Saturday, July 30, 2011.
Breakfast. No New Belt. One Size Smaller. Assunta's.
A continuous squeaking under the hood of my PT Cruiser makes me think I need a new serpentine belt. The guys at Superior Tire in Covington, who take care of most of my mechanical problems, said they couldn't do it today. But that put Mary Ann and me in the neighborhood of Mattina Bella for breakfast. And it is Saturday morning, after all. Omelette with Swiss cheese, tomatoes, and green onions, with Susan Spicer's multi-grain toast on the side. Very satisfying.
I have no radio show today, so Mary Leigh and I went out to do some shopping. I was motivated by a clothing crisis. What with all the traveling lately, I have allowed my dirty duds to pile up without taking them to the cleaners. I thought I had clean clothes waiting for me there, but I didn't. I'm down to my last shirt and pants.
At the store, Mary Leigh advised me on what to try. She found a shirt in an alarming shade of purple that I wound up buying. She had already turned up some equally bright shirts, but didn't understand that a guy who has been wearing a 17 1/2 collar for a long time can't just go down to a 16. At least not if he wears ties.
She and MA are concerned that the weight I've lost makes my clothes look baggy. I've always preferred a loose look. And fat guys do not look good in form-fitting clothes.
But even at nineteen a woman cannot be told that her instincts are wrong. ML produced a pair of slacks she liked. They were two inches smaller around the waist than I have worn in fifteen years. "I won't be able to get into these," I said.
"Just try it," she said. I needed something for tonight. I tried on the pants. They fit! Comfortably! I am a forty again! It started me thinking that it might be possible to get down to the thirty-six I was in college.
I would not take a step in that direction tonight. As we went through all the dinner possibilities, Mary Ann suggested Assunta's. I haven't been there in a long time. The main reason is that the menu hasn't changed much over the years. Assunta retired some years ago, but her daughter Ann bought the restaurant and keeps it going much the same as it always was.
Which is as a trattoria serving the kind of Italian food liked by the locals. Although a few items on the menu have an old-country quality (Assunta is an Italian native), most of the menu is very familiar.
I started with what proved to be the best dish of the night. Black mussels, steamed, with a sauce of butter, herbs, garlic, and too much salt (I think it might have been reduced too much). Mary Leigh, who wouldn't consider eating a mussel, picked up on the substance of the sauce. "Is that anything like the sauce on grilled oysters?" she wanted to know. I said it was pretty close. She attacked it with a loaf of bread, and won the battle.
The girls split a combination appetizer consisting of three fried things: eggplant, artichoke hearts, and croquettes. The latter are balls of mashed potatoes with salami and cheese in the centers, with a bread crumb coating. It's a lot like arancini, but with potatoes instead of rice.
The girls were wild about the red sauce that came with this. It so excited Mary Ann that she asked for lasagna with extra sauce. Mary Leigh had meat-stuffed pasta shells, also with a levee-break flood of marinara. The portions were for field hands, more than twice as much as my delicate flowers could allow themselves without deeply disturbing their consciences.
For me, panneed veal. It came out sauceless, with fettuccine Alfredo on the side. I will say that they did this better than most places do these days. Restaurants seem to have forgotten how to pannee veal. They either cut it too thick, fail to pound it out, slice with the grain, or grossly overcook the veal. Assunta's only guilt was in the latter category. It should have exited the pan thirty seconds sooner. I fixed the problem by using MA's excess sauce as a dip, which added just the right moistness.
Dessert. I was intrigued by the spumone pie. Yes, it looked like spumone. In flavor, it was too rococo for me. Very sweet. The Marys found a chocolate pie that sounded suitably over the top, and got it. Again, very rich, very sweet. But that's an Italian thing.
The place was busier than I remember. Indeed, we had to wait for a table for a few minutes in the bar. It looks like the back of an altar, and indeed when it first opened that's what it was. I wonder where that altar is now.
The best thing about this dinner is that now we have one more fully-acceptable restaurant to visit on the North Shore. We have been running low lately.
Assunta's. Slidell: 2631 Covington Hwy (US 190). 985-649-9768.
