being vs. Being

frivolous escapades into the stuffed pasta world this evening. to embark on a meal that is not only time consuming, but also labor intensive, frustrating, finnicky and rapidly slurped down  (so as to only minimally find time to savor the cook's labor) is reliably a challenge that has me instantly dancing in my socks in the kitchen and thumbing through cookbooks (usually to something akin to these gems).

 

in the name of tortellini and using the aforementioned pasta recipe from My Calabria along with Mark Bittman's basic ricotta filling for cheese-stuffed pastas the kitchen was full. filled with various mismatched dish towels, rolling pins, biscuit cutters, bubbling pots of stewed sweet tomatoes and red wine, teacups filled with egg wash, pastry brushes, tiny spoons and flour streaked aprons. the effort was predictably drawn-out and frought with challenges of all kinds. of proportion of filling, thickness of pasta dough, the proper way to seal the fussy dumplings with enough egg wash without using too much, etc.  of course, by the time the whole hours-long ordeal was spooned onto warm plates, veiled with hard cheese (before topping with sauce as Cosentino stresses in My Calabria, as true Calabrians prefer, yuck yuck...), and set onto a table sprinkled with tiny wine glasses and hard bread it was almost immediately over, plates pushed forward pebbly bits of ricotta dabbed up with bread crusts, that sort of thing. but this is the absolute joy of Being in the kitchen. not merely being in the kitchen, but Being in the kitchen- being in the Buddhist or spiritual sense of existing  in the present, doling full attention onto the task of using hands to form nourishment has me nearly in tears every time. this is not to say, of course, that something stoic and basic- lentils simmered in vegetable stock with just a bay leaf and a carrot or two, or a piece of warm bread spread with almond butter or a bottle of beer a handful of crackers, some crisp apples and curls of cheese aren't perfectly equal gestures in Being in the kitchen, but the fussy, dish pile that results from a true floury and sweaty effort are always remembered most fondly.