Not While I'm Cooking

The scene where Carlo and Silvio wack big Dom in the back of the Pork Store was so good I had to watch it twice.
Ahhh. This is summer vacation for a teacher. I watched the last two episodes of season six of The Sopranos before lunch. Even pushed lunch a little late, which for me is major. Meals are how the men in my family measure the day.
No one is more religious about mealtimes than my dad. Though for five months of the year he lives alone in a little house in France, so he runs no danger of any late arrivals pushing lunch to 12:15. My oldest brother Paul has been an ex-pat in France for the past 10 years. Crammed into a tiny third floor walk up on the Rue Paradis, he likes nothing better than walking all over Paris for THE best loaf broad and all the way across in the other direction for THE best disk of goat cheese. A long time bachelor, much of his time is consumed being a connoisseur. My dad also loves to cook elaborate things for himself, and loses no sleep if he dines alone, as he'll tell me over the phone, "I wish you were here, I've got six oysters I just opened up and a plateful of beautiful tomatoes and-" he enjoys himself, by himself. Not a skill everyone has.
I dropped the kids off at their camps by 9am. Hit the strip in North Berkeley that has the worlds greatest fruit and veg place, Monterey Market. I contemplated grabbing a few things for the whole week, the kids lunches and whatnot, but realized we had already done the Big Shopping. So I pretended I was in Europe and just shopped for what I might eat today.
A big bulb of fennel. Two tomatoes so ripe they were cracked.
Up at the cheese store run by cheeful Asian women, I grabbed Pecorino Romano, and the ground coffee smell was so earthy and intense, a single espresso was unavoidable. Came home.
Tried to blog.
Nothing to say, I hadn't eaten yet.
So after my two hours of tube time, I went into the kitchen. Then into the Zone.
The zone, where all you see is the cutting board, all you think and smell and taste is the food.

I pooled olive oil in a saute pan, melted two anchovies in that, clove of garlic, chili flakes, in went the thick sliced fennel bulb, and I forgottaboutit- so it would carmelize nice.
Chopped up the final messy hunks of leftover lasagna, added some left over grilled eggplant and a few hunks of grilled chicken into it that was destined for the trash. Put a lid on that.
Sliced a bursting tomato, showered it with chiffed basil, olive oil, sweet balsamic, a little funky sherry vinegar, some of that Pecorino.
Beautiful brown almost burnt crust on that fennel. Tomato so wet it has to be summer now.
Took it all outside. Ate. The fennel was the best part. SO sweet, with that slight fishy edge to it, as unctious as Tony Soprano himself.
Which brings me to my final point, if I have one. When Dom came into the back of the Pork Store, Carlo had his apron on. "We're making fra Diavolo" Silvio says to Dom, "why don't you stay?" Dom refuses.
Who the hell would refuse Lobster fra Diavolo? Foreshadowing.
Then of course all the off color homophobic remarks Dom makes about their recently murdered colleague, Vito Spattafiore.
Then he incorporates Carlo into these remarks, who in spite of his silently building rage, continues to stir and season, his back to the interloper from Brooklyn.
Until the last comment about the lipstick.
Sil hits him on the head, and Carlo -despite Dom's huge size- manages to get that knife in about twelve times. Talk about knife skills.
A big professional mistake of course, to kill a made guy, to act out of passion in this way. But for gods sake, when you're cooking, when you're in the zone, you just shouldn't be disturbed.