Sept. 3: Noodle, rice, or potatoes

 

 

I love gnocchi.

It’s supposed to be a pasta that’s made from potatoes but, darn it all, it don’t taste like taters to me. It tastes like pasta. It’s like spaghetti but you don’t have to twirl it around your fork. You stab it and eat it. Yummy!

Problem is I’m the only person in the family who likes gnocchi, which means I don’t get to eat it very much. I made some for Ash once and she didn’t like it. B-Man didn’t like it either. I don’t blame either of ‘em. Gnocchi looks like giant maggots.

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A while ago, I got into the bad habit of eating nothing but a pack of Sidekicks for lunch. It’s cheap, filling, and quick to make. My favourite varieties of Sidekicks are the Harvest Chicken Rice, Honey Garlic Noodles, Teriyaki Noodles, and Chicken Fried Rice and Mexican Rice. I boil it in a mixture that is 75% water and 25% hot sauce.

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Stupid buggabugga took a lot of things from me – one of them being my favourite sushi restaurant, Wasabi, which was located in the Byward Market in Ottawa. When buggabugga hit, all the restaurants had to go to a takeout only model, which is not a good thing for sushi places. That’s because no one wants to eat sushi out of a white paper bag. It’s called edible art for a reason. The presentation of the sushi is as important as the eating of the sushi. Getting takeout sushi is like someone handing you a whole bunch of Christmas presents and that forcing you to watch as they wrap them.

The owner of Wasabi knew me and was happy to see me on the infrequent occasions when I visited him. I asked him if he’d seen the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, which is about a Japanese man whose whole life revolves around providing the best sushi experience possible. Someone who trains under him must first master the art of wringing out a hot wet rag. There is, apparently, a correct way to wring out a hot wet rag and if it is not done precisely, it will detract from the overall sushi experience.

I can’t remember if the owner of Wasabi saw the Jiro documentary or not, but he did tell me that he had some exacting measures when it came to procuring fish. I didn’t doubt it. The sushi at Wasabi was out of this world. It is a tragedy that the restaurant no longer exists.

At Wasabi, you could order a bowl of rice or you could order a bowl of sushi rice. The sushi rice was more expensive. No matter what kind of rice you ordered, it came with blackened sesame seeds on top. Asian men near me would pick up those bowls and, using chopsticks, shovel it into their mouths at blinding speed. I was never able to eat rice so fast. Maybe I could if I used a fork.

Sushi rice is made with rice vinegar. It is as far removed from Uncle Ben or the stuff I get in my Sidekicks packets as you could get.

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The picture that accompanies this post is a gnocchi dish of my own concoction. It consists of gnocchi, cooked chicken breast, hot sauce, and seasoning salt. It is best eaten while listening to a Point of Grace CD, which is also pictured. Point of Grace is an all-female contemporary Christian music vocal group. They used to be a quartet but now they are a trio because one of the Point of Grace people decided to be a sillyhead and devote herself to family stuff instead of singing about God. Point of Grace once released a Christmas album that had a cover of Santa Claus is Coming to Town. I didn’t like it. Christian artists who put out Christmas albums should not sing secular Christmas songs on them. My dad agrees with this. Thomas Aquinas would also agree with this. So would Mr. T.

In my CD collection I have a double album called WOW 1998, which contained 30 of that year’s biggest contemporary Christian music hits. Point of Grace had a song on it called Circle of Friends, which was written by Kenny Rogers, who is dead now. Kenny Rogers looked like this:

In addition to being a famous country music singer, restaurateur, and person with a beard, Kenny Rogers was also a sometime movie actor. At one point in the early 1980s, Kenny Rogers announced that from that point on, the only woman he would kiss in the movies would be his wife - no longer was Mr. Kenny Rogers willing to kiss any non-Kenny Rogers wife actress no matter how awesome the movie might be. This revelation caused zero repercussions whatsoever because there’s exactly zero people out there jonesing to see Kenny Rogers make out with Sophia Loren.

 

No, not gonna watch it unless Kenny plays tonsil hockey with Pam Dawber

Kenny Rogers was married five times, so it's unclear what wife he was talking about when he made that pronouncement. Still, it is important for me to note that at one point in my life, I was about a five minute drive from where Kenny Rogers was staying. Apparently, he played a country music festival near the small town where I lived. I was working as a reporter at the time and, if I really wanted to, I'm sure I could have pulled a few strings and scored myself an interview with him. I definitely would have asked him if his osculation policy had hurt his film career; maybe he would have been up for the Al Pacino role in Scarface.

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So far in this note, I have mentioned noodles, rice, and potatoes. I also mentioned gnocchi, which is potatoes. Unfortunately, I spent more time talking about Kenny Rogers than anything else, but that's just the way we roll on the Rotating Pineapple.