Meatballs as My Creation

Another week down, April Fools tomorrow, another month, 7 and counting, time accelerating as soon as the good stuff starts happening and I need more OF it.

That’s life, that’s the system. Time is like money:  when you need it you can’t get it – when you don’t, they’re shoving loans and credit cards down your throat.

Devegar – despacio – slowly.  Portuguese, Spanish, English. 

Hey-sus, I’m trilingual.  What about that?  Big smile of appreciation spreads inside. My brain’s no sponge anymore – more like a petrified rock.  It hasn’t been easy getting those new words to stick.  Thanks for that, the hard work, the patience and persistence.


And then the little voice says:  Well…not fluent. Still can't conjugate in the subjunctive.


But the big voice fights back:  Yeah, but…I can listen to a song in any of these languages and know what they’re singing about.  How ‘bout that.  Ha, I can read music too – a fourth language.
 
I’m so Lonely I could Cry, Bill Frisell’s blue notes say it all without words.

And then there’s the language of food.

I’ve spent the afternoon shopping for the ingredients at the market:  carne molida at Double-R butcher – he grinds the slab of lean shoulder right in front of my eyes, then to the pork guy for fresh chorizo – then the veg stand for parsley and basil and a good white onion – and the baker for breadcrumbs. 

The sauce was already made. I awoke at 7 am before my day of meetings and had the blender going, and my kitchen smelled like Lena’s! Fresh Santa Rita tomatoes from my b-day trip to the hydroponic hothouse with Rita.  The rise to the top and pop – and I remove the skin – careful not to burn my fingers.

I’ve invited my singing neighbor Yola over for cena; but that was last week, and I realize appointments are amorphous here.  I left a post-it not reminder on her door this morning. But I get home after work and it's still there. It’s 9 and I’m starving and she's still not home yet.  I pull the post-it not off her door and sit myself down to my table.  I light a candle, pop open a bottle of my Mexi house red, and serve myself a pile of green salad with balsamic vinaigrette and Perla’s smoked provolone and a bowl of ziti and meatballs,  Mexican-style. Grandma Lena would be proud – or appalled. She was a purist.   

I love that I cook and think of her – like we’re cooking together – like she’s speaking into my ear:  remember, let the meat sauce speak for itself.  Light on the herbs.  And she’s right.  With the chorizo in place of Italian pork sausages, I get the slight hint of Mexico chile on the tongue, and it’s a delight.

Albondegas as my creation!

Abundance

Grandma Lena's schooms were a hit at Rob and Maria’s Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday night, though there were 10 other dishes (we counted) to compete with – not to mention an array of pies for dessert.

Yes, it’s always too much food – but Thanksgiving is about abundance – the panoply of flavors and textures playing off each other like a symphony. I realize in the midst of a recession it may not seem the most savory topic - but abundance can exist without wealth - and even in spite of it.

My memories of Thanksgivings at Grandma Lena's on King's Highway, in a working class Brooklyn neighborhood of Jews and Italians, are of such abundance. It was five long courses, served over 7 hours – with napping and walk-breaks in between – or when we were really little, games of Miss Mary Mack and Chinese jump rope played with my cousins in the apartment hallway - city games with which my sister and I (suburban girls that we were) were simply enamored.

The order of courses at Lena’s Italian-American Thanksgiving was as follows…

First, the antipasto, the cured meats and cheeses and homemade marinated goodies, my personal favorite, including eggplant strings and sweet red peppers, pickles and olives. Then came the pasta, big steaming bowls of ricotta cheese stuffed ravioli drenched in a red gravy that had cooked on the stove for the preceding few days, searing in the flavors of the homemade meatballs and Italian sweet and hot sausages, and the bragioles, another fav, rolled carpets of thin beef and pork stuffed with garlic and herbs.

Next came the main meat course (and by then, if you hadn’t heeded Grandma's advice and paced yourself, you were in real trouble), wherein the baby lamb, the turkey, sometimes a ham, were laid out on the table, along with all the sides, roasted potatoes and yams and stuffed artichokes and mushrooms (this is where the schrooms came into play) – and always an iceburg lettuce salad, a seeming afterthought, even a bit of embarrassment compared to the rest of the colorful dishes on the table, prompting Grandma's now-infamous ‘just put it’ remark.

Then there was always a long pause as the brown coffee was brewed, and the silverware and dishes were gathered and washed, and the plastic table covering mopped down of it's splats of red sauce - thus revealing the pristine while lace underneath. And then the desserts were finally served – the cannolis and pies and, because it was always someone’s birthday, a couple cakes as well.

At this point it was belt-loosening time – and an even longer pause was required to digest, during which most of the uncles would have dozed off in front of the football game and Grandma or Aunt Jenny would rouse them with shouts from the kitchen about the black coffee. The espresso smells wafted through the air; and I suspect that’s what awakened them for the final course – the nuts, cracked open in bloated silence, and the fruits, pears and apples, which Vinnie peeled in one long strand, with the deftness of a barber, passing slices around the table off his paring knife. And dark thick espresso, brought out in a shapely silver pot, was poured into doll-sized china cups and served with little shots of Sambuca to help the digestion - and make the grownups smile.