Uff-da! (That's for my friends the Jensen girls, Sally and Jen. They say stuff like that where they hail from.) It's been a busy few weeks. A heady, inspiring, titillating few weeks, filled with great friends, great food, and great guzzling of luscious wine. (See previous post for just a sample.) I've had a stream of beloved foodie friends down from the Bay Area, which has refired (pun intended!) my passion for all things culinary, and stirred my soul to its core, like a good martini.
Actually, I think it might be in the air. My tribe seems to have burst onto the pop culture scene, with a vehemence that far outstrips anything that's been going on on the Food Channel. It's all about Julia, you see. Julie and Julia has awakened interest in She Who Rocked Our World (as she's generally regarded among restaurateurs and foodies) in a way that seemed impossible even in the midst of the general chef-worship that has permeated our national airwaves. Julia's 40-year-old magnum opus is back on the best-seller list. Card retailers can't keep a "What Would Julia Do?" greeting card in stock. And to top it all off, last Saturday was Julia's birthday, which precipitated a frenzy of French cooking in kitchens across the country.
So, what does this have to do with Wine Giques? Well, it means I refuse to indulge in the worst of my weekday habits: ordering out. I'm determined to cook every meal I eat at home, at least until the euphoria wears off. And believe me, thanks to my ex-husband the chef and my finely-honed sense of revenge, I have the cookbook collection to do it. (Although I am lacking Mastering the Art of French Cooking, owning instead the more-definitively titled The Way to Cook. I prefer to sidestep all the cultural nuances and go straight to the ...uh, meat, of things.)
Tonight was "what do we have in the fridge?" night. You know the scene. You saw it in The Big Chill: the one where you stand in front of the refrigerator and stare. Luckily, I usually have a treasure-trove of basics stashed in there: Plugra butter, shaved Reggiano, fresh greens, stock, cream, olives. And a few interesting things, like green peppercorns and dry vermouth (hey, I already mentioned the martinis). Just to mix it up a little, I also opened the freezer and stared. A bag of tiny frozen peas caught my eye, and we were off to the races. I pulled out my trusty copy of Pasta Classica, and there it was: Tagliatelle con Piselli, Salame e Prosciutto. I made a few substitutions here and there, nearly swooned over the aroma of onions browning in butter, held back the salame for my batch of pasta to appease my vegetarian teenager, et voilà, dinner. (The dish uses both the green peppercorns and the dry vermouth, BTW.) I even barked out a cheery "Bon Appétit!" to the teenager when she came in to fill her bowl declaring "Ewww. I don't like peas ... but this tastes good."
Lucky for me, the other thing I had stashed in the fridge was a bottle of 2005 Podere Il Caio Grechetto dell'Umbria, picked up from one of those shiny stacks at the front of Larchmont Wine & Spirits. The buttery browned onions and the hint of vermouth brought out the nuances in the wine, lifting it from mere dryness to fruit-and-fennel-infused goodness. I downed a couple of glasses and thought "time to write!" and here I am, imagining that I'm Julia, in the middle of an 8-year labor of love, looking forward to tomorrow night's dinner ... when there will be more friends in town to cook for, and new wines to uncork. I've had a Julia quote on my Facebook page for months, which sums it all up nicely, as was her wont: "Life itself is the proper binge." Oh yes, indeed, Mme. Child, it surely is.
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