Me & Dyana in Jaipur

Years back we were blessed with a beautiful Indian homestay student, who lived with us during her year as a Ford Fellow at Harvard. Dyana and I developed a strong friendship that holds on tight to this day. In 2007, we travelled through India together, visited holy and tourist sites and drove deep into the Himalayas on an educational/humanitarian jaunt to give away writing supplies to children who didn’t have any.

Today, while I was making cookie dough for Christmas, I thought about Dyana. Being raised Hindu, Dyana anticipated celebrating Christmas for the first time–with Christians– and particularly looked forward to the sweets that were coming. My mother-in-law Betty was also coming. Dyana seriously expected I was a nervous wreck. “Do you want me to help you clean the house?” she asked. “You have to have everything perfect for the mother-in-law.”

An American mother-in-law is but a whisper compared to the powerful tsunami of an Indian mother-in-law; she blows especially hard in the household of her eldest son. Indian TV is ripe with soap operas & prime time shows featuring wicked mother-in-laws who bestow beatings, food deprivation and forced floor scrubbing on their beautiful daughter-in-laws. One well-educated woman I met in Delhi–a Sanskrit scholar and a friend of Dyana’s– was beaten regularly by not only her mother-in-law, but also her husband and father-in-law for producing three daughters. They wanted boys.

By choice, Dyana managed to skip the marriage and with it the mother-in-law stuff. This news surprises everybody who knows anything about Hindu culture. I think she slipped through the cracks not only because she’s very smart  and well-educated but mostly because when she was a child she tumbled down a flight of stairs at a shrine and landed on Shiva’s sword. The fall resulted in blood loss, unconsciousness, a big cut across her forehead, but not death. She had been chosen to do something important… not make cookies!  But I taught her how to make these biscotti anyway. It’s a family recipe, handed down to me from my grandmother.

Nonna’s Biscotti

Mix & cream together:

• 1/2 pound butter
• 3 cups sugar
• 6 eggs

Sift together dry ingredients and add to butter & eggs:

• 7 cups flour, or more
• 1 t sea salt
• 6 t baking powder

Mix together and add at the end:

• 1/2 cup whisky
• 2 t vanilla
• *1 oz anise extract OR 1/3 t anise oil * never use old extract, it has no life, no taste.

Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour baking sheets.  Divide dough into 4 equal pieces.  I weigh the pieces to be sure they are even.  Shape into loaves that are 1” high and 2 1/2 “ wide.

Bake 30-35 minutes.  Cool slightly.  Cut diagonally into biscotti.  Put slices back onto the tray for a second bake.  Bake an additional 15 minutes.

NET FIVE INSTALLMENTS ON AMERICAN HOST MOTHER ARE ABOUT DYANA, OUR INDIAN STUDENT

More than a few Megumis, an Asami, Koko, Miyuke, Reko, and several Hirokos have sat around the dinner table with us here in Cambridge. We like to make the girls feel at home, so Matt and I mastered chopstick usage.  The chopsticks quickly evolved to be more comfortable eating utensils than forks.  So now, everyday–unless we are eating spagetti– we set chopsticks next to the dinner plate. (When I travel I even pack a couple of sets in my suitcase so I don’t get stuck with having to use a fork.)

Our Homestay students, who are not Asian, have a choice but they usually opt to learn how to use the chopsticks. Dani, a Mexican was dumfounded. “I never thought a person could pick up a bean with a chopstick!” she said.

I have to remind the students that not all American families use chopsticks or serve rice and seaweed. They sure are glad I do: after a couple of weeks in the States all their classmates gain weight because they are eating the typical American fare of pizza, burghers and macaroni and cheese.  My girls stay slim! (recipe follows)

For the past ten years, I have kept a “mostly” macrobiotic household–eating whole grains and lots of vegetables. Macrobiotic food stems from a Japanese philosophy of yin and yang. Without too much explanation, I provide a simple explanation: peasant foods, noting exotic or highly spiced , oiled or sweetened.

I prepare arame and make quickly pickled salads. The seaweed keeps metabolism up to snuff and the enzymes in the pressed salad (like pickles) aid digestion. What better foods could you ask for if you want to remain slim and trim like the lovely Japanese girls who have graced my life?

Seaweed and pickles: secrets to slimness

ARAME WITH SUNFLOWER SEEDS

2 handfuls of arame, wash to remove any shells that might still be attached ( I never find any) and soak for a few minutes.

3/4 cup apple juice

1 cup sunflower seeds, washed and toasted in a cast iron skillet; you will put half of the sunflowers in a suribachi (and grind by hand. If you do not have a suribachi you can use a food processor but do not grind seeds to total smoothness)

1 teaspoon shoyu

1 teaspoon wasabi

1/2 cup chopped chives, or scallions if chives are out of season

Drain soaked arame and place in saucepan with apple juice. Simmer 15 minutes. When cooking liquid is gone, add the shoyu, wasabi and chives. Stir. Add the sunflower seed paste and the sunflowers. Garnish with parsley sprig.

Serve as a side dish.

