Happy Accidents

I tried my best not to stain the pages of Patricia Rubin’s ‘Che è di questo culazzino!’: Michelangelo and the Motif of the Male Buttocks in Italian Renaissance Art, an essay I had just downloaded from the Oxford Art Journal via Jstor. I was both riveted and hungry. I had rushed to the kitchen to make a quick black bean quesadilla while I digested the rest of this fascinating article.

What’s wrong with a sour cream blemish or a Cholula sauce spill? Cookbooks often withstand coffee stains, pencil marks, grease smudges. Why should an art history treatise be treated differently? Aren’t a fresco and a feast creative concoctions? When do you control overflow?

So called self-help gurus recommend changing the way you do things to obtain new perspectives and avoid repetition. Butter for instance. You usually cut it with a knife. Try scissors. It’s possible and still efficient. Routine kills the artist—and the chef. Michelangelo popularized something in painting that his predecessors did timidly: to show people from the back. To place an ass right on viewer’s face. He probably arrived at that through sculpture, since front, back, and sides are all important. He pushed torsion to its limit to show every facet of the body. For this, some consider him a proto cubist. His Battle of Cascina, a fresco he never completed, started the trend for such anatomical novelty.

—New York City, 4/13/2021

Nothing better on a cold winter day than a bowl of lentil soup. When I was a kid I hated lentils. Most children hate them. My mother used to say: “Lentejas: si tú quieres las comes, si no, las dejas” rhyming “lentejas” with “dejas.” Something very Buddhist for an Italian Argentinean matriarch.

The mentioning of these legumes made me want to reread Alan Bennett’s Bed Among the Lentils (1988). One of a dozen hour-long monologues for BBC called Talking Heads (nothing to do with the band created by David Byrne.) All, except two, feature female protagonists, played magnificently by British stars: Routledge, Walters, Atkins. Lentils is available in YouTube, starring Maggie Smith. 

I won’t explain why lentils —everything looks very brownish— because I don’t want to give some of the plot away in case you want to watch it. Or read it in the Picador paperback edition if you are allergic to Ms. Smith. I wonder if it exists as audio book. Audio books are so popular now. These monologues would be fantastic to listen to, although those top-of-the-line dames are hard to match. How about audio cookbooks? I picture Sophia Loren—or Sofia Vergara for a younger generation—reading Marcella Hazan’s Lentil Soup with their sophisticated accent. Or a vegan version of the soup in Spanish that requires powerful, voiceless velar fricative j’s in lentejas. I can only picture it sensuously narrated by Penélope Cruz.       

— New York City, Tenebrae, 3/31/2021

Kids

had to stay at home for long months last year. I hear they still do in some places. We don’t have children so we cannot even imagine what that’s like. I hope savvy parents put kids to work in the kitchen, either helping with dishes or assisting as petits sous chefs.

My studio created one of the first cookbooks entirely for children—with adult supervision that is. In 2013 there was nothing like this in the market. It’s still available in Amazon, used copies going for as low as $3.47! Our author modified the recipes to make them kid-friendly, organized the steps methodically, came up with fun titles—always following safety guidelines. I have never had more fun producing a book: attending the food styling and photo sessions, tasting the meals afterwards, art directing the models and illustrators, and telling copy editors to stop changing text if grammar and style consistence were taken care of. Books, print or audio, have deadlines. Like blogs. It’s not about the poetry of the words. (Or is it?)

One of my favorite recipes in the book is the Egg Salad Sandwich Stacks. Our photographer did a splendid job focusing on the chives that garnish the bread, blurring the outer corners of the sandwich halves. Whenever I have spinach, bacon, and of course eggs, I make it for lunch. It’s technically a club sandwich, which apparently didn’t get its name from the acronym for chicken & lettuce under bacon, but because it was served at clubs. Who knew?

— New York City, 3/16/2021

Hors d’oeuvres.

Which are your favorite finger foods at a party? “Party”? What is that? So 2019!

Hors d’oeuvres, usually served in “the transition period between day and night” as Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosso explain on page 3 of their 38-year-old The Silver Palate cookbook, should be not too filling so your dinner guests ruin their appetite, but not too bland so your guests have to hide their sincerity.

