Split Pea Soup

I could start writing about cooking and never stop.

I watch (and enjoy) a calculus lecture, from two and a half years later and almost 200 miles away, but when the video screen goes black and youtube offers me related videos, I need to come back to my body. I need to be present.

Cooking: it is all about being there. Being here. Being now. Cooking is timing and attention and transformation. Heft the bag of split peas, feel them, through the plastic, shifting. The thousand split peas will pour out of this bag, cascade across the bottom of the bowl. If I poured them onto the floor, they would scatter and skitter into every corner. They are independent, they do not love each other. But for now, they are one shape, moving together, formed by my hands into this reassuring solid. When I set the bag on the counter vertically, it slouches, but does not sway.

And then the onions, like giant pearls. The onions wait patiently in the bottom drawer in the refrigerator, but when their time comes, they shine through the whole kitchen. When I pick up an onion to slip and rip away its brown jacket, it fills my palm. For an instant, this onion globe is the entire world. Under the crisp outer paper, the onion is silken smooth. Today I sliced one along its equator, revealing concentric circles. Pale and perfect inside, the two hemispheres glowed on the cutting board, as though I had split the planet apart and found it suffused with light.

Chopping the onions, the knife is very real in my hand: its weight, its solidity, the sliding of the blade through the onions. Like the peas, the onions will be sundered into a thousand independent pieces. With each severance, the onion cries out, and its scream hangs in the air as an acrid vapor. But to no avail. The knife mercilessly destroys the harmony of those opalescent globes. They are bound for a bowl and then a bowel.

When I slide the onions into the pot, I scrape the knife across the edge. The metal rings. The onions, below, crinkle and shiver in the hot oil.

Meanwhile, I pour the peas into a bowl, and fill it with water. My language lacks a word for the song of liquid pouring into legumes. . . It's a very transient fountain, but lovely nonetheless. I immerse myself in the cooking, bury my hands in the peas to clean them. I can smell the peas: a quiet smell, minerals, sunshine. My hands massage the peas. Clouds drift into the water. Rinse, repeat. The little golden peas cling to my hands but I wash them back into the crowd, and then they all go in with the onion in the pot.

Pour in five cups of water. Wash the dishes, listen for the water to boil. Listen for the plopping, popping sounds that say to stir the pot. Smell: the onions, the softening peas, the steam.

Later I squirt in the lemon juice the recipe calls for. But it's not enough. Instead, the kitchen tells me what the soup needs. I drizzle black molasses across the sandy-colored peas. The cider vinegar reeks, but I add a capful, and another. Stir and taste, add and stir again and simmer some more. . .

At the end of the hour, it's lunch, ladled into a bowl that I hold in my hands. In the bowl is soup, and in the soup is myself. I eat, and I thank God for creation, for these glorious vegetables, for these scents and sounds, and I rejoice in this kitchen, where I play creator.

Pie

It is too easy to drift through a day thinking about other places and times, barely seeing and hearing the immediate world. Smells, though, I can never ignore. They root me in the present moment. Today, starting a pie, I cut two sticks of butter into cubes. When I picked them up to add them to the flour and sugar, the cubes left my hands shiny and butter-scented. I rinsed off the grease, but the smell of butter stayed with me as I mixed together the tart dough. The recipe called for whipping cream, so I pried the carton's mouth open. Even before the silken liquid poured into the light and air of the kitchen, its perfume drifted up to mingle with the scents of butter and flour. Subtle smells, but they drew me deep into their realm. I thought of nothing but pie, pie, pie.

The dough mixed and rolled out, the peaches and rhubarb chopped, we arranged everything in the tin. The fragile dough had to be treated gently, but the fruit didn't suffer from being jostled. Golden chunks of peach tumbled into the pie shell. They glowed with nectar. Sections of rhubarb, polished by juice and sugar, tossed themselves among the peach cubes like rubies. The other circle of dough settled quietly over this mound of treasure, and we pinched the pie closed.

Then the pie squatted in the oven for an hour, sending out the aroma of cream and peaches and butter and sugar, in irresistible clouds of scent. The smell of a baking pie is not subtle. It filled the kitchen, and my mind. Nothing else mattered. I would have been content to spend that entire hour staring into the oven, drunk on that golden smell.

Hours later, I've tasted the pie, eaten it. I can feel it still in my belly. It is a comforting presence. The memory of its smell, though, tantalizes rather than comforts. I will be haunted all night by the ghost of the scent of pie.