Alison's Risotto

I took Alison's bag as she arrived. This and fetching wine glasses were the only help she allowed me to give. The rest of the evening was up to her, a host in my own home, composing a risotto to interpret the hour of conversation we had at noon the same day. During that conversation, I'd attempted to express some of what I feel. With her help, we ended up hitting on big themes with deep roots, themes I've attempted to explain many times, the themes that have driven my biggest, most difficult decisions.

A lot for a risotto to contain, but that was the goal. We picked up the thread again as she unpacked her ingredients.

She popped an orange wine called Skin Contact. It was barely smokey, a deep yellow. It's the wine skins that make it orange. Over the course of an hour of prep and discussion we worked through the first half of the bottle, lifted by its headiness and maturity. I acquired the buzz specific to eating late, hunger staved off, time passing without notice.

The central topic we orbited was an old paradox of mine: the desire to expand, experiment, and adventure, as well as a longing for the familiarity and predictability of home. I don't always know how to reconcile the two. So many of the people I meet scratch just one itch or the other. I have a deep nostalgia for my suburban Texas upbringing, but always knew I’d have to leave and find a larger world. I found that larger world, but in it I often feel like a visitor, not quite settled in.

I find that many of the more adventurous people I meet abandon their pasts. But Alison, like me, carries her heritage with her. For all she's left behind, the food she grew up with still speaks through her today. I didn't love food like her until much later in life, but I tie it to my youth in Texas just the same. Great food is one of the few things I know that can answer my desire for daring novelty and my desire for slow comfort at the same time. These contrasting desires, so rarely satisfied together, are what Alison would be attempting to infuse into our risotto.

I watched as she prepared three different squashes, cleaving them with gusto. She was calm and engaged, comfortable talking as she cooked. I envied that facility. She then arranged squash wedges on a pan with a liberal sprinkle of salt and chili spices. Next to it she placed cubed pork lardon, glossy with its own fat, freshly torn from a vacuum-sealed package. Pork and squash went into the oven to roast. As they cooked, the kitchen filled with their savory scent, the fragrance blooming every time she opened the oven to check. She then sliced the shallots very thinly, cleaned the garlic chives, and sauteed them in butter. Then in went broth, rice, and the wine we were drinking. 

She stirred the risotto over low heat with infinite patience. If you push your risotto, Alison said, you're missing the point. If you rush, it will punish you. Besides, it's a ritual. If you want fast, make a sandwich. We had plenty to talk about in the meantime. We discussed how we relate to our emotions and our bodies. I use my body awareness to help me access my emotions (which are often locked away), while she uses her emotional landscape to help her get in touch with her body (which often feels distant from her). I remember looking at her posture as she said this, wondering how much of the heat, the scent, and the motion of the kitchen she was feeling. Meanwhile I sat still, leaning forward. 

She added goat cheese gradually, along with other things I did not notice. The texture thickened, still creamy by the time the squash and lardon were ready.She took them out, releasing another steamy bloom of their combined scents, and stirred them into the mix along with harissa and parmesan. It was ready. I pointed out a couple of Korean clay bowls, and she poured us each a portion. The shishito peppers, roasted to a char, got thrown on top still whole. A drizzle of garlic chili oil to finish, and we were ready to eat.

Under the white light of the dining room, the risotto was an audacious orange. The tint of harissa pulled it towards the deep dandelion color of the squash. Shiny red chili oil streamed through the risotto's peaks and valleys. My spoon found soft resistance against meat and vegetables suspended inside, a heretical but intriguing combination.

The risotto gave the impression of a bold older aunt, a swashbuckling world traveller with a power-clash eclectic style, wielding heavy accent and chunky jewelry with the unselfconscious originality only age can earn. She broke the mold while young, and it's only now that the rest of the world is catching up to her. On anyone else this look would be a costume, but she wears it as easily as a smile.

The look was bold, but the flavor was bolder, hot and bright and cheesy. The leading edge was the salt of the lardon pork. Its hammy fat had a Southern lilt, while the goat cheese added an almost gamey complexity amid the dankness of pork fat. The cured cubes had acquired a caramel crispness along every edge, a sweetness with the salt. In the center of each meaty chunk the lardon was pure pig, utterly confident, uninfluenced by the rest of the dish.

The insistence of all this pork was balanced by the signature slowball heat of harissa, the most patient of all chili sauces. Its warmth rose and simmered long after each bite, gently pushing and pulling against the more immediate heat of the garlic chili oil. Pork and harissa make for strange bedfellows, certainly far from halal, but the considerate mediation of the risotto kept the family together.

Underneath the heat of chili oil and harissa was the grassy cut of charred shishito. A full bite was clear and sparkling, a refreshing respite from the ubiquitous umami surrounding it. Its rawer side was more austere, water against oil, cleansing and vibratory. It left me tingling. Within the risotto, sly and strappy garlic chives played counterpoint to the shishito, suggesting structure with their thready curves.

Between green above and green below were sweet golden crescents of squash. Roasting and spice dressed it for the bombastic occasion, keeping it oriented in the tumultuous yellow ocean. I felt the sense of home strongest on the caramel edge of the lardon, but it was in the squash—sweet and demure beneath the warmth of chili—that I first tasted heartbreak.

Halfway through, the dish started to cool, leaning away from heat and into the shishito's grassiness. Harissa always goes to bed early. Once cool, it receded, stopped making itself known. Its body faded away, leaving only the front-loaded kick of the chili oil and shishito to animate the spice profile. I missed the harissa already, wished it would stay a little longer at the party. The salt, on the other hand, was ready for an all-nighter, still playing with the sweetness of squash.

As I approached the bottom of the dish, the oil darkened and browned. Shishito stems were littered everywhere, claws extended like a jungle cat. The peppers had refused to separate under the edge of my spoon, and left my thumb and forefinger smeared with orange and red oil. I pushed them around with my spoon, scraping the last few bites I had room for, leaving the base of the bowl a calligraphic swirl of oil and risotto spatter. The orange flecks felt like fingerprints in pottery. Yellow and black, all heat gone out of it, as empty as I was full.

It was time to say goodbye to our bold aunt. She hugs Alison and me goodbye, her chunky jewelry poking my cheek. The last we see of her is a big, obvious wink. She has a rare gift, to be so large and unruly while walking so lightly in the world. Somehow it all hangs together beautifully.

I want to be that way. I want to be seen and understood, but I often don't know how to invite the right sort of attention. Even when I do, that same attention can feel unbearably intense. So instead I try to make art that reveals myself, that evokes the feelings I feel, showing what I want and fear and hope for. When others look at the art and respond to it, I feel seen. Even if they don't understand, I can look at the art and see myself. It's proof that I exist, that I'm not alone or invisible. I have done this all my life.

Here Alison has done it for me. We've eaten my feelings together. But I don't want to see my feelings in the risotto. I just want to hang out with my cool aunt, see her being herself, being happy. Sure, she and I have some things in common. But it’s her differences that give her strength, and that gives me permission to have differences of my own. 

I want to have a physical body that shows who I am. I want to be relentlessly present, with colors and shapes all my own, full of flavors that seem like they wouldn't make sense together but that after years of slow-cooking meld together into something both nourishing and exciting, familiar and strange. I want to embrace my own unexplained mysteries, wear them like a badge like she does. 

Whatever people expect of me—even what I expect of myself—is always a little bit too narrow. Better instead to step outside of those expectations, bring my entire joyful mess.

Alison’s risotto lives that way. Maybe I can too.