To Haydée Teresa Lujan
Ernie’s bride in her own way

It came in a message. Its comings and goings however, had begun earlier, perhaps in the restless work of some museum curator or a similar specialist. We ignore.

One of you sent it. It was a short email, written in English, in which the sender identified himself as a user of our website and also (we can only suspect) a reader of these scattered notes with which we attack you each week. He recommended.

It came with an attachment. An image of a scanned document: a recipe typed on an old typewriter (perhaps now lost). The tape (and the letters carried in its wake) had a deep navy blue color, almost black in the sections in which the author crossed out a word overwriting with tight "x".

Margin notes. Elements added with an also blue ink: deletions, underlining, circles. Just under a final note in broader strokes of red pencil: "Stanford ham, soy sauce, Onion, Garlic, Tomato".

Someone attributes to Julio Cortázar the comparison between literature and boxing according to which writing novels is to try to win on points while writing short stories is like going out and try to knock out. Accepted this comparison, it is easy to agree that Ernest Hemingway was a literary pugilist of Olympic capacities.

He had the brutal punch recognizable to who has read "The Killers" or "A clean, well-lighted place" and the systematic aggression of "Sun Also Rises" and "A moveable feast". Inside that other quadrilateral that can become a blank sheet of paper it was always the same: clean shots, few feints, pursuing the opponents chin all the time.

That's why every piece of paper, every word scrawled by his hand on an unsuspecting reverse side carries the intensity of someone accustomed to communicate much with few words.

His real job was adventure, writing was collateral. He was more a character than an author and therefore each piece of paper from his everyday brings a plot twist, throws an uppercut.

On May 6 2013 the National Council of Cultural Heritage donated to Finca Vigia Foundation 2000 a cluster of 2000 documents belonging to the author. Letters, telegrams, travel documents, invoices...

Digging through this rich substrate Sheryl Lu Lien Tan writer and cook, found unexpected treasures:

“Fingers deep, I kneaded. Fighting the urge to be careless and quick, I kept the pace rhythmic, slow. Each squeeze, I hoped, would gently ease the flavors—knobby bits of garlic, finely chopped capers, smatterings of dry spices—into the marbled mound before me.”

Thus began her writing "Hemingway's Burger" published September 16, 2013 in The Paris Review about finding among this stationery turned to bits, the original recipe of the Wild West Hamburger preferred by the author.

From there, the way to our mailboxes was expeditious.

Ingredients

• 1 lb. ground lean beef
• 2 cloves, minced garlic
• 2 little green onions, finely chopped
• 1 heaping teaspoon, India relish
• 2 tablespoons, capers
• 1 heaping teaspoon, Spice Islands sage
• Spice Islands Beau Monde Seasoning -- ½ teaspoon
• Spice Islands Mei Yen Powder -- ½ teaspoon  (Spice Islands discontinued its production of Mei Yen Powder three years ago. If you don’t have any in your pantry, here’s how to recreate it: 9 parts salt, 9 parts sugar, 2 parts MSG. If a recipe calls for 1 teaspoon Mei Yen Powder, use 2/3 tsp of the dry recipe (above) mixed with 1/8 tsp of soy sauce.)
• 1 egg, beaten in a cup with a fork
• About one third cup dry red or white wine.
• 1 tablespoon cooking oil

What to do

Break up the meat with a fork and scatter the garlic, onion and dry seasonings over it, then mix them into the meat with a fork or your fingers. Let the bowl of meat sit out of the icebox for ten or fifteen minutes while you set the table and make the salad. Add the relish, capers, everything else including wine and let the meat sit, quietly marinating, for another ten minutes if possible. Now make four fat, juicy patties with your hands. The patties should be an inch thick, and soft in texture but not runny. Have the oil in your frying-pan hot but not smoking when you drop in the patties and then turn the heat down and fry the burgers about four minutes. Take the pan off the burner and turn the heat high again. Flip the burgers over, put the pan back on the hot fire, then after one minute, turn the heat down again and cook another three minutes. Both sides of the burgers should be crispy brown and the middle pink and juicy.

From Hemingway (marionette and puppeteer) stems, as if it were some exotic pheromone, a particular intensity, expression of  an irrepressible desire for drinking the whole life in a sip (one of the many thousands he drank throughout his existence). In everything inhabits a particular taste, the taste of the experiences accumulated an poured like a unique spice over each one of his acts and writings.