Apron Anxiety (30 page)

On Valentine’s Day, just a week after my ungraceful breakup, I take my first spin class at SoulCycle since leaving New York for Washington over two years ago. I’m so excited at the prospect of putting on my spandex and spin shoes that I’m barely mindful of the potentially gloomy holiday. The 7:30 class that usually has a waiting list is close to empty tonight. It’s just me and a few other upbeat, well-toned singletons that, as unattached New Yorkers, would rather be productive than pathetic. We all share a collective “Never let ‘em see ya sweat” mentality. Well, unless you’re about to burn off eight hundred calories in under an hour.

Our teacher’s name is Rique, and he’s a full-blown sex bomb. In fact, when the lights go down and the music goes up, the first song he plays is “Tonight (I’m Fuckin’ You)” by Enrique Iglesias.
And we’re off
. The beat is transforming, Rique is turning us all on, and the room is as electric as I had remembered. Even if I’m wearing a sports bra instead of a lace bra, and riding a bike instead of a boyfriend, this intoxicating, unventilated room
is the only place I want to be tonight. For forty-five minutes straight, I spin my ass off. I spin like never before. And I spin the last of any feelings I had for Benjy right out of me.

After class, my legs throbbing in the best possible way, I walk a few blocks to Whole Foods in Union Square. At nine o’clock on Valentine’s Day, it’s prime dinner-reservation hour. Dozens of lovestruck couples are strolling by me—girls in flippy blowouts and boys in popped, pin-striped collars. I can’t help but notice all the roses in hands and sparkles on faces. But I am happy for the lovebirds, eating their prix fixe romantic meals wherever
Yelp
tells them to, and going home to be spanked thanks to Victoria and all her secrets.
Good for them
.

The only action I’m getting tonight is in the apron. It’s a great night for a test kitchen under the bridge, so I’m steaming mussels for the first time, if all goes well. I don’t even know if I like mussels, to be honest, but everyone keeps saying they’re the perfect home-cooked meal for an easy, intimate dinner (should I ever have another worthy candidate). Benjy introduced me to a few new dishes and cuisines, whether I liked them or not, and I’m trying to keep the
food-venturous
momentum going. Mussels aren’t exactly alligator schnitzel, of course, but they’re not a move in the
wrong
direction. Any recipe that includes the term “debearding” seems unusual enough for me.

As I search for my ingredients, I look around the market at all the single shoppers who tonight will be reading recipes instead of Hallmark cards, and reveling under the light of the refrigerator bulb instead of a candelabra. The Goth girl in front of me will be making a tofu pad Thai, it would appear; the divorced dad is planning a filet mignon for one. I feel the struggle in the air, which I appreciate, and as I create all their stories, I wonder if they have figured out mine. (Then again, have I?) I
am proud to stand in the organic aisles with the likes of secret mistresses, chronic commitment phobes, sexually deprived, out of luck, independent and codependent dumpers and dumpees. They might not have suitors, but they have spirit.

In the long checkout line, I’m surprised to see a random food writer friend approaching as I stretch my sore limbs. His reviews can be merciless, and depending on the restaurant, he’s either blacklisted or beloved. We became friends several years ago, back in the
Us Weekly
days, long before Bolognese and bouillabaisse were how anyone paid their rent. I tell him I’m experimenting with mussels. He tells me he and his girlfriend are taking a break. He delicately asks what happened in D.C., explaining that no one really understands the story of our breakup. I tell him it’s not so black and white, but if it’s all off the record, I can try to explain. A minute into my monologue, and six Bridget Joneses before checkout, he interrupts me.

“The problem is, Alyssa,” he says with seriousness, “you never caught on to the secret.”

“What secret?” I ask, terrified, knowing he’s a hawk.

“The secret is that
you
were the special one.”

Whoa. In all my conversations about Chef with my best friends, family members, and wise editors, I’ve never had a more poignant moment. Hovering over my garlic and parsley, wearing fleece and pom-pom socks, alone on Valentine’s Day, I feel deeply liberated by his words.

