The Pudding that Would be King

My persimmon pudding has aspirations. It’s decided to trade in its lowly status of pudding for that of a cake. Peasant Pudding to King Cake. It’s not so outlandish, really, to consider that the dishes we lavish attention on decide to have a life of their own, is it? Certainly not in our soul food kitchen, where everything seems to have attitude.

My slow-roast Colita, for example. It’s a muscular piece of beef, which takes a while to break down and become tender. But if I plan on cooking it for 6 hours, it may decide, really on its own, to clamp down for another 6 hours or so, totally fucking with my timetable. Or the egg substitute I use for the vegan version of my pecan pie. The stuff just simply erupts in the oven, totally without any advance sign or warning. I have to watch it like a hawk — and even that sometimes doesn’t work. I have normal, rather mild homemade bbq sauces which, when used as a baste for one of my dishes, all of a sudden turn into these Scoville beasts with blistering spiciness. My homemade tachina paste has pretensions to be peanut butter. Some limes I use as a finishing touch on dishes — SOME LIMES mind you, not all — take what were otherwise nuanced seasonings and turn them into a screaming match of flavors.

And when you think about it a little more deeply, why the hell not? For a long time, authors have often referred to the characters they create taking on lives of their own. Think of Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author as just one in a long line of examples. Why not the same for dishes that we concoct? I went to the market the other day looking to take advantage of the beautiful persimmons that are just coming into season here. Pudding, I thought. Nope, cake it decided. Who’s fucking kitchen is this, anyway?