It doesn’t take a genius to see how cooking and making love are related. It does, however, take a genius to cook the way one makes love, or vice versa. The key ingredient is time. Ragù napoletano, for example, or the eight treasure duck, the baked Alaska—these dishes can take upwards of seven hours to prepare. Hell, leave it to the French—with their demanding Bresse en vessie, a sopping-wet pig bladder stuffed with foie gras, truffles, and a whole chicken, requiring more hands and more hours to attain than a fourth consecutive “little death”—to turn extramarital affairs into a literary genre.
Tonight, I will prepare the world’s most succulent rice pudding, the roz bhaleeb, a recipe passed down by my mother. This is what I want to give my date. The greatest dessert, for the newest romance of my life.
I leave the office early and rush home.
***
It is mid-afternoon on a Friday when dinner preparations begin. My wife is overseas, so we have the apartment to ourselves. . . .
Wash a cup of short-grain rice in a mesh sieve until the tap water runs clear. Place the rice and a cup of water, preferably bottled, in a large pot and then bring it to a boil. Lower to a simmer, cover. Carefully add more bottled water when necessary, until thirty minutes pass. That’s the foreplay, though, like touching here and there, kissing, laughing.
Meanwhile, on a back burner, bring eight cups of milk to a playful bubble, in an elegant saucepan.
Like undressing, next drain any excess water from the pot of rice and pour the warm milk in as gently as you would feed a baby, ensuring not a single grain of rice does crumble. Not one.
My father used to say that if you broke just one grain, then you had to start over. Otherwise, someone’s aunt would trip down the stairs. Just one more reason he insisted on a wooden spoon to stir. My mother, a natural woman, was not as superstitious. She used a metal spoon and just kept a close watch. Maybe she cracked a grain or two, but no one noticed, and no one’s aunt ever fell down the stairs when she made roz bhaleeb. Which spoon will I use?
The following is the actual mechanics of making love. The aching, the grunting. The holding in and holding on. The stirring of the rice inside the milk, over low, low heat, always stirring slowly, always softly stirring, every minute or so, for an hour or until the mix has thickened. As with risotto, do not let the insides cake to the metal. We had a family friend once treat roz bhaleeb like it were paella, letting the mixture burn on the bottom, unstirred for an hour. We never visited his house again. And all his aunts are dead.
When the rice and milk has reached the consistency of pudding, you will hear it say: “I’m ready.” Add a three-quarters cup of quality sugar, another cup of milk, and the most important ingredient of all, the one that elevates a plain dish to the heavenly realm, where floral flavor, pleasant aroma, and well-being combine in a tablespoon of rose water.
***
Add rose water, sugar, and milk. Cook the mixture for ten minutes, then transfer it to a sizable serving bowl, preferably an heirloom. Cool in the fridge for at least four hours. And, hahu, you are done.
For garnish, I like to shave in a lot of orange zest, the pillow talk. This time, while focused on the rind’s curve hitting the grater’s edge as it tells me a story, I decide yes, this bowl of forbidden paradise deserves a signature. A slice of orange, a label. I apply the tip of my finest paring knife to a peel of the tangy fruit and write the name of my beloved destined to tear me apart tonight, my date. Her name in Farsi means conscious, in Urdu ecstasy, and in hers, Arabic, devotion:
Wajdan.
She did not come. “And she will not,” as the poet said. I waited all night, until red candle wax dripped on the doily and our heavy drapes were drawn closed. The only movement for a while was the woody incense dancing with the steel guitar on our stereo, and my spoon.
After finishing the dessert, I call my wife overseas. I hope it isn’t too early for her. I hope it isn’t too late for us.
Iván Brave is a teacher at the Language and Culture Center of the University of Houston. He is the author of two novels, The Summer Abroad (2018) and They Lived They Were (2020), as well as essays, poetry, and translation across multiple journals. Learn more at https://www.ivanbrave.com/.
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