The Hark-Aldonze ripostuary of antiphonal asininity
Episode 6: The Albondigas (Meatball) Soup Guide to Invasion
The "Receipts" Taos Green Chili | Chef Aldonze's query Greetings Harrk! This is Aldonze again! Chef Aldonze-Luiz (Loo-eeze). I am shucked and deeply muzzled by your last retorte. To think that we crossed the roads so many years ago gives me the whirlies and makes me shutter all over. How can this be? Is it feta? I think not! MY God, this is something out of an epimode of a boned twilight! You better believe that Aldonze get pretty drunk after reading this. I do not think I can speak of Cecil and Cora any more. Aldonze does not understand these things of mystery. I can only say that you are a pretty smart fellow to get hell out of there. I saw that old man's shotgun. It was pretty big, non? I do not approve of your behaviour with the wife but Aldonze understands these things. For Aldonze is nothing if not narrow minded. I have a happy plan. I do not travel too much in my older year's butt I think it importance that we should meet in the persons. You must plan a cooking tour of Australia for Aldonze! I will give you 10 per cent of the actions. I can stay at your house where we can plan the tour and The Squeeze can ride on my tail-lights. This will give Aldonze the chance to meet your lovely family and my fellow Squeeze writers. (So far, none respond to my E-mails.) Pretty good plan, non? I am a good guest and will cause no trouble and Aldonze will be more than happy to cook during the latitude of my stay. However, Aldonze is a big man so I need a king-size bed. You must let me know when to arrive. Now, to the business. Many years ago, when Aldonze was young, I take a long time in Mexico learning the ancient cuisine. I tell you Harrk, a book could I write on my travels in that place! I even had my own Taco Cart in Mexico City. (I called it Casita Aldonze.) Aldonze was happy. Suddenly, in answer to many previous queeries, I get the telegram I am hired as head chef for a big LA restaurante. Wow! I get the train and bus tickets and two weeks later arrivivo in Santo Dieg. The last foot of my journey to the City of the Angles I was very excitable. In Beverly's Hills, I presented myself to the owner who talked and dressed funny. (I think he was a fruity!) He infirms me I am so long on the route that other fellow insteads me. Aldonze hired as chef-in-training, only. This was horribly offal but what was Aldonze to do? I took the job. The big boss chef was this crazy French mec who make Aldonze feel like muck. His soused-in-command was a magro beanpole Italian who keep telling me not to get big ideas. Even the Mexican prep cooks make fun of Aldonze. They speak Chinese behind my back ("Ai, ching gow") and flap me off with the fingers. I do my job but I was not happy. One busy Saturday night, I throw out the silly cold cantaloupe and basil soup and switched it with my new receipt of Albondigas Aldonze, the ancient meatball soup from Mexico. The crazy Frenchman gets real mad but it was too late. The place was packed with moving staz and steaming bowls of my now famouse Albondigas were already being served. I laugh pretty hard you bet! Laughing cut short, however, when I hear shouts and applause from many tables. The fruiterer came in and take the French Chef by his hand and leads him into the dinning room. All clapped the hands. I could not believe. That French salaud took the bows for MY soup! I was angry beyond doubt. I say nothing, but I think plenty hard. The next morning I come to work to see many polizai and find the fruit-plate crying at an empty table. I give him my hankie and he tell me terrible cadastre happen over the night. The French Chef and magro Italian had a pretty bad accident in the kitchen and went bye-bye. I over hear some polizia surmounting a premises that many empty bottles of schnapps on the floor contribute to first prime cause of barmy activities leading chef to dance on table and fall into vat of bubbling stock pot for next day, nicely poaching himself for next life. As for Magro Italian, he must have incidentally locked himself in the walk-in freezer because when found copper say he a wopsicle. Much laughter from rude LA racysts. While the corpses were being carried out, I sneak out into the back alley and catch a bus to Tijuana. Not that Aldonze had anything to do with these crazy guys deaths by giving them a case of Slivovitz for getting trioomphunt with Aldonze meatball soup, but Aldonze thought it wise not to get involved with LA's fuzz, non? Six months later, I encounter the two Mexican prep cooks selling my soup from a lunch cart opposite me in Mexico City. I invite them that night to my house for drinks... Now, after many years of fame with Albondigas Aldonze, I release it to the world. It is simple to fix for Aldonze is nothing if not complicated. Until next time, I remain Aldonze. Chef Aldonze-Luiz (Loo-eeze) at your service! | Harold Hark is leery Hello, Aldonze. Yes, it's you and I'm afraid again! It may please you to know that my wife and daughter thoroughly enjoyed your chicken burgers, commenting