Weekend Update: Happy Valentine's Day!
Having had a big day yesterday — by which regular readers will understand that I was out of the house for most of the sunlit hours, and a few of the dark ones as well — I was not in the mood for Valentine’s Day this morning. But I wanted to be. We needed a touch of fireworks. Kathleen has been working crazy hours; meanwhile, I’ve been clipping and pruning my life to the point at which, should I care to do so, I ought to be able to turn out a slightly gala dinner.
Lugging the onus of Valentine’s Day was entirely my idea. Kathleen, God love her, really does discharge the whole big-day thing with a morning kiss. “Happy birthday, dear!” (She doesn’t say “dear,” but never you mind what she does say.) Having grown up in a fautissimo comme-il-faut household, Kathleen is not big on observance. She also knows that there’s no danger of my forgetting birthdays. Having been born on the Epiphany, I never forget the names of all three kings, and what they gave baby Jesus. Kathleen long ago gave up trying to keep up with Balthazar et al.
Being Balthazar, I can tell you that the coolest thing on Valentine’s Day is coming up with a knockout dinner that isn’t really a whole lot of work to prepare. I’m always ready to lean on our fine library of porcelain, crystal, linen, and other accessories; without going to much trouble at all I can turn out a celebratory dinner even if it wasn’t a particularly memorable one. As Kathleen well knows: she kept asking for chicken pot pie (from Eli’s). She wanted to keep it simple — being married to the cook and all.
Notwithstanding, I settled on Escalopes de veau cauchoise pretty early. It’s an American dish, really: veal scallops in Granny Smith sauce. Okay, the sauce includes a bucket of cream and a flambé of Calvados. Not to mention the fact that I got the recipe from Elizabeth David, hardly a Yankophile. The asparagus that accompanied the veal behaved like well brought-up girls who, although they were expecting butter, were only too happy to fall into the apple cream that spilled off the veal.
That was the main course — the only one that I knew about when I left the house to do the shopping. It never occurred to me that I could count on Agata & Valentina for my first course and my dessert — both of them heart-shaped! Imagine! Tomato-pasta cheese-filled heart-shaped-ravioli! Who could resist? And a heart-shaped “chocolate silk cake.” As for the latter, all I know is that, having had a slice: major joltage.
As for the ravioli first course, I made a simple Alfredo cream, which turned out to be just the thing to point up its virtues. I had thought that the tomato was just for color, to make the ravioli red. Not so! And the cheese filling jiggled nicely with my parmesan-laden cream.
It’s a terrible thing to find out that your wife is having an affair at a lovely dinner that you have prepared for her yourself, as I can only imagine from Kathleen’s distraction during dinner. While I was thinking Valentine’s Day and cooking and whatnot, Kathleen was thinking beading. She was, in fact, making a new chain for my Paul Smith reading glasses. Her mind was totally engaged on diameters — threads, needles, and perforations. She had no small talk at the table. Her politeness was exquisite, but it was clear that few eight-year-olds have been more eager to escape the table and get back to what they were doing.
As the cook in the family, I forget what it’s like to be called away from the important work that you’re involved with because it’s “supper time.” But no matter how distracted Kathleen is by the job in hand, she never forgets that, in order to make dinner, I put aside my own work hours earlier. That’s one of the reasons why she wanted pot pie.
There is not a happier husband in the world. I have reason to believe that the feeling is mutual.
This essay is dedicated to faithful aiders and abettors Flather and Tindley. Trust is not only the name of their bank.