Food, Family and Memory

I went to bat for my friend Tracy. She wanted the starring role in a movie my dad was producing, but it was really his friend Bob who was the money guy and director. If it were just my dad, it would have been a slam-dunk. So, I went to work on Bob. I pitched him for months, relentlessly. That’s me when I want or need to be – a dog with a bone. “Have you seen Tracy in Christopher Guest’s new movie?” I asked. “She’s brilliant.” Or: “Check out her credits, you’d be lucky to get her.” And: “Bob, let her audition, you won’t be sorry.” Finally, when I had exhausted all other angles, I went for the Boys Club Secret Society as a last try: “Your lead actor has always wanted to fuck her.” Yep, that did it. The part was hers.

We went to Texas and my best friend Tracy had the lead as the girlfriend. And I had one scene, one great scene, as the angry-crazy-ex-wife. (It would be another year before I’d play the role in real life.) And except for the hurricane threatening to shake things up and me freezing my ass off the day I was shooting, it was great fun to be on location with my dad and my close friend. I spent most of my downtime hunting for Galveston’s best fried chicken.

That was the late 80’s. Sometime in the mid-90’s, Tracy called to say she was hired to do some reenactments for the Leeza Gibbons Show and would I like to join her, they need another actress. Me, panicking: “Is that in front of a live audience?”

My nephew, who lives in a tiny New York apartment, called me with a recipe emergency. He’d invited a new Potential Girlfriend (PGF) over for dinner and wanted to cook something that was cheap and easy but impressive. I thought this was ambitious for a guy whose cooking skills are limited to pouring cereal and microwaving popcorn, but I had an idea.

Henry’s understanding of ingredients is, shall we say, unsophisticated; he has probably never spoken the words “paprika” or “fennel.” But he did well with the shopping list I gave him, texting me only once when he was bewildered by varieties of olive oil.

We began Skype instruction two hours before the PGF’s ETA. “So, first you preheat your oven to 350 degrees,” I said.

After a brief silence, Henry admitted that the oven was where he keeps his shoes. After a less brief silence on my end, I told him to get the (damn) shoes out of his oven and call me back. We hung up, resuming instruction five minutes later when Henry’s oven was vacated.

I got sick last week. Sick like “Oh my god, I’m never going to walk again.” Sick like, “Should I go to hospital now?” Sick like stomach virus. out sick Liquid Alison. It was the worst, though luckily it moved through me quickly, so to speak. After hours of sleeping cocoon-style on the couch, I realized I would have to put something into my body. I stood in my kitchen, staring at my shelves, wrapped in a blanket, moaning slightly as my dogs rolled their eyes. It had to be simple to make and easy to eat. My eyes scanned the shelves: quinoa, polenta, whole wheat penne, vermicelli, and then focused on a box of small shells, half of which I had cooked for a child’s mac and cheese a long time ago. That I could do. Pasta is easy.

As a personal chef, I’ve spent years trying to get kids to expand their culinary comfort zones to include something beyond buttered noodles. But then I sat there on my couch last week and ate buttered shells with a bit of parmesan and I had a true aha moment. It was insane it was so delicious. Maybe I’ve been fighting a losing battle. Sure, sure; appreciation for broccoli is an important skill to acquire, but I had been thinking that the kids had limited palates because they didn’t know much. Actually, they have limited palates because they found no reason to look further. Buttered noodles are at the apex of simple esculent pleasures. It is my testimony that buttered pasta saved my life last week.

Even in turbulent time like these there are certain constants in life – like noodles. Noodles have played a very important role in my life. Whenever I got sick my mother would cook luchen (‘luxshun’ for those jews and non-jews unfamiliar with yiddish pronunciation) and cheese. I have vivid recollections of her bringing me a steaming bowl (not just a bowl but a BOWL) of wide egg noodles (like pappardelle but eggier and chewier) bathed in butter, cottage cheese, cream cheese, cinnamon and a touch of sugar and salt. It was the only thing I had to look forward to when I got sick. If the noodles were hot enough, the sugar and butter would melt into a glaze over the whole dish. And in college when I got sick I would routinely make myself a bastardized version of the dish usually with just spaghetti, salt, butter and cottage cheese. As I got older and began moving around the country for different jobs the luchen and cheese unfortunately receded into my history.   

Luckily noodles crept back into my life. It was the first date I had with my wife Niki. We had just seen a late movie in Santa Monica and were starved but nothing was open that appealed to us so I said something like, ‘let’s go back to my place and I’ll cook us up something.’ When I said that I really didn’t know what I had in my refrigerator, however I was out to impress her with my cooking skills. Upon getting back and examining the provisions all I had was Hebrew national hot dogs, spaghettini and celery. So I thinly shredded the dogs and celery, boiled and drained the noodles and fired up my ancient wok. A few drizzles of soy sauce, pinch of black pepper and a little maple syrup and voila! A first date meal that won her heart.