Tongue (20 page)

Radish

Thyme

White wine

Water

Pinch of salt

Two spears asparagus

Truffles

For the sauce:

100 grams watercress

Garlic

Truffle oil

Lemon juice to taste

Whole green peppercorns

Directions:

1. In a large pot, boil leeks, onion, carrots, celery, radish, thyme, white wine, water, salt, and tongue for 30 minutes. The tongue will shrink when it is dropped in the boiling water.

2. Remove the tongue from the stock. When the tongue cools, cut off the membranes.

3. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

4. Place the tongue in the oven and bake for 15 minutes.

5. Cut the tongue into half-inch slices.

6. Snap off the ends of the asparagus and steam or sauté in olive oil in a hot pan.

7. In a bowl, mix together the ingredients for the sauce. Finely grind whole green peppercorns.

8. Pour the sauce on a plate and arrange the slices of tongue on top. Garnish with sliced truffles. Place the asparagus on the side.

Suggestions:

• Instead of baking the tongue in the oven, try pan-frying it in olive oil.

• If the scent of the sauce is too intense, you can replace the watercress with finely minced Italian parsley and garlic in a 3:2 ratio.

• If the tongue is not the freshest, you can add nutmeg to enhance its flavor.

CHAPTER 35

I NO LONGER BELIEVE that the truffle symbolizes love. Love shatters with the rumbling of thunder, but thunder causes truffles to grow. Sure, both are hard to find. You harvest truffles, which can’t be seen by the human eye, by following a trained sow with an excellent sense of smell. So it’s closer to hunting. Truffles are black and round like a forgotten, burnt potato. Among food lovers, the truffle is considered precious, along with caviar and foie gras, exciting them with a whiff and giving them joy. The black diamond of the earth shatters more easily than glass, and it’s hard to handle. Too much of it works as an aphrodisiac, like nutmeg or cloves. Even expert harvesters exercise extreme caution when harvesting, sliding a finger carefully into the ground. The truffle is difficult to work with unless you’re an experienced, skilled cook; it is the subject of worship. Even though you can’t see them and you can’t tell for sure, you pile branches over the spots where you think they may grow to maintain the right humidity. You harvest them in October and November and they are reborn in the next autumn rain. Every time I have a chance to eat
truffles I wonder whether they are so treasured not because of their unique taste and scent of aged mud, but because you can’t find them easily and they’re impossible to farm. Truffles are always a part of the priciest dishes. I take out the truffle I obtained through Chef in May, which I sealed in a bottle in olive oil. Perfection is the key to sublime taste.

The touched expression on his face is probably because of the truffle. His eyes sparkle and his skin—the scalpel’s first point of contact if he were to be dissected—is taut and excited, anticipating the feast. And he asks again, as if to be reassured, “So this dinner is really the last time, right?”

I tell him that I won’t be contacting him again. After seven persistent calls he finally agreed and came to the house today. I put down the truffle and turn toward him. He used to be the person to whom I wanted to give my best. He used to be the person who made me feel as if I were looking at a better version of myself. The last thing I can give him is tonight’s feast.

I turn up the corners of my mouth and smile. “Of course. I won’t even call anymore. I keep my promises.”

“Okay … thanks.”

“You’re thanking me already before you’ve eaten? But what’s happened with Se-yeon?”

“Hmm?”

“I heard from Mun-ju. Se-yeon disappeared without a word?”

“Oh, no, it’s not like that.”

“What happened?”

“She said she wanted to rest a bit. Because when the cooking class opens she won’t have that kind of time.”

“Oh … so you heard from her?”

“Yeah, a few days ago.”

“Where is she?”

“Why are you so curious? You don’t even like her.”

“No, that’s not true.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Because of her I realized how much I treasure you.”

“That’s a little awkward to hear.”

“So when’s she coming back?”

“Soon.”

“Soon?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sure she’ll come back soon. Like nothing’s happened.”

He changes the subject. “But you look happy.”

“Oh, maybe because of my dream.”

“Dream?”

“Yeah, I had a dream about a beakfish.”

“Beakfish?”

