4B — Thursday, January 21, 2016
the b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
By CATHERINE SULPIZIO
Daily Arts Writer
Winter break is nothing if
not an endless buffet of volup-
tuary temptations. Almost two
weeks at home in San Diego and
another in Chicago offered up
the requisite enchiladas from
my
family’s
go-to
Mexican
place, Thai green curry for Star
Wars screenings, a lazy brunch
of frittata and a citrusy kale
salad, a luxuriant New Year’s
Eve feast in a subterranean den
that began with risotto and
ended with chocolate cake and
then plenty of dark, muddy red
wine that stained my lips crim-
son, Bloody Marys with extra
horseradish and whiskey cock-
tails that staved off the Chica-
go chill — among other things.
But January is the icy month
of atonement, a thought that
echoed when I opened my
refrigerator — after a long and
decadent birthday weekend in
Chicago — to reveal its spartan
shelves and the lone survivors
who had grimly soldiered on.
When replenishing the refrig-
erator seems a particularly
insurmountable
challenge,
I
want a dish that comes together
not from an involute choreog-
raphy performed by a troupe
of ingredients, but arises from
a few good alliances between
wholesome, leafy compatriots.
And when the weather takes on
the climate of a refrigerator, I
want something that simmers,
boils and melds into itself on the
stove. In short, what I longed
for was lentil soup, the humble
little dish that is both edifying
and indulgent. The lentil har-
kens back to Ancient Grecians,
who very much enjoyed them;
their playwright Aristophanes
said “you, who dare insult len-
til soup, sweetest of delicacies,”
perhaps a hair defensively, in
one of his plays.
The soup starts with a gener-
ous gloss of olive oil in a big pot
— more than you would think
necessary at the peak of New
Year’s austerity — and a roughly
chopped bouquet of vegetables:
1 carrot, 1 yellow onion, 1 leek,
3 cloves of garlic. But the magic
of lentil soup is its chameleon
form — substitute celery for the
carrot, green onions for the leek
and shallots for the onion, or
whatever other root vegetables
lurk in your pantry. The point is
to chop as finely as you have the
patience for, but uniformity is
little prized. I chop roughly and
quickly.
Sauté in olive oil until every-
thing has compressed and their
aroma begins to make your
kitchen feel hospitable again.
After 10 minutes, add a very
long glug of whatever wine
or beer you have and a cup of
dried green lentils, plus a can of
crushed San Marzano tomatoes
and another 2-3 cups of water.
Stir and bring to a simmer. Add
a palmful of salt, a pinch of hot
smoked paprika, some stalks
of thyme or bay leaves and a
squeeze of lemon juice that will
cut through winter. After this,
cover and walk away.
45 minutes is enough time to
read half of the London Review
of Books you were gifted for
Christmas, or for the more
abstemious, take a brisk and
nippy walk. And in 45 minutes,
the hard, little lentils soften
into velvet, and the shards of
carrots, onions, leek, tomatoes,
and garlic deliquesce into a silky
base. The lemon and dark wine
lend a richness to the stock not
often found in vegetarian fare. I
ladle it into a saucer and drizzle
with more lemon and a shower
of green onions, but it is equally
good with a few drops of olive
oil, a piece of au courant avoca-
do toast, or a handful of simply
dressed arugula.
Dear Gillian,
Not that anyone really says
“sleep with somebody” anymore,
but I literally don’t like sleep-
ing with other people. I find it
anxiety-
inducing
and awk-
ward and
I
never
sleep
well.
On
the
other
hand,
I
don’t want
to be rude
or
sexist.
Is
sleep-
ing
with
someone
essential to
intimacy?
Thanks in advance,
– Awkward in Ann Arbor
Dear Awk,
The poets say yes: sleep in your
lover’s embrace. But the sleep sci-
entists say no: love your lover, but
sleep alone, and if you need an
embrace, try a pillow.
T.S. Eliot’s “A Dedication to my
Wife” celebrates sleeping side by
side as an embodiment of love and
companionship: “To whom I owe
the leaping delight / That quick-
ens my senses in our waking time/
And the rhythm that governs the
repose of our sleeping time, / the
breathing in unison.”
Yet scientific sleep studies have
shown that bed partners not only
breathe in discordant meter, but
their body movements, duvet
thefts, insomnias, and snores dis-
rupt one another’s sensitive and
precious sleep cycles, which may
leave couples resentful and want-
ing to punch one another.
There are probably a number of
reasons that “sleeping with some-
one” came to be a euphemism for
intimacy. Not only do they natu-
rally follow one another, but they
both find us at our most vulner-
able and therefore require deep
trust. Visual artists more typical-
ly portray a sleeping figure alone.
Look at the contemporary painter
Kehinde Wiley, who plays with
western art historical iconogra-
phy and Black identity in his piece
“Sleep,” drawing from the poses
and imagery of both a solitary
and graceful sleeping figure like
“Giorgione Sleeping Venus and
a fallen martyr like Carvaggio’s
“Deposition and Entombment of
Christ.” But when a second figure
does share the sleeper’s canvas on
occasion, there’s often a nod to
voyeurism, discomfort or indigni-
ty. A classic example is Botticelli’s
“Mars and Venus,” Venus watches
alert as Mars slumbers unguard-
ed and exposed.
