Sunday, February 6, 2011.
Sixty. King Cake Muffuletta. Pizza Comes Full Circle. Super Bowl.
I woke up as a sixty-year old man for the first time. I truly cannot apprehend that reality, despite a fair amount of evidence. But so what if I don't? Mary Ann says she doesn't know why I am upset by my age, because I've acted like an old man as long as she's known me. Come to think of it, my first real girlfriend told me that when we were both twenty.
We have as many as forty people coming over. We passed through the apparently unavoidable Seven Stages Of Party:
1. Five Hours Before Guests Arrive. Well, we're in pretty good shape with everything. No need to rush or panic.
2. Four Hours. You know, I don't think we have enough food if the [name of family] all show up. Maybe we'd better send Jude and Mary Leigh to get more.
3. Three Hours. Really, we're ahead of the game. There'll be lots of food ready when they get here. Maybe that's too soon?
4. Two Hours. Tom Sez: You girls have got to clean up your mess! I have no place to work! If I have to clean up after you, I won't have time to make those dishes you told me you want me to make a half hour ago!
5. One Hour: OMG! There's no way we're going to have this house cleaned up in time for the guests! And we have no food ready for them! And not enough food!
6. Time The Guests Are To Arrive. They don't. Except for two people who came early, and who say they want to help, but can't. Many dishes are incomplete.
7. Half-Hour After Guests Are To Arrive. This is ridiculous. We have waaaaaay too much food here. Forget the cole slaw and the hummus. And the guacamole and the boudin. The sink is piled six inches high with dirty dishes, and hardly anyone is here yet!
From this point everything is out of control, we're just doing the best we can, none of the guests can find a cup or a glass or a plate or a fork, and we're all too frantic to pour wine or anything else. So we give up. Everybody has a good time. Most people leave earlier than we thought, and a few stay much, much later.
Mary Leigh made a four-layer cake that frustrated her greatly. She said it wasn't coming out at all. The concept was that the layers were increasingly richer and denser with chocolate as they went down. The top would be decorated like a football field, with green icing and yard lines. As far as anyone who tasted it was concerned, it was a masterpiece. But the young Mary picked up the perfectionist gene from her mother, and she is in the dumps.
The dish I was most interested in from a research standpoint was my muffuletta king cake. Someone must have thought of it before, but I can't remember hearing of such a thing. The dough's texture seemed perfect as I punched down the big balloon of it and rolled it into three two-foot snakes. I called in the Marys to braid it, because I don't know how to braid. Mary Ann had the idea of decorating the top of the loaf with purple, green and gold sesame seeds. Green and gold were no problem; purple was much harder to achieve, but we hit it close enough.
The oval was visually arresting. The bread had the texture of those good Italian loaves they make at Angelo's, but that's a little too firm for this purpose. Next time I will add more eggs (six instead of two, I think) and more milk.
We cut the whole thing across into a top and a bottom. Covered the bottom with olive salad. (Next time I will make my own, but there was no time today, and I used Boscoli.) Next came the layers of ham and Genoa salami with provolone, mozzarella, and Swiss cheeses. The top of the loaf stayed in one piece more successfully than I dared hope. We cut the whole thing into king-cake-size slices and put it onto the table. It went quickly.
The king cake muffuletta made me feel high. (The wine couldn't have hurt.) Next, the pizza. I make what I think is a good pizza dough, but I've never been able to get the pies to come out even close to round. This time, I told myself, I would. I left the rolling pin out of it. I made the crusts as I saw the guys at Pizza Man do it. Still, I got oblongs and triangles, no circles. Then, somewhere around the fifth pie, it just happened. A round pizza! Then another, and another! I was even tossing them now. Score another point for the newly-old man!
The toppings were no problem. My sauce is Chef Andrea's, made without cooking. I had a vast oversupply of grated cheese, so I could lay that on thick. (It was a blend of whole-milk and part-skim mozzarella, with some feta here and there.) The most offbeat pizzas were the three I made with garlic olive oil instead of tomato sauce, with the herbed-and-pepper feta and white crabmeat. Those disappeared from the buffet table very quickly.
Meanwhile, football. It was the first time in my life that the Super Bowl and I were in my own home together. By halftime, the Packers seemed on their way to a blowout. (How could they not, with a coach like Vince Lombardi? He's still at Green Bay, isn't he?)
The guests began to drift away. Only about a dozen people remained for the whole game. Ceil Lanaux was literally stuck here. She was not the first person to roll onto our lawn and sink into it. Her ten-year-old son and his buddy were enjoying not only the game but also the limitless supply of food. I wanted to keep them eating as long as possible. We could have hosted three parties with the food we had. I had dough for five more pizzas when I quit at eighteen.
By then my back was killing me. I flopped onto a sofa, never again to rise until I took Ceil and the boys home. I had no choice but to watch the game. Yeah, finally, I felt sixty.
But still, really. . . how could I be that old?
