Last night I invited a friend of mine and her boyfriend over for dinner. They invited me for dinner the Saturday before so I wanted to pay them back, but I also had other reasons, although vague until the evening became night.
As an aperitivo, I made little crostini with Baguette from Balthazar, mascarpone cheese, pieces of parmiggiano topped with a bit of fig spread from Whole Foods. There were quite good but I think the fig spread was a tad bit too sweet.
Anyhow, for dinner, I wanted to recreate a wonderful risotto dish I had in Italy at a restaurant called Il Guscio. Of course, the cook being me it had to fail, in that it didn't taste like the sweet savory risotto I had there, but compared to other mortals, ordinary risotto dishes that I've had in the States mine was not bad. I made the basic risotto with pinot grigio from Venezia, then added gorgonzola cheese and pear pieces. No, first, I sauteed the pear pieces in butter separately with a bit of sugar added for sweetness since the pears I had bought were unfortunately not sweet or ripe enough. Towards the end I added the gorgonzola instead of parmiggiano. Also chopped chives made it in at the end. The result -- good, but not outstanding.
For the second course, I made one of my party favorites -- Japanese croquets, better known as Korokke. My mom used to make them for me when I was young, and I always loved them. You basically mash the potato then add sauteed vegetables(onion, cucumber, carrot or even sweet peas) and meat(minced) or seafood or whatever you want. Then you make them into little balls or little oval pancakes, dip them in flour, then beaten egg and finally in panko, Japanese breadcrumb which I think is superior to regular breadcrumbs. Yes, some breadcrumbs are better than others... They look fluffier in appearance and are crispier once fried. One of the important things to consider when making these is to salt the cucumber and carrot for 20 minutes or so before sauteeing them.
On top of these, I also made a side of sweet peas cooked in water with whole cloves of garlic, salt and sugar. Oh, I forgot the olive oil. That's what was missing.
For finish, I made green tea (matcha) and served it with mochi.
Being an imperfect perfectionist I never get the whole thing right. I get bogged down by details of one thing, and run out of time and fail to execute the whole thing perfectly. I was kind of playing Dinner Party like playing house or doctor... and I had a vision of things. A table set perfectly with a vase of flowers and a menu written on a nice card in cursive, flanked by scented tea candles in little ramekins filled with lavender. Of course there would be a white tablecloth of the best kind of linen, my favorite, the ones handmade in Italy with matching napkins. The perfect lighting, not too dark, not direct but indirect lighting that gives off warmth. Water will be served in my favorite bottles. One that I had asked the barman to give me at Bar Veloce one night. It looks like a plain wine bottle but clear and with no labels. One natural and one sparkling. Of course for every good dinner good wine is essential. One white and one red. And the final touch -- the music. For dinner parties I prefer jazz over rock and roll. Some of my favorites are Bill Evans and Brad Mehldau. Most of my plans were executed last night except for the menu and the tablecloth. As usual I ran out of time. They got here before I was able to make the menu and I couldn't find the tablecloth. Also the flower wasn't exactly the kind I wanted. I had some pink hyanciths, which are perfectly lovely, but their stems are too thick and don't look delicate enough on the table. Anyway, that's that.
So the food part went fine. It wasn't perfect, but it was a nice try overall. Nothing like the elaborate doll parties I had when I was young, but there are more obstacles when you're having a dinner party with actual food, risotto requiring an especially strong arm muscle.
It's really the conversations that I take pleasure in. Pleasure being not always a funny ha ha kind of pleasure, but anything that fulfills my curiosity or help me arrive at an insight. The evening was full of those, but I was also disappointed with the company I was in.
To put this whole thing in context, a couple of years ago, my friend, let's call her Silicon and her boyfriend, let's call him Shylock, got me involved in something which I thought was an investment in commercial bridge loans, which turned out recently to have been a huge Ponzi scheme. It was all over the news, tagged a "mini madoff" scandal. Just to be clear, I am in no way holding them responsible for this. They were not aware of what was going on, and if I would have just listened to my instincts I would not have gotten involved in something so foolish. But like so many people of that time I let my baser desires guide me in some very important decisions. To cut to the chase, because to talk about the full scope of how this happened and my sentiments about it would require a lot more deliberation and writing, at the end I lost A LOT of money. Full two-year salary of a recent college grad.
