Dear guy in the white Ford ahead of me at the Del Taco drive thru,

Dear guy in the white Ford ahead of me at the Del Taco drive thru,

I've lately been having a talk with myself about anger. About rage, really. About grief and rage, which are twins, obverse and reverse of the same coin, aren't they? I could say that my grief/rage is national, but really, it's international and national and local and personal. Things are messed up. They are awry, askew, they are going sour and turning violent, and the losses--psychic, human, animal, civic--are at this point past counting.

Yes, I thought about all these things as I watched your broad backside, white Ford ahead of me in the Del Taco drive thru, brake lights aflare, as the driver--that's you, guy in the white Ford--leaned on an elbow out the window, apparently having a tete a tete with the person whose voice I could faintly hear through my own window, as I waited to order my two fish tacos and a Diet Coke.

Of course I was in a time crunch. Don't be ridiculous, of course I was.

What could you have been discussing? On NPR, they were discussing whether the Las Vegas shooter was somehow affiliated with the Islamic State, which the Islamic State claimed he was. Could he have acted on his own, and Islamic State still somehow claim it, in some legitimate sense? What is a legitimate claim from Islamic State, vis a vis this particular crime? &c &c &c, and the brake lights were still lit up and you, guy in the white Ford, still leaned out your window, and you were still, apparently, talking about something taco or burrito related? What could this be?

I admit I felt a tiny ignition of anger. I was under a time crunch, you see, a meeting that was to begin in fifteen minutes, and those fish tacos weren't going to eat themselves.

Finally, finally, you inched ahead in tiny, infinitesimal inches. And, following you, I crept forward to the drive thru kiosk to say, Two fish tacos and a diet Coke, and Del Scorcho. Because they always want to know if you want sauce, and Del Scorcho is what my son once ordered, ergo: Del Scorcho is my sauce.

I raced into my building, sack of tacos in one hand and the Diet Coke in the other. I managed one bite of one taco before I dashed to my meeting.

And now, having wolfed my tacos like a wolf, I'm thinking to myself: what could you have been discussing at the drive thru ordering kiosk, facing that tinny little speaker as if it were the person speaking through it? Was yours a terribly complicated order? Did you find yourself in need of a rundown of all the possible sauces? Were you ordering for a starving militia? Who are you, guy in the white Ford ahead of me in the Del Taco drive thru? And what hunger brought you to this drive thru, where you tarried, and, let's face it, kind of messed with my crack timing?

But that's okay, because I don't have a rage/grief problem, so we're cool,

htms

And the sauce shall have depth of flavor, and mystery.

This is a little culinary history. Well, a little of my culinary history.

I. In olden times. Back in the olden times, when I was a lass, and the Mormons had Primary during the week, my mother often left me in charge of dinner. Usually I had instructions. My mother made the best spaghetti sauce, which upon occasion I was asked to prepare. It was the sauce of the meaty variety--a bolognese, as some more sophisticated sorts may call it, but we called it spaghetti sauce and we liked it. It tasted dark and thoroughly cooked. There may have been a seasoning envelope, as folk were wont to use in those days. Or there may have been dried herbs in bottles. Whatever. The sauce was good. And the parmesan came in a green foil-wrapped cardboard dispenser.

II. The middle years. Back when I was a young person, I became a vegetarian. The meat sauce, she was no longer my gig. Instead, I assembled a variety of vegetables that made what I considered to be a pretty darn good sauce. It included chopped onion, garlic, mushroom, green pepper, and parsley, stewed in canned tomato sauce, or maybe bottled tomatoes that I had preserved myself. I loved this sauce. I would make it and give it away to people who had just had a baby, along with a loaf of french bread that I had also made myself. I thought this was clever and kind, because the sauce could be frozen and saved for a rainy day, when all the dinners had dried up and the baby was crying. I made this sauce for many, many years. I am still happy to make it, or something like it, to this very day.

III. The latter days. In which I learned to roast tomatoes, thereby creating an even greater depth of flavor, as the tomatoes took on a caramelized flavor from the roasting and the concentration of the sugars, etc. These tomatoes could be thawed and chopped and used as is, or they could be further stewed and made into a saucier sauce.

