Last Bite: A Novel of Culinary Romance (16 page)

Meanwhile, Aunt Maria made a large salad and I peeled and cut up potatoes to roast in the pan with the pork. Mrs. Alfano ate the last
sfogliatella
. The rest of the family arrived just as we were ready to sit down, and the noise level went up considerably.

Until Nonna turned eighty last year, she had family meals at her house. And unless you were dead, you were there. On her eightieth birthday, her children finally convinced her to move into an assisted-living facility and Mom continued the tradition
at our house. It’s not compulsory anymore, but everyone still comes if they can. My parents had the wall between the dining room and sunporch removed and converted the entire area into a room with a table large enough to accommodate the entire family. Fourteen of us now sat comfortably, with our heads bowed, waiting for Dad to finish grace. Ben sat in a high chair smashing the olives. Dad asked God to bless the food and finished, as usual, with a request to bless all the people here with us. Fourteen pairs of eyes looked at the enormous spread and quickly shouted, “Amen.”

Eating dinner together is not as simple as it used to be. Aunt Gina is lactose intolerant and can’t digest the ricotta filling, so she cut her ravioli open, ate the pasta, and gave the filling to Uncle Little Joey, who is on the Atkins diet and can’t eat the pasta. He ate the ravioli filling and licked the cream cheese out of the celery stalks on the antipasto plate. Mark is a vegetarian, so he ate the ravioli but asked for it without the meat sauce. Raymond is fasting for Rastafarian rights and only drank Coca-Cola. Uncle Mike is on a low-fat diet, so he ate Uncle Little Joey’s empty celery stalks. Mrs. Alfano complained that the gravy was too thin and the pasta too thick and ate seconds anyway. Every Sunday, Mom pretends not to notice the food juggling, but poor Nonna always looks genuinely saddened by it.

“Michael, why can’t you eat just a few ravioli? What’s that going to hurt?” For someone of Nonna’s background of lean times, not eating on purpose was just wrong.

“I can’t, Ma. They’re not on my diet. Besides, I drank a Slim-Fast before I came, so I’m not really hungry.”

“I knew a man who drank that stuff for three days and then just dropped dead. He was perfectly okay before that.” Mrs. Alfano always knows someone who did the same thing
as someone else and did not survive, or at the very least was confined to a wheelchair and would forever be a terrible burden to the family.

“I doubt that it was Slim-Fast, Mom.” Uncle Tony should have known better.

“You think they are going to teach you that kind of thing in medical school? If people don’t get sick, what is there for doctors to do?”

“I heard a good one about doctors the other day.” God bless my father. He had one for every occasion.

“This doctor is late for a meeting, so he rushes in and quickly sits down. The doctor sitting next to him looks at him strangely and then asks him why he has a rectal thermometer behind his ear. The doctor pulls it off and looks at it. ‘Damn. Some asshole has my pen!’”

“Mike!” Mom sounded outraged, but I could see the twinkle in her eyes. The rest of us were laughing except for Mrs. Alfano, who was blessing herself.

“What?” Dad’s innocent look was as funny as his joke. He loved to stir up a little trouble and then act as if he had no idea what he’d done.

“I know a woman who had her temperature taken that way in the hospital and they put a hole in something and now the family has to do everything for her. She can’t get out of bed. They’re all praying she’ll die.” Mrs. Alfano was on a roll now.

Russell was sitting next to me, and I don’t think anyone but me heard him say, “Is that all it’ll take? A little prayer and Mrs. A’s gone?”

“Sharon made the ravioli. They came out really well. Brava, Sharon!” I wanted to give Sharon some encouragement. Besides, this seemed like a safe topic.

“I heard on television that ravioli were created to use up
leftovers. So ravioli are really garbage.” Just like Mrs. Alfano, Raymond held to the if-you-can’t-say-something-nasty-just-scowl school of behavior.

It was Aunt Gina’s turn to be outraged. All five feet of her snapped into action. “Raymond! Leftovers are not garbage. That’s an awful thing to say. Apologize.”

“Hey, Ma. Chill. You’ve all said that Sharon’s cooking is garbage.” He laughed at what he thought was a good joke. The therapy is definitely not working.

