Zimmer: MAXHOSA Socks & Feasting at Aphrodite's Table

3

The morning off to a decidedly resolute start, Amelia walked briskly down the hill into the wind, carry bag in hand, and headed into town. Her usual editing work had been a little slow that month, and she was anxious to get started on her pressing list. The local singular second-hand bookstore would be the first port of call.

“Hi. Um, where could I find your cookery books?” Amelia asked the woman at the counter.

“Bottom end of the second shelf to the left, dearie, just before the kiddie’s section,” the darling elderly lady replied, with a kind smile and a passing glance up from the Jane Austen collection held so comically close to her face it was almost touching the tip of her eccentrically bespectacled nose, most caricaturish, with her dishevelled greying bun atop her head and her hippie tunic and prayer beads, only a Converse sneaker cosied up to a MAXHOSA sock and peeping out from behind the counter to betray the general 70s bygone dishevelment.

Amelia thanked her and quietly slunk away to keep the shopkeeper from any further disturbances, leaving the latter to get back to her period fiction.

Finding herself in the right place, Amelia scanned the spines of the books in the lower level shelves of the cookery section, her resolve beginning to flail in the midst of the choices that lay before her. Finally, on hand and knee, at the tail end of the last shelf one of the spines jumped out and piqued her curiosity.

“Aphrodite’s Table by Mathilde Bellamy,” she whispered to herself. “Let’s give you a look then.” She had to admit she found the title titillating.

Making a note of where she’d found it, Amelia sat on a nearby stool. The front cover was an intimate black and white of the author supping from a scallop shell in a high-backed dining chair so grand it lent her an almost stately, though irreverent, air. The dust-jacket itself fraying around the edges in spite of Bellamy’s picture of perfection. Amelia turned to the blurb at the back of the hardcover.

There she was met with a watercolour illustration of Bellamy in a vivacious red cardigan, forest green mini skirt and knee-high white go-go boots, holding a basket full of strawberries, set against a backdrop of irrepressible ivy and jasmine and black-eyed Susans, her mini threatening to get lost amongst the menagerie of plants. A laugh in the face of the black and white cover, belying the true author.

Dearest reader, welcome! Collecting and treasuring as I have over the years, the recipes that have brought me together with fine friends from all across the globe, I invite you to join me on a culinary tour de force as we dine and worship at the table of Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty, passion, pleasure and life’s bountiful gardens. If you find that you are living a life without appetite, then you are living no life at all. So please come and let us eat together, my newfound ‘belle amie’. Mathilde with love

Amelia read the blurb twice over. She regarded the author again. Pixie-esque features and mesmerising brown eyes, that Amelia imagined fluttered like butterflies beneath her girlish bangs beset by a coquettish bob of dark curls. The watercolour illustration almost resembling a Keane’s ‘big eyes’ painting. A publisher’s French wet dream.

But then again, there was something so seemingly unaffected and natural in the author’s bemused expression. An upward, devillish turn in the corner of the rosy mouth. Something that said, should you ever meet in person, Mathilde Bellamy could and would become one of your dearest friends. A true confidante. The kind of friend to drink and be merry with until the very last drop was sucked dry from the bottle, long into those magical wee hours before dawn, when all the rest of the world was asleep.

But Amelia checked herself, fancifulness already getting the better of her.

She returned again to the cover.

Perhaps it was the candid front cover photograph of the author caught in the throes of culinary ecstasy, the root of it all a succulent scallop. It reminded Amelia of her mother’s own unadulterated love of shellfish.

Maybe that’s what did it.

The book some kind of a means, a conduit, with which to teleport her to a new and better version of herself, while at the same time, promising to transport her back to fonder times. Perhaps the whimsical illustration on the back, for Amelia who craved just at least a little more (any!) whimsy in her life. Why couldn’t she have it all?

She looked back on those generous big brown eyes, as Mathilde Bellamy seemed to affirm that yes, of course, all her heart’s secret longings should be fulfilled. And for no more than the cost of chunk change for a second-hand find.

Amelia delighted in its slightly dog-eared pages. Lifted the book to her nose and drank in the scent of a book well-travelled. With history. A story within a story.

She turned to the first page and found an inscription in fading brown ink. Cursive.

To my only, Margaret. My Margie. ’05

You know I only married you for your money, and certainly not for your cooking! Thank you, Maude!!

With love, John. Just John for you. Forever.

Then and there, Amelia decided that another stray simply had to find a home with her.

“I’ll take this. Thank you.” Amelia presented the woman at the counter with the hardback.

