The Sacred Spices
Chuck Etheridge
July 28, 2024
Comino, Chili, Salt, Pepper, Garlic Powder
The Five Pillars of Wisdom
The Pentateuch,
The Torah of South Texas Cuisine.
Comino, rich, dark brown,
Called “cumin” by some,
Brings the heat,
Opens the airways.
Chili, the deep warm red,
Adds spice,
Which is not the same
As heat.
Salt, the Biblical spice,
The covenant of friendship,
Helps the tongue tell
One flavor from another.
Pepper, glorious in blackness,
Adds depth,
Makes flavors sharper--
Use it sparingly.
Garlic, faintly yellow granules,
Opens flavors up,
Spreads more evenly through food
Than its fresh cousin.
This sacred five,
This holy quinity,
The five-fold ministry,
The building blocks of life.
Together they manifest
Tantalizing tacos,
Fabulous fideo,
Pleasing picadillo,
Glorious guisada,
The list goes on,
Arroz, elote,
Carne al pastor…
The only debate,
How much of each to use,
Family secrets,
Or hand-written recipes
Abuela’s cookbook
A sacred trust.
My theory:
You can’t use too much comino.
My oldest son says
“You add comino until
Your ancestors rise from the grave and say,
‘Ja, mijo. Basta,
‘That’s enough, son.’”
And then you add
A couple of shakes
More.
If your wife enters the house,
And can’t smell comino
When the door opens,
You didn’t use enough.
Our faith
Welcomes impure thought;
Divergence from the path of righteousness,
Yields delicious deviations.
Want to entertain heresy?
Remove the comino,
Add onion powder
And you have brisket rub.
Want to stay sacred
But veer away from doctrine,
Creating an apocrypha,
Still holy, but not quite pure?
Remove the chili
Add tempting turmeric
And a bit of oregano,
And you have sazon.
I share the Gospel with you
In all its glory,
Go forth,
Spread the Good News:
Chili, Salt, Pepper, Garlic Powder,
And comino,
Blessed be
Comino’s holy name.
A self-proclaimed desert rat, Chuck Etheridge was raised in El Paso, Texas. After a stint in the US Navy keeping the coast of Southern California safe from the threat of enemy invasion, he attended the University of Texas at El Paso and TCU. In addition to his time in the service, he has worked as an actor, a convenience store clerk, a Rent-a-Poet, and a catalog copywriter (specialty: describing staplers) before finding respectable employment as a Professor of English at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi and free-lance writer. He is the author of three novels, Chagford Revisited most recently, his poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction have been published in a variety of reviews and anthologized in a number of books, and he has written two plays that have been produced. His most recent work can be found in the Level Land: The I 35 Poems for and About the I 35 Corridor and Switchgrass Review.
