We set off early and Peter was keen to know all the details, and scribbled down everything I said in a brand new notebook. I did find myself wondering if I was ready to teach him; could I really transmit what one does in the Zen kitchen? The dharma of the kitchen is rich and profound, but it is also personal, deep and silent.
Even the practical aspects of the kitchen didn’t feel easy to communicate. Some cooks plan carefully, using Excel spreadsheets of recipes and quantities, but I have never been like that. Each retreat the menu changes, according to season, or the type of retreat. If a new type of grain is available in the local wholefood shop, I will include it at the last minute.
We both gasped when we started the drive up the track towards the house and shared a deep feeling of coming home, common to many who visit the Maenllwyd. Autumn here is glorious. It has an added splendour, as if the abundance of the season is palpable in the landscape, textured in the foliage of the trees, in the clusters of pine cones on the ground. Summer grasses and flowers linger on, decaying with grace. After we had unloaded the car and found places to sleep, I began the practical instructions. There was a lot to do. We started to unwrap the crockery from its coverings: the previous cook had not covered the crockery properly so we had to wash it all.
I showed Peter how we set the tables: each participant gets a plate, a bowl and a mug. A piece of kitchen towel is placed between the bowl and the mug. We found knives, forks and spoons, and the laminated prayer cards with the text for the grace on each side: one to recite before the meal; one to recite after. We put a card by each place.
We tidied the back kitchen, which was full of boxes of vegetables. We hung canvas bags from the wall to hold bread loaves and many other things we could not fit anywhere else. It looked like a huge amount of food, but we would be cooking for a big group. John was not very well. He had intense pain in his back, and was waiting for an operation. Fi was the Guestmaster.
The Rayburn was also in need of a lot of attention; she was playing up and was not as responsive as usual. The Rayburn is definitely a she, a sinuous enamelled woman with a warm heart, who is emotionally needy. You have to tweak her and talk to her and be attentive to her needs. She will only respond if you fully connect with her.
I remember one retreat during which I could not get her to heat up, no matter what I did: she was just not reaching the hot temperature needed to bake or roast. I tried all the troubleshooting suggestions in the cook’s manual, without any success. After a couple of days, I went to talk to John. “I think it is you she wants. Have you been ignoring her? Can you go and kneel by her and see if you can persuade her to work properly for me?” He laughed and agreed to have a look. He came into the kitchen, opened both doors, had a poke at each corner to break the clinker loose (clinker is the hard cinders which get lodged on the sides of the burner pit and become solid). Kneeling in front of her, he touched her, gave her his time, but failed to distinguish anything technically wrong with her mechanism. Shortly after he left the kitchen she ignited and her attitude changed. She worked a treat from then on.
On this retreat, the thermometer on the oven door had stopped working, so we had no choice but to engage with her cycles of warmth and intense heat. From this tiny and temperamental oven we had to bake bread for lunch, two cakes a day, and cook supper. Knowing how and when to fiddle with the vents to get her hot, when to add coal, when to do the riddling, all became part of the flow. Rather than planning things in order, we had to act according to the way she was working. When she was hot, we baked the bread; when she was at a lower temperature, we baked the cake. The Rayburn is the perfect example of the kitchen’s sensitivity and sensuality, and it was a challenge to share my understanding of her with Peter, whilst allowing him to learn for himself.
Peter kept his notebook to hand at all times, and scribbled notes as I showed him how or what to do. He told me he was not looking for the artistic details just yet; he just wanted to know the basic operations and the logistics.
I grinned at this. Artistic detail is not separate from the basic operation and logistics in the rudimentary Zen Kitchen. Art flows right into it and takes over as the only way possible to cook under such conditions. But I didn’t want to tell him that. I was going to put all my efforts into showing him, silently, “doingly”. I wanted him to notice. Lighting a flame underneath a wok full of golden olive oil and knowing the right moment to drop in the onions is not a science, nor is it empirical. It is an art of sensing with your heart.