PRESSED SALAD

1/2 cup sliced cucumbers

1/2 cup sliced Chinese cabbage

1/2 cup sliced radish

1/4 cup sliced celery

1/4 up red onion

1 teaspoon sea salt

Mix all chopped vegetables in a large bowl. Add salt and gently massage the salad until they begin to sweat, turn shiny and release liquid.  Place a weight on the vegetables: I use a dinner plate that fits inside the bowl, then I put a few rocks or canned goods on top of the plate so that pressure is exerted on the vegetables. Allow the salad to sit under pressure for 45 minutes to 3-4 hours.  A significant amount of water will be released.  Discard the pressing water. Rinse off the vegetables so that they do not taste salty.  Squeeze out extra water.

Serve plain, or sprinkle with lemon juice, rice vinegar, or a simple dressing made with sesame oil, a tiny bit of shoyu and rice vinegar. Of course,you can use bottled dressing but just a little so as not to override the healthy developed enzymes with fat.

Dani filled me in on the secret ingredient!

Dani, a dark-haired black eyed, dutiful beauty, came to Cambridge to study English so that she could please her large family and get into Harvard Law School. They must not have realized her English skills were so basic and that to twirl around in the halls of Harvard Law required a quickness of tongue that Dani wasn’t going to learn in two months or two years.  Her personality was more suited to human rights and labor law–which her well-to-do family didn’t want her to pursue– and she was dedicated to Mexico, her home country.  Dani couldn’t understand why her aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins raved about the United States.  “I don’t like it here. I don’t like the language. No matter how hard I study I do not get it”

She did like our family and was a gentle presence. One afternoon we had lunch together.  Dani was as clearly disgusted to see what I was eating as I am when I watch my husband eat cantaloupe chunks floating in oatmeal. “You’re going to get sick,” she said.  I was eating ‘Avocado alla Roberta.’  “It’s too heavy.”  Expressing concern, she rubbed her abdomen.

“What?  Don’t you eat avocado day and night in Mexico?” I asked.

“Yes.  Only a slice.  A slice in soup.  A slice on the side of the plate next to chicken.”  She wrinkled her nose.  “Never like that.” She pointed to the beautiful creamy green resting on a bed of lettuce.

“Guacamole?” I pressed a spoonful of deliciously ripe avocado against the roof of my mouth, enjoying the rich taste and sensuousness of the food.

She winked. “In my family we have a secret.  When we make guacamole we add milk.”

In Dani’s family, they don’t dip chips or crudite in guacamole.  They put a sensible spoonful of it on the plate next to meat.  They add a tablespoon to a tortilla. They make a sandwich with a layer of guacamole, a lice of melted cheese.

Here’s the family recipe

SECRET GUACAMOLE

Tools- a rock and stone bowl to mash and mix the guacamole.  (You can use a Japanese suribachi, or a wooden bowl and rock)

I  serrano chile, dry or fresh

salt to taste

2 avocado

a few squeezes of lime juice ( about 1 1/2 teaspoons)

1-2 Tablespoons of milk

Put the chile in the bowl and mash it with the rock. Add salt to your taste. (We don’t use much salt here) grind the salt into the chile.  Sprinkle with a little lime and grind the lime into the mixture.  Add two peeled avocados.  Mash and mix into the chile.  Taste and adjust the salt if needed.  Add a few more squeezes of lime.  Stir with a spoon.  Add 1 Tablespoon of  milk, using more if you want a smoother texture.

Dani’s family serves cut onions and hot peppers on the side. Each person can spice or onion up the guacamole as they please.

An Italian who looked like a cheerleader

Not many Italians apply for homestay. Part of the reason may be that in Italy it is unheard of–or at least very rare–to share your home with strangers. Home is for family;  immediate family, not cousins, aunts, uncles. So it works both ways: odd to stay in someone else’s house. When our daughter went abroad for her junior year to the University of Padova, the university there found the international students homestay rooms.  These were not typical Italian family homes, but university professor homes, or single woman’s homes. People either looking for company and money, or academics from countries more accustomed to sharing living situations than Italians.

So when we get an Italian, it is most often an unusual situation. In Cesca’s case, she ended up with us because ‘there was no room in the dorm.’  The living situation worked out just fine for her and for us; in fact we remain friends to this day. One warm October er we hosted Giuseppe, a rather nervous Carabinieri from Rome who was interested in advancing his career. He worked in the stolen artifact department and played a trumpet in the Carabinieri band (more about Giuseppe in a later blog). Then there was Roberta.  Roberta was young, sixteen, and her father wanted her to be in a family home while she attended a summer program at Harvard to improve her English.

Roberta stayed with us for a month. She was from Modena, a river town in north central Italy famous for balsamic vinegar, Pavarotti, and Maserati.  Her English was already quite rapid and confident. And like most homestay students, Roberta allowed herself to be lovable. That’s the clue to a good homestay: being open to gentle feelings that go both  ways. The student wants to be liked and we want to like them.

If you saw Roberta on the street you would have never guess she was an Italian girl.  Rather you would pin her a cutie from Atlanta: blonde, brown-eyed, freckled and a diminutive American nose. For sure a college cheerleader in a former life, Roberta walked with bounce, smiled like a 70 watt light bulb, and was on the short side but not thin. Her heroine was Hermione, the female friend of Harry in Harry Potter.  She wore Hermione pajamas, dangled a plastic Hermione character from her backpack zipper, and had a Hermione email address.

