Cherries: A confession

It is July 30, and I am eating cherries.

On face value, this offense might seem trivial. I paid for the cherries, after all. But with each little sucked stone I admit my part in the conspiracy – a lacework of trees and pickers and tarps and Cherry Queens and trucks and airplanes and dollar bills, the American kind. So Barbara Kingsolver might tell me, and she’d be right. I bought these cherries at an American-run grocery store in South Korea. I have no idea where the cherries came from or how they got from a tree to my hotel room other than the last half-mile, which I drove. All I know is that I plan to eat every one and feel tickled pink about it.



















Cherries mean summer. Their squat, tumbling entrance into the world each year hardly competes in a season laden with thundering movies, splashing kids and flipping flops. A few years ago I started listening more carefully, especially when my taste buds were talking. Each June this is what they said: We’ve only got a couple of weeks to do this thing, a month at most. Get to the grocery store and buy as many fresh, sweet cherries as you can.

That was when I lived in central New York, and the cherries at my super-sized grocery store came from Michigan or Washington, I’d guess now. That sin of shipping and guzzling un-local food is the argument in Kingsolver’s latest book, “Animal, Vegetable and Miracle.” It’s hard to find fault with the notion, especially when much of the United States is rich with farmland, local produce and farmers’ stands. She admits that you can’t grow food in all places, and she does something about it. She and her family leave the artificial food chain in the American southwest for the consumable progeny of Virginia. (She does not admit, however, how her garden or her farming neighbors managed to produce rice paper wrappers during her family’s year eating from the local food economy. We all have our secrets in the kitchen.)

After my family gave up gardening when I was 10 or so, we went to the grocery stores for most things to eat. Years later when I started making my own groceries and dinners, I looked forward to this weekly habit as a way to experiment with vegetables that don't traditionally grow in the American south. Portobello mushrooms on a summer grill. Roasted asparagus with Christmas dinner. Stuffed artichokes any ol’ time you felt like it. And if work or life was too complicated, the old, easy stand-bys always stood by: broccoli, bananas, eggplants, peppers, lemons. As I’ve aged, the conspiracy and my part in it have ripened so that it’s possible to find delicious cantaloupe year-round. In more than one winter I’ve marveled at the juicy melon I’m eating.

Not so with cherries. They remain one of the few hold-outs in this one-season-fits-all way of produce. Even in the midst of massive grocery chains and unhealthy government farming subsidies, fresh cherries remind us that weather and climate and location, to a degree, matter. Occasionally, other reminders of natural cultivation pop up, such as litchi nuts in late April, or corn after the Fourth of July. For me, spying those tilted boxes of red-black balls at the store cracked louder than fireworks. Summer is here, go sit on the porch and enjoy the late, lazy evening.

This specific attention to the growing calendar does nothing to solve the problem – or, let’s face it, lessen the convenience – of refrigerated trucks and food with frequent flyer miles. The appearance of cherries at a major market romanticizes the idea of seasonal produce and local farming. And like any short-term love affair, it inevitably brings more complications than you bargained for. Unless you live in Michigan or the American northwest, those cherries didn't come from a tree near you. But still, give up cherries cold turkey? What a cruel, uncheerful world.

This summer, unlike many past, I had planned on just that. In Tokyo the beautiful and shrink-wrapped cherries can cost $10 for less than a pint, a fact I couldn't wrap my wallet around. But a week later I found myself on a business trip in Korea ogling cherries, in July no less, at only $4 a pound. My hand reached for the plastic bag before I knew what was happening. Now I’m trying to decide how much I regret that decision. The cherries are good, I’m only half-sorry to say. Part of me is having a fabulous, healthy dessert.

Part of me is craving plums. Back in Tokyo, I passed on the expense of cherries and, on a friend’s advice, waited for plum season to arrive. In early July, tennis-ball-sized plums appeared with apple-tart green skins. On my first bite, I realized I’d honestly never eaten anything that glowed so rosy or tasted so plummy. It was a wonderful discovery and, relative to other prices in a Japanese produce aisle, a reasonably affordable one. I hope they are still in season when I get home in a couple of weeks. Otherwise, I'll be waiting until next July for the plums to return. And that, I suppose, is the point.