These are the ones in our repertoire: Guacamole finished with a bit of red onion and tomato slivers; pepperazzi stuffed with goat chese, eaten unabashedly in one mouthful; grissini (breadsticks) wrapped in prosciutto—a recipe we copied from our friends Jill and J-P. If I feel industrious I make tiny albondiguitas con azafrán (Look it up!) but I need to stock up on those precious threads at www.chiquilin.com, along with some Spanish pimentón. I always forget to ask my husband what kind of hors d’oeuvres they serve in Kentucky, where he is from. When I first came to this country, crudités were very popular at parties. I almost choked on an uncooked broccoli floret once. Thank God for the Heimlich maneuver. Did you know that this life saving technique was invented by a Delaware-born doctor around the same time President Joe Biden was becoming U.S. Senator of Delaware? A good time to toast! All hors d’oeuvres are well accompanied by a glass of Cava, a summer Chablis, or an Aperol Spritz, a refreshing libation with a fizz.

— New York City, 3/2/2021

Gabrielle

Hamilton is the founder of Prune restaurant in New York. I was there once, with a date. I read her memoir during lock down. Ms. Hamilton is now married to a woman but was married to an Italian-born male doctor at Weill Cornell Medical College when she wrote the book. It is divided into three parts. In the third part, she talks about the visits to her in-laws in Puglia, the southernmost eastern region of Italy, the “heel” of the boot.

Some sections bring to mind a Luca Guadagnino film. Carmeluccia, the family housekeeper, teaches her how to make orecchiete (little ears) and minchiareddhi, the iconic pasta from that region.

Ms. Hamilton explains it in detail: “[The minchiareddhi or] “little penises” she makes by pressing a common knitting needle down into the pellet and using it like a rolling pin until the dough has closed into a tube around the needle. Americans would never recognize the shape as a penis, because of our obsession with circumcision, but anyone familiar with the unmaimed ones —in their unaroused state— will see it in an instant. These two shapes, she explains, are typically made together and served together because they share a cooking time.” Or because of their whimsical, complimentary and copulative shape? When served as one dish with a ragù, Italians call it I maritati: The Married. Soaked in that heavenly gravy, these homemade gluten-full sexual organs melt in your mouth. It’s quite tasty.

—New York City by Ms. Hamilton, 2/16/2021

MASALA DOSAS & POTATO CURRY

Two Wednesdays ago. 11:42 a.m: a Black and South Indian American stands on the podium of the Capitol building, in her purple outfit. She repeats along what a Bronx-born Latina Supreme Court judge intones, becoming the first female vice president in this 245-year-old country. I should be doubly proud, since Argentina, my native country, had the first female president in history. A record, unfortunately, held by a weak head of state who was deposed by the military junta two years into her reign. (Worth another musical. A sequel to Evita since they shared the same husband.)

After the inauguration ceremony, I googled “what are kamala harris’s favorite foods.” Lots came up including a video in YouTube that shows her, then a Senator, cooking Masala Dosas and Potato Curry with Mindy Kaling, a comedian also of South Indian ancestry. Both Kamala and Mindy’s mothers came here when they were in their teens and died young. The video shows them prepping and telling family stories as the cooking evolves. (You can tell a lot by the decisive way Kamala chops her red onions.) Don’t expect a precise rundown of the recipes. This is family cooking. You learn as you converse, sharing idiosyncrasies that transcend individual kitchens.

John teases me that I save too many empty glass jars with good lids. From now on, I will always remember Kamala bursting in her iconic laughter, as she mentions that her mother used empty Taster’s Choice jars to keep all the Indian spices fresh, a tradition she and Mindy still follow.

— New York City, 2/1/2021

Estragon.

An herb I love. You probably know the English word. If not, please LOOK IT UP! It’s also one of the 5 characters in Samuel Beckett’s tragicomedy in 2 acts En attendant Godot. Why is it that everything sounds better in French? Just compare: “en attendant” with “waiting.” If you ask me, “expecting” feels anticipatory. But Waiting for Godot is the official English title.

When we are lucky ­—another character in the play— and the herb grows abundantly in our city roof garden, I love to chop it, mix it with soft butter, sprinkle some salt and create a flavored delicacy spreadable on a fresh, warm baguette.

