Food for Thought

She was an extremely successful chef in an extremely successful restaurant on the coast of Maine. The midcoast, to be precise, although exact location is better off a secret. Once they hear about the great food, prices, and views, the tourists start to invade our state and they just come for the lobster, not the scenery or history. (We aren’t happy about that.)

It had taken some time and effort for her to become head chef. She had gone through rigorous training in three countries. She was an expert at preparing seafood, as might be supposed since she lived and worked in Maine. In addition, she was unusually creative with herbs and spices and knew the best butter, oil, and vinegar for dishes. She was very informed on wines and occasionally led wine tastings for customers. In the back of her mind, she would think about acquiring a vineyard of her own and producing organic wine. There was time enough to do that.

She was actually rather in awe of her job and success, but she knew she’d earned the position and was happy about being recognized for her culinary creativity. Not everyone can say that. A lot of people don’t realize their good fortune or can stand back and smile at what they’ve accomplished. She felt very fortunate and, while not ambitious, she did want to keep improving her skills. She would travel some more and would continue to take courses. In the culinary world, many things are needed for success. Practice, experience, is one of them.

The type of restaurant was typical: good local cooking, with a few innovative dishes that gave the menu some flair. No need to given extensive examples from the menu, but other than the freshest shellfish and lobster imaginable, there were salmon, monkfish, and hake that were always from the day’s catch. Any potato dishes were made with Aroostook County’s best harvests. Desserts included blueberries from Cherryfield and eggs from off Route 1 where a woman who also was a skilled quilter kept her chickens in free-range consitions. Some dishes used cheese, a fine Maine product, especially the soft goat cheese whose only rival is one made in Vermont.

Only one thing seemed odd. Next door sold pizzas, and it was part of the restaurant in a way nobody could really explain. It had just grown out of the original space and was also successful, but was not competing with the ‘fine dining’ side of the house where she worked. Her kitchen was just as busy, but even in the most demanding moments, she didn’t forget a thing, including the fresh garnishes that were from her hydroponic herb garden. A plate never went out to a table without a spring of perfect parsley, leaves of Genovese basil, or Mexican oregano, among other possibilities. Only an ingredient like saffron was imported, but it came from a certified grower in Spain and was not like the cheap colorant used in some places to give rice or a cream sauce a more golden shade.

All the ingredients were locally-sourced, which was the reason the restaurant’s original name had been Maine: The Way Food Should Be. It wasn’t a great choice, but nobody vetoed it, although people in the midcoast region tended to call it Should Be for short. That, of course, sounded a lot like Shooby and with time that became the name for most people, some of who were old enough to joke and say something about shooby dooby do, which was either a song chorus or a cartoon.

Tonight was a perfect night. It was crowded in the Shooby and people were ordering top-of-the-lines dishes. The waitstaff and kitchen people were doing a stellar job. Nobody sent a dish back or complained. Mandarin yellow walls in the cozy dining space glowed in the evening air and candlelight. The Portuguese lace curtains complemented the maple woodwork.The moon was doing its reflecting best to enhance the lapping waves. It was hard to think of being anywhere else in the world at that moment.

Then it all changed. There was nothing obvious at first, however. One server put in a ticket that looked like it said zonchos but was really mangoes and referred to the mango-mint-chile chutney served with the grilled langostinos. She stopped and stared at the word, thinking it couldn’t possibly be zonchos, which people in a certain culture know are boiled chestnuts. Chestnuts have many meanings and uses, but there are few trees that produce them in Maine, sadly. 

She quickly realized her error and continued her cooking tasks, delegating the things to the sous chef as she should, while giving an occasional glance at the assistants chopping garnishes, potatoes, etc. She didn’t prepare many dishes with chestnuts, but was thinking she might try to expand her repertoire. Too bad they had to be imported and were costly, plus they often arrived either dry or moldy.

After the chutney dish came a ticket for a beef and red wine stew with cheese-filled dumplings. It was rich, full of calories, the meat was so tender … and she stopped in her tracks. She now had an image of a hillside spring and, right after that, a bubbling pot with small dumpling-like spheres. No beef and no top-shelf wine; more like gruel with some salt pork, and the balls of dough pulsing, boiling. She shook her head and put up the deep dish of flavorful stew to be transported to a table. 

