Pomelo

Do you pomelo?

Those pink segments do not come from an ordinary ruby grapefruit. They come from a yellow-skinned soccer ball whose pith is about three quarters of an inch thick.

You get rid of all the pith and then you skin the membranes from the fruit, and then you separate the pieces. Each pink teardropped cell is taut and fat, and strangely dry on the outside. Inside they are sweet, with no grapefruit bitterness (which I don't mind, actually - the bitterness, I mean).

(Oh, and nevermind the leeks - they were for a green vichyssoise...)

I am on a watercress kick and last night's salad was those segments, fresh watercress and slow-cooked shallots. Which are a revelation - cook them for as long and as slowly as you can stand, and they turn brown and deliciously crisp. Add a little salt and sprinkle. The dressing can go either way, depending on the rest of dinner - SE Asia, with lime for sourness and fish sauce for salt; or sherry vinegar and olive oil.

Either way, pretty wonderful.

Have I mentioned that watercress is almost beyond super-food?

And the daffodils??? Another story. January is a revelation.

Seaside in a courtyard

In early December, in the small white-washed holiday and fishing town of Paternoster, we stayed one night, after having made a special there to eat at Oep ve Koep. We slept at The Oystercatcher's Haven, above the bite of white beach and its turquoise ocean. To reach our room we had to enter through a courtyard and its garden of bleached shell and pale driftwood, rusted iron and smooth stones. And some plants, too.

We slept well.

Courtyard Garden

Coming soon, to a blog near you...

Shopping for tropicals

Canal Street, Chinatown

The road to Dim Sum Go Go

...is a grey one, in January.

Proceed across the Brooklyn Bridge, whose Sunday renovations had the entire Brooklyn-bound side closed to traffic. We could hear the consequent chaos from the Manhattan Bridge. Temperatures were mild. Both of us removed our coats and sausaged and tied them on top of the Frenchman's new camera bag on his back. 

See the lone water tower on the left of the bridge, just behind the South Street Seaport.  You don't read about it anymore, but generators are what brings electricity to many of these buildings, still, post Sandy. Their electrical innards were fried by the salty storm surge. Vince's work skyscraper just south and a little west of here (that's to the right) still runs on generators. Picture its six elevator banks on generator power. 

The love locks are back. I photographed them a while ago. Recently a website linked to that post because why? Because the website owner makes custom love locks, complete with inscriptions. Whatever.

During the renovations - still ongoing - most of the locks were cut off so that the ironwork could be painted. Their keys are thrown into the water below after the lock has been attached.  

About two miles from home, Chinatown. This is East Broadway. No relation to Broadway itself, and confusing for newcomers.

Sunday is prime time at Dim Sum Go Go, the joint whose food has remained consistent for as long as I have been eating there, which is...ten years! It was packed, but we did not wait more than ten minutes for our table. The crowd is one of the best mixes of New York I've seen, anywhere. Old Jewish men, tattooed Hipsters, mixed couples, pretty Chinese girls with impeccable manicures, United Nations of friends converging at one of the large round tables and sharing bright green plates of steaming bok choy, snow peas, platters of steamed buns, towers of bamboo dim sum baskets, endless cups of tea and cold Singha.

Below, from bottom left - lotus-leaf wrapped sticky rice and chicken, snowpea dumplings and roast duck dumplings.

                                                             Afterwards, we walked.

I decided not to photograph the bin filled with water and big green, live frogs.

These long, skinny barracuda-ish fish looked like South African snoek.

Very interesting, above: Ginseng. "American ginseng" (Panax quinqefolius) - an over-foraged, vanishing and subsequently endangered plant in the wild. Just about $40 per pound... It is apparently cultivated in some states (according to the linked paper on alternative crops). I did not know that. Online, I encounter foragers who wild-harvest and sell it.

                                      For a few blocks the rest of the city is obliterated by otherness.

