Asparagus.
Two-, maybe three, week-old asparagus. The cutting guilt that goes jolting through my abdomen as I come face to face with it, again…today, competes with the tentative hunger I’m feeling. Just like each day these past three weeks, I don’t want to engage.
It is nearly 11 p.m. and I have not had any dinner. I ate raw almonds around 4:30 p.m.. I’ve had a beer and a white wine in the hours since. But I have had nothing to eat and the asparagus are not only a reminder of my springtime aspirations, they are also unappetising. At three-weeks-old, and at this point I am sure they long ago passed three weeks, they have lost their glory. Like a 30-year-old figure skater.
Aspirational asparagus.
The worst kind. Worse than the asparagus throughout all of winter, that doesn’t even exist. Worse, too, than the dry, cracked reams I find in early summer, aspirational asparagus taste like water and came from far away – called by the calendar’s new header: March. These ones have a floury, grey waxen sheen and I don’t want to eat them tonight, or three weeks ago, or ever.
I slice the unsavory ends away. I keep slicing higher and higher up to the spear, unsure how much is rancid and unsure how much just looks it. I have had it with myself and this war with the asparagus. And I am hungry.
Or at leat I think I am. I can’t stop thinking about how this kitchen contains only ends of parmesan and little fish in a brine and none of it sounds inspiring or good or even edible. But I am seized with a ravenous desire to care for myself.
Last week I texted my mom, “What would you cook for me for dinner if I had a big long stupid day and I’m craving finger steaks but we don’t wanna spend a million years in the kitchen?” I’ve been feeling neglected and alone and I thought maybe by channeling my mother I could remedy the situation.
I’ve been haunted recently by a section of Small Fires in which I became aware of the fear of my own appetites. I don’t know them, nor do I wish to get to know them. I like to displace them onto others. I like to imagine what he would like to eat or what you would like to eat, or what YOU think I might like to eat. All so that I can cook and overcome paralysis and get dinner on the table. But tonight it is just me who is hungry, or maybe not, and I don’t know what to do.
I salt a pot of water and I put it on to boil, always a good start. The asparagus needs help. Sauteéing wouldn’t help it. So I begin to ask the asparagus, “What do you need?”
Salt, it replies matter-of-factly.
And suddenly I am cooking a dish I have cooked a thousand times before and once just last week. My knife is making reassuring swishing sounds against the bamboo cutting board from IKEA and the water is beginning to boil and steam. And somehow there is a large skillet warming over medium-high heat and olive oil is being poured into it and the garlic has already been peeled and sliced. Anchovies are rinsed with a spoonful of capers and the chili flakes have tipped themselves into the mix.
Soon I am grating parmesan over all of it. The vague rules about fish and cheeses be damned.
And I have been fed and I come to find that I tonight I am sad and that I have discovered the recipe for 10 P.M. Pasta with Aspirational Asparagus (a riff on David Tanis’s), a dish I can recommend if you are unsure if you are hungry or happy or sleepy or sad.
It cooks itself.
Directions:
Make David Tanis’s Midnight Pasta Recipe but add subpar, very old Asparagus to the boiling water with the pasta.
Eat, and ask yourself how you’re feeling.
Clea, thank you for this lovely push towards self care with Aspirational Asparagus.
Another home run!