March 2, 2012

My dearest,

These days, when I’m in our kitchen, I cook.

In fact, I cook quite often. Usually a soup, something Chinese and clear the way you likes it (a remnant of your Cantonese nanny’s influence). ABC soup. Watercress. Old cucumber. It’s easy with a slow cooker. (I’m not gifted at cooking and have happily accepted this.)

Some stir-fried greens – whatever’s fresh. Inevitably it’d be Chinese-style with garlic and a dash of Chinese wine and oyster sauce. Then a meat, which is my bane. You like meat on bones, like chicken thighs, but I dread the stuff cos I never know how to get rid of the skin and fats and our chopper can’t cleave through the bone. Or I don’t whack it down hard enough, possibly. I prefer cubing chicken fillet or minced pork, and I do those sometimes too.

Ah well.

You have seen the disaster last night when I tried deep-frying a couple of well-marinated chicken thighs, only I tried to cheat with less oil and pouring the oil over the top of the meat, like I have seen on some cooking show years ago. Bloody lying cooking shows. It doesn’t work, at least not when I attempt it.

In the end I had to fry the meat twice, and it was over-cooked and dry. But tasty. (For I know how to marinate, that I do.)

Maybe all of this is a roundabout way of telling you I did no writing yesterday. It didn’t feel entirely wasted though. I watched Les chansons d’amour (directed by Christophe Honoré) for the umpteenth time. Haven’t done so in a while, but I recall when I first watched it, I had it on repeat.

Young Parisians in love and grief, in a rain-washed Paris, joking and crying and laughing and skipping around, what’s not to love? And this while singing half the time. Not songs from actual musicals, but more light-weight modern French songs? (No choreographed dance routines, thankfully.)

It’s lovely and there’s a character that only appears mid-way, this young French boy who’s in love and so insistently so — he’s someone you could fall in love with, not because he’s cute (though he is) but because he is so sweet and innocent and intelligent and hopeful.

He reminds me that beauty in the world need not be faded decay or cold plaster but pure joy. Happiness is beautiful, too. And you.

Yours, ever and always.