“The Mediterranean fish with a golden crescent on its forehead. It’s really rare to catch that fish.”

“So you dreamed of a rare fish. I guess something good is going to happen to you.”

I’m standing in the kitchen wearing chef’s whites and my heels with pearls in the soles. Once, my favorite pastime was to stand in this open kitchen and make dinner, the person I love sitting in front of me. Why does everything feel so far away, as if it will never happen again? And why isn’t it happening again? I look at him over the chopping block.
Seok-ju, I’m glad that after this dinner my heart can leave you, go far away, gradually
. I dip my hot fingertips in ice water. “I’m going to Italy tomorrow.”

“Oh, really?” He can’t hide his relief.
Both of you are the same—you are not careful
. I open the fridge and take out the tongue that I aged after cleaning off the tendons and tattered muscles. I have to concentrate my cold fingertips on this deep red tongue. I wrap my palm around the knife. It feels good. The knife under my full control. This feeling is why I handle meat. I pour him another glass of champagne as an aperitif.
And I whisper sweetly, “Don’t get drunk yet. I’m going to make you such a good meal that it’s going to melt your tongue.”

He lets his guard down because of his expectations for the meal, or maybe because I won’t be here tomorrow. If one person has changed and the other hasn’t, their former love becomes pathetic and stagnant and cruel. It’s better not to talk about the old times. But today may really be the last time that we sit across from each other in our kitchen and eat. Instead of feeling miserable, I feel sentimental.

“Do you remember that time?” I ask.

“What time?”

“When you regained consciousness.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“It was six months later.”

“… Yeah.”

“I still remember what you said when you opened your eyes.”

He’s quiet.

“You grabbed my hand and squeezed it.”

“Is dinner almost ready?”

“You told me we shouldn’t be apart anymore, remember? That you were afraid of not seeing me again. That even though you were unconscious, it was so real and painful. So you just kept thinking, this is a dream, a dream, I’m just dreaming.”

“… You said you wouldn’t do this. You told me it was only dinner.”

“When you were unconscious it wasn’t that hard. Even though the guy who caused the accident died, I knew you would wake up. You had to wake up, for me.”

“If you keep doing this, I’m leaving.”

“I’m making dinner right now. Just wait. It’s almost done. If you just leave now I might keep calling and bothering you, and not leave and stay here. That’s not what you want, is it?”

He’s silent.

“So just be quiet and stay.”

“What’s the main course today?”

“Of course it’s meat, it’s what you like. But today I cut it a little thinner.”

“… Why?”

“Do you know why people started cooking sliced meat?”

He’s quiet.

“Because it became uncivilized to put an entire animal on the table. You want to eat meat but you feel uneasy. So they started to slice it smaller. And you can keep distance from the animal being eaten. But isn’t it kind of funny? It’s not like it changes the nature of it.”

“I’m hungry. Is it ready yet?”

“You just want to leave here as soon as possible.”

“No, it’s just because I want to eat. Something smells so great.”

“I think it was when you were recovering from the accident. We were taking a walk and you said, I’m the happiest right in this moment. You stroked Paulie with one hand and grabbed my hand with the other. I was so happy that tears sprang to my eyes. I was so happy that you had come to and that you were happy. Unbelievably happy. And I smelled bursting thyme. I felt that delicate herb exploding and spreading like popcorn.”

“Did you ask me to come for this?”

“No, no. It’s almost ready. I’ll give you soup first.”

He sits down again, resigned. I place a tart green summer apple that I’d frozen after scooping out the inside, frosty, on the table. Inside is a cold soup made with apple, butter, sugar, broth. It would go down his throat sweetly and softly. I chose this soup because I thought it would go best with the strong, tough tongue. He takes a spoonful to his mouth and his face blooms. “It’s cold and sweet and silky. I bet the world’s first apple tasted like this.”

“Adam and Eve made love after eating an apple.”

“What?”

The apple that was placed in her armpit
. For people with a sensitive sense of taste and a certain sensuality, the most amazing scent is that of their lover’s sweat. He laps up every last drop of the soup, scraping the bottom of the apple with his spoon.
Her smell will keep him relaxed
. At least until this meal is finished.

