On retreats where I have electricity I make a lovely beetroot dip. I also make beetroot hummus and take beetroot on journeys with other vegetables. It is wonderful with orange, fresh baby spinach leaves and crumbly feta, and it loves tamari sauce.
Beetroots work best when roasted. Peel them and cut them first in half across making sure you have even sizes. Using your hands, coat them with olive oil and a little tamari sauce, and roast them for at least half an hour at 180 degrees. Don’t overcook - they must still have bite.
Beetroot dip
This dip needs firm, uncooked beetroots. It has always been a winner whenever I have made it. It was inspired by a mezze in Skye Gyngell’s first cookery book, A Year in My Kitchen, which I treasure.
1½ - 2 kg beetroot, cooked and peeled (you can either roast or boil them, but don’t overcook them)
1 garlic clove, peeled
½ large red chilli, deseeded.
A small bunch of fresh coriander
½ bunch of mint, leaves only
1 tbsp roasted spice mix
3 tbsp good quality balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
125 ml thick Greek-style yoghurt
Sea salt
Place the beetroot in a blender with the garlic and chilli. Pulse, then add the rest of the ingredients. The dip should not be too homogenised, try to let it keep a grainy texture. Put into a bowl, cover with olive oil and serve at room temperature.
For the roasted spice mix:
2 tsp fennel seeds
2 tsp mustard seeds
1 star anise
1 small cinnamon stick
2 tsp coriander seeds
2 tsp cumin seeds
Put all the spices into a heavy-based pan over a low heat. Shake the pan to mix and toast them, and do not leave them unattended. When you begin to hear popping noises, turn the heat off and allow them to cool. Grind them into a powder in a pestle and mortar and store in a jar.
The slugs appeared on Tara’s steps: for the first time, I felt totally present on the retreat. They left sparkly traces on the stone, diamond slime that glinted for the few moments that the sun shone in the early morning.
The ferns that grow everywhere around the house were beginning to show; embryo-like sprouts of new life emerging in furry curls. Some of the fronds looked like centipedes, others like alien ram horns.
During one of the work periods, the sky darkened suddenly and bellowed with thunder. A heavy hailstorm descended upon the valley, the temperature dropped, and a white sheet of satin-like nuggets of ice fleetingly covered the ground once more.
I lit flames and fed fires and the Rayburn felt greedy as I poured coal into her pit. I asked her to give me more, and she did: she roared and the kettles danced and jumped, spitting water that sizzled as it hit the hotplate. The kitchen felt boisterous: the lamps hissed; the aubergines splattered in hot olive oil.
I decided to make a veggie roast, which was unusual for me. I had never been too keen on nut roasts but there was a big bag of mixed chopped nuts in the pantry and I thought I would give them another try. In January I had made little nut cakes with roasted vegetables and some wonderfully fat capers from Puglia that one of my friends had salted and stored in tiny jars and had brought as a gift to the kitchen. On that occasion I failed miserably to make them moist, and the Guestmaster told me I should have made gravy.
I toasted the nut mix in a tray in the oven, being careful not to burn it. It went from pale-white to honey-gold.
I caramelised a red onion, chopped a parsnip into small bits and threw in some tiny cubes of green pepper. I added fresh basil, parsley, salt and pepper and quinoa puffs instead of breadcrumbs, as a few of the retreatants didn’t eat wheat. I mixed all this with the nuts in a bowl and added olive oil and four eggs. It probably needed more, but that was all I had.
I let the mixture sit, so that the ingredients had time to soak each other up. With help from one of the kitchen assistants, I shaped the mix into balls which I placed in muffin cases. They went into the oven at 180 degrees until they turned golden brown.
I served them with slow-roasted garlic potatoes, onion gravy with tamari and a lovage sauce. Perhaps the sheep across the field would bow to us in gratitude if they knew. Who needs lamb when you can have such a moreish roast. The offering I left on the steps was devoured overnight.
