The Indy-Lebanese Culinary Diaspora(extra-width)

(advance warning for those of weaker constitutions)

Mnemonic:

Gotta figure some idiot’s on the take way the toll roads near Gary choke on vehicular vomit. Bureaucracy sloughs on, traffic grinds always, already to a halt.

Tom drove the rental. Gary’s inconsequential last gasp at relevance hiccuped past; rickety accretions of factories, casinos, oil tanks. Some “lake-effect” rain-inflected sun laquered bungalow walls a soporific umber. Suburbs, suburbs, suburbs, and a snack at the world’s most-disorganized McDonald’s; I typically take the lazy politicization of American demographics with a truckload of salt(those that proselytize are also those who read states as red or blue). I don’t piss my pants about chain food. I don’t eat it every fricking day. What to think of the guys ordering bag upon bag of multiple extracheeseburgers and vats o’ McNuggets? Even if all that stuff’s for the family, what the hell are they thinking? Oprah chortle-screams,“Monster calves for everyoooooone!"
I do enjoy me the rare ten piece and sweet n sour sauce. And fries. In Hebron, ID one doesn’t so much walk as perambulate, toddle on fleshly tree trunks genetically-distilled to hoist vast greasy sacks of tasty, reconfabulated, and fried foodstuffs. White trucker fuel(I mean other than Black Cats). Urf-ing a teensy bit, we scootched our way south of the rain.

I thought for sure we’d miss seeing friends N and J before they left for her new gig in San Francisco. We’d planned to visit last weekend along with some other guests of their’s but that fell through; then these past few days opened up woohoo!

A smaller, cozy brick house slung in the verdant bosom of Indianapolis replete with front porch(for smoking) and a catering kitchen in the garage leading to gorgeous, massive trees and a strange stone bust guarding the backyard hobbit door.

N’s a chef. She cooked for v.i.p. clients at The French Laundry, did her thing at Chez Panisse. During the past several years she parleyed her skills into private jobs. That’s what’s taking her and her husband back to San Francisco too soon.

J, he’s auburn curly locks, seems somehow slight, self-effacing, then you get a load of his hands; grim, intelligent, enthusiastic hands. You should see what he’s done with their Broad Ripple basement. Nominally, a carpenter, he debrides the banality of the burrows of the wealthy. See him guiding Tom n I downstairs waiting for N to finish off work. What was raw space wine cellar is now completely unrecognizable from the original dank cement: sensual, mottled-bone carpet steps descend past rock show memorabilia to a re-imagined speakeasy of maroon walls abundant with alcoves for the liquor, a copper bar, and sublime Oriental swaybacked bar chairs. He made the room adjacent a lounge replete with de rigeur giganto TV, couches, pillows beckoning decompression. A new bathroom down the new hall from the new bar features mockingly-reconstituted Time magazine covers framing simple, elegant fixtures. The new one throws the upstairs bathroom in stark contrast: downstairs its classic, minimal, modern, nothing gratuitous. Upstairs, it’s 40’s modern in green and black tile, steel, spindly-legged green sink, matching white accoutrement(towels, curtains).

He digs the Crazy Horse Neil Young damage as much as I. Hell yeah.
Now he likes Vic Chesnutt, cuz that’s how I roll.

J says he got as much of an education as N while she studied at the C.I.A. No doubt.

N's curly nimbus gleaming, lustrous, unfurling across her shoulders; often insouciantly drawn back in a half-hazzard ponytail. She's freckles, grins with a soupcon of intriguing irascibility, a whirlwind of bright conversation and earthy anecdotes.

N nourishes us. I have a notoriously small appetite. To please her I stuff myself; reckoning, drooling for her breakfast stuffs, desiring her stews, languishing upon not finishing her multi-course cornucopia, reminiscing over desserts she declares crap. Whatever’s on the table's warm and tempting; hurled out of the kitchen by a wise-cracking, distracted Tasmanian-Lebanese devil. I do the distracting.

