Mate Cocido with Curtis Daily
Thursday, December 27, 2018
This Christmas season I had the pleasure of the company of
my Portland friend Curtis Daily. He was in town to play his baroque string bass
for the Chan concert on December 23 of Claudio Monteverdi’s Vespers.
One pleasure I share with Daily is our enthusiasm for
drinking “mate cocido”. I prepare the Argentine tea by using a very large
French press (dedicated only for mate). We drink mate cocido (as opposed to the
classic one of using the gourd also called the mate). With my Argentine Navy
custom of drinking the mate cocido with milk I heat up milk in the microwave.
The resulting colour of the brew is something resembling swamp water (with no
crocodiles).
The pleasure of the mate cocido was enhanced in how we sipped it. This we did from special cups and saucers.
Before we left Buenos Aires this last September, my
friend Fernando Velazco gave me as a parting gift two cups and saucers. One is
for the venerable Café Tortoni and the other for the London City a joint that
was haunted by Julio Cortázar who wrote part of his first novel there.
Time with Daily implies conversation. There is lots of
it. We compare notes on our mutual expertise (his music) and (me photography).
As his Christmas gift I printed the image you see here.
It is nice but I have to add that the image seen on a monitor does not
replicate the 3-D effect of the actual inkjet.
