I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti Page 21
Lachlan’s problems were of the physical variety. Once he adjusted to the time difference, he came down with a terrible cold; when that went away, he discovered a tiny pimple on the back of his neck that had to be cancer. In the midst of all these woes, Lachlan wasn’t “feeling very sexual.” Thanksgiving fell in the cold portion of this cycle. I picked up some echinacea on my way home from work on Wednesday and made this lasagna with the leftover mozzarella from the September tasting that I had been saving in the freezer. That’s what my mother always made the night before Thanksgiving, a little nod to our other culture, but not the big nod other Italian-American families make of serving pasta as a first course on the holiday. That is a custom my mother finds unconscionable. Don’t ask me why—my mother is my mother, is the best reason I can give.
Thanksgiving Eve Lasagna
For meat sauce:
(You can use this sauce with spaghetti or tortellini or any pasta you like.)
1 pound ground beef
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small yellow onion, chopped
1 clove garlic
Pinch hot red pepper flakes
1 (28-ounce) can tomatoes
½ cup red wine
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup basil leaves
Brown meat over medium heat until red color is all gone and it is an unattractive gray. Heat olive oil in large skillet over medium heat and add onion, garlic, and red pepper; sauté until garlic is golden and onion is translucent. When meat is fully browned, discard the fat and add meat to the pan with the garlic and onion. Add tomatoes, wine, sugar, and salt; bring to a simmer, lower heat, and cook, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes. Add basil leaves.
For filling:
2 pounds ricotta
2 eggs, lightly beaten
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup water
Olive oil for brushing
Here’s where I save you a big labor-intensive step:
1 (9-ounce) box no-boil lasagna noodles (I know I disparaged the brand earlier, but Barilla’s are good)
4 cups shredded mozzarella (I recommend you shred it yourself with a box grater or food processor fitted with a shredding blade)
1 cup freshly grated parmigiano (I recommend you grate it yourself)
Freshly ground pepper
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Mix the ricotta with the eggs, then add salt and water. Brush a 9 by 13-inch baking dish with a little olive oil and a layer of sauce; then arrange the noodles, followed by ricotta, topped with 1 cup of mozzarella, ¼ cup of parmigiano, and freshly ground pepper, followed by a ladle or two of sauce. Continue this for three layers of filling, then top with one more layer of noodles covered with sauce and sprinkled with the remaining cheese.
Bake for 45 to 50 minutes, until browned and bubbling. Let stand 10 minutes or so before serving.
Serves 8 to 10.
The herbs and cheese got Lachlan well enough to make it to my brother’s in Connecticut. I prepared him for insanity, as I do anytime someone I want to impress is about to be confronted with my family, though no one ever thinks they’re strange at all. Lachlan found only kindred spirits. “She reminds me of you,” he said of Carla, “she sparkles.” He discussed Raymond Carver with Matthew and Monty Python with Nick. Nancy, in California, was present by way of Matthew’s laptop, which he set on the table to include her in the fun via Skype. This, to Lachlan, was madness, and the rest of us just found it irritating, so I put the computer to sleep while Matthew was too busy cooking and serving to notice.
When I called my mother the next day to ask what she thought of Lachlan, she was enthusiastic. “He’s a person you feel instantly comfortable with,” she said. It was true. The discomfort, I was about to learn, comes later.
Anne met Lachlan over leftover lasagna the following Saturday, and the two hit it off instantly. Ginia, who had met him over the summer, reconnected with him at a dinner party our friend Meredith gave in honor of his return, but she made herself a little harder to win, not that Lachlan noticed. I showed him off at parties thrown by my Harper’scolleagues and even dragged him to lunch with the priests. I was hoping that soon Father Joel, whom Lachlan called a “wee soul,” could pull off some kind of interfaith ceremony. Apparently, a nod from the bishop was all that was needed to have me married to a Presbyterian.
All the while, we were waiting to hear back from THE AGENT. I had checked in with her a week after Lachlan arrived, the time she’d said it would take her to read the manuscript. She got on the phone with me immediately, bubbling over with praise for the novel: “I just started reading it and I’m pretty positive I’m going to love it, but I haven’t finished,” she told me. “Don’t show it to anyone else, I’ll finish in a week.” Lachlan made me go over that conversation with him again and again. “Now tell me one more time,” he’d say as that week became many more. “Did she say she would call you in a week or that she would finish reading in a week?” I’d make another go at re-creating the conversation as best I could and even refer to the notes I’d made in anticipation of just this sort of hounding.
“What would you want to do if you weren’t working in publishing?” Lachlan asked me over dinner at Il Gattopardo in Midtown before a classical music concert at Carnegie Hall (he was an authority on analog music, too). I told him my secret, that I dreamed of being a writer, something I was embarrassed to say, especially since I hadn’t written a word since college. Still, that was what I always felt I should be doing, though I was afraid of trying. Lachlan dismissed my aspiration with typical writerly snobbery: “Why would anyone want to be a writer?” he snorted, as if the vocation were a sentence he alone was stuck with for the crime of his brilliance.
