Pinch of hot pepper flakes
1 large eggplant, unpeeled, cut into ½-inch cubes
2 teaspoons salt, plus more for the pasta water
One 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes
¼ cup red wine
1 tablespoon sugar
1 pound rigatoni
1 cup fresh basil leaves, torn
Grated Parmigiano-Reggiano for garnish
To make the ricotta topping: Beat the ricotta and milk together in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or in a medium mixing bowl with a whisk) until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add the fine sea salt and mix well.
Place the mixture in a serving bowl. Generously sprinkle the coarse salt, pepper, thyme, and oregano over the top. Drizzle with oil and refrigerate.
To make the rigatoni: Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and pepper flakes and sauté until the onion is almost translucent. Add the eggplant and 1 teaspoon of salt and cook for 20 minutes, allowing the eggplant to get a little brown, moving it around with a spoon. Then add the tomatoes, wine, sugar, and the remaining 1 teaspoon of salt. Stir often. Cook for 50 to 60 minutes, until the eggplant is very soft.
Bring a large pot of water to boil, throw in a handful of salt (about 3 tablespoons), and cook the rigatoni according to the package instructions. Drain the pasta, then return it to its pot. Add the sauce from the skillet into the pot, on top of the pasta, mixing everything together. Add a dash of oil, and most of the torn basil leaves. Ladle into bowls and garnish with the remaining basil leaves and Parmigiano-Reggiano. Top it off with a scoop of the ricotta topping. Serve hot.
Enjoy the moment.
The Simple Trifle
SERVES 10 TO 12
This trifle might be embarrassingly easy to assemble, and filled with culinary taboos, but to me, it’s a portrait of opulence. The angelic white Cool Whip against the blasphemous candy bars? Screw the rules! Of course, you can make everything from scratch, but don’t beat yourself up if there’s no time, or if your hungry ex-lover is coming home soon and life is difficult enough. Sometimes you just have to do the best you can with what you have. Which is, of course, better than doing nothing at all.
1 batch cooled Supernatural Brownies for Breakups and Breakdowns, or brownies from 1 box prepared mix (per package instructions)
chocolate pudding from 1 box prepared mix (per package directions)
1½ (8-ounce) tubs of Cool Whip
5 Heath Bars, crushed, 1 reserved for topping
1 carton fresh raspberries, washed and patted dry
Break up the brownies into small pieces.
In a large trifle bowl or clear glass serving bowl, make a layer with one-third of the brownie crumbles. Create another layer with one-third of the pudding mixture, then a third layer with one-third of the Heath Bar bits. Top with a generous layer of Cool Whip. Dot the Cool Whip with one-third of the raspberries. Repeat the layers twice and top with the remaining Heath Bar crumbles and raspberries, if any are left (or save one raspberry for the center).
Basically, just get everything in there; it might not be perfect, but it will be beautiful.
Epilogue
Back when my friend Anzo acted as my “agent,” negotiating deals with horny high-school lacrosse players on the topic of seeing (but “no touching!”) the architecture of my upper body, as we parked our parents’ station wagons on dark cul de sacs and damp swamplands, she always ended the night by saying that when I became “a famous New York writer” she was going to buy me my first black leather jacket.
Fifteen years later, when I show up in Boston for the fund-raiser to celebrate Jean’s life, a day after accepting a full-time job as the “New York Editor” for New York magazine’s Grub Street, she has the jacket waiting for me wrapped, naturally, in a patchwork of soft-core porn. The note reads, “You were never too cool for us, but always too cool for Ruby Tuesday’s. Congrats on the dream job!!!”
That night, about fifty people from high school show up at Lord Bryant Marengo’s Saloon, a quirky old bar and grill, gleaming with framed photographs of Jean, from the day she was born to her twenty-fourth, and last, birthday. Kates and Court have assembled incredible collages of our childhood memories, too, everyone so young and hopeful. We’re all in our thirties now, and I think I am the only woman in the room who’s not pregnant, in between pregnancies, or anything even close. But despite the baby bumps, husband drama, and mortgage migraines, or utter lack thereof, it’s really like nothing has changed. I feel every bit as close to the magical people in that room as I did on the day we graduated from high school in 1995 (when naturally, I went naked under my graduation robe—just like my mother did twenty years prior).