Transaction concluded, she marched confidently back out into the world, leaving the bookshop like she was that little kid again, her first triumphant cartwheel in the bag, beaming from ear to ear. She hugged her new purchase close to her chest, in her cotton carry bag, all the way out of town and up the steep incline back to her cottage, as if her very life depended upon it. For all she knew it just might well depend on it. At the very least, there could be no going back now. Of that much, she was certain.

No more banality, no more humdrum, she thought and jangled her house keys in tune to a happy melody in her head, one of her Nana’s old favourites, stepping over the threshold of her front door and calling out to Ailuros.

“Honey, I’m ho-ome!” But the cat was nowhere in sight.

She made herself a fresh mug of coffee and got comfortable on the sofa with Bellamy’s book, opening it to the introduction. The author was grinning back at the camera, in a pretty floral apron, armed at the ready with an industriously large wooden spoon.

The picture slightly yellowed, the page a little greasy and beset with a wine glass stain. But its subject matter triumphant all the same.

Eating, even for one, should be, at its best, a celebration, a sensory and seductive exploration of orgasmic delight. No less so than a tryst between secret lovers enfolded in satin sheets, or a kiss stolen from a sweetheart. Do not underestimate me when I say that good food is always fuelled by passion and desire.

When dining alone, in our dreary times of ready-made meals and drive-thru culture, it is for a woman an act of revolt. Believe me, emphatically, that there is nothing quite as forlorn and in need of a warm embrace as a woman who has lost her appetite. Or worse, a woman who plainly denies it. Appetite begins in the home and with the self, with the meals we come to languish over and delight in, bite by bite, and spills deliciously out into all we do in life, making it all the sweeter for it.

To my mind there is no greater symbol of insatiable appetite than the mighty Aphrodite, risen from the ocean bed, the patron goddess of ladies of the night for her scandalous reputation of endless lovers as she reigned on earth and in the heavens above. And should we not all be recreated in her own image? Insatiable, and proud of it. Especially as women of a modern era.

So please, pour a glass of wine and raise a toast. Be your own seductress. Call on music. Dust off your most provocative ensemble. Whatever makes you feel truly good. There can be no shame in the kitchen. Only indulgence and pleasure. And then you may start in the kitchen but not a moment sooner.

Some of the dishes in this book are so simple even a small child could manage them with little to no effort. Others will ask more of you. More of your time. But sometimes all the better for it, like the slow dance and subtle flirtations between strangers who have only just met but know, come full moon, they will finally undress and ravish each other, morsel for morsel. The voracious spirit in me welcomes the voracious spirit in you.

Now let us embark with a little breakfast, or as I like to call it, foreplay!

Perhaps it was a little early for wine. Not that she had any. But Amelia was otherwise determined to follow Bellamy’s instruction to the letter. First, music. She found some Fleetwood Mac on YouTube. Something about Stevie Nicks always made her feel free and loose. Like dancing in the dark. Even if it was only just a little. It was better than nothing.

But something provocative?

She couldn’t think of a single item of clothing at her disposal. She opened her wardrobe and pulled out a dusty box of her mother’s things from the top shelf. Although she hadn’t quite Georgina Young’s hourglass figure, it was worth a look. She removed a soft cotton kimono style robe from the miscellaneous items in the box, immediately drawn to it. She’d loved that robe on her mother. Its great billowing sleeves. A silken and sensuous lavender tinged sky blue with such lovely bright orange and pink blossoms that even the honeybees in their garden would oftentimes mistake them for the real thing.

Dining in a robe.

She considered it, hesitant at first.

Was it silly? But then again, what was wrong with some silliness, some fun for a change? Surely there had to be some perks to working from home.

Playlist streaming, and in nothing but her albeit uneventful knickers and an old cotton robe, Amelia was finally ready to play something of the part that Bellamy demanded of her, hoping that with the passing of time she would feel less of a fraud. Braced at the stove, she turned to the next page.

Oefs en cocotte (or “Egg in a pot”)

There are few things as decadent to my mind as a soft, golden yolked egg and this dish is a treasure for me, as I have loved it since a little girl. Sometimes nostalgia makes a dish all the more sumptuous. That said, if you are a newcomer to this simple but luxurious treat, I hope it will charm you as it has me and mine over the years.

Amelia checked she had the necessary at hand. Salted butter for greasing. A tablespoon of cream for the egg. A pinch of salt. And of course, the egg. Finding a little bowl in the back of the cupboard, Amelia brushed the inside with the butter with one of her mother’s old paintbrushes, giving it a thorough wash first, and cracked an egg ever so carefully into it. She found a little bit of leftover cream in the fridge. From her last sad attempt at pasta. It smelt fresh enough. Thankfully. She sprinkled the salt over the egg and added the tablespoon of cream before popping it into the oven. Well that was no work at all, she thought to herself.

Maybe it was as easy as Bellamy assured readers.

