meals' table: fire

 I would move to Australia just to dine at Firedoor, where Lennox cooks everything with fire - 200-day aged steak, octopus, cabbage, caviar, everything. I have fantasies about doing this in my backyard. Everything in the menu reel was droolworthy. Note to self to make tamarind marshmallows.

I'm a sucker for visuals of people cooking on some little outdoor setup on these kinds of shows. Grilling a salad on a farm right after picking the ingredients and baking a fish in fire by the ocean was no different. So rustic. So romantic.

There's a scene where he roasts (what I think is) a flayed lamb on a cross in some sort of empty warehouse while talking about his mentor and friend shutting him out. I felt.. emotions.

This lamb al asador was a food centerpiece in Argentina. It felt like a commonplace specialty... like it's not everywhere but it's an important part of the cuisine. And it was beautiful. 

Like this rack at Casimiro Bigua in El Calafate.

This giant pup definitely thinks so.

I'm going to derail a bit from fire and just mention that this guanaco carpaccio was... quite uncomfortable. It was like a meat... jelly. I did eat it all but only managed with the help of the accompaniments and my general desire to not waste food. Would not recommend.

The teepee of lamb and bottle of red that I shared (with Bob I think?) was not disappointing though. The best parts are the crispy skin bits and the chewy cartilage-y bits closest to the bone.

Side story... I met a retired man Bob on my tour group who planned to be in Patagonia for a bit over a month. Our 10-day trek was his first stop, so he could see the signature sites, get an idea of his favorite places, and go back to his favorite places to do the full backpacking treks. He said he did a similar thing around Thailand. I remember thinking immediately - wow this is how I want to live my life. We got so lucky with the weather on several occasions, and the views were all incredible. Bob was so eager, energized, and excited to do it all, and as a result I ended up spending a lot of time with him. We did the more strenuous hike option on the first day, the one that was basically a vertical climb to Mirador Ferrier that overlooked several huge lakes, and he banged his knee on the way up. The next day was an optional journey up to see the famous towers. It was a longggg hike, and we were warned about a portion that scaled the side of a mountain that could get so windy people are just blown off the edge. It ended up being the most perfect day. The sky was so clear, and the view of the towers was so crisp, I almost couldn't believe it. [We saw pictures from the tour group following ours, and it was completely gray and overcast.] One of Bob's trekking poles snapped on the way down, and when we got all the way to the bottom, he told me his knee still hurt from the day before. He had been deciding which route to take up until the fork where we split but ultimately knew he didn't want to miss out. He confided that he didn't tell our tour guides about his knee pain, knowing they wouldn't let him do the more intense hike. I was wildly impressed, but also incredibly concerned. I kept thinking about his wife and kids who were about my age (he told me more about then during a more leisurely hike over El Chalten), wondering if they were worried at home. Our last hike was a glacier trek that was not included on the itinerary. It was something like five miles to the base of the glacier, and then a mile on the glacier with crampons, and we saw an avalanche in the distance! Bob hurt his other knee on the way down. When the rest of the group boarded the bus to leave to Buenos Aires, everyone said their goodbyes to Bob, telling him to take it easy during the rest of his trip. He was just as jovial though maybe a bit worn, as he waved us off.

We found out a couple weeks later that his heart gave out on a hike, and he had passed. I remember standing in the middle of lab when I read the message, pretty much moved to tears because he died thousands of miles away from his family and weeks away from reuniting with them. I wondered how they received the news. I wondered about the new tour group he was with and what the leaders did to bring him down the mountain. Then I thought about how that's how I'd want to go - with the beautiful back drop of Patagonia, literally living to the fullest. I want to be as relentlessly fearless as Bob.

He was so happy the whole time, telling and retelling his stories. 

Joyce and I started doing tree poses on our trips together, so at the first peak I reached in Patagonia, I had to do a tree pose for her. Bob loved it, almost to an embarrassing degree, like the way your parents embarrass you in public. It was sweet though. At every view, he pressed his palms together over his head and said to me, "Do the tree thing!"