Forked path

(A draft that I did in 2008 when I was still in York laboring on my PhD thesis.)

It has been quite a merry year since its first day. Two friends got engaged and are planning their weddings. Their wedding- and marriage-related adventures have been hot topics for our gatherings ever since. I came to know how every relationship goes through ups and downs, and fortunately the two parties return to each other again in the end.

This trail is one of my new discoveries this summer. The path on the right leads to the library, and the one on the left the same. The knowledge about the fact that the diverted trails ending up in the same place came much later to me. One day when I was treading on the path, I remember those stories about relationships. I was standing at the beginning of the division of the trails, thinking that this could make a heart if their diverted ends meet again on the other end of the meadow. Standing at this end, we never know what will happen unless we move on and get through.

Last Sunday we invited some friends to the house. As my cooking is not something worth showing off, the choice of ethnic food, especially that of my own country Taiwan, is one of the safe choices.

Mullet roe (karasumi / 烏魚子) was one of the dishes that I prepared. It was served with cubes of leek, apple, and pear in a childish display. The bitter taste of roe was entirely enveloped in the sweet juice and smoothed away.

'Sounds for Sacred Spaces' at York Minster, 10/Feb/2007

(The first draft of this entry was done a while ago but was abandoned for some reasons. Now it seems that I have a better idea about how to talk about this concert.)

'Sounds for Sacred Spaces' is a perennial concert in which vocal and instrumental religious music is presented in a fascinating audioriam: the York Minster.

This extraordinary space for concert and Gamelan, a traditional musical instrument from the central Java, have been two main attractions of the concert. And these they indeed worked together very well when the Minster allowed the oriental sounds to flow through the enormous space and to create enchanting echoes. Sounds of Gamelan provide a base melody with which the audiences' imagaination and mediation created resonance.

Perhaps the combination of these 2 elements was the main reason why the concert last year got it's name: 'Echoes from the Far East'.

This year's music feast was a success as usual, but it was even more intriguing for its 'experiments of music within sacred spaces' rather than merely 'sounds for sacred spaces'. As the programme said, it is an acoustic adventure.

The spirit of the concert--being spiritual and inspirational--was maintained, but more alternatives were added to the program. Last year's concert featured a stream of immaculate vocals and sounds of which the styles were rather traditional and monotonous and the themes were consistently religious. This year, however, both secular and sacred music were heard. There were spiritual songs of folk religions and some extracts from opera pieces. The flow of the music throughout of the concert was enriched by a good alternation between musical instruments, a short medieval opera and several pieces of choruses.

The internalized profiles of musicians this year definitely helped add a new dimension to the concert and to common perception of reglious music. YoMaMa, among other choirs in the performance, is a good example.

The Garden: Afternoon Glory

In addition to bitter melons, we also grew afternoon glory as part of the green curtain for the house this summer. Both plants have been competing for survival, and at some point I thought the afternoon glory had lost the battle.

Finally in the early autumn when the harvest of bitter melons came to an end, the afternoon glory started to take over the stage. They are such elegant creatures, the buds and the flowers alike! Its flower bud closes in the shape of a spiral; the white color is innocently silky; the the neck of the flower looks firm and its petals tender. How unfortunate that they only bloom at night and only for a night! Only those who sit up late enough could appreciate these beaming gems in the dark.

The Garden: Cooking with the Garden

It is pretty difficult to find fresh culinary spices and herbs in Japan. Most of the time we can only do with herbs from jars. Yet, the choices are quite limited to the types of cuisine popular with Japanese. Occasionally even if one is lucky enough to spot them on fridge shelves in supermarkets, they are as expensive as gold.

After the quake, the concern about the safety of food seeded in me the desire to create a small piece of kitchen garden.

Since the summer, we have been enjoying the lush produce of basil and parsley.

I have been greatly fond of thyme, a herb that is used to season pork and fish dishes. Their elegant look of straight-upward rising stems with small and neat leaves has charmed me greatly. The fragrance, which could be fishy to some, has turned me a slave to them.

Thyme (百里香)

The other day, I replaced perilla frutescens (しそ) with thyme on the recipe. I was not sure about how it would work, but the several spoons of thyme magically turned a traditional Japanese dish of aubergine and pork mince into a western delicacy (<- please be warned that 'delicacy' might be a pure exaggeration).

Before I had an idea about how I could use lemon balm, it had outgrown the flower pot. I followed a recipe on the Internet to mix it with garlic and olive oil and used it as an alternative to pesto. Different from the thick and sometimes greasy taste of pesto, the lemon balm provided a refreshing tint on the tongue.

Lemon Balm （檸檬香蜂草）

I was not a big fan of chives before I started to cook in Japan. The strong smell, like that of garlics, which does not dissipate for several days always irritated me.

K's father planted the first chives in the garden, and I was then compelled to use them as they matured. I have used them to make Japanese egg rolls (卵焼き). To my surprise, They are delicious without any aggressive and residual odor. It is probably because I did not fertilize them very well as there was a secret hope in me for their ill-being. I am now grateful that they have survived my cruelty deriving from a relatively shallow knowledge about the world of cuisine.

Garlic chives (にら, 韭菜)

Pimm's, an English summery taste that I have long craved.

To celebrate the publication of K's translation today, we made this very English summer cocktail with Pimm's, lemonade, cucumber, and pear.

How I have missed the English summer!