Heavy Fare

by

Angstwolf

 

Dips and spreads

 

 

 

Days,

she prowls the house in bra and panties, chewing ice cubes, holding a cigarette in one hand. It calms her to see it burn. The bra holds a prosthesis that replaces her left breast. She unclasps the bra and sets it out on the dresser. A wide pink scar curls around her chest. He studies the second pink scar, the one in the dresser mirror. "This is our secret," she tells him.


Chopped Chicken Liver

You either love liver or hate it. If you love it, chances are you can appreciate it any form, whether as fried liver and onions, dirty rice, pate de foie gras, or ankimo (monkfish liver sushi). Chopped chicken liver is a relatively easy way to get your liver fix (well, it doesn’t get much simpler than fried liver and onions, does it?) This recipe is a little nontraditional, but very tasty.

1 pound of chicken livers, rinsed and dried on paper towels

1 large yellow onion, finely diced

2 tbsp olive oil

1/4 cup butter

2 tbsp tawny port (or red wine, or brandy)

salt and pepper

Heat the butter and olive oil over moderate heat and add the diced onion. Saute the onion, stirring occasionally, until it is golden brown. Add the livers and saute the livers until they are fully cooked (when cut in half, you should see little or no pink color). Add the port, and continue to saute until the alcohol has boiled off, about 3 minutes. Add about 1 teaspoon salt and about 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper. Pour the entire contents of the frying pan into a bowl, and allow it to cool.

Coarsely chop the livers in a food processor. Add water, about 2 tablespoons at a time, stirring or processing between additions in order to incorporate the water. Once the livers have been chopped to a small dice (still some texture, not mush), transfer to a bowl and continue mixing by hand only. Continue to add water until the mixture is the consistency of mashed potatoes. Taste the chopped livers and add salt and pepper to taste. Refrigerate and serve cold.

Dressing it up: how do you garnish something that looks like, um, refried beans? Most people mould chopped chicken liver into a clever shape and place crackers or toast points around the perimeter. Thinly-sliced onion should also be provided for people who like a bit of raw onion with their liver.


Years later,

Angstwolf is driving home from medical school for the holidays accompanied by his parents. His mother sits in the passenger seat, his father pretends to sleep in the back. Angstwolf, armed with the wealth of knowledge that only six months of medical school can bestow, patiently draws her out:

She remembers waking from surgery to find Sargent looking at her with a very serious expression. There was something in his expression which she found distasteful, something perhaps she interpreted as a judgment on herself, or in any case, something that implied an absence of love. How would she have liked him to appear?

She was an essentially friendless person who, even at that time, must have had an impoverished relationship with her brother and parents; thus with one misinterpreted glance she distanced herself from the only person who may have been able to support her. But distrust was one of the fundamentals of her personality. Angstwolf cannot imagine events playing out any differently.


Hummus

For people seeking to live by the Mediterranean diet, hummus is a near-perfect food. Writing a recipe for hummus is a bit challenging, since a great deal of flavor adjustment occurs during the preparation. As long as you do not make any drastic moves, you will be pleased with the final result.

1 cup dry garbanzo beans (chickpeas)

tahini

olive oil

lemon juice

salt

garlic

garnishes: chopped parsley, harissa, sumac (see below)

Soak the beans overnight. Boil them in a large volume of water until they are tender (check periodically).Strain the beans and allow them to cool.

Once the beans are cool enough to handle, gently squeeze them, bean by bean, to remove the skins. (No, really! You can certainly omit this step, since it is really time-consuming. But you will notice the skins, if not when you eat the hummus, then later on, since the skins produce flatulence.)

Combine the beans, 1/4 cup tahini, the juice from one lemon, 1/4 cup olive oil, 1 teaspoon salt, and one crushed clove of garlic in the mixing bowl of a food processor. Process until well mixed. Taste the hummus and add more garlic, lemon juice, olive oil or salt until you are satisfied with the result. The hummus will still have the wrong texture: it will be much too thick.The final step is to gradually add cold water, mixing after each addition, until the hummus has the correct consistency. Refrigerate and serve chilled.

To serve, mound the hummus at the center of a large serving dish. Using a moistened spoon, make a depression in the center of the mound. Pour a bit of olive oil into the depression. Sprinkle the hummus with sumac and chopped parsley. Put the harissa into a small bowl and place it to one side of the hummus. Around the perimeter of the hummus place pita bread, wedges of onion, celery, carrots— whatever you want.

About the ingredients. Tahini is a sesame seed paste; it is used in hummus and as a sauce for falafel. Tahini is marketed by Joyva. Harissa is a relish made of roasted red peppers. As red pepper relishes go, harissa is high on flavor and low on heat. It is marketed by Indo-European Foods as "red pepper salsa." Sumac is a purple spice that has a mildly sour flavor. It is very good on rice or kebabs. Sumac is marketed by Sadaf International Gourmet Foods.


He continues the questioning, and she responds:

It became plain to her after two events. She was taking a shower when she felt an electrical jolt travel from her tail bone to her scalp. This was not one of those stray sensations, the body providing phantom responses to phantom stimuli; the agent for this sensation was external, and as such was a mystery to be explained.

