500 g potatoes, peeled and cubed
50 g butter or the equivalent of extra virgin olive oil
Salt and ground black pepper
Place the vegetables in a large pan and cover with cold, salted water. Bring to the boil over a high heat, cover, reduce the heat and simmer for about 20 minutes, or until vegetables are tender.
Set the oven to 190°C.
Drain the vegetables. Return them to the pan, add the butter and let it melt into the vegetables, as you mash with a hand masher. You can leave some lumps, it adds texture and also intensifies the flavour. Season well.
Place the cooked lentils in an ovenproof dish, like a lasagne dish, and top them with the mash.
Cook in the middle of the oven for 20 minutes. Serve immediately.
It worked really well. I had used the leftover miso in the stock; this combined well with the spices, and the topping of mashed roots contrasted with the nutty lentils in quite a Zen way, as earth met sweetness.
People were collecting leaves and branches from their walks, and making arrangements around the house. It was if the landscape was inviting us to bring the outside in, and the house itself began to feel autumnal.
Peter began to notice the things that I have noticed over the years: the screeching noises; the kind spirits near the troll-like sycamore trees, between the house and the compost heap. Above all, he began to experience the magic of the kitchen, the alchemy of the process. Just as the vegetables and grains were transformed into food, so cooking had a profound transformational effect on the mind of the cook. The kitchen calmed our minds, just as a session on the meditation cushion allows things to arise, allows opposites to drop and gives space for the heart to take over.
On the last full day I suggested to Peter that we prepare an offering to Tara, as a celebration of the week we had had. I wanted to represent somehow the richness of the gifts we had received: the landscape, the kitchen, John’s teachings, Fi’s support and glowing presence.
I took an afternoon stroll up the hill. It was warm and sunny and I carried a basket with me. I was not sure what I was doing, but I collected things as I went up: pine cones, acorns, trippy mushrooms, different coloured leaves, conkers, red maple leaves, a fern that had already turned brown, berries, mossy bits of wood, tiny flowers still growing in the grass.
In the evening, after clearing up the kitchen, we were exhausted. We were beginning to doubt that we had enough energy left to make this offering, but we knew we had to continue.
We had decided to make a mandala. Mandalas are a representation of the universe, they depict both the microcosm (in our case, our work in the kitchen) and the macrocosm (the world around us). We asked John for advice on how to design one and he mentioned one traditional Tibetan form: the five circles. These circles are called Excellencies and they represent the teacher, the message, the audience, the time and the location. This made sense to me, as I had been making natural circles on Tara’s steps for years, using flowers, things I found on my walks, and other kitchen produce.
Mandalas also demonstrate impermanence. Tibetan monks spend days creating mandalas from sand, only to sweep them away as soon as they are finished. John’s visible vulnerability and the rapid deterioration in his health made the mandala particularly poignant: all was changing. Anxiety about the future hung over us.
We worked on the mandala, so tired we were hardly able to murmur a word. We made little piles of the earth’s fruits: the red hawthorn berries; the tiny Indian cucumbers; handfuls of red lentils; leaves from all the trees around us; long red chillies. Tiny mushrooms and orchids were left in the kitchen, surplus to requirements. Acorns with missing tops, green and brown ferns, cinnamon sticks: all were to take their place. We had not used the karela, the bitter gourd from the Asian supermarket, so it too became part of the offering.
We realised that is was going to take us hours and it was too late to stop. We refrained from saying anything, but I knew that we both regretted having started it. Our backs and feet and legs ached. Peter took a break, stretched his back and did some exercises on the floor. The creation of the mandala felt like a pilgrimage, charged with a solemn heart and physical pain and soreness. By the time it was finished, we knew why hadn’t stopped and why we had to do it. It was beautiful, like life dancing through the richness of nature.
The following morning was the last of the retreat. After breakfast we all gathered to offer the mandala to Tara. John sat on the bench leading the chants whilst Peter and I carried the offering towards the statue. We offered the tray with humility, stinging backs and tears in our eyes. We chanted the Tara mantra until all our voices faded; the only sound remaining was birdsong. Om tāre tuttāre ture svāhā.