Of the mushroom

Rumor has it the rainy season is about to end. The sun is shining in Kyushu, Japan's southern-most island, and a few rays have burst through the clouds in Tokyo this morning. It seems a safe time to approach the subject of mushrooms.

First – when approaching mushrooms, it's best to walk decidedly and avoid thinking too much. This, I think, is a pretty good rule for most things in life, but especially with mushrooms. My mom is allergic to them. My sister refuses them on principle. A friend in Japan has watched them grow from the wall in his apartment this summer. Hmmm. Still, he eats them, and I do too. Compartmentalizing can sometimes be your best pal, and this is one of those times.

Second – it has been an awfully wet July, a time replete with books and tea and a growing craving for earthy, fall flavors. I know it's summer and the corn is popping off the stalks, but on this side of the world, green and gray never looked so luminescent and cozy. So much rain has fallen the grass glows and reflects against the smoky sky, much like fallen snow at dusk on brief February days. Matters probably aren't helped by my current Jane Austen phase. All in all, I've got a serious craving for melting popovers and roasty chickens and the smell of thyme. But I don't have time for all that. I've got a weekend full of errands and an airplane to catch Monday, so I need an empty refrigerator at the end of it all. Thus, I brought home an armful of mushrooms.

Let's be clear: I'm not of the school that encourages mushrooms to replace meat. Only meat replaces meat in my kitchen, so that's that. Mushrooms have their own potent charms that needn't be brushed aside as a substitution for beef. (Needn't. See? Jane Austen.) They taste like walking after a rain, and to me, that's a mighty good thought that can stand alone. Plus they have odds and ends of odd things in them – selenium, cooper, iron – elements I somehow think would be best left on the Periodic Table, but I'm told they are good for me. Again, compartmentalize.

So mushrooms, a meal, alongside roasted asparagus and some shirred eggs. I'm lucky to find relatively affordable, fresh, and fragrant mushrooms here, so I needed little more than a cast iron skillet and salt and pepper. If you have fresh garlic and thyme at your house, they are welcome in the frying pan. I feel silly writing a recipe, because this is really just supper. Here goes:

Open a bottle of red wine and pour a glass for the cook.

Gather your mushrooms. I bought smallish packages of button, shitake and silky, undulating oyster. Brush off the dirt, wash briefly if needed, and cut into large bite-size pieces. Get a heavy frying pan hot, as if you were about to sear meat. Add 2 to 3 tablespoons of olive oil; it should shimmer. Add heartiest mushrooms first and let them sit in the pan for a minute. Turn down the heat slightly if the pan smokes. Stir, adding garlic, thyme and more delicate mushrooms as you go. You shouldn't have to add more olive oil, and the mushrooms should not exude liquid; if they do, the pan wasn't hot enough in the beginning. Add generous sprinklings of salt and pepper.

Serve with shirred eggs and roasted asparagus, drizzled with balsamic vinegar, and a wedge of blue cheese.

Pour another glass of wine for the cook.

The wakame wars

It's Tuesday, raining, and I find myself wrapped up in a silent war with wakame. The seaweed has no idea we are fighting, so clearly it is winning.

It started late last week, innocently enough, as these things do. I had picked up the seaweed during an ambitious moment on my lunch break. My friend, who is Japanese, had let me tag along to the grocery store for a shopping lesson. In the past, she's patiently answered questions such as “where is the sushi ginger?” and “what's the kanji for rice vinegar?”

Last week, I wandered into the wakame, the moist seaweed that often shows up as the bed under seared tuna or floating alongside noodles in udon. Unlike nori, the dried, flat version that wraps sushi or enhances sashimi, wakame looks like it came straight from the sea. It's wavy and chewy, like kale, but with a subtler flavor of green. I found myself agreeing to my friend's instructions: wash off the salt really well, seep in boiling water for just a few seconds, then use. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

I brought the wakame – wet, salted, green, shredded – home. Into the fridge it went, a small, heavy-ish plastic bag set atop the top shelf. But over the next few days, my mood shifted. Lunching at neighborhood restaurants beckoned. Cereal for dinner with a movie felt like a treat. And still it loomed, that seaweed, behind the refrigerator door. By Sunday I was treading nervously in the kitchen, circling widely, like a golfer dreading a 20-foot put. I peaked in again this morning. It hadn't moved an inch, the stubborn bastard.

