Winter Maize

 

Last Tuesday, during the storm’s brief interlude, your intrepid friends at the Linkery foraged boldly into this region’s nether depths, in hopes of seizing upon some obscure element of heretofore untapped flavor and untried value.

 

(We enter the land of happy carrots)

 

The scene: 54th and Chollas Parkway, in the wilds of City Heights.

 

The dialogue: distinctly Hemingway-esque.

 

“Here. Eat this.”

She gave me a green leaf.

 

 

“What’s this called?” I asked her.

“We don’t know what it’s called in English. In Cambodian it’s (insert exotic phrase).”

 

 

The green leaf was good.

“It tastes good,” I told her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The beauty and the danger of a field trip are one–that the educational component gets lost in the giddy excitement of breaking free of the classroom.

 

Lucky for us, most of the educational part was lost anyway, because no one from our contingent speaks Cambodian, or Swahili, or Vietnamese. (We’re working on that.) This left us free to tramp through the mud and ask questions like “What’s that?” and be satisfied with simply tasting.

 

 

(“Dude, where did you get your hat?”  “Dude, where did you get your shoes?”)

 

 

Some of the plants came with tentative names. Swordleaf, or maybe it’s sword grass, was growing in the greenhouse, along with something that Joel thought he remembered from his travels as “coolantro.” Yes, as in “cilantro”…but cooler? Which begs the question, are you cool enough to eat coolantro?

 

 

We say that you are.

 

As you might recall, the Linkery hosted a field trip of the New Roots gardeners last month, so that they could get an idea of where their produce might end up, if they chose to devote some of their individual plots to grow for us. In turn, they invited Max and Joel to visit New Roots to taste what they are already growing. Max was tied up with preparation for Tuesday night’s wine dinner; not wanting Joel to feel lonely, a bunch of us came along.

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Roots is a project of San Diego’s branch of the International Rescue Committee. It has garnered acclaim both local and far-reaching. There are eighty plots and all but one are occupied by refugee and immigrant people who now live in the neighborhood. Since last June, these two acres in City Heights have fostered the stuff of TV movies–cross-cultural friendships, cooperative learning, even enrichment of troubled youth. Case in point: the one unoccupied plot is not exactly free. Amy Lint, the IRC coordinator who got this whole show going in 2006, told us that it unofficially belongs to a group of teenage Somali-Bantu girls who were, in her words, “hanging around and causing trouble” back with the garden first opened. She offered them a plot as a distraction from trouble-causing; now they won’t give it up, though the IRC has instituted a similar gardening program at their school, Crawford High.  “They want to stay here,” she said, “because this is where all the action is.”

 

Bob Ou is undoubtedly action.

 

 

When Bob arrived at the garden, our field trip became a class party. His arms flail and his laugh rolls, and his speech is Cambodian-accented English with a Louisiana drawl, spoken at a Los Angeles pace. Also, he brought us soup made from his mustard greens. Let me say that again: He. Brought. Us. Soup.

 

 

       

 

Noeuth is taciturn but focused. She said little until we made our way to her plot, where many of the unpronounceable vegetables grow. Business made her shyness evaporate.

 

(Noeuth explains how she cooks the unpronounceable herbs–like so many things, they go great with chicken.)

 

When we introduced Noeuth to Joel as the guy who cooked the mustard greens she grew for us last month, her shy expression broke into one of sunny surprise.

 

 

 

We asked the gardeners about their impressions of the Linkery. Their reticence could be interpreted as politeness or confusion. Juan, in an effort to tease out their thoughts, admitted, “We’re a little different…”

 

At this, Bob exploded in laughter. “That’s no joke! I got there and I said, this restaurant is different–it’s sure different!”

 

Agreed. We are a little out there, not easily defined. You just have to taste and find out.

 

…Brush up on your Cambodian, and look for the New Roots produce to feature in startling and provocative dishes, from your neighborhood connect to all that is both local and exotic.

 

 

 

 

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