The retreat ended, and we left behind the offering to Tara just as it was. It was a symbol of our sweat and tears, of what we had learned, all left to be eaten by wildlife, to be shifted by the wind, to be soaked by rain.
Chapter Nine
Porridge
I have never been a big fan of stodgy food. Growing up in a warm climate made me accustomed to light, Mediterranean-style meals: continental breakfast, a big lunch, afternoon tea and then late night supper. They were high protein, low carbohydrate meals, full of fruit and vegetables.
It amazed me how much I changed after just two winters in Britain. My body needed more calories, more fuel. Butter became alluring. Rich food, which had never appealed to me, gradually became a necessity. I developed a sweet tooth, falling in love with chocolate. On more than one occasion I even succumbed to crumpets, those bizarre gooey buns that cannot be chewed unless they are dripping with fat.
Still, I could never eat porridge. I even found it difficult to look at. I remember my husband’s stories of when he used be a professional fisherman on the Isle of Wight. Porridge played a major role in his fishing tales: he claimed that it gave him the sustenance to endure the arduous days of dredging for oysters. He told me how he used to soak cracked oats with salt and coconut overnight and eat two big bowls of porridge before setting off in Bee, his boat, before dawn. He said that porridge kept him full for longer than any other breakfast. For him, it is the perfect breakfast, full of goodness and comfort. For me, it used to be a meal I would only eat as a last resort, an “eat to survive if there is no other choice” type of food.
I did not know this when I first went there, but porridge is a key part of the Maenllwyd breakfast tradition. The cook brings a big pot into the dining area and after grace the teacher fills each retreatant’s bowl using a big, bronze ladle. On the first morning of my first retreat, as I sat silently not knowing what to expect, a bowl of hot porridge appeared in front of me. There was no escape. The first bite was unbearable. I didn’t know what to do. I felt it would have been rude not to eat it. I was eager to test myself but I felt like crying. With great relief, I spotted a pretty dish full of stewed fruit: lightly spiced apricots, pears and prunes. I added some to my bowl. The second bite was still difficult, so I added a spoonful of honey. The third bite made me fear that I could not face a fourth. There was a little dish containing a brown grainy powder, which I sprinkled on what was left of my nightmare. It was gomasio, ground toasted sesame seeds with toasted sea salt. This made the fourth bite much better: nutty, salty. I remember the porridge ripping out whatever warmth I felt inside; it sank like a rock in my stomach. This was no comfort food for me. I didn’t even manage to finish the porridge. From then on I opted out, gripping my bowl firmly to myself as the server approached.
When I first became a Tenzo I resented making porridge and I never ate it. I felt like Babette, making a foreign gruel for the people she cared for, nourishing them but not herself. Her nourishment came from the care she put into making it for them. I loved cooking everything else but found serving porridge very uninspiring.
Then, one winter’s day at the Maenllwyd, I was rushing to get breakfast ready. I was alone in the house, dawn was breaking and a twinkle of golden light was filtering through the front window, into the dim
kitchen. If I strained my ears, I could hear the chanting from the Chan Hall across the yard. I had retrieved the cold milk from the stream, and I was decanting it into earthen jugs, getting everything ready for breakfast. I suddenly realised that I had forgotten to check the porridge.
As I stirred it vigorously I looked closely at it, trying to connect with the pot and with what was inside it. The oats had swelled and merged into one. Surely this food was as beautiful as any other food I cooked, but I still found it bleak, dull, almost sad. It puzzled me. This was good, honest food - why couldn’t I like it?