Funny thing, because Wakame isn't exactly known for its patience. Underwater it climbs like kudzu. The weed takes over reefy shelters and pushes out the algae that sea urchins and fish eat. For Korea, China and Japan, where wakame has been harvested for centuries, the rapid growth makes for good crops. But this weed gets around and finds unsuspecting neighbors off-guard. (Don't I know it). Twenty years ago it was first discovered in waters off Wellington and has grown, quite literally, to be a problem there.

Perhaps the kiwis would be more forgiving if they heard this: Wakame also is suspected of fighting fat, specifically, bulges found around the belly. I can't speak for New Zealand, or anyone else really, but I say “Get that little baggie out of the fridge and onto the dinner plate!” It's a tad long for a bumper sticker, but it beats “fucoxanthin,” the compound in the seaweed that initiates the slimming. Japanese chemists have found this mouthful-of-a-word causes fat mice to conjure up a special protein that converts their pudge into energy.

This being a story of the sea, there is a catch. This “thin” compound inside wakame is wound up so tightly in the seaweed's own protein structure that you'd have to eat an ocean's worth to get the same results as those in the lab. “Fucoxan,” I say, with my own special accent.

So here I am, five days later, at a wakame stand-off. I just went in for an apple, whistling ever so carelessly, and the vegetable barely bothered to sigh. I'm beginning to be reminded of the start of more than one relationship, only this time I haven't even had a decent meal yet. I've got a potential dinner in my fridge that could, in my scientific dreams, mean one step closer to buttoning up my skinny jeans. Instead I sit here typing. Figures. Something tells me that if I continue this battle much longer, I'll have to restock my fresh wakame.

Which is what I do. Out with the old, in with the new. And like most things taken for granted, the wakame salad comforts comfortably. Even overdue, exaggerated truces are worth the wait.

Wakame salad

Prep wakame according to package. I used the wet, salted version. First wash off salt, then cover with boiling water until pliable to your liking (it took barely 2 minutes for me to be happy). Drain and set aside to cool. The dry version, I hear, just involves steeping in hot water longer.

Add equal parts shredded cucumber and carrot (I had about 1 1/2 cups of each) to a large bowl. Add a small handful (2 to 3 tablespoons) chopped pickled ginger, 1/4 thinly sliced red onion and 1 whole diced avocado. Once cool, slice wakame into manageable pieces and add to bowl.

Make dressing: 1 tablespoon each miso, soy sauce, sushi vinegar (rice vinegar with sugar added). Add about 10 or so drops of sesame oil. Add about 1/8 cup of hot water. Mix and taste against the vegetables before adding.

Pour dressing over salad and toss. Add protein if you like -- leftover chicken, shrimp, baked tofu. I had tofu on hand for a nice, light summer dinner. Serves 3 or so for dinner, 4 to 6 as a side dish.

The Rice Bowl

In the beginning, there was rice. Or rather, in our beginning there was rice. Those green-gold and wavy plants had their start long before we got it together enough to winnow the grain from the stalk and then thresh, husk, dry, polish, steam and fill the bottoms of our bowls and stomachs with these little pieces of wonder. For us, it began more than 10,000 years ago. A few hungry souls in China stripped wild rice from plants and began pounding away with rocks. By 5,000 B.C.E. or so, more and more folks were getting the hang of putting the white on rice, and the trend spread over land and sea. People sowed the grain into languages, land measurements, economies and religions eastward to Japan, westward through Asia, and on to Africa and Europe. Magically, wine appeared, and rice-a-paloozas ensued with honors and hoorays for this tiny giver of life.