Foot surgeries, hand surgeries, more surgeries.
She opines that women aren’t built for a man’s kitchen.

{Do you mean women are “essentially” unable to perform at industrial culinary levels?
Do you intend that the historic codification of the restaurant kitchen is in a man’s favor and, therefore deleterious to a woman’s body(see: surgeries)? Do you think it’s possible, or propable, to re-conceive “the kitchen” in favor of a woman’s physionogmy? Ha! Beyond such facile innovations as the Betty Crocker Lady’s Stovetop/Dishwasher as seen on HGTV’s “Kegel Excercises for the SlowCooker in You.”

Contrary to what makes for good reality TV, hormones do not a kitchen make.
An institutionally, gendered embodiment is merely fuel.

Screw the hierarchy of the kitchen, the kitchen sexed, the passive/agressive relationship between the customer and the back of the house. Change is good.

Don’t get me started on the asinine, self-entitlement of the "new breed" of blog-borne, whiny waiters. I digress.}

Forgive me -------- for I knew not whence I spake regarding Napolean Dynamite. We watched it before bed the night we arrived. It wasn’t the cliche’d ironic cinematic cumstain I assumed sight unseen. It's not what it's marketed as at all. The film takes place in an Idaho of weirdly-insouciant aesthetic anachronism. As the kids say, it has heart. And that Kip’s kinda hot.

We had movie night after Charbay Blood Orange Vodka cocktails(surprisingly, Campari-y), beers, and N’s chili with mushrooms. I thoroughly enjoyed it(I think she was afraid I’d get all up in her grill "Texas Chili Snob"). I inquired as to what chile ratios she included and was informed that it was my spice mix of choice(The Spice House...I hostess-gifted her with a box of hand-picked stuff awhile ago) I was licking out of the bowl. And sweet, scratch cornbread; probably her main achievement of the night since she never, ever makes it. A tetch buzzed, I blanked out in chili bliss missing her revery on Yucatecan vs. New Mexican cornbreads. Tasted plenty fine, sho nuff. And canned mushrooms in the chili! Even my inner Texas Chili Snob grokked them. Mmmm...good beer. Chocolate cake and vanilla whipped cream followed with the movie portion of the evening.

Next morning we got plates full of her N's McMuffins then off to track down medium-format film for my Holga(alas, the scanner's kaput). Oddly, Indianapolis’s mid-range camera stores are much better than Chicago’s. Well, we thought we’d catch some contemporary art at the IMA, but turns out that floor won’t open until November. The usual suspects sufficed and I got a gander at, I believe, my first in-the-flesh Bosch.

Strolled the grounds, the Lily house, ravine gardens, shot pictures in front of a Robert Indiana(not LOVE, thank JVH1), posed for ribald fotos humping bad pub(i)c art sculpture, saw used underwear for sale in a resale shop. We lunched at Taste in Broad Ripple whose remarkably ass-y waitstaff couldn't taint the holy-hell scrumptious basil-flecked pommes frites with garlic aioli. Over-designed sandwiches all around, but the beer was better. I had suggested Brugges(Abraham Ben Rubi's newish Belgian pub) for lunch, but N made a gassy face accompanying her definitive thumbs down.

Coffee with s/o’s family while antique-shopping in downtown Noblesville where I was cheerfully-conscripted into Thanksgiving dinner by his mom with instructions to arrive later.

Back home for the main event: N’s Lebanese mezze:

She promised to teach me THE FINGERING OF THE KIBBEH.

Lamb stew(I swear she said, GNYUK-GHNEE, but she begged off elucidating after I murdered the pronunciation with High German equivalents), she’d already started that morning. I’d leafed tons o' parsley for tabbouleh after breakfast. J grilled the eggplants and one exploded. S/o poured our new favorite Muller-Thurgau, Maso Ricardo, 2003: it's as good as the Pojer and Sandri of a few years back before their vintages turned to piss. Of course, one of the bottles we brought was corked, feh.

