from
The New Yorker, January 11, 2010
THE CURSING MOMMY COOKS
ITALIAN
BY IAN FRAZIER
 Chop chop chop chop chop chop
chop chop chop chop chop chop chop chop chop chop
chop chop chop clatter chop skitter crash bang—FUCK!
Stir stir stir stir stir stir stir stir stir
stir stir stir stir stir stir stir stir stir stir
stir skid bang skitter bang crash—SHIT!
Hello. For those of you
who don’t know me, I would like to apologize
for my brief outburst there at the beginning, but
I am the Cursing Mommy, and occasionally I do
blurt curses, break crockery, give people the
finger, and hurl objects to the floor. Well, all
I can say about that is, anyone who can make a
Bolognese sauce and not get a bit flustered has
my heartfelt admiration! I expect we’ve seen
the last of that behavior today, however, as I
turn to one of my favorite dishes, a delightful
and relaxing seafood risotto in the Venetian
style.
Whipping up a risotto is a marvellous way to give
a sense of occasion to an intimate dinner party,
because of the careful timing that is required,
and the pinpoint attention to detail right up to
the moment of serving. If done correctly, every
risotto will be unique, its own irreproducible
concoction. That’s the fun of a risotto, you
see! In order to pull off this feat of cookery,
the chef must be completely relaxed, and to that
end I like to start with a robust Chianti such as
I am pouring here, forestalling any necessity of
immediate repouring by using an ample glass like
this snifter-type thing in which my ten-year-old
recently brought home two goldfish after some
kind of a project at his school. (Don’t ask
me where the goldfish are.) A little more than
halfway full should be fine.
At some point in your past, all of you have no
doubt been under pressure to prepare a dinner
party in which everything is really special and
“just so.” As it happens, that is the
very situation I find myself in tonight, when the
party will be for only six—two other couples
besides Larry and myself. The men are both
clients of Larry’s, and Larry, who is as a
rule somewhat worried, anxious, and useless when
it comes to almost anything, has been talking
rather wildly about how he’s going to be
fired and we’ll end up on the street. I
know, and you know, that this is another of
Larry’s whiny manipulations that his mother
was always dumb enough to fall for and I’m
not, but, in any case, this dinner party seems to
be sort of mandatory, which means the risotto had
better be up to par. Now, you may ask, will Larry
himself be around during the preparations for
this important dinner party?
Well, actually, no. Larry will not—beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-
As you see, when I set out to make a delightful
seafood risotto à la vénitienne, I always like
to get off on the right foot at the very
beginning by HAVING THE FUCKING GODDAM SMOKE
DETECTOR GO OFF!!! Fucking goddam piece of
useless stupid garbage—what could have set
it off? The steam from the fucking dishwasher? beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-
Thankfully, this is nothing I can’t deal
with, because I have learned in past encounters
with this lousy piece-of-shit smoke detector that
although I cannot turn the fucking thing off once
it starts, because it is the ridiculous
battery-less kind or something, all I have to do
is stand on a chair, remove it from its
ceiling-attachment thing, and take it down to the
basement, as you observe me doing now. Then I
simply place the smoke detector here in the
corner, and bury it under an enormous heap of
bedding near where my son has his TV. beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-
Ah, that’s better. . . . No, it’s not.
Because, as I stand here once again in the
kitchen, I notice that the stupid fucking smoke
detector can still be heard. The sound is faint,
but definitely still quite annoying, and enough
to distract me, or any skilled cook, from the
concentration necessary to pull off a
high-maintenance dish like risotto. Luckily,
though, I have just the solution for that: my
Three Tenors CD, which I was planning to play
anyway! I’ll put on the Three Tenors, let
them take me to sunny Sicily or wherever the
hell, and drown the fucking smoke detector the
hell out. Larry’s new CD player, which I
have already plugged into the kitchen outlet
here—is there a CD already in it? why
won’t it open?—if I push
this—no—fucking goddam stupid Larry
can’t even get a CD player that works—beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-
All right—you know what I am going to do?
I’m going to drain off the last little bit
that’s left in my snifter, pour myself a
nice big refill, imagine a lovely and relaxing
tropical vacation scene, and scream
“FUCK!” at the top of my lungs. Then I
am going to go back down to the basement, get one
of Larry’s hammers, and “disable,”
as they say, the smoke detector. Meanwhile, I
will leave some onions browning in a skillet here
on the left front burner so as to have a head
start on my risotto when I return.
(Pause.)
beep beep beep beep beep CRASH SMASH CRUNCH
POP SMASH beep
With that little detour behind us, we can now
proceed to the preparation of the lovely bits of
fresh seafood—the shrimp, squid, and snow
crab—which we are going to add to the
risotto when the time is right. I begin by giving
the seafood a thorough cold-water rinse, like so,
and then—beep be...e...e...p, bip—
What was that? bee bee beep beep, bip,
b’b’b’b’, beeeeeeee. . . .
Those of you who have followed this column for
any length of time know that once in a while, at
moments of extreme frustration, the Cursing Mommy
gets so totally fucking fed up that she starts to
scream curses, say what a stupid fuckhead that
fuck Dick Cheney was, and generally let off a
good cursing out all around. But now the Cursing
Mommy is older and wiser, and she’s not
going to do that today . . . unless . . .
what’s that smell? Was that stupid smoke
detector trying to tell me something? JESUS
CHRIST, THE FUCKING BURNER UNDER THE ONIONS HAS
SET THE PAPER TOWELS ON FIRE! OH, GOOD GOD! THE
WHOLE FUCKING ROLL IS GOING UP! NOW THE CURTAINS
ARE ALSO ON FIRE!! Oh, where’s that fire
extinguisher? Behind the basement door? Yes!
Thank God! But what is this pathetic drizzle
it’s spraying? AHH! I’LL HAVE TO SMASH
THE FIRE OUT WITH THE EXTINGUISHER ITSELF! smash
smash smash shatter smash crash crush shatter
smash
(Pause.)
After a vigorous session in the kitchen, I often
like to relax and recharge by taking what I call
a “mini vacation,” as I’m doing
now. I simply recline on my back on the kitchen
floor with my feet in the bottom tier of my
cookbook shelves, my head propped against the
useless spent fire extinguisher, and a clean dish
towel, moistened with cool water, across my
forehead and eyes.
Then I drift away in my mind to some far-off
place and take some deep breaths to expel the
remaining acrid and possibly toxic smoke from my
lungs. Let Larry deal with this shit when he gets
home. He can call Gianelli’s for takeout and
put it on whichever one of our credit cards still
works. I’m not even going to think about it.
I would look forward to a future when we will be
living in our car if I thought it meant that then
I wouldn’t have to cook, but you know what?
I will still have to cook. . . . O.K., I know
people are coming. In just a minute I’m
going to get up. beep...beep...beep...beep...beep
Oh, what a fucking terrible day this has been.
Look for the Cursing Mommy’s next
column, “Get Out of My Fucking Lane, You
Fuck: Defensive Driving Tips from the Cursing
Mommy,” which could be along pretty soon,
depending. |
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