2.(3-4) Imperial Suite/A Kitchen Philosophy

Slim Novel 2 - http://adventuresofkimi.blogspot.com - See Homepage


3. Three-Oh-Three

Each floor of the Imperial Hotel is oriented about its north-south 3-meter wide hall. The more expensive room faces west and, from its window looking to your right, the northwest, one can see the Imperial Palace Park with its surrounding moat and black rock outer wall.
   Suite 303 opens into a luxury space, good for a Hollywood Party. From the corridor one comes into a foyer where coats and hats can be stowed and a large oval mirror against a wall at a small table, where women can view themselves, and a small private washroom. The entrance to the main room has an arched ceiling with fine white-gauzy centrally slit curtain.

While Kimura dallies in the kitchenette – on your right as you walk into the main room –Ali walks about the room. The décor is ornate French Second Empire: The 4-meter high ceiling assures against claustrophobia while an arabesque cornice gives an aesthetically pleasing separation of the walls from the ceiling, with the walls colored a dark green and the ceiling a soothing moderate blue. A large window in the northwest far corner, to the right on entering, looks down on the Palace.

   Ali is taken aback. The militarists had recently cloaked the Emperor in patriotic symbolism dictating no one is to be above Him. She pulls the window cord and a velveteen-purple drape drops.

   Looking up, she notes at center of room a chandelier of clear glass crystal prisms surrounding 3 electric globes that diffuse the light. Beneath it is a round couch, an ottoman, full of soft red, green and blue cushions. “Ooh!” she shouts, jumping up and down on the cushions. Then she runs to Kimura. Unlike many young women, Ali is immensely interested in eating.

   The refrigerator is well stocked. She notes 2 steaks on plates with garnishing and raw red onion flecks. They only need to be cooked on nearby electric stove. She sees a package of mixed salad ready for transferring to plates and also red-brown raw tuna sashimi slices, small songbird eggs and more delicacies that need to be kept cool. She spots some shiny black caviar and starts to sing squeakily.

Caviar comes from virgin sturgeon

Virgin sturgeon, very fine thing

Virgin sturgeon need no urgin’

That’s why Caviar’s m’favorite sing.

   Kimura claps and says “More”.

   She bows. “One squeak’s enough, Kim.”

   On the counter are 2 bowls: one full of fresh green apples, grapefruits and kumquats - the very small oranges you eat whole at one chew; the other with bananas, mango and a small papaya.
    A small bar with 3 high bar stools is set against the wall. Lifting self onto one of the stools, Ali samples a gold-plated cocktail shaker and finds the martini mix marvelous and next to it, quinine water, beer, wine, brandy and a bottle of scotch. “When do we get stewed, Kim?”
    He shakes head and she thinks: That’s what I like about Japanese men, Bossy.

   The drawers in the kitchenette are stocked with things to cook. As soon as she sees the varieties and sizes of the pasta she jumps up and down, claps and squeals “Ooh! If there’s one food I wanna become enslaved to, let it be spaghetti. Do you like Italian spaghetti, Kim?”

   “Like it? My dear young lady! We invented it. That fellow Polo stole it.”

   She faces him and touches his right shoulder shyly. “Just who-all do you know to rate a suite?” Then she frowns “Have you done this before?” and laughs. “Well, if you have, don’t worry; I’m not the jealous type.”

   “I am a scholar not a gigolo, Ali-san. The front manager knows I am a top political reporter and he is giving us the Emperor Suite gratis expecting I will reciprocate with mention of the hotel as best place to stay for VIP.”

   They make tour the suite. The bedrooms each have a large canopied double-bed; beside the bed, two ornate sofas, a desk and chair, and in the corner an attached bathroom.

4. Kimura’s Kitchen Wisdom

Ali comes out of her room wearing a yukata, the wrap-around Japanese bedroom gown, hers with flower design and colorful sash. It fits her slim 45-kilogram, 1.6-meter height snugly, revealing small breasts that seem virginal from lack of droop and firm nipple outline. A yukata is worn with nothing but skin under: one can do a quick turn of sex or eating or sleeping or sitting on toilet.

   Kimura is in kitchenette. Ali sits at the bar counter on a stool and watches with comment. “Tell me, Kim, howjya come off makin’ meals?”

   He replies, “Food preparation is an extension of a utopian idea. Allow me to demonstrate with the pasta.” He turns on the cold water and fills a globular glass pot.

   “Hey!” she squeaks, “Are you crazy? Glass!  Why dontchya cook it in a metal pot? And the water? Why not start with hot water since you’re gonna have t’boil the spaghetti?”

