Irenian.

It’s Monday. My last Monday at the diner.
On Friday night, after the day’s 241 cover take and having made several desserts—I made more still by simmering evaporated milk and mango juice and adding in sheets of gelatin. That would be for one of the finale dinners in our series of “FareWells” dinners, a way for us to make more money and cook, still, whatever we wanted.

I put the mixture into heavy bundt pans and later they unmolded them to what the chef described to me as, “Magazine cover, 1980’s Bon Appetit perfect”. I went home and packed a lot of my things and brought them to Pirooz’s. My apartment in Greenpoint met the doom of Zone A, prone to heavy flooding, should there be any, during a hurricane.

On Saturday the city shut down. The diner was open through the night, and again I made a slew of pastry for the day (it was plentiful, and we were busy), and then worked on Panna Cotta with the chef of another restaurant in New York, Fedora.

After my ride home I settled in with Pirooz. Hurricane Saturday felt, strangely, like Christmas. It was either an adrenaline and excitement driven marathon or we’d sleep through the night and in the morning look to see if there was presents under the tree and snow outside. I made stir fry. We watched a movie. I lasted until 1. I wonder if we all asked ourselves if the power would go out, if the water supply would be depleted and if our structure was sound. On our Sunday walk we saw plenty of trees uprooted and many businesses closed; but generally Brooklyn stayed quiet. The sun came out.

Last night I cooked some more. I think with the combination of cooking for someone on a regular basis, and watching Mad Men, I have a better understanding of what mother’s feel like when they have to cook something different every night; and how leftovers are actually exciting and not boring; and how most of the stuff we serve at one of America’s top 10 best restaurants in ‘11 (Bon Appetit says), might be considered ‘leftovers’, anyway. It’s fun, though. I made a nice bechamel and added cheddar and parmesan, salt, pepper, and curry powder. I added it to the quinoa elbows with threw in chickpeas and baked the sauce with the noodles until the parm I’d sprinkled on top was brown. I oven-roasted tomatoes and tossed greens with a lot of vinegar to balance the creamy sauce. I like cooking. I was surprised at how good it tasted when I sat down with P and a white-wine spritzer (Ferrari-Carrano Fume Blanc, like I used to drink).

I like eating cereal and reading the news in the morning with coffee made with an auto-drip (or a french press, or a percolater). The sound the auto drip makes reminds me of sitting in the dining room of the house my mother grew up in in Pennsylvania. During our last summer visit, my mom would brew coffee in the yellows of the kitchen and pour me a cup as I sat and typed romanticism on my computer. That sound and scent with the combination of toasting bread is like a safety lock and key. It reminds of rolling green Pennsylvania hills and Reno apartments and Brooklyn all at once. 

I’m going to stop there, and I will meet you on the other side of the last 48 hours at M. Wells on 49th Ave and 21st St in Queens.