The Portable Edible

Upper Austria: a story recounted to me last night, over Chinese tea

Irmine's father's father died in the First World War, leaving his widow and six children. Three years later, she died as well; the six went to their aunt, who had eight children of her own. There was never enough to eat; Irmine's father survived on the meadow and in the forest, having taught himself which edible grasses and wild mushrooms were good to eat.

He became the gardener on an aristocratic estate in Upper Austria; his wife, along with four other women, was a cook, and she prepared the food that he raised. Irmine grew up with neither refrigerator nor television. Root vegetables were kept through the spring in the cellar, buried in a heap of gray sand. She saw how the aristocrats lived, observed their fine china and beautiful gardens, and developed her own good taste.

Irmine remembers filling tin cans of wild raspberries with her grandmother; the can was so large, and the berries so small, that it seemed their work would never be done.

Irmine can swim a lake for three-and-a-half hours, and can hike the whole day long, hunting for wild strawberries and chanterelles. She knows which plants make good salads, and which flowers adorn an Easter table.

Her husband lost the upper half of his foot in a motorcycle accident three months after they met. She had to teach him to walk again; his pride made it difficult. They traveled to Italy and hiked in the forests for hours, slow and patient; he was comfortable in a place where no one knew his face, and no tongue spoke his own.

Sometimes half-sentences of Irmine's are amputated by my weak ear for Austrian-accented German.

"Listen, I once had a client, a man, who weighed seventy-five pounds. He was older and in very poor health, the famous owner of four hair salons. After his wife died, he became unable to take care of himself. The way he ate! The man didn't know how to eat, I tell you.

"He would sit down at the table, two mobile phones at his ears, reading a newspaper, legs not even under the table! He ate his food in whole gulps, not even pausing to chew! I had to teach him to sit, you know. At first, we just turned off all the machines, and sat.

"Then I taught him to eat, like you teach a child, I'm telling you. How to chew, how to hold fork and knife, how to cut off bites and savor them for a while. We made nutritious meals, but he didn't know how to start with that. We had to start right at the very beginning.

"Like a child. Where is he now? Oh, I don't know. I think he was one of those hopeless cases, I'm sorry to say. No wife and no love in his life. Seventy-five pounds, his body close to giving up. I think for him, it's almost the end."   

Some Ethiopian workers on a friend's organic farm near Vienna taught Irmine their national coffee ritual. "They roasted the green coffee beans right there in the field, over a small metal pot of coals, and then ground the beans ... everything fresh, you have to see it to believe it."

She collects river rocks from the Danube, varnishes them, and piles them in tall glass vases, speckled here and there with raw amber or turquoise stones. "I know what's beautiful, you know. I know what makes people happy. Nature ... and love."

Dandelion spring

Skipped yoga today to watch the sunset, then paused on a hilltop.  Glistening wisteria to my right, shading the last purple blossoms of a magnolia tree -- to my left, against the sky, the skeleton of a Golden Gate Bridge.

Bitter dandelion tea in the morning to cleanse my tongue.

Vernal equinox, sun slanted against jasmine blossoms, rose geraniums sweating slightly in the warm noon.

Pasta with dandelion greens, Swiss chard, walnuts, and aliolio in the evening of the first day of Spring.

1/2 lb pasta (spaghetti, tho I chose fusilli)
1/2 c fresh walnuts
1 clove garlic
pinch salt
1 tsp olive oil
1 head Swiss chard (green leaves), washed but not dried, and chiffonaded
1/2 bunch dandelion greens, also washed and not dried, chiffonaded

1. Set water and generous pinch sea salt to boil. I am going to try this with bottled water next time; the water here tastes of chlorine.
2. In a skillet, toast walnuts until fragrant, then chop. Set aside.
3. In mortar, mash garlic with pinch of salt until it is a paste, then add more olive oil to make a smooth emulsion.
4. When water comes to a boil, add pasta.
5. Heat a small amount of olive oil in a large skillet. Add greens and just barely wilt.
6. When pasta is a little underdone, drain, but don't shake off too thoroughly. Add to the skillet with greens, toss in walnuts, and stir thoroughly. Then add garlic paste.
7. Taste for salt, sprinkle with fresh black pepper, and serve.

