Chapter 4

It’s raining this evening. It’s the kind of rain that Kansas City summer doesn’t usually get. Hard and blinding. The house has cooled down from the afternoon heat. I feel like cooking. There isn’t much in the refrigerator except for some chives, a few eggs, and a dubiously named vegetable I picked up from a Chinese store. Apparently it’s a wild plant and nobody grows it. So I get in my car and drive to the store to get groceries. It’s still raining. The tires split water and leave short traces like someone with amnesia. Print, print, fade, fade.

            At the store I decide on a pasta dish with a cheese sauce. It’s a recipe from a friend of mine. He made it for me and I liked it very much. I have tried to cook it a few times. The ingredients take a while to gather but I have nothing but time. When I finally get to the counter, the cashier turns out to be an English professor at my old college. Professor by day, cashier by night and a very pleasant man at both. He smiles at me as I say goodbye. I’m back out in the rain. Print, print, fade, fade.

            I have never been able to recreate the sauce. My first attempt was poor. I didn’t have a good goat cheese which I was later told is the most important ingredient. The second time, things were better, especially with fresh basil as a garnish. The only flaw was the Parmesan cheese which curdled into little pieces and felt like soft pebbles. I had much hope for the third time but it turned out to be the worst. I cooked it for a friend of mine and her boyfriend when I came to visit them in Atlanta. The Parmesan did not blend at all and nor did the chopped onion. I was puzzled. And I was so puzzled that I later decided to analyze my cooking. Step by step, ingredient by ingredient. 

            I thought about it for a while. To make the sauce smooth, the cheese would have to be mixed in while the vegetable broth and heavy cream are still cool. During the last two attempts, perhaps I let the sauce boil before adding the cheese in. Cheese has a tendency to separate instead of melting upon sudden contact with intense heat. I didn’t know this at the time but the logical explanation is that the proteins seize up, squeezing out water and fat. What you end up with is rubbery globs awash in a pool of grease.

            I thought life would be so easy if every question had a logical answer like this. Or an answer at all.

            I’m full of confidence tonight. I chop the onions to such fine pieces. Some of them roll off the cutting board on to the kitchen floor. I can’t find them all for they are so fine. And I do the same with the garlic but none of them escapes. I sauté the onion and garlic in butter then pour in the vegetable broth and whipping cream. The kitchen smells great now. But I’d rather smell the rain so I open all the windows and the French doors. The fresh air comes in waves. I can smell my wet backyard with wet earth, wet trees, and wet grass. I have spotted rabbits a few times. I wonder if I’m smelling them too.

            I turn off the stove and let the whipping cream and vegetable broth cool to room temperature. It will just take a few minutes. While waiting, I get the big pot out to cook the pasta. As I fill it with water, I notice the rain, helped by the blowing wind, has started to come in through the kitchen window, forming a trickle. It starts from the windowsill, following down the narrow alley between the window and the water faucet. From there, it braces the left side of the sink then finds its way to the kitchen floor. The cool rain water collects then drops hesitantly. I shut the window and wipe up the little puddle on the tiles. But the rain keeps seeping through. Soon enough there is another trickle, another drop, and another puddle of rain. Somewhere in the window frame, there is a small gap. That’s how the water gets in. I try to close the gap: I pull the sliding part as far down as it will go, I place a towel onto it, I close the blinds and I ask the rain to stop.

           I spend much of my time filling gaps and I just can’t fill them.

           The sauce has now cooled. I mix in the Parmesan and the goat cheese, turn the heat to low then start stirring. Pieces of translucent onion look like glass. They float up and down as the wooden spoon makes it round in the sauce. The goat cheese dissolves beautifully into the white and creamy liquid. The shredded Parmesan softens. Hundreds of pieces, thin and long, find one another, stick back together into one body like they once were. I keep stirring. The spoon starts to feel heavy. Instead of blending in the sauce, the Parmesan somehow remains stuck together. Each time I pull it apart, it stretches like rubber strings. This reminds me of the candy store I visited a long time ago. People made candies inside the store so the little kids could see. Strands of flavored melted sugar got stretched, folded, and got stretched again. I was so small then.

            I turn up the heat, I turn down the heat then up again. I stir feverishly. The cheese still looks like candy.

            Why?

            With times of mistakes and corrections, I thought I would finally get it right. But isn’t life full of surprises and ironies? So I turn off the stove, take the saucepan to the sink and drain out the sauce. The lump of melted cheese remains. I look at it one more time then drop it in the trash. The cheese falls and hits the bottom of the trashcan. It does not make a sound.

***

Parmesan and goat cheese sauce – ingredients:
Shredded Parmesan cheese: 1 cup
Goat cheese: 4oz
Onion: 1
Garlic: 2 cloves
Butter: 0.25 stick
Heavy whipping cream: 2 cups
Vegetable broth: 0.5 cup

Sep. 2010