Eating Wine

The use of wine in many restaurants goes much further than seeking harmony of what one eats with what one drinks. It's now another essential ingredient in the kitchen. It's sauce, condiment, gelatin, and dessert. To tenderise and marinate meat or to smoke fish. Novelties in the menu include oysters in Chablis, sardines marinated in Champagne, and my personal favourite, any good fish flambed in Vodka. This last I have been doing at home for years.

Now with the advanced science and technology, they have come up with a chewable Champagne, in solid form which you eat with a spoon, and it conserves perfectly the aroma, the taste, the colour, and the carbonic of the Champagne when you chew on it. The spark one gets in the mouth, not the throat.

I love wine and have used it in my kitchen for as long as I can remember. In the beginning when I was experimenting with it, I did what everybody advised, using cheaper wine, the theory being that the alcohol evaporates when in contact with high heat and not much point wasting good wine. Before long I felt it rather senseless such practice. Adding wine is to enhance the food. If a wine in not good enough to drink, why should it be good enough to add to the food I eat?

So for years now, my theory is only the best is good enough. For most meat dishes I use really good quality dry sherry, and white wine or Vodka for fish and seafood. Same goes with the wine for the table. Having the best wine once in a while is for me better than drinking bad wine for every meal.

Fortunately, wine in Spain is still cheaper than say in England and many other European countries. Another fact is, a good wine doesn't necessarily mean a very expensive one. The Bodegas (wine shops and wine cellars) here let you try first as many variety as you wish (or as your capacity for alcohol permits) before you buy, providing you with a small clean glass with each one. Even if you leave without buying any, they would still smile and thank you for having come by. Don't be greedy and try too many though; you might not know what's what any more after the 6th or 7th glass, and end up buying the one you don't even want to use in the kitchen.

Tags:food,wine

Current Mood: Artistic

Flight Of Fancy - My Fictional Story

On waking I found that the flight attendant had left an entry form on the arm of my seat. One of those all foreign visitors must fill to declare your purpose for entering another country. The rest of the passengers were still sleeping in the half-light, as it was night. There were only dim lights on the signs to indicate where the toilets were and whether they were free. Also those at the bottom of seats that faintly lit up the corridors.

Making sure that the beam of just one headlight I switched on was shining only on my side, so as not to bother my neighbour, I began to fill the form. Everything was fine until I came to the part under the date of my birth, there's this little box requiring me to fill in also the date of death! Overwhelmed, I looked up and saw the flight attendant in the midst of that spectral atmosphere coming down the aisle. When she got close enough, I stopped her:

"Excuse me," I half whispered, "What am I supposed to put in this box?"

"What do you think?" she responded, observing me ironically as if I was naive or playing the fool.

Puzzled, I presumed that perhaps death had snatched me while I was asleep! I put down the date I left Heathrow Airport and which was in fact still the same date at that moment. After completing the rest of the form and my signature duly in place where it was indicated, I close my eyes and took another snooze.

I woke up to the bustle and clinging of cups and saucers as the flight attendants were now serving breakfast. The blinds on the windows are all up now indicating the early dawn, and all the lights were once again switched on. I saw the form sticking out of the seat pocket in front of me, but preferred (for fear) not to check whether that box I filled in was just an hallucination of mine. Reaching San Francisco Airport, I handed in the form to the police on the Control point, took a taxi, went to a hotel, later did all that the city expected me to do as a tourist, and returned home 2 weeks later with gifts in the suitcase.

My daily routine have been since then the same as always; my relationship with people around me and my work too. Everything continues exactly the same, but somehow everything is different, as if, instead of living, I am imitating the life I had lived before the travel. I begin to question everything I do and everyone I meet; are they all real?

Tags:hallucination,death,life

Current Mood: Contemplative

Paris - The City Is A Canvas

It has been quite sometime, when the graffiti, the art that started off on the metal body of a New York train more than 30 years ago, has left behind it's clandestine status of the street to fall into the pampering arms of Museums and galleries. The Cartier Foundation has, through their exhibition 'Born in the street: Graffiti', selected under different topics the astonishing drawings, elevating the graffiti to the category of visual art. Not just in the way as retrospective view of New York, but with their eyes on the future and in other capitals.

For the occasion, the Foundation offers their external wall to street graffiti artists, from day to day, with their sprays of paint and helmets of music, to display their talents redecorating the wall on full view of the passersby. (The only legal walls in Paris, authorized by the Town Hall). The artists dedicated their free time, from Monday to Friday, working in the open with street audience, not behind close doors of an artist's studio. In the interior and the garden of the museum, there are also 2 walls for murals of 4x3 metres, for different artists to paint on, changing the pictures once a month.

The graffiti on the train was painted in 1973. Very nice I thought. The other picture is on a wall in Sao Paulo

 

Tags:graffiti Paris

Current Mood: Accomplished