All in all, it was quite the coups. Rice is mild enough for babies and grannies, sturdy enough to fuel armies of slaves and soldiers. Its greatest nutritional value is that it fills stomachs with energy that's easy to burn. Its greatest culinary value is that it thickens whatever else is on hand, spreading the bowl's contents without undermining sustenance or taste. It's not for me to choose its greatest contribution to literature, so I'll just give you my favorite rice-related tale. A long, long time ago, a dog romped down from the heavens and ended up in Hunan with three grains of cooked rice and three grains of rice seed stuck on its tail. An older man – who just happened to have a knack for spotting friends and food, – gave the dog's ears a scratch, tasted the rice, and declared both good. He planted the grains, began the harvest and called over the neighbors. In my version of the tale, he keeps the dog and names him George.

So the tiny rice prevailed and provided throughout the land. It gave protein and iron and potassium, necessities for peasants and kings. Pound it and you get flour. Ferment it, that festival-loving wine. Ladle your favorite soup, stew, curry, vegetable or even fruit atop, then sit back and admire. Even better, pack a steaming and plain scoop-full into a bowl, then lean over, close your eyes and inhale. First comes a hint of flowers, perhaps nuts, maybe a little corn. Breathe a little deeper and you'll find yourself under a cool canopy of trees, musty dirt covering the forest floor. Finally, from some hidden place, a dash of creamy sweetness appears. You open your eyes, surprised. That meager bowl of rice somehow manages to smell like the places we live, or at least where we once lived. Take a bite. It tastes simple and encouraging and warm,
like home.* It's no wonder. To this day, breakfast, noon, dusk, it remains the most cultivated crop in the world and provides one-fifth of the calories needed to keep us all moving.

Yet nothing – not rice or even George the dog – can hang around for a few thousand years without playing a part in some sort of trouble. It takes an awful lot of work to raise a few trillion grains of rice. The crop found its way to South Carolina in the late 17^th century and cultivated wealth for a few, toil for too many. Nearly half of all slaves entered America through Charleston, and buyers there paid more for those who already had experience growing rice in Western Africa. In the fields, the slaves taught their owners how to dike and flood. In the kitchens, ingredients and cultures mixed to form new world staples: gumbo, chicken-and-rice Sunday dinners, casseroles. Things got much worse before they got better for people and their rice. In aftermath of the Civil War, rice production in America's southeastern coastal states dwindled, and for a time, immigrants stopped bringing themselves and their ricy recipes to town.

Thankfully, the story does not end there. Our taste for rice survived, and better yet, more rice-loving folks began streaming in after World War II – first from the south that goes way beyond the Gulf Coast, then from Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and India – to jump start our taste buds with fried rices, fried rice balls, sushi, burritos. Creamy chicken gravy had met its match, and now I bet a visit to any major grocer chain in the south will carry things like nori sheets, pickled ginger, sesame seeds, edamame, and wasabi, all needed to make this version of sushi salad.

I've been making what I've foolishly called sushi salad for years, but that was before I knew that such a thing really exists here in Japan. Of course, it's not called anything so silly as sushi salad. As best I can tell, sashimi bowl is the more accurate and least embarrassing translation. Basically, it involves a bowl of plain rice topped with whatever sashimi you like (or can order in Japanese): tuna, salmon, shrimp, egg, roe, scallops, urchin, eel. Some is cooked, some not. It's topped with sprinkles of sesame seeds and strips of Nori (dried seaweed), and you can add as much ginger and wasabi as you like. Mix, and eat.

This version is based on what I have on hand this evening, and uses cooked salmon because I bought it yesterday and figure I should sear it to keep worried readers at bay. But if you trust your fishmonger, go for it. These bowls would make a fun party food. Instead of making everyone work to roll sushi, just pack the rice in a bowl, hand it to a friend, and let him or her top with a selection of sushi-friendly ingredients. Great for a summer Sunday supper, I'd say. And as you pass each naked bowl of rice around, give just the tiniest pause. In that bowl is 10,000 years' worth of work and nourishment. I know I'm getting a little dramatic here, but I can't help myself. I mean, really, if George hadn't come into our lives, then just think where we'd be.

Sashimi Bowl

This recipe can be pushed in nearly any direction you like. You can substitute shrimp for salmon, fresh peas for edamame, white sesame for black. Make it a hundred different ways, and have fun.

