Amateur Gourmet

Chapter One Start with Spaghetti The story goes that Mom, recently married, prepared a spaghetti dinner for Dad to enjoy upon coming home from work. According to her, she spent the day shopping for ingredients, rolling the meatballs, simmering the sauce. Dad, an ambitious young dentist, spent the day drilling holes in people's mouths and wiping saliva off their chins. He came home very hungry. I suppose Mom welcomed him home with open arms and then declared that there was a feast to be had on the kitchen table: spaghetti and meatballs. Come, darling, have a seat. If one were to observe my father at any mealincluding the meals he enjoys to this dayone might make the false assumption that he was raised in abject poverty, one of thirteen siblings who all had to fight for small slivers of government cheese at a table made of cardboard boxes. And while he didn't grow up at the Waldorf Astoria, his Brooklyn childhood provides little evidence to justify the furious way he scarfs down food. "How is it honey?" asked Mom. "I worked all day on it." "Good," said Dad, scarfing and slurping. "Do you like the sauce? I used special tomatoes." "It's good," said Dad, halfway done at fourteen seconds. "Do you want cheese on it? Or maybe some bread with it?" "No, thanks, it's fine. Very good. Thank you." Were we to counsel Mom at this moment in her life, sitting on her shoulder like a good guardian angel, we might suggest that she stop asking questions now. "I think he likes it," we'd say. "You can quit pestering him." Mom, however, had no sage marital guruno Dr. Phil flapping around her craniumso she persisted. "Do you like the way the sauce clings to the spaghetti? Do you like the way the onions are translucent? Do you like how the tines of the fork spell out ITALY?" There are no witnesses to corroborate what happened next, but according to my mother, Dad took a fistful of spaghetti and flung it at her, streaking her overeager face with tomato sauce. My dad is not a violent person, so the mere act must have surprised him as much as it surprised her. Anticipating fireworks, he fled to the bathroom, locked the door, and quivered, terrified of what Momalready a tempestuous spiritmight do. But Mom didn't chase him into the bathroom. She didn't put cyanide in his toothpaste or slash the tires on his car. Mom didn't even curse his name as she wiped the translucent onions off her eyebrows. She simply chose the best revenge she coulda revenge worthy of Clytemnestra. As Dad came home from work day after day, exhausted and emaciated, Mom would greet him at the door with a warm welcome and then snatch away his car keys. "What's for dinner, honey?" Dad would ask. "Depends," Mom would say. "Depends on what?" "It depends," said Mom, halfway out the door, "on where we're going." You see, Mom, with little exception, never cooked for him again. If Mom's culinary career ended with spaghetti, mine began where hers lefts off. Two and a half decades later, in the kitchen of my one-bedroom Atlanta apartment, I madefor the very first timea sauce that's become a staple in my repertoire. It's the sauce that made me fall in love with cooking, a simple assemblage of ingredients that within thirty minutes becomes something entirely new. Upon tasting the concoction, I had all the enthusiasm of my young mother and no one there to throw it, quite literally, back in my face. The recipe comes from chef Mario Batali's Babbo Cookbook and that's where our adventure begins. Basic Tomato Sauce From The Babbo Cookbook Makes 4 cups 1/4 cup extra-virgin oRoberts, Adam D. is the author of 'Amateur Gourmet ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780553804973 and ISBN 0553804979.