Lachlan kept in touch with his parents, calling them every so often to report on the progress of the book. I suppose he liked letting them know that things were happening with his career, and also that he had some kind of girlfriend, because while they were chatting, he asked me by way of hand gestures if I wanted to have a word with his mother. It was the oddest request, but, deciding it connoted commitment I by no means wanted to discourage, I took the phone and spoke with Harriet in Edinburgh, who seemed as uncomfortable as I.
“I see you’ve discovered the way to Lachlan’s heart,” she said, having listened to him brag about my cooking for the part of the conversation when he wasn’t talking about THE AGENT (from whom we still had no news). How I wished it were so simple. I had gotten to Lachlan’s stomach for sure, but I still did not know the anatomical path to his heart, if there even was one.
The route to other parts of his body was difficult to ascertain as well. When the ersatz cancer fear had dissipated, Lachlan had run out of excuses for avoiding sex, so he dug around for some of my ailments. “What do you worry about?” he asked when we got into bed one night. At the time, I was mostly perturbed about the dishwasher—it wasn’t draining properly. Lachlan had dealt with the repairman that afternoon while I was at work, but when I opened it that evening, I was confronted with a pool of white stinky water and unclean dishes.
“Everything,” I replied to his question, acknowledging that my need to have a home in precise working order is a neurotic balm for a plethora of shortfalls I perceive in my own self.
“I don’t know why you worry, you’re so intelligent, you’re such a wonderful person,” Lachlan said—a response that was both truth and overstatement. He construed some of my appliance angst to be about him, which wasn’t fair because I didn’t know as much as he did about what was going on at that point. If he was right, that little machine had a lot of weight on its racks; there was no service I could call to come and fix Lachlan.
It wasn’t all “sand dunes and salty air” the next night when Lachlan embarked on something beyond the usual cuddling in bed, but for all intents and purposes, he appeared to be in the game. Suddenly he stopped. “I’m not excited,” he said, “you’re anxious, and it’s not sexy.”
“I like you full stop,” he said as I begged him the next morning to explain to me what was wrong. “All relationships have periods when they’re not sexual.” Yes, they do, but first shouldn’t they go through the one where they are?
Holding hands and cuddling at night continued for a time, but our sex life was officially over. We did, however, continue to sleep together in my bed. Lachlan was apologetic about his frigidity at first; he would embrace me in the kitchen while I was making us dinner and say, “Sorry I’m so weird.” He brought me lilies, which “symbolize virginity”—an inappropriate message, though they were pretty and filled the apartment with a glorious scent—he brought me a nice bottle of Nebbiolo, one of my favorite grapes. But louder than the fragrances and fine tastes were the words you’re not sexy. My senses were overloaded with the sound of that phrase.
The burning question in my mind, whether the problem was with him or me, should have easily been answered by the fact that Lachlan was developing an unnatural affection for an ice-cream scoop—a purple plastic object shaped like a little man with a round head that scoops ice cream and a pear-shaped body for a handle. Lachlan christened him “Scoopy” and insisted he be liberated from his drawer and stand on his cloven foot on the kitchen countertop. One Friday evening, Lachlan brought him out to the living room to watch Chitty Chitty Bang Bang with us and for the next few days changed the lyrics to one of the songs from the movie in homage: “Someone to care for, to be there for; we have Scoopy,” he’d sing. He referred to Scoopy constantly as our child, the third person in our home. He even did this in front of my mother!
“Scoopy was very upset!” Lachlan exclaimed to me in private after she’d laughed off his peculiarity. I was enchanted by the Scoopy thing and even sang along to his anthems, though life with Lachlan was becoming wretched.
The other thing Lachlan loved that was not me was coffee. Not that it kept him awake, but he adored drinking it, and he was an authority on making it. He devoted himself to the study of techniques for maximizing the beverage’s flavor potential and had many well-researched ideas on the matter. I learned from Lachlan that you should never clean a coffeemaker (or teapot, while we’re at it) with soap—it should be rinsed simply with water and only water. A new espresso maker must be seasoned before use; to do this, you brew a mock pot of coffee from used grinds. (I suppose if you’re not thrifty, you could brew a pot from new grinds and throw out the first batch. But then, why not just drink it and grin and bear a first, imperfect cup of coffee?) Lachlan insisted on the fine grind, no matter the filter, the better to wrench every last bit of flavor out of the bean. He treated coffee with an Old Testament sort of reverence; it was veneration mingled with fear. He saw dangers inherent in adding fire to ground beans and water under pressure. To make a cup of espresso was to flirt with death. If the pot was left boiling on the stove one moment longer than necessary, it might explode and shoot boiling water and grinds all over the kitchen. We could be killed! Lachlan kept constant vigil over espresso as it brewed, making sure to remove the pot from the heat at just the right moment, to keep us safe.
I don’t follow any of his dictums. Do you actually think I would take coffee-making advice from someone who sleeps all the time?
As I got more and more fed up, my generosity waned. I begrudged Lachlan the littlest things—like the pricey can of Italian tuna fish he helped himself to for lunch every day. That was a habit I could break, knowing full well how Lachlan obsessed about his health. Apparently, he was not aware of the dangerously high mercury content in tuna fish. I felt it was my duty to let him know that it wasn’t a good idea to eat it every day. Instantly, he was on to more economical lunch options, like beans and toast.
