Saturday, February 27, 2010

Blue Mitchell, Blue Soul (Riverside)


Friday night dinner is not on Thursday or Sunday or Monday. Saturday dinner is a formal affair, you have friends coming over so you plan out a five or six course feast using every utensil in the cabinet. Sunday is roasted something or other with potatoes and gravy, just like grandma used to make. Wednesday is the middle of the week and you're tired of leftovers from Monday and Tuesday. But Friday has to be quick and full of flavor, so you went out of your way on your way back home, past the fishmonger's shop (because, of course, every town village and city has a fishmonger's shop that somehow survived out of the 19th century) and you pick up a bag of fresh mussels. You come home, drop off your shit and change, and then you drop, oh I don't know, half a stick of butter in a pot, let that melt slowly. Then throw in some garlic and red pepper flake, then four or five sprigs of parsley. And don't forget some fresh thyme, essential, a few tablespoons of thyme (like Tom Waits say, "And it's thyme thyme thyme for you to love, and it's thyme thyme thyme"). Let that saute up until your whole damn house smells like herb. Next, you throw in all the mussels you just washed and stir them around until they're warm enough, then the white wine, what I don't know, half a bottle of Pinot Gris (drinking the other half in the meanwhile) and enough salt to salt it, and you let it all steam up. You pour it all out into a bowl, cut up some baguette for dipping, kiss your beautiful love, and then -- and maybe this is the most important part -- throw on some Blue Mitchell and let the time ride itself out on this mellowest of all mellow Friday dinners.

Suggested Wine Pairing: If you've got the thyme, you need something to pick up the thyme. That would be La Cattura, Teroldego/Syrah, Toscana, 2006.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Friday is a disaster, let's face it. Friday is just as much as disaster as the days before--Thursday's disaster, Wednesday's disaster, Tuesday's afterthought to Monday's disaster--and we can add Sunday and Saturday because academics get to choose which seven days of the week to be disasterous, it's why we turned down the idea of class struggle. Every day is much like the others, because every day is friggin teaching, is friggin research lite, is friggin broke, is friggin spouse, is friggin kid. So you get home through traffic with no idea what to cook and your wife moves her bloodshot eyes from you, to the kitchen knife, then back to you. You call the kid in from the room with the frayed electrical wires and tell her to play with the kitchen knife--just to keep it occupied. Oil the pan and it smokes immediately. Toss in the onions and they burn immediately. Chop potatoes and they adhere immediately to the pan; it means three days of soaking that pan, and three days when you have to use the tiny sautee pan you brought from baba yaga's garage sale, when you were a graduate student, when you still had dreams. Crack an egg and watch it land on the side of the stove, run down and pool on the floor. Project yourself into the pooling chicken protein. What else will you listen to tonight, locked into the bathroom, ipod earbuds tucked up to your brain? Abba. Dancing Queen. Because you will want to believe.

Wine pairing: despair pickled in coca-cola