Feeding the Hungry Ghost (12 page)

Red Onion Jam

This tangy onion jam is good with farinata or flatbread or dolloped on any grain or legume salad, and fabulous with fresh, ripe tomatoes.

Makes about 2 cups

2 red onions, halved

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 cup cabernet or other red wine

¼ cup agave nectar or honey

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

1 handful fresh thyme leaves

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Slice the onion halves thinly, so the slices form half-moons. Very stylish.

In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions soften and turn translucent, about 10 minutes. Add the wine, agave nectar, balsamic vinegar, and thyme, and cook, uncovered, until the liquid reduces and turns garnet colored and syrupy, about 10 minutes. Keep stirring as the mixture reduces, to keep the onions from sticking to the bottom of the pan.

Cover the skillet, reduce the heat to low, and cook until the mixture becomes jammy, about 15 minutes. Let cool. Season with salt and pepper.

The onion jam can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.

Spring Pea Puree

This puree is easy, bright in color, thanks to the peas and mint, bright in palate, thanks to the lemon and mint. Two juicy lemons should give you all the juice you need. Sometimes, though, life hands you pithy lemons, in which case a third lemon may be necessary.

Makes 1¼ cups

1½ cups fresh or frozen peas, thawed

1 clove garlic

1 bunch fresh mint

Juice of 2 or 3 lemons

¼ cup olive oil

Sea salt

Blitz the peas, garlic, mint, lemon juice, and olive oil in a food processor until smooth and well combined, about 2 minutes. Taste and season with salt.

The puree can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for several days.

I’d like to think I’m just naturally brilliant and generous that way, but it’s all due to imprinting. Over more than a few Friday nights, both Cora and Marcella inadvertently instilled in me an antipathy toward eating animals, but they also gave me the sense that a shared meal is both party and social cement — the thing that brings us together and keeps us together. And of course, it has to be beautiful. You honor your guests, whether they’re kings or cousins, whether they’re seven or seventy.

(Note to self: polish the silver and candlesticks.)

This belief, this practice, is my True Religion without it being, you know, true religion. Or maybe it is the truest religion. Long before it was a career path, hospitality was a moral imperative for all faiths. Inns and guesthouses had yet to dot the landscape. Airplanes wouldn’t be invented for centuries. If you wanted to get somewhere, you walked. Or if you were part of the 1 percent, perhaps you had a mule or horse or camel.

There was no heading to Disneyland; you were on the Silk Route for trade or making a religious pilgrimage. On foot. And if you got a little tired or peckish on the road, you prayed someone would take you in. And if they had you bunk with the sheep or gave you their bread when, please, you’re gluten intolerant, you didn’t have a lot of recourse. You couldn’t post a rant on Trip-Advisor. So you were grateful for what you got, and it really brought home the Golden Rule.

Okay, things are a little different today. We outsource hospitality. And charge for it. So you can get things the way you want them. And yet, we’ve lost something, that desire, or at least that willingness, to open our homes and hearts. It means putting it out there, letting your guard down a little. In Buddhism it’s known as
dana,
or generosity, but more than being generous, it’s
wanting
to be generous.

I’m no more Buddhist than I am any other religion, but as a precept,
dana’s
a keeper. In the same way I have no problem mixing it up in the kitchen, I cherry-pick bits from different faiths. This is a no-no among the hard-core religious and probably offends everyone.

But people do it all the time. I mean, look at the Bible. If you want to find justification for any sort of behavior, it’s in there. It’s just a matter of interpretation. Including what a supreme being had in mind for us to eat. If you think there’s a line in the sand between Jews and Christians or Democrats and Republicans, the difference between omnivores/meat eaters and vegetarians/vegans/meatless folks is a mile-wide chasm. And, of course, both sides think they’re right.

In Genesis 1:29, the word, as Adam and Eve got it, was,
“Behold, I have given you
every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall
have them for food.” You can read that and conclude God wants us to be meatless.

Then you can read Genesis 9:3, in which God tells Noah,
“Every moving thing
that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things,” and conclude God’s given us the okay to eat animals.

Or you can reckon, as I do, that Noah was a whiner. That he yammered and yammered and said, “But I don’t like seeds and herbs. And we’re stuck here in the rain on this stupid boat, and I’m hungry.” God just gave in and said, all right, already, eat what you like; let it be on your head.

I’m a little skeptical about Peter, who in Acts 10:9–15 hears a voice telling him nothing is forbidden him to eat. Some religious pros believe the voice to be God’s, but we weren’t there. Who knows? Maybe Peter was just crazed with hunger and suffering auditory hallucinations.

So we go back to Genesis 1:28, the bit where the Lord gave man dominion over all the animals.

Yes, but that doesn’t say we should eat them, too. Dominion is not the same as domination. I prefer to think the interpretation here is: we are custodians of our fellow animals, and since we have this fairly well-developed cerebral cortex that puts us in charge, it’s our job to look after them. With compassion, not cruelty. And without making them for dinner.

