Highly Bearable
Sometimes my life feels like a collection of wrong turns at the fork, but every-once-in-a-while the heavens open and the angels sing. Take this morning. I’m just in rhythm with my surroundings-- looking around and saying, “Well, goddman Swerdy, how’d you pull this off?” From the words on my screen to the glaze on my coffee cup, it’s like I got Perez Prado on repeat and my heart is doing the mambo; not due to some great romantic love, but to an accumulative love. A macro-romance. A sweet duet with what has turned out to be a highly bearable reality.
And why shouldn’t it be bearable? It’s a beautiful summer morning in LA and I have been to the farmer’s market and purchased cherries from Weiser Farms who don’t even grow cherries, but have a few trees and pick ‘em and lay ‘em out next to their famous Magic Myrna potatoes, and so I buy twenties bucks worth and now I have that cherry smile. That “life is a just bowl of” grin. That stained finger, tongue redder, whoop de doo. Firm, dark, maroon little love drops. The pits like the fortune in a cookie and all of them saying the same thing. “Yes. Yes. Summer. Yes.”
The Magic Myrnas are ridiculous. They are almost too sweet and buttery, “almost” being the key word in that sentence. I have cooked them many ways: boiled in salt water then lightly slathered with cultured butter and creme fraiche. Cut-in-half and roasted in the pan with a whole Jadori chicken that’s been salted for 24 hours*, the salty chicken juice love-bombing the taters. I’ve even baked them alone in a thin metal baking pan sealed with tin foil, so they roast and steam at the same time, and I thought this was a high point, until I did them like that, then split them lengthwise and fried them slow in bacon fat and that’s when I understood why I had been put on this earth. They were crunchy, but soft, with a bacon smoke umami subtlety. The taste and mouthfeel an ancient satisfaction.
Can we talk strawberries? I know it’s a touchy subject. No two fruits have suffered from modernity more than the strawberry and tomato. From the infantile need for some red blemish-less perfection to a desire for shelf life to the sad fact that almost no one even remembers what a good strawberry or tomato tastes like, these two red glories have been manipulated within an inch of their lives.
I have this theory. It's mostly about art and food, but it can be applied to pretty much anything. The theory goes like this—Is it the real thing or an idea about the thing? The strawberries in the supermarket are an idea about strawberries. The strawberries I get from Roots Farms are the thing itself. Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon is the thing itself. Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman is his idea about Al Pacino. (On a side note, I have a great story about my friend Paola, a Sicilian economics professor and film lover who grew up in Syracusa adoring Al. She had only seen him dubbed, so when she came to study in America, she was like I am finally going to get to see him in all his Bronx boy mother tongue glory! She goes and rents a Pacino movie and is deeply disappointed. Turns out he’s not as good as Giancarlo Giannini doing Pacino… Does everyone know Giannini? Have we all seen Seven Beauties, Swept Away, Love and Anarchy? Is this mic on? What the fuck is happening here!!!)
But let’s get back to the Fraises. I’ve written about Roots Farms before. I call them the benevolent Manson Family, because they got two half-Charlie looking cult leader types running the show, and a throng of attractive young women selling their wares. The younger Manson is named Justin, a tall, lanky hippy-child, steward of the land type, floppy, black leather cowboy hat crowning his bearded face. He’s got that “it’s all good” smile and talks about crop rotation and “harvesting” sheep for lamb barbecues that can be attended for a price. I even have his phone number in case my need for lamb chops in a bucolic outdoor setting becomes acute.
Last week I got there at a reasonable hour and all the strawberries were gone. “Hey man, strawberry season’s over?” “Nope. Word got out and the restaurants swooped in. They were gone by 7:30.” I’m not against pastry chefs getting what they need, but save a few pints for the little guy. “Hey bro, if I text you next Saturday, and remind you to hold some for me, can you do it?” He gave me a groovy, I am no stranger to psilocybin grin, and said, “I can.” And so Saturday night I passed him a note asking for two three-packs and added a pic of myself with the caption “The cat in the hat.” When I got there, he gave me the old, “Oops, I forgot” shtick, but he didn’t keep it going long, and I got my fragolas.
I can't say for sure I caught the cooking virus from my brother but he was definitely a carrier. I remember him telling me how Lindsey (his wife) loved to go see live music, but that he rarely went with her. “I don’t like to see music. I like to cook dinner.” I can relate, and as much of a jazz-loving, funk-skunking groove-licker as I am, I don’t go see a lot of live music either. But oh man, do I make dinner. I make dinner like Dylan tours, and I don’t mean that in some, that’s how I serve my purpose, way, I mean I’ve done it so much I don’t know how to do anything else. Dinner is how I jam. My commercial six-burner stove, my Fender amp. My well-seasoned carbon steel frying pan, my Stratocaster. Maybe I’m an ego-maniac or black-market narcissist, but why would I go see someone else gig when I can perform at home and feed myself while I’m at it. Sure, Sonny Rollins could get me to eat take out, but not many others. And I don’t need to fill Disney Hall; just one to five hungry souls to smack their lips in rhythm and let me love them.
My pal Bill is coming over for dinner tonight-- I’m gonna slow sear a little “jowl toro.” It’s sort of like pork belly, but the fat more buttery. After the first bite, you’re like, “This is kinda nice.” Five bites later you’re thinking what other animal’s face can I eat? After that, I’ll fry the pre-roasted Magic Myrnas in the rendered fat. I’ll make a simple salad of this beautiful Red Oak lettuce I get from Roots, the Sicilian olive oil I’ll dress it with so good you could pour it over your lawn and be happy. We’ll start off with a big Cherokee tomato, as sweet as one of William Carlos Williams’ plums (though I would never serve it cold). I’ve already cut up the fragolas and hit ‘em with a little lemon and a bit of sugar just to break ‘em down. I got some homemade buttermilk biscuits in the freezer and I’m gonna whip some cream and get my strawberry shortcake on. But don’t get it twisted. These fresas need no help. All you got to do is text the man in the floppy hat and pop ‘em in your mouth.
I have been roasting chickens for forty-years. I’ve Rosemary-lemon’d, head of garlic stuffed, bed of onioned and anchovy-rubbed, and those are just a few styles that come to mind. I know people can be fierce about their favorite version of this culinary standard (is roast chicken “Pennies from Heaven” or “Body and Soul?”), but now that I am old and wise, I just buy the best bird I can, salt it for twelve to twenty-four hours, and let it rest at least thirty minutes after roasting. You can never let a roast chicken rest too long. Put it on my tombstone.
"Five bites later you’re thinking what other animal’s face can I eat?" Made my day.
Well, damn, Tommy. Now I’m hungry.
And you hit it square on the nose - the strawberries and maters from the grocery store are indeed the idea of the thing.