“
Hey, Raymond
. Put a sock in it.” Russell rarely showed anger, but he wasn’t about to take any criticism about his wife’s cooking when she’d finally shown some interest. I wondered if Dad was ready with a sock joke. We don’t think that our table conversations should necessarily be polite, and they usually do grow loud and edgy. We’re okay with that until we hear someone say something like “And just what is that supposed to mean?” or “I’m coming over there to knock your effing head off.” Then it’s time to clear the table and go on to another course. I got up and asked for help clearing the ravioli plates.

The second course went much like the first. Mark ate the potatoes, Nonna’s peppers, and salad. Sharon is Jewish, so she passed on the roast pork and the sausage. Uncle Little Joey made up for no ravioli pasta with generous helpings of all the meat, and Uncle Mike pushed salad around his plate. Most of us followed our ravioli course with roast pork, roasted potatoes, peppers with sauce,
braciole
, sausages, meatballs, and heartburn. Nonna’s remedy for poor digestion is salad, which she calls “the stomach’s toothbrush.” It does lighten the load, so that those who really wish to punish themselves can stay at the table and eat dessert.

What am I gonna do about you?
—Reba McEntire

O
n Tuesday morning, my train was late and I arrived at the studio a little after five-thirty. I went straight to the buffet, grabbed a large coffee and a cheese Danish and told myself I’d go back for muffins later. There were too many to choose from and I wanted to get to the kitchen before anyone else so I could get organized before having to give directions.

Danny was already there. He was leaning against the far counter, legs crossed at the ankles, sipping a cup of coffee.

“Good morning, Chef,” he said. “You’re late.”

“Well, good morning to you. You’re very early.”

He looked at his watch. “You said five-thirty?”

“I know. It’s just unusual for chefs to get here so early in the morning after a restaurant night.” I put my coffee and Danish on Romeo and then slipped my purse and tote off my shoulder and dropped them on the floor. “Don’t you ever go to bed?”

The corners of his mouth turned up in a slow, wicked smile. “Whenever I get the chance.”

“I meant, do you sleep?”

“Like a baby.”

“Glad to hear it. I see you have coffee. Would you like a Danish?” I reluctantly moved my Danish to the center of the table. “There’s also a huge buffet spread out in the hallway.”

“No thanks. I never eat on an empty stomach.”

“Well, mine never is.” I broke a Danish in half to expose more of the cheese and took a bite.

“Okay. So what do I do?” Danny asked, walking over to Romeo and putting both his hands on the surface.

I reached into my tote and took out his scripts, as well as the recipes and scripts for today and tomorrow’s shows. I was spreading them out in front of him when Mae walked in, followed by two of the Tonys.

“Well, top o’ the morning to you,” Mae said with a huge smile. “Hey, Casey. That was an awesome party, Danny!”

Danny gave a little bow. “Top o’ the morning to you, love. I’m glad you had a good time. It’s the truth I had nothing to do with it, except for the food.”

“Well, that was the best part.”

“I thought the best part was seeing you lasses all decked out for the party. You were a force, I can tell you. I’m glad you all came.” He smiled, and I’m pretty sure I heard Mae sigh before getting to work on several cans of Pillsbury dough. We didn’t need backups, but we did need a number of finished calzones for a beauty shot.

I sat down at Romeo with Danny, explained to him the difference between setups for live and taped spots, and showed him how that pertained to his scripts. He was fascinated and said he’d had no idea that cooking on television involved so much. “I would have thought you just cooked and the cameras rolled.”

“Most people don’t know how much preparation and product go into one brief cooking spot,” I said.

When we’d gone over all the scripts, he reached for the chef’s coat and tool kit he’d brought and asked, “So, what can I do?”

“Do you really want to work?”

“If you promise you won’t sing.”

“I’ll try to control myself.”

“Well now, don’t go that far.”

I rolled my eyes at him and gave him a pile of onions to chop for the chili.

Sonya popped in briefly to see how things were going. I had told her that Danny would be here to observe, so she wasn’t surprised to see him.

“Good morning, all. That was a wonderful party, Danny.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

“Do you feel prepared for next week now that you have the scripts and a sense of how we do things?”

“No problem. Casey’s been a huge help.”

Jonathan came in as Sonya was leaving. “I am not happy!” he said, and in case we hadn’t heard him or couldn’t read the pout on his face, he repeated himself. “I am
not
happy!”