Ailuros sauntered into the kitchen, made curious by all the activity. Amelia bent down and stroked the feline’s glossy coat. Ailuros was just about the most glamorous stray she could’ve imagined in the cat’s own way. For all its shambles of a patchwork of colours and certainly no pedigree or papers. (Although hadn’t she read it almost impossible to declare a cat a thoroughbred, so much unlike dogs in their roaming lives…?)

Amelia took the opportunity to steal a quick peek. Female. Definitely female. She would have to take the cat to the vet for a check-up and possibly a snip. The last thing she wanted was a pregnant stray on her hands.

But first, breakfast.

Next, it was on with the buttered toast soldiers while the shirred egg took another five minutes in the oven. No sooner had the toast popped up, and the oven timer buzzed, her egg ready. Feeling rather chuffed with herself, Amelia plated the humble feast on a wooden tray with a cup of milky, sweet rooibos tea, just as she had loved it with her eggs as a child, and carried it all out to a sunny, protected corner at her patio table.

Creamy and gooey and oozy, it was every bit as delicious as Amelia could’ve wished, the orange yolk spilling over the edges where she mopped it up with her salty, hot buttered toast. Ailuros meanwhile had followed Amelia out onto the porch, poised like a wildcat surveying all the corners of her domain.

Amelia wanted to curl up inside that moment forever. In that very moment she felt more like a Young. She felt more like her mother’s daughter. It had been too long. Far too long. But finally, she’d arrived. Tentatively.

Fortified by the events of the morning, Amelia stacked the dishes neatly in the sink and returned to her bedroom, to the box of her mother’s things. She’d put most everything into storage at the time of her mother’s accident. Except for a few of her mother’s belongings. It had all been too painful at the time.

But this morning she’d suddenly remembered a painting that she’d packed in the box. ‘Portrait of a Woman in Red with Blackbird.’ She rummaged through its contents until there it was. The woman had long, gleaming Prussian blue hair.

“The most beautiful blue in the world,” her mother had told her, wistfully. And who was she to disagree.

It had always reminded Amelia of the kind fairy with turquoise hair in Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinnochio, as if the painting too was watching over them. The figure sat tall in a red dress, a garland of red carnations in her hair, with a blackbird on her arm. Her mother had said that the woman often visited her dreams. It was the only portrait her mother had ever done in all her prolific years. Georgina Young believed that people made for poor subject matter.

“Too self-conscious,” she would tell Amelia. “Incapable these days of simply being, as natural as the sea, or a ripe piece of fruit hanging heavy on the vine. Even cats and dogs make for more interesting subjects.”

But this painting had been important to her mother. She once admitted to Amelia that the woman gave her courage. Amelia had found this confession almost unreal, never thinking for once that her mother could be anything but the very pillar of strength and courage. That her mother ever so much as doubted herself.

But there it was.

This strange figure, the conjuring of her mother’s dream world.

Amelia dusted the small oil painting off with her laptop cloth and placed it up against the wall on her chest of drawers. That way, she would see it every morning when she awoke. And perhaps this woman would give her courage too. She’d lost her only loved ones, and known only death in her relatively short time. First her mother, then her Nana. And eventually too, her Papa, her maternal grandfather, whom she’d cared for and loved when there was no one else left. But maybe it was time to find it in her heart again. Even if for now it meant only herself and a cat.

That’s a start, at least, Amelia consoled herself.

Ailuros jumped up onto the bed, rubbing her face against the corners of the box, content and purring gently. Amelia leant back against the pillows appraising the portrait of the woman in red.

One empty space filled with art and one elegant breakfast, she concluded with a smile, deciding to spend the rest of the day in bed with Bellamy’s book. For her list to work she would have to dedicate herself to it every day, without fail. Tomorrow she would attempt a new dish, perhaps one that demanded more of her. And, of course, there was the matter of a plant.

She remembered the splendid greenhouse her grandfather had erected. Her dear Papa. From his noble staghorn ferns to his pretty little pansies and proud arum lilies so much like mothers embracing their newborn infants. It had been a wonderland for her growing up. An anniversary gift for her Nana, her grandfather was always pottering around in it, tending to the whims of each and every plant.

“You see,” he would tell her. “This one is female to be sure. Loves to be told what a beauty she is every day. This one on the other hand is male. Tells you exactly what he wants but can be far too stubborn for his own good.” While Amelia was doubtful that she could ever be as masterful a green-thumb as he was, there was no harm in a hopeful attempt.

“The very least anyone can ever do is try, don’t you think, Ailuros?”

But Amelia had lost her audience as the cat was curled up in the box, sleeping soundly and all but oblivious to her new master.

Aphrodite by Nata Lia