Rare, desiccated white parsley, left, circa 1981.
(Fines Herbes, right.)
So my mother had her second cataract surgery yesterday, which meant that I had to be at her house the night before, which also meant that I had to take her out to dinner, since she owns no discernible cooking tools and I refuse on culinary grounds to order out. Because for me, cooking is therapy, and god knows, when I visit my mother, I need therapy.
A lot of therapy.
I chose my mother’s neighborhood restaurant, Cafe Luxembourg; it’s right down the street, the bistro-style food is consistently very good and often excellent, it’s always packed (my mother likes crowds), and the odds of her seeing the Hollywood elite cooling their heels at a place where they can be left alone to eat in peace without any Graydon Carter-ian fanfare is very high.
I don’t know if this is true of all New Yorkers, but many of us don’t give a fat rat’s behind whether or not we’re dining next to Someone Famous; nevertheless, there comes a metaphysical tipping point in our lives when all this changes (this is the same tipping point that dictates whether or not we can eat without getting a small bit of something with the staying power of superglue caught in the corner of our mouths) and we officially become gawkers of a certain age. I once visited the ladies room at a fancy Upper East Side Italian restaurant and a gravelly voice from the stall next door asked me if I had any toilet paper; when the door swung open, I found myself standing side-by-side with Lauren Bacall, who was grumbling about her veal chop. If this happens to me in, say, thirty years, I might gush and trip over myself with euphoric ecstasy, if I am my mother’s daughter.
Long way of saying that on this particular night, right before her surgery, I spied Luxembourg regular Liam Neeson sitting at a nearby table with Laura Linney and a group of friends. My heart sank, but not for Mr. Neeson’s sad, recent loss; I just knew what was next.
“It’s HIM, it’s HIM; what the HELL is HE doing with HER??”
“Mom, stop–please, just eat–“
“She looks like she put on weight.”
She pushed her chicken around, batting it from one side of the plate to the other like it was the puck in a game of Knock Hockey, and kept staring. This is dinner out in Manhattan with my mother.
Given that the surgery is commonplace and the fact that she refused to be seen in public wearing a plastic eye cup, returning to Luxembourg (the restaurant, not the country) the following night was out of the question. So, after the ordeal was over and I got her home, I decided to cook. A quick fridge recon revealed a loaf of Wonderbread; half an overripe banana; several slightly crusty cheeses loosely draped in aluminum foil; and an open box of Carr’s water crackers. Once I got her settled on the couch with a cup of tea, I ran over to Fairway, which my mother is lucky enough to have situated a mere 2 blocks away, and which she never, ever visits. My goal: do some food shopping for her and fill her fridge with uncomplicated basics that she could graze on during the course of the day, which is pretty much how she always eats.
I returned home with a side of salmon from which I would make four filets (two for dinner, two to be mashed with mayo); a round of fresh mozzarella; French bread; chicken soup; canned tuna; and lemons for her; for me and Susan, a pound of enormous, black Cerignola olives from Apulia; some Peppadews; a piece of Reblochon; a pound of fresh almonds still in their husks; walnut oil; and a big bottle of utilitarian extra virgin olive oil.
There are a certain number of domestic contradictions at play in my mother’s kitchen, which make good cooking truly prohibitive. First, she owns no cookware. I recently gave her two basic saucepans, but beyond them, the top to a circa 1969 Dansk fondue pot, and one small stick-proof skillet meant for exactly one egg, she owns absolutely nothing. Second, she owns no knives other than the set of now-bent Ginsus that my late stepfather bought one night at about 3 am when he was watching television. Third, her spice rack is filled with the sawdust of the ages; my mother-in-law actually owns a can of Durkee powdered sage from the Eisenhower administration, but it’s still green.
My mother’s dried parsley is white.
Not snow-white, exactly, but sort of an off-ivory cream color that should never, ever be used in the same sentence with the word parsley.
So, parslied potatoes, if I was of the mind to make them, were out of the question. If I wanted to secretly make a tablespoon or two of compound Mazola (my mother’s butter replacement) with which to brush the salmon, I could forget about it. Even if I wanted to sprinkle some of it onto the fish itself, for a little color, I couldn’t. It would just wind up looking like the dried, minced garlic flakes from 1983 that are sitting next to the jar of desiccated tarragon on her spice rack.
(Note foil wallpaper.)
I hauled out a small, stick-proof cookie sheet that I’d accidentally left there years ago, sliced the salmon into four equal filets, dusted them with a little Diamond Crystal salt and an unidentifiable substance I can only guess was pepper, drizzled them with some of the olive oil I’d bought, and roasted them at high heat. The cookie sheet warped, sending hot fish oil splattering all over the bottom of the oven; her one, lone, donkey-shaped heat-proof glove, extracted from the bowels of a drawer bursting with takeout menus, had an angry, gaping hole in its palm/mouth, making it look like Eeyore had gone three rounds with a pit bull. I thought about folding a large sponge in half and using that as a gripper, but there was not a sponge to be found in the house; she believes that they’re dirty (“only if you don’t clean them, mom”) and uses paper towels instead.
The pan was so hot and so warped that I envisioned myself having the mitts of Dr. No by the time I fed her. So, I just left the door to the oven open and let everything cool before removing it; the salmon naturally stuck to the pan and broke into pieces when I attempted plate it. I managed one partial filet, dribbled with a bit of fresh lemon juice. I brought it in to the den, where my mother sat in her robe, watching television.
“Simply delicious–” she beamed.
“Just how I like it: totally plain. But can you bring me some parsley?”