“Somehow, I’d picked up on that, Jonathan,” I said. “But for your information, calzones are not brown. They’re beige.”

“Beige is just a variation of brown. And what about the salami? Caca brown. Couldn’t you have thrown in some roasted red peppers?”

“It’s his mother’s recipe. He just didn’t want to change it. Believe me, we asked.” I knew Jonathan was very close to his own mother and thought this might temper his annoyance. It did as far as the calzones were concerned, but he had other issues.

“And tomorrow, what do we have? Brown chili. Don’t even get me started on that.” That’s the last thing I wanted to do. “I
can’t wait to see next week’s scripts. Let me guess: it’s brown-meat week?”

“As a matter of fact,” I said, handing him the scripts for Danny’s show with the lamb dish on top, “it is.” To ward off another hissy fit, I immediately introduced him to Danny and he politely shook his hand before going to his cupboard—still pouting but, thankfully, saying no more about the lamb. Danny shot me a questioning look and I mouthed the words “I’ll tell you later.”

At six o’ clock, our cohost Jim came into the kitchen to see if our baseball player had arrived yet. He hadn’t, but Jim hung around like a little kid outside a pro sports locker room. He shuffled around outside the door for a while, then came in and engaged Danny in conversation. He’d been to Oran Mor, and although he’d come hoping to talk batting averages, he seemed pleased to chat with Danny about Ireland. Our baseball player showed up around six-thirty, and it was hard to keep him on track since Jim was more interested in next year’s starting lineup than provolone, salami, and the Pillsbury Doughboy. Luckily, they called Jim to the set just about the time he was suggesting “a little catch” outside behind the studio. He’d brought his own baseball.

The calzone spot wound up being a charming segment that looked very natural—just a couple of guys standing around, rolling up calzones, talking sports, and trying not to spit or scratch on national television. I told Danny that he would do his live spot with Karen instead of Jim and that she would keep things moving as far as timing and conversation were concerned.

“Lack of conversation is not an Irish affliction,” he pointed out. I thought about my father and said, “I know. You’ll do just fine.” When the show was over, we took a break before going into high gear for tomorrow’s prep.

“I’m going out for a smoke,” Mae said.

“I’m going back to the buffet for some muffins. Are you ready for something to eat, Danny?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll go with you and see what they’ve got.”

“Anyone else want anything?”

Mae asked for a raspberry yogurt and the Tonys both asked if they could go outside with Mae.

“Go for it.”

To get to the buffet, we had to pass behind the set through a dimly lit passageway. I was all too acutely aware that I was alone with a bold flirt who oozed testosterone. I picked up my pace, but he took hold of my arm and stopped me. “Are you walking that fast to get away from me?”

“Why would you think that?”

“Because you keep ignoring my attempts to seduce you.” He still had his hand on my arm and he ran it up to my shoulder. The touch sent an uninvited tingle through my body. “But I know you’re crazy about me.”

Oh! The arrogance! I thought he might get the point if I shrugged his hand away, but it felt pretty good where it was, so I let him leave it there. “We’ve had this conversation before and I told you, I’m not interested.”

“And that’s because you think I’m some kind of mole?”

“Vole. Meadow vole.”

“Whatever. Is that the only reason?”

“That’s pretty much it.”

“I think it’s pretty heartless to stomp on small critters before finding out if they mean you any harm.”

“I didn’t stomp.”

He threw his hand over his heart. “You have no idea.”

He looked so wounded that I laughed. “If you feel stomped upon by me, then I am sorry.”

He put his hands on the wall on either side of me, locking me in front of him. “Well, you
could
make it up to me.”

I ducked under one arm and continued to the buffet. “Not that sorry,” I said.

“Look at all this!” he exclaimed when he saw the long buffet table. “It’s brilliant.”

“Well, the pastries didn’t come from Jacques Torres, but they’re not bad.” I handed him a plate and he selected a plain bagel. He put a small container of cream cheese on the plate next to the bagel. I decided to take just one muffin, even though I had planned to take at least two. I grabbed a yogurt for Mae.

The kitchen was empty when we returned. We sat down at Romeo, across from each other. Danny cut his bagel in half and started to spread cream cheese on it. I offered to toast it under the broiler, but he said he liked it that way.