IV. A short note about noodles. Linguine, obviously. So suave. But also any of the long thin noodles. I am not a fan of fettucine. The broadness leads to uneven cooking. Maybe I'm impatient, which is why: linguine.

V. A short note about herbs. The advent of widely available fresh basil basically changed everything, of course, so much so that where, back in the middle years, I would move through a bottle of dried basil at a pretty good clip, now I don't have any dried basil in the house.

VI. A short note about chopped sauces. When it's summertime and the tomatoes are fat and luscious, it makes no sense to cook a sauce, to my mind. You just chop all the things that might go into the sauce, at a smallish dice, and put them on the hot noodles. They will melt a little and be the very glory of summer, especially if you have peaches for dessert.

VII. The sauce I made tonight. Tonight, my grandson gave me a call to see if there was something good cooking over at our house. 'We were actually going to eat leftovers,' I said, truthfully. My grandson said, 'Couldn't you make something better? Like pancakes?'

Or noodles, I thought. So I bestirred myself to seek the provisions of my house, to try to rustle up some sauce.

First: I had about a third of a packet each of four different kinds of pasta. So: mixed pasta. This requires some deft timing of when you add which kind of pasta to the boiling water. You'll be happy to know that you can cook penne and mini farfalle together, as long as you give the penne about a minute and a half headstart.

Second: no parsley, no basil, no peppers. I had an onion, several fresh-ish cloves of garlic, six small portobello mushrooms, and some greens.

I chopped the onion and garlic and began sautéing in olive oil. Then I chopped the mushrooms with haste and anxiety, since many in my family are not fans of mushrooms, but I planned to blend the sauce, so the mushrooms would not be in evidence. If anyone saw them, though, all bets would be off. I chopped the greens and added them to the pan. Then I took a big can of San Marzano crushed tomatoes and started blending.

My blender complained a little bit, but I kept adding tomatoes and a little water and giving it a little prod now and then, and we got a good, no-chunks sauce flecked with green. I put it back in the pan and added a little more water, then a nice sprig of rosemary for something a little sharp in the background.

My daughter and grandkids arrived. My daughter said, 'Mmm, it smells good in here!' Oh, good, I thought. 'Good!' I said.

A minute later, she said, 'Are there mushrooms in the sauce? It smells like mushrooms.' And I was all, Good Lord. And then, dear reader, I briefly lied. 'No,' I said. And then, maybe fifteen seconds later, I retracted: 'Okay, yes. But it's all blended!'

VII. A short note about the other time I lied about mushrooms in a pasta dish. One time, I lied about mushrooms in something or other, probably a lasagne. My son asked if there were mushrooms, and I pulled the same logical shenanigans. Later, my lie was revealed and he has not let me forget it. Perhaps the memory of this mushroom-oriented untruth is what made me repent so quickly tonight.

VIII. A short note on pickiness. Other people's pickiness evidently turns me into a liar. I wish, therefore, for the greater good and for the strength of my own character that people would not be so picky. That is all.

IX. A conversation about mushrooms in the sauce. Then we had a lengthy discussion about the whole flavor and scent of mushrooms and whether this person and/or that person could discern the mushroominess within the sauce. I myself love mushrooms, and I wanted the flavor to have an earthiness to it. And let's be honest here: I wanted to make a sauce that was more than tomatoes and dried oregano.

X. The verdict. And if I do say so myself, it was good.

Dear French restaurant,

I'm not quite sure why, but I seek you out, French restaurant, and especially in cities where I do not live. I think, in fact, I may never have actually eaten at the French, or French-ish, restaurants in my own town. But I am drawn inexplicably to the bistro as a category when I am away from home, and particularly when I'm on my own.

When I'm on my own, I want food with a tradition, food that's not afraid of its own commitments, food that is simultaneously a little bit snobby and, paradoxically, also as comforting as soft clothes and comfortable shoes and butter. Lots and lots of butter.