Like Hermione, Roberta was smart, real smart: a type A personality; a no-nonsense girl. Prior to her month of study of English at Harvard and homestay with us in Cambridge,  she had bicycled across Spain with a group of European teenagers. When she left us, Roberta was off to a week of violin camp in Austria, then a week of sailing school in the Mediterranean, and then a week of family time in her father’s village on the Abruzzi coast, before resuming high school classes in Modena at the competitive liceo classico where she studied Greek and Latin along with English and Spanish, algebra, chemistry, etc.

Roberta told me that liceo students drink a lot of espresso. “A cup in the morning at home.  A cup at morning break. After lunch and two or three tazzini of espresso during the afternoon and another before after school activities. There’s espresso machines in the hallway.”  She stayed up until midnight most nights and often hours after to do homework.

She didn’t have a boyfriend. “Like Hermione I’m always their friend, never the girlfriend.” She rolled her eyes.

Her looks were what frightened Italian boys away. The strong American cheerleader features were taboo. What would their mother say?  They wouldn’t get past the liklihood of her being a stranieri, a foreigner.  In fact Roberta said in the evening kids gathered outside the fence to her house to stare at her (and her sister) in disbelief, as if they were some sort of physical mutation that they could not accept as one of their own. A freak show.  “Are you sure you’re mother and father are Italians?” they asked.

Her own mother had been born in Modena. So had her grandparents, who lived in the house with them. Her father was from a town on the Adriatic Coast. He worked for Maserati, the exotic Italian race car company and travelled all over Latin America  selling to auto dealerships and rich individuals. “Mostly he’s in Mexico,” Roberta said. “He wants me to learn Spanish.”

Father ruled the roost. He and Roberta spoke daily on cell phones to each other.  He was planning a great career for this daughter, so he said….or, most likely, a lucrative marriage to one of his customers, which he didn’t say.

Roberta loved avocados. She requested I buy them for her.  Perhaps in preparation for her inevitable future in Mexico, she ate two a day. Maybe she ate them with such gusto because they weren’t always available at home, since Italian avocado consumption is one of the lowest in Europe (only 25-30 g per capita) and the fruit are totally imported, mainly from Israel and Spain. Avacado trees there are grown for ornamental purposes rather than for agriculture, though there are movements to change this practice, since commercial lemon culture is down: lemons come more cheaply from Spain and northern Africa than from Sicily or southern Italy. Maybe Roberta feverishly ate avocados because her family prohibited her eating them: they didn’t want her to get fat. A chubby Roberta- Hermione would be a less than perfect marriage prospect. An avocado weigh in at 265 calories and 27 grams of fat. But they’re healthy.

Roberta couldn’t control herself when a creamy green avocado sat on a plate in front of her. She liked to mainline–no hanky panky with an avocado relish, avocado guacamole, or ravioli stuffed with the green stuff.

I prepared the avocado the same way her mother did, which was a surprised to both Roberta and to me. I also made simple red sauce exactly the same way as her mother did–with olive oil, onion and tomato, nothing else–and I dressed my salad the same–with olive oil, balsamic, a sprinkle of sugar and soy sauce.  This befuddled us both. How could two women so far away do it exactly the same?

AVOCADO ALLA ROBERTA

Cut a ripe avocado in half and remove the pit.  Squeeze lemon juice over entire surface of exposed avocado fruit to prevent the surfaces from browning. Spread a lovely leaf of Boston lettuce on a plate. Place the avocado halves on top of the lettuce. Fill the avocado cavities with a generous teaspoon of fresh squeezed lemon juice and a 1/2 teaspoon of shoyo (Japanese soy sauce). Garnish with fresh cracked black pepper. Float 1/2 of a cherry tomato inside each cavity. Eat with a spoon, like Roberta.

I’m talking about real dogs, not bad looking guys because her fidanzato, Gianni, is quite handsome; a graceful, well-ironed  young man with blue eyes, big smile and great sense of humor.  I am happy “my first homestay daughter” Cesca found a man to love and a man to love her. 

Now back to the story about dogs: One evening Matt, Cesca, her friend Elena and I were walking around the extraordinarily beautiful seaside town of Trani. Trani is all beige-ish white, sun-bleached cobblestone, turquoise and sky blue with bits of green along walkways and flowers in window boxes. In the 11th century, Trani was a major launching position on the Adriatic for the Crusades.

Trani is crowded with Italian tourists in the summer: hundreds of expensive sailboats moored in the gently sloshing harbor; Italian men wearing perfumed ascots, perfectly pedicured blonde women, and kids in crocs out for an evening passesgiata.  Gelati American music.  Italian chatter. Vespa horns. Strings of lights. Wafts of espresso, garlic, and fish both fried and grilled. 

We were there in April, not the tourist season, and we were the only Americans there.  The evening was chilly enough for a thick sweater.  The four of us walked along an ancient cobbled strada past the crescent harbor out to a promontory to have a look at the Cathedral of Saint Nicholas. Everybody in this part of Italy loves St. Nicholas. His Trani cathedral lies on a raised open site near the sea and is built in the characteristic white local limestone. It has also a large crypt and a lofty tower. The Romanesque portal are beautifully ornamented in the Arab style.

The sun was about to set, accenting the sturdy building’s clean stones and making the sea a deeper blue. A single ten or eleven year old boy bounced a green rubber ball against the side of the cathedral.  I don’t remember what we were talking about.  Maybe how Italians iron their clothes and Americans don’t. We heard the clicking of toe nails against the cobblestone.  A thin, red-eyed dog with a black saddle-shaped spot on its white body circled us three times. We called him Spot. Spot took position at Cesca’s right side, curling down his floppy ears and keeping time with her steps.