Tantra awakens my senses, it makes my heart beat fast. At five thirty the following morning, dawn was breaking. The green of the sheep’s pasture had a pistachio tone: bright, like a raw nut. The patches of peat and bracken where the sheep would breakfast were glowing with the first sunrays. The lambs were still asleep, curled up in pairs. The rain had finally ceased and everything was soggy. The prayer flags around the trees dripped heavy drops.
That night we did another puja, this time for Chenrezig, the Bodhisattva of compassion. The room was transformed into a ceremonial circle, and we offered gifts in beautiful crystal glasses and bowls. The Chan Hall glowed. We chanted the offering mantra (for gifts), which included a mudra (a movement of the hands). We offered gifts that correspond to the welcome attention a host in ancient India would give to a guest. There were eight offerings: water for drinking; water for washing dust off the feet (which was collected from the stream); flowers; incense; light; perfume; music and food. We made the perfume with fragrant almond oil mixed with saffron. As food, we offered rice, pulses and spices, and music was offered in the form of a Tibetan conch shell. We finished late and I slept with a clear heart. I had reconnected, through ritual, with the vastness and simplicity of being.
Before I started cooking at the Maenllwyd, I had forgotten who I was. In the turmoil of life, of growing up, of leaving, in the pain of heartbreak and separation, of parenthood, of busy life and money worries, the essence of me had disappeared somewhere deep. I had gone into hiding, too vulnerable perhaps, too frightened. It felt like a part of me had wilted. I was living in exile within myself. I found cooking a revelation. The more I got lost in the process of cooking, the more at home I felt. Memories were re-awakened by smells and flavours. I realised that my soul had been nurtured through food, in kitchens, with the women of the family, on church retreats, at long tables under shady vines, with friends, in different parts of the world, with my children.
The power of that simple, rustic kitchen threw me back into the flow of Flo. It offered me no time to dwell or indulge, just this sensuous state of knowing, of trusting a connection with something deep within myself. It was a call of the wild, where the inner goddess of creation arose to join the other participants: the cooker, the Rayburn, the kettles. I learned to dance, with reverence, with the fruits of the earth, with fire, water, wood and stone.
On the mountain I meet with spirits. Their ancestral presence unravels as I pour myself into the duties of the day. They come by night in the hoot of an owl, in the breeze entering my sleeping space through the half-open window in the Buddha room.
They come because I invoke them with silence and ritual. They descend and erupt from within me and around me, from the bog of my memories, the infinite accumulation of unspoken treasure. They float from the valleys, descend from the hills, and I am open to them. It is like opening a door to endless possibilities.
As I pour some oil into a pan, still unsure of what the soup is going to be, something rises from within, a knowledge that transcends rational knowing, that what to do next is in me all the time, yet it flows only when I am silent and connected with what I am doing. It flows as my hand takes a pinch of salt from the bowl and sprinkles it into the pot, before I add the chopped onions.
Cooking on retreats in the Maenllwyd is where I come to connect with myself, and with the larger “self” of the universe. I come to the home of the non-linguistic me, to connect with something that is unspoken, guttural, a residue of learning and yearning, the whispered secrets of family language, ancestral storybooks never written, an archaic wisdom that goes beyond purely cognitive knowing. A form of knowing takes o
ver, one which is instinctual, powerful, which works best if I just let it flow, without dwelling on it or attempting to understand it. We are a store room of stories untold, of encyclopaedias of facts that are not empirically shaped. And it all unravels while I am stacking pots, arranging bowls, observing that the measuring jug has got a crack yet it does its job. Despite no longer having the riddling wheel standing against the window, as part of my kitchen shrine, I get the strong sense that the wheel of the teaching always turns, it fuses what we learn and what we have known all along. What is it that makes us forget? Meditation is a practice of remembering what we are and what we have lost or forgotten along the way.
In the Zen kitchen, scales and measurements are secondary. Instinct and connectedness are the key ingredients, together with heart. This knowing does not come from a book, but if we are still, silent, meditative and eager to create, something clicks, unstitches into a more powerful sense that leaves the books standing on the shelf. Zen cooking is about experiencing each moment, being aware of our presence but also the presence of everything else we are working with, who we are cooking for.
