Letting the Cilantro Die (and other acts of culinary passive aggression)

Anyway, one of the upsides to cooking and eating alone is obvious: when you’re single, you get to eat whatever the hell you want, and it can be about as gross or as elaborate as you see fit. You also get to include things like cilantro, which, recent scientific studies have shown, a full 50% of the human population cannot tolerate because of the lack of some weird blood enzyme the absence of which makes the herb taste exactly like soap. In my home, this culinary crevasse runs deep: I love cilantro, and Susan hates it. It’s not even that she actually hates it, because Susan, possessing what they call true “Buddha-nature,” doesn’t much hate anything (Pat Buchanan and Dick Cheney not withstanding). The fact is that she simply cannot eat it, and sometimes, if the wind is blowing right, cannot even be in the same room with it. This poses obvious problems in our household, because we tend to cook Indian, Asian, and Mexican food almost exclusively, and cilantro has a key role in those cuisines. Leaving it out, which I’m forced to do unless I’m eating alone, results in the same sort of flaccid flavor sensation that you’d equate with, say, eating salt-free hot dogs, or Italian tomato sauce without basil or garlic. 

It just doesn’t work.

Susan’s inability to get near cilantro runs so deep that when she goes to the supermarket and cilantro is on the list, she inevitably arrives home with tales of abject horror involving having to touch the stuff to get it into her grocery basket. I’ve witnessed this a few times and you’d think she was about to hug a leper for the sour and screwed up expression on her face. Either that, or she forgets it completely, which I naturally find deeply suspicious. 

So last summer, while we were out planting our vegetables and herbs in the garden, I decided to dedicate one giant terracotta pot to a big batch of cilantro. This way, Susan could avoid touching it, and I’d have available snippets whenever I needed them, to mince or rub into cilantro mush with garlic and hot red pepper for the odd fish taco, Asian noodle dish, or dal. Susan made faces as I transplanted seed starts. I was very happy. But a few weeks later, I noticed something worrisome. 

Everytime I stopped working on my book long enough to go out to the garden, I saw that all of the herbs and vegetables were happy and healthy, except for the cilantro, which looked like the kiss of death. I touched the soil in every pot, and every pot was damp. Except for the cilantro.  I grew angry and churlish. 

“Are you trying to kill the cilantro?” I asked her.

“Are you out of your mind?” she responded.

“The soil–it’s dry. Everytime you water the herbs, you blithely skip right over the cilantro. Don’t you?” 

“Honey,” she said, “I think you’ve snapped your cap: I can promise you that I’m not committing any acts of negligent violence on your beloved cilantro.” 

And then she went back to her gardening. 

She made me feel utterly moronic. Even the dog was laughing at me. 

But I really did have just the teeniest bit of worry that my partner wanted to strike down dead this one herb that I had tried for years to convince her mimicked lime. And she, knowing that I used to find beets absolutely loathsome, never once tried to force me to eat them. Some nice partner I am.

So this year, the herbs have become my domain entirely, and if I find them in need of a good slurp or at death’s door, I’ll have no one to blame but myself. As for getting Susan to eat cilantro, I’ve thrown in the towel: I’ll limit its appearances to when I’m home alone, and cooking for myself. She’ll never, ever have to get near it again. 

Except when I continue to sneak it into the Vietnamese summer rolls, tomatillo enchiladas, Goan shrimp curry, pork buns, and dal that she loves.