It's a bonus when the staff are kind. This has happened to me two times, but each of those was a memorable time. Once in San Francisco, the waiter, who had either a real or a really, really good faux French accent, asked me if I wanted "still or fizzy" water, and told me that the sauce on my salmon was "delicious," pronounced with extra French syllables. Tonight, the guy was not remotely French, but he was really nice, and he brought me extra bread when I asked for it, because the saffron sauce on my moules safran was so unbelievably, stunningly delicious. And a spoon when I needed it to eat the sauce.

And he did not look askance when I had dessert on top of that, a Normandy apple tart. With some sort of extra special whipped cream and salt caramel sauce, just the right amount of each.

French restaurant, you were everything that I needed and wanted in a restaurant tonight, and more.

And that sauce was so, so good, it made me grateful. For sauce.

htms

And now, a word or two about sauce.

While my friend and I were in Bozeman, we had lunch at a terrific little tapas place. We both had sandwiches. I ordered mine with fries, which came accompanied by a chipotle catsup.

(and now, we pause for a short moment in personal history:)

When I was a kid and my dad was in the Air Force, we lived in Japan for three years. I was eight when we moved there and eleven when we moved back to the States. In the middle there, we went to the Officer's Club to swim in the summers. This meant, among other things, proving that you could swim so you could have your yellow patch so you could go in the deep end, and also during the once-hourly out-of-the-pool break, buying french fries at the snack bar. (To me, to this day, swimming at a public pool calls out for french fries, which doesn't always happen, which leaves, therefore, a certain feeling of incompletion and loss. But I digress.) At the snack bar, the french fries came with a side squirt of catsup, which I ended up disliking quite a bit. I did not, however, complain about this openly. I just ate the non-catsup-y fries first, then the ones that had been only barely anointed, then the ones where I could sort of scrape off the catsup. And, thenceforth, I have preferred my fries to be accompanied only by salt. Or, if the fries are amazing, perhaps salt that has been chopped with fresh garlic.

(back to Bozeman:)

Chipotle catsup is a whole different thing than catsup. I am sure there's a fancier way to do it, but you can make it by putting (a) catsup in a small dish, and (b) shaking as much bottled chipotle sauce as you like on top. You can go ahead and use a fry to mix it, because you can eat the mixing implement, and the fry will be ever-so-perfectly enhanced by this subtle improvement. I never thought I would say it, but this kind of catsup is a perfect accompaniment for fries.

Onto another sauce: the Bozeman sandwich had basil aioli.

Friend: So, you do mayonnaise now?

Me: This isn't mayonnaise. This is aioli.

Moreover, basil aioli.

(and now, another short moment in personal history:)

My mom used to pack my lunches when I was in elementary school. Let us pause now to salute lunch-packing moms, who try to keep track of the picky tastes of elementary schoolers, who may like, say, bologna with cheese one week, but form an inexplicable and unalterable opposition to the very idea of such a sandwich the next. Never mind that there's a whole new package of bologna. Bologna shall never again cross the palate of the elementary schooler, and that non-negotiable truth is the New Lunch Rules. (This is the basic story of how I didn't eat eggs from about age six to last year.)

Anyway: in sixth grade, I loved deviled ham. The kind that came in a can. You put a little mayo on the bread, spread on the deviled ham, topped with another piece of bread. Slide the sammy into a waxed paper bag, bag of chips, orange wedges, cookie, and back in the day, we'd call that lunch. Except for the day when a tiny globule of mayo happened to adorn the edge of the crust of this sandwich. It caught my eye. I contemplated it. I considered it. Why should a slightly glossy-looking bit of mayonnaise which had escaped its breadly home bother me? What difference could this possibly make? Except that it did. Mayonnaise thenceforth became my mortal and eternal enemy.

(back to Bozeman:)

But aioli is not mayonnaise, and mayonnaise is not aioli. Especially basil aioli. Which was the perfect accompaniment for the delicious sandwich I wolfed down, accompanied by fries and chipotle catsup.

And thus ends the disquisition upon sauces, amen.