A Crepey Summer Lunch; What Food Means

It’s still hot. I know, I’m like a 64-year-old man about the weather now. I can’t stop stating the obvious. When B and I first moved into this place, we evaluated the enormous stand air conditioner in the corner of what is now our kitchen/work area and decided we didn’t need it. Our house was built in 1969 and, although it’s on the second floor, it still has the old-fashioned veranda running the length of the house, with a double set of windows that make it possible to open the entire house up to the outside air. We also live right above the river, so a nice, cool breeze blows directly over us from the water. After a few naive June nights, we decided our small wall unit in the bedroom for sleeping and emergencies would do.

I failed to take cooking into account.

So it’s 11:32pm on Saturday night, and I’m making a mille crepe cake.

Lunch was another story. But I’ll tell that one in a minute.

We’ve both been blessed with a three-day weekend this week. Thanks to the MERS crisis and the decline in international tourism, the government decided to be serious about their holiday-replacement policy this time around, so a lot of companies followed through with swapping out the Saturday holiday for a day off on Friday. I needed it. I got slapped with a 70-page editing project in the middle of an already hectic work week, and, of course, it needed to be done before 11am the next day (put in my hands at 4:30pm). I still managed to grab dinner with B twice, despite him deploying his code this week (?), which meant overtime for him as well.

B’s going through some stuff right now, as we’re finding ourselves in transition. I’m kind of used to putting my nose to the grindstone and doing what I need to do to get to where I want to be, keeping my eyes fixed on the end goal and all that. Right now, we need to work and we need to work hard. I don’t want to be 40 and still pulling all-nighters, but I also want a house, to travel, to write, to cook and to never go back to the poverty and insecurity I grew up in. I’ve got my eyes on a Korean version of the American dream, but B is taking it a little more Korean-literal, and wondering if weeks full of 16-hour workdays and exhausted weekends is all there will ever be.

B’s come just as far in life as I have, but he has more trouble believing the future we imagine together might be possible. I’m in enough awe of my life and the blessings I’ve had set before me to believe that, although it may not be perfect, we can, if we work hard enough and hit on just the right luck, build whatever kind of life we want to.

But nothing comes for free. Not everybody has to pay their dues, but we do. And I’m not angry about that. Paying the dues is half the fun.

The point is, I’m his partner now. For real. And it’s my job to haul him through the hard times. So I’m doing my best to keep our business together and show him that, although we’re tired and stressed and although there are days and even entire weeks when just keeping ourselves in clean clothes and fed feels like an epic battle, we can still enjoy it.

So I make cakes at 11:30 at night. Because that, out of everything, is the one thing I can do to put a smile on his face, if only for the few minutes it takes him to eat a piece.

Would I like to spend my life writing poems? Yeah. But there’s always been something so disconnected about poetry for me. I grew up religious and while I’m not anymore, writing a poem, to me, is akin to praying. It’s speaking in tongues, going deep inside and hauling some shrouded thing out of the murk. It’s valuable for me, and I know it’s valuable for some others, but translating that into action is so hard.

But food is life. It’s the realest metaphor, so real that it’s almost literal — taking whatever is at your disposal and transforming it with sweat and passion into sustenance and fellowship. It’s an act of love, in its rawest form. Eat this and be alive.

So today I took some summer vegetables and the goat milk ricotta I made earlier in the week and made these crepes.

Summer Vegetable Crepes

Crepes

• 1 cup flour
• 3 eggs
• 1 1/2 cup milk
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 3 tablespoons butter, melted

1. Mix together the flour, salt and pepper.
2. Add the milk and butter first, then add the eggs. Mix thoroughly so there are no clumps of flour.
3. Cover and refrigerate for an hour.
4. Grease a nonstick pan with butter and warm over medium heat. Pour in 1/3 cup of batter, quickly swirling the pan so that the batter coats the pan evenly. Cook on one side until the crepe is easily loosened from the pan (about 3 minutes) and flip. Cook on the other side for one more minute.
5. Stack the crepes on a plate and cover to keep moist.

Filling

• 1 Korean zucchini (애호박), diced
• 1 cup green beans, cut into 1 inch pieces
• 2 ears of corn, boiled and removed from the ear
• 3/4 cup curly parsley, chopped
• 1 cup ricotta
• 1 cup Parmesan, shredded
• 2 teaspoons cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 tablespoon oil

1. Heat the oil in a skillet over medium-high heat.
2. Toss in the vegetables, parsley and seasoning and stir until cooked through (about 7 minutes).
3. Add the cheese and stir until melted (about 2 minutes).
4. Remove from heat.

Topping

• 1 cup plain yogurt
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 cup chives, chopped

1. Mix all ingredients together and chill in the fridge.

From here, it’s pretty obvious: Fill the crepes with the filling, and top with the topping. Enjoy.