This would be good with walnut oil, but it goes rancid so quickly ... I hesitate to recommend.

Peanut and ginger stew while it rained

Today, crushing coriander for the stew, the smell of Russian bread wafted back to me: held inside a wooden bread-box, a square brown loaf encrusted with whole coriander seeds.  A moist, deep brown.

We walked through the waist-high cannabis growing on the side of the road, along the dirt path from the middle school back to the little wooden house wherein lived my three women: Galya, Zhanna, and Roza.

In the shed hung bunches of birch leaves, pale grey-green, upside-down and patient. 
We took a bucket and trudged to the back of the garden to collect last raspberries: peppers hung red, eggplants black from stalks.
Galya pulled up the floorboards to reveal a cool space under the house in which she kept her jars of garlic-infused eggplant and wild strawberry jam.
"I remember summers in Kazakhstan where we'd go into the forests and collect buckets and buckets of wild strawberries."

I remember when I woke up next to you, on that first morning, you had a chapped cold sore on the edge of your pink lips. Your thin red hair lay curled across the pillowcase, and your eyes looked all around: up to the little window across which the sun rose and set, over to my small table on which sat a ficus tree and a water kettle, and then to my face.  "Guten morgen, du schoene," I said.

It was the title of a book in my parents' bookshelf. 

I don't think you'd heard that before; you smiled wide and creased your eyes at the corners.  You have soft hands, quick hands that can pull the corners of bedspreads down in a second, can catch little creatures like frogs and grasshoppers, can pull beetles from the undersides of the potato plant.

My room was cold, with the light open wide through the blue window.  Outside, the trees turned yellow and then stick-like and bare, and then pink and green, according to season.  Those are all the colors of your heart, especially the pink and the green.

You have the only pair of eyes that matters in a room of dancers, all fluttering their fingers and gyrating their hips: your eyes can flash black with your soul.  Your heart can flash green when you hear my music.

You are my love who is not my lover.

== The urge strikes and leaves, like a slap on the cheek.  Tea leaves and camellia blossoms, another renewal of spring.  This year, spring seems to jest with my heart and my soul, that little blue-gold sphere I hold in my belly, dreaming and re-dreaming.

== Dream, dream, dream.  We shouldn't spend all our days dreaming, because we don't appreciate the present moment.  When I cook, I take notes of the sizzle of jalapeno and ginger in the pan, the sudden heady rise of steam that stings the eyes ... whipping the peanut butter around in the jar, stirring in the oil, licking the spoon until there are crumbs on the edges of my lips ...

== At least this is better than shopping.  Heart beats, you eat, and you sleep.  Perhaps you read a poem to get you by. 

All of poetry is enclosed
in the spaces between words:
all of spring
in the night hours between stars and sighs.

Peanut and Ginger Stew (from the New York Times)

2 small Japanese eggplants, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch dice
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander (best if you use whole berries and crush in mortar & pestle)
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp cayenne
1/4 c peanut oil
2 inches fresh ginger, peeled and minced
1 jalapeno chili, seeded and minced
1 onion, chopped
1/3 c tomato paste
1 small (14 oz) can tomatoes
4 c water
1/2 c natural unsweetened creamy peanut butter
1 zucchini, cut in quarters lengthwise, then sliced 1/2-inch thick
juice of 2 lemons
1 bunch coarsely chopped cilantro leaves
Sea salt to taste

1. Toss eggplant with 1 tsp salt in colander; set aside for 30 min.  Rinse, squeeze out all moisture, and set aside. In a small bowl, combine cumin, coriander, turmeric, and cayenne; set aside.

2. In large pot, heat 3 Tbs oil over high heat.  Fry eggplant until lightly browned and just tender, about 5 minutes.  Transfer to plate and set aside.

3. Add remaining 1 Tbs oil to pot and heat over med-high heat. Add ginger and chili and cook, stirring for 30 seconds. Add spices, stir for 30 seconds. Add onion and cook until softened and translucent, about 5 minutes (may need to turn down heat). Add tomato paste and cook, stirring, 1 minute.

