Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

I was with Nina and Tali trying to dig up one of my favorite Wikipedia articles. They were zooming around me making these gyoza they call mandu. Here it is. Jjokbari, the most poetic Korean slur for the Japanese. It means cloven footed, after the sandals and split toe socks the colonizers wore. Of course I was wearing flip flops at the time. Nothing is an accident. A customer came in the other night in those Margiela tabi. Jjokbari chic.

There’s also ilbon-nom, I read aloud. Which means Japanese bastards.

“Oh, I thought that was just Korean for Japanese people… That’s the term we used at home anyway…”

HA!

Nina had just done the work of a hundred ajumma with a multi-course spread on the elongated dinner table. Banchan, pajun, kimchi jigae, kalbi, forget about it. I was on the verge of tears!

Before digging in, I said a quick prayer, something resembling grace. Another gin-soaked ramble about how there’s no such thing as Japan or Korea anymore, only New Jersey. Someone kicked me under the table. Ow. You’re right, let’s eat.

Tali told me at work that Ozu had rekindled the old flame in her mother. She was dabbling in that Italian and Thai stuff before. Now back to the roots.

“Jeffrey, your eyes are really red. Have you been crying?”

No, it’s allergies.

“Sure.”

My eyes had been driving me NUTS all week. Bloodshot and itchy from god knows what in the air. “Don’t itch them then” is like someone telling you to calm down.

I’ve rewritten Keats:

“Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye
Until August ragweed comes
And makes me want to die”

I need my eyes to make the goddamn bentos and look up Korean slurs on Wikipedia. It’s all I have left. Outside on the patio. There was a piñon fire burning and a few hand rolled ciggies and the odd firework. The burning was intolerable.

Finally, I said to hell with it, closed my eyes, and wrapped them in my indigo tenugui. Blindfolded the rest of the night and led around the house like Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman, a role I was born to play:

It was me and her, this gorgeous…daughter of the Mayflower…in the backseat of my Mazda Protégé. The two of us…alone in the Presbyterian church parking lot. Hoo-ah. I was…

“Jeff, Jeff. There are kids here.”

Kids…where?!

“I’ll go see if I have any eyedrops.”

If you can’t find any you could bring me a fucking grapefruit spoon and we’ll be done with it.

“Ugh, I miss grapefruit spoons.”

“Ugh, grapefruit for breakfast. So good.”

“Ugh, the 90s.”

I remembered the line from The Little Prince. “L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.”

It’s true what they say about losing sight. It sharpens the other senses. How musical Shaw’s voice is. That dry half-rest before he delivers a funny line. To hell with my eyes. I’ll figure it out. Nina can read me the slurs and I’ll feel my way around the kitchen.

I woke up the next morning feeling better. Chopped up some fat lines of Claritin in the bathroom and downed a nettle tea. Having rallied I forgot everything Exupéry said about l’essentiel. Obsessed again with looking at things. Scrolled through old photos of me and Ruben. The Pirelli calendar. A cute polaroid of Liam and I. Showing him the secret of the engawa nigiri. The little skirt of a flatfish like hirame, sliced open and laid on a little bit of rice. As god said to Moses, the game must be passed down.

About to lose the summer hires to higher education. Rae and Tali really stepped up. Legends only. Rookies no more.

Rebecca and I serenaded them the other day. Cued up Whitney Houston’s “The Greatest Love” and sang along:

“I believe that Children are the future… teach them well and let them lead the way…Let the children’s laughter remind us how we used to be…”

How we used to be…

Scored some chanterelles from a local source. Thrown in a tamagoyaki it is about as good as it gets. Consider it a dry run for the Japanese brunch we’ll start on Saturdays when the time is right.

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temaki
choice of blue crab, maguro, kanpachi namerou, or ikura

sesame miso bagna fredda
local raw vegetables with an umami-rich anchovy dip

hiyashi salad
local lettuces, radish, cucumber, sesame ginger dressing

kyuri sunomono
vinegared cucumber & seaweed salad

kanpachi namerou
tartare of raw kanpachi*, white miso, ginger, shiso, over rice

chanterelle tamagoyaki
Japanese rolled omelette with locally foraged chanterelles

albacore salad with shiso dressing
raw albacore over local greens with fresh shiso vinaigrette 

scallop ceviche
raw sea scallops, sudachi, ikura, aonori

hamachi bento
raw yellowtail over sushi rice with hiyashi salad, pickles

seared scallop bento
seared sea scallops over Japanese rice, hiyashi salad & pickles

maguro bento
raw bluefin tuna over sushi rice with hiyashi salad, pickles

chirashi
raw hamachi, tuna, scallop, shima aji, tai, ikura over sushi rice*

basque cheesecake
sesame miso cookie