When everyone has arrived, and the hugging and life debriefing mellows out, Kates—who married her high-school sweetheart, became one of Boston’s best nurses, and has two extraordinarily delicious young daughters—thanks everyone for coming. She asks us to raise our glasses, which no one from my big-hearted hometown will ever struggle to do, and begins, “Someone once said that friendship doubles our joy and divides our grief.…” And so begins our night of extreme love and sorrow.
We laugh, drink, catch up, and cry, and laugh, drink, catch up, and cry some more. No one in the room knows or cares about the restaurants I’ve been going to, or the celebrity chefs I’ve cooked with, or that my new job is probably the best thing to ever happen to my professional identity. They just want to make sure I’m happy. “Not all the time, but definitely most of the time,” I say, telling the absolute truth.
It’s a hard night to begin with, and in a perfect world, Chef or someone else I love as much as I do him would be there to charm my friends, refresh our drinks, and wipe away my tears. But then again, if life was fair, we wouldn’t be there in the first place, softly touching Punky Rogér’s 9/11 memorial pin instead of her plush Donna Karan cashmere.
Eventually Kates turns our attention to a slide show, set to “Son of a Preacher Man” and “Forever Young” and all the other songs we used to blast over and over on the radio while cruising around town, so innocent and immortal. Jean’s pretty face flashes in each image, and it’s heartbreaking, but we also have to laugh. I had the bushiest eyebrows and the most wannabe-bohemian wardrobe. My friends, too, were ridiculously dressed, with blotchy pink faces and ladybug turtlenecks. How outrageously overconfident we were for small-town teenagers who loved our parents, passing notes and chasing boys.
But I don’t see just us. I see inside us. I see a frisky fifteen-year-old in a polyester halter-top who always knew that an antiseptic future was out of the question and couldn’t wait to take a gamble on the universe. The girl I see in me? God, she would delight in knowing that in twenty years, she’d still be a little different from everyone else in the room; that her life would be lush with great love and footloose affairs; that at some point she would live, live abundantly, in the hills and frills of Hollywood and under the bright sparks of the Brooklyn Bridge. If teenage-me knew that one day she’d look pain in the face, fame in the eye, and that her circle of friends would be as good and loyal as mine, she’d probably toss her hair, put on her Walkman, and say, “Well, obviously.”
But what would she make of my new life as an epicure? She’d definitely think it was cool that I conquered something so uncomfortable, especially since I’m a better version of myself because of it. But she wouldn’t pay too much attention to my tales of Manchego and marzipan, because, as she might say: The problem with food is that it gets eaten; it goes away. What you’re left with when it’s gone is so much more interesting. Then she’d probably switch the subject to the only thing she’d really care about: Mom, Dad, and Rach. And I’d tell her, “They’re all happy and healthy,” and that our signature dish is still laughter, extra well done.
The slide show flickers to an image of Jean, sitting with her boom box under a weeping willow tree in her big backyard. The whole room stares, still in awe of her carefree effervescence. She was
only herself. I make eye contact with Anzo, and through her tears, she gives me a wink. Kates and Court are standing, but barely, close to their own handkerchief-clutching moms, who are Punky’s girlfriends, and two of my favorite people. The rest of us are holding hands, rubbing backs, taking care. And I think how the women in my life, in this room, in my family, and up in heaven are my symphony, my Riviera, my black, pearly caviar, and I worship them.
When the slide show ends, just after midnight, our eyes are burning and our stomachs are grumbling from six hours of alcohol with only a few trays of soggy sliders festering under heat lamps. Much of the crowd has gone home, including the Rogérs, who had to leave early for a very good reason: their son and daughter-in-law are about to give birth to a little girl, whom they are naming Jean Rogér. “You give your folks and little Rach our love, okay?” Punky says, holding my face and kissing my forehead, on her way out. “And find yourself a nice guy already, goddamnit.”
About ten of us remain at the party. I tell Kates to replay the fifteen-minute slide show, which I already know my sappy, sloshed friends will want to watch again and again. Then I slip away to a twenty-four-hour grocery store down the street.
As quickly as I can, I crisscross through the aisles. It really doesn’t matter what I make or how I make it, as long as it tastes good. I grab a few hearty loaves of bread studded with sunflower kernels and poppy seeds, some extra-crunchy peanut butter, and a pretty jar of raspberry jam—the color of rubies. I then toss into my basket a few bags of tortilla chips, mangos, onions, avocados, lime, and mint—just enough ingredients for a fresh mango salsa. For something sweet, I decide on vanilla ice cream, some dark chocolate morsels, and a bag of frozen blueberries that I’ll quickly heat up for a compote topping. On my way out, I see that Devil Dogs are on sale.
