Charterhouse and Sorrel

By Gwen Morgan

A friend arrives from Beirut. Always stays here when he comes to town for meetings. Lebanon, about which I know next to nothing, except that it teeters – cosmopolitan, beautiful, vulnerable to every neighboring country, rife with car bombs, mortar fire, snipers – the fragile gateway to the Levant. My friend lives in the old city. Across from his office are lined a French bakery, a halal butcher, fruiterers, and a tea seller. The Corniche at sunset. Mt. Lebanon, where the last cedars of Lebanon exhale. In the summer, everyone leaves the hot torpor of the city for the hills with their cool breezes, rocky pastures, and fruit trees. Civil War. Rafik Hariri, prime minister, was assassinated by a truck bomb just when the country seemed again stable. Syria claims it had nothing to do with this, but who believes that? Then Hezbollah and Israel wreaked havoc in the south. The elections, what were they really? My friend smokes more than anyone I’ve ever seen. With our meals we have wine, then coffee.

He goes to Canyon Ranch to quit smoking and then to a Carthusian monastery. The Carthusians are a community of hermits. They have a communal silent meal from time to time and, on other occasions, equally as rarely, a half-hour conversation with one person. The rest of the time, as near as I can tell, they spend in their cells. A community of hermits. It is heartening to hear that such a contradiction lives and breathes, and is, if not thriving, surviving. Carthusian: It’s from Chartreuse, in honor of the place where St. Bruno came up with the idea. Two letters from Bruno remain: In one he professes his faith, and in the other he declares his contempt for the world, where he had previously been successful. In English, a Carthusian monastery is called a charterhouse.

He comes back (more meetings) on his way back to Beirut. He’s radiantly healthy, chewing a toothpick. In the time during which he resided at the spa and the monastery, it has been spring here. A moody and seductive spring of drenching rain and wind interspersed by days of clear sunlight. In the last three weeks the daffodils have gone, the red lipstick tulips, too, although the parrots and midnights hang on. The grass is covered with the pink snow of cherry blossoms, and the pear trees have started to set fruit. The azaleas go all exuberant, while the flowering dogwood balances in a moment of aristocratic perfection, its four-petal blossoms elegantly delicate against the sky. The fox has returned to her summer den to whelp another litter of pups, and at the very end of dusk, she lopes along the dark edge of trees and drives the fenced dogs crazy. Even the sorrel has grown up so quickly that I’ve had to harvest it once already.

Sorrel is tough, grows like a weed, and has a bite. It’s the oxalic acid that gives it its sharp taste. In high concentrations (rhubarb leaves, for instance), oxalic acid is poisonous, but in sorrel there’s just enough and, despite, or because of, that one dangerous element, the stuff is good for you. The 17th century Culpeper’s Herbal claims that it cools fever, cleanses wounds, and does just about everything else you could ask for. Grows almost anywhere, perennial, with an arrow-shaped leaf, but if you want to eat it, pick the leaves while they’re still young enough to look fresh and bright green. Make sorrel soup. Cream, potatoes, sorrel: comfort food with an edge. It balances precariously between opposing forces. It’s not Lebanon. This is an edge that anyone can live with. When you get it right, you can taste it.

Sorrel Soup

2 cups sorrel, chopped fine (in a food processor is easiest)
1 onion, chopped
1 small clove garlic, chopped
2-3 potatoes, peeled and cut up in 1/2 inch dice
4 cups chicken stock
2-3 cups water
2 cups half and half
¼ cup or more crème fraiche or heavy cream
salt, pepper
olive oil, butter

Heat 2 tbs of oil and put a tsp or so of butter in
Add onions and garlic and cook until translucent but not brown
Add sorrel and cook for 5 minutes
Add potatoes and mix
Add some salt
Add chicken stock and water and bring to a boil
Lower to simmer and cook until potatoes are soft
Add half and half and heat to just below boiling
Add crème fraiche or cream
Salt and pepper to taste.

You may puree it, but it’s not needed.
Serve hot or chilled.

Nubar Alexanian, Waterboarded 3, 2008, Caren Golden Fine Art, New York