by Sasha Martin
“Don’t give it a second thought! I loved it. Anyway, you have to prioritize family. It can’t always be go, go, go.” He pauses. “You know, I was supposed to visit you and Michael three weeks before he died. I should have been there when he was in the hospital. I didn’t know it was going to be the end. Stupid.”
He shakes his head, as though willing the image away. “Work never matters as much as family. I learned that the hard way.”
“You could have never known. None of us knew,” I said. “I’ve spent most of my adult life trying not to run away from the past. We’ve all coped the best we could in a no-win situation.”
“But look at you now! You’ve got a great kid and husband …”
“But you want to hear the ugly truth?” I lower my voice. “Sometimes I wonder if I deserve them. Sometimes it doesn’t feel real—like I could blink and it could all just disappear.”
Neither of us speaks.
Finally, Tim clears his throat. “We can’t let the past get in the way so much.” He suggests we plan our next visit right then.
As we talk, we realize that we’ve never given Mom a surprise party, that popular ritual that’s so common in big, warm families who celebrate with supermarket cake, hot dogs, and not enough salad. Her birthday is coming up in February, six months away.
We decide to throw Mom a surprise party at Tim’s home in Florida. He will send her tickets for a Christmas present, inviting her to visit him that February for her birthday. As far as she knows, she’s just coming to see Tim for a quiet, sun-drenched weekend.
Masala Chai
With coffee shops on every corner, I sometimes forget how easy it is to make my own spiced tea. Although I greatly dislike the cloying sweetness of premixes, this recipe can be adjusted to personal tastes. In India, there are regional variations, but one thing is certain: “Chai” means “tea,” making the expression “chai tea” redundant. “Masala Chai,” which means “spiced tea,” is the proper nomenclature. I took Mark Bittman’s advice in The Best Recipes in the World and kept this spice blend simple (this way the drink stays in regular rotation); for a change of pace, try adding nutmeg, clove, or star anise to the pot.
6 cups prepared black tea, tea leaves removed
Spice blend:
10 cardamom pods, lightly cracked
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
10 black peppercorns
1 or 2 cinnamon sticks
1 large knuckle unpeeled fresh ginger, sliced in 3 or 4 coins
Finishing touches:
Up to ¼ cup sugar
Up to 1 cup milk
Tumble the prepared black tea and spices into a medium pot. Bring to a bubble, cover, and cook 10 to 15 minutes, or to desired strength. Remove from heat. Stream in some sugar and milk (my preference is a touch of sugar and all the milk). Strain. The spices have done their work—lay them to rest in the garden. Serve steaming hot in the winter or ice cold in the summer.
Makes a good 1½ quarts
In the months leading up to the trip, I spend days mulling what kind of gift to give Mom. One day I dig up an old wooden picture-frame box and decide to fill it with strips of paper—one for every year of her life—each listing a different reason why I love her—except that there’d have to be dozens upon dozens. It’s a lot of love notes to think of on my own.
I decide that dividing the project up by four would be a lot easier. With Connor, Tim, and Grace, we’d each have just 17 and a half reasons to contribute.
Tim loves the idea and asks when “it’s due.” Connor, my brother of few words, asks how long the notes have to be, and says he’ll enlist his kids’ help. Grace has a harder time. Raised without a mother at her side in a house full of boys, she still feels uneasy about her relationship with Mom. But after a sincere heart-to-heart, she takes the most artistic approach of all, using photos and doodles to enhance her sentiments. We decide to put a picture of the four of us in the frame to commemorate the celebration.
“Mom! You’ll never believe this.” I squeal into the phone a few months later. I’ve finished all the I, J, and K countries—and now we’re well into the L’s. “I just got off the phone with Rick Steves, host of his own show on NPR. He interviewed me about my stove top travel concept—which he loved. They’re going to air our conversation all over the country in January!”
Mom oohs and aahs, and I smile, grateful for the distraction. We’re only a couple of months from her surprise party; it’s getting harder to keep my mouth shut.