“All the homeless dogs in Italy have red eyes,”Cesca said when I noted our new companion looked as if he’d been drinking.

Three or four more homeless dogs– one golden and one sleek as a greyhound– rushed out of Trani’s thin Medieval alleyways like a pack of beggars chasing coins. Spot bared his teeth and barked the other’s away. He became our guardian, our protector, our canine guide in Trani.

“Wherever I go dogs find me,” Cesca said as she trucked along the ancient streets, Spot loyally keeping pace at her side.

Just the week before, Cesca successfully defended her thesis in veterinary medicine.  “You can call me a doctor who smells like a dog.” She laughed.

 Elena, Cesca’s friend and colleague was also a vet.  “The smell has sunk into our skin.”  She rubbed her arm. “We are saturated from working with dogs all day long.”

Spot sat when Cesca stopped. Matt noticed the black hair on his back was shaped like a big heart. 

 Cesca said. “I am their favorite.” She laughed and Elena agreed. “The dogs go crazy for Cesca.”

So there we were, the four of us, in a medieval town, with a dog shepherding us along  the walkway abutting the sea.  Gianni, the fidanzato, was at home, watching soccer on the TV, recuperating from his day at work.  My daughter Ruby’s flight to Bari from Rome was delayed three hours.  What should we do?

Eat. 

Spot moved on to wherever stray dogs slept in Trani.  We entered a rather famous Trani restaurant called the Orangerie on the Piazza Quercia. What should we  Outside, under a tented patio, we drank ‘spreetz’, chatted, and from our front row view of the port watched lights bob on the sea until the mosquitos started to bite. upstairs. Gianni joined us, we moved upstairs, and we dined….

Mamma mia!!!!! The chef at the Orangerie, Luca somebody, is know for giving traditional dishes a superb makeover.

Grilled seafood involtini: thin eggplant slices rolled around a fleshy white fish and potato puree.

Shrimp on a bed of green apple matchsticks.

*Octopus floating atop a bread and potato raft with a toasted sail

Orechiette with Rape

Pasta with cherry tomato

Grilled Orate

Green salad

espresso

No room for dessert

*Every time we said octopus in Italian, Cesca corrected our pronunciation: polipo. We imitated the way she moved her lips. In Bari, people eat raw polipo. “They net it, bring the animal to shore, turn the head inside out, pound it against the rocks,” Cesca said. “Then they eat it. Crudo. With a few drops of lemon juice.” 

We don’t do raw octopus, but I often prepare the traditional pasta of Puglia.  Orechiette, by the way means ‘little ears.’ Here’s my recipe for Orechiette with Rape

Cook a pound of semolina orechiette according to package directions. 

Meanwhile, wash and then steam a bunch of rape* for about 3 minutes.  The rape should remain rather bright green. Let the vegetables cool a bit before roughly chopping the bunch into small pieces.  Small pieces give better pasta coverage.

Please note that you can use any strong-flavored greens, such as mustard greens, collards, broccolini, kale, and chard in addition to or in place of the rape.

Pour 1/2 cup of good green olive oil (preferably from Puglia) into a large skillet.  Heat the oil add 3-5 cloves of chopped garlic.  When the garlic begins to be transparent, add the chopped greens, being careful to get out of the way of hot oil when it spits as you add the moist greens.  Stir and continue to cook for about 4 minutes.

When the orechiette are cooked drain. Be sure to reserve 1/2 cup of the water in case you need it; the reason you would need it would be because you didn’t use enough olive oil to lubricate the greens and pasta.  Add pasta to the vegetable and oil. Stir from the bottom so as not to break any of the pasta. If needed add the 1/2 cup reserved pasta cooking water.

Season with salt and pepper, as you like.

Variations:  Add a can of anchovies to the garlic and oil mixture.  Add  1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes. 

 Read Apple& Cinnamon Series Parts 1-14 to find out more about her. 

our first homestay daughter

(RECIPE FOR Penne with Prosciutto and Artichoke AT STORY’S END.)

Well, the Third Megumi wasn’t a typical Japanese girl either.

Whisky helped her to think

Compared to the Second Megumi, who taught us bad chopstick manners, the Third Megumi perched on the opposite end of the Japanese  personality continuum.  She wore tailored clothes, had her hair cut at Sassoon, read German novels ( in German), studied law at Harvard, and was completely and utterly refined, gracious, artistic, mystical, romantic, and logical.  

Her claim to fame in our house was not her music, her Chanel #5,  or her very expensive shoes.  Megumi-three was the only Asian we have known who enjoyed eating black olives.  As an hors d’oeuvre, crushed and smeared on bruschetta, or as an ingredient in pasta, Megumi never refused a Gaeta, Kalamata, cracked Provencal, or Moroccan dry-cured. 

She came to live with us when our family was preparing for the move across Massachusetts Avenue, from Buena Vista to Oxford Street. We packed for months while she studied in the ‘student’ room on the second floor. Our belongings slowly filled boxes and then a huge moving truck. She observed Matthew’s anxiety and my panic attacks about the responsibilities of the new house: it’s size, the cost, the neighborhood.  