4. Add diced tomatoes, water, eggplant, and a sprinkling of salt. Bring to a boil and cook 5 minutes. Place peanut butter in medium bowl, add two ladlefuls of soup, and stir until emulsified, then pour mixture back into soup.

5. Reduce heat to a simmer, add zucchini, cover, and cook 20 minutes, until vegetables are tender. Turn off heat, stir in lemon juice and cilantro. Taste for seasoning.

It's good with hot white rice, but then it needs more salt. I think it would be good with a puffy flatbread.  Serves 8.

Saturday thoughts

NO SURRENDER

struggle against the body:
surrender not to fingers,
or to the sweet breath of
red wood
morning sun,
copper leaves,
gingko blissful in the yellow
of your Russian leather loafers. 

i sigh,
and turn away.
your breath burns:
Mary cauterized into my left lung.
draw the breath in from there.

now turn, sigh,
and hum a melody
distant to the Deus,
to all the hoyas,
the lianas --
the creeping vines.
i'll leave you here,
smiling, sliding
down the pitcher plant's soft throat.

Creamy

"A cowboy, and a cowgirl.
They sat on a bench by the lake.
They tilted their heads,
until the books they had read
Spun out and selected a mate."

What have I been cooking in my butcher-block of a kitchen?  Pale gold is the kitchen, bold walls like marigold when the sun shines.
I made:
Cream of Broccoli Soup

4 heads broccoli, chopped up into very fine pieces
(stems included, not just the gaudy florets, not
just the petticoats, let's take the legs too!)
1.5 cups whole milk
1.5 cups chicken stock
1 onion
1/2 tsp ground mace

1. Saute onion in butter until it is soft and translucent.  Add 1.5 cups hot milk and heat until very hot, but not bubbling or boiling.
2. Add the chopped broccoli, and then the chicken stock.
3. Add 1/2 tsp ground mace. Cook, keeping at a simmer, for 30 minutes or so, or until broccoli is soft.
4. Can be pureed at this point (I think it is a good idea to avoid whole pieces of onion).

Berkeley: the first cherry blossoms on Tamalpais Road, huffing and puffing up the stairs past a gray-haired woman talking on the telephone
while her two mini-schnauzers nipped at me ankles

melted shreds of Cheeseboard pizza cheese, Gregoire frying up his onions, the low roar of coffee grounds burnt at Peet's (this is the original
Peet's, just down the street from Chez Panisse where last night a limousine, license plate GRAND16 was parked ...

I passed by
the dessert menu was boring)

What doesn't bore me is Ici, Mary Canales' rather new ice cream shop on College Ave. at Ashby:
no waste: the tasting spoons are metal; the eating spoons,the cups for sparkling or plain water are organic cornstarch
biodegradable water-friendly the works

Butterfatty

Cardamom-semolina shortbread, chocolate espresso cookies the size of thimbles, dainty for tea or after a tuna sandwich.

"Yeah, the cool thing about this place is that there's, like, no waste," says the girl behind the counter to a suitor ...
and the police cruiser always parked outside,
this is our beat:
"Yeah ... um ... gimme a scoop of vanilla and for
him, peanut butter ..."

Pink peppermint the color of the blooming trees
all along College Avenue:
enjoy both in spring.

Ici
2948 College Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94705

I woke up and thought of chocolate cake.

Woke up with the taste of Nigella's "Pantry-Shelf Chocolate-Orange Cake" on my tongue.  I've variated this cake:

With plum jam, on the day before my Russian doll, Miss Capricciosa, set out for her three-day train journey to St. Petersburg.  I roasted spiced nuts in the oven; we brought Swiss bread from the Mälzer Bakery down the street -- a firm, accomodating half-rye bread of a Swissman; we bought sliced Emmentaler and Gruyere and Gouda cheese and a box of Manner wafer-cookies in their tablecloth-pink wrapper.  The cake comes out very low, very dark, with a deep mineral flavor from the plums

reminding me of December 23rd on the market streets of Prague, our noses were both red and running and we went into the supermarket and bought Golatschen as they are called in Vienna -- cream-cheese pastry circles with a dollop each of Quark or Topfen, poppyseed, and plum jam in the middle;

with orange marmalade, my first attempt in a white kitchen in Nicosia, Cyprus --
cleaning out the pantry indeed --
we were about to move away, and there sat one dusty jar of thick-cut English marmalade (Nigella says thin-cut but I like the chewy caramelized nubbins)
in the wintertime in Cyprus, all the orange and clementine trees bear fruit, streets bombarded by rolling orange baubles

with lime marmalade, most recently in Berlin, served on New Year's Eve in a Neukölln Altbau apartment while the firecrackers blasted outside, Turkish and German kids alike ...

