Thursday, December 20, 2012

LASAGNA


No one talks about its elegance. They’ll talk about its simplicity. Oh, they’ll go on about its simplicity. And how pure it is. How unpretentious. How basic.
No one talks about its curving and Rubenesque flavors. No one talks about its lush cream, or the sauce with a history all of its own. They neglect the thing that happens to spinach, and how its leaves turn supple, like lingerie. The do not talk about the magic spell in every fennel seed. They forget that the salt in Parmesan comes directly from the palms of Italians, lined and creased w/ Tuscan soil.
No, they freeze it and call it an ”option”. But Lasagna is no Veronica’s Betty, no Ginger’s Maryanne.

Lasagna’s seven veils are not wispy but thick and drowsy. Each noodle is a love letter, rectangular and curled in a waving Cheshire smile. Each dollop of Ricotta is white and hopeful in the crimson sea of sauce. The spinach leaves are laid out, straight and orderly. Each one is placed carefully, each intentionally, like careful love. The spinach and ricotta stare at each other, yearning, awaiting completion, burlesque and bawdy, each. That is the thing about lasagna.

It’s straight laces, is comforting rectangular housing and easy geometric portioning, that is the great trick as lasagna is comforting, but not because of its neat packaging, its easily deconstructed layers.

Lasagna assembles, orchestrates, curates. It leads you around the dance floor, confident and strong. It does not buckle under. Rather it holds you there, just above your hips, and whispers in to your ear, just so.

Lasagna sings softly, but steady. More than a murmur, as Italian in a hushed, sexy voice often can seem. The heat in the kitchen is from more than the oven.

And it lingers, it draws it out. From the moment of firing the oven to when it finally presents itself supine for consumption there are a hundred small romances each more maddening than the last. Each taste of the sauce is a stolen kiss. The smell of the frying Italian Sausage, the sound of mad crackling grease, have the kind of electricity and immediacy of a copped feel. The garlic oil gets into your skin, slick and deep in its permeation.

In spite of all this madness lasagna remains elegant, long and complex. For each Amsterdam Red Light explosion of longing and yearning lasagna keeps a mystery hidden, tucked away, inside. This small thing, this small bit of immaculate brilliance, is love.

Love is what brings the milk to the milkmaid. Love is what grows the tomatoes. Love is what rains on the starved spinach crop. Love is the voice behind the song. Love is the secret spell inside of the fennel seed. Love is what assembles these bits into an orchestra.

That is what lasagna tastes like.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

A Prayer for Stroganoff

There is a prayer in the way salt gets thrown
Into the Big Boiling Pot, sitting like Capone
In the corner of your stovetop
Water crests and foams, stream clings on my face

Dear God, please make something of these things
Left in the side drawers, these bits discarded forgotten
These leftovers from other recipes, from other Master Plans
Remnants, ink smudges, stroganoff

It is a last ditch effort, stroganoff.
That bit of beef that was insignificant, less than prime.
Wide egg noodles, thick hipped and lush
It’s sexy and it knows it, stroganoff.

There is comfort in the pepper grinder,
In its weight, in its imbalance. The sound
Is the same as shells crunching beneath my feet
Bare on volcanic sands, Mt. Etna at my back.

The cream and stock were meant to be together.
The cream’s decadence lingering in the roux
Brown, comfortable, dependable, brown
Flecks of yellow mustard sparkle, recessed like stars

And each time stroganoff is charming, soothing
Each ingredient proud but not dickish about it.
Like gypsy violin, or a proper kiss
Stroganoff