The Hungry Heart

I repent of my diets, the delicious dishes rejected out of vanity, as much as I lament the opportunities for making love that I let go by because of pressing tasks or puritanical virtue.

--Isabel Allende

****

Young women often go to Isabel Allende for advice. But the question they most often ask the 55-year-old author has nothing to do with writing and everything to do with sex. How, they want to know, do you seduce a man?

Her answer: “The greatest enhancement to eroticism, as effective as the most knowing caresses, is the story, told between freshly ironed sheets, that leads to love.” As she points out, the stories Scheherazade told over 1,001 nights not only saved her life, but also seduced a sultan.

After that, Allende says, there are recipes, there are spells and magic, and there is an arsenal of aphrodisiacs: strawberries, chocolate, caviar and wild mushrooms.

She writes of these things in her newest book, “Aphrodite” (HarperCollins, $26), which explores the connection between food and love. It’s not quite a cookbook, though there are nearly 150 recipes, and it’s not really a sex manual, though the language can get steamy. It is, in fact, as the subtitle indicates, “a memoir of the senses”--from the Chilean fisherman who thrust a sea urchin’s tongue into Allende’s mouth when she was 8, to the smell of violets from her Aunt Teresa’s pastilles, to the first time her current husband cooked for her.

There is even a recipe called Soup for an Orgy, of which Allende is ruefully fond. Sitting in her Sausalito home, a Victorian building which has, in its time, served as both the Bay Area’s oldest brothel and a chocolate-chip cookie factory, one asks the obvious question. Has she ever been to an orgy?

“No!” she admits. “Isn’t it disgusting! Is it because I’m too old? Have you?” she wants to know.

Allende is the author of six books, with more than 10 million copies printed in 27 languages. “Aphrodite” is her second consecutive book of nonfiction, the happier sequel of sorts to the book she published after the death of her daughter.

Allende’s 27-year-old daughter, Paula, was discovered to have a rare genetic enzyme deficiency in 1991; she went into a coma and died one year later. Allende began a journal for Paula when she went into the coma. It, combined with more than 190 letters the author wrote to her mother in Venezuela, became the book “Paula.”

“After her death,” says Allende, “I could not write for three years.” Six months after Paula’s death, her husband Willie’s daughter died after a drug overdose. “We were so depressed, the world had lost its color and a universal grayness had spread inexorably over every surface.”

“Writing ‘Aphrodite,’ ” she says, “pulled us out of that depression. I remembered that I was a journalist by training. First, I went to the library. Not much on aphrodisiacs there. Then, I went to the San Francisco sex shops. I would sit in those vibrating chairs reading translations of Chinese erotica from the 11th century.” (She defines eroticism as “using a feather; pornography is using the whole hen.”)

Then followed a year of cooking and eating and dinners with friends. Allende wrote the recipes with her mother, Panchita, with whom, Allende has said, she has had “the most important love affair of my life.”

Allende tested the recipes on friends. “Of course, you have to tell them they are eating aphrodisiacs, or they will not work,” she admits.

“We would prepare the food in creative ways, asparagus spears with tomatoes at the base, peach halves with berries perched on top. We would tell stories at the table about ex-lovers. Many friends described pulling over to the side of the road after leaving our house!”

Sitting back in her chair, she says, “I have been labeled a sensualist. I can live with that.”

Certainly her novels--among them, “The House of the Spirits,” “Eva Luna” and “The Infinite Plan”--have never shied away from the sensual. Although she has always resented comparisons and pigeonholes in both the criticism and praise for her books, Allende has invented her own brand of magical realism. In it are woven the threads of her childhood. Food and sex are the warp and weft.

She was born in Lima, Peru, in 1942 to a Chilean diplomat and a fabulous cook. Her father, remembered by Allende as a man in a white linen suit, ran away when Allende was 3, after a sex scandal that might shock even the politicians of today. It seems that he kept an apartment in Lima with a two-way mirror, and he often lent the space to friends for clandestine affairs. Dinner guests could watch the couple of the evening--a big hit in Lima society until a politician saw his son through the mirror, in a corset and garter belt, frolicking with another man. (Years later, at 26, Allende was called to a morgue in Santiago to identify the unrecognizable body of a man she later learned was her father.)