The kitchen has three gas rings for cooking, two small ones and a substantial size ring on a stand which is ideal for the big wok. I never rely on the Rayburn’s hot plate because the space is permanently taken by the three enormous kettles, which are kept full and hot at all times. The kitchen was designed by a tall cook, so shorter Tenzos often have to stand on a piece of railway sleeper to stir the food. The height of the rings taught me to work at heart level with the cooking; I learnt from a gut feeling rather than from instructions. Peter understood this pretty quickly when, as we started a soup base, notebook in hand, he was trying to count the lines on the gas knob to see what height of flame I was using to heat up the oil. I asked him to put his notebook away and stand by the heat, to get a sense of it. “You will know,” I said. “And while you are doing that, without letting it become a thought or a preoccupation, be aware of the needs of the Rayburn. Don’t forget that there is bread dough rising above it.” If you lose yourself in an individual task, if you linger too long in a moment - and believe me, after a couple of days even onions frying in a bit of olive oil can make you feel like you are tripping - you will miss the flow of everything else. Peter came to gather precise data; he was also striving to learn how to do it perfectly, with no space for mistakes. In the Maenllwyd kitchen things go wrong, but everything always works out well in the end.
The first dishes we made together were courgette, lemon and coconut soup, and lemon cup cakes. The first batch of cakes burnt completely and went in the compost bucket. We started again.
We made the usual first day supper of mushroom stew and polenta with a green salad. Peter used batavia leaves, Turkish radishes, and toasted sunflower seeds. The dressing was delicious: we used cold-pressed sunflower oil, cider vinegar, pink mustard, a bit of honey and salt.
Peter followed me as I instructed the kitchen team. After the washing up was finished, we started with the food preparation. It is important for the team to wait for instructions before starting on a new task. That way I can show the helpers what shape the vegetables have to be chopped, as I try to imagine how I would like the soup to look, and which vegetable is to become the focus point.
Work periods in the kitchen are often frantic during the first half of each retreat, until people settle around the preparation tables and begin acquainting themselves with the way I show them to chop onions, with how to look at vegetables in order to connect with the way they would like to be chopped. The kitchen is a perfect place to practice mindfulness, awareness, a perfect place to practise Zen.
I remember one particular retreatant, a university student. He was a very keen Buddhist scholar. When he learned that he was to be part of the kitchen crew, he was mortified: he told me he was an intellectual and that kitchen work was too menial for him. I didn’t respond. I have come across a lot of people who bow and follow the etiquette of flow and sitting and consideration to others in the Chan Hall, yet at the table they forget that they are practising, they forget that the table is also an altar, that practising Zen is not just for the cushion.
The intellectual practitioner worked half-heartedly in the first few work periods. I could sense that he felt that he was missing out on something by chopping onions, emptying teabags from teapots, or sweeping a floor. Each work period I reserved a bowl of flat parsley and during the last fifteen minutes or so, I gave him the parsley, asking him to hold each leaf, break it off the stalk and tear it along the veins. I asked him to do it tenderly and told him that I was not in a hurry. For three days
I gave him this job, and on the fourth day, instead of the parsley, I gave him something else to do. He looked disappointed. What about the parsley? Later, when the clappers announced the end of the work period, he asked if he could do his afternoon option in the kitchen instead of spending time in the library. He chose the kitchen as his option from then on and thanked me at the end for showing him that he could be meditative in the menial, that there was so much to be learned from a parsley leaf.
Peter and I were like two cooks in a cave, immersed in the practice. Alone in the house while the rest of the group was in the Chan Hall meditating or chanting, we cooked and prepared and cleaned. Before the retreat I was slightly apprehensive about sharing such a small space with another person but we managed not to bump into each other, getting into flow with everything else. I quickly became grateful for the teaching of teaching someone else.
John’s pain got worse, so he took to staying in his room until breakfast. I offered to give him gentle back massages with essential oils: he accepted with gratitude. He was in a strange and beautiful space, in obvious pain, but he continued to give the most inspiring talks. Peter, Fi and I noticed how his teaching was changing. He talked about awe and wonder, about opening up, about reclaiming the child-like mind.
