Red Sauce

The Life of a Sexy Ass Guido

The life of a sexy ass guido is not an uncomplicated one. I beg and I borrow this a bit, but when it says so much by saying so little, I have to take it.
I met a man that looked like Donald O'Connor in a yellow jersey and I am just now recovering from the whole experience.
He is standing there in his fancy yellow lycra cycling jersey, puffing out around his flat belly, and he is sporting a slight but constant smile on his face and he is asking me if I “ever met anyone at these things.” "One of these things" is an organized bike ride through a New York cycling club.
I can’t get his face out of my head. It’s sitting there like the last chip in a bowl or not the last chip in the bowl because that is usually the most desired chip. No, his face is sitting there stuck in that place in my brain where things stick and become a vision all around you even if you are looking at the 7-11 on 23rd off Park Avenue like the last girl standing at the high school dance. But I never went to high school dances, but still, there is that girl standing there and this guy, the guy with the yellow lycra thinking he is all Lance Armstrong studly standing there, grinning.
“Have you ever met anyone special or interesting at these rides?” he asked again after I said, “Huh?” the first time he asked.
The man looks a bit like Donald O’Connor but O’Connor would for sure be nicer, kinder, gentler and not in dire need of a post-divorce fling with a chick in her own lycra jersey. And he might sing and dance and be friends with someone like Gene Kelly.
This Donald O’Connor man may even be obsessed. Yes, he seems obsessed. He bought a $2,000 Serotta bike and got professionally sized for another $500 and he is sporting all this cycling gear, Look clips, Cannondale socks, Pearl Izumi cycling shorts and he is constantly smiling. No, he is grinning. He is suave. No, he thinks he is suave.

Voices Drown, the Tourist's In Town

Directly after enjoying a lovely lunch of chick pea cakes, duck confit in a cherry sauce and a dessert of chocolates and peanuts at Telepan, whose restaurant week menu is long and lovely, I went to Human Resources to bitch about Sheen of Puke. The perky HR woman, whose office was stifling hot, assured me they were aware of his problems and planned to do something about him.
So, as pleased as I was, I was then off to clear off my desk and head over incongruously to Bloomingdale’s where my sister in law and her two daughters were. They came in from Michigan for the weekend to shop and to eat.
We ate like queens this weekend. The relatives fought like schoolgirls and I saw New York City in some ways as a tourist. I saw it as a loud, hair extension-donning, label wearing tourist who is a bit upset her teenage daughter needs space.
The moment I knew it was going to be a long weekend was when over a bucket load of creamy, spicey guacamole made at our table by a dark-curly haired handsome gentleman here, my sister in law said, “Oh my god. Is that Paris Hilton?”
I looked over at a skinny blond woman who looked nothing like Paris Hilton and just said, “No.”
Then my sister in law said, “I really like her. She’s so classy. That Nicole Richie is just so tacky.”
Yeah, um, what do you say? I mean, surely, I was confused. I wanted to get more details. What did this mean and how is she measuring this tacky factor? But I didn’t ask. I just let that sentence lay there in the air of Rosa Mexicano and over my pomegranite margarita, which was thankfully very strong.
I am still recovering a little from my weekend.
I slept until nearly noon today and biked most of the afternoon.
On my long ride through Brooklyn, I was struck by the two images I am left with from my weekend. The first is of my sister in law pushing open the huge doors of La Perla’s Madison Avenue branch and in a loud unmistakable Midwestern accent asking the demure saleswomen all dressed in black and talking in whispers, “What’s upstairs? Sales?”
And then silence from the demure. And an even more silent head nod from one of them.
And the next is my sister in law pulling out one of her extensions on Bleecker Street and laughing and holding it up against the sky. “Hey, look, I lost one of my extensions. HA HA HA HA HA HA.”
I am exhausted.