“He got really excited about the Guinness Chocolate Cake With Baileys Buttercream.”
The cake had gone viral that summer. It isn’t fussy, or prim. But the Irish stout and the Baileys give it a certain swagger, helped by the striking contrast between the dark chocolate crumb and pure white frosting. There’s festivity to each bite, and although many might have reserved the cake for Saint Patrick’s Day, I’d made it for Keith’s birthday. Once our plates were clean, we almost felt like we’d had a swashbuckling time on the Emerald Isle.
“Sounds like the perfect celebration,” Mom says.
“Who doesn’t love a good party?” I ask, bursting to share our secret. Perhaps in anticipation of her surprise, I include Global Table desserts at all our family celebrations over the next months. When Keith’s son Ryan starts his own budding family, we celebrate the new baby boy with Latvian “birthday cake,” bread studded with plump raisins, bitter orange peel, and delicate saffron threads.
Dark Chocolate Guinness Cake With Baileys Buttercream
Jet-black, ultra-moist cake topped with pure white frosting makes this Irish confection resemble a real pint of Guinness. Although beer and cake might sound like a bad night at a frat party, the Guinness actually works to deepen the chocolate flavor, much like espresso—even as the alcohol cooks off. It’s a very easy batter, with no egg separating or careful folding. Sometimes an easy cake is just the thing.
For the cake:
12 tablespoons (1½ sticks) butter, plus more for cake pans
1 cup Guinness Extra Stout
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
¾ cup unsweetened cocoa
1½ cups sugar
1¾ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 large eggs
For the buttercream:
¾ pound (3 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 pound powdered sugar, sifted
2 to 4 tablespoons Baileys Irish Cream
For the cake:
Preheat the oven to 350°F. In a small saucepan, heat the butter until just melted, then whisk together with Guinness, vanilla extract, and cocoa. While the Guinness mixture is cooling, grease and line the bottoms of two 8-inch cake pans with rounds of parchment paper. Whisk together the sugar, flour, and baking soda in a large bowl. Pour the Guinness mixture onto the dry ingredients, and then whisk in the 2 eggs. When the batter is shiny and smooth, pour it into the two prepared cake pans. Lick the whisk when no one is looking. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. Cool completely.
For the buttercream:
In a stand mixer, whip the softened butter until fluffy. Add the powdered sugar on low speed, then increase to medium-high, and drizzle in just enough Baileys to get the buttercream loose and fluffy. The key to making whiter frosting is to whip it 5 to 10 minutes, scraping occasionally.
To assemble the cake:
Run a knife around the edge of the cake pan to loosen and turn out cakes. Level the layers with a serrated knife, if needed. Spread about a third of the buttercream on the bottom cake layer. Top with the second layer. Wiggle them around until they line up just right.
Thinly spread another third of the frosting mixture over the top and sides of the cake to make a crumb coat. This will seal in the crumbs so chocolate flecks don’t ruin the white frosting. Refrigerate to set—about 30 minutes or overnight if desired.
Once the crumb coat is firm to the touch, add the final third of the frosting to the cake—top first,
then sides. Spread it around evenly. Slice and serve with an extra cold pint of Guinness.
Enough for 8 to 10
When the NPR interview airs, thousands of visitors flock to the website, crashing my server many times over. Some read to remember travels past; others come to dream about trips they’ll never take.
Mom calls to check in.
“It’s incredible,” I say, “People from everywhere are finding the site.”
“Oh, yeah?” Mom replies dryly.
“Aren’t you the least bit excited? Where’s the enthusiasm you had the other day?”
“I just don’t want you to get hung up on all that … attention.”
“It has nothing to do with that, Mom. People from tiny countries finding the site—Nauru, Tuvalu, the Ivory Coast—are just happy to have their recipes brought to light. And there’s more!” I exclaim. “Right here in Tulsa, a woman who runs a program where kids garden and cook their harvests has asked me to speak.”
