I Remember Nothing [21]
But this rumor is clearly for real, so I suppose I am going to have to throw away my Teflon pans.
Meanwhile, I am going to make one last ricotta pancake breakfast:
Beat one egg, add one-third cup fresh whole-milk ricotta, and whisk together. Heat up a Teflon pan until carcinogenic gas is released into the air. Spoon tablespoons of batter into the frying pan and cook about two minutes on one side, until brown. Carefully flip. Cook for another minute to brown the other side. Eat with jam, if you don’t care about carbs, or just eat unadorned. Serves one.
I Just Want to Say: No, I Do Not Want Another Bottle of Pellegrino
We would like a bottle of Pellegrino. The waiter brings the Pellegrino. There are four of us at the table. The waiter brings glasses for the Pellegrino. The glasses happen to be extremely tall. Tall glasses are not necessarily the best glasses for Pellegrino, but before I can say a word on this profound subject, the waiter pours the Pellegrino into the tall glasses.
When the waiter is done pouring, there’s a tiny amount of Pellegrino left in the bottle. My husband takes a sip of his Pellegrino, and the waiter is back, in a flash, with the last drops of our Pellegrino. He tops off my husband’s drink.
The first bottle of Pellegrino is now gone. We’ve been at the table for exactly three minutes and somehow we’ve managed to empty an entire bottle of Pellegrino.
“Would you like another bottle of Pellegrino?” the waiter says.
I haven’t even had any of this one!
I don’t actually say these words.
I love salt. I absolutely adore it. Occasionally I eat at a place where (in my opinion) the food doesn’t need more salt, but it’s rare.
Many years ago, they used to put salt and pepper on the table in a restaurant, and here’s how they did it: there was a saltshaker and there was a pepper shaker. The pepper shaker contained ground black pepper, which was outlawed in the 1960s and replaced by the Permanent Floating Pepper Mill and the Permanent Floating Pepper Mill refrain: “Would you like some fresh ground black pepper on your salad?” I’ve noticed that almost no one wants some fresh ground black pepper on his salad. Why they even bother asking is a mystery to me.
But I wasn’t talking about pepper, I was talking about salt. And as I was saying, there always used to be salt on the table. Now, half the time, there’s none. The reason there’s no salt is that the chef is forcefully trying to convey that the food has already been properly seasoned and therefore doesn’t need more salt. I resent this deeply. I resent that asking for salt makes me seem aggressive toward the chef, when in fact it’s the other way around. As for the other half of the time—when there is salt on the table—it’s not what I consider salt. It’s what’s known as sea salt. (Sea salt used to be known as kosher salt, but that’s not an upscale enough name for it anymore.) Sea salt comes in an itty-bitty dish. You always spill it trying to move it from the dish to the food on your plate, but that’s the least of it: it doesn’t really function as salt. It doesn’t dissolve and make your food taste saltier; instead, it sits like little hard pebbles on top of it. Also, it scratches your tongue.
“Is everything all right?”
The main course has been served, and the waiter has just asked us this question. I’ve had exactly one bite of my main course, which is just enough for me to remember that, as usual, the main course always disappoints. I am beginning to wonder whether this is a metaphor, and if so, whether it’s worth dwelling on. Now the waiter has appeared, pepper mill in one hand, Pellegrino in the other, and interrupted an extremely good story right before the punch line to ask if everything is all right.
The answer is no, it’s not.
Actually the answer is, No, it’s not! You ruined the punch line! Go away!
I don’t say this either.
• • •
We have ordered dessert. They are giving us dessert spoons. Dessert spoons are large, oval-shaped spoons. They are so large that you could go for a swim in them. I’m not one of those people who likes to blame