Ain't Nothing Like a Jersey Girl

I finally got it. I have love for the Jersey girl. It’s not the big hair or the big makeup and heels that make the Jersey girl the one to love. It’s the Jersey 'tude that gets me.
You may be the punchline for many jokes and the source of many “ewwws,” from those that may not get you. But I got you this weekend, Jersey girl.
It was the three of you, rolling down the boardwalk on the Jersey shore, with your short little dresses and skirts and your nearly unmanageable high heels. Your nails were totally on and your tans were perfect and brown and real. And I bet your friend said, you looked like you were “black.” But you walk in those heels and those dresses unaplogetically. And when you see a completely non-Jersey girl pass you by, you don't stare and gawk and make fun like others do of you. No, you just take your Jersey ass further down the boardwalk and chat away with your girlfriends because you have no time for the hate. There are no girls like Jersey girls, it’s very true. Even the most non-Jersey girl from Jersey has this Jersey girl 'tude. I am perhaps a wee bit jealous… Or maybe it was the wicked heat this weekend. It may have shrunken my brain to make me believe a bit in New Jersey?

Food of note this weekend:

Funghi Misti Pizza at Fornino's: I have mentioned this pizza before. It's a mix of mushrooms, truffle oil, caciovallo cheese and mozzarella. It's life affirming and changing and a solid foundation for a relationship. (Sort of).
We got some free wine from the chef/owner, too. And we got some news. They will be opening a pizza joint on the Lower East Side but with a different name in September or thereabouts.

Steamers: I have never had these before. Not much clam eating for this former vegetarian from the Midwest. They seem to sometimes taste sweet and succulent and at other times a bit bitter. Ah, the complicated mollusk. To eat them, you pull out the covering on their neck which is black and covered in a wrinkled, bitter black membrane. You “shuck” this puppy off and dip the clam in a little bowl of clam juice and then butter. And eat. They are both tasty and gross at the same time. But I realized as I dug into a great deal of these, slipping off the slippery black membrane and dipping and eating, that introducing me to a new food is like putting your imprint on me. It pulled me a little into an even bigger feeling world. Yes, new food is that momentous. As I pulled off the slim, slimy membrane and dipped the slightly chewy mollusk in the two plastic cups (clam broth and butter) and placed it on my tongue, I realized I was in the midst of a new world.
Apparently, steamers are the beginning to an authentic New England Clambake. Next would be buttered corn. And there is little I love more than buttered corn. After that is lobster…

Lobster. The fish shack we ate at in cheesy, lovely Point Pleasant New Jersey was out of corn. But they did have lobster. I opted for it steamed. It was a Maine lobster. It was slightly sweet and it was perfectly steamed. The meat slipped out of its shell like it wanted to.

Coffee Chocolate Chunk Gelato made by a lovely doctor. My friend, the doctor, got a new toy as one of his wedding gifts - an ice cream maker. And he made gelato and it was one of the best cold things I have put in my mouth in months.

Fat-or Why I Checked Out for the Weekend

I flew into Michigan late Thursday night. So I went almost directly to bed and slept like a baby for ten hours.
When I woke up my mother said she wanted to go to breakfast and talked incessantly from that moment on.
We sat across from each other at a diner in a booth and she told me about my cousin’s soon to be ex-wife. The story involved strippers and blowjobs in bars. There was a frantic energy to the morning. It made me nervous. I was thinking that my mom’s chatter was also about nerves so I looked down at my pale sunnyside up eggs and wondered when the chatter would stop. How to stop it.
On her plate were two, fat homemade sausage links. She dug into them first and cut them into four squares. They sat there, resting next to a fluffy pile of scrambled eggs and a glistening rectangular brick of hash browns.
Around us were waitresses shuffling from one booth to another sporting overteased, overhighlighted hair. In one hand they held a pot of regular coffee, in another decaf with its signature orange cap. Michigan accents were sharp and surrounded us.

I Will Say Yes to Michigan, For Now

I leave for the Great Lakes State today. I am going to continue my spiritual guidance duties for my niece and delve into some lovely Michigan produce at my favorite grocery store in the world, in of all places, the hellhole that is Clinton Township, Michigan.
Go figure.
So, I may or may not blog in the next few days. But then again, I may.
I will keep you on your toes and guessing. It's kind of like opening a watermelon. You never know what's inside until you cut it open.

