Duende Graces Edible Art

Even for average Joes like us there can be duende in workaday routines like eating.

8 China Buffet re-opened yesterday after a fire that put it out of commission for two months. Its closing came on the heels of another Chinese restaurant in the north side of Indianapolis shutting down without notice on Tet, the day of the Chinese New Year, this year. Both restaurants fed the Chinese and other Asian residents of the city who met there on the weekends, whole families lunching together in Asia-style, noisy, chaotic fun.

I was delayed at home talking to my sister in KC. By the time I arrived at the restaurant a queue of people was already shuffling its collective feet at the door waiting to get in. I drove back home and fixed myself lunch.

Food ingredients are, despite recent price increases in basics like rice, eggs, and milk, still cheap compared to other parts of the world. I had a container of chicken breast I had salvaged from soup I had made the other day. I had cooked the breasts with just some ginger. I split them with my fingers into long, thin pieces and threw in leftover onion-garlic-and-chili dip sauce. Fresh lime juice came next. I am still enamored of lime juice since I discovered a Cuban mojo sauce at Trader Joe earlier this summer. I think lime is more fragrant than lemon, or maybe my nose has just gotten inured to lemon. A few grindings of black pepper, salt to taste, a couple dashes of ground dried cilantro seeds, and a handful of sliced, fresh scallions (I love onions) and the chicken slivers began to come to life.

Adding the vinegar and lime juice, I only added half the amount of full-cholesterol mayonnaise to give the chicken salad a creamy, moist finish. Heaped on toasted whole-wheat American bread with red-leaf lettuce, a bowl of mung bean soup, a heap of seedless, green grapes and I had lunch fit for a king, or, in my case, an average Joe. The fresh scallions added crunch to the salad. They are not as hot on the tongue nor linger in the breath as people expect them to do. Fresh vegetables and herbs always wake up canned or frozen vegetables.

For a treat, I added half a hopia or Chinese sweet black-bean cake. How's that for homestyle fusion food? One comes to a point in life, I think, when we can cook delightful meals without consulting a recipe book or searching the Internet. We develop a sense of what goes together and how to bring out what characteristics in the ingredients to create the effect we want in what we put into our mouths. 

Eating is more than supplying nutrition to our body that it can repair, maintain and grow itself. Eating is one of life's graces. It is as much art as non-edible paintings or literature or photographs. We can live much of our lives, with practice, even all of it, with duende!