There has always been a part of me that’s avoided too much deep self-reflection on the downfall of Chef and me. I can recite all of our fights, all of our issues, and all of the mistakes, from which there would be no return, that he and I
both
made. But I’ve never been able to identify what was at the core of our ultimate contamination. And here it is, plain and simple: my
identity was compromised; the sentiment of being “less than” made me feel ugly and made me act erratically. Yet all along, I was the special one. I see that now; I feel that now. But if only I had known then.

“Lys, there’s one more secret,” he calls as I walk toward the cashier.

“What is it?” I shout back.

“Those aren’t mussels. They’re clams.”

Ah, crap!

By ten o’clock, I am home preparing an impossibly easy, yet very elegant meal (of
actual
mussels) that takes no more than ten minutes. First I give the little suckers their facials, the “debearding,” then they all go into a bath of butter, wine, and garlic. Presto! Dinner is ready, my favorite playlist is singing softly, and I eat my Valentine’s Day
moules
quietly and contemplatively. I get into bed and watch a couple of TV shows saved on the DVR. I fall asleep alone, stretched out, well fed, entertained, and enlightened.

AS WINTER
turns to spring, I get busier than ever with cooking, baking, entertaining, dining out, and writing about it all. Some foods like speck (
a speck of what?
) and offal (which I misspelled as
awful
when transcribing an interview) still throw me off, and I am as awkward with chopsticks as I am with, say, doing the moonwalk. Yet I see myself constantly evolving, almost without trying. I now use words like “anise” to categorize the black licorice flavor I love so much in foods like fennel, drinks like ouzo, and of course, candy like Good & Plenty. “Sassafras” describes soft drinks and sweets that remind me of root beer; I say “custard” instead of “pudding,” “squid” instead of “calamari,”
“crème fraîche” instead of “Cool Whip.” Sandwiches are no longer sandwiches but tartines, and such tartines often bestow homemade pickled radishes, plum chutney, and the tolerable cousin to my nemesis, mayonnaise, which I can finally spell and pronounce: “aioli.” I am turned on by turnips, offended by overcooked eggs, and can finally deliver the word “cockles” without cracking up.

Rapacious vernacular aside, there are many acquired tastes that I don’t think I’ll ever actually acquire, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. Sardines make me quiver (and not in the good way), and the avant-garde lard trend is a huge gross-out. Any food too spicy, raw, or fleshlike is not going to happen—search me, you won’t find them, no matter what food crime I’m committing. My Jewish-girl aversion to pork, in general, is another massive violation of the gourmet code of behavior. So chances are I’ll never be a gangster eater—no pig butt or fish eyeballs for me, please—but I make no apologies and still consider myself largely culinary-spirited. Like most things in life, it doesn’t have to be so all-or-nothing.

My home cooking is equally an ongoing experiment. It wouldn’t be any fun otherwise. A James Beard Award nominee recently came over to raid my stacks of cookbooks, only to be disillusioned by the slice of homemade whole-wheat bread I proudly fed him (it admittedly resembled the texture of a football). “Are you sure you used the right yeast?” was his gentle feedback. Unfortunately, my beautiful bread-making days seem to have been tied to beginner’s luck, because now they all come out wildly unattractive and generally inedible. However, I like to think that if everything were patisserie-perfect, then I’d have less to laugh about.

Whether it’s in my skill set or not, there is nothing in the food world that I’m not sweet on learning about.
Nothing
. One
of the perks of interviewing great chefs and foodies for
Grub Street
is that I get the chance to ask them anything I want.
Mocha Frappuccino or steeped green tea? Describe your last Taco Bell binge. Do people do drugs in your bathroom? Ever burn toast?
They usually respond well to me. I think it’s because, by now, I
get
chefs. I know the glossy daze in their eyes, like a toddler at the tail end of a tantrum, after exiting the all-consuming tunnel of their shift. I know to give them space, five minutes for some, a few hours for others, as they mentally transition from workhorse to human being. And even once they’ve changed gears into the very cool creatures they intrinsically are, I know that there are still some chefs who can’t veer far from restaurant talk, and others who will stop at no intellectual rampage to prove that they
can
. In the end, it’s a safe bet that they all just want to talk about bacon, sex, and themselves, anyway.

