The Business of Bewildered Braise

I promised good vibes. I also had to reply to this letter. You'll understand.

Before I begin, the big Thanksgiving news: I’m going live with the brilliant Clare de Boer of The Best Bit the afternoon before Thanksgiving at 1pm EST! We’ll be solving your cooking mysteries in real time. Can’t tell if the bird is properly seasoned? Gravy won’t thicken? We got you.

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Before you read this week’s letter: it deals, obliquely, with death and despair. If you’re not up for that right now, just join me live next week!

Dear Tamar:

Since the death of my brother, birth of my daughter, and death of my father—all within the last two and a half years—I’m aimless and confused. I want to be a braise. Then I’d be, at least, actualized. Wouldn’t it be nice for someone to dress me up and stick me in the oven?

-Bewildered Braise

Dear Bewildered Braise,

I’m no stranger to despair. I’m intimate with it. I’m also no stranger to the language of despair, which has its own logic and cadence. I’m hoping my fluency in it makes you feel less alone. Let’s note, though, that the language of despair is tricky. It overlaps with descriptive prose. I ask you to be clear about what you need and call here if it feels right.

I’ll start by saying: No. No it wouldn’t be nice. You wouldn’t be a good braise. You’re too stringy, too unseasoned, too unripe.

I present this as a culinary fact. I ask you to acknowledge it. You may be comforted hearing me say it—agreeing, after all that you are meat. You are meat—you and me and everyone we know, sacks of meat, strung by tendon, hung on bone. And meat, as we know, is useful. A sentient animal wakes and sleeps and may even dream. An animal has hungers and needs. Not meat.

The issue is that your meat has other, non culinary, uses. Your hands, for example, can lift things up, carry them, and set them down again. In my deepest despair, I remember leaving my NYC apartment on Thursday nights, murmuring: “lift things up, put them down.” I took my hands on the subway. I took my hands onto a van run by the Coalition for the Homeless. My hands lifted up plastic-wrapped sandwiches. Lifted cartons of juice. Opened and closed the van door.

Your feet, also—which would take so long to cook through, you might run out of cooking gas, or blow a fuse—have uses. Humans need to be driven from here to there and back again. Humans whose own feet are tired and whose backs hurt, carrying heavy things. Your feet—which again would be a complete disaster, gastronomically speaking—would only have to depress and release the gas and brake peddles, and other people’s feet and backs and hands would be spared.

I once ate lamb’s heart cooked by the St. John chefs. I’ve eaten beef heart at Cafe Mutton. Those are fine uses of heart. But it sounds like your heart is in heavy use. It sounds like it’s breaking and trying to mend. I would advise letting it keep doing what it’s doing.

Your body is meat. But here is another way to consider it.¹

Question

BY MAY SWENSON

Body my house

my horse my hound   

what will I do

when you are fallen

Where will I sleep   

How will I ride   

What will I hunt

Where can I go

without my mount   

all eager and quick   

How will I know   

in thicket ahead

is danger or treasure   

when Body my good   

bright dog is dead

How will it be

to lie in the sky

without roof or door   

and wind for an eye

With cloud for shift   

how will I hide?

Dear cook, you must keep your body, your house, your horse, your hound. You must stay out of the oven, out of the frying pan, out of the fire. You have uses yet. You need your house, your horse, your hound to find them. You need it in order to prepare simple braised beef, and gather people to share it.

Dear cook, I return here to the language of despair—which is just another way of saying “poetry.” Dear cook, as Gertrude Stein said, Believe me, for my meat and for myself.

1. I read this poem in Sarah Moss’s memoir, My Good Bright Wolf. Be tender with your heart and meat sack if you read the book.