Dropping Knowledge on Meat and Tofu

I had tofu two nights in a row and I liked it. I am trying to cleanse, purify from too much meat eating over the winter and too much bloat in the belly. (Ok, I will stop talking about my belly and my bloat, I swear.)
I had tofu with vegetables and couscous, suckas. I sautéed some garlic, some onion, added in some tomato paste, some sugar (just a wee dash), some soy and some peanuts (crushed) and some hot pepper flakes. It was some kind of vague Thai dish. Sort of boring, but so satisfying.
And this morning on my subway ride into work (Shaneequa is still out of commission) I read an article in Mother Jones that has changed my life. Michael Pollan writes a about a farmer in Virginia whose philosophy has made me feel a bit more optimistic about the future of the industry of food and farming.
I was a vegetarian for 15 years. I was one of those animal rights activists. I wrote and worked for PETA when they just had a lowly little four-page newsletter, kiddies. Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation changed my life. And while I may indulge in cow, pig, lamb, fish, duck and even ostrich now, I still am worried, concerned and obsessed with where my food comes from and how it gets there.

Maple Butter and Bad Teen Behavior

When it comes to Canadians, it’s hard to pick a favorite. So I am going to go out on a limb and just say Jennifer Tilly is my favorite. But I am not even sure if she retains her Canadian citizenship. Anyhow, the Tilly rocks. Enough said.
Saturday morning another Canadian thing rocked my world. Canadian maple butter. Dyamm. It’s better than maple syrup. Slather a pat of the concentrated maple goodness on a fluffy pancake and it melts and penetrates as well as coats! And while maple syrup can sometimes seem too sweet and cloying, the
“butter” manages to pull off a savory essence at the end of an initial sweet taste. It also provides a slim layer to the pancakes, adding a bit of textural interest. (Maple butter is just spreadable maple syrup, by the way.) The “butter” would also prove well on a hot biscuit or muffin, no doubt.
When it comes to Canada, the first thing that comes to mind is not necessarily food. Beer, perhaps, hockey, curling (!), universal health care and even Alanis Morissette come to mind first.

Apparently, Hyenas Can Tell When You Bleed

I don't understand people who don’t like breakfast. These people who say they just don’t like eggs, don’t like eating until afternoon, or just plain forgot breakfast. When I run into these people, I feel a bit adult and mature because it’s when I realize and confess to the fact, the mature realization, that some people I just won’t understand. And, you know, there are a few breakfast haters in my life. I even like them.
Me? I love eggs, pancakes, French toast, oatmeal with fruit, without fruit, granola and yogurt, scones with dates and berries and oats and nuts, muffins, quick breads, hash browns, bacon, ham cooked with Vernors and brown sugar, coffee, orange juice, strawberries, butter pats, mounds of jam, jelly, compote, maple syrup. 
During our trip in Afffffrica, South Africa and Zimbabwe to be exact, I traveled with a friend who is as compatible an eater and travel companion I could ever find, but not a huge breakfast eater. And, yet, it was ok. Again, I feel mature because I dealt with that with aplomb, if I say so myself. (Note: new attention to maturity since birthday and use of "aplomb".) So it was fucking Africa hot one day in Zimbabwe and I didn’t bungee jump and we crossed the border to Zambia with just a cursory look at our passports by one guard who simply handed us a cardboard slip and sent us walking. So that was the day that perhaps the saying, “Aaah, it’s hard to travel with someone” came true. But we were hot and sweaty and nothing was going right. Screw Mugabe. It was his fault. And all we wanted to see was Victoria Falls but it was a letdown. Wrong season. Screw Mugabe.

Always a Bride's Maid Nurturing a Conch

In Turks and Caicos, I started eating fish regularly. I was a vegetarian for over 15 years at that point and first delved into red meat in  Chicago (where else?) and then in a series of trips to the  Caribbean with my family I ate fish daily, nightly. Never liked it before. But while in the land of fish, I indulged frequently.

We headed to the lovely island for my cousin’s wedding. After a drunken-filled wedding night, I went with a cousin and a cousin’s friend to the one tourist attraction on the island, the conch farm. It was there that we watched a conch's gray penis inflate to twelve inches.

