Some Came Running

A Saturday evening at home in the land of the media elite

An improvisation: watercress, "crunchy sprouts," and grape tomatoes, gotten at Union Market.

A couple of halibut fillets (purchased at Fish Tales, mais bien sur), marinating in olive oil (Frankie's Spuntino, duh!), lemon juice, dried basil, some minced garlic, salt and pepper. A James Beard preparation, I think. 

...pan sear those puppies a bit...

...et voila, the delectable finished dish.

As for viewing, well, I had ambitions to finally introduce MLW to Clouzot's Diabolique, but we wound up watching a goofy Law and Order SVU and Saturday Night Live instead; the latter was pretty delightful, with the real Lindsay Buckingham standing next to Mr. Hader's impersonation of him being an especial highlight. I should also note that as trying as I often find Union Market, I am charmed by its habit of playing vintage Blue Note stuff on its sound system, and hearing Herbie's "Survival of the Fittest" while scouring the produce section inspired me to put on Maiden Voyage for the first time in a long time when I got home. 

Damn, I'm good.

At the first hint of autumnal weather, the call goes up in the Kenny household for beef and Guinness stew, a concoction of slow-cooked goodness that, along with lasagna, is one of my specialties. So, today I took some "me" time...or I should say "us" time, as the concoction is most avidly enjoyed by My Lovely Wife (who is indeed the person who puts up the call as the weather goes autumnal), and whipped up a batch. 

It's such a simple thing to make that I'm almost embarrassed to boast about it. You chop up a buncha veggies—I'm big on carrots and potatoes, obviously, have grown to enjoy onions in a stew more and thus slice a fairly big one into eighths, and for some extra texture and nutritional value throw in parsnip slices—brown two-and-a-half pounds of meat, throw it all in a crock pot, and pour two cans of Guinness stout over it. Season a bit, throw a buncha thyme sprigs on top, put a lid on the pot, set on low, and forget it for eight hours. Go to the gym, read some Bleak House, listen to some Art Tatum, Cecil Taylor, Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh, or do all of the above. People who've given up drinking sometimes fret about cooking with alcohol, as the booze-burnoff isn't always 100% assured. This is one of those recipes where it's guaranteed; the resultant stew is entirely suitable for children and the alcohol-allergic. And is kind of unbelievably delicious and tender. This was a particularly hearty and satisfying batch.

Sometimes people say to me, "Glenn, you're such a dick; but your wife seems, indeed, really lovely. How the hell does she live with you?" The above would seem to be a portion of the answer.

Lasagna.

Remember the final section of Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev? After Andrei's taken the vow of silence, and the plague has wiped out most of the region? And the prince's soldiers come to the bell-maker's house to demand a bell, and the bell-maker's whole family is dead, except his teenage son, the kid from Ivan' Childhood? And the kid boasts how he can make the best bell ever, 'cause the dad gave him the secret of bell-making from his death bed, and the soldiers take the kid up on it, and tell him if he screws up the bell it's execution for sure, and the kid oversees the whole process and is a complete prick to everyone, and Andrei's watching from a distance? And finally it's the moment of truth and the clapper's in and the bell has to ring in a beautiful tone, and it does, and everybody's ecstatic, except the kid himself, who's a devastated sobbing wreck, and Andrei breaks his silence and asks the kid what's wrong, and the kid tells Andrei that he lied, that his father never gave him the secret of bell-making?

Well, I kind of feel that way relative to my Grandma Petrosino and lasagna-making. And still, I go on, year after year, trying to approximate her sublime results. I am told that my efforts more than suffice, so I will share here, for the first time, my methods and tips. 

FIrst, the correct receptacle. In my early years of lasagna-baking, when I was a schlubby, nomadic bachelor, I was content to throw everything in one of those disposable aluminum roasting pans.   But the time came to put away childish things, and a few years ago My Lovely Wife and I invested in a Real Lasagna Pan from Mario Batali (left). Aside from being an attractive and sturdy piece of cookware, it's a real whiz at heat retention, a serious consideration in the lasagna-making game.

