Read Online Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant by Jenni Ferrari-Adler - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Jenni Ferrari-Adler
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to brag about it afterward. When I talked to my ex-boyfriend on the phone, we would recount meals we had made for ourselves— see, I live pretty nice on my own. The asparagus thing was more of a party trick.
Perhaps I should have admitted from the beginning that there is something I love about asparagus aside from the miracle of spring, and even aside from its deliciousness: I love the pee. Nothing seems to redeem the workings of the digestive system like asparagus. It’s another verification, after a long winter, that I am alive. Natural processes are working! In fact, what the human digestive system and asparagus do to each other, each proclaiming itself, seems downright heroic.
I have heard the pee is genetic: some people get it, some people don’t. The first bite of that first stalk of raw asparagus was all it took for me. The pee smells like absolutely no other pee. It almost smells good. And it always makes me feel redeemed. This is the pee from a healthy vegetable! Beet pee, on the other hand, is always alarming—I never remember that I have eaten the beets, and I think I am dying—and coffee pee makes me suspicious, as if the coffee has stripped all the minerals from my insides and dumped them, like a whole bottle of vitamins, out at once.
Despite my airing of it here, digestive processing of asparagus is an intense personal experience. You should enjoy it alone. Some things you should make sure to eat together with people—garlic, sardines. Your breath will smell, your hands will smell, you will exude a special kind of sweat, and it will all be wonderful if your friends are doing it too. But you can eat asparagus all alone and then socialize without fear. Kiss whom you like. The pee (I hope) is yours alone, unlike your breath or your sweat, which you can’t help but share.
In fact, too many people should not eat asparagus together. When I worked at a restaurant during the height of asparagus season, when every employee was eating some form of it for their meal, the unisex staff bathroom was impenetrable with a kind of asparagus fog.
The superhero starts to flag in her determination. Asparagus season is as long as Lent. I have to fool myself by not making asparagus the main, plain ingredient. After all, I remember, it’s supposed to be a side dish. Those evil supermarket asparagi sit around all winter waiting for someone to overcook them and leave them in a puddle next to a Kroger pork chop.
I can disguise the asparagus by cutting it up in bits and tucking it into things. Leftover cooked asparagus goes into omelets and frittatas. I hide asparagus underneath Gruyère on toast. I sneak it into risotto with lemon and Parmesan. I make it into soup with cream and tarragon. I put it in pasta with garlic and anchovies. I eat it in bites that alternate with bites of hardboiled egg.
As fussy as you might get with asparagus recipes, the superhero has some limits. Stop at hollandaise sauce—there’s always too much of it. Nor is it superheroic to wrap asparagus in prosciutto. It insults both the prosciutto and what’s inside it. That kind of food is made to impress people—not that a heap of asparagus isn’t good with a heap of prosciutto.
But now there is solid good weather and a variety of produce. I have come back to life, and I am forgetting my gratitude for the vegetable that summoned me from the dead. Will I ever be able to pee again without forcing a reprise of my meal into my head? Is there anything new I can do with this stuff? In late June, I start to hate asparagus. My body is desperate for nonasparagic nutrients. The superhero skips a day. Two days. The superhero crumbles, forsaking her old fuel.
But then, on the tables of the real Spargelfrau in the farmers’ market, the bunches start to fatten and then to dwindle. I am penitent. It is going to disappear, and I am going to miss it for another ten months. I buy from this last burst of asparagus, pay homage, cooking it so that it shines alone,
Perhaps I should have admitted from the beginning that there is something I love about asparagus aside from the miracle of spring, and even aside from its deliciousness: I love the pee. Nothing seems to redeem the workings of the digestive system like asparagus. It’s another verification, after a long winter, that I am alive. Natural processes are working! In fact, what the human digestive system and asparagus do to each other, each proclaiming itself, seems downright heroic.
I have heard the pee is genetic: some people get it, some people don’t. The first bite of that first stalk of raw asparagus was all it took for me. The pee smells like absolutely no other pee. It almost smells good. And it always makes me feel redeemed. This is the pee from a healthy vegetable! Beet pee, on the other hand, is always alarming—I never remember that I have eaten the beets, and I think I am dying—and coffee pee makes me suspicious, as if the coffee has stripped all the minerals from my insides and dumped them, like a whole bottle of vitamins, out at once.
Despite my airing of it here, digestive processing of asparagus is an intense personal experience. You should enjoy it alone. Some things you should make sure to eat together with people—garlic, sardines. Your breath will smell, your hands will smell, you will exude a special kind of sweat, and it will all be wonderful if your friends are doing it too. But you can eat asparagus all alone and then socialize without fear. Kiss whom you like. The pee (I hope) is yours alone, unlike your breath or your sweat, which you can’t help but share.
In fact, too many people should not eat asparagus together. When I worked at a restaurant during the height of asparagus season, when every employee was eating some form of it for their meal, the unisex staff bathroom was impenetrable with a kind of asparagus fog.
The superhero starts to flag in her determination. Asparagus season is as long as Lent. I have to fool myself by not making asparagus the main, plain ingredient. After all, I remember, it’s supposed to be a side dish. Those evil supermarket asparagi sit around all winter waiting for someone to overcook them and leave them in a puddle next to a Kroger pork chop.
I can disguise the asparagus by cutting it up in bits and tucking it into things. Leftover cooked asparagus goes into omelets and frittatas. I hide asparagus underneath Gruyère on toast. I sneak it into risotto with lemon and Parmesan. I make it into soup with cream and tarragon. I put it in pasta with garlic and anchovies. I eat it in bites that alternate with bites of hardboiled egg.
As fussy as you might get with asparagus recipes, the superhero has some limits. Stop at hollandaise sauce—there’s always too much of it. Nor is it superheroic to wrap asparagus in prosciutto. It insults both the prosciutto and what’s inside it. That kind of food is made to impress people—not that a heap of asparagus isn’t good with a heap of prosciutto.
But now there is solid good weather and a variety of produce. I have come back to life, and I am forgetting my gratitude for the vegetable that summoned me from the dead. Will I ever be able to pee again without forcing a reprise of my meal into my head? Is there anything new I can do with this stuff? In late June, I start to hate asparagus. My body is desperate for nonasparagic nutrients. The superhero skips a day. Two days. The superhero crumbles, forsaking her old fuel.
But then, on the tables of the real Spargelfrau in the farmers’ market, the bunches start to fatten and then to dwindle. I am penitent. It is going to disappear, and I am going to miss it for another ten months. I buy from this last burst of asparagus, pay homage, cooking it so that it shines alone,
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