2 filets of salmon

1 tablespoon miso

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 tablespoon rice vinegar

1 coin-sized disc of fresh ginger

¼ cup of water

Mix all ingredients except the fish into a small bowl. Add salmon, marinate in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. (Taste the marinade first and see if it's too salty for you; if so, add more water and shorten the marinating time.) Pat dry with paper towels, then sear in a frying pan drizzled with a neutral corn/vegetable oil. Leave on one side for about 90 seconds, then flip to the opposite side for another 45 seconds or so. Remove.

Other ingredients (all should be at room temperature)

1 package frozen edamame, boiled, peeled and cooled

1 avocado, diced

2 nori sheets, cut with scissors into thin, bite-sized strips

pickled ginger

1 small diced cucumber, seeds removed

black or white sesame seeds

4 cups cooked rice, sprinkled with rice vinegar (I used Japanese, sushi-style rice)

Put rice, still warm, into serving bowls. Top with favorite ingredients, ending with the fish, the nori and the sesame seeds. Add soy sauce if needed. Mix, and eat. Should serve two to three.

*Results with rice poured from a box purporting to come for someone's uncle who can whip up a pot in a minute will disappoint during this experiment. To remedy, I suggest a few thoughtful moments on your grocer's rice aisle or quick trip to the nearest Asian- or Latino-inspired market.

A peach pit

I think I'll be pleased one day to look back and know that much of this began with a peach. That day should come a week from Tuesday, I'd say. By then I'll be moping about and sneezing through the dust bunnies left behind on book shelves, having sold off my novels and miscellaneous collection of how-to books to pay the water bill. (When did I think I would teach myself Korean? Please.) I will wallow in my emptiness and curl up in the floor in defeat, all because of that damned peach.

Ah, but I can't help myself. When did this juicy vixen become the crack cocaine of the fruit world? I'll tell you when. When grocers in Tokyo – from the haute to the humble – starting stacking rows of the little biddies on nearly every sidewalk. A stroll through the city's steamy, summer air makes a perfect incubator for peach perfume. While others dab their brows with handkerchiefs and sip from iced lattes, I bore ahead on a honey-scented path, sweat beading on my lip, to the nearest food store to get my fix. In Tokyo, fruit is caressed and cuddled like a newborn baby. Grapes, cherries, oranges, apples, even bananas come specially swaddled in plastic wrap or Styrofoam booties, and sometimes both. Peaches are given this royal treatment and look like Christmas tree ornaments in need of hanging. I snatch up a package of two and feverishly make my way to the checkout line.

That'll be 950 yen, please. My Japanese isn't that good, but I'm fairly sure that's what the check-out person is telling me. Honestly, I'd rather be ignorant and lay down the money without thinking. Just $7.75 for two pieces of fruit. Isn't that peachy?

Well, it is. These things are gems, I tell you, uncanny containers of rosy syrup and flesh that make the whole kitchen smell like summer. I love the colors of peach, which aren't peach at all if you consult Crayola, but draw from a whole chunk of the food color wheel – wine, violet, saffron, marmalade, corn, cherry. And that's just the skin, a light sandy fuzz that contrasts sublimely with the heavy pulp inside. It's a fruit that requires simultaneous biting and slurping and like most things worth their while is best when eaten right over the kitchen sink. A peach is like holding a sunset in your hands, and much sexier, besides.

Still, more than $3 a piece, and the first one was NOT free. But what can you do? Tie the napkin 'round your neck, that's what. I've been eating one a day for the past few weeks, cut sloppily over toast or yogurt, and I don't plan on retiring from this strenuous schedule anytime soon. Rationalization is one of my favorite hobbies, so here's the skinny on the peach – I feel I'm owed. After buying buckets of picture-perfect, sawdust-filled peaches from grocery stores and farmer's markets in America, I've found that reliability comes at a price. Each of these wonders is wonderful, firm and sweet and delectable, not a mushy mess in sight. I'm never disappointed, and that might just be worth three bucks a day.

p.s. I saw a mango last week selling for 4,000 yen, $33. Good thing I hate them, or I'd have to hock the camera.