Estragon’s first line in Beckett’s play is “Nothing to be done.” (He is trying unsuccessfully to take off his boot.) And he has the last word as well: “Yes, let’s go.” Although the stage direction says “They do not move. Curtain.” This existential paralysis can be shaken with a quick, refreshing summer salad. Go no further. (You can’t, since you are also waiting for Godot.) Use the root vegetables mentioned in the play. Grate two carrots, one medium turnip. Add a few radishes thinly sliced. Combine a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar with two tablespoons of grape seed oil, salt and pepper to taste. A dash of mustard and a half teaspoon of grated horseradish are optional. Mix all hurriedly and enjoy.

—New York City, 1/12/2021

STRIP-TEASES® are back! This time it’s all about FOOD! We have been cooking so much in 2020. And everyone loves food.

As always, each STRIP-TEASE® will be one page long, 3 paragraphs maximum, and, for those of you who receive the blog via e-mail as a pdf, it contains a “strip” that you can cut out and collect. But there are new features:

• Each blog entry will start with a LARGE word (a key word referring to the topic) alphabetically arranged from blog to blog so the STRIP-TEASES will never stay out of order!

• If foreign words are used, and due to limited space, I won’t do the work for you: LOOK IT UP!

• Each entry will end with the letters w, x, y, or z.

• The entries will appear biweekly (semimonthly), not weekly.

After the volume is complete, you can request a FREE booklet with all the recipes mentioned in the blog. You’re welcome to share yours!

Happy New Year!

R a ú l

España.

My favorite piece of orchestral music. It’s a jota (LOOK IT UP!) As in the letter “j”. As in Jorge. My paternal grandparents were from Galicia, Spain. The land of Santiago Matamoros (“Saint James Killer of Muslims”). Oh, boy! Shall I renounce that tarnished ancestry? What about Spanish music, Spanish fans, Spanish wine, Spanish food?

I made paella for New Year’s Eve. I had never made it before. I consulted with an expert: my FB friend Carlos, who was born in Casablanca but lives in Alicante, a two-hour drive from Valencia. I asked for advice. The first thing he whatsapp’d me was: “My advice is NOT to make it if you have never made it before, for such important date.” I replied: “It’s just me and my husband so far. If we get poisoned, we’ll die together and the epitaph will read: ‘They died as they lived, in union and in unison. The last supper was Paella a la Valenciana.’ ”

So after a good laugh, Carlos proceeded to tell me how to make a seafood paella by video chat. Forty two minutes later and with the help of Google translate (names of fish in Spain differ from Argentinean Spanish) and copious notes, I faced the challenge and left for the fish store the next day with my list. I won’t say how it came out —yet— because that is discourse for my dinner companion to include in his yelp! review.

—New York City, 1/1/2021

“W E   H A V E   M O U R N E D  the year __(year)__ of this age. But now we realize it was only the beginning of mourning and this strange force of evil, unheard of through the ages, has not ceased since then, ready to strike on all sides, to the right and left like a most skilled fighter. So after sweeping across _____(place or country)___________ several times, now that no part is left unharmed, it has struck some regions twice, thrice and four times, and ruined some with annual sickness. […] Where are now our sweet friends, where their beloved faces, their soothing words, their mild and pleasing company? What thunderbolt has devoured these joys, what earthquake overthrown them, what storm submerged them, what abyss opened to swallow them? We were close together; now we are almost alone.”

Options, just from the last two centuries, to fill in the blanks above: 1978 – Argentina (the peak of kidnappings and disappearances due to military persecutions), 1983 and onward – U.S and the world (casualties to HIV/AIDS), 1993-1995 – Bosnia Herzegovina (ethnic cleansing) 2003 – Western Sudan (the Darfur genocide), 2013-2016 – Western Africa (Ebola outbreak), 2020 – “the whole world”.

The above “mad lib” was written by Petrarch, the Italian poet and humanist, in 1348, the peak year of the Black Death, the “pestifera mortalità,” the bubonic plague that ravaged Europe and killed half its population. And now your turn for the “mad lib” we are living: 1. Can you relate to some or all of what he is lamenting? 2. What’s your individual projected date for this pandemic to be over? 3. What is the most important thing you are missing or had to cancel because of Covid-19? Can’t wait for your answers!

—New York City, 8/4/2020