Allende’s mother, Panchita Llona Barros, took her to Chile, to her grandfather’s mansion, where she lived until she was 10. “Grandfather was a severe Basque,” she remembers, “not a hedonist. It was an ascetic household. Even the water was cold.”

But there were secrets in that house. Allende, at age 10, found the writings of the Marquis de Sade hidden in the bookshelves and devoured them. Her mother remarried and the family lived for five years in Lebanon, where Allende, again illicitly, read the Arabian classic “A Thousand and One Nights,” which was kept hidden in her stepfather’s closet.

At 19, Allende married a Chilean engineer, with whom she had two children, Paula and Nicolas. She had a thriving career as a journalist (“the only two subjects I didn’t cover were sports and politics”), writing what she calls an Erma Bombeck-style advice column and hosting her own TV program.

Her uncle, Salvador Allende, the first avowed Marxist to be elected president in a Latin American country, was killed in 1973 in a CIA-backed military coup that established the military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Shortly after the coup, Allende fled the country for Venezuela. Her husband and children followed.

Allende’s childhood was the raw material for “The House of the Spirits.” It began on Jan. 8, 1981, as a letter to her grandfather, who was nearing 100 and on his death bed. People die, he had told her, only when they are forgotten.

After 500 pages, Allende realized she had a novel, not a letter. “Writing a book,” she thought, “might hold him to the Earth.” She has, for luck, begun all subsequent books on the same day. Each of her books serves, in some way, as a spell or a talisman to revive flagging spirits or exorcise demons. “A book,” she has written, “is only a way to touch someone, a bridge extended across loneliness and obscurity.”

In 1987, shortly after divorcing her first husband, Allende met San Francisco lawyer Willie Gordon while on a book tour (for “Of Love and Shadows”). He was 55 and had been divorced for six years; she had been divorced one month.

Within 24 hours, Allende, who does not waste time, asked him for a commitment. She went home to Venezuela and sent him, by FedEx, a contract. What she was willing to give was listed in one column, what she demanded from him was in another (example: If he started seeing other women, she would kill him and all his children). “The demand side was longer,” she says.

Six months later they were married and Allende moved to Sausalito. Since moving to Northern California, she has met, she says, “very few normal human beings.”

“In America, we use sex for everything except pleasure. We talk about it all the time and we eat all the time. But we care more about cholesterol than pleasure! We are the only culture that uses terms like quickie and snack to describe sex.”

She admits, “I have always been more sexual than most people, even my husbands. Of course, one of the best aphrodisiacs is self-confidence. Being attractive, I’ve learned, has little to do with looks.”

At 55, she feels better than ever, especially after the last year. “I don’t diet or exercise at all! I hate to sweat, unless it’s while making love.”

Speaking of overdoing it, what should the gluttonous eat after a night of too much passion? Allende recommends an omelet with caviar and smoked salmon to restore strength. As for anti-aphrodisiacs: “Hurrying. Eating alone. Anything cruel,” she says. “If I have to kill an animal, it ruins everything. Slicing sushi from a living fish makes me run from the room. Drinking is also an anti-aphrodisiac, particularly for men. Most of them, after three drinks, are completely useless. Depending of course,” she says slyly, “on the size of the man.”

“There are few virtues a man can possess more erotic than culinary skill,” she writes in “Aphrodite,” tracing the actual moment she fell in love with Gordon to several hours after their first meeting, when he prepared dinner for her. The only thing he won’t do, apparently, is cook naked. “To my sorrow,” she says, “my husband is a good cook but not a tease.”

One of Allende’s favorite recipes in the book is the Soup of Reconciliation, a wild mushroom soup used to patch up an argument. “Willie and I use food like sign language. If I make the mushroom soup, he knows I am sorry. If I come home to a table set by the fire, to caviar and strawberries, I know what’s in store for me.”

So food and sex can cure depression. It seems, for Allende, that they can also cure writer’s block. “Fiction is something that is in your belly, not in your mind,” says Allende, who still writes in Spanish. Oddly enough, the author of “The House of the Spirits” does not believe in ghosts, but she believes in memory, and it is the senses that keep the memory sharp. Aphrodisiacs, after all, are food for flagging senses. As for matters of the heart, “love” says Allende, “is a matter of luck.” That recipe is not included.