Art and beauty are everywhere and there is nothing more perfect than nature. To understand beauty you must understand what it means to be alive: fleeting, complex and wonderful. Alive and aware, in love and communion with everything.
Chapter Seventeen
Butterfly
A September morning, and I was cooking for another retreat at Bala Brook. A blue tit chirped from the rhododendrons, the kettle whistled, the Aga was hot. I opened the tins of tea. The next break in the meditation schedule would be a short one so I decided to make only three types. I was in the mood for Oolong, because I had learned recently that it meant “black dragon tea”. I picked Darjeeling for its musky taste and caramel tint. I also made Rosehip with two tea bags and at the last minute I dropped a few Rain Flower green tea strands into the last pot. I watched as they swelled in the hot steamy water.
With a busy day ahead, I started on a few preparations. The morning’s chanting resonated in me as I stirred the soup stock, chopped some mint, and sliced warm bread. The chanting (of an ancient Buddhist text, the Heart Sutra) soothed ancient sorrows from my heart, from my parents’ hearts, from the heart of all humanity.
Here I was again: the Cook at Bala Brook. The garden was overgrown and the bounty of late summer lay at my feet: fruit-laden trees; herb borders attracting bees and bugs; marigold and borage flowers drying on the windowsill waiting to sit atop the icing of the afternoon cup cakes.
I found solace in the solitude of the meditative kitchen. I felt like a prisoner whose blindfold was being carefully removed after years of captivity. My eyes were slowly readjusting to the light, beginning the process of re-focussing in order to see again. After all that time of darkness and blurriness, things began to appear. As I opened up to the world, so the whole world opened up to me.
I was beginning to see again with the same eyes I had when I was a little girl: that way of seeing with wonder. The colours around me intensified, everything moved me. The wasps losing their nest on the landing window, a pair of dragonflies mating: I observed them for a long time, how beautiful and furry, how in “it” they were. The Japanese berry tree behind the house changed colour by the hour; the knotted oak swished in the gentle breeze. The stream kept up its constant chanting: water flowed, the kitchen flowed, time became me and I became time.
Once again, I had been given a question to work with: “What is this?”
What is this thing that came to Bala Brook?
What is this boulder trying to flex into diamond?
Why is this body so disconnected from this person?
Why can’t I ever feel that obvious perfection of the simple fact that I am alive, that I am made of the same material as everything else in the universe, that I am pure stardust, that I am more alive than Venus?
As I went to light a candle in the early morning I found a dead butterfly on the windowsill. Its legs were crossed over its chest, solemnly compliant to the death that had befallen it.
As I picked it up, the powdery vestige from its wings tinted my fingers with orange fairy dust. How fleeting is the life of the butterfly. It has no time to dwell, no concern. A butterfly is not aware, a butterfly just is. Life and death do not differ from egg, larvae, pupa. It is all one thing and yet, when I look at how perfect it is, I become lost in the moment, becoming part of the grace of its short, ephemeral lifespan, stirred by the beauty in its unknowing of it.
Once the moment had passed, I had a sense of my own splendour and fragility, as the butterfly lay in the palm of my hand. I decided to go out into the garden to collect leaves and conkers: I would make the butterfly the centre of an offering to the Sri Lankan shrine in the entrance hall. In the meantime, I placed the butterfly in the joined hands of the White Tara statue in the kitchen.
I went out into the sun, chanting Tara’s mantra to myself, those special words that have been chanted by generations of devotees: Om tāre tuttāre ture svāhā. My heart expanded with gratitude to the butterfly. I walked around the garden, in awe of everything that is alive. I could hear the stream but I could also hear my heart beating. I caressed the rocks, picked some red leaves and shook the borage plant so that some of its bluest flowers would drop into my hands. I collected weed seeds. My feet were bare, my limbs loose. I found myself walking in time to the Sanskrit mantra. With my small basket of gifts for the butterfly, I lingered on the bench by the brook’s edge. I knew that lunch needed to be served soon, but also that this was the right moment to do exactly what I was doing.