From the French-trained demigods to the tat’ed badass chicks to the infantile, alcoholic savants, I find myself emulating anything I can shake out of these culinary daredevils with their chipped-at personalities and tremendous talent. Floating in and out of restaurant openings and tasting tables, I extract sound bites, both highbrow and low, that tailor the way I look at food.

The über-purist chef, Michel Bras, from a little village in the French countryside, tells me that one of his favorite treats is an apple core, simply because it is always dismissed with such wasteful disdain. He makes me try one and it gets lodged in my throat, but I totally get his point and now look at broccoli stems and banana peels differently, too. Thomas Keller—the most pleasant and perhaps important chef in the country—admits he can’t walk past Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups at the grocery store without throwing them in his shopping cart. He’s probably just trying to humanize himself, but now I grab them, too,
with glory instead of guilt. Grant Achatz, of Chicago’s Alinea fame, sings the splendor of a vegan Japanese chef in New York who’s “revolutionized the vegetable,” so I make a reservation for a table for one, walking away seventy-five dollars poorer but a pea shoot more evolved. Paul Liebrandt of Corton and the documentary
Matter of Taste
, and whose crystal blue eyes make me lose all concentration, argues that Marco Pierre White was the last of the rock star chefs, imploring me to buy
White Heat
right away. Gabrielle Hamilton prescribes Negronis for when life gets rough; Padma Lakshmi prevents hangovers with an “egg in a hole” before bed; and Ruth Reichl finds her Zen in cartons of Szechuan Chinese food while sitting silently on the couch. And so I do as they do. I do as they say. Call me a foodie follower. I’ve heard worse.

As I explore the likes of Cambodian
num pang
and avocado ice cream, popping into artisanal cheese shops and swanky whisky rooms, I am, by default, meeting a lot of men again. The funny thing is, when I go on dates now, most guys admit they’re nervous about making the reservation or ordering the right food in front of me. I try to explain that even though I’m uploading as much culinary information as I can into my brain, I still buy wine based on packaging, shiver at pig hearts, can’t stomach oysters, and hesitantly pronounce “pho” and “chicken
paillard
.” But they think I’m just trying to be disarming.

In the lobby of the Bowery Hotel, I get cozy with a Jared Leto lookalike who wears eyeliner and smells like a wet dog. When I stop returning his calls, because he’s just too out there, he leaves endless voice mails in which he simply chews food into the phone. He calls it gastro-poetry. Enter the once-famous child actor who is now a struggling film producer. I like him a lot, even though my gut says he’s hiding something (and trust me, it’s
not
residuals). Then he tells me he’s going fishing
in upstate New York and ends up in rehab. At a coffee shop in Brooklyn, I meet a novelist whose books I’ve bought, and whom I can’t believe is flirting with me. For the next few weeks, we text profoundly and pornographically, but on the night I’m set to see him for an actual date, I come down with a miserable migraine. I cancel via e-mail and ten minutes later he writes back, “No second chances, sweetheart.”
Asshole
.

I don’t jump into bed with all these new guys, but I’m not knitting them sweaters either. In case of “gentleman callers,” my kitchen is always ready. I usually keep an onion, potato, and cumin quiche in the fridge, as well as a berry tart or something simple and sugary that stays fresh for a few days. This way, day or night, sweet or savory, G-rated or X-rated, I always have something to offer.

Against my better judgment and after months of kitchen-rat restraint, I even go on a blind date with another well-known chef named Alexi. It takes weeks before I agree to meet him, but after three close friends vouch for his solid character, I pop my head into his restaurant, wearing sunglasses and a hat, and notice him peacefully reading the
New York Times
and sipping a coffee. There’s no chaos, iPhone, publicist, or posse reverberating around him. I intuitively like his disposition, and tell our mutual friends to move forward with the matchmaking.