MADAME BOVARY

Gustave Flaubert’s frivolous heroine inspired this one.

1 cup mixed cherries, strawberries, raspberries and red currants

3 tablespoons sugar

3 tablespoons cream cheese, softened

1 teaspoon grated lemon zest

4 ladyfingers, crushed

2 tablespoons kirsch

1/2 banana, sliced

* Pit cherries. Combine cherries, strawberries, raspberries, currants and sugar in saucepan, and cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, 8 minutes. Remove from heat and drain, reserving juice. Set aside to cool.

* Process cream cheese, zest, ladyfingers, kirsch and fruit juice in food processor until smooth.

* Spoon into goblets and top with red fruit. Decorate with banana slices.

2 servings. Each serving:

254 calories; 54 mg sodium; 92 mg cholesterol; 6 grams fat; 44 grams carbohydrates; 3 grams protein; 0.70 gram fiber.

HAREM TURKEY

1/2 turkey breast (about 2 1/2 pounds), cut into 4 pieces

Salt, pepper

1/4 turnip, cut into chunks

1/2 carrot, cut into chunks

1/4 onion, cut into chunks

1/2 stalk celery, cut into chunks

1/4 cup olive oil

1 cup water

1 thick slice bread, crust removed and torn into chunks

1/4 cup minced parsley leaves

1 clove garlic, peeled and crushed

1 cup ground walnuts

1 tablespoon lemon juice

Black olives, optional

Tomato slices, optional

* Season turkey with salt and pepper to taste. Place turkey skin side down in large skillet. Saute turkey, turnip, carrot, onion and celery in 2 tablespoons olive oil over medium heat, turning vegetables often to prevent scorching, until skin of turkey is golden, about 8 minutes.

* Turn turkey pieces skin side up and add water. Reduce heat to low and cook, covered, until juices run clear when turkey is pierced with fork, about 30 minutes. Add water as needed to prevent skillet from going dry.

* Remove from heat and drain, reserving cooking juices. Set vegetables aside. Remove bones and skin from turkey and set aside.

Soak bread in 1 cup reserved turkey juices until soft. Blend bread, parsley, garlic, walnuts, lemon juice and salt to taste in food processor to make thick paste. Thin as needed with remaining olive oil.

* To serve, spoon paste over turkey and garnish with olives and tomato slices.

4 servings. Each serving without olives or tomatoes:

617 calories; 243 mg sodium; 111 mg cholesterol; 44 grams fat; 13 grams carbohydrates; 43 grams protein; 1.73 grams fiber.

RECONCILIATION SOUP

We did not adapt this recipe to our usual recipe style, but rather we left intact Allende’s sensual description of the preparation of this soup. She leaves no doubt about her state of mind or intention.

1/2 cup chopped portabello mushrooms, or 1/4 cup dried

1/2 cup chopped porcini mushrooms, or 1/4 cup dried

1 cup brown mushrooms

1 clove garlic, minced

3 tablespoons olive oil

2 cups stock (beef, chicken or vegetable)

1/4 cup Port

1 tablespoon truffled olive oil

Salt, pepper

2 tablespoons sour cream

* If you can’t find fresh mushrooms and must use the dried ones, soak them in 1/2 cup of good red wine until they spring up happily; in the meantime, while they’re soaking, I calmly drink the remainder of the wine.

* Then I mince the garlic clove for the pure pleasure of smelling my fingers, because I could just as easily use it whole. Then I saute it with all the mushrooms in the olive oil, stirring vigorously for a few minutes--I’ve never counted, but let’s say 5. I add the stock, the Port and the truffled olive oil--but not quite all of it. I leave a couple of drops to dab behind my ears; let’s not forget, it’s an aphrodisiac. I season with salt and pepper, and cook over low heat with the lid on until the mushrooms are soft and the house smells like heaven, about 30 minutes.

* The last step is to process it in the blender; this is the least poetic part of the preparation but unavoidable. The soup should end up with a slightly thick texture, like mud, and with a perfume that makes you salivate and awakens other secretions of body and soul.

* I put on my best dress, paint my fingernails red and serve the soup in warmed bowls, garnished with a dollop of sour cream.

