This post is about fitness. I suppose. Lidia Bastianich, the renowned-ish Italian-American chef, had this to say about her son the other day: 

He fell into the pressures of decadence. It's a potent current, a beautiful, enriching current.

Indeed it is, Lidia. Her son, it seems, has taken up jogging to counter the corporeal effects of too much gluttony. After recent forays into cured pig's jowl, salmon, and other lipid-endowed foods, The Elephant and Butter can empathize. But running is not the answer. I agree with Wong Kar Wai on this one: running is best reserved for when you have a freshly broken heart (see: scene 6). The gym is not the answer, either. They are filled with untoward smells and aggressive lighting. So, I've taken up jumping jacks. I highly recommend the jumping of jacks. One can jump them anywhere. They employ many of the essential functions of the body. And, they involve almost no equipment. A worthy pair of shoes helps, though. Luckily, I found some in a thrift store the other day.

Goodbye, sweet lipids and bad humors.

It is an immutable and irrefutable fact that the Elephant and Butter eats more jalapeños than you do. For example, every morning in my cream cheese. For example, in a cumin-lime-jalapeño salad dressing I made the other night. The evidence flabbergasts, gentle reader. As the great Sam Cooke once sang, don't fight it, just feel it.

Someday, I will host a 20-course meal. For a while now I've been working on the menu, which will feature both food and non-food courses. The details are best kept secret for full effect, but I can say that the feast will likely begin with a recitation of Gustav's gorgeous, erratic speech from Ingmar Bergman's  Fanny and Alexander. Just prior to the speech a small child has been christened, and now the entire family is gathered at the table. The wild patriarch rises to speak:

If I could I would throw my arms round you all in a vast embrace and I would plant a kiss of affection on your brows, a kiss that, more than any words, would tell you of my happiness and my love. We are all together again now. Our little world has closed round us in security, wisdom, and order after a time of horror and confusion. The shadows of death have been routed, winter has been put to flight, and joy has returned to our hearts …. We must live in the little, little world. We shall be content with that and cultivate it and make the best of it. Suddenly death strikes, suddenly the abyss opens, suddenly the storm howls and disaster is upon us—all that we know. But let us not think of all that unpleasantness. We love what we can understand. We … like our subterfuges. Rob a man of his subterfuges and he goes mad and begins hitting out. Damn it all, people must be intelligible, or we can’t dare either to love them or speak ill of them. We must be able to grasp the world and reality, so that we can complain of its monotony with a clear conscience. Dear, splendid actors and actresses, we need you all the same. It is you who are to give us our supernatural shudders and still more our mundane amusements. The world is a den of thieves and night is falling. Soon it will be the hour for robbers and murderers. Evil is breaking its chains and goes through the world like a mad dog. The poisoning affects us all, without exception … No one escapes …. So shall it be. Therefore let us be happy while we are happy, let us be kind, generous, affectionate, and good. Therefore it is necessary, and not in the least shameful, to take pleasure in the little world, good food, gentle smiles, fruit-trees in bloom, waltzes. And now, my dearest friends, my dearest brothers and sisters, I’ve done talking and you can take it for what you like—the effusions of an uncouth restaurant owner or the pitiful babbling of an old man. It doesn’t matter to me, I don’t care one way or the other. I am holding a little empress in my arms. It is tangible yet immeasurable. One day she will prove me wrong, one day she will rule over not only the little world but over—everything! Everything!

Unhinged, and not a bad way to begin a feast.

A yellow colander.

The Guanciale Caper has been accomplished. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that The Guanciale Caper accomplished us. I can hardly claim any sure agency over the events that transpired last night. Here is what happened. At six o'clock, A.F. arrived. We greeted each other with the fervor of people about to uncover the mysteries of swine cheek. A bit earlier I had done some thinking, and as we stood in the kitchen I told A.F. that, as I saw it, we could do two things this evening. We could make some pasta all'Amatrciana and consider ourselves happy and stable men. Or, we could prepare a very involved six-course Italian meal of beauty, idiocy, and excess. As I knew he would, A.F. did not hesitate in choosing the latter option. We smiled broadly, as if we had already accomplished something. I put on a Townes Van Zandt album, and showed A.F. my cookbook research. We celebrated with some excellent beer.

Soon we began making pasta, and this is when things became difficult. Goaded by the examples of the cookbooks, I suggested we abandon the pasta machine in favor of good old fashioned physical exertion. In a matter of minutes, A.F. and I found ourselves leaning into our dough, sliding on the floor, and grunting like depleted wrestlers. Our dough was unyielding. We kept drinking. I put on 'Surfer Rosa' by the Pixies in order to give us strength and speed. We eventually managed to create two moderately flat, round sheets thanks to a special technique suggested by Marcella Hazan. Basically, we stretched the dough on our rolling pins, and against the side of the table.