Back to Silicon and Shylock, who brought along their dog, let's call him Six. What amazed me was that they did not once express an iota of remorse about my loss. Well, Silicon kind of did last night when we were on the subject, but Shylock was more concerned about the blame not falling on him. Perhaps it comes from the mentality of someone that grew up in a very litigious culture like the U.S., but if I were in the same situation as Shylock, he was friends with one of the guys that worked at this firm that was nothing more than a house of cards, I would have felt awful about it. Together they got some of their friends involved, and some of them lost a lot of money, but not as much as me. This I found out last night. Despite what he said previously, I found out last night that he himself might not have lost any money, and in fact he might have actually even profited from the thing. When I asked him how much of his principal investment he actually lost he was reluctant to tell me, and said that since he's taken 'interest' checks out over the years he doesn't know exactly. Then, he got defensive immediately as if I was accusing him of something, and said that he didn't take money from me so I shouldn't be upset even if he made a profit, which he wouldn't confirm. But this was a ponzi scheme. The definition of a ponzi scheme is exactly that. Investors make 'profit' not from actual profit or interests, but from the money of other investors. His aggressive defense of himself, trying to extricate himself from any sort of blame really seemed to be in poor taste. Then at one point he asked me if the money that was lost was all mine, or perhaps some other people's money I brought in. I said it was all mine. He seemed to think somehow it would have been better if some of it was someone else's, which is a kind of mentality I cannot understand. Why would I feel better if I brought in a friend and this happened? I would not only feel stupid and hurt by my own loss, but feel morally responsible for having a friend brought into a shady enterprise and caused financial loss for someone I care about.
People, more often than not, reveal their own perspectives and principles by the questions they ask. There is a lot of projection involved. That is how Shylock thinks. Before saying in earnest that he was sorry that this happened, he went straight to covering his ass. There are two types of culpability. Legal and Moral. He is in no way legally culpable for what happened. I am ashamed and at fault of my lapse in judgment, greed and whatever else motivated me to trust these people with my money. Yet, isn't it normal for him to feel some degree of remorse if he was an, albeit inadvertent, instrument to someone else, a supposedly a friend's financial ruins? Especially because from the conversation I had with them it seemed that he was more aware of things, whether consciously or not, than I was. In this country, people rarely seem to say they're sorry, even in car crashes. They seem more concerned about not getting sued and evading the blame somehow. This is something I can never get used to.
My dear friend, I call her the Pea Princess, met these two last year when she came to visit me, and disliked them both. I trust her a great deal. Maybe, some friends are better off eliminated. So many people remain friends out of some old habit.
I started this blog to record my daily thoughts, but it looks like I am really writing in the stream of consciousness style. no proofreading or editing. Just continuous ranting I guess... Sorry if anyone ever comes across and reads it.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE -- maybe scary for some people. There is a ghost that lives in my closet. Their dog Six was nervous all evening, and Shylock asked me if there was a ghost in my apartment. It must be true. Few years ago two of my friends independently corroborated that there was a female ghost living in my place. They saw her on two separate unrelated occasions, both times the ghost was seen coming out of my closet. I kind of believed them because some things would go missing at my place that I just could not explain. The one that still upsets me to think about is a brand new set of Caran D'ache color pencil set that disappeared. I never even used it, and it was a present from my favorite cousin. And one time I got up in the morning and went to the kitchen to find a glass that was shattered on the floor. There was no explanation for it. It looked as if someone grabbed the glass and really threw it on the floor. Maybe the ghost was upset about something. But anyway, going back to the sixth sense of the dog, maybe there is someone else living at my place. I was scared for a moment, but she doesn't seem like a vengeful ghost. But then, sometimes ghosts don't like it when their human roommates find out about them, so I don't know what's going to happen. I closed the bathroom door when I was peeing today. I felt embarrassed that she might be watching me.
As I was writing this I listened to a rerun of yesterday's A PRARIE HOME COMPANION. I love this show. Everyone makes fun of me because supposedly its fans are mostly middle-aged White people, but I am fascinated by radio plays and banjos and harmonica playing. Yeah, and the puppet shows. I should have worked for the public radio...
okay, now on to another Oshima film at the BAM. It's a beautiful day today.
