My Ultimate Meal

Joshua Allen
ENGL 1010

You always get asked these questions; If you were stranded on a deserted

island, what two books would you want to have with you? If you could only watch

one movie for the rest of your life, what would it be? Whats your favorite color?

Impossible questions to answer, these. Which authors irrelevant musings would

you want to accompany your slow descent into madness and eventual emaciated,

existentially lonely demise on some South Pacific atoll? Dickens? Kafka? Dr. Seuss?

Could you bring yourself to care? What beloved film would not become your most

reviled piece of cinema once you had seen it for the 83 rd time and knew there would

be a 283rd time, a 583rd time? Would you profane a masterpiece, like Last of the

Mohicans, or would you prefer to repeat ad nauseum the likes of Tommy Boy?

And could your favorite color of jacket possibly also be your favorite color of

automobile paint and hair color? Only if youre a hopeless weirdo.

But then there is this line of hypotheticals that runs a little darker; what

would you want to be your last meal? I know, ultimate, in the context of My

Ultimate Meal may not necessarily have been intended to mean final. After all,

the word has recently come to mean something more like awesomest thing you

can think of, but honestly, I find it so much more interesting to ask how you want it

all to end than to ask, what do you prefer at this moment? So lets work with the

more interesting definition:

Ultimate
Being or happening at the end of a process; final.
Synonyms: eventual, terminal, end.
 Not to get too morbid, but I am assuming for the purposes of this paper that I

am not being offered a last meal by an oncologist. In that case, the answer would

be whatever can be blended and run down a tube in my throat, and thats just not

exciting, and would require trigger warnings for my readers. No, I imagine my

ultimate meal is being offered to me by my jailors; burly, black-whiskered men,

holding Ak-47s and sweating profusely due to the equatorial climate of whichever

country I have recently offended, and of which I am now, temporarily, a ward. They

say I am out of appeals. I shouldnt have worn that culturally insensitive t-shirt, or

walked so near the bitterly contested national border, I shouldve taken more care

about where I urinatedwhatever. Im to be blindfolded, marched into a courtyard,

and neednt worry myself over the details from there. In the meantime, some

diplomat or, more likely, my mother, has made a sufficient number of phone calls to

make the right peoples lives a nightmare, and that saintly persons nagging

persistence has secured me one last Earthly smorgasbord before I step into that

great buffet line in the sky, one last moment of the kind of hedonistic indulgence,

typical of Westerners, that landed me in trouble in the first place.

Surely my mother would hope that Id ask for something from her kitchen

one of her grilled cheese sandwiches, perhaps. But the charred and blackened

bread would only serve to remind me of whats coming my way. No, that wont do.

What I want more than anything is a spread of culinary delights as only my step-

mother-in-law could provide them. Its true - in part I want this so that I can

inconvenience the wicked stepmother to my wifes Cinderella one last time. She

never liked me much, but thats much better than how I feel about her. I only speak

her language in the most rudimentary sense of the word speak, (perhaps I

wouldnt be in this mess had I studied a little harder) but honestly, I believe that
from listening to her talk about me and my wife to her guests, I know a great deal

about how to use the third-person mode of the Farsi language to insult someones

entire familial lineage. But really, its more about the fact that she is one of the

most gifted kitchen wizards, er, witches, I guess, that I have ever met in my life. I

want her in on preparing my final feast. Id prefer that she serve the food from the

prison dining ware, though, since she cant seem to ever seem to wash all of the

food off her own dishes. But dishwashing aside, she is truly skilled in the kitchen.

She has several dozen generations of tinkering cooks to thank for that, I

suppose. Traditional Persian cuisine is amazing to me. The first time I ate at their

home, my in-laws opened up a whole new world to me. Everything is done

differently. The portions at the table could have sated even mighty Thors renowned

Asgardian appetite. And, like magic, the moment my plate was cleaned, it was

aggressively restocked with more food I didnt realize at the time that their social

customs require a good host (their highest honor) to keep offering food until the

guest absolutely refuses several times in a row, whereas my social customs are to

never refuse offered food. All of this took place not at the table, but on sofreh an

unnecessarily ornate table cloth spread on the floor, around which we all sat and

sampled the 6 or 7 different dishes that had been prepared. I was once told by my

wife that Iranians sometimes eat with loghmeh, in which you grab food with your

bare hands, make a mouth-sized ball of it, and stuff it right in your gaping maw, but

on this occasion she had warned me not to do so. Too informal, I suppose, for the

occasion.

