December 5, 2007
RAÇÃO DE WAINSCOT
| HARVEY WELLES & PHILIP RAINES |
A recent recipe discovered by the famous, reclusive Brazilian chef, Joao Farragos:
INGREDIENTS
One onion, chopped
Butter
One sweet potato, diced
One can of tomatoes
One banana
One stock cube
Two banana
Freshly-grated ginger
Three banana
Two tspns balsamic vinegar
Four
Half cup of finely-ground nostalgia
Half tspn of essence of pure sorrow
Pinch of salt
Pinch of pepper
Stuff
Before starting, make sure you have the right version of the recipe. Ask your gran how she makes ração de wainscot, or whatever local name it goes under, ask her for the secret family recipe that she was sworn by a generation of grans to protect. Ask Jamie Oliver. Ask Delia Smith. Ask the Dalai Lama. Choose the version that makes the least sense.
Prepare your cooking space. Set aside a whole afternoon, but avoid weekends. Call in sick to work. The higher the level of guilt, the sharper the taste of the dish. Put on appropriate music. Play something sad. Play something inspired by the dish. Play fado. No, play the full 23′12″ of Dolorosa! , the saddest music in the world. Chop the onion to cry copiously.
Over a low flame, sauté the sweet potato in butter and grated ginger for several minutes, or until lightly-browned. Add the tomatoes, stock cube and balsamic vinegar, bring to the boil, then simmer for twenty minutes. Watch the thick red mixture bubble and slurp. Think about the origins of your planet.
Add the bananas. Think carefully about where to add the bananas.
Prepare a broth of childhood. To do this, you will need to produce finely-ground nostalgia. This can be obtained from painfully-sharp memories from your first twelve years. Photographic albums, old diaries and first tape cassettes are useful props, but more sophisticated versions of the recipe will employ private detectives and regression hypnosis. Avoid reincarnation. Happy associations are preferred, but if sad, extract the sadness using a lemon press—this can be used later to make a vinaigrette of tears for a side salad. Wear gloves and old work clothes when grinding the memories.
Dissolve half a cup of finely-ground nostalgia in two cups of boiled water. Reduce over a low heat for the next forty-five minutes. Season with salt and pepper. If available, season with autumn.
Assemble the stuff. Do so in a random order. Better yet, get someone else to do it for you. Add to the stew or throw away, as appropriate.
Prepare an essence of pure sorrow. If it is your first time with this recipe, you may want to purchase the essence directly from Señor Farragos’s online shop. But if you want to prepare your own, you can cultivate your own. Identify miserable individuals through lonely-hearts columns, soup kitchens or call centres, then break their hearts/steal their pensions/offer them proof of a godless world/etc. and crop the pure sorrow.
Puree the pure sorrow in a food-processor and sieve through a second-hand funeral suit. Add a half teaspoon to the ração.
After reduction, cook the mixture for five minutes at a high heat or in a crucible of spontaneous passion. Fierce, animal sex with strangers is recommended.
Take the mixture off the heat and allow to cool. Do not leave to settle. Nothing ever does.
Serve when you least expect it.
Consume while lying down in a darkened room. The intense rush of exquisite grief that is the hallmark of ração de wainscot is best experienced in private. Do not operate machinery afterwards—ever.
Write down your version of the recipe and pass onto someone you don’t know. Make sure you make up a lot of it.
“Food for Thought,”
Varig Airlines Inflight Magazine, March 2007
Harvey Welles and Phil Raines have recently published stories in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Albedo One and Challenging Destiny as well as The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror on two occasions. Phil lives in Glasgow and is a member of the Glasgow Science Fiction Writer’s Circle. Harvey remains silent now on his other details.