Stigmat-er

How I Met My Angel

A few weeks ago I was making myself a super cute dinner of fava bean shmoo (1), and sausage and spring vegetable pasta.

I blanched the favas in salted boiling water, took them out, shocked them, and started shelling them.

Sixteen hours later, after I finished shelling a pound of beans—fava joke!—I added more water to the pot, and waited for that shit to come back to a boil.

A few minutes later, I went to put some orechiette! in, but lo and behizzold, the fucking water looked like this:

Stigmata water! Stigwater! Stigmater! What the fuck, right? I cooked the orechiette in there anyway, as the water tasted fine—briny, like blood. The pasta bloodbath yielded orechiette with a sort of wine-purple tint, not unlike the chunkier, recognizable bits of post–eating-and-drinking-too-much-at-A16 vomit. A little bit gross, but fine. 

I can’t think of any explanation for this, and Google is silent on the matter. Thus, according to chaos theory—as explained to me by Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park—there’s only one logical answer:

Jesus Christ.

Of course, as you all know, there are numerous precedents for Judeo-Christian figures presenting themselves in edible form (2). But it was so unexpected that I, a humble Romanian farmboy, would have my very own gastrospiritual experience. It inspired me to seek out similarly fortunate souls. And it didn’t take me long to find Youtube user thesmiths1013. (I encourage you to watch this whole video, or at least the first minute, and then again from 2:20 on).

Not being from a place blessed with Golden Corrals, I then set out to find out more about the restaurant. I don’t know what I was looking for exactly.  A place to nourish both body and soul. Somewhere where strangers whisper into the ears of angels. A land of miracles.

What I found was a land of lobsters.

As unsettlingly vulgar as that ad makes Golden Corral seem, I am grateful, for it returned me to the world of the secular restaurant, which brought me my angel:

 

Take your top off,

Chris

 

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(1) Shmoo’s a word I picked up during college from my chef at downtown in Berkeley. Anything with a puréed texture was shmoo. It didn’t matter if it was foie mousse that had been passed painstakingly through a shark-skin sieve, if it was pasty, it was shmoo. Then he’d say, in his endearingly nasal whine: “Chris, put more shmoo on there.” In this case, shmoo is fava been puree with mint, green garlic, parmesan, olive oil, and lemon.

 

(2) Most notably, Cheesus (the Cheetoh Christ), and the Virgin Mary grilled cheese sandwich.

Cheesus

Grilled Cheese Mary