The skies were incredible, so full of stars it felt like it was about to fall on top of us. Fi and I sat on the bench outside the Chan Hall in silence and took it all in: the Milky Way and a few shooting stars.
We made minestrone soup using tiny fennel seeds and a lush savoy cabbage. We topped it with tons of fresh basil.
Quick minestrone
Serves 6
I often take my time when I make soups and I try to avoid using tins, but this recipe works really well for a hearty lunch. If you don’t want to use chick peas, pearl barley works well, as do tiny shapes of pasta.
2 medium onions
2 medium carrots
2 medium leeks
5 stalks of celery
½ Savoy cabbage
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, finely sliced
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 heaped tbsp chopped fresh rosemary
2 400g tins of tomatoes
1½ litres home-made vegetable stock
3 good handfuls of fresh basil, torn
1 400g tin of chickpeas
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Chop or slice all of the vegetables into bite-sized pieces.
Put the olive oil into a warmed, heavy-bottomed pan. First cook the onion until soft, then add the carrots, leeks, celery, garlic, fennel seeds and rosemary. Sweat over a medium heat until just tender (about 15 minutes).
Add the tomatoes and cook for 2 minutes. Add the stock, bring to the boil and simmer for 15 minutes.
Add the basil and the chickpeas. Simmer for a further 15 minutes. Add the cabbage, cover the pan and simmer for 10 minutes. Taste and season.
Fi was left in charge of leading the retreat while John was resting and I was moved by her approach to teaching. I had a beautiful interview with her in the hut, in which I described a moment by Tara in which I felt my heart expanding, spilling out through my inner contours and trickling down the steps. For a flicker of a moment, everything became my heart, until I rationalised it, went “wow”, and in that second, the moment was gone.
By halfway through the retreat we were all pretty exhausted. The weather remained fine, but Peter and I never managed to find the time for a walk, let alone a rest. One afternoon, at tea, Fi and I were sitting on the bench outside for a few minutes, soaking up the sun, and Peter walked past us and asked, humbly, “Is it OK if I brush my teeth?” It was 4 in the afternoon. We smiled. He went to the stream and brushed his teeth and I could sense his tiredness, his back pain. We had many different coloured bunches of beetroot: orange, golden, stripy, and the conventional purple ones, so we decided to make beetroot cake. We followed a basic carrot cake recipe, swapping raw, grated carrots for the intensely purple, grated beetroot: we chose to use the conventional colour beets to make the cake. It was beautiful to see the juice colouring everything as we mixed the batter: the oil and eggs and sugar mixing with the beets like a magenta mess, like a kids’ experiment. When we added the flour the colour softened. We thought we would be offering a pink cake, but as we sliced it, we discovered that it was green, grassy, unusual, and wholesome. It was definitely a cake for tasting the earth.
Beetroot cake
200 g wholemeal self-raising flour
2 tsp mixed spice
1 tsp baking soda
175 g dark brown soft sugar
2 large eggs
150 ml sunflower oil
Zest of an orange
200 g raw beetroots, peeled and coarsely grated
110 g sultanas or raisins
100 g pecan nuts
Pre-heat the oven to 200°C.
Grease and line a 10 inch cake tin.
First place the pecan nuts on a baking sheet and toast them lightly in the oven.
Whisk the sugar, eggs and oil together in a bowl with a hand whisk, making sure that the sugar dissolves well.
Now sift the flour, mixed spice and bicarbonate of soda into a separate bowl. Add the beetroot to the emulsion of sugar, eggs and oil, followed by all the remaining ingredients, apart from the pecan nuts. Mix well, and pour the mixture into the cake tin. Scatter the pecan nuts evenly on top of the cake. Reduce the oven temperature to 170°C and bake the cake on the centre shelf of the oven for about 40 minutes. It should have risen well, and be firm and spongy in the middle.
