Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.
Alden’s birthday fell on a Sunday this year. But because she taught early Monday morning–and because she actually had to prepare for her class, a graduate seminar–we decided to celebrate her birthday on the Saturday afternoon before. I’d read somewhere about a neighborhood joint in Indianapolis called Goose, The Market. We found it in the Fall Creek area of Indy, a few blocks north-northeast of downtown, at 2503 North Delaware Street (here’s a MAP).
But the Goose is not a neighborhood joint–or at least not only a neighborhood joint, although its customers did seem to arrive by foot and by bicycle and hang out on the front steps and the litte tables on the sidewalk outside. But besides that, it is also a corner charcuterie, a wine cellar, a gelato stand, and a cured meat paradiso. 
We ordered the “Tour,” a cutting board loaded with a variety of meats, cheeses, olives, homemade condiments–including a very toothsome homemade mustard–and a foot long baguette. Best of all, the “Tour’s” size is variable–it can be ordered for any number of diners at $10 a pop. Besides the baguette and mustards, ours included, among other amuse-bouches, several slices of rich black-currant terrine, a creamy sheep’s milk cheese, home-cured olives, and a buttery salami-like pork–which, now that I think back on it, probably was salami.
But enough about the Goose. The upshot of all this was that on Sunday night, Alden’s actual birthday, we stayed home. Sometime in the middle of the afternoon I began to realize that yesterday’s fabulous meal was, well, yesterday’s. And that I needed to come up with something for Alden’s actual birthday. (Ever seen The Tao of Steve? A great movie. The big lesson to be learned from it is that for a man to win the affection of a woman, he must do something spectacular in front of her–I live by this. Anyway . . . . ) All she could tell me was that she’d like something with avocado. Not much, but it was her birthday and I wasn’t going to press her. Plus, it was something I could work with.
I drove to the grocery and began to wander the aisles. I hate not having a list. I can spend hours in a Kroger when I’m winging it. So, eventually, just to have something in my basket, I grabbed a box of quinoa off the shelf. Quinoa? I’d never cooked with it, but I knew it was a grain–except that it actually isn’t, but that’s another story. Anyway, it’s grain-ish. Then I bought nearly a pound of shrimp–because they looked good–some cherry tomatoes, a bunch of green onions, a bulb of garlic, cilantro, two limes, and of course a couple of avocados. I still wasn’t exactly sure what I was gearing up to do. It must be like what athletes describe as “muscle memory”–meaning, like the athlete, I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, but nevertheless stayed in motion and hoped for something good to happen.
Back at home, I washed and cooked the quinoa (and yes, you have to wash it–otherwise there’s a kind of soapy-tasting, if harmless, residue that remains) with twenty or thirty threads of saffron and set it aside to cool. Then I salted and peppered and sauteed the shrimp and garlic in olive oil and turned off the heat. To the shrimp, I added six or eight halved cherry tomatoes, an entire bunch of cilantro, a shake or two of crushed red pepper flakes, some more olive oil, and the juice of one lime.
finished plate
And yet, it didn’t seem . . . finished. Hm. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but. So I looked through the cabinet once, then again, and the third time my eye came to rest on a little jar of whole star anise, and I did a little thought experiment. Yeah–it seemed right as rain. And they’re just so beautiful, to boot.
Have you ever seen one? They’re star-shaped–as promised–sort of ribbed and nubby, and they’re the darkest shade of maroon. And when they are crushed under one’s nose . . . mm, holy smoke. It makes it all worthwhile, that mortar and pestle that take up so much space on your counter or on top of the refrigerator, that you keep thinking about throwing out or giving away because you hardly ever use it, but which somehow never happens. Well, good goddamn thing, because you need it to crush a star anise. Get your nose right down there in it and inhale deeply. Uh? You’ll never go back. You can’t–you’re one of us now.
So I added the star anise to my dish, and then I plated it up and arranged sliced avocados over the whole thing, added another dash of kosher salt, and squished a lime that sprayed juice over both plates. Dinner time.
Later, as we were cleaning up after dinner, Alden asked what–other than the obvious–I had added to the dish. And when I got to the lime and star anise, she stopped me by reaching across the table and putting her hand on my forearm: “I’m wearing Lolita Lempicka,” she said, referring to her perfume. Alden is very interested in essences, their alchemy and effects and possibilities in the world. “Two of its components are lime and star anise.”
Wow. Like Little Todd says in Missouri Breaks, “Life’s not like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”
And before I forget, here’s a star anise:
star anise
