Stories

I love pasta and seafood together, especially shrimp and pasta. This dish is dressed fra diavolo, like a devilish friar. Supposedly named after a Neapolitan guerrilla fighter, this recipe is a rathertraditional take on the southern Italian specialty. A little heat withpeperoncino (red pepper flakes) along with the red color of the tomatosauce give the meal a hellish flair. Pair with wine and no one canresist.

Make sure you start cooking the linguine in time so thatit is ready to go once the sauce has finished cooking. You don't needto drain or rinse the pasta. Simply use tongs to transfer the cookedlinguine directly to the sauce, which will better adhere to the starchypasta.

On Sundays, we stroll over to the farmers’ market along Columbus Avenue. It starts around the Museum of Natural History and meanders south a few blocks. The farmers set their stalls up on the sidewalk with their trucks parked along the avenue behind them.

It’s nice. All the healthy people are out shopping. I thought I’d pick up something fresh and farmy for dinner – maybe some turkey burgers from the turkey guy, some greens from the greens guy, some mushrooms from the mushroom guy – that kind of thing. Guy, by the way, being an all-encompassing term meaning human.

There are girl guys at the market, as well. The greens person had some bins on the table filled with various micro-greens that looked, frankly, fantastic. I asked for a taste of the sunflower and he fished out a single little sprout with his tongs and dropped it in my hand – delicious, as fresh as spring, succulent and sassy. I stuffed a couple of handfuls into a bag and a couple handfuls of the micro-buckwheat into another and handed them to the guy to weigh.

“That’ll be twenty-seven dollars.”

“With all that great food in Italy, how do you guys stay so thin?”

This kind question came during a book talk we gave last Monday night in Holbrook, New York – at the Sachem Public Library. It was very generous of the questioner to include me in the “thin” category along with Jill, but indeed I still wear the same suit size I did back in our L.A. Law days twenty-some years ago. I’m not thin, but at least I’m not any fatter than I was then.

We answered her by pointing that Italians don’t eat much processed food and that makes it much easier to keep our weight down over there. But of course it’s not just what they eat that allows them to maintain una bella figura, it’s also how much they eat – or how little, I should say. Italians don’t pile it on like we tend to do over here. A bowl of pasta is not intended to fill you; it’s to prepare your mouth and stomach for your second course.

This truth was driven home dramatically a little later in the evening.

This is a true story. Today as I walked into my office I was immediately confronted.

“Hey Matt, my mother-in-law taught my daughter Courtney to make homemade cream puffs! I brought some in today, would you like to try them?” she asked.

Why, certainly!

“Hey Matt, you’ve really gotta try this Almond Toffee Bark I made last night,” said another coworker.

Well, ok, I responded.

“Hey Big Boy, there are Krispy Kremes in the conference room,” teased another.

Not anymore, I thought.

“Oh! I forgot! She also taught her how to make homemade donuts! They took forever and they look funny but they’re really good! Have one!” screeched coworker #1.

And I did.

Do you want to know what’s worse then everyone being clever and crafty and baking and frying during the holidays? It’s being born without one ounce of self control.