When moving day arrived, Megumi’s computer and printer fit in the back seat of my car.  She had few clothes and the ones she did hang in her bedroom closet were from Burberry. They fit in one suitcase. We drove up Upland Road, crossed Mass Ave, turned left on Forest, and then right onto Oxford Street. 

Gathering her suitcase and a few shiny paper bags, one of which contained a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, Megumi, who was a very beautiful woman, stepped out of my car onto the driveway. Citing a traditional Japanese belief, Megumi gave our newly renovated Victorian house a nod of approval.  “In Japan a shift towards the northeast always brings a family good luck.”  

Her blessing reminded us of our good decision and remains an echo in our house to this day. 

The first thing we did was to set up her room: put together a bed, hang curtains and move a table and chair into the sunny back room–in the northeast corner of the house!  Her rear window looked over a typical Cambridge scene: trees, an urban backyard, pocket views of neighboring yards, back porches, fences and windows.

Prior to joining our family in February, Megumi had lived for a month in a small  Central Square studio.  Alone at night and in law school during the day was causing her to lose her mind, she said.  The most sensible solution was to find a family to board with. 

But more than loneliness was causing her craziness. Eventually she told us her story. My heart went out to her.

She had given up a career as a classical pianist to pursue law and business. Her  law degree, from Japan’s most prestigious school, the University of Tokyo, set her at a stellar level.   

Like America’s Ivy League, Japan has their Ginkgo League universities. Japanese leaders–especially before the war– attended University of Tokyo; it was known as the “imperial university.”  Today high-level corporations and the government restrict their hiring to graduates of University of Tokyo and the other Ginkgo League schools. 

After having worked a few years as a lawyer for a major international company headquartered in Tokyo, the company awarded Megumi’s work and invested in her future with them by sending her to Harvard for an advanced law degree.

This Third Megumi, with her education, ancestry and expectation, was close to being Japanese royalty, and she was in a jam.  She was in love.

She was in love with a man who worked for the same company. He had proposed marriage. The couple had several options:1) keep their relationship secret and their exchanges in the office formal. Only one of them could socialize and establish friendship with other company employees. 2) Not marry. Or 3) they could proclaim their love. If she chose the third option, Megumi would be forced to forgo her hard-earned career. 

After dinner she doused her tea with a can of condensed milk and talked.  I asked about her fiancée Toshi, and his habits, looks, passions. Talking helped her to put life in perspective. She told me about the hierarchy in Japanese companies, the tradition of male-only offices. “For me to be working where I am working is an honor,” she said.  Would she be able to give it up? If she left, she would dig a deeper hole for other career women. “It’s not just my job but the fate of future women in my company.”

In her room, she read law books, took slugs of whisky, and wavered between pursuing her career and forgetting marriage, agreeing to keep her love life secret, or going the whole way and being an at-home Japanese wife.

Her taste for Jack Daniel’s descended from her grandmother, she explained. “We were very close and had similar talents.”  Both were classically trained musicians and daughters of diplomats. Before WWII, the grandmother had lived in London and Berlin.  During the war, she survived the bombing of Hiroshima. 

 As a young girl, Megumi had spent weeks and months with her grandmother and picked up her taste not only for whisky and music, but also for Carnation canned milk, tined sardines, sausage, Dijon mustard, and olives. 

At the end of August, her courses at Harvard came to an end. Megumi spent an extra week with us, shopping, thinking, pondering love, and emailing Toshi, before flying back to Tokyo to meet him and to answer the big question.

Up to the day she left us, Megumi didn’t know what to do. We still don’t know what decision she made about her love.

I like to think she proclaimed her love for Toshi and kept her job, trailblazing a path into the high echelons of Japanese business culture. 

Penne al Prosciutto e Carciofi was The Third Megumi’s favorite pasta.  She asked me to prepare it for her farewell dinner with our family.  She left with a copy of the recipe in her pocket.  Serve olives as an appetizer.

Penne al Prosciutto e Carciofi (Penne with Prosciutto and Artichokes)

• canned artichoke hearts ( 14-16 oz)
• … or 4 fresh artichokes *
• salt
• 1 lb. penne
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 3 oz prosciutto roughly chopped
• 1 tsp fresh thyme leaves
• salt and pepper

• Bring a large saucepan to boil, add salt and penne and cook until al dente.
• Drain the artichokes and chop 
• Heat the oil in  a large heavy-based frying pan over medium heat
• Add the prosciutto and artichokes and saute for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally
• Add the thyme, salt and pepper to taste
• Drain the pasta and add it to the pan
• Cook for 2 more minutes, stirring continuously
• Transfer to a warmed serving bow;l and serve immediately, hot.

An easy and quick recipe. Canned artichokes are saltier than fresh, plus prosciutto is salty, so add only a pinch or less of additional salt. Do not add too much salt to penne cooking water.   

*To prepare fresh artichokes: Clean the artichokes, discarding stalks, tough leaves and chokes. Slice them very thinly into a bowl with water and lemon juice. Serves 4

RECIPE FOR MY MISO SOUP FOLLOWS STORY  

(At the table) What's the worst thing you can do with your chopsticks?

The Japanee girls who stay with us are extremely polite, respectful and so observant of our customs that they blend seamlessly into our household. But as in all situations that involve groups and people, there will always an acception to the norm. That exception was The Second Megumi.

