Edible Erotic Temptations

by P. Conant

Ah, food!  A favourite subject of mine.  There are foods to heal or feed the soul such as chicken soup, consoling foods such as the nibbles we eat even if not hungry and for the rebel in us, the chocolates and cheese cakes we know we just shouldn’t have.

The only chocolate I can really savour slowly is the Belgian kind – no, not Godiva, but the best – the Neuhaus or Leonidas exquisite chocolate creations I used to buy in Antwerp.  Now here in Spain, I resort to airport gourmet shops on my travels.  Oh, those are sensuous and inspiring.  I bite off a little piece and as it begins to melt, I press it gently against the roof of my mouth. It offers no resistance and eventually coats my tongue with its warm, sensuous texture and exquisite flavour.  I close my eyes, a satisfied smile curves my lips and I moan.

There are other culinary lingual pleasures such as drawing my little finger deeply through the amaretto icing for a cake, catching a greedy amount of it and decadently drawing it off with my lips.  So deliciously exciting, that a little quickening around the mid section thrills upward and tingles my tongue that begs for more.  Another deep, satisfying smile as I contemplate its seductive flavour; thick and creamy.

Ah, but then there is the visual sensuousness of the ripe fig, its delicate skin carefully and venerably spread open to reveal its heady fruit – a velvet temptation - inviting the beholder to suckle and savour its ruby inner universe.  One does not ravish a fig by biting into it as if it were an apple!  No, one gently parts it open with the gentlest part of the human anatomy – the tongue and savours the succulent inner  garden, Seat of Gaia.

But one wonders:  if the fig is the inner garden – what is the entrance?

For me, the answer is immediate:  the mussel!

I love mussels.  Steamed in white wine or Champagne left over from the fête of the evening before, or dropped into an herbal tomato sauce, or cooked in a garlic and cream one. Or my Mussels in Benedictine Sauce recipe!  The possibilities are almost endless.

Mussels are without a doubt one of the most blatant seducers of all the culinary temptations.  If figs are suggestively sensuous, then the mussel is almost pornographic in comparison. 

When I prepare them, I invariably come to other thoughts besides preparing the dinner.  I have a silly smile and distant vague look in my eyes as my hands go about the automatic preparation of them.

The tightly closed shell is like the clamped legs of a nervous woman who needs a little heat to encourage them to relax and part, just as the mussels need the steamy encouragement of a hot pot and its own juices that it copiously releases on warming. A delicious aphrodisiac!

Enjoying a generous serving of them at the table without grinning lasciviously as I open them and try to make light conversation is difficult in itself.  But when I prepare them in the kitchen for a special recipe, I must handle each one intimately.  Prying each cooked mussel open a little more and coaxing its morsel out of the shell, I drop each one into the waiting Benedictine or Champagne sauce.

The mussels - some  small and almost virginal in appearance, others large and voluptuous - make me blush for there in my fingers lie the culinary replica of womanhood:  the labia major, and minor, even the clitoris and most obviously, the inviting entrance – the canal to the garden.  To the Seat of Gaia.

My knees weaken for a moment as my blood pressure seems to drop to my own 'mussel'.  I cannot resist sucking one or two into my mouth – perhaps a secret communion of the Sisterhood.  

I recall scenes in a restaurant, a sumptuous dinner shared with friends and mixed company.  We all decided on mussels for an appetizer.  Chagrined silence fell upon the guests, broken by occasional nervous conversation.  One friend courageously commented “…almost obscene, aren’t they?”

I smiled with raised eyebrow and secret thoughts.  “Obscene? Oh no, provocative!”  I grin as I use the empty double shell of one like tongs and drop a particularly inviting mussel into my waiting mouth, slowly savouring it  and the expressions on my friend’s faces.

Bon Apetit!