Chapter Eighteen
Retreat Nine: Transformation
Like a whirlwind I packed the car and left York with my foot pressed down on the accelerator, looking forward to the retreat. As I drew closer to the Maenllwyd, I noticed that I was anticipating what I often dread: I carried a strong desire to dive into the process. The journey was like any other past journey: the car packed with ingredients, each nook and cranny filled with bunches of herbs, boxes of tea and jars of crunchy peanut butter. What had changed? Perhaps it was me who was different? I was still processing the note to myself that I had written only a month before when everything seemed doomed: “Be your heart.”
As I opened the first gate, in the distance I saw smoke coming out of the Chan Hall’s chimney and a few cars parked in the yard. I stood and soaked it up, not just as a mere bystander.
Four or five people were already there. All men; I was in the company of wolves. There had been some further changes in the house since John’s death: a new pine dresser cut in half, as the ceilings are low. The shelves were perfect for displaying teapots and jugs.
I was here to unravel a new story, to re-tell my tale. I asked the teacher if I could once again work with the first question I had ever worked with on retreat: “Tell me who you are.”
The kitchen flowed from the moment I stepped into it, to the rhythm of my heart. People flocked to the kitchen to offer help and even before the retreat started, everything was in place: flowers in vases, tables laid and ready for breakfast. A big stainless steel pot full of fruit compote boiled away on the stove. A retreatant who knew about my connection to the slugs came and told me that he felt sad that it was winter and that they might not appear. In my heart I knew that they would, but I kept this to myself. I had brought a bunch of hyacinths; one of its tiny fragrant flowers would draw them out.
As we sat by the fire with a cup of tea, each person shared their story of why they had come. People felt a little apprehensive: the gate was closed, and we were in. Each told a little story of why they were here; it was our last chance to chat for a while. There were some familiar faces, others new. The next day, each person would begin their own solitary process, engaging with their koan, the meals and each other. The plate of biscuits suddenly contained only crumbs.
Meals at the Maenllwyd are traditionally served by the teacher, but Eddy, who was leading the retreat, had asked me to do it instead
. He wanted me to be in charge of the food. At first I was taken aback, honoured to be asked but uncomfortable with the break in tradition. I realised that I did not want to miss out on my daily visits to Tara, so I asked Peter if he would serve.
Eddy had also asked me to explain the washing up ritual. I had been waiting for this opportunity for a long time: the ceremony of washing up at the tables, passing hot water from person to person, had captivated me from the first meal I had eaten at the Maenllwyd. Each person pours hot water into their bowl and mug, and rinses any remaining bits of food or drink into a large central bowl. There is so much to be learned in the simplicity of the task: a ceremony of mindfulness and gratitude. It is a silent and humble process. After each meal the dirty water from the central bowls, containing the remnants of the food, is offered to the hungry ghosts. In Tibetan Buddhism, hungry ghosts are spirits who roam their realm in terrible suffering. They experience hunger and thirst and live in constant fear. They have very narrow throats and huge stomachs and they can only be fed water with small crumbs of food. In some Japanese monasteries, only the rice water is offered to the hungry ghosts, as anything larger could become wedged in their throats. Some people fear hungry ghosts; I can only feel compassion and sadness for them.
I shared this story with the group, and suggested that those who found the idea of hungry ghosts too far-fetched should think about the constant hunger, thirst and fear experienced by millions of people in our earthly realm.
The next morning, I started making the bread straight after breakfast, leaving the dough to prove whilst I went to Eddy’s first talk. He shared a story I really liked: There was a Zen master named Mazu who used to sit in meditation all day long. One day his teacher Nanyue approached him and asked, “Great monk, what do you intend by doing meditation?” He meant to check up on his real motivations, since Mazu seemed the perfect Zen student - too perfect, in fact. Mazu replied, “I am intending to be a Buddha.”
Tales From a Zen Kitchen Page 15