Then a vivid image came to me. It was a picture of a graveyard covered in snow. I was standing on a wood block, with a wooden spoon, unlocking my memories, stirring something other than porridge. The image of the graveyard reminded me of a story I had once read. It was the opening chapter of my great-grandfather James’s biography, written by my grandpa Alec, which I had read as a young teenager. It starts with a sentence describing an intensely cold afternoon in the cemetery at Kilbirnie, Scotland, in 1876. A small group of people gather around an open grave, listening to a Presbyterian priest give a sermon, paying respects to the deceased. The dead woman is a young mother called Agnes. Everyone is thinking about her distraught widower, John, and the three small children left in his care. The confused and bereft John, still numb from the blow of losing his wife, stays behind by the grave after everyone leaves, not noticing the snow falling around him. He ignores his friends’ pleas to go home and only returns very late at night to his miner’s cottage, where he falls ill with pneumonia and dies four days later.
So, my great-grandfather James Clifford lost both his parents at the age of four. His sister Agnes was six, the little one, John, one. Granny Knox, although frail and old, took the three orphans on and looked after them until she died. They were extremely poor. The book tells how she made their clothes out of worn-out adult garments, so raggedy that they could not even attend church sometimes. The children spent most of the year barefoot. Their nutrition was basic and humble: they ate only porridge and potatoes.
James was an outstanding, well-behaved student who excelled at school. When he was seven, his teacher, the severe Mr. Fulton, suggested that he might be able to get a university scholarship. Yet his poverty meant that he had to start work in the coalmine at the age of twelve. I was twelve myself when I first read the story, and I remember my horror when I read that at my age he worked twelve to fourteen hours a day and only saw daylight on Sundays. Even today, it feels grim to think of this remarkable man’s childhood. How many times had I read that first chapter, which told how he worked hard at the mine so that he could complete school at night, how he became a missionary and ended up in Argentina, the land of plenty, where the sun shines every day and where nobody eats porridge.
Suddenly my breakfast-making reveries revealed why I felt the way I did towards porridge: my sadness at eating it, the association of eating porridge with a child’s devastating loss and grief, with poverty, with cold feet. In stirring that porridge I also acknowledged the magic of the kitchen. I was coming into relationship with my ancestral stories, which are so much a part of who I am today. If I could understand the emotions still alive in a story of my past, projected into a bowl of food, how many more stories were there to unlock?
How many more ghosts of my past were waiting to come out and reveal their sorrows?
Nowadays I cook porridge lovingly on retreats, always with a dedication to my Scottish ancestors. Porridge was what gave them strength and made them survivors. I make it with equal parts of organic jumbo oats and porridge oats, which I lightly toast and leave to soak overnight in a 1-2 ratio of oats to water. Often I drop a cinnamon stick into the porridge, which gives it a wonderful fragrance once it starts to heat up.
I cook it in the morning for about an hour, adding a good pinch of salt, stirring it every time I pass the pot whilst I am getting breakfast ready: lining up bowls of stewed fruit; separating the vegetables for the morning’s work period; going back and forth to the stream to pick up the cold milk and Tara’s tray; slicing bread.
It took me a while to learn how to get the right consistency. I almost beat it to make it creamier, as this helps the oats to release their starch. Even today, I have to be in the mood for eating it, and it has to have a salty element in it, a bit of runny honey, and something else to add texture.
That breakfast, my first ever at the Maenllwyd, was my first encounter with gomasio: little wooden bowls full of a brown textured powder that smelled nutty. I don’t recommend it for every meal as sesame has a strong taste and I prefer good quality sea salt for seasoning dishes, but gomasio awakens curiosity and it is often what makes people break the silence on retreat, to ask me what it is. So I must include it amongst my recipes.
It originates from the macrobiotic tradition, the Japanese philosophy on whose principles I often draw in my cooking practice. Macrobiotics esteems sesame seeds as a virtuous ingredient. When mixed with salt and toasted, the seeds acquire a natural healing quality. Sesame is believed to hold the key to a healthy digestion and helps reduce sodium levels (although it contains salt, the difference is in toasting it). It is rich in minerals and a good source of both protein and fibre.
You can make gomasio at home. Don’t make too much, as the seeds tend to go rancid after a while. Small portions will last a long time, as you only need a little. All you have to do is grind together dry-roasted sesame seeds with roasted sea salt.