Around 8 o'clock A.F. and I became very decadent and lost track of ourselves, time and perspective. This coincided with the arrival of S.B., who began to film our efforts. Humbled by the pasta and diminished in sobriety, we began to spend more and more time theorizing and less and less time cooking. A.F. pointed out that he and I seemed to be in a different temporal sphere than S.B. The Violent Femmes came on. I somehow lit my nose on fire, blackening the left nostril fully and melting the tips of my left eyelashes. Actually, that happened before S.B. arrived,  I think. That I do not know for sure is not a good sign.  Still, we somehow made a fiesty Amatriciana sauce, and showed the menu--which we had typed up just prior to our dissolution--to S.B. She approved, and very helpfully called attention to items on the menu we had already forgotten about. 

Antipasto | Olive

Primo | Bucatini all'Amatriciana

Secondo| Carne con carne con carne

Contorno | Carciofi

Insalata | Insalata

Dulce | Sorbet de Cassis

Obviously, there is some magical realism in our menu. The bucatini was not precisely bucatini, and we may have gotten carried away and inserted one too many carne in the name of our carne dish. L.J.Y., with impeccable timing, arrived exactly at the beginning of the vegetarian stretch of the menu, and also just in time to watch A.F. and I flail around with vocabulary. She brought news from the outside world. We opened a bottle of pinot grigio. We poured sherry. We reached the dulce, which cut through all the savory remnants on our palates and reduced us to quivering. Talib Kweli played. Unable to stop, we added more courses, each time updating the menu with a pen.

We ended in a great, gauzy recline. Some of us proudly wore a guanciale musk. We took off our shoes and talked for a good long time. And then, as the evening came to an end, I lost functionality and shattered a glass on the kitchen floor. Time became apparent. It ended.

The Elephant & Butter has recently discovered a hugely positive correlation between having free time and producing auditory food programming. I had some free time last weekend, so the audio has returned. What follows is a simple, sad song I wrote about the vicissitudes of life and vegetables. It sure ain't sung in key, but if you lower the volume the caterwauling is less noticeable. Turn it low, shhh, and listen:

Oddly, I have never written about my unsuccessful imported tomato scheme. Nine months ago I coordinated a substantial purchase of San Marzano tomatoes from an importer in New Jersey. They only sold them by the case, and not wanting sole possession of 48 cans of tomatoes, I got about six other people involved. R.J. Apple, the venerable New York Times food writer, had this to say about San Marzanos:

The best variety [of tomatoes] originally came from a village near Pompeii named San Marzano sul Sarno. These San Marzano tomatoes, which gave birth to the Italian canning industry in the 1800's, are now grown throughout Campania, as the region surrounding Naples is known. There is a lot to like about The San Marzanos. Their skins slip off easily. Just like fresh San Marzanos, they have an ideal equilibrium between acid and sweetness. And because they have less juice than most American tomatoes they cook down more quickly, preserving more of the fresh clear summery taste.

My shipment, however, was a disappointment. Though the cans were awfully pretty (see figure 1), the tomatoes were acidic to the point of tasting metallic, and required a shit-ton of salt to calm their bilious tendencies. None of the friends who ordered them complained, but from time to time I notice the cans in their apartments serving a decorative function rather than a culinary one. Selah.

figure 1. | the can:

But as alluded to before, my overly complicated food distribution days are back: I am now embarking upon a Great Pork Face Caper. Moments ago, I placed an order for guanciale, which is at this very moment being air-mailed to me from Seattle. Seattle! Guanciale is cured pig's jowl, a central ingredient in numerous Italian dishes that's not easily found in America. It's what's used in all'amatriciana. It's inimitable. And this weekend it's going to spur some homemade pasta. The dough shall be rolled. More later.

Pimentón dulce, I recently learned, is a Spanish paprika made from sundried, round peppers. I picked some up recently at a local specialty food shop, my interest thoroughly jogged by its label, which features a sultry woman smoking atop some pillows at nighttime near a canal. The message clearly conveyed to me by this tableau was: this spice will taste good on fish. So I mixed it with olive oil, salt, and lemon juice, and brushed it on a strip of salmon, which I grilled. On the side I steamed some broccoli, then fried it in cumin.

And here is a terrible photo of the pimentón, but a rather endearing one of a small wooden sheep.

The Original Wasn't Original

Yeah, it's different now. The original aesthetic of The Elephant and Butter did not agree with me. It was not wabi sabi. So now it looks like this. The header photo, by the way, is an L.J.Y. original taken in Camden Town, and a personal favorite. 

I decided to dismantle things after being dismantled by the following film:

Onward!

This Is Not A Farmer's Market

A strange distortion of reality has come to my town, and its name is Mel Gibson. When Mel Gibson comes to town, all of a sudden faux farmer's markets appear on the wrong day, everyone seems to be carrying a walkie-talkie, and ropes and ropes of wires are taped to the sidewalks. Gibson is here to make a film about a daughter who has disappeared. You know, the same old fear narrative he's been peddling for pretty much ever. 

On my way to a cup of coffee this morning I passed a bad simulacrum of a protest. Over and over, Gibson drove by in a car as the protesters hooted and hollered about a war. In a Gibson world, the protesters are drab, often wear smeared black eye make-up, and seem anemic. Two protesters were dressed in eagle and bear costumes. You know, like liberals do. 

Sadly, I did not get to talk with Mel. I had hoped to ask him about his Yom Kippur plans.