Cream of Spinach Soup
Today I am spending the morning in my kitchen, cooking the base for what will become a cream of spinach soup. I shall freeze the base that I am about to make and then defrost it over Friday night, ready for finishing off for the dinner I am making on Saturday for friends.
I look around the work surfaces and see a lot of mess and clutter. I shift the items that need to be washed up over to the sink and make some clear space for myself.
The first thing to do is to get that washing up sorted out (we do not have a dishwasher). I am rinsing the items under the tap and thinking about how I want to approach the morning. Should I regard it, for example, as a bit of a chore? That certainly doesn’t square with the book on Zen Guitar that I have been reading. I don’t want to start spouting a load of pseudo-Zen stuff here, but a better way to proceed would be if I take every step with care, and delight in what I am doing. I pause to look at the clean pile of stuff on the draining board. I’m glad I washed up first; the greengrocer at the market has to set out his stall afresh each day.
I open Julia Child’s book at the recipe for potage crème d’épinards (cream of spinach soup), which is based on her recipe for potage crème de cresson (watercress soup). I get a pan on for stock and hoy onion, carrot, herbs, and a good slurp of white wine into the water. I use bottled water because our tap water has a chemical taste and that won’t go away in the cooking. I tip out the spinach leaves and make a pile on the work surface: 400 grams.
I read the recipe. Julia requires the leaves to be chiffonade. This will take some time. I have come to a cross-roads. I could chop them in 5 minutes, maximum. I could cook them whole and puree the soup later. I am convinced that my dinner guests would not notice whatever way I decide to go. I choose to keep faith with Julia. I know this is going to be a challenge, but I need to enjoy it as such. I go and get a classical CD and put it on to play in my kitchen media unit. I have chosen the Brandenburg Concerto #1 by J.S. Bach. The music starts, and I take hold of my knife. I select a pile of leaves and place them ready for the cut. The CD player keeps jumping. I abandon the CD. I pause and think. I refuse to become annoyed. I have had the machine for about 20 years and I think it needs to be replaced at some point. I turn the radio on to our BBC3 classical station. The music is good, but there is interference. Maybe somebody is using a hedge trimmer or something like that, nearbye. I think about this for a little while. I decide to explore silence.
I am chiffonading, something I seldom do. The pile looks enormous. I give myself a mental slap on the wrist. That sort of attitude will never do; it is most un-Zen-like. I decide that I must not think about getting to the end of the pile. What I need to do is focus on the present, on the here and now. Each leaf, each draw of the knife.
The house is very still. Soon, I perceive that the silence is being filled. There is a quiet but rythmic muffled ticking sound, emanating from the kitchen clock. It reminds me of my paternal grandparents house: tick-tock, tick-tock. Soon, I realise that the kitchen rhythm section is more complex; the fridge freezer appears to be generating an improvised jazz solo across the beat of the clock. I can hear the sound of my own breathing, too. I check my watch. I have been chiffonading for 12 minutes. I decide that it would be good to make a cup of coffee and to sip that from time to time while I cut.
I am aware of the part that this part of the culinary preparation plays in the recipe as a whole. As I cut, and cut, I make the link to my experience of drawing a sketch of Orford castle. The sections of brick took me a long time and to do them was rather repetitive. However, I was rewarded for my attention to detail in the completed sketch; without patience the sketch would have had a different character and it would not have been mine. I feel good about making this comparison. I continue to focus on the present moment. If I have a thought, I let it go. In this way I avoid slipping into the world of daydreams. After an hour, I have finished. In the broader scheme of things, it does not matter whether I spend 10 minutes or 60 minutes chiffonading. Many folk routinely spend a lot longer than 60 minutes watching mind-numbing rubbish on TV. By way of contrast, I have had a very interesting experience this morning.
I melt some butter in a pan and sweat some chopped onion. Then I push in the chiffonaded spinach and leave that to wilt under a gentle heat for five minutes. At this point I stir in some rice flower and cook that through for a few minutes before taking it off the flame and beating in my strained stock. I simmer the soup base for another five minutes and then I am finished. I shall freeze it when it has cooled down, later today. I say that I am finished; that is not quite correct. If I am to bring closure to the Zen-kitchen experience, I need to wash and tidy up my stuff. First I eat an improvised snack made from the onion and carrot I used for my stock. Then I get squared away. One thing that occurred to me this morning was that I would very much like to find a bistro-style check table cloth to put on my round table in our sitting room. I have a very nice pale blue cloth that I use for the big 1×2 metre table I made but I shall not be assembling that on Saturday.
It is now time to practice some arpeggios on guitar. Speak to you later, my dear blogophiles.