The three of us stood at the tip of the bay on a square platform of graying planks. All of it sat at the edge of a hysterically turquoise sea. Grace, the tour guide of the conch farm, told us that the conch's penis is able to inflate to four times its length. Grace picked up a large conchshell and fiddled in the mouth of it with her fingers. She padded the tip of her finger on a shiny, gray membrane and, pow, there it was. It shot out as quickly as the Road Runner got away from the Wile E. Coyote.  The penis was dark, wet, gray and shiny and as wide as two and a half fat fingers -- as long as a ruler. It reached outward, and stiffly searched and wobbled as it tried to find what had provoked it.  Grace's fingers hung in the air. The day was so bright and I was so hungover that I squinted inside my sunglasses and feltmore than a little nauseated by the shiny penis. And the can of coke I was drinking started to taste too caramelly and thick.

    The night before, we were all shoving Malibu rum on ice down our throats and debating whether or not it was a good idea for one of us (not me) to sleep with the guy that took us on a rafting trip earlier in the day. At the moment that my cousin decided it was ok to do this, another one of our male cousins yelled to us; "It's time to toss the bouquet."

We laughed, thinking it was a joke. Of course, we were too old for that. And between the three of us we must have been bride's maids in 30 weddings. (I have 13 notches on my taffeta belt.) So as i stood at the back of the dancefloor I recalled the last 13 times I stood in some pastel colored dress huddled in a mass, hoping that the bride wouldn't toss the thing right in my hands. But, with aunts, uncles and even a grandparent there, what else could we do? We gathered on the dancefloor. That's when I fully understood who I was at this event. It felt kind of freakish. When you're 21 it's not so strange to be on display and trampled by Maria Balmonte for the bouquet. But now, it was unnatural, unpleasant and frankly, I said out loud, "uncalled for."

   Public humiliation in a pastel dress is not for the timid. If you can't hold your liquor or are a bit sensitive about looking like a popsicle with blow-dried hair then you should just try and stay away from it all and quietly refuse the role. No, being  a bride's maid is for the tough ladies.

   And, you know, conch can be tough. It's also not for the timid. But if it's treated just right, like a lady, it can be dee-lovely and dee-licious.

    I got to thinking about the conch since the temps are rising and it feels like Spring. It's the time of year I start thinking about a summer of fresh fish and fruit. I am thinking blue skies, fried fish and cold drinks. Hopefully, no shiny, gray sprouting penises will be popping out of shells.

     So nurture the conch, pad it like Grace did. It's hard to find in the local supermarket.  But it's a lovely snack, fried, and popped into your mouth like an old lady pops in a refreshing menthos.

Conch Fritters

Ingredients:

1 cup conch

1 bell pepper

1 medium onion

1 garlic clove

2 eggs

2 tbs Key lime juice

2 tbs tomato paste

1 cup flour

2 tbs baking powder

some milk

1 tbs thyme

1 tbs oregano

1 tbs celery seed

1 tbs hot sauce

¾ tbs salt

½ tbs basil

½ tbs cumin powder

½ teaspoon black pepper

Directions:

Pound conch with a rolling pin until it has flattened out (especially the thick and hard "foot"), then dice into small pieces. Mix in lime juice and tomato paste with conch in small bowl. In separate large bowl, dice pepper, onion and garlic. Mix in spices. Mix in conch mixture. Mix in flour, baking powder and eggs.

The mixture should be fairly thick, if you take spoon of it and turn it upside down it should stick there for a few seconds. If too thin, add more flour. If too thick, add a little milk. You could also substitute a little beer for the milk if you like.rec

Get a couple of plates with napkins or paper towels handy, as well as a tablespoon, a teaspoon, a fork, and a metal device for scooping stuff out of hot oil.

Heat a pot of about 2 inches of cooking oil on medium heat. Stir after a few minutes. Oil should be ready after 7 or 8 minutes, don't heat too fast or oil and fritters will burn.

Scoop up 1 tablespoon of fritter mixture, scrape it into oil with teaspoon. Let cook for about 2 minutes, then roll it over with fork (they float) and let cook on other side for about 2 minutes or until lightly browned. Scoop out with scooper and let drain on napkin plate. Let cool a bit and then taste. Carefully adjust seasonings in remainder of batter to taste. Repeat this procedure of making one fritter until you have the spices just right. The recipe may seem like a lot of spices, but they lose their strength when mixed with all that stuff and cooked.

Serve with lemon or lime wedges, some more habenero sauce, and plenty of cold beverages. And be careful with that hot oil. Excessive alcohol consumption and playing around with hot oil definitely do NOT mix.