What I dreaded happening did, in fact, happen: my GDMF car died on me as I was Ubering a lovely group of grads, whom I couldn’t even take to their destination. I had to pull into the lot of an Asian market & call AAA. My passengers were confused at first, but once I started bawling they were super-sweet & wished me luck.
Car is now in the shop until at least Wednesday, so — no Uber for me, nor do we have transportation beyond the scooter. Foque.
I distracted myself from this freshest of hells by making the pasta sauce for tonight’s dinner with our NYC friends: a lovechild (bastard?) of arrabbiata and puttanesca, if you will. Melted a bunch of anchovies in olive oil, rendered and somewhat crisped up a couple of slices of chopped bacon, added a diced onion, RPF, and 3 fat garlic cloves, then let that all mingle nicely with the last dredges of tomato paste I had in the fridge, a few drops of Calabrian chile oil, and a healthy splash of rosé. Lastly 3/4 of an open jar of Rao’s plus some passata, oregano, capers, and sliced orange peppers & let that simmer away.
Antipasto was seared scallops with a dusting of smoked paprika, lemon zest & chopped parsley over chile pesto.
Our friends brought a lovely salad (butter lettuce, avocado, grape tomatoes, pecans, artichokes, vinaigrette) as per our request,
and my boo made his fabulous Cuban tres leches flan for dessert. We all had seconds.
There was wine. Oh, was there wine, and oh, will there be more tonight!