“Now it’s time for salad.” I serve a salad of arugula and grapefruit. Then it will be time for the main course. I have to gradually awaken his senses. The sweet-and-sour grapefruit and bitter arugula would gently waft past the bumpy taste buds like a spring breeze.

“Simple, and you can taste nature.”

“Good. I’ll get you a different wine. It’s time for the main course.”

I bring out two tall Riedel wineglasses, shaped like tulips about to bloom. The wine I got for tonight’s meal is Barolo Zonchera. It goes especially well with flavorful meat dishes. The wine he ordered on his first visit to Nove, when I leaned on the pass to steal glances at him, while he was immersed in eating my steak.

I pour a glass of the Barolo for myself. I place the tongue in the middle of a large white plate and top it with three slivers of truffle, and next to it I place fresh oven-roasted asparagus in a V shape. The deep brown tongue, intense gray truffle, and mellow green asparagus clustered on the white plate impart trust before they’re tasted.
The reason chimpanzees eat each other’s brains is that their souls are in them. Our souls live here. In this tongue. Now it’s your turn to tell me what it tastes like
.

I dim the kitchen lights.

I take a white cloth trimmed with lace from a cabinet.

I pick up the plate carefully with both hands and place it on the table.

“Your favorite poet, Baudelaire, said, Be always drunk on wine, or poetry, or virtue.”

His face splits into a smile upon seeing the plate. “So you’re saying, get drunk on virtue!”

“Right. Try it.” I slip the white cloth over his head.
This is what they did when eating ortolan. When they chewed on the bird’s rib cage and wings, bones and innards, in the dark with a cloth over their heads, they were able to relive the bird’s entire life. They really understood taste, didn’t they?

He takes up the fork and knife obediently. Slices of tongue fan out in perfect symmetry on the sauce of garlic, peppercorn, truffle oil, lemon, and watercress. He pierces the middle piece, the biggest, the one with the clearest shape. Immobile, I watch him put it into his mouth and close his lips and move his chin slowly, chewing. A smile spreads across his face.

“How is it?”

“There’s something really tough about it, but it has a really good texture. It even feels crisp under my teeth, like very hard vegetables. Is this really beef?”

“Of course, of course,” I nod vigorously.

He puts another bite in his mouth and chews. “How can it taste like this? It’s so good.”

“There’s something special in my recipe, you know.”

“I feel a power in my mouth like two strongmen are competing against each other. Not just a fight that splatters blood but something that creates harmony, like a fight of taste.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. The taste is so alive—it’s leaping around on my tongue.”

You can’t fool taste. His pupils are starting to dilate. He chews carefully and swallows, one morsel after another. As if he’s enveloped in a holy light, his face becomes flushed and sweat dots his forehead. He’s sinking into my new dish. I hear from far away
the patter of cats walking across the yard and raindrops falling into the drain. The feast has to be the last thing of the day. In quiet and intimacy like this. Like travelers who want to get to the same destination together. I feel the ground swaying peacefully. I’m standing on water. Dizziness sweeps across me. I pause from stirring the watermelon sherbet that’s for dessert and whisper in his ear, “Should we kiss just one time? Just once?” This is the end.

His eyes betray wariness. I grab his right wrist, the one holding the fork.

“Okay, because you’re truly a great cook. But this really is it.”

We approach each other slowly and our lips touch, fluttering, a resting of my face on a frost-covered winter window. Not too hot or close or passionate. Like a shy first kiss, tentative and soft.

I open my eyes and look into his. One man and one woman. Like every love story, there are happy times if you look back. And the first moment of seduction that drew us in. But now it’s time to go back to our places. To feel more and to remember more. We have returned to our first shared moment. But maybe we are now different trees. Trees that can only drink in different musical notes. Everything starts to die as soon as it’s born. Some things thrive and others decline while some are reborn and others float away. The thing that lives, gradually changes. It’s not important to go somewhere but it’s crucial that we’re moving. In the dark I quickly wipe away a tear with the back of my hand and with his fork I spear a piece of tongue and gently push it between his red lips.