"Do you want to try?" one asked me as I screeched and dodged the sparkler he'd just thrown.  He had soft, round cheeks.
"I'm scared!" but I held out my hand, and he lit the wick with a small, expert hand, and I tossed the crackler and sparkler and whizzer to the sidewalk
we all popped and fizzled with laughter

and we made it to the party, where one of the guests ate three slices of my cake, and I had to eat one even though I wasn't hungry --
fuel for further festivities!
The lime made a caramel tang all along the edges of the cake, which blistered a dark brown, and the inside was moist and sour-juicy.

Sour and chocolate ... I wonder what Mr. In't Veld would say.

I prefer to use Lindt Excellence 70% when making this cake, although with the lime variant I used 60% milk chocolate and the rest 80% dark.

Pantry-Shelf Chocolate-Orange Cake
from Nigella Lawson's "How to be a Domestic Goddess"

½ cup unsalted butter (113 g)
4 oz bittersweet chocolate, broken into pieces
1 1/3 c good, thin-cut orange marmalade (can use apricot, raspberry, plum jam)
½ c sugar
Pinch of salt
2 large eggs, beaten
1 c flour
8-inch springform pan, buttered and floured

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Melt butter in saucepan; when nearly completely melted, stir in chocolate.  Leave for a moment to begin softening, then take pan off heat and stir with a wooden spoon until butter and chocolate are smooth and melted.  Now add marmalade, sugar, salt, and eggs.  Stir with wooden spoon until well-mixed, then beat in flour bit by bit. 

Put into pan and bake for about 50 minutes or until skewer comes out clean.  Cool in pan on a rack for 10 minutes before turning out.  Serve slightly warm, with crème fraiche, or cold.

a blustery day: tea-time

Bitter teas: dandelion (Löwenzahn), stinging nettle (Brennessel), artichoke. I drink an aperitif called Cynar that I bought in the basement of the Wertheim department store – one of those German city department stores with fancy, luxurious market halls downstairs. I first discovered the market hall in the Munich Kaufhof aged 14 and spent many afternoons there, browsing the candy aisles for my childhood favorites after school: Schokobananen – marshmallows proudly infused with real Chiquita banana pulp, dipped in dark chocolate grease – and bars of whole hazelnut (dark) and almond (light) nougat. This bar, in a gold wrapper, reminds me of an ingot and melts richly against the tongue like foie gras or pork belly.

Berlin: November weather in January. We took a walk along gravel paths, past Lucius Clay’s house in which the Moroccan ambassador now resides, looked up at the pale, fragile branches of beeches and birches and decided we would make bitter teas.The belly of the beast: that’s what this rainy day is all about. The sky is colorless, formless, and its weight seems to be its only characteristic. A cool wind blows through the empty branches. 

I chose dandelion. Marketed in Germany as “fat digestion tea,” it mends the stomach ailed by marjoram-infused Bockwurst or too much fatback-steamed sauerkraut. Grünkohl floating in so much bacon fat it has melted into nothing is the way to make kale into a treat.

Here's an aperitif treat: a whiskey glass with three ice cubes and an inch of Cynar, a rich reddish-brown and tasting of a Roman sidestreet, or maybe of the pale awning fluttering outside a bar/trattoria on the Via delle Quattro Fontane

Teas and their fitting vessels:

Green: jasmine out of small, glazed porcelain sky- and apple-colored cups

Sencha first flush from a tall, thin china mug with a lip thin as parchment

Black: strong black Turkish tea from a small glass

Arabic tea from glass mugs with glass handles, floating two cloves and a cardamom pod

