Three-Cornered Leeks

The British love to talk about the weather. Especially here in Cornwall, every morning starts with a "you alright? Yeah, rank weather we've got today." When I first got here, nearly everyone I met told me about the long, miserable winter I'd missed. Maybe it's just that the weather controls so much here: the surf, the produce. Or maybe it's that it changes so often. In April, it's been warming days oscillating between thick showers and sunshine - moments of apocalyptic rain and 15' swells, followed by idyllic sunny days that make me feel like this is the best place on Earth. 

Spring means the produce is going wild; in three weeks, our garden went from dormant to flourishing with baby radishes, flowering mustards, rhubarb, and lettuce. There's that pregnant feeling in the air; the mangalitsa pigs are pregnant and starting to lactate, the birds are circling their nests in the high trees. It feels exciting, new, rich with second chances like Spring is supposed to. There's wild garlic and three-cornered leeks, nettles, and fiddlehead ferns lining all the roads and footpaths - lush, edible forests growing in the hedgerows. 

I drove out to Porthcurno Beach today, the most Southwestern point of England, in a storm, and watched the waves crash into the jutting cliffs; three-cornered leeks were growing all over the cliffs, and beginning to blossom: the white flowers, growing at the top, were seasoned by the sea breeze: salty and garlicky. 

The blossoms, if you catch them before they flower, make an amazing pickle. Pick them and salt them overnight in a jar. You can eyeball this, or if you want to be more precise - add 2% salt to the weight of the leek blossoms. Then cover them with apple cider vinegar and let them sit at room temperature until they're as fermented and pickly as you want them to be. 

Soliman Bay

I woke up in Tulum, Mexico today jet lagged as sin, to the sounds of birds chirping above me, in a house with a few palm leaves strewn together into a roof. Somehow it keeps the rain out even though I can stick my fingers through it. I booked the ticket to Cancun two days ago, from a friend's apartment in Lyon, France. It was criminally cold there, and the Yucatan heat feels accosting but good. 

I like it here. This part of Tulum is still separate from the overwrought eco-chic resorts and white-washed bars and restaurants on the "strip." It's quiet and the bay is calm and Luis comes by to open coconuts, and we eat soft-scrambled eggs and tortillas together. Nearby there's a cafe called Chimico's where a couple guys fry the fish they catch every morning in a deep pot over a fire. It's that kind of sexy, carnal food that reminds you you're human, the sound of fish flesh hitting golden oil, coals crackling, water lapping onto the sand. 

In town, near the bus stop that takes you to Cancun, there's a taco stand that's casually serving the best food I've ever tasted: slow-cooked pork marinated in citrus, spices, and annatto seed. It's called cochinita pibil and at Taqueria Don Beto, it's served on fresh-pressed corn tortillas with bowls of pickled onions, hot salsa, and loose guacamole. They're 8 pesos each and genuinely transformative - go there. 

i heal my heart with mangoes

I took a plane to Thailand last night, my friend and I, on a whim. We have vague, almost non-existent travel plans for the next 3 weeks and it feels good. My heart is healing from a devastating breakup and it feels good to be on the other side of the world. I'm eating again and moving my feet.  

We flew through Beijing and I watched the sun rise over the city from the plane - just behind the wing, black fading into orange and pink. Everything they told me is true: the sun is different in Asia. It's larger, more orangey, like a thick free-range yolk. We stepped into the airport and the sun was shining strongly through the windows, making long dramatic shadows. It felt warm and new, an embrace. 

Beijing was cold and almost post-apocalyptic, too clean. A stark contrast to Thailand - intensely colorful, atrociously hot. We landed late and the streets were still alive after midnight. Fried fish and green papayas, corn milk, coconuts, bins of ripe fragrant fruit. We bought mango & sticky rice from a woman on the street and ate it in our air-conditioned hotel. Delirious and exhausted, my eyes sinking into my head, it's the best thing I ever remember eating. The ripe mango, floral, sweet and juicy (it's nam dok mai mango season); salty-sweet sticky rice soaked in coconut milk. 

The streets smell like durian, jasmine flowers, roasting bananas, sewage, and sweat. It makes the states feel so sanitary (in a bad way) - everything in plastic, boring, watered down. 

Eating Insects

Three days ago I was in Mexico City when a friend of mine bought a bag of dried grasshoppers (chapulines) from a street vendor. “They’re a good drinking snack,” he told me. And they were. We were drinking liters of cheap Mexican beer on a patio in Plaza Couyucan. I looked at their spiny little legs, dead and dry and curled up towards their bodies.

I ate them anyway, and they were good– exactly the kind of experience I wanted in Mexico City. I came there to eat. I’ve always wanted to come here. I wanted to see the colors of the buildings stacked together. I wanted to smell pork cooking and corn boiling. I fell in love with the Mercados, the cheese and meat and juice vendors tightly packed together in warehouse buildings. The streets are intoxicating to me. There are taco stands on literally every corner, sometimes several, each of them with five or six salsas stacked on a table with fresh limes cilantro and onions. Cumbia and mariachi music is constantly spilling into the streets. 

Everything is much less sanitary, and I mean that in a good way – it’s not wrapped in plastic and hidden behind a partition. The fruit is fresh and raw and hanging from strings on a food cart. The meat is cooked right in front of you. Someone pulls pork from the bone that’s been cooking in its own fat; a woman presses corn masa onto a griddle, and fills it with roasted nopal and beans and avocado. People stand together on street corners eating tacos with their hands. I stood on a dirty, unswept street and ate the best chorizo I’ve ever had – topped with sautéed onions and potatoes and an addictively creamy green salsa.

It's common to use every part of an animal – sweetbreads (the thymus gland), beef tongues and pig’s ears, chicken necks hanging in shop windows, pork face pozole. I watched a man make chicharones, slicing the fat with a sharp knife, pressing and frying it. 

And then there's the grasshoppers. What do they taste like? Mild, nutty, a little sour like sumac. Their legs, when braised, are a little strongly and fibrous. When fried they're crunchy like peanuts. Like most meat, they sop up the flavor of whatever they're cooked in.