Tuesday, March 11, 2003

Eight dollars and sixty-two cents.  That is what we have in our bank account.  Thanks to some generous patrons (including some who really should not be donating so much, haven’t you heard there’s a war on?!!  But thanks anyway, you’re saving our asses….) will have the cash flow going again soon, but because of the sometimes slow ways of paypal, we are for the moment stymied. But there are some advantages to only having eight dollars and sixty-two cents in your bank account.  It crystallizes your options.  There was no worrying over various stuffings for lamb and which artichoke recipe will go with duck.  Eight dollars and sixty-two cents in your bank account translates into a pantry dinner.  And thanks to the Project, my pantry had some possibilities. It just so happens that the next sauce up is Sauce Duxelles, Brown Mushroom sauce.  I have mushrooms left over from the stuffing for the lamb, and some brown sauce made from the lamb bones.  Julia says the sauce goes with pasta.  Ah, pasta.  The very word sends me into paroxysms of pleasures.  So easy!  So clean!  So not lamb!!  Eric initially had one of those bone-deep Eric reactions – “Is there going to be meat in it?” “Well, the sauce is made with lamb bones.” “But no meat meat.” “Honey, we’ve been eating lamb for approximately three thousand years.” Hunted look from Eric. “Besides – hardly any dishes at all.” That turned him around. For the brown sauce, all you do mince a cup of mushrooms – it took a long time, but there’s always this delicate balance between mincing by hand and getting out the Cuisinart, and mincing by hand won this time – and sautéing them with butter and oil and minced green onions.  Shallots would have been better, but green onions were what I had, and Eight Dollars and Sixty-Two Cents.  Then pour in a third cup of vermouth and let that boil almost completely away.  Pour in the leftover brown sauce and some tomato paste.  I didn’t have quite enough sauce, so I had to pour in some chicken stock to make up the difference.  I simmered that while I was cooking the spaghetti.  I was a little worried that the sauce would be too thin, so I scooped out a fourth cup and mixed in some cornstarch, then put that back in the pan.  That seemed to give it just a bit more body.  When the pasta was done, I just took the sauce off heat and stirred in three tablespoons of butter and some parsley, then tossed it with the spaghetti.  It wasn’t all that impressive to look at, especially since we had nothing to go with it.  But – “Honey, this is great.” And it was.  It really, really was.  A very deep, lingering flavor.  Eric kept saying it tasted like Gubbio, which is this restaurant we went to once in Tribeca, seemingly run by the Russian mafia, but with really, really fabulous food.  Closed now, and I can’t really remember the pasta particularly, but this Sauce Duxelles seems to have hit a Proustian lode with Eric, because he keeps saying it – “Just like Gubbio, just like Gubbio.”  To me it was just supreme comfort food. I guess the secret is in the sauce.  When you make a sauce out of long-simmered lamb bones, this is what happens.  Which is why I need to have no job and spend all day simmering sauces.  Ah well. My mother called after dinner, she was asking about what to do with some pork stew meat she’d bought.  She was talking about green chiles and cumin and black beans, and I felt like I was on Mars.  Someday, I will go back home.  But for now, spaghetti with Sauce Duxelles will keep me going. 7:28:46 AM    comment []