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.