La Pasta E Il Pessimista

A short story on food and feeding

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I

When my meticulously diced onion hits the pan, I am greeted by a familiar sting as rogue drops of oil singe my arm. After mentally filing it away as the cost of doing business, I return to the task at hand. If cooking is to be considered the culmination of proper timing, complimentary flavors, and heat applied, then it’s going to take an implicit amount of finesse to get this right. As I chuck in the similarly diced red and orange bell peppers, I think about just how often I’ve been eating this same barebones pasta. Even with masks on our faces, the refreshingly nice lady that oversees the self checkout counters at Lombardy Kroger and I have started to recognize each other. She’s even commented on my recently-formed habit of buying the same seven items: one yellow onion, two bell peppers, a head of garlic, a bundle of parsley, some constantly-wilted basil, and a package of this special looking fettuccine made with parsley in the dough. Mixed with one of the many cans of roasted tomatoes I’ve already accrued at my apartment, the ingredients can be molded into some very passable sustenance for any broke college kid surviving a life-changing historical event.

The peppers and onions are surrendering their moisture; softening, but not to the extent of becoming mushy. Without any meat in the dish, cooking out the chew of what little content I have would be highly inadvisable. By creating a small landing pad at the center of the pan, I give myself the necessary room to drop in the garlic and refine its somewhat imposing spice into a savory, fragrant part of the larger whole. When the meager showing of ingredients is sautéed to my specifications, I crack open my months-old can of roasted tomatoes and listen to the telltale hiss as its contents fall into the pan. After crushing the tomatoes, adding some water, and making some much-needed seasoning adjustments, I’m left with the beginnings of a humble yet undeniably functional sauce. Once it’s been covered and brought to a steady simmer, I fling myself onto the nearest couch; eternally grateful for a moment to sit down before the noodles need to be cooked. I recognize now, on the fourth day in a row of preparing this same dish, that I’ve been treating cooking just like my mother used to; indifferently looming over the stove until I’ve earned my next period of respite. And sure, the present lack of that creative spark could likely be blamed on a number of outstanding factors; the deadly pandemic virus or my chronic financial destitution, for instance. That didn’t stop me from falling into a deep thought hole about how far I felt my cooking had fallen in that moment, or about why I’d ever even learned my way around a kitchen in the first place.

II

I would say that I learned to cook similarly to how I learned to walk. Once you get two feet under you, things start to go remarkably smoother. My first culinary experiences were largely experimental. I swear I only graduated from after-school ramen noodles once I started getting stoned in my junior year. Homemade Crunchwraps and bacon, egg, and cheese bagels just glistened that much more brightly in my bloodshot eyes. Cooking hadn’t revealed itself as an outlet yet. I had yet to open my eyes to the full scope of its history and elegance. While a healthy admiration of food and its production usually begins in the home, my brother and I were never really exposed to the kind of methodical, prideful food preparation that I’ve tried so hard to embody in recent years. My father’s navy family background, and his resultant childhood desire to join the military himself, had left him with some distinctly utilitarian views about food. In his mind, a can of beans and a few hot dogs could serve a person just as well as the finest of steak dinners. As such, he left the more complex kitchen work to his better half.

For my mother, the kitchen was an arena of expedition, just one of many boxes to check in the fast-paced hum of a somewhat pedestrian nuclear family. Though we always ate well, we found there was rarely much magic in it. The dishes we swore we’d seen touched by minor gods on network television were reduced to simplified imitations as we prioritized convenience over craftsmanship time and time again. It was a “Taco Tuesday”, “Spaghetti Wednesday” kind of house. And though the streamlined, 21st century lens we saw food through still taught me a lot of what I know today, I would also argue that it disincentivized me from taking a look at the bigger picture. Before I idolized Bottura, before I learned what Slow Food was, and before I bought my first real kitchen knife, I had to unlearn the modern American perception of food as an inconveniencing chore.

