From the time of her childhood in San
Francisco, Alice collected recipes. When life became ‘too black’ she read
cookbooks an was ‘immediately lost to everything outside.’ She did not keep
diaries, but recipes nudged her excellent memory and through them she conjured
recollections of place, time and extraordinary company. A leisured hedonism
pervades her Cookbook, an assumption that few things are more important than
lunch, that there are, after all, only 365 of them in a year and that a bad one
is a waste. Cooking was, she said, an art on a par with painting.
Morocco-based painter and writer Brion Gysin, a
friend of Gertrude’s in the 1930s, wrote in with a recipe for hashish fudge,
complete with notes on growing cannabis at home. Naively, Alice included it and
a publicity crisis ensued. Harpers, the book’s publisher, eventually sent a
telegram to the Attorney-General to check if they were in legal trouble and, if
so, whether they should halt the printing. (They were not; they did not.) Some
even argued Alice had included the recipe as a publicity stunt.
"HASHISH
FUDGE
(which
anyone could whip up on a rainy day)
This is the
food of paradise — of Baudelaire’s Artificial Paradises: it might provide an
entertaining refreshment for a Ladies’ Bridge Club or a chapter meeting of the
DAR. In Morocco it is thought to be good for warding off the common cold in
damp winter weather and is, indeed, more effective if taken with large
quantities of hot mint tea. Euphoria and brilliant storms of laughter; ecstatic
reveries and extensions of one’s personality on several simultaneous planes are
to be complacently expected. Almost anything Saint Theresa did, you can do
better if you can bear to be ravished by ‘un évanouissement reveillé‘.
Take 1
teaspoon black peppercorns, 1 whole nutmeg, 4 average sticks of cinnamon, 1
teaspoon coriander. These should all be pulverised in a mortar. About a handful
each of stoned dates, dried figs, shelled almonds and peanuts: chop these and
mix them together. A bunch of Cannabis sativa can be pulverised. This along
with the spices should be dusted over the mixed fruit and nuts, kneaded
together. About a cup of sugar dissolved in a big pat of butter. Rolled into a
cake and cut into pieces or made into balls about the size of a walnut, it
should be eaten with care. Two pieces are quite sufficient.
Obtaining
the Cannabis may present certain difficulties, but the variety known as
Cannabis sativa grows as a common weed, often unrecognised, everywhere in
Europe, Asia and parts of Africa; besides being cultivated as a crop for the
manufacture of rope. In the Americas, while often discouraged, its cousin,
called Cannabis indica, has been observed even in city window boxes. It should
be picked and dried as soon as it has gone to seed and while the plant is still
green."
John
Keats’s Porridge: Favorite Recipes of American Poets
Allen
Ginsberg offers his uncompromising borsch recipe:
Boil 2 big
bunches of chopped beets and beet greens for one hour in two quarts of water
with a little salt and a bay leaf, an one cup of sugar as for lemonade. When
cooked, add enough lemon to balance the sugar, as for lemonade (4 or 5 lemons
or more).
Icy chill;
serve with hot boiled potatoes on side and a dollop of sour cream in the middle
of red cold beet soup. On side also: spring salad (tomatoes, onions, lettuce,
radishes, cucumbers).
Joyce Carol
Oates cooks up some disciplined Easter Anise Bread:
1 dozen
eggs
1
tablespoon sugar for every egg (¾ cup)
2 cakes
yeast
½ cup oil
1 cup
butter
1 teaspoon
orange juice
1 teaspoon lemon
juice
1 teaspoon
anise seed
1 pinch
salt
9 cups
flour
Warm milk,
enough to dissolve yeast
Beat eggs;
add juices, yeast, and milk an beat slightly. Mix flour, sugar, salt, and
anise. Now add to liquid mixture and mix until well blended. Let rise in bowl
until nearly double in size. Punch down. Let rise again. Shape into four
loaves. Place in greased pans. Let rise and bake for 20-30 minutes at 350
degrees.
Muriel
Rukeyser makes an irreverent Omelette Philleo:
On the side
of variousness in life, this is my omelette. It is made with all the combining
of egg yolks and milk (or, for weight watchers, water) beaten, and egg whites
and salt, beaten; the folding, slashing, and then the variation: fill with
slices of cranberry sauce for a tart and various omelette. It is named for
Philleo Nash, friend, former Commissioner of Indian Affairs, and Cranberry
Prince.
I do not
mention my pickled watermelon rind with scotch. Nor others.
Ultimately,
what John Keats’s Porridge offers, besides the promise of some filling dishes,
is an apt metaphor for poetry itself — even creativity at large — as an endless
cycle of borrowing, remix, and transformation. As William Cole eloquently puts
it in the introduction,
It’s
interesting to note that nearly ninety per cent of all the recipes submitted
are either the poet’s original recipe or his variation on a standard recipe.
Few poets, it would seem, are willing to claim as favorite any old run of the
mill standard recipe. This is not surprising when we consider the nature of the
Beast: the poet as creator, inventor, who makes out of a few necessary
ingredients a magic potion.
via http://www.brainpickings.org/
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