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Overloading the Machine
Asian Pear Salad
Based on the Boston Globe, 2005 October 12
Serves 4.
- 1/4 cup unskinned, shelled hazelnuts
- 1 pomegranate
- 3 Asian pears, cored and sliced into eighths
- 3 Belgian endive, thinly sliced lengthwise
- 1 tablespoon champagne vinegar
- Salt and pepper, to taste
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
1. Set the oven at 400 degrees. On a rimmed baking sheet, spread the hazelnuts. Toast them for 15 minutes. Leave to cool. Rub the hazelnuts in a kitchen towel to remove the skins. Chop nuts coarsely.
2. Halve the pomegranate horizontally. Set the fruit on a plate, cut sides down. Gently mash the fruit into the plate. Remove the remaining seeds with a spoon.
3. On a shallow platter, gently toss the Asian pears and endive.
4. In a bowl, whisk the vinegar, salt, and pepper. Whisk in the oil a spoonful at a time. Taste for seasoning and add more salt and pepper, if you like. Sprinkle the dressing over the salad mixture. Add hazelnuts and pomegranate seeds.
His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred
to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never
claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god. Circum-
stances being what they were, neither admission could be of any benefit.
Silence, though, could. It was in the days of the rains that their prayers
went up, not from the fingering of knotted prayer cords or the spinning of
prayer wheels, but from the great pray-machine in the monastery of Ratri,
goddess of the Night. The high-frequency prayers were directed upward through
the atmosphere and out beyond it, passing into that golden cloud called the
Bridge of the Gods, which circles the entire world, is seen as a bronze
rainbow at night and is the place where the red sun becomes orange at midday.
Some of the monks doubted the orthodoxy of this prayer technique...
-- Roger Zelazny, "Lord of Light"
This page was last modified on 2011 December 20.