Same as Megumi One, Megumi Two came from a small town in southern Japan. She was bow-legged and wore high heels and really short skirts. At the time, I wondered if her bared legs were a sort of Japanese female-on-the-hunt signal, since Megumi Two, from day one, was interested in meeting men. She asked me straight away how she could find one.

I suggested an internet dating site. We sat together at the dining room table to fill out the questionnaire. One question asked the woman: what do you like in a man? Megumi told me to fill in the blank with: “Men who smoke are very sexy.”

She herself did not smoked. On questioning, she insisted smoking was a masculine habit that made men attractive. “I like the way they hold the cigarette between their fingers and I like it when they blow smoke out their nostrils.”

Every morning Megumi pulled on her short flared skirt and a blouse or sweater. Then she tied a very unusual pink plastic cape around her shoulders. The cape had a wire the diameter of a hula hoop sewn into the hem. It opened under her head like an umbrella, flaring in a circle around her small shoulders. Wearing the strange getup,  she walked from her room, down the picture-lined hall to the bathroom. Ruby and I didn’t quite understand exactly what went on in the bathroom when she wore the cape but came to understand Megumi wore the cape to protect her clothing while she brushed her hair and put on make up. 

She stayed with us in for one month in the winter. And, from the day she arrived, along with wanting to met a man, Megumi wanted to go to Buffalo, New York. She didn’t know why. She knew no one in Buffalo. In my mind I thought  she must have read that the men in Buffalo smoked.

“Buffalo?  It’s in America’s snow belt. It will be cold, windy. There’s nothing there, really for tourists. Wouldn’t you prefer to visit New York City?”

She shook her head no. Megumi had very white skin, powdery white without makeup, pouty lips and large teeth. Her best feature were her large eyes, which moved languidly. You got a sense that this girl had good luck, despite not being very bright. 

“Maybe you want to see Niagra Falls?” I asked. “It’s close to Buffalo.”

Megumi had never heard of Niagra Falls. Before coming to Boston, she had saved enough money to take a bus to Buffalo. “My special trip. Buffalo.” She nodded.

On a whim, I telephoned my friend Nancy Buck, who was a teacher in Buffalo–more exactly Orchard Park- and let her knowrI had a student living with me who was interested in visiting Buffalo.  Nancy  was delighted. As conincidences go, she was teaching a special semester on Japan to her third grade students. Megumi could come stay with her family for a couple days if she agreed to teach Nancy’s third graders how to use chopsticks. 

Without hesitation, thanks, or questioning me, Megumi accepted.

On Saturday morning I put Megumi on the twelve hour bus to Buffalo. From Buffalo she would take a bus to Chicago and from there fly home to Japan.

On Sunday Nancy nearly lost Megumi on the Canada side of Niagra Falls. “They weren’t going to let her back into the country,” she said. “I had to call a lawyer friend to help us out.”

We spoke after Megumi had boarded the bus to Chicago. I was feeling a guilty for having sent Megumi to Nancy. “The third graders were okay with her, werent they?”

“I’m not sure,” Nancy answered. “She wasn’t at all what I expected.”

“Did she wear the cape?”

“Yes!”

Before Megumi Two left our house, I asked her to demonstrate how she might teach the kids how to use chopsticks. She needed a bit of promting with English. After several run-throughs she did fine and resumed slurping her miso soup.

Which brings me to a second point. Megumi had no idea that most Americans did not eat miso soup or bowls of Japanese rice and tofu for dinner. 

In all situations, Megumi remained perfectly unruffled and unaware of both her affect and the particulars of her environment. I probably should not have sent her off as an ambassador of japanese culture. 

 ‘Your being in the classroom will be very special for the children and for Nancy,” I reminded her. 

That last evening at dinner, after her run through on chopsticks, I was curious about the impolite gestures children could make with their chop sticks, gestures that would irritate their parents. “But please don’t teach Nancy’s students the bad things. ”

Megumi lit up for a moment and smiled. She proceeded to stick one chopstick in her ear, scratch her scalp with the chopstick, wave the chopsticks like a baton,  bite them, make fangs out of them, and rapped them them on the table like drumsticks.  Of course she stuck one between her lips and pretended to smoke.

“It’s very bad luck to stick the chop sticks upright in a bowl of rice and let go of them,” she said. “Never do that.”

MISO SOUP  The only rule for making miso soup is to include one sea vegetable and one land vegetable. Like bad chopstick manners , I suppose there are “bad miso manners” that I am not aware of.  If you know any, please email me.

• about 1/2″ wakame per cup of soup ( never go overboard on wakame, less is better)
• 1 think slice of ginger
• 4 cups water
• 1/8 cup finely sliced leeks, white part ( onion is OK)
• 2 shitake mushrooms, soaked in about 1/2 c warm water and finely sliced (add soaking water to soup)
• about 8  carrot slivers ( daikon is OK)
• 1/2 to 1 teaspoon miso paste per cup of water
• 1-2 chopped scallions, white and green
• 4 thin slices of lemon

 Soak wakame and mushroom separately.  When wakame  & mushrooms are soft, slice finely and place in saucepan with water , leeks and ginger. Bring to boil uncovered over a medium flame. When broth is boiling add carrots.  Simmer for about 2 minutes.  In a separate cup, dilute miso paste in small amount of water.  Remove ginger from cooking pot. Pour diluted,p ureed miso into broth. .  Simmer, do not boil for 2-3 minutes.  Garnish soup with a sprinkle of scallion and a floating disk of lovely lemon.

