Oh, Clementine, you’re even better covered in chocolate.

What am I hiding? Maybe that some recipes are so simple – the taste they create, so complex – that their simplicity belies their result.

For example: Take some citrus, dip it in the finest chocolate and sprinkle it with a little salt.

In this case, clementines, a little Valrhona, and some sea salt.

Peel and segment several oranges.

Melt the chocolate.

Dip the oranges into the chocolate and place them on wax paper.

Put the paper down in a cool part of the kitchen so they chocolate hardens quickly. Sprinkle sea salt on each piece.(Careful with the sea salt, it can be overwhelming.)

I wouldn’t stick them in the fridge, not that expensive chocolate – wouldn’t want it to discolor from the cooling process.

My old friend, poet mentor, Wallace Stevens has something to say about oranges in the first section of his poem, Sunday Morning

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late

Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,

And the green freedom of a cockatoo

Upon a rug mingle to dissipate

The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.

She dreams a little, and she feels the dark

Encroachment of that old catastrophe,

As a calm darkens among water-lights.

The pungent oranges and bright, green wings

Seem things in some procession of the dead,

Winding across wide water, without sound.

The day is like wide water, without sound,

Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet

Over the seas, to silent Palestine,

Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.

Today’s writing prompt from the Poetic Asides challenge: write a hiding poem.

Silence is Delicious

Poems are recipes, recipes are poems.