Lemons, those harbingers of sunshine, lemonade, summertime and blonde hair streaks, saved dinner the other night. I didn’t have a car for the day, but still needed to rustle up dinner. Over the weekend Mr. Perfecto has casually tossed down a contentious gauntlet, when he cluelessly and callously mentioned that dinners were getting, erhm, a
little boring. Not only was I insensed by Mr. Perfecto’s whingeing, but I was doubly challenged because I couldn’t get out to a store. It was time to assess the contents of the fridge and the pantry, and see what I could concoct
that would tickle Mr. Perfecto’s fancy.
This was one of those times that I wished we lived in New York City where, as Calvin Trillin was fond of pointing out to his daughters, there were hundreds of restaurants that would deliver. Imagine that! Instead I poked around the fridge and the internets and weighed my options.
Some days it is all we can do to wake up, shower, do our work, and play nicely with others. Some days adding dinner prep to the mix is more than a human being can stand. Which was why it was great that our children thought pancakes for dinner was a great concept. Or pizza. One week, when Mr. Perfecto was out of town, we tried to see how many consecutive pizza dinners we could stand. Homemade, frozen, hot from the pizzeria, cold leftovers – we made a thorough scientific study of the length of time for which pizza remains a delicious and viable source of nutrition. Four days is one day too many, by the way.
Mr. Perfecto, as a fully formed adult human being, with middle class expectations of three square meals a day, has never been as adaptable as our children. He also espouses the amusing belief that a salad must accompany every evening meal. Luckily for him there was one last salad left in the wilting container salad farm. It has sudden gotten too warm for those delicate little leafy spears of crunchy goodness.
And lucky for Mr. Perfecto that the New York Times, the venerable gray lady herself, came to his rescue.
I found a recipe for lemon linguine by Pierre Franey in the Times’ food archive. And by some good luck we had on
hand all the ingredients for this light, lemony, springtime pasta meal. Amazing! And a pasta dish in our house that was not heavily depend upon masterful overtones of garlic was highly unusual – dare I say not humdrum?
In the refrigerator I found: the pasta (fresh, though frozen, linguine), good Parmesan cheese (brought home from Rome by Mr. Perfecto himself a few months ago, so we know it has been well-aged), a couple of lemons, 3 tablespoons of butter, and some cream. The recipe called for heavy cream, but I used half and half, and it all turned out fine. We even had some bread in the freezer bread collection, and there was a nice modest little bottle of California red lurking in the wine rack. The dinner problem was solved mid- afternoon and back to the drawing table I went, pleased with my resourcefulness. So there, Mr. Perfecto! Who’s boring now?
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1589-linguine- with-lemon- sauce
“You can’t possibly ask me to go without having some dinner. It’s absurd. I never go without my
dinner. No one ever does, except vegetarians and people like that.”
― Oscar Wilde
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