(RECIPE FOLLOWS STORY)

In January 1996, I received an envelope with a yellow checkered pattern on the back flap and a little red and yellow kitten wearing a bow tie on the lower left corner.

Inside was a note from Megumi, who was scheduled to come live with us at the end of the month. Her penmanship was very precise but wiggly; it looked to me as if she was a born cartoonist. Along with her greeting and her telling us how excited she was to come to Boston and live with our family, Megumi sprinkled a dozen happy faces on the margins of her already very cute stationery. She was from a rural town. Kyoto was the closest city.

She arrived all polished and smiling. From day-one she never dropped the corners of her mouth. Every mornring Megumi bowed to us and held her palms together near the center of her chest. Her pink jacket matched her pink gloves. She wore  baby blue sneakers. I found flowers on my counter top and by the time spring actually showed up, we all felt as if it had already hit our house.

Her English was really weak and it didn’t get much better. Megumi was so sweet, her words didn’t count. She collected friends, lots of friends, mostly other cute Japanese girls who giggled and chatted together–that’s why their English didn’t improve much.

Megumi wasn’t a girl to study either. She preferred to go out–into the snow, slush, and the night to meet her girlfriends, to shop, to look at the river, to take the subway to Boston and visit museums, the flower show, and Newbury Street.

She liked to cook. After a month with our family Megumi politely asked my permission to prepare the family supper every Monday. In anticipation of me saying yes, she had packed an apron with ‘Hello Kitty’ on the pockets in her suitcase.

Megumi introduced me to Japanese cooking. She brought home mirin and tempura flour, bean thread noodles, udon, special soy sauces. She made tofu fritters and chicken curries, cut carrots into flowers and floated thin slices of lemon on top of miso soup. She was not yet twenty years old. Her mother had trained her well. We loved her tempura. 

Megumi lives on. We have special bowls that we still use today use to make ‘Megumi Soup’, a dashi broth with udon, fried tofu and spinach. 

Megumi went back to her small town Japan in April and left us with a recipe for a fantastic noodle salad, which I understand is a Japanese ‘take’ on a Chinese dish. It’s called Harusame, which means Spring Rain. Coated with a slippery, shiny dressing, the transparent thin, bean thread noodles do indeed resemble spring rain. They slip over the tongue like drops hitting a puddle.

BTW: Matthew, Ruby and I  received birthday cards, all cute,  on each of our birthdays for about five years. In her precise and wiggly way Megumi let us know she got an office job in her small town. By now she is married, for sure, and cooking delicious food for her kids and husband. 

HARUSAME

buy mung bean thread noodles

1. Make this dressing and put it into a big bowl

• 2 T sugar
• 3 T soy sauce
• 3 T rice vinegar
• 3T sesame oil
• 1/2 t Japanese soup powder **(Bonito fish soup stock, usually marketed in Asian shops as “Hon-Dashi”; could also use 1/2 t Thai fish sauce; bonito flakes; fish boullion crumbled)
•  a little bit of black pepper

2. Cook the Harusame

• Boil  2 packs of Harusame ( bean thread noodles) in 4 cups of water  for 2 minutes.
• Drain off the water. Using kitchen scissors, cut the noodles into smaller length pieces. While still hot put noodles into the big bowl with the dressing.

3. Prepare the vegetables

• Carrot: Cut a carrot into small cubes– about 1/2’ squares– and boil for 2-3 minutes
• Corn: Either cut corn kernels from an ear of corn, use a small can of canned corn, or thaw about a 1/2 cup of frozen corn.
• Cucumber:  cut into small pieces ( match the size of the corn and carrots) and add a little salt. Rub salt into the cucumbers and wring out excess moisture. 

4. Combine

Add vegetables to the noodle and dressing and stir.

5. Garnish & serve warm or room temperature

Sprinkle with diced scallion, using both green and white parts.

Yuno at Chocho's

Last spring, when I introduced Yuno to youngsters who were visiting our house, I told them her name: “Yuno” and they smiled and shook their heads no.  “Yuno,” I said again. They shook their heads, thinking it was some sort of game.  The third time I repeated “Yuno” the kids stopped smiling and looked confused.  Finally I said, “Her name is You-Know.”  

I can only imagine how the kids managed to make sense of it. If there’s a girl named You-Know there could be another  I-Never-Knew and a boy You-Don’t-Know and maybe someone else called Take-A-Guess and another person walking around with a name like I-Am-Sure.  They hadn’t met any of them yet but they had met You-Know and they liked her.  How could anyone not?

She’s a pixie who walks like she has the long legs of a runway model, kind of spidery and graceful. I’ve never seen her feet out of high heels, even during snow storms.  But Korean girls do like their shoes and fashion and looking good.  

(I have a lot more to write about wonderful Korean girls in future blogs!)

Yuno came to us as part of a pair, kind of like Apple and Cinnamon.  She lived in our house while Shou Pei was here and the two of them often stayed up all night talking, just like Adelle and Cesca years ago.  They met at their language school. 

 Shou Pei, a very-good looking Taiwanese student, asked if her friend Yuno could move in with us. They got along so well; they liked to go out on weekends and drink, dance, and laugh. If they lived at my house then they could double-up on their fun and reduce their getting-together commuting time. Plus my house was nice, comfortable, American. They knew what they wanted, they knew I would look out for them, and they wanted a family.

