You're Not Dead Yet
So please enjoy some pasta & panna cotta.
“Maybe if you were, like, 18.”
I was at a party earlier this year talking to a bartender who said this to me after telling him I was tempted to go to culinary school.
How often, I wondered, have people (maybe especially women?) been told they’re too old to do something they’ve expressed interest in? Maybe if you were, like, 18, echoed not only for the rest of the night but in the days that followed. I was caught off guard that a stranger would offer this as advice, but then a voice whispered inside to remind me that often when people tell you you can’t do something for [insert reason] they’re probably talking to themselves. And in this vein, anything they’ve offered under the guise of advice is usually best ignored.
So, what do I tell myself as, a thankfully not 18, but 32 year-old?
You’re not dead yet.
A phrase that, to me, is the antidote for “you’re too old to do that thing”.
Death is both inevitable and inconceivable. I know it’s coming someday but I find that impossible to believe. I guess it’s natural, maybe even a safety feature of humanness, to be delulu in our relationship with mortality, assuming we have all the time in the world. Reminding myself that, yes death is coming but it hasn’t happened yet, helps remove layers of constructed reality and allows me to recalibrate, at least for a moment.
For the past five years my career has been on an unconventional path, trying to incorporate a variety of interests into a way of making a living. For a recovering overachiever it’s difficult to start over, especially when you live in a city where seemingly everyone your age (and younger) is career-driven and actualizing their dreams. The career I chose out of college could have continued on a trajectory that led to moderate success but being on that path felt like I was locking my soul in a box every Sunday night until Friday.
It’s a tale as old as my generation—to seek a life worth living (life, of course, meaning career). Maybe a larger conversation could be had about the enlightened capitalist’s plight of leaning on a career to create meaning for life rather than a job being a means to an end. Perhaps a job or career is not/should not be the gravitational field of one’s life. But for better or worse, I don’t know how to relate to myself or the world I'm in without knowing how I want to toil in it.
At the risk of sounding like I’m bought-in to the trad wife life (I am not), when I toil in my kitchen I find it’s easier to live in my body, to have fun, to make mistakes, to share love and community with friends and, ultimately, to keep myself alive. The alchemical act of marrying ingredients and sometimes meeting them with fire is one of the most magical things human beings have ever stumbled across.
You’re not dead yet, so enjoy this extravagant meal which was surprisingly one of the easiest, most delicious, hands-off meals I’ve made in a while.
Lamb Pasta w/ Red Sauce
Lamb
The queen, Alison Roman’s recipe & method for slow-braised lamb. The only modification I made to her recipe was to add ~2 tsp of nutmeg
I made the lamb the day before because I planned to add the cooked lamb to my pasta.
Sauce
4-5 garlic cloves
1 diced onion
Salt & pepper
Quarter-sized squeeze of tomato paste
~1/4-1/2 bottle of red wine
1 can whole pomodoro tomatoes (hand-crushed them)
1 cup water (could be more or less depending on your preference for sauce’s consistency)
Noodles
Tagliatelle pasta
In a dutch oven or large pot sauté garlic & onions with salt & pepper until they’re translucent. Add tomato paste and cook with garlic and onions until it all gets a little more rich in color, about 3-5 minutes. Add the wine, let it simmer for about a minute or 2 until it’s reduced slightly. Finally add the tomatoes and water. While this is simmering on medium heat for about 20-30 minutes, add the lamb and boil your pasta in a separate pot so that it’s cooking while your sauce has time to reduce. Once the pasta is al dente, strain most of the water (reserving ~1/8 cup) and add to the sauce. The sauce should coat each noodle but not drown them. Let this all canoodle together for about 5 minutes, until the pasta has finished cooking through. Plate and garnish with things like flat leaf parsley, parmesan, red chili flakes, lemon or orange zest, etc.
Vanilla Bean Panna Cotta with Maple Syrup and Waffle Croutons
I had panna cotta at Brushland Eating House not too long ago and they topped it with local maple syrup. Ahhh maple syrup, the wisest of flavors— earthy, rich, and blessedly nostalgic. One of my favorite things to eat as a child was cold butter mixed with maple syrup, sometimes spread on toast and sometimes eaten with a spoon. I admit this with a healthy dose of both pride and shame.
As I was eating Brushland’s panna cotta I wondered what it might be like to include something with a slight crunchy-ish texture. Just like with ice cream, yogurt, or other silky, creamy, smooth desserts, to me panna cotta needs something with a little more interest and dimension that can provide textural contrast. While caught in the hazy luxury of my maple syrup high I wondered if waffle croutons could work with this dessert and also why I’d never eaten or heard of a waffle crouton.
Vanilla Bean Panna Cotta
2 cups heavy whipping cream
1 cup whole milk
¼ cup granulated sugar
3 (or more!) tbsp vanilla bean paste
1.5 tbsp gelatin
Combine all of the ingredients together in a pot on low heat. Bbarely let it simmer and certainly don’t let it boil. The heat is just to help melt and integrate the sugar and gelatin. Once there’s no sign of either at the bottom of the pot, pour through a sieve into whatever vessel(s) you want to serve the panna cotta in. (I decided not to attempt removing them after setting because I could care less about removing them cleanly from a ramekin.) Let them set in the fridge for about 3 hours at which point they should be firm, but hopefully not rubbery.
Waffle Croutons
I’m currently working on a recipe for waffle batter that will crisp up around the edges, which is the essence of “crouton” I’m looking for. I found the recipe I used for my waffles left the texture soft, closer to pancakes.
I made the waffles ahead of time and when I was ready to serve the panna cotta, I crumbled them in a pan of brown butter with cinnamon which helped create a more crispy/crunchy texture. To serve, take the panna cotta from the fridge, pour about 1 tsp of maple syrup (or more if you want) to cover the top and finish with a crumble of croutons.