Scent of Apples - my Own Culinary Diaspora

Rustic Mini Apple Tart with Guava

It is amazing how snippets of my college literary upbringing seem to intermingle and come back triggered by food. Gullermo Pesigan, my English homeroom class adviser would be mighty proud of me. He stood on top of his table to stress a point long before Dead Poet Society came about. So blame him for some of my eccentricity.

While Bienvenido Santos attempts to connect a displaced Filipino farmer in Kalamazoo Missouri to the essence of the modern filipina of his times in the story of the same title, how I relate to apples makes me reflect on my own detachment from my patrimony and yet untenable thread linking me in so many small ways. Leaving Manila was part of a longing not to be confined to a string of islands for the rest of my life, to shake off the toxin of a career that came too early, and this unshakeable need to connect with my muse, who is more a bitch most times, unless I am writing and cooking.

Apple pie is quintessentially American - how I make it is essentially me - a mish mash of who I am trying to be and memories connected to my youth - the guava preserve I spread on the bottom of the pastry on a mini tart pan is reminiscent of countless treks to the hills of my childhood in La Union to gather the fruit from wild trees, fill a sack, cross the river back to town, and watch as one of my grandmas peel and seed the guavas, boil them in sugar until the jam turns a reddish brown. The next morning, Grandma would wake me up, give me some coins, and I would walk three blocks away in foggy streets to the village bakery in my ratty pajamas and buy hot pandesal. I would come back to the scent of freshly boiled coffee, sit down on the rickety communal table, and dig into the jam.

At second grade I would not even have seen apples that much, though I read incessantly about them in my books, along with wheat, red barns and 4 H clubs. Nowadays, I don't even eat them raw, i brew my coffee with the touch of a button, my favorite niece Camille at the same age would not be allowed beyond the community gate to buy dinner rolls or vinegar, and I would not taste guava jam again unless I go to the Japanese grocery where they sell stuff from Hawaii or buy pastries from the Cuban bakery. I love that my childhood was bucolic, my youth was literary and my advancing years have been loaded with experience which reflect my cooking.

Kiss Your Gourmet Dinner Goodbye

As with any great meal, certain connections come to an end and do not deserve to be renewed, not even through a thinly veiled friendship that doesn't really amount to much.  I think being on friendly terms work best for couples who have heavily invested together on something - like kids, or property, or even a dog.  Like a great meal,  an ended great love is something you remember with fondness and with good memories, long after you have digested and dumped it in the toilet.

It will be a while before I hit the kitchen again with passion.  For it is with pleasure and heart that certain meals came about, inspired by the energy of love one experiences at that time.  And it was an inspired period - starting with beef borguignone and sole meuniere, progressed into tarte tatin, that inspired a foray into Julia Child, which in turn brought me to the doorsteps of San Francisco's La Boulangerie for french baking because George Mulot and Laduree were continents away.  Those were the evenings dedicated solely to the tactile maneuvering of butter and dough to make puff pastry, croissants, pain au chocolat, mini rustic apple tarts, eclairs and french fruit tartes.  Trios of duck confit, filet mignon and seared ahi tuna were capped with creamy pots de creme.  Never was pork so ignored to adjust to someone's taste.  And I can barely remember how many rib eye steaks I have composed and served on a rickety table covered with a Middle Eastern headscarf until I finally whipped it off in disgust and replaced it with a more civil and matching linen.  Seared chilean sea bass or black cod took turns with poached salmon and tuna steaks on the odd Sunday night. The last dinner I served him was now inspired by Spain, perhaps a sign of the changing times and forked roads. 

Cornish game hen roasted with garlic and rosemary from Adrian Feria's discussion on the new Spanish gastronomy.  It was good.  No, it was perfect.