Josie’s Global Gardens classroom is literally a garden: 2-by-6s hammered together for raised beds, with an oven fashioned from straw and mud that cranks out perfect, brown-bottomed pizzas. I come prepared to teach the children about food in Japan. But the dozen eighth graders guide me under the wind-battered pergola and instruct me to take off my shoes because, as they proudly share, Japanese people don’t wear shoes in the house.
“And which direction should our guest sit?” Josie prompts them from behind a sweep of short, blond hair.
“Facing the entrance,” a bright-eyed girl tells me.
I am impressed with their preparedness, and on a whim ask them about their favorite foods from around the world. I expect the list of tacos, spaghetti, and pizza; what I don’t expect is the sideswipe of raw emotion. One little boy’s parents work two jobs, and he eats alone a lot. Another child tells me she used to eat more Mexican food when her grandmother was alive, but her mom doesn’t have time to make Grandma’s food anymore. But when she grows up, she plans to revive the family recipes.
They over-share with wide eyes, hoping I’ll hear them. I do, for the better part of an hour. After the session, Josie and I talk while our daughters play together. I ask her about the children’s stories, and her eyes sadden as she nods. “They just need someone to hear them. Thank you for listening.”
An unexpected friendship forms.
In February, all of us—Keith, Ava, and I, plus Connor, Grace, and her kids—arrive at Tim’s squat palm-shaded bungalow in Florida the day before Mom is due in. It’s the start of the third year of the blog and our first reunion since it started. Come to think of it, it’s the first time we siblings have been together, under one roof, for a week straight since I was ten—minus Michael, of course.
To keep busy until Mom’s arrival, I buy the groceries for our next Global Table Adventure, this time from the Maldives, an island nation off the coast of India. I’m making curry-crusted fish and the island’s popular honey, ginger, lime drink called lomi lomi. The fishmonger helps me select a giant red snapper. The eyes shine like glass marbles, so fresh I wonder if they might blink when I look away.
According to the recipe, the fish is supposed to be grilled, preferably on the beach. But I’ve always had terrible luck grilling fish; the sticky skin fuses to the grate, inevitably tearing the flesh into a jumble of unrecognizable flakes.
That night I find the Twitter handle of the Four Seasons in the Maldives and send them a request for advice about grilling the fish, adding that if they have a recipe for the lomi lomi, I’d be forever grateful.
Almost immediately I get a reply. The tweet reads: “250 g chopped ginger blend with 1 litre water, strain. Add 20 ml ginger juice, 30 ml lime & 60 ml honey, lots of ice, to taste.” They send a second tweet: For the fish, I just need to preheat the grill on high for a long, long time and obsessively rub the grate with oil until it gleams.
The next day, Tim leaves to pick up Mom. When he escorts her into the house, we all pop out from behind the wall in the sunroom. She leaps back, squealing with fear, then delight, clasping her hand to her chest and laughing.
She hugs us all and keeps saying, over and over again, with a grin a mile wide, “Oh wow, you’re all here, you’re all here!” and a while later, “I never had a surprise like this before! Never.”
A lump forms in my throat as I watch her. I ask Tim if he thinks she ever felt this loved.
“Just wait until she gets all those notes after dinner,” he grins, ear to ear.
That afternoon I ask the family to wait for me while I cook and photograph the recipes from the Maldives. No one complains, but while I chop the onion and grind it together with the curry leaves for the fish paste, I notice the heat for the first time. It must be 90 degrees in the shade. Everyone looks wilted. I regret keeping them from the beach just so I didn’t have to cook alone.
I work as quickly as I can, passing out the lomi lomi drink while I finish up. Next, I ask Tim to preheat the grill, deciding, after all, to go for the true, authentic cooking method. I want to feel the freedom and taste the salt air on the crust. But we forget to oil the grates, and the fish fuses to the metal, shredding as I struggle to pry it loose. I rush to the store to pick up a second $45 snapper, unwilling to let the mangled fish serve as the picture-perfect specimen.