That first meal with my in-laws, thats the one I would want faithfully

recreated for my final meal. Persians do rice, and they accompany it with a stew, or

khoresht, which is served over top of the rice. But the ricearomatic Basmati, in
several preparations. One dish, sabzi pollo or green rice, was basmati with dill,

parsley and fennel, which tasted vibrant and herbal and fresh. One dish was bright

yellow saffron rice sprinkled with crimson sumac powder. One rice dish had dried,

succulent barberries (which, as far as I can tell, are tiny craisins) that were sweet

and sour and warm and comforting. Then there was the tahdig. Tahdig is

delightful, and difficult to describe without making it sound terrible. I know,

because Ive tried many times. Ill try again; rice is prepared in what can only truly

be called cauldrons, which appear to have been handed down, unwashed, for

centuries. While the rice cooks, the bottom layer is allowed to simmer in oil, and to

burn ever-so-slightly and fuse, so that it forms a golden-brown, crispy rice wafer of

sorts that is eaten with the meal like a delicious oil-soaked cracker. The ability to

not screw up the tahdig, I would later learn, is the mark of a worthy cook and of a

family you should definitely marry into. There is only so much tahdig to go around,

and you can actually watch disappointment take hold of peoples faces as you, the

honored guest and suitor, snatch the last piece from the serving plate.

The rice was great. Having only ever sampled Uncle Bens Boxed Mush, I

honestly never knew rice could be great. But better than the rise were the many

khoresht, the stew-like meat dishes that are meant to be eaten atop the rice. There

was Ghormeh Sabzi, a dish that is visually indistinguishable from regurgitated

spinach, but that tastes so rich and meaty, with chopped herbs, dried limes, kidney

beans and, yes, spinach, in a lamb broth. So foul was its visage, that I was so

nervous to taste it, but to this day it remains my favorite Persian dish. It is also

apparently the most difficult dish to prepare, and I always request it when we visit.

There was a dish with what I had thought were peas, but that, upon eating a

mouthful of, I discovered were actually extremely sour grapes, intended to be eaten
one or two at a time with the tender tomato-and-carrot-brothed chicken. There was

a giant filet of fresh salmon, baked to flaky, omega-fatty perfection. We had

Bademjan, a khoresht of fowl and eggplant that was cooked so well that it lead me

to the discovery that eggplant can actually taste good (who knew?). These stews I

freely mixed and matched with the various rice offerings to thrilling effect.

And finally there were the odds and ends. There was home-made yogurt, just

sitting there in a bowl with mint and garlic in it. I honestly didnt know what it was.

I puzzled over it. Nothing else at the table caused me as much grief as trying to

figure out what to do with it. Meanwhile the in-laws stared, waiting for me to go

first. It turned out to be the best sauce Ive yet found to top meat dishes with. Near

the yogurt, a large plate was filled with fresh garden herbs - mint, basil, tarragon,

chives, cilantro, and dill that you just grab and kind of munch on while you eat, so

that you can experiment with the flavor profile of every single bite you take. Now,

they have this thing called torshi. Torshi means sours. And yeah, these pickled

veggies are sour, but they have a hearty flavor that had me hooked on the first bite.

If I could only have one item from that table again, I think itd be the torshi. Its not

even a meal item, its almost a garnish, pickled cauliflower, carrots, eggplant slices,

pickled in a closely-guarded process with a closely-guarded collection of herbs and

spices, and stored in a closely-guarded jar in the cellar. Each family has a unique

recipe, and Ive been led to believe men have died trying to steal the recipes of

other families. For some reason, large sheets of lavash bread were presented to

me, though I had no place to actually put it. And did I mention Orange Fanta? Yes,

the drink that once kept Nazi soldiers refreshed has found a new life at the dinner

tables of expatriate Iranians in Utah. Its not as though there were no traditional

beverages offered; before dinner began I was served approximately 8 small cups of
Ceylon tea. Where some cultures serve aperitif to settle your stomach after a meal,

the Persians take the opposite approach, opting instead to cause fitful convulsions

and a general feeling of caffeine-induced anxiety before a meal. After dinner, there

was more tea, but of course, at my ultimate meal, there is no after dinner.

To be completely honest, Im not entirely sure who I would invite to share in

this meal with me. My wife and children of course. Maybe a former teacher who

said I wasnt living up to my potential. My parents would make the list. Im more

than a little curious what type of pants my dad would deem appropriate for sitting

on the floor for dinner, and the exquisite joy I would feel watching their up-till-now-

unchallenged white privilege melt away would be too good to pass up. If I could

leave them with one gift, it would be a sense of cultural discomfort. If I could leave

them with two gifts, Id throw in a bottle of torshi. Its truly superb. In fact, yes.

Everyones parting gift is a bottle of torshi. Who is everyone? Well, since I wrote

the first line of this paragraph, Ive had some time to think it over. Everyone I ever

knew would be allowed to spend up to three minutes saying goodbye and enjoying

an all-you-can-eat-in-three-minutes buffet of sorts. This is, of course, one person at

a time. I get nervous around crowds. As the final guest takes his or her jar of torshi

away, muttering see you later through a mouthful of saffron rice, Ill tear off the

cuffs of my pantlegs and tie a makeshift blindfold. As I am walked down a hall,

bareskinned footfalls echoing off of concrete walls, Ill laugh to myself over the

thought that, in point of fact, all blindfolds are probably makeshift. In accordance

with my wishes, no priest or religious person will tell me lies about an afterlife as I

make this last walk down the hall. Just me, and some brutes, and some guns. I can

feel fresh air for the first time in months, and I inhale deeply as moonlight passes
through the fabric of my blindfold, and step into an open courtyard. And lets not

worry ourselves about what happens next.