We also experimented with some of the Indian ingredients we had bought in the new Asian shop in York. Peter tweaked salads and made dressings and we discussed with John the theories behind a good porridge. We all agreed that the oats must be fresh and that you must add salt to the soaking water. We found this amusing: a German, an Argentinian and an Englishman in deep discussion about Scottish gruel. John was often in the house with us, which was a treat. He would sit in his chair, saying very little, but his presence was touching, frail and impermanent.
I took a short walk before tea on the fifth day, as I needed to let off steam and find my centre. I picked berries and brown bracken, which looked like milky chocolate. The mossy trees were dropping their leaves, getting ready for a lighter time. The skies were cloudless. Everything and nothing made sense. Two ravens flew high above me, their gargantuan beaks shining like liquorice sweets.
We made a lentil cottage pie topped with a root vegetable mash of organic parsnips, carrots, celeriac, suede, and butternut squash. We left it slightly lumpy, in case people wanted to decipher all the elements in what they were eating. We cooked the Puy lentils with onions, garlic, tiny cubes of carrot, cumin seeds slightly toasted, a bay leaf and lots of tamari sauce, which gave it a wonderful richness.
Braised lentils and lentil cottage pie
Lentils develop an earthy and rich flavour when cooked. Wholesome and perfect, the circular shape represents to me the infinite goodness of this humble legume. Before embarking on any lentil recipe, I like to toast them lightly in a pan. This enhances their smoky flavour and also allows you to spot any small gritty bits or broken lentils and discard them. After toasting, place the lentils in a colander or sieve and run cold water through them.
For braising, you will need whole lentils, so Puy or Castelluccio are best - you need them to be cooked through but retain their bite.
Serves 6
345 g Puy lentils
1 large onion, peeled and cut into long thin strips
1 carrot, peeled and cut into small chunks
3 stalks of celery, cut into small chunks
1 red chilli, some seeds kept, chopped small
3 small cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped small
A bunch of parsley
3 fresh bay leaves
A small bottle of Pilsner beer or a glass of white wine (optional)
⅓ cup tamari
2 tbsp extra v
irgin olive oil
½ tsp cumin seeds, whole
2 cloves
Very concentrated home-made vegetable stock
½ tsp smoked paprika
Sea salt and freshly milled black pepper
In a heavy-based pan big enough to hold two litres of liquid, heat the oil and add the cumin seeds, the cloves and onions. Cook them over a gentle heat until the onions are translucent. Add the garlic, carrots, celery and chilli, and allow to sweat under a lid.
Add the lentils, and mix well. Add the paprika and stir, then add the beer/wine and allow to evaporate. Add the tamari.
Add enough stock to completely cover the lentils and bring to the boil over a medium heat. Slow cooking is very important. If left over too high a heat, the gentle flavourings of all the elements will go into shock. Add the bay leaves and about half of the parsley.
Lower the heat and simmer until lentils are cooked but still retain a bite, approximately 30 minutes. Check the seasoning, adding sea salt and freshly milled black pepper. You might need to add more stock and tamari; be with the lentils and you will know how to tweak them.
See if you can find the whole cloves and remove them before serving. Add the remaining parsley. You can serve the lentils with rice, pearl barley, or on their own with a spoonful of Moorish aubergine dip (see p 143) or yogurt.
You can also turn them into a cottage pie. Simply make the lentils, omitting the cloves and smoked paprika, and add a few more cumin seeds and half a teaspoon of cumin powder.
For the topping you need a good root vegetable mash. I like to make this using organic root vegetables; the taste is sweetie-like and quite wonderful. Here I give you an idea, but feel free to use other roots: sweet potatoes, butternut squash, swede. Linda, who tested this recipe before the book was published, experimented with two layers, one of mashed parsnip, one of mashed sweet potato.
500 g carrots, peeled and cubed
500 g celeriac, peeled and cubed
500 g parsnips, peeled and cubed
Tales From a Zen Kitchen Page 7
