A True Delight From Our New, Unwilling Food Writer

The Ostrich dusts off its kitchenette

After at least fifteen arguments, I’ve come to understand that Clayton Brusk, our Chief Financial Ostrich, is never going to let me hire an outdoor columnist and a fashion editor. He seems to think the Daily Ostrich has more of a “pajamas on the sofa” demographic. [Publisher checks mirror, concedes the point.] Clayton usually shoots down the notion of hiring anyone, so you can imagine my surprise when he sauntered into my office suite and said, “You know, Tom, I’ve been looking at the numbers these recipe sites pull in. What do you think about taking on a food writer?”

In less than thirty seconds I’d called up Vera Maraschino and told her I had a gig for her. In retrospect, I should have thought a little harder. In retrospect, she should have thought to ask, “What’s the gig?”

I had her meet me in our newly spruced-up Ostrich Kitchenette, and her first question, upon meeting there, was, “Why are we in the kitchen?”

“Because you’re our new food writer,” I told her.

“Our new what writer?” she said.

“Food writer. Didn’t I mention that?”

“I don’t think you fucking did.”

“You’ll make a great food writer,” I assured her.

“Don’t patronize me, you ass,” she said. “I’m not gonna be a food writer. I don’t cook.”

“You must cook something,” I ventured.

“I’d starve without Uber Eats,” she said. “Literally. I go into my kitchen for exactly two reasons: to open a bottle of wine, and to make popcorn.”

“So that’s something,” I encouraged her. “You know how to use the popcorn button on your microwave.”

“I don’t have a microwave,” she said, actually scoffing. “What would I do with a microwave?”

“—Make popcorn?” I suggested. “How do you make popcorn?”

“Ugh.” She rolled her eyes like a twelve-year-old. “Heathen,” she said. (And this was when I knew I’d hired the right person.) “Get me a pot. One with a lid.”

Vera’s two kitchen skills.

How Vera Maraschino Makes Popcorn

1. With a mortar and pestle, grind a teaspoon of fleur de sel, or other sea salt, to a fine power. Toss the salt into the pot.

2. Put a heaping tablespoon of coconut oil into a pot, and let it melt on medium heat. Make sure the oil has coated the bottom, and let it get hot before you put the popcorn in.

3. Measure half a cup of quality popcorn kernels. (“Not this grocery store shit,” Vera told me, for next time. “Orville Redenbacher?” I suggested. “Maybe,” she said. “That guy smiles like he’s telling himself a dirty joke.”) Put the kernels into the pot, and stir to coat them in oil and salt. Spread them out into a single layer.

4. Leave uncovered until the first kernel pops. Then put on the lid and turn the heat to medium-high, to keep the electric burner from cycling off. (“Don’t keep shaking it like a toddler,” she said, frighteningly. “Let it sit there and pop.”)

5. When the popping starts to slow, do shake the pot a few times, holding the lid with your thumbs to keep the popcorn (but not your thumbs) from burning. When the popping has basically stopped, transfer the popcorn to a bowl as fast as possible. (“It’s not Saving Private Ryan. Let the lazy ones live with their life choice.”)

6. In the bowl, drizzle the popcorn with a fine stream of olive oil, and drop a few pinches of sea salt and black pepper from your fingers, from high above the bowl. Shake the bowl to mix the popcorn, and repeat the drizzling and seasoning several more times.

7. Eat it “effing now.”

I’ve always been a buttered-popcorn man, but Vera’s olive oil was almost butterier than butter, if that’s possible. Call me a convert.

She said if she’d been at home she would have used her special spice mixture— “popcorn Jesus,” she calls it. She says she’d never measured the ingredients, but it includes, in descending order of quantity: nutritional yeast, fine sea salt, ground red pepper, granulated garlic, black pepper, oregano, and ground ginger. I tried it myself, and—yes.

When she’d finished my lesson, Vera told me, in a colorful tirade I won’t print, that I needn’t call her again until I’m looking for a fashion writer. She’s the type who means what she says, but, all the same, I bought a case of red wine for the Ostrich Kitchenette. Clayton can take it out of my paycheck.