Thursday, July 10, 2003

I’m going to commission me a painting, in velvet, of the Martyrdom of Emily.  I’m picturing a Stations of the Cross sort of thing, perhaps an entire series of works: Emily with Cigarette, Emily Chopping Things in a Sweltering Kitchen, Emily Watching Buffy with Vodka Tonic, and of course the Presentation of the Sweetbreads.  I can just see the shining gold of her hair, the pinkish glisten of the glands in her hands; it will be beautiful.  I will plaster the walls of my kitchen with them.  They won’t show the grease, and they’ll serve as a constant reminder of true friendship and its abuses. So, yes, I sent Emily in my stead to pick up the sweetbreads.  I feared that I would be beset by stupid work- and transit-related delays again, and so I exploited one of my dearest friends in the name of the Project and my own sanity.  And then, of course, everything went swimmingly at work, and I could easily have done the deed myself.  Ah well, no matter.  While I awaited Emily’s arrival in our miraculously not-stifling apartment, I whipped up in the blender some Sauce aux Fraises, out of the strawberries that had begun their slow maceration process in the cooler with the vodka at the Belmont racetrack, and which were by now richly fragrant, glistening, and soft.  I forewent rubbing the berries through a sieve, because I have no problem with strawberry seeds.  Instead I threw them directly into the blender with some superfine (suuuuuuperfine!) sugar and a bit of Kirsch.  This sauce was meant to be served with my disastrous Ile Flottante, which was waiting, pooflessly, in the fridge. When Emily arrived, she promptly hit the showers (she’d had a long day), while I began the exhausting work of soaking the sweetbreads.  Put sweetbreads, which are funny, oddly shaped little things, pale and lobed and very liquid-y (Emily says they’re like Ooblek, by which she means not the green slime that falls out of the sky in that Dr. Seuss book, but rather stuff you get in a plastic bin, like play-doh, that’s changes from liquid to solid and back), in some cold water.  Soak for an hour and a half, changing the water a few times.  Phew! Eric came home and immediately started in on that Eric’s Spicy classic, Wolfman Jack Burgers.  He had neglected to buy sour cream, which caused him a considerable bit of despair.  But you know, a Wolfman Jack burger with roasted green chiles, Monterey jack cheese, mayonnaise and bacon can be just fine, even without the sour cream. So here’s the thing.  It turns out Emily has never seen Die Hard.  When we discovered this gaping hole in her filmic education, we of course, as her dear friends, had to rectify the situation.  And it was somewhere in here that I fucked up the sweetbreads.  Because, see, after the sweetbreads, have soaked for an hour and a half in cold water, and soaked another hour and a half in water and vinegar, and after you’ve peeled that very annoying white film off it, kind of – I, like JoAnn, decided to read Julia’s phrase “pull off as much as you easily can” fairly liberally – you are meant, if you will not be cooking them immediately, to blanch them in barely simmering water for fifteen minutes.  Well, I put them in cold water in a saucepan, and set them over a moderate flame.  And I was keeping a careful eye.  But really, when you’re taking a neophyte through Die Hard for the first time, it’s so difficult not to get wrapped up all over again in the exquisite intricacies of the Bare Feet subplot.  And, well, I let the sweetbreads come to a boil.  And they came out looking not gently blanched so much as, well, boiled.  Hm.  Well, tomorrow will reveal all.  And there’s always another opportunity.  Next time, though, I’ll be doing this sweetbread thing on the weekend, so I can do it all in one day. It’s amazing what twenty degrees can do.  Even though we seem to have given up entirely on dishwashing, and even though I just attempted to take a taste of my Ile Flottante that we failed to eat last night but quailed when I cut into it and found that the thing had separated into two distinct layers, the bottom one being gelatinous and vaguely sulfurous in odor, and even though I have to leave now to go to yet another fucking board meeting, I am at peace.  How did that happen?  I can only think that in my mind, my Martyrdom of Emily paintings are already hung….   6:47:04 AM    comment []