As the night wore on, the tickets kept giving her tiny jolts, as if they carried some subliminal message. Proia came to mind and she had to work hard to recall it was a type of ball sometimes made with cornmeal, cooked at the back of the open hearth. That was what she thought of when she saw the polenta with corn, eggs, and feta. She silently thought polenta tasted better in the burnt lemon and rosemary polenta cake she had created and which was very popular at the Shooby.

Porridge came in on another ticket, and her concern increased. They didn’t even serve porridge in the restaurant. She’d never made it for customers, and momentarily panicked: did they even have the right ingredients to make it? Why would anybody order such a dish for supper? She heard the word papiñas appear out of the blue. No, it was more than that. She heard the whole phrase papiñas con leite and shook her head. She definitely wasn’t about to serve that to somebody in a restaurant known for its exquisite seafood, fresh vegetables, and house baked potatoes. Oatmeal and milk? Impossible. 

And it must have been impossible, in fact, because the ticket had disappeared. Nobody had ordered anything close to porridge.

She was getting worried, because fast on the heals of the oat ceresl came an order for sopiñas con viño, which wasn’t even English. But she knew sopiñas weren’t ‘little soups’, that they were chunks of bread soaked in wine. It might be warmed up, but it was definitely not the kind a connoisseur would ever touch. This was a hearty dish for children. Children who ate boiled chestnuts and bread baked in the back of the hearth. It was considered to be good nourishment for women who had just given birth. At least wine had more calories than water.

Torrexas con mel, fried bread drizzled with honey came next. She was becoming very alarmed and didn’t really know if she had been cooking all the real items on the menu. She was losing track of the tickets, some of which she thought might not be real, even though all the servers looked completely normal and everyone who had the supper shift had shown up.

Roasted potatoes, salt, vinegar? The restaurant served potatoes, sure, but certainly not with vinegar. That was for fries at the state fair, but not in an establishment with a Michelin star and almost no fried dishes. The menu was varied as well as healthy. There was no room for French fries. Why had a customer ordered something that was not on the menu? It wasn’t ordered with anything else, either, like steak or fish? 

Finally the last table had left, and she was exhausted, not from her work in the kitchen, which she always did with energy, but from the strange infusion of food from afar - because it definitely was from afar. It had come in a different language and wasn’t from the menu of a sophisticated restaurant that could boast about the quality of its offerings. Variety, organic, proteins, vitamins, minerals. Not pure carbohydrates and grease, like some places served.

She grabbed her jacket and went home, thinking she might have a small glass of white godello before going to bed. She was exhausted and confused. She sat down in the comfortable chair by a window which had a view of the ocean and looked out over the water. She often thought about what lay on the other side and who had come from those regions. In a few minutes, after only one sip of wine, she had drifted off. 

She dreamed about her grandmother, who had always like to read poetry out loud and read it with a rhythm that seemed it would make her get up and dance at any moment. Mostly she read Rosalía de Castro, because (miraculously) she had two books by the writer. In her dream, her grandmother was reading again, but in two languages, which was impossible, because her grandmother spoke but a single language.

Has de cantar,

You must sing,

que che hei de dar zonchos;

I’ll give you boiled chestnuts;

has de cantar,

you must sing,

que che hei de dar moitos.

I’ll give you so many.

I

"Has de cantar,

You must sing,

meniña gaiteira;

gay little maid;

has de cantar,

you must sing,

que me morro de pena.

I’m dying from this pain.

Canta, meniña,

Sing, little maid,

na beira da fonte;

beside the cool fountain;

canta, daréiche

sing, and I’ll give you

boliños do pote.

dumplings from the pot.

Canta, meniña,

Sing, my maiden,

con brando compás;

with easy rhythm;

daréiche unha proia

I’ll give you a flatbread 

da pedra do lar.

from the stone of the hearth.

Papiñas con leite

Porridge with milk

tamén che daréi;

I’ll give you as well;

sopiñas con viño,

bread soaked in wine,

torrexas con mel.

honey on fried bread.

Patacas asadas

Potatoes all roasted

con sal e vinagre,

with vinegar and salt,

que saben a noces.

they taste like walnuts,

¡Qué ricas que saben!

how delicious they are!

When the poem was over, grandmother simply added: It’s time to come home. Cook for us. I’ll give you boiled chestnuts.