Ingredients are, of course, incredibly key here. The object is to get the best and freshest possible. Here's where I've gained a considerable advantage over the past two decades: by living in Carroll Gardens, a Brooklyn neighborhood known for fabulous Italian food. I make a homemade tomato sauce using Italian canned goods I usually buy at Esposito's And Sons on Court Street.  That's also where I get the meat. While Esposito's is famous for its sausage and soppresata and other such truly great stuff, the store is also a superb all-around butcher shop.I get four pounds of ground meat—2 1/2 pounds beef, 1 1/2 pounds pork ("That's the flavor," as Martin Scorsese's dad says in Goodfellas.) For cheese, it's Caputo's, also on Court Street. Four pounds ricotta, and three balls (about a pound each) of fresh salted mozzarella. Caputo's is also a fantastic pasta store, and they have come up with the lasagna-maker's life saver: a soft fresh lasagna noodle that goes straight into the pan, no boiling required (it's next to the sauce there). You just shake the semolina off and lay it down. Then there's the salt, pepper, oregano, and two eggs. 

Of course before the chef begins he or she must make sure that the tunage is in order.  For this cooking session, I decided to groove to, first off, Just Us, the first solo session from British saxman Elton Dean, made around the time he was just joining Soft Machine and featuring that group's Mike Ratledge on keys for a couple of tracks; fans of the Softs might be surprised at the particular character of this largely free-blowing session. Then there's Larry Coryell's Spaces, pairing that great guitarist with the equally great John McLaughlin; Chick Corea, Miroslav Vitous, and Billy Cobham comprise the killer rhythm section that finds the lead players splitting the difference between early fusion and unabashed Django-worship. Ragged Border is the debut album from Cosa Brava, the latest rock project spearheaded by the wondrous Fred Frith. And finally, the "new" Jimi Hendrix album, Valleys of Neptune, very hot stuff indeed. Throw these in the CD changer magazine, crank the volume, and get down to business.

First to prepare the ricotta. This will be, in a sense, the bedrock of this casserole (it seems sacreligious to refer to lasagna as such, but sometimes such de-mystification can be useful), so it needs some character of its own. 

Saturday brunch, and my latest get rich quick scheme

Behold the glory of "clams hashed with eggs," as the recipe calls it. While you can't see the clams, rest assured I shucked 14 of them this morning, and they're in there. You do see the peppers, the sliced potatoes, the paprika, the Niman Ranch bacon. I always say, if you're gonna be a fat fuck, you might as well eat some interesting food whilst in that mode of existence.

So I guess you've all heard of that broad who bought that mammoth Julia Child book and made every recipe in it and blogged about it and now has one book out, another on its way, and had a movie based on the experience/book made by Nora Ephron with the super-cute Amy Adams playing her in it? Of course you have. MY idea is to do the same exact thing, only with The Nero Wolfe Cookbook, from which, yes, the above dish—which really was extraordinarily delicious—was prepared.  Whaddya think? And the thing of it is, this old cartoon from The American Magazine does not lie—the recipes in the cookbook are plenty elaborate, with lots of opportunities for screwing up. I've gotten to be a fairly accomplished cook over the years, if I may say so myself—you should be so lucky to sample my lasagna, my eggplant parm, my beef-and-Guinness stew, my rye-bread-stuffed pork chops, etc., etc.—but I can still envision the comic possibilities inherent in the spectacle of my cleaning several pounds of pig chitlins for homemade corned-beef hash, or straining anything through cheesecloth. My brow gets a little furrowed even thinking about parchment paper, although My Lovely Wife seems to have little problem with it. 

Does that sound like a particularly commercial proposition to anyone out there? And if so, who would direct? The obvious candidate, Marco Ferreri of La Grand Bouffe fame, is long dead, alas...