   He assumes his professor tone. “First principle in cooking is not to boil in metal pots. What I assert now is based on recent research not yet published but that I know because I have a friend at the Medical School who is doing an autopsy study on the brains of old persons that die in hospital. He observes them while they are alive and gets a history of how the food they ate was cooked. And he finds that persons who eat much from aluminum-pot cooking or from aluminum cans show changes in the brain associated with senility compared to no changes in persons who have ingested no or little aluminum tainted food. He has even correlated it with blood aluminum level. It is not like arsenic poisoning where you get sick quick; it is slow. You would not know anything was wrong until you reach age 60 and develop a Parkinson disease tremble or lose your memory for names. People think inheritance or hardening of artery is the cause but the study shows it is high aluminum in the brain cell. Iron too. The brain cells with Parkinson disease are overloaded with iron granules.”

   As he talks he fills the glass pot three quarters with water, puts it on the range and turns up the electric. “The reason I use cold water from tap instead of hot is that hot water dissolves more toxic metal salt than cold. That includes iron and lead. I like my cooking water hot but healthy so no hot tap water.”
   He takes a box of spaghetti from cupboard, tears open one square end, dumps the spaghetti cylinders on to his left palm, starts counting five cylinders at a time out loud and stops at 100.

   “I don’t believe it!” she shouts. “You’re like the guy in Oliver Twist, y’know, the workshop dictator who limited Oliver to one cup’a gruel.”

   “It is not cheapness.” He grasps the bunch of 100 spaghettis, breaks it into thirds and drops all into the pot just then coming to a boil and stirs around with chopsticks.
   “I prepare my food by the numbers counting up to what I know will be just below the normal satiety level when we finish eating. Most cooks cook too many Calories. My way stops that.”

   “Well, I don’t mind not overeating,” says Ali. “Tell me more of this fascinating philosophy of cuisine.”

   He turns off the electric heat under the frothy, just-starting-to-boil water.
  “Note I do not slavishly follow instruction on box.”
   He hands it over and she reads: Bring water to boil, add teaspoon of salt, put in the pasta and boil at low heat for 20 minutes.

   He continues, “I cook pasta by using heat accumulated in the water from the boiling. As soon as this water comes to boil, I turn off the heat and allow the pasta to simmer in the hot water with occasional stir. In 20 minutes it will have cooked itself.”

   “Really?”

   “Indubitably. I base it all on my kitchen experiments.”

   “Kitchen whats? Now I hear everything. Is your Ph.D. in culinary science?”

   “Political science,” he says and gives the pot a stir. “Now about the garnishing.” He takes a package of agaric, rinses off the light tan mushrooms in tap water and chops each one into morsels. Then he picks up a fry pan, puts in vegetable oil and heats it up to simmer, drops in the mushrooms and follows with cuttings of one onion and a small eggplant he had first skinned. He puts a lid on the sizzling mix, tunes down the heat and turns to his fruits and vegetables, not forgetting to lift the lid off the pan every minute to give the mix a shove-around with skillet so it does not stick to bottom.
   “I make the garnishing with no tomato sauce or ketchup because I desire to eat the pasta, not the salt and spice of sauce and ketchup, which is bad for kidneys, heart and brain. Also note we are not having meatball or any other meat with our pasta, and that includes fish too.”

   “Oh, I t’ought we would eat dat steak I saw before.”  She lapses into her Bronx talk when hungry.

   “No. I wish to demonstrate a vegetarian meal so I can say why I prefer it. It is not because meat is unhealthy to eat, which it unquestionably is. But the time has come for us humans – at least the smart ones like you and I; that we highest animals start stopping meat eating. I am not going to claim I am vegetarian. Living in this social world in the social whirl, it is not easy eschewing chewing meat. But whenever I get a chance to cook, you will not see fish, fowl or red meat. I am tired of living off the wholesale retail murder of a living thing that has its own consciousness. I know slaughtering animals for food is not going to stop because of my puny gesture but I want to take a stand before I die. Then I can write for future people: I raised my one little voice and my two little hands to carry out three little words: Stop killing animals.”

   Realizing how soap-boxy he has become, he looks away. Ali is silent then she comes to him and slips arms about his neck in tight embrace and her lips press his. She slowly separates self, steps back, and stands away just looking quietly at him. “I love you Kim. Please join my life and never go away. I like who you are and I am going to learn your system.”

To read next, click 2.5 Sixty-Nine