Wandering the few backstreets which have not been discovered by the tourist throngs who converge on Chinatown to buy designer knock offs.

Lunar New Year is coming: February 10th. Fire crackers and parades, The Year of the Snake (you are a snake if you were born in 1929, 1941, 1953, 1965, 1977, 1989, 2001, 2013). Don't worry, snakes are not all bad.

And if you're wondering, I am a rooster. Crossed with a scorpion. If nothing else, I'd make good coq au vin. If you can catch me...

January in New York

Cast-off Christmas trees, the remnants of December...

This is Atlantic Avenue, which we will cross in about half an hour, on our way to the Brooklyn Bridge, its mile-long passage over the East-River-which-is-a strait, and our progression to Chinatown. By the time we set foot on The Bowery below Canal we will have recovered from our breakfast of coffee and raisin challah bread and will be ready for dim sum. Juicy roast duck, steamed parsley, pea shoot. And the small roast pork buns. A tapioca-trapped egg custard for Vince, to end.

Then we will wander the streets, shouldering tourists and peering into bins of unidentifiable produce with wonderful textures and colours and doubtful smells. I will buy fruit and Vince will feel duty-bound to carry it. We will pass Columbus Park and see the vernal cherry and the old, old men playing music and the gambling around the small tables. We will make our way northwest to Broadway and Pearl River Mart to buy some more small China bowls, as we've broken several, recently. Then back south, to pick up accumulated mail from my post office box, and finally we'll dip back into the subway and ride home.

This will be Vince's weekend, as I ruined his Saturday by needing him to slave away at choosing and processing some extra images for The Book. His photos are just so good and it looks as though many of the double-page spreads that open each month will be his. I am very lucky. They capture the landscape of New York perfectly.

And that is the whole point.

Hiking in the sun

Ixia dubia

Thank goodness for South African pictures. I have not been outside the apartment in 60 hours, am developing a glassy look from staring at computer screens, tend to startle easily and am in need of a change of scene. Even a walk to the deli.

So until I emerge, here are pictures I took on a walk that Vince and I did in December on the east side of Silvermine, the area of mountains within the Table Mountain National Park that provides hikers and botanizers with a wealth of opportunities for doing both. I think this walk took us about four hours, with a light lunch packed (and two cold beers. Hey, liquids don't count as weight). Sadly, no dogs accompanied us, as in days past - the corgis aren't up to long, hot hikes (wusses) and Ben has passed on. I miss Ben.

Above and below - As I mentioned in a Cape Point post, this is the first time I have seen these lovely flowers in bloom. In late summer you find only their striking seed heads, empty of purple. Dilatris pillansii, or rooiwortel (red root). Stems are about thigh-high, flowerheads larger than an outstretched palm.

Below, more Helichrysum vestitum - these white everlastings were a constant during our brief trip.

. 

And lots of lilac-ink Pelargonium cucullatum, which one begins to take for granted, as it is everywhere. 

No-name grass, but lovely.

Below, yellow thingies. Oh. alright, I'll look them up:

Well, Cotula, but I don't know which one. My mom has a mat-forming species in her garden. I bet in the greenroof trade they'd be called "steppables"...

Gardens of Pelargonium cucullataum and Senecio...OK, botanists, I still get this wrong: If it is the genus name, do you capitalize it if it stands alone? I am entirely inconsistent about it.

And a very unusual, prostrate pincushion -  Leucospermum hypophyllocarpodendron...

Our path. You don't think you're walking very far until you look back. Same goes for life, I suppose: I did that?

Heading back from the caves we had gone to find, which Lyn first showed me, a year-and-a-half ago, when Vince was grounded in New York. Walk in the afternoon and the chances are good that the mist will catch you, coming in off False Bay.

By the time we had descended and trudged back to the car, a good hour from here, the mountain had disappeared into the white cloud. We drove home, all of ten minutes, jumped in the pool, and dried off with a cold gin and tonic.

...

Guess I'll make that deli trip. Soon.