Their frequent metaphoric link
to death is another bond between
sleep and intimacy. The French
call the latter “le petit mort”
and the idea of sleep as a kind of
temporary or reversible death is
ubiquitous in the history of the
arts. How about the final scene
in Romeo and Juliet: she’s asleep,
he thinks she’s dead, he kills him-
self, she wakes up, sees him dead
and kills herself. Or look at John
William Waterhouse’s “Sleep
and his Half-brother Death.”
Awk, your anxiety about sleep’s
vulnerabilities — sleeptalking,
or flailing about, or worse — is
understandable.
Back in the day, when hous-
ing was scarcer, beds fewer and
heating more primitive, shar-
ing beds, even with strangers,
was not uncommon. Your feel-
ings of awkwardness about it
are reflected throughout litera-
ture. Think Cassio and Iago in
“Othello” getting their legs tan-
gled or the great scene in “Moby
Dick” leading up to Ishmael and
Queequeg sharing a bed at the
Inn. It’s enough to make you leave
the flannel robe and teddy bear at
home.
One reason sneaking out in the
dark hours of the night is consid-
ered sleazy, though, is that spend-
ing the night bridges the hours
between the alluring evening of
seduction, revelry and intoxi-
cation and the sober daylight
of visibility, reality and reflec-
tion. George Balanchine’s ballet
“La Sonnambula” (“The Sleep-
walker”), based on the opera of
Vincenzo Bellini, explores the
relation between the world of
sleep, magic and dance and that of
waking life with the pas de deux
between The Sleepwalker and
The Poet. Dorothy Parker’s Short
Story “You Were Perfectly Fine”
published in The New Yorker in
1929, captures the abrupt panic of
being yanked from one state to the
next — recalling one’s drunken
behavior the night before with the
person next to you in the morning.
Besides the obvious issue of con-
sent in a drunken hookup, seeing
your lover through to the morning
helps dispel or confirm the fear
that Parker’s “lovely things” in a
supposedly pivotal moment in the
romance exist in only one half of
the two’s collective memory.
Don’t worry AAA, there are
some steps you can take with-
out sacrificing your beauty sleep
or having to have a sleepover
before you are ready. You can ask
your boo to brunch and share the
bonding pleasure of coffee and
omelets without the prerequisite
of sharing a bed beforehand. Or
perhaps an afternoon movie at
one of your homes where you can
practice snuggling, or even a low-
stakes siesta as in Jean-François
Millet’s “Noonday Rest.” In the
meantime, the best way to avoid
coming off as rude or sexist is to
communicate, explaining exactly
why you’re trekking through the
snow back to your house at three
in the morning instead of stay-
ing cozy, even if it sounds like an
excuse.
So no, Awky, sleeping with
someone is not essential to inti-
macy; but intimacy, at least the
meaningful version, does suggest
that you should probably find a
way to get comfortable with the
sleeping part. Once you get to
know your love interest on a few
different levels, lit by both the
sun and the moon, you might feel
more and more at ease with the
prospect of spending the night. I
wonder if there isn’t some kind of
tech fix for your issue. Have you
tried something other than dorm-
issue twins, like a nice full or
queen? How about earplugs? Or I
know: one of those Sleep Number
beds advertised on TV.
The point is, if you stick
around through the dreaming
until morning or beyond, who
knows ...
Jakab is taking a little nap.
If you wanna be her lover,
email gillianj@umich.edu.
CULTURAL CURES COLUMN
Do I have to share a
bed with my lover?
GILLIAN
JAKAB
Lentil soup, the most
overlooked delicacy
COMMUNITY CULTURE NOTEBOOK
EPISODE REVIEW
The room goes silent, the
moment of truth awaits and the
knife goes in, only to reveal the
juicy, pink
center of a
perfectly
cooked
steak. Gor-
don Ramsay
starts the
applause
and the
crowd goes
wild. Hungry foodies all over
the nation salivate as they watch
celebrities take the “MasterChef”
stage for a shot to win $25,000 on
behalf of a charity of their choos-
ing. For the 100th episode, four
rounds of celebrities rumbled
through the culinary arena, each
with their unique mystery box of
ingredients and 60 minutes for
the competing stars to live out
their “MasterChef” dreams.
First up were “Empire” cast
members Ta’Rhonda Jones and
Kaitlin Doubleday, followed by
a couples’s round with Terry
Crews (“Brooklyn Nine-Nine”)
and his wife Rebecca King
— Crews battling for the best
cupcake against Boris Kodjoe
(“The Last Man on Earth”) and
Nicole Ari Parker (“Rosewood”).
Lobsters were poached, cupcakes
were decorated and Gordon
Ramsay needed “a touch more
salt.” But most anticipated in the
“MasterChef” special was the
appearance of today’s “it” girl,
supermodel Gigi Hadid, who
went head to head with fellow
Victoria’s Secret Model Devon
Windsor. Hadid, the self-pro-
claimed foodie of her famous girl
squad, tore up the kitchen as she
crossed off one of her ultimate
bucket list items. Two hours later,
as the celebrities said goodbye to
their “MasterChef” glory, the rest
of the world was just a bit hun-
grier and a lot more skeptical of
the raving reviews the culinary
professionals dished out to the
amateur contestants. — Danielle
Yacobson
B
MasterChef
FOX
100th Episode
The lentil
hearkens back
to Ancient
Grecians.