For the grinding, ideally you should use a suribachi, a Japanese mortar that is used with a pestle called a surikogi. This mortar has serrated edges, which makes the grinding easier. However, this is by no means essential and you can use an ordinary pestle and mortar or an electric grinder.
Gomasio
¼ cup raw, unhulled sesame seeds (I prefer brown or yellow) 1 tsp table salt
Place seeds in a clean, dry, frying pan and toast on low heat, stirring often, until golden or until they are just starting to pop. Try to take them off the heat before the popping takes place. Use the lowest setting on your hob. It often takes 20 minutes; the potency of the taste is in the toasting. It will also make them easier to grind later.
Place the toasted sesame seeds in a bowl and allow to cool.
Roast the salt in the same pan, again on the lowest setting on your hob, for about 10 minutes, until it shines.
Mix the seeds with the salt in the mortar, and grind. Be careful not to grind it into a powder, as the texture of the seeds is important.
The first thing I do after I unpack the car is make fruit compote. I make enough so that it lasts for two or three breakfasts. As with all my cooking on retreat, the quantity and variety of the fruit changes. In summer months I add black plums. In the autumn and winter, when people tend to eat less fresh fruit, I use apples and pears. I slice bananas, and experiment. This is a basic recipe, but you can make it your own, according to season.
Dried fruit compote
200 g unsulphured apricots
200 g pitted prunes
100 g raisins or sultanas
200 ml freshly squeezed orange juice
2 tbsp honey
1 cinnamon stick
2 cloves
2 cardamom pods
Place all the ingredients in a heavy-based pan and add enough cold water to cover all the fruit. Leave to soak for a couple of hours. Add another half litre of cold water and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 30-40 minutes, or until the fruit has softened and the liquid is syrupy and thick. Allow it to cool down and serve at room temperature.
Chapter Ten
Retreat Five: Cooking in a New Kitchen
It was time to cook yet another autumn retreat, but this time there was a difference. The Maenllwyd had been modernised over the summer, and I knew that the kitchen would be different.
I came a day early to get the place into a nice flow. I found a new Rayburn and a new range cooker, along with new shelves and work surfaces, and freshly painted white wal
ls. The boxes of organic vegetables slotted perfectly onto the new shelves. I had a bunch of ornamental, cabbage-like flowers for the altar and freesias for the kitchen window and for the slugs. John admired the freesias so I placed a long stem on the altar in the refectory so that he could smell their scent when he blew out the candles after each meal.
Early morning: the kitchen sizzled and the sleepy new Rayburn toasted a tray of sesame seeds, slowly, at a snooze pace. The first stages of what was to become a bitey, courgette soup sweated away on top of the new range cooker, which now stood by the window where the counter space used to be. It was a misty start to a beautiful autumn day; the valley was clouded over by what looked like a bowl of different coloured ice-creams, that creamy pastel subtlety of pistachio, raspberry, peach, hazelnut. The sunlight filtered through the mist, showing off the landscape’s deliciousness.
This was to be a Hua-Tou retreat. A Hua-Tou is a “critical phrase”, an open-ended question designed to concentrate all thoughts upon a single point. A Hua-Tou makes you look profoundly into the nature of simply being. It is not a question that requires an answer. One has to allow it to repeat over and over, locking it into the mind so that it arises continuously, whatever activity one is engaged in, like brushing your teeth or peeling an onion. The idea is to allow the Hua-Tou to take over one’s whole consciousness, even when you are asleep.
I began working on mine as soon as the retreat started. It was “What is it?” or “What is this?” What is it? I started to use it, to bring practice into the focus of whatever it was that I was doing.
There is a lovage plant in the kitchen garden. Although it was close to packing up for winter, I was delighted to find some new tender leaves for the first night stew. The leaves become tough and bitter by late summer, but on the last retreat I had given it a good pruning, to encourage new growth. I tied the branches with string and dried them over the Rayburn and stored the dried leaves in jars for the winter months.
Tales From a Zen Kitchen Page 8