I notice that the family is becoming askance at my obsessive behavior, but I cannot seem to stop myself. I want everything to be exactly right.
I roast the second fish in the oven. In my fourth hour of cooking, it comes out perfectly browned, with no tears. When I pop the snapper, glass eyes and all, onto the table, there’s a noticeable quiet. Everyone’s stomach seems to be shifting in the fish’s unblinking, charred gaze.
I talk about the culture in the Maldives, where no bits go uneaten and the eyes are prized by the most ardent of diners. (Not that I plan on eating them myself). After a fair amount of throat clearing and mock eyeball eating, everyone digs in. Eventually we work our way through the perfect fish. Still hungry, we start in on the mangled one and eat it all, too.
After we share a vegan birthday cake—from Whole Foods, not the Maldives—we present Mom with the box. I watch her face as she opens the lid. When she realizes what the notes are, she shuts the box with a click: “I’ll enjoy reading these later. Thank you.”
We all urge her on, telling her to read them now, but she shakes her head, puts the box back in the gift bag, and offers everyone a second slice of cake.
But the surprises aren’t over. Tim tells us to leave the dirty dishes: We’re taking a sunset trip to the beach to commemorate Michael’s passing. It’s the 20th anniversary of his death. I am dumbfounded that so much time has passed. Tim brought red balloons. We release just one into the blue—for Michael.
As I watch the balloon float away, I wonder what Michael would think of the last 20 years—if he would feel I’ve spent them well. I wonder what notes he might have put in the box. Quicker than expected, the balloon becomes little more than a dot, then a pinprick, until the vivid red disappears into the transparent ether.
I wish we could be together like this more often. But at the end of the day, we all have to go home to our separate lives and responsibilities.
That night, Keith and I whisper while Ava sleeps.
“Did you see your mom reading the notes?”
“Wait—what? She actually read them?”
“Yeah, when you all were doing the dishes, she sat off by herself and went through every one of them. After a while she even read a few out loud. She loved them.”
“Of course she has to do it when I’m not watching,” I sigh, not attempting to hide my irritation. “I don’t get why she always has to hide like that.”
“Maybe she didn’t want to have all eyes on her while she read through the notes. Receiving all that … love … it’s got to be pretty overwhelming, don’t you think?”
He studies me a moment, then links his pinkie around mine. “You seem really tense, Sash. Are you OK?”
&nb
sp; “What do you mean?”
“All day you tried to control everything. I think you’re making everyone nervous.”
I roll over without responding. He thinks I’m pouting, that I’m mad at him, but what I’m really thinking is: I know. That’s exactly what I’m doing. And I don’t know how to stop.
Fire-Roasted Fish | Fihunu Masa
Spice-encrusted whole fish is often cooked beachside in the Maldives, over live flame. The deep brown crust can be quite the scorcher depending how many chilies are used. The spice paste I offer draws from the best local recipes, using garlic, cumin, curry leaves (available in Indian grocers), black peppercorns, and hot chili peppers (I use habaneros, instead of more traditional dried red chilies). Although Maldivians might grind the paste by hand, I make quick work of it with a food processor.
Any large, meaty fish holds up well to this spice paste. Locals like a bright-eyed, whole red snapper, grouper, or tuna. When cooked with the skin on, bones in, the end result is impossibly moist. Whatever the choice, I save time by having the fishmonger prep the fish for cooking. They can remove the scales, guts, and gills.
The traditional way to cook a whole fish is to thread a rod through it and grill over an open fire. For home cooks, I suggest roasting the fish in an oven. For those who prefer to grill: As I learned the hard way, the skin can easily stick. To avoid this, preheat the grill on high and carefully rub the grill grates five times with a folded paper towel dipped in vegetable oil. Then pop on the fish, shut the lid, and reduce the temperature to medium, flipping only once.
Makes enough spice paste to cover one large whole fish, or several small. Allow one pound a person. Tip: If no whole fish are available, try the paste on a side of salmon. Though not traditional, the flavor is divine.