Once upon a time

I do not know which came first: books or biscuits. One provides sustenance, the other gratification, though I forget which is which. Both warm and satisfy, both tempt and tease. Small enough to slip in a pocket, large enough to render one speechless, they offer bountiful opportunities: tragedy, parable, cheese, jam. As an added bonus, they travel well. Either can be consumed just about anywhere, though their taste can change by moving from couch to park bench to airplane seat and results vary depending on the softness of cushions and the frequency of pigeons. Tastes and tales also hold tricks up their sleeves. Each impersonates a con artist who promises a full mind and belly but continually manages to evaporate clean out of hand. Memory wanes, hunger ensues, and replacements win out every time. Overindulging in either will get you in trouble, though it's almost always worth it. Most endearingly, each is personal and can only be enjoyed by one's self, no matter how many other people insist on milling about the room. No one can bite the biscuit for you, and besides, think how much you'd be missing?

My memories of fiction and food are inseparable. Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present was the first book I remember reading aloud, when I was four, though my mother secretly doubts my language skills and chalks it up to memorization. I maintain the letters all made sense. Suddenly left to right was important, and it all added up to an important recipe. Each time we opened the book, a little girl collected blue grapes, green pears, yellow bananas. I didn't even like pears or grapes. Yet on the page, the grapes looked like jewels and made me thirsty. The idea of a smooth, cool pear flush against my cheek made me feel refreshed, cozy. I remember craving the contents of that picnic basket as much as craving the story.

It soon became clear most stories worth reading – or hearing – included food. Pooh Bear rolled from bed each day for the distinct pleasure of sticking a pawful of honey into his mouth before remembering his manners and offering the second dip to friends. Beth and Mr. March got cake and wine when they felt ill, a diagnosis not to be dismissed. Laura and Mary played house among the pumpkins and squash, and I often wondered why they didn't move their straw-filled bed into the cellar so it, too, would smell of ham and onions. Even Wilbur's breakfast still sounds appetizing to me: “skim milk, crusts, middlings, bits of doughnuts, wheat cakes with drops of maple syrup sticking to them, potato skins, leftover custard pudding with raisins, and bits of Shredded Wheat.” Starches and creams, with drips of sugar – the breakfast of an obvious champion.

The theme continued quite naturally. Alex and the Black ate seaweed, a survival technique I turn to now at least weekly. Ignatius ate, and occasionally sold, hot dogs, a habit I have gratefully avoided. Dilsey, the sturdy saneness at the center of the storm, held forth in the kitchen. Ishmael ate fish stew, Miss Maudie baked Lane cakes. We can all be thankful Edith Wharton lived then and not now, for there's no better way to draw Madame Olenska's sensuality than by revealing that all of New York simply refused to dine with her. Both Eudora Welty and Zora Neale Hurston brought the metaphors to screeching halts when they flat out christened two characters Teacake, female and male, respectively. This summer I was back in the cellar with two other girls, Ada and Ruby, who were desperately getting ready for winter. I rejoiced with them when they found an unimaginable treasure: ten pounds of coffee.

My education with food developed at a slower rate. I always wanted it and cooked it, though I grew up in a place and time when the dairy case at the local grocery chain carried a distinct variety of cheeses – sliced, creamed, orange'd, and Velveeta. As a child, eating out meant a treat of ordering French fries as a side dish. The coleslaw came whether you asked or not. But my early palette lucked out in other ways. My parents tended a garden, which called for the endless shelling of lima beans and field peas in the summer and neatly stacked rows of frozen vegetables in the winter. I still associate the peppery smell of a tomato stalk with standing in my grandmother's yard, and like most people in the civilized world I often bemoan the fact that I haven't eaten a tomato worth its pulp in almost 30 years. (The best and most recent: in Iraq this summer. Here's another joy of food and stories. You never know which will provide nourishment and which will cause you to seek a new definition of civilized.)

When the gardening ended around the time I was becoming a teenager, I panicked. I honestly didn't know where other Americans got their vegetables. You can imagine my disappointment when we started frequenting the other side of the grocery store. Years passed before I knew that the powder from those green cans was actually a cheese, from Italy, no less. As a young adult I was slightly shocked that some people could be brought to their knees when challenged to taste a spicy and gelatinous glop that starts with a can labeled Rotel. I also learned that challenging our tastes is part of the fun. I can say this because I ate head-on, steamed, soft-shell shrimp with dinner last night, and also because the best at-home nachos start and end with a can of Rotel totmatoes. It's the truth, and there's not much to do but admit it and move on.