The tabouleh's cracked wheat spent the afternoon absorbing chopped cherry tomato liquor.

For kibbeh, N mixed the finely-ground sirloin bought at the butcher’s that morning with her homemade cumooni(a moist, complexly bouquet-d/floral, obviously, cumin-y spice mix). Kept the raw paste wet with ice water in the kneading. Tasted as she went and offered it to me so I might learn what I was looking for flavorwise. Mmmm...raw kibbeh.

Before beginning the lesson, she opined devilishly that only one male friend of hers had ever really gotten it. Surely, I’m not the second, but I look forward to practice.

Fingering the kibbeh involves hollowing the paste into cones which are then stuffed with a mixture of cooked ground lamb and pine nuts. One then palpitates the result into symmetrical, pregnant footballs, deepfrying the result. I took much more rigorous notes for future attempts.

To her 30 or so I accomplished maybe 5 useable ones.

At the the J-fabricated verdigris-d moire' copper table we toasted with excitingly, excellent Chateau Musar 1996 red(petroleum nose of a yummy bordeaux).

Detroit storebought pita...so much better than that found in Chicago; handkerchief-sized, delicate pockets of charred bread. I asked if it was actually lavosh, but N declared it pita.

She lamented the lack of good pomegranates with which to garnish the baba ghanoush.

-buttery rice pilaf

-lamb stewed in tomato and butterbeans w/cilantro(and an entire discourse concerning the substitutions of veg in the stew and the cocommittant appropriate spicing)

-salty, citrusy tabbouleh pungent with parsley

-a divinely smokey baba ghanoush

- spicy, tensile kibbeh served sans sauce(a platter heaped with perfect, plump footballs) the casing giving way to savory stuffing

Over dinner she told more tales of the C.I.A.

So, so ridiculously-stuffed, and scolded by N that her uma wouldn't appreciate our inability to polish off thirds or even fourths, we weeble-wobbled downstairs to the lounge for a screening of Hannibal(a film I despised upon first viewing, but for whose details I’ve developed a certain affection).

Tiny, tiny sherry glasses for our luscious, caramely, date-y Malvasia della Lipari, it has the most electric, bitter tweak at the back of the palate. Toasting, "I’ve given a great deal of thought to eating your liver.”

Good for N, she finally curled up asleep. Sdtrk-"O Vide Cor Meum."

Bundled under the covers I skimmed the Time magazine article about the new “post-gay,” queer youth. Man, those baby-fags are such ponces.

Dawn brought an unctuous, garlicky ful and N’s fusion McMuffins: Lebanese by virtue of being stuffed in a Detroit pita with eggs dusted with her 7-spice. Fresh, crunchy scallion “chawn-on", rather than mincingly-bitten. Grrrarrrgh! Chomp!

Shoe-shopping at DSW, Indy Costco for dvd’s(Nip/Tuck and...urgh...Dallas...I grew up with Dallas on the telly in Houston so don’t quite understand the s/o’s facination with Bobby Ewing), Mrs. Strange and Mssr. Norrell(which ---------- shall pay for in straps upon his back if it sucks...but, then, it was his recommendation that allowed me to relax and watch Napoleon Dynamite), croissants, olive oil, Kirkland tuna, razors, yadda yadda yadda. The Indy Costco pizza pales in comparison to Chicago’s Costcos. Of course, I forgot to stick with the pepperoni and went instead, with a combo slice heaped in dehydrated rat turds of Italian sausage.

N and J bid us farewell our arms full of leftovers and the enormo bag of frozen fresh-picked blackberries we’d absentmindedly left with them last April. That's when she made her morel feast(from our picking’s at the s/o’s parents’ farm). They'd already eaten all our corn.

Driving back, even the construction wasn’t all that bad. Well, yes it was.