Milky from a round, wide Rosenthal tea-cup and saucer, white as the moon in which to float the milky brew (although the BBC says that the U.K. is one nation that does not benefit cardiovascularly from its tea-drinking habit), eaten with chocolate-dipped butter cookies that are lowered and raised, dripping, into and out of the tea-cup

Silky smoky Lapsang Souchong made steamed whole milk, drunk from a blue-and-white patterned Russian cup, so thin you can see the shadows of your fingers on the other side.  Lips grazed along the gold-plated rim

Korean: a great bowl, like an aquarium, in which you can see the pine nuts, walnuts, and herbs swim

Fennel-Anise-Caraway: out of a huge, heavy, thick-lipped Starbucks Cyprus mug, potbellied and scraped by steel wool stains

Linden tea (ihlamur) deserves a pretty, narrow tea-cup papered in strawberries, with a matching lid

This list is inconclusive evidence of a tea-drinking feast.  You will have to believe me when I say that it took place on the starry Persian carpet of a certain Grunewald living room. Outside, the streetlights have not yet turned on because it is only two in the afternoon, although it could be six in the morning or ten at night, under this woolen blanket. 

Dandelion tea tastes pleasantly of a plant’s metallic blood, of the salty green coursing through its transpiring veins. It is not as strong as stinging nettle tea, which I drank one spring in such copious amounts that its tonic function was impeded by my constant, bright-yellow urination and midnight nausea. “Can you harm yourself with too much nettle tea?” I asked the lady behind the herb counter.

“No, it’s an excellent spring tonic, and it’s got a lot of iron in it to boot,” she replied.

My mother always feared too much iron in foods, and spent a great deal of time in the multivitamin aisle at the pharmacy, reading the labels of all the Flintstone vitamins.  If it were iron-enriched, she put it back on the shelf with frustration.

Our housemaid loads up our dishwasher with more precision than even my father can.

“Hello, Mary Beth. This is Carole.”
“This is Joyce.”
“Oh, Joyce, hello. Is Daddy there? Can I speak to Daddy?”

Education by indulgence: In't Veld Schokoladen

Two stores, one in beautiful tree-lined Prenzlauer Berg and the other on a street off Nollendorfplatz.  In't Veld has taught me about chocolate in the way we best learn of life's greatest gifts: education through indulgence.

Mr. In't Veld writes that he now uses "kakao" instead of "bitter" to describe his dark chocolate confections, because the latter reduces the flavor dimension of chocolate to just one.  Even though bitter is the best flavor, I forgive him because his house-brand chocolate is excellent, and because his taste is right.  "Because it is bitter, and because it is my heart." 
In English, we've always called it dark chocolate.  Dark: moonlight, midnight, deep rich soil, coffee sulking underneath the crema.

In't Veld's housebrand Criollo is smoky and rich, the perfect combination of snap & melt. Slit open a fig and stuff with a thin dagger of Criollo...

a dagger-shape is the best shape for a hunk of chocolate, sharp enough to pierce a kidney ...

and half a walnut. The smokiness highlights the vanilla notes in fresh California walnuts, and concentrates all the sunlight that's stored in a fig. 

Eye moves along the chocolate-colored shelves to the array of Zotter bars.  All "bio and fair trade," the inside of the wrapper says, and encourages you to cut through the chocolate with a sharp knife, then savor the flavors bit by bit. And those flavors!

Bergkäse mit Walnüssen and Weintrauben Alpine Cheese with Walnuts and Raisins: Early December in Klosterneuburg, Austria.  We sit before the fireplace, curtains drawn to reveal the orange lights and spires of Vienna.  A cigar smolders in the crystal ashtray.  Cheeks still burning from the cold, we warm our fingers in our pockets and savor small bites of this chocolate, infused with enough delicately pungent cheese-cream to make us smile.
Ween devoted an entire album to the felicitious combination of Chocolate & Cheese.

Grammelnussn: Chocolate and cracklins.  The last time I ate fried pig skins was in the backseat of my parents' car as we drove back to Munich from the nearest Army base, trunk loaded with white plastic bags of American groceries.  The Zotter variation leaves neither fingers greasy nor head cloudy.