Soon afterwards, she awoke one night to find Sargent absent from the bed. He was not in the bedroom, not in the bathroom. Terrified, she staggered through the house searching for him. Staggered because something unnatural gripped her legs. She left the house and made it as far as the driveway before she collapsed and lost consciousness.

She awoke again the next morning, in her own bed, Sargent asleep beside her. When questioned, he denied ever having left the bed. He became angry when she persisted in her inquiries.

And then I understood.


Guacamole

The challenge is not in making guacamole... any dufus can make guacamole. No, the real challenge is in making a guacamole that will cause your guests to perk up and say, "Hey! What the hell is this?" Here it is both ways, dull and interesting:

Dull Guacamole

This is very acceptable guacamole, assuming your avocadoes are ripe. Taste each avocado before using it! Underripe avocado is very unpleasant and cannot be disguised by any amount of spice.

3 to 4 ripe avocadoes

2 to 3 limes

salt, pepper to taste

Halve an avocado and squeeze some lime juice on the flesh before removing the seed. Remove the seed and scoop the flesh into a bowl. Taste the avocado to make sure it is ripe. Squeeze a bit more lime juice on the flesh. Repeat with the remaining avocadoes, one at a time.

Coarsely mash the avocadoes with a large wooden spoon (not a fork, which will tend to create a guacamole that looks like green mashed potatoes). Add salt and pepper and additional lime juice to taste.

 

Interesting Guacamole

Dull guacamole (see above)

1 teaspoon ground cumin

2 tablespoons harissa (described above, in the hummus section)

1 tablespoon freshly crushed garlic

½ medium yellow onion, finely diced

cilantro (AKA Chinese parsley), finely diced, about 1/4 cup

1 or 2 tomatoes, coarsely diced

Combine the ingredients. Mix most of the cilantro into the guacamole, but reserve a bit of it to sprinkle on top as a garnish. You may substitute any red pepper salsa for harissa, but you will miss out on the intense roasted chili pepper flavor of the harissa. Try to use the most flavorful tomatoes possible (e.g. vine-ripened).

Eat with tortilla chips, or as a side dish with almost any Mexican main course. Important:store guacamole by placing plastic wrap directly over the dip, such that little or no air contacts it. Refrigerate, and eat it as soon as possible. Guacamole does not keep for long...


His skin prickles

when he realizes that she took her dream as a true experience, that she felt compelled to explain these remarkable phenomena, and that in the act of explanation she arrived at a world view which would grip her for years.

The electric shock; Sargent’s absence from bed; the force that gripped her legs and ultimately dragged her down into oblivion; Sargent’s amnesia for the preceding night’s excursion. From these elements she assembled a universe of rays that could monitor everything from vital signs to conversations, beams to induce amnesia or sleep. Manipulating these rays and beams were the doctors and medical researchers who had caused her cancer and who would continue to study her, waiting for her demise.

As the months and years passed, she came to realize that she was not going to die; realized, in fact, that she represented a cure for cancer.


Salsa Verde con Ajo de Shewolf

Like many of Angstwolf's and Shewolf’s recipes, this one was inspired by something they devoured at a restaurant, enjoyed, but thought could stand improvement. As with anything green (except Jello), Boy does not regard this as food and will not even sample it.

½ cup cilantro

1 cup parsley (Italian parsley, if available)

1 heaping tbsp freshly crushed garlic

½ cup olive oil

½ tsp coarsely ground black pepper

1 tsp capers (optional) or lime juice

1 tbsp harissa

salt to taste

1 cherry pepper

Combine the cilantro, parsley, garlic, olive oil and black pepper in the container of the food processor. (You will want to include a few of the cilantro and parsley stems, as this will add texture.) Process carefully; you want the salsa to be coarsely but evenly chopped.

Remove the seeds from the cherry pepper and coarsely dice the pepper. Cherry peppers are very flavorful red peppers that look a bit like cherry tomatoes. They are not very hot.

As usual, you may substitute another red pepper salsa for harissa (e.g. sambal oelek— now ain’t that helpful?)

Add the harissa, cherry peppers, salt and capers (or lime juice). Taste and correct the seasoning by adding additional salt, pepper, lime juice or harissa. Keep in mind your particular "garlic tolerance" when you decide how much garlic to use in this recipe— it is raw garlic, after all.

This salsa is delicious with just about any meat or fish. It can also be used as a topping for toasted French bread slices (a jazzy garlic bread, essentially), or it can be eaten with raw vegetables. If you really want to shovel it down, eat with chips... or a spoon.


The trace of guilt he feels in revealing their secret

disperses when he realizes that Sargent shows no sign of surprise. Indeed, when he sees the lack of reaction on Sargent’s face, he wonders if he misunderstood the concept of "secret." Brother and Sister know, too. Eyes Pinned Open is in the room and must have heard him blab their secret, and yet she is not upset.

Eventually he realizes that it is a family secret.

`


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