Those made nervous by a meatless diet like to cite Romans 14:2, which says,
“The weak person eats
only vegetables.” And though I’ve read an interpretation saying, oh, the Bible doesn’t really mean it, even I’ve got to say that sounds pretty definitive. But then the scripture reads,
“Let not the one who eats
despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him” (Romans 14:3).
And there’s 1 Corinthians 8:8, which says,
“Meat commendeth us not
to God.”

I am amazed by how many biblical references I know, considering I’m a heathen. But I had enough Sunday school before dropping out to know according to the Good Book, God laid down a scant few rules — ten of ’em. We have a hard enough time following these (some kind of human design flaw). How many elected officials alone have skirted or shrugged off three of your basic commandments — thou shalt not lie, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not commit adultery?

So am I questioning God? No. I’m questioning us. Because while the message might be a little confusing, basically God says we can choose what we eat. The question becomes, what do we choose?

I choose compassion, toward animals of all kinds. Including — though it’s sometimes a struggle — my own kind, the human kind. Which brings me to one of my biblical faves, Proverbs 15:17 —
“Better is a dinner
of herbs where love is than a fattened ox and hatred with it.”

The way I interpret the Bible is the way I choose to live — with a supersized portion of compassion, hold the meat, hold the side of hatred.

My issue with formal religion is my issue with government. The guys at the top may go into the job with all the good intentions in the world, but once in power, they get a little too cocky. The tenets of religion get to be like a bill in Congress — there’s some good bits in there you can get behind, but they’re bundled with other things you cannot in good faith espouse but are forced to go along with anyway. That just doesn’t feed me.

Another thing: many formal religions have used — or skewed — the tenets of their faith to justify bloody bits. You know, the
Crucifixion, the Spanish Inquisition, the slaying of the firstborn, jihad, stuff like that. With that comes the sense of we’re right and you’re wrong. Centuries upon centuries of it, and we still haven’t realized it doesn’t work.

I bypass all that breast-beating-and-bloodshed-in-the-name-of-God stuff. There’s a reason Easter and Passover come in spring — at their heart, they honor seasonal renewal. Well, we can all celebrate that, and while we’re at it, let’s celebrate Rongali Bihu, otherwise known as Assamese New Year, the mid-April holiday when the northeast part of India marks the coming of spring. The festivities go on all week long, and how can you not love a holiday where cows are groomed and festooned with flowers?

At all the spring holidays, we gather to share ritual foods, the most direct route to season and spirit. We literally take it in. Food is the way we connect; it is the lens through which we see the world. It is creation, it is re-creation, it is nurturing, it is hope.

Judeo-Christian Biblical Barley and Herb Salad

This barley salad has life force and history. Cheap, fortifying, and loaded with fiber, barley feeds five thousand people in the Book of John and is a hit in the Old Testament, too. These days, most people consider barley — if they consider it at all — as something wintery, perhaps sharing space with mushrooms in a warming bowl of soup. Here, this ancient whole grain gets the tabbouleh treatment and becomes a significant salad loaded with herbs (and love — see Proverbs quote above).

Nice as part of a biblical meze (Middle Eastern tapas, if you will), served alongside a blob of hummus and flatbread or with roasted eggplant, it’s just right for spring.

Tahini is an extremely luscious sesame paste, available in Middle Eastern groceries, natural food stores, and most supermarkets. Like natural (preservative-free) peanut butter, tahini tends to separate, with the oil floating to the top of the sesame goodness below. Stir well before using.

Serves 4 to 6

2 cups Stone Soup (see
page 84
) or other vegetable broth or water

1 cup barley

1 bunch fresh mint, chopped

1 bunch fresh cilantro, chopped

1 bunch fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped

3 scallions, chopped

1 tomato, chopped

Juice of 1 lemon

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon ground cumin

Pinch of red pepper flakes

½ teaspoon agave nectar or honey

1 handful kalamata olives, pitted

2 tablespoons tahini

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

In a large pot, bring the vegetable broth to a boil over high heat. Add the barley. Cover, reduce the heat to low, and simmer until the liquid is absorbed and the grains are tender, about 30 minutes.

Fluff the cooked barley with a fork and set aside to cool. (The cooked barley can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for a day or two; bring to room temperature before proceeding with the recipe.) Stir in the herbs, scallions, and tomato.

In a small bowl, whisk together the lemon juice, olive oil,
cumin, red pepper flakes, and agave nectar. Pour over the barley and stir until the grains are evenly coated with the dressing. Stir in the kalamatas.

Refrigerate in an airtight container for at least 2 hours. The dressing will soften and moisten the barley.

Remove the barley salad from the refrigerator. Drizzle the tahini over the barley salad and season with salt and pepper. The kalamatas add some saltiness of their own, so don’t season until just before serving.

Serve cool or at room temperature.