They were such a pair! I really fell in love with Shou Pei and Yuno.

Yuno has the gravelly, loud laugh of a big person—or maybe a small person who learned early on she had better fill up space or be overlooked.  Every once in a while I wanted to ask her not to laugh so loudly but realized I had to be a real grump of a person to make that request and adjusted my mood, which in the end was better for all of us.  One day she totally surprised me by sitting behind a piano and playing a beautiful Chopin piece. “My father made me study piano,” she said dropping her chin and flirting with me in a daughterly way. And I complimented her.

Last the summer Yuno left Boston and moved to New York to study fashion marketing. She was a bit apprehensive about her language skills, which were good, and about living in a city where she knew no one.  But she was determined to be strong, to study, to do well in New York, and to make her father proud of her. Her father manufactures sports clothes, so I guess Yuno is in line for a job with his company. From afar her father manages her life.  Fathers in Korea are very, very important.  (More in later blogs.)

Yuno adjusted. We stay in touch; a lot lately. Last weekend I had a reading in New York at NYU and Yuno showed up.  This weekend, the end of her spring break she took a bus to Boston to carouse with some of her old Boston buddies.  We went to lunch at Chocho’s, a Korean place buried like a belly button among the Japanese noodle and sushi places in Porter Exchange. Everyone calls the Food Court there Little Tokyo and it is full of young Asians with their dark, dark hair, designer glasses and big pocketbooks. Most of them are college aged, mostly from MIT, I think.  I know my Asian students at BU crossed the river to eat here, particularly at Cafe Mami.  The food is inexpensive and good and the atmosphere is oh-so-seen-and-be-seen for those wife and husband hunting.

Yuno showed up late, as she usually does, in her high high heels and a fashionable grey wool coat with kimono sleeves and lots of buttons. She covered her mouth and apologized profusely.  She had gone to the wrong place.  “I never knew,” she said.  “How come for all the time me and Shou Pei lived at your house we didn’t come to here?”  She looked around amazed.  “We never knew.”  

My house is three blocks away from Little Tokyo.

I could hardly be upset. Yuno updated me on her life in New York.  A boyfriend…maybe.  She’s looking for summer internship and may have one helping to manage clothing manufacturing.  She made new freinds. Wants to stay in Manhattan. She likes the clubs. The Korean food in New York restaurants is terrific. “Each restaurant specializes in a particular food.  Like one makes the best bibimbop, another the best bulgoki.”

At Chocho’s ate bibimbop.  I satisfied a recent craving for soon duboo, a spicy tofu stew, which I make at home.  Yuno said the way I make it is pretty good.  Here’s my recipe.

Shrimp & Vegetable Soon Duboo (Soft & Spicy Tofu Stew)

• 1 Tbsp. sesame oil
• 2 Tbsp. gochu karu (red pepper powder)
• ½ mild onion (like Vidalia) sliced into strips
• 1 dozen (or so) medium size raw, peeled shrimp
• 1 ½ cups of either a) anchovy broth (boil 10-12 dried anchovies in water for 10 minutes and then remove anchovies); b) dashi stock (drop a square-inch of dry kombu in the water and bring to a boil for a minute before removing kombu); c) bottled clam juice; d) water
• 2 containers of silken tofu, cubed
• 1 Tbsp. gochu jang (red pepper paste), optional if additional spiciness is desired
• 1 cup sliced broccoli, cauliflower, carrot and maybe a little bit of oyster or enoki mushroom if you have it. 
• 1 egg
• 1-2 scallions sliced diagonally

1. Heat a medium saucepan.  Add the oil, sliced onion, and gochu karu.  Lightly stir fry over medium heat for a few minutes until fragrant. Add the shrimp and fry briefly. Set aside.
2. Pour the broth and vegetables into a medium saucepan and bring to boil over high heat. Reduce and simmer until vegetables are soft. 
3. Add the onion, gochu karu and shrimp to the vegetables and broth.  Then add the tofu (and gochu jang if you are using it) and stir well.  Bring to a boil and simmer for about 5 minutes, taking care to stir so you don’t burn the bottom.
4. Stir in green onions,
5. Serve immediately with rice, roasted sheet of seaweed, kimchee, other side dishes and a raw egg.

The opening and cooking of the raw egg is quite a sensual preamble to the eating of the soon duboo.  The soon duboo must be very hot. Tap the shell on the side of your bowl to open the egg.  Open it. Drop the contents on top of the soo duboo and stir lightly with your chopstick, so that creamy baubles of egg remain softly suspended within the delicate, luscious and steamy tofu stew.

Eat with rice.  Most Koreans drop a spoon of rice into the stew, eat it and then add another spoon of rice.  I use brown rice, but that’s me. Most everyone else prefers white rice.

Korean Side Dishes (buy at Korean store or make yourself): cucumber salad, shredded daikon radish, bean sprouts, potato salad,  black beans, white kimchee, red kimchee

On Line Recipes That I’ve used: korean sweet black beans http://koreanfood.about.com/od/sidedishesbanchan/r/BlackBeans.htm

I deleted the ham>>korean potato salad http://koreanfood.about.com/od/sidedishesbanchan/r/PotatoSalad.htm