The Bigot’s Melting Pot
Slow cooking is the wisest way:
Avoid inclusion of exotics
till you know their flavor fits.
Ingredients from Eastern lands,
are never easy to digest,
but then I must confess
they often add more quality
than coarser native brands;
and brown components
smuggled across the Rio Grande
combine quite slowly, if at all;
But still, they prove most palatable
at harvest in the fall.
So watch the pot and carefully note
how white meat blends right in
while other things do not —
Perhaps the pot’s not yet quite hot,
or too much fat is gathered at the top.
Oh well,
perhaps, as other chefs have done,
we’ll run it through a sieve,
to clarify the broth
and make it seem less primitive..
(2001)