Running back to the party with my brown paper bags, in my black leather jacket, I glide past the projector, which is repeating the slide show yet again, and into the saloon’s vacant kitchen. I hurriedly put my blueberries on the stove top, with equal parts sugar and water, and heat things up, stirring often, watching for the berries to burst into their zany juices.
On the side, I peel, pit, and cut the mango into totally incongruent cubes. I dice my avocado even more disobediently, taking a moment to admire its wonderfully ripe and retro chartreuse shade. I chop the yellow onion eagerly and unmeticulously, careful to keep my fingertips. When it starts to sting my eyes so badly that I can’t see straight, I shove half a loaf of bread in my mouth and keep it there, an old wives’ tale that Chef once taught me and I never actually tried. It works! With wet, drooly sesame seeds sliding down my chin, simultaneously laughing and gagging, I finish the onions, whisk the salsa ingredients together, and add some lime juice and salt. And voilà.
Cleaning myself up, I move on. I pour the bags of chips into a streaked, silver punch bowl, swirl together our disheveled PB&J sandwiches (which could never masquerade as tartines), and scoop the dripping generic ice cream, splashed in cheapo chocolate, into beer mugs and cognac glasses. The blueberry compote is ready, and I serve it alongside in a flower vase with a ladle.
There are no crystal fleur-de-lis dangling from the stems of my glassware, no artisanal honey drizzled into the nonorganic peanut butter, no edible dandelions garnishing the clunky salsa, no high art in the Tostitos. The meal is messy, crazy, uncouth, and full of more meaning than anything I have ever made.
And then, I feed my friends.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When I was six years old, I wrote a three-paragraph memoir, ending with the following promise to myself, “One day, I’m gonna move to Greenitch Vilage and be a wrighter.”
Soon thereafter, my parents and sister became my first editors for the scribbled stories in turquoise crayons that we mailed to the New York Times for fun. Then others, for real. All along, my aunts, uncles, and cousins made me feel beautiful, important, and writerly, as I grew from a kid to a teenager to a thirty-something. A million thank-yous to all of them. Especially to my mother’s mom, Dorothy Pava. No one has a family as loving as mine.
But eventually, I had to bring in the big guns.
My eternal gratitude goes to Pilar Queen at McCormick & Williams, who, while inhaling macaroni and cheese at City Bakery, said that I had a book in me and then became my agent and confidante. If it were up to me, I’d consult with you before every first kiss, sit-up, and midnight snack.
Also, to the great David McCormick, who graciously let me talk his ear off before his first cup of coffee. Sorry I’m so loopy around you—extremely dignified people just have that effect on me.
I owe so much to Emily Takoudes, my editor, who kindly and generously guided me through mountains of self-doubt and tough times without ever losing her patience. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed being your most unprofessional author, telling you way too much information, and stalking you as an editor and friend for life. Not to mention the bragging rights included!
Angelin Borsics, thank you so much for all the warm encouragement and spot-on edits. And to Emily’s assistant, Hilary Sims, bless your heart for tying up so many loose ends. How lucky was I to have you both?
To all my friends from Longmeadow, New York, D.C., and L.A., you can finally stop saying, “You need to write a book about this shit.” I live for you guys; I mean it. Shelley gets first dibs on who should play her in the movie though.
A huge thanks to Alan Sytsma at Grub Street for giving me a shot, even after I told him that the real me would rather eat dinner on a picnic blanket than at Per Se. And to my former colleagues at the various magazines, thanks for letting me stick around for all of the glamour and none of the grit. Especially Liz McNeil, who has provided me with work and wisdom at the best and worst of times.
Rachel Shelasky, my exquisite sister, gets a second shout-out because she’s also a professional research editor and helped me enormously with nitpicky details that would have otherwise ruined my life. Rach, I love you so much.
To all the men I have loved hard or liked briefly, don’t be mad; I made you all sound really hot.
And to Chef, whose heart is of the purest kind: You helped me more than anyone with the Apron Anxiety blog and book. Thank you forever and ever. Now finish up those potato chips; this is the final page.
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