Lachlan’s lack of concern for the needs of my body, a body that was shouldering the burden of procuring for him a big-deal New York agent, was doing me in. One rainy Monday morning when I was going to have to phone her for the fifth time, I woke up crying and I couldn’t stop. I tried to explain to Lachlan how the pressure was getting to me; how much energy it took to make those calls. He sent me off with good wishes and a pursed-lipped kiss, as he did every day.
My discontent reverberated onto my entertaining, usually so free of incident. During the Scottish occupation, a fire broke out at two separate dinner parties. The first time Jen and Jeff were over for my mother’s trusty baked sole, a fish that proved trickier than it needed to be because when I pulled the baking sheets from the oven to see how they were doing, they slid to the back, spilling grease onto the oven floor and causing flames to shoot out wildly. Lachlan was in the living room yukking it up with the guests while my eyelashes and hair were getting singed in the kitchen. Jeff finally heard my cries and ran in to put out the fire. It was then I realized that the previous owner of my apartment had inserted the racks backward. That discovery put an end to some of the near death experiences, but not all of them.
Incendiary Sole
¼ cup (½ stick) butter, melted
1/3 cup olive oil
1 heaping cup bread crumbs
¾ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
Freshly ground pepper
2 pounds sole or flounder
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Combine butter and oil in a wide, shallow bowl; season the bread crumbs with salt, parsley, and pepper and spread on a plate. Dip the fish in the butter and oil, covering thoroughly, then dredge through the bread crumbs. Place on a baking sheet and bake for about 15 minutes, until the crumb topping is lightly browned. (Don’t worry, I’ve adjusted the recipe so there is no extraneous fat that might cause an oven fire.)
Serves 4 to 6.
I took off the Friday before Christmas to get a tree with Lachlan. I had never had my own Christmas tree before because my previous living room would not accommodate one. Unfortunately, the heartwarming scene of dragging a fresh Vermont fir through the Brooklyn streets that danced in my head when I had envisioned Christmas with Lachlan a month earlier did not play according to script. Besides the fact that it was raining, yet again, dragging such an exultant symbol down sidewalks with a man whom you want to love you more than anything else in the world, who doesn’t and won’t no matter how many pretty decorations you come up with, filled me with gloom.
It rained on Christmas Day, too. For my present, Lachlan gave me a cutting board designed for slicing bread with slats for the crumbs to drop through, making an altogether neater bread-cutting experience. A gift as sexy as our relationship, you might say, but that’s what I asked for when he asked me what I wanted. I was shocked that he was planning on getting me anything, but Lachlan believed in presents. I got him a beautifully designed edition of the chapter on greatness from Baldassare Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier, a book I loved back in my innocent college days, which my current situation recalled to me.
The week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, I gave a dinner party for out-of-town friends who were in New York for the holiday. They had been hearing about Lachlan by e-mail and were looking forward to meeting him. Too bad that by that time our relationship was as deflated as cooled Yorkshire pudding. Which is what I happened to be making that evening, along with roast beef, for the traditional British Sunday dinner (even though it was Wednesday). My puddings looked and tasted perfect when I pulled them from the oven after extinguishing a fire caused by the fat that bubbled over in the pan. This time, Lachlan got wind of the crisis and ran in with a broom (?) to put it out. The handle hit the overhead light, causing glass to shatter all over the floor, so once we had the flames under control we were sweeping up this other mess. Besides that, the meat was tough. I didn’t have a good time at that dinner, but that was par for the course, and this was no St. Andrews Links.
Spiced Roast Beef
(Adapted from epicurious.com)
Your meat won’t be tough unless you have a withholding Scotsman living in your house.
1 teaspoon whole cumin
1 teaspoon whole coriander
1 teaspoon whole black peppercorns
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon cayenne
1 garlic clove, thinly sliced
1 (3-pound) beef eye roast
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons fresh cilantro, chopped
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Crush cumin, coriander, and black pepper in a mortar and pestle, process them in a food processor, or put them in a paper or plastic bag and crack them with a rolling pin or hammer. Mix in salt, ginger, and cayenne with crushed spices. With a paring knife, make several small slits all over the meat; inset garlic into them. Brush meat with the oil and rub spice mixture over it.
Roast until a meat thermometer inserted into the center registers 120 degrees for medium-rare; this should take 50 minutes to 1 hour. When it is done, remove the meat to a cutting board, tent it with foil, and let it rest for 10 minutes or so. Slice thinly and sprinkle with cilantro.
Serves 6 to 8.
Yorkshire Pudding
1 heaping cup flour
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
2 eggs, lightly beaten
4 tablespoons butter, melted
In a bowl, stir together flour, salt, and milk until well mixed, then add the eggs and stir until batter is smooth. Let it stand at room temperature for 1 hour.
When ready to bake, preheat oven to 375 degrees. Distribute the melted butter among 8 muffin molds, then evenly distribute the batter into the molds and bake until puffed up and golden brown, about 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from oven and serve immediately. Yorkshire puddings deflate rapidly, like expectations.