I still order French fries on the side, of course, but now I try to hold out for pomme frites. Foods I thought I hated early in life – asparagus, peas, carrots, avocados, pears – got a second chance thanks to farmers' markets and new friends like fresh garlic, pickled ginger, cilantro and shaved fennel. My world has grown as well. Now I'm spoiled to know that bintoro should taste like eating fresh butter at the beach, that yogurt should carry the tang of milk and grass, that green curry should not overwhelm the table with its fragrance but rather should slake its diner with the sum of its parts – sweet, salty, sour and bitter.

Thankfully, my book shelves have widened as well. M.F.K. Fisher, R.W. Apple Jr., Julia Child, Thomas Keller, Amanda Hesser, Bill Buford, Ruth Reichl, Jeffrey Steingarten and so many more thick cookbooks and crisp memoirs have moved with me around the world. My sister, friends, and even, I'm not completely sorry to admit, television, have all contributed to my lexicon. There are constant messes from my kitchen, but there is always something to eat. So here is my selfish confession -- I live in Tokyo and travel a fair amount and still feel that I haven't learned enough about how to make all the wonderful things I'm eating.

So starts a new recipe, one that I hope will urge me to do a little more thinking and learning about food, writing and photography. Sweet, salty, sour, bitter. Those are our basic tools, with umami – the ability to taste the savory – thrown in. I suppose I'm cheating a bit with Ginger Salt Peach Lime, since ginger reverberates with a sharp zing rather than a bitter bite on the tongue. And there's no room in the title for cheese, my umami. See? A mess. But you have to start somewhere. And I've been growing hungry for a while now.

So, to lunch. This jumble is warmly inspired by Clotilde Dusoulier, whose lovely first book I finished yesterday and whose blog, Chocolate and Zucchini, I check regularly. Plus, summer makes me crave French flavors. And finally, like any cook or writer, I can only start with what's on hand. Currently that doesn't involve ginger and lime, and the only peach in the house made its contribution at breakfast. Thank goodness it's only lunchtime, and there's a whole afternoon to think about what to read, and what to make for supper.

Chicken, pasta and fig salad with goat cheese and honey mustard dressing

1 lemon
8 cups water
2 garlic cloves
6 to 8 peppercorns
6 to 8 coriander seeds
½ teaspoon sea salt
3 to 4 sprigs of fresh thyme or ½ teaspoon of dried thyme
2 chicken breasts
2 cups salad-type pasta (bowties, fussilli, orrechetti), cooked
4 to 6 figs, quartered
2 to 3 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
4 sliced rounds of goat cheese (or plenty more, depending on how you're feeling that day)

Dressing:

2 tablespoons grain or Creole-style mustard
1 to 2 tablespoons honey, lavender-scented if you have some handy
1 to 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
4 to 6 tablespoons fruity olive oil

Zest lemon and reserve. Cut lemon in half and squeeze enough of the juice into a large mixing bowl (the beginning of your dressing and salad) until you're happy. Then juice the rest of the lemon into your poaching water (which should be inside a medium-sized stock pan) and add the fruit, garlic, pepper, coriander, salt and thyme.

Bring to rapid boil, gently lower in chicken with a large spoon, then quickly fiddle with the stove to bring the whole concoction to a gentle simmer. Cooking time will depend on the size of the chicken, but a good way to avoid tough meat is to simmer for just 10 to 12 minutes, clamp on a lid and turn off the heat. In another 10 minutes or so, check to see if it's done. The warm water should finish cooking the chicken while leaving it tender. Remove both pieces from the water, cool slightly, and shred by hand.

Meanwhile, add the mustard, honey, and olive oil to the lemon juice and whisk. Taste dressing on one of the cooked pieces of noodle and adjust as needed. Dump in chicken, pasta, parsley and mix. (This can be refrigerated for a day or two.) Plate the salad – four servings as a light lunch or appetizer, fewer servings if needed for a main meal – and add figs and cheese. Sprinkle with lemon zest.