jubilantly throughout the meal on the succulence of the repast before them and, more pointedly, on the miserable little plate of canned tamales and jalapeño peppers before me. The dog, ever at his place beside my wife, exercised his beseeching eyes and drooling jowls to encourage her frequent donations of chicken bits. He knows haute cuisine when he smells it. Unfortunately, and almost immediately, the tamales gave me severe gastric distress, cutting short the threesome's joyous experience. Particularly when I enriched the incessantly whining dog's luxurious tri-coloured coat with an immense volume of vomit, peppered with jalapeño seeds. Evidently the tamales were off. I suppose I should count myself lucky this time, for there was only one bile-laden expulsion. Later in the evening I was administered a bowl of bland pumpkin soup with dry toast. Keeping this down was no problem and the episode was pronounced over. It seems I cannot take a trick when it comes to my association with you, Chef Aldonze. Yet I am nothing if not perseverant. My favourite soup in this world, you see, is Albondigas. I am salivating already. However, before ingestion, I shall first consult a numerologist, have my horoscope read, throw the I Ching, check my BioRhythms on the day, drink a bottle of Mylanta beforehand, and upgrade my life insurance. Now let me discuss your terrifying proposal to visit! First of all, the Australian Immigration Department would never give you a tourist visa. You may be allowed into Mexico, but never here. You see, Australia is gripped by a scumbag conservative government that detests swarthy, questionable types such as yourself. (You are swarthy, aren't you!) In order to visit our hallowed shores the supplicant must be white, multi-skilled at squeezing a quid out of suckers, have no criminal background (that is, he or she must never have been caught), nor must he or she have ever associated with criminals in so far as anyone knows about it (and that includes anyone who thinks there is more to life than squeezing a quid out of suckers). It would help if the requesting party is married with at least two freckled children. Married men with one (non-freckled) child are suspected of free thinking, while unmarried women are known to be practioners of harlotry, and single men over the age of 40 are judged to be poofters. All three, therefore, constitute an un-Australian threat to the economy, the concept of society having been abolished. Furthermore, membership with one or more clubs such as Rotary, Kiwanis, the Shriners and/or various veterans of foreign wars organisations are helpful. Above all, a suitable fear of the unknown (in other words, the future) combined with a worship of the past (or that which is a done deal and cannot be said to frighten with alternatives requiring choice) is of enormous help. You could of course fly to Indonesia and there join any number of desperate refugees waiting for the next available ten-man fishing boat to take you and several hundred Iraqis, Iranians and Afghanis to Australia. Failing death by capsizing in cyclonic seas, upon your arrival in the scumbag conservative's land of glory, you would be met by Illegal Alien police, denounced as a queue jumper and escorted to one of a burgeoning group of American-owned detention centres situated for anything but your pleasure in the outback. There, in synchrony with your equivalents in Hitler's Germany, you would be assigned a number and no longer called by your name, Chef Aldonze-Luiz. Any attempt to escape would be foiled by razor wired, electrified fences and killer dogs. For your troubles you would be beaten by American-hired security guards wearing balaclavas to protect prosecution by do-gooders in the community at large. When I say community at large, I am merely japing, for most detention centres are located in deserts. Thus escape would simply be met, within two days, by death from thirst. You don't want your tongue to swell and fill your mouth, do you? But, God forbid, were you somehow to land here as a citizen above reproach, I should be very hesitant to allow you into my sanctuary. You have done me enough damage from afar. To date I have been gas-born round the world, twice compelled to void my intestines, twice hospitalised, and made to reminisce about times better left forgotten. And you want to perpetrate your cruel curse on me in person twenty-four hours a day for an unspecified time? I think not! There is, however, one possibility for such an occurrence to eventuate. If you will allow me to put a webcam in your bedroom, that the world may watch your revolting and repulsive every move, you may indeed come to stay. You, of course, will have to supply the webcam. Furthermore, you will cook breakfast, lunch and dinner at your expense, each and every move supervised by yours truly. No funny stuff! Above all, you are prohibited from asking my wife for her treasured recipe containing the secret ingredients and instructions for "Blonde Persimmon sponge gateau avec Cointreau"! We shall see about a cook's tour. Perhaps in Woomera or Port Hedland. Nya-ha-ha-ha... |