Kyung-ran Jo - Tongue

You don’t have the right to handle foie gras if you’re imagining quacking geese following a tractor around. You’re a useless artist who has lost all objectivity toward your model. I wash my hands with soap several times and return to the kitchen. I place the foie gras in the center of the dish, then place cold steamed asparagus on a diagonal. I once thought that if love were tangible, it would be a truffle or asparagus. Things that push through the ground. I shake my head. Asparagus has to be cut and eaten when it sprouts in the spring, while it’s tender. If you leave it alone, it quickly turns into a large, fuzzy leaf, growing into a thick pole too big to grip. Asparagus continues to grow even after you cut it, though slowly. If it’s true that I’ve changed, my thoughts on the food and my fingers on the butcher block will be even colder, even more detached. Unlike the kitchen, the world is filled with things I can’t control.

I spear a leftover piece of foie gras and hand the fork to Chef, asking with my eyes how it is. Chef puts it into his mouth and chews, nods once. I put the plate on the pass. Manager Park comes and quickly takes it away—foie gras has to be eaten warm. I’m done for now. I think I have time to take a five-minute break, but I double back just as I’m about to leave the kitchen. If black caviar is the dream of gourmets, foie gras was born from human desire and pleasure. Horatius once said that liver is the seat of passion, the home to sensual love and wrath. I stick the last piece of foie gras into my mouth and hide it under my tongue. I press my lips together and push it down.

WHEN I WATCH gorgeous women mingling, I think I can understand Seok-ju. He wouldn’t have been able to tear his eyes off Se-yeon, a yellow daffodil in dark soil, standing with her head tilted down as if to convey that she didn’t want to be noticed in a crowd of people. He would have met her gaze. There’s nothing shocking about a young architect with a promising future falling in love with a beautiful former model. There just shouldn’t have been a woman called K between them. The architect should have met the model before he met K. Because he was the first man that K had loved, he—they—should have been more understanding, should have been more cautious about their love. There are rules even when you wrench a toy away from a young child. I nod along to the soft techno music that sounds like sorrowful weeping. The people who have gathered today for Wine & Food ’s ten-year anniversary party are mostly owners of the best restaurants or companies that import wine or cheese. But there may be even more models and celebrities and stylists and designers. Every time I meet the eyes of the tall and thin and beautiful, wearing great clothes and a mist of strong perfume, I feel my pupils widen as if I’m a man looking at gorgeous women.

From the bar, a woman I know waves at me. She’s a news anchor who often comes to Nove and eats only the crusts when she eats bread because she’s afraid of gaining weight. I almost don’t recognize Chef, who’s sitting next to her. He doesn’t like to come to these events. If Mun-ju hadn’t asked us to cater it, he might not have come at all. After discussions with the magazine, we decided to go with scent as the party’s theme. You can’t neglect the preferences of the people attending the event you cater. My strategy in catering events is to put out a few memorable and special dishes that are light but filling. An adjective hides behind the word “scent”—sensual. Sensuality triggers a desire to touch and eat, awakening the senses. The sense of smell is powerful, the sense most closely linked to taste. From a cook’s point of view, the scent of food is a necessity for skinny women who avoid eating. Tonight many known gourmets have come to the party. It’s important to sate them and tickle their taste buds, but you shouldn’t completely satisfy them. If they’re satisfied, they’ll want something better. You have to leave some expectation for the next course. It’s important to make food that sustains the appetite. Gourmets are capricious, preferring to eat out and be critics instead of cooking at home, wanting to experience even more flavors and desiring satisfaction from food that doesn’t exist. They are finicky and demanding and temperamental, but I need them.

For the first dish of the buffet, I have prepared oysters. It’s not the peak season for oysters because this is when they breed, but at least it’s not June or July, when they lay eggs. There’s no need to make many appetizers. It’s sufficient to use sight and smell to lightly awaken the appetite before the actual meal. I place lemon-spritzed oysters on the half shell between ice carvings surrounding a large fountain of ice. Fresh oysters emit a marine-fresh smell, and the lemon juice hints at tropical fruit ripened in the sun. I also have a ceviche of olive-oil-marinated turbot garnished with chopped shallots and caviar that goes well with the white wine we’re serving with the oysters. It’s an appetizer that will turn heads: the white turbot, light-purple shallots, the pink fig sauce, the shiny black caviar.

The mains are salmon with scallop sauce and rib eye with sauce périgueux. I purposely don’t make enough for everyone. Even if you give it out for free, if there’s too much food it doesn’t look pricey or fresh. For those who will be coming late, I prepare light bite-size sandwiches, canapés of cheese, caviar, and paprika, cinnamon-sprinkled ravioli filled with watercress and melon, and dark-red cherries. And also dessert, which can never be omitted. The colors of my dishes are varied and gorgeous and sensual, evocative of the theme of scent. The chocolate at the end of the buffet table contains over 90 percent cacao. It’s chocolate that’s almost a drug—even a tiny bite will intoxicate. I sprinkle powder from this chocolate onto ice cream made from cheese and fresh cream. It would have been very expensive if Mun-ju hadn’t gotten the vendors to sponsor the event.

I got a present for Mun-ju, a black vase shaped like a squat candlestick decorated with red roses and ivy, which she placed in the middle of the buffet table. Amid the warm, silken food and the flowers and the sparkling, jewel-like crystal stemware, the guests eat and drink and talk and laugh and hug and blow away smoke and dance in a way that makes even the smallest movements look erotic. Mun-ju, wearing a breezy chiffon dress, is acting the hostess, flushed, mingling. She winks when our eyes meet, to say, It’s perfect, it’s a smash! Everyone is laughing and everyone is giving off a fragrance. In the center is the table draped with a white cloth and on top are my dishes, the product of several days of planning and preparation.

I break away from the crowd and lean against the wall and start drinking cold, salty margaritas. It’s fine to get a little tipsy on a day like this. My lips burn, soaked in alcohol and salt. I push a canapé into my mouth. I pop the caviar with the tip of my tongue. I feel sweetness, saltiness. Even though I put just a morsel into my mouth, I sink completely into the caviar’s unique and vivid taste, as if I’m a butterfly with taste organs on its front legs, sensing sweetness if one leg touches nectar. The music continues to play and it’s as if the party is never going to end. I didn’t eat a bite all evening because I was cooking. I should eat something. I fetch another margarita and down it quickly.

I think I smell a burning cube of sugar. Is it the scent of a violet? The fragrance that blooms disappears, then opens. The smell of Se-yeon’s perfume. Marjoram. Is she here? Midsniff, I open my eyes wide. The anchor who was at the bar is swishing by me. Her perfume swirls in the air like a long breath and dissipates slowly. The intense scent lingers like the fluids left on after-sex bedsheets, the smell that captivated him. The fragrance throws me off balance, appearing in an unexpected place. Do I give off a scent, too? I stick my hand, still wet and swollen, into my pocket. The most sensual of aromas is the essence of a young raven fed only boiled eggs for forty days, then killed and preserved in myrtle and almond oil. The smell that all women want to give off and that all men want. Musk is altogether too common, but it excites people instinctually. In Elizabethan times, women slipped a peeled apple between their arms and, when it was soaked in sweat, gave it to their lovers to smell. Smell is the longest-lasting memory. People stay and go, but smell transcends time. The smell of an apple soaked in sweat, the scent of a raven killed after a diet of boiled eggs. I want to be like these extreme pheromones, creating explosions of taste. I don’t want to be helpless, stumbling like this.