III

It was no small task trying to drag Food Network out of the TV screen and onto my countertop, but I was determined to make it so. I started out simple, buying a couple extra ingredients whenever my mom would send me to the store before dinner. She’d usually shut me down before I could slyly toss them in with whatever dish she was working on. It would be some time before I could get her to trust my palate at the stovetop. I was still only a freshman in high school, and my grades didn’t suggest that I was an authority to be trusted in any forum. Nonetheless, I persisted. From the hours of 11pm to 1am, the kitchen became my playground. My brother became all too familiar with my unique style as I slung increasingly complex quesadillas and stir fries his way night by night. Until I could make my parents aware of the potential of my newfound hobby, I would need to keep things cheap and non-invasive. Quietly, slowly, I got better and better. I’d never had something like that before. Well, not something that I’d enjoyed at least. Cooking yielded immediate performance reviews. You didn’t have to go back and watch the tapes to know what to do differently next time. It was all right there on the plate. I’d always thought of myself as flighty, bouncing from one hobby to the next when I found that I couldn’t be “perfect” at them. This wasn’t like that. As I stuffed my face with whatever work of carefully crafted culinary art I’d concocted that night, I finally found myself witnessing perfection in process, rather than in product. I was dazzled by even the smallest improvements in knife skills, or by coming that much closer to putting the perfect amount of spice in a dish. More so than ever before, I think I was taking unadulterated pleasure in something.

As time went on, I recognized more and more that cooking was becoming one of my preferred avenues for connecting with others. For better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness or health: people always needed to eat. When my mom was too tired or busy, I occupied the position of secondary sustenance provider. Doubts surrounding my palate were progressively abandoned, and I finally felt like I’d found my little niche talent in the family unit. After years of my parents pushing me to succeed in all the same spheres that my brother had, I was proud to be able to say that I’d cut out my own space to find pride in. I’m ashamed to say that that pride dwindled considerably when I got to college. My roommates had very little kitchen know-how, and none of us had the excess funding to be going to the grocery store consistently. The “normal” thing for college students to do was buy massively overpriced meal plans and sustain themselves on subpar food that produces egregious amounts of paper and plastic waste. It took years for us to rediscover the practicality and companionship that cooking at home offered. Once we did, we never went back. I taught my best friend/roommate the basics, and he took to it like it was second nature. For the first time in my life, I got to see my passion for something inspire action and pride in someone close to me, and that really made all the difference in the world.

IV

I snap back in, aloof to how long I’ve been reminiscing. The gentle buzz of the city continues outside, though I’m not entirely sure where it’s coming from. The streets are appropriately quarantine-barren and the buslines are running as more of a formality than anything else. A fundamental inspection of my sauce reveals that it’s been simmering for far longer than I usually run it. After what I feel to be an appropriate amount of expletives, I remove it from the heat and frantically prepare a pot of water for the noodles. As it comes up to temperature, I chop up the necessary amounts of basil and parsley to add to the final product. The water boils. I fear that my anxiety is being transferred to the fettuccine as I scold myself and submerge the thin morsels in the fast-bubbling water. As the moment to combine my ingredients arrives, I clumsily transfer the noodles directly into the sauce, soaking the hot stovetop and sending generous plumes of steam into the air of my poorly ventilated apartment. As the pasta water makes an immersion out of the beautiful-yet-incomplete sauce and oil, I see a glimmer of hope in what I feared to have been an entirely botched operation. With the addition of my pre-prepared basil and parsley, the dish is complete, and all that remains is my own uncertainty. I’d run out of fresh parmesan three days prior, so I settled for the powdered variety I keep in the fridge for dire circumstances. As I lift the first bite, I resolve not to judge myself too harshly for whatever my inattentiveness has yielded. Perhaps excessive rumination had just been a part of my process for the day. But, seemingly in spite of my doubts, and in spite of my incessant day dreaming, and in spite of Food Network’s guidance, the flavor is explosive. The extra time simmering has refined the tomato to its most savory potential. The fresh herbs bring life and the hastily prepared noodles have retained the optimum amount of chew. Pepper and garlic dance as part of a delicately concocted, homogenous whole. In this tiny, enormous moment, I submit to the concept of casual miraculum, and the word is dragged from my sauce-coated lips before I even know it’s coming: “Perfect.”