coldhearted scientist وداد

Below is another post I wrote at another time, and scheduled at random to come up today. Now I am advised to visualize myself encompassed in a blue egg of protective light, and the post I had scheduled to come up is, in a way, one such.

I am from the coast and when I still lived there I would hike out onto the bluffs in late afternoons and dream on the horizon, by the Chinese rocks, as I called them because one, next to a gnarled tree sculpted by the wind, had Chinese inscriptions on it. In those days I had clear eyes. I am meditating now.

The original post is in another key, as it is about cooking. But it is a recipe designed to recall a place.

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Sometimes a little hut crops up suprisingly on a wild beach in Mexico, Peru, or Brazil, selling steamed rice, grilled fish, and salad with hot peppers in it. Now that I have genuine redfish that I caught in a little pirogue, and especially since some of it still has the skin and scales, I can replicate this beach meal exactly.

The rice has to be really good rice. You sauté finely minced onion in a little olive oil and stir this with the rice into the water to steam. At the end, you sprinkle it with chopped cilantro. The fish has to be fresh local fish, of course. You brush it with oil, grill it, salt it, and serve it with limes. Redfish takes longer to grill than I would have thought.

The salad has to be perky since the meal is simple. It needs mixed lettuce and herbs, fresh chopped chiles, tomatoes, scallions, and anything else you like – I like mushrooms, although they do not have these on the beach, and you may like avocado, which they sometimes do have. It needs oil, vinegar, lime juice, garlic, and salt.

With all of this you should serve ají. There are many ways of making it but one is simply to mince hot peppers very finely and marinate them in olive oil. Here is a recipe that takes more work.

Axé.