Tales From The Ridge

Monday, November 28, 2005

If Gabriel García Márquez had been a chef

Béchamel Sauce

This recipe was passed to me in Caracas by an itinerant Jewish merchant who told me that it was all that prevented him from being choked by the jungle whilst he searched for his father's grave, his eyes sparkling with a sadness that can come only from knowing the exact day of one's own death.

Ingredients
425ml milk
a few parsley stalks
1 bay leaf
1 blade of mace
10 whole black peppercorns
1 slice onion, 5mm thick
40g butter
20g plain flour
1 lemon

To begin with, burn the lemon. This will cause the air in the kitchen to grow so pungent that the silvery ghost of your dead mother will not enter the room, thereby leaving you to cook in peace. Then pour the milk into a saucepan - the saucepan I use was given to me by a small-breasted whore named Carlina in a Maracaibo boudoir suffocated by red velvet, but any heavy-bottomed pan will do - and add the parsley, bay leaf, mace, peppercorns and onion. Turn on the heat and stir until the slow spirallings of the liquid remind you of the melancholy descent into madness of an ancient dictator ravaged by syphilis. Strain the liquid into a jug, and do not forget to pick over the strainings for any diamonds that may have appeared.

Gently melt the butter, add the flour and stir vigorously until the mixture resembles the congealing tears of a dying man. To this, slowly add the infused milk, all the while stirring like a man cursed by the demons of lost loves. When half of the milk is added, pour in the rest and switch to a balloon whisk. Lower the heat to the kind of temperature that one might feel on kissing an innocent man's brow as he feels the unblinking eyes of the firing squad trained upon his heart, and cook for about five minutes (or for the time it takes for the cloud of silver butterflies to pass, whichever is the sooner).

If you wish, the above instructions may be carried out by a semi-transparent Indian, although I would caution that he be supervised lest he transport your cutlery to the spirit realm as a gift for his mulatto bride.