The shape of cure

Some metaphors manifest themselves.

Well, the weather has gotten cold and the world has gotten more terrible, and the only thing I feel like doing at all is cooking, which allows me to do all the things I do while writing (make plans, be creative, improvise, use my brain, accomplish something, etc.) even when I can’t write. I used to be able to write all of the time, no matter what was going on, but post-memoir/post-Covid writing has been much, much harder; the conditions have to be precisely right, and they almost never are. Clinical anxiety collides with depression collides with other work collides with procrastination collides with heartbreak collides with the crisis of being alive. Then you add a dose of fascism and I’m… stuck. But I recently got settled in a new studio space and opened up a lot of boxes of books that haven’t been together on a shelf in years and I’m feeling a bit more optimistic. I’m trying to build some rituals into the process to trick my mind into its old patterns. Candles and flowers and oracle cards and little figurines and hard candies. And letting myself make food to feed me and my beloved and my friends. So even on a bad writing day—which is all the days—I’ve accomplished something.

I did write a little this year—my story “Endlings” was conceived and written in a feverish pitch this spring, and appears in the brand-new issue of Conjunctions. (It’ll also be online on LitHub this week!) But what I’m really proud of today are these beautiful cured egg yolks, which I’m hoping to incorporate into some soups and pastas over the next few weeks. These luminous little pucks can be shaved like a hard cheese into or onto just about anything, and were dead easy to make. You literally just need salt and egg yolks, though you can add sugar, herbs, spices—whatever you want.

There are million guides to doing this online, but here’s what I did: Filled a glass tupperware with about an inch and a half of kosher salt. Used a chirirenge to make six deep divots in the salt, and then cracked six eggs into a bowl. Separated the yolks from the whites with my hands, and dropped each yolk into a divot. (I froze the whites in little cubes for future cocktails/desserts.) Put on the lid and left them in the fridge, undisturbed, for five days. Wiped off the excess salt, rinsed the yolks in cold water, and dried them with a paper towel. Put the yolks onto a parchment-paper-covered wire rack over a tray and left them in the oven at its lowest setting, which for me was 170*F. Kept them in there for an hour and a half until their texture was like gruyere, which was the specific simile used in the Bon Appetit recipe. Once they were done, I put them in the fridge, where everyone assures me they will last for about a month. I have other cooking projects I want to do; ones that are far more complicated and time-consuming. But I’m pleased with how easy this very small project was; how I was able to make something that will nourish me and mine, even with my limited energy.

I’ve been wanting to write more for you all, here. I’ve started half-a-dozen posts in the last six months and abandoned them because I got overwhelmed, or didn’t start because the idea of trying to write and failing just felt like too much. But today, I told myself it was okay to write just a little. Even about nothing at all. Even just about cured egg yolks.