2 servings. Each serving:

387 calories; 933 mg sodium; 6 mg cholesterol; 31 grams fat; 7 grams carbohydrates; 7 grams protein; 0.55 gram fiber.

EROTIC DRESSING

In some instances, this dressing can be used in place of mayonnaise. And forget about cholesterol!

2 hard-boiled eggs

1/2 cup mayonnaise

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

1 teaspoon minced fresh tarragon

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 tablespoon minced chives

1/8 teaspoon paprika or 1 teaspoon mustard

Salt

* Mash eggs with fork. Combine with mayonnaise. Add oil, vinegar, tarragon, lemon juice, chives, paprika and salt to taste, and mix well.

3/4 cup. Each 1-tablespoon serving:

72 calories; 105 mg sodium; 38 mg cholesterol; 6 grams fat; 3 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram protein; 0.02 gram fiber.

SOUP FOR ORGIES

This soup has a robust country flavor that raises a sweat on your eyelids and awakens your basest instincts, even a desire to recite poetry. It goes without saying that there are no fixed rules for an aphrodisiac casserole like this. You can give wing to your imagination, adding sausage, smoked meats, different vegetables and, if you want to add an exotic South American touch, cassava and corn on the cob. A huge pot--minimum 10-quart capacity--is an absolute necessity. Before serving, the meat must be arranged on the platter with a certain aesthetic intent or it will look like road kill.

MEATBALLS

2 tablespoons bread crumbs

2 tablespoons milk

1 pound lean ground pork, or 3/4 pound ground pork and 1/4 pound ground veal

1 egg

1 clove garlic, minced

1 sprig parsley, chopped

Salt, pepper

1 tablespoon flour

SOUP

24 cups water

1 veal bone

5 ounces well-marbled bacon

1/2 pound pork ear and jowl

1 pig’s foot

1 ham hock

1 turnip

1 carrot

1 celery stalk

2 leeks

Salt

1/2 pound dried garbanzos, soaked in water overnight

1 1/2 (3- to 3 1/2-pound) chickens, cut into pieces

1 pound veal ribs

1 pound veal shank

1 1/4 pounds small red boiling potatoes

1 cabbage, quartered

1/2 pound pork sausage

MEATBALLS

* Soak bread crumbs in milk until soft. Combine ground pork, egg, garlic, milk-soaked bread crumbs, parsley, and salt and pepper to taste. Shape into 10 balls, then dredge in flour. Set aside.

SOUP

* Bring water, veal bone, bacon, pork ear and jowl, pig’s foot, ham hock, turnip, carrot, celery, leeks and salt to taste to boil in large (at least 10-quart) pot. Reduce heat to medium and simmer 1 hour.

* Remove skins from garbanzos. Put in large pot with plenty of cold water and cook over medium heat until soft, about 45 minutes. Drain. Ladle just enough broth from pot of simmering meat and vegetables to cover beans. Simmer 10 minutes. Keep warm.

* When stock has cooked at least 1 hour, add chicken pieces, veal ribs and shank and meatballs. Continue cooking until meat is very tender, at least 1 1/2 hours.

* Remove meat from pot. Strain stock and discard vegetables. Line strainer with cheesecloth and strain stock again. Divide stock between 2 saucepans. Heat stock in 1 saucepan to simmer over medium heat, add potatoes and cabbage, and cook until tender, about 15 minutes. Keep stock in second saucepan warm over low heat.

* Remove cabbage and potatoes to plate and keep warm. Add sausage to broth in first saucepan and simmer until cooked through, 7 to 10 minutes.

* Remove skin and bones from chicken. Cut all meats into equal-sized pieces. Ladle about 2 inches stock from second saucepan into deep platter. Carefully arrange meat in families--pork, veal, fowl with meatballs in center to separate meat from fowl--on platter. Place garbanzos on side of platter or in separate bowl. Arrange cabbage and potatoes on separate platter.

* To serve, ladle warm broth from second saucepan into serving bowls. Pass meat and vegetables for guests to select what they want.

10 servings. Each serving:

434 calories; 371 mg sodium; 124 mg cholesterol; 24 grams fat; 21 grams carbohydrates; 33 grams protein; 1.24 grams fiber.