Royal Pork on Sticks and a Way to Never Forget

Thailand’s Princes Maha Chakri Sirindhorn is now the author of a cookbook. Stir-fried Young Chilis, Baked Spinach Balls, Superfish in the Ocean of Milk, Prawns in the Emerald Pond, Poultice for a Baby's Head, Pumpkin Soup, Pumpkin Pie, Beehive Pancake, Pork on Sticks and Chicken Pressed on the Pan — the project began as a present for her two best-loved teachers, who are turning 84 and 72 this year — lucky years, according to Thai tradition. The Bangkok Post reports: “Knowing that the pair would be delighted to have a keepsake she'd created herself, especially if it were the product of an activity she particularly enjoys, the Princess settled on a handwritten cookery book, to which she gave the title Krua Sra Pathum. The English-language version, which she translated herself, is called Sra Pathum's Cuisine. In preparation for the book, the Princess used the rare Sundays when she was free of other commitments to play chef, testing and making adjustments to recipes in her personal kitchen at Sra Pathum Palace, her current residence... The Princess decided to expand the cookbook into a diary for 2007 to honour the memory of her late grandmother, the Princess Mother, who was herself an avid cook, and also to raise funds for the construction of a museum in memory of her great-grandmother, Queen Savang Vadhana, the first occupant of Sra Pathum Palace.” The book includes a recipe for Boston baked beans, much loved by “HM the King when he was a boy,” reports the Post. “Readers shouldn't be intimidated by some of those fancy names; they merely reflect the royal sense of humour. That ‘superfish,’ for example, is simply a filleted snakehead fish marinated in milk then baked with breadcrumbs and cheese, while the ‘emerald pond’ is a bed of aquatic algae arranged on a flat stone.” A bed of algae! Well, why didn’t you say so? As for “Poultice for a Baby’s Head,” Her Highness advises doing the following with mashed spinach, condensed milk, butter, salt and pepper: “Mix these ingredients together, spread on toast and top it with grated cheese. It is a trick to make kids eat vegetables and get protein, carbohydrate, minerals and food fibre.” The Post adds: “In addition to close-ups of ingredients and the final product, each section comes with a series of photos of the Princess demonstrating the various steps... She then adds, good-humouredly: ‘If you cook them and they are not delicious, it is your own fault; you must have cooked them incorrectly.’”

Sometimes a book rises up out of the realm of bookdom and becomes something else entirely. Joel Meyerowitz’s brand-new Aftermath, a collection of panoramic photos taken at Ground Zero in the first days, weeks and months following 9/11, is an anthem, an archive. It’s history. The ruins he photographed are gone, but as long as these pictures survive, we’ll have a record of what happened, where, and to whom. And that matters, because even though the workers who spent months in the pit that used to be the towers posted a big banner there that said WE WILL NEVER FORGET, it’s sadly all too possible that all too many people will forget, or even already have.

A veteran photographer who has been honing his craft for more than forty years, native New Yorker Meyerowitz was in Cape Cod when the planes hit the towers. Rushing back, he learned that photographs were prohibited and all media was banned from the ruins because Ground Zero was officially a crime scene. Remembering his Vaudeville-actor father’s long-ago advice about how a well-placed shtick can move mountains, Meyerowitz convinced Rudy Giuliani, NYPD brass, and museum administrators that that “I was going to get in there and make an archive of everything that happened ... making visible for the rest of the country the consequences.” He obtained official permission, and with a large-format camera he alone was permitted onto the scene. He captured scenes that simply stun. Workers, firefighters, chaplains, cops, grieving relatives, twisted steel, steaming concrete, volunteers serving hot coffee and transforming a church into a cozy lounge and raking the rubble for bones, keys — one such man calls his kind “gardeners in the garden of the dead.” The text is sometimes as gripping as the pictures; at one point Meyerowitz recounts a member of the Arson and Explosion squad — a macho bunch if ever you saw one — describing how while digging through the smoke they were suddenly surrounded by monarch butterflies: “swarms of them flitting around us, tapping on our helmets in the smoke. One of the guys stood up and said, ‘Souls.’”

Meyerowitz will be discussing the book on Thursday, October 19 at Hennessey & Ingalls Bookstore in Santa Monica, CA. He’ll be at NYC’s Javitz Center on November 2 and at the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY on November 30. No matter where you were that day, and no matter where you’ve been since, he’ll make you never forget....