Stutenmilch mit Hafer Mare's milk with oat flakes: My best friend was raised in Kazakhstan and grew up eating horse sausages.  She spoke casually of the famed fermented mare's milk.  When we walked through the streets of the university town in which we met, we shared bites of this bar, cheeks flushing red from the wind and our delight.

Rose Basilikum Rose-basil : basil-drenched marzipan, a layer of rose gelee, then sweet milk chocolate.  She moved out, and took the dog too!  This was one of our last desserts in the Berkeley house, all four of us basil-breathed, watching the wine echo in our dusty glasses.

Other highlights include the Laurent Gerbaud mendiant chocolate, whose fruity high notes blend well with the buttery cashews, pine nuts, dried cranberries, and other surprises. 

It feels good to snap into a bar of house chili chocolate under winter's homogeneously grey sky.

In't Veld Trinkschokolade (drinking chocolate) consists of dozens of silky brown pearls that roll lazily through the fingertips.

Last but not least is the beloved Domori Latte Sal, milk chocolate crunchy with salt crystals.  I just wish this bar were a bit thicker. 

Finally, both branches of the Berlin store are knowledgeably staffed.  My precious Criollo is out until February (the house brand is created here in Berlin, using a blend of Domori raw materials and the witty Berlin hand), but the saleswoman introduced me to a fine substitute, an Indonesie criollo made by the French chocolatier Pralus.   

The store is worth the bumpy double-decker bus ride out from the Grunewald, legs itching on fuzzy seats and the Christmas lights all along the Ku'damm flashing as we hurtle past.  Education through pleasure, try / try again.

www.intveld.de
Dunckerstraße 10
10437 Berlin
Mo-Fri 11-20, Sat 11-18
0049 30 48 62 34 23
e-mail: info at intveld dot de

Winterfeldtstraße 45
10781 Berlin
Mo-Fri 11-20, Sat 10-18
0049 30 23 62 32 56

e-mail: w45 at intveld dot de

Fennel teatime

Fenchel-Anis-Kümmeltee is what we, age 15, drank when it was snowing outside in Munich. We bought pretzels at the bakery and came in from the cold, turned on a talk show on TV, took off our shoes and socks, turned up the radiator, and sat in the kitchen, sipping honeyed fennel tea.  We ate English muffins spread with melted butter and more honey.  Then we went upstairs and had sex for hours.  Yes! Honey bodies honey bread honey tea honey wine

 

The blend of anise, fennel, and caraway draws to mind a certain liqueur called Kümmerling, which the only gay bar in Göttingen serves as a chaser to every poor long drink.  It tastes like the soggy lips of a buck-toothed man.
                                                                                                                                                               
                                                                                                                                                            
I hurt the buck-toothed man's feelings; he would like you to know that he has since undergone corrective dental work and now proudly bears a set of perfectly-straight pincers.

I met him in a bar one night in Berlin,
"Where have you been all my life?  who are you?  where do you come from?" he asked,
and I was only 19 and had only heard that once before in my life, so I fell in love.

OH, now he's really pissed, because I'm sharing with you that night in the bar: our waitress with slash marks along her wrists, a Czech film in b&w projected against the grey wall, half-capped boys sliding their fingers up and down glasses of beer in tune to the music. 

He had brown, curly hair and it was into this hair that I sunk.  First my fingertips, then my fingers, then the first chunk of my palm (up to my life line), and he wrenched my hands out before they could slide anywhere further ... anywhere dangerous, like maybe his third eye, or his crown chakra.

So he ripped out my hands, and laughed until summer.  "Until October," I said.

But we never ran marathons in the nude, fueled only by fennel tea, because he never returned to Berlin to see me.  I moved to Germany many times, but I fell in love only twice. 

So to fennel tea I return, especially after those mornings during which I eat bars of chocolate, cookies, and chocolate croissants all in a row

or after those nights in which the spray of cold rain hisses under car wheels, water transforming the streets into dark, smudged mirrors

or after a grey morning of ice-skating, ankles still shaking.

the bathhouse

What to eat after bathing.

Yesterday I tried out the Hamam (das türkische Frauenbad) in Berlin, Germany:

Layers of women stripped peachy-pink, the rosy flush rises in their cheeks the moment they strip off their jeans, hats, scarves and wrap towels about their soft bodies.  Breasts and bellies, lavender-scented handcream and silk scraping mitts.

Scrape that body!  Girlfriends sit in the tiled niches, pouring hot and cold water into large stone basins.  They dip their golden bowls in and out of the water, letting it flow down their backs and shoulders.  They extend their legs, muscles rippling in the thighs, and pour the water gently from knee to toes. 

"The Americans were so funny last time," the girl opposite me says to her friend.  "We were in the sauna, and we'd just poured in the Aufguss (scented infusion), and they just walked in and left the door wide open so all the steam escaped."

Her friend smiled.  They both smiled at me.  Co-conspirators in the women's baths, this seems to me an ancient tradition inspired by the Romans at least.

In another room, the proprietress brought around a silver platter of cut fruits and the smell of citrus rind soon wafted up to the mosaic niche:
a niche of silver tiles,
blue tiles, purple clouds,
three round skylights already dim with evening dusk,

and the warm stone in the middle on which I lay for some time, thinking about another bath, in another country:

Cherlak, Omsk district, Siberia, August of 2005,
the banya.

Oh, the banya!  Could there be anything more delightful?  The steam and heat, knowing that Gala and Roza and Galya’s dead husband built the wooden slats and walls with their own hands … a shed next to the house just for bathing, a little foyer in which to take off shoes and pants and to tie up one's hair --

Enter the steam room, sit down on the slats for five or ten minutes until

Sweat dripping from every crease and crevice, train grime and vodka toxins all slipping away into the sweet-scented wood.  Jeanna tossed some beer into the fire and it steamed maleficently before filling the space with the warm yeast of baking bread.  Dip head into water, soap, scrub with the loofah, Jeanna does my back and I hers. 

Galya comes in, handkerchief tied around her head, shirt off but still wearing her floral skirt.  She reaches up for the switch of dried birch leaves we've dipped into the bucket of boiling water once, twice, until the leaves begin to soften and release their tender perfume.

Yes, tender the birch perfume.  In springtime, children slit the bark of birch saplings and collect the pale-yellow elixir in buckets.  Cok beryozovi -- birch juice -- we buy it in glass jars, but I can only dream of the way the April juice tastes ...

it must be like a deer nibbling the first green buds of spring, or the first yellow blades of sunlight that warm the hardened black earth, or curling your toes under when you step out of bed on the first morning of May, no slippers just bare feet on the bare ground...

Galya takes the birch leaves, whispers me onto my back, starts at my feet.  She shimmies the leaves against my toes, up my legs and along my thighs.  When she reaches my chest and neck, the heat is almost unbearable.  The steam's delicate scent belies its brute strength to knock all the old air out of my body, filling me instead with warmth and wood and Galya's strong hands reaching into that second, secret layer of my dermis.

Emerging wet and warm and elated, I slipped into a pair of star-spangled pajamas and at 2 AM there is no greater joy than being steam-slicked and slightly trembling from the heat, eating sour little apples from the neighbor’s garden and slices of sweet melon from Uzbekistan, as orange as a pumpkin and, inside, pure white.

After a Turkish bath, which is more gentle, I recommend a glass of strong tea.  Here is the Russian style, which is very similar to the Turkish:

1) Set your electric water kettle to boil.
2) When boiled, take a ceramic pot, rinse out with hot water, and fill with three or four generous tablespoonsful of black tea (even Lipton).
3) Fill the teapot and let steep for 3 minutes.
4) When the tea is very dark and strong, pour an inch or two into each tea-cup and, depending on taste, add enough hot water from the kettle to fill.
5) Add sugar.  One cube for the dieters and the milquetoasts, two for everyone else, excepting the especially joyful, who get three.

Drink your tea piping-hot with fruit: apples, which you serve on china plates with a knife; clementines or oranges; melon if in season.  I have seen pickles floating in glass jars, but I haven't tried these yet and do not know if this is traditional.

Then you lie down on the bed, wrap yourself in a blanket, and dream for twenty minutes.

Hamam, in der Schokofabrik.  Mariannenstr. 6, HH.  10997 Berlin. 
Telephone: +49 30 615 14 64.  www.hamamberlin.de