Guancholl!

I like to feed people. To make a yummy thing or buy a yummy thing or know about a yummy thing, and then say, “Here, taste this yummy thing.” I like to watch flavor spread through them. To alter their senses with my sensibility. It’s a great way to give love and get love at the same time. To say, “Look at you” while saying, “Look at me.” I’m not like those Italian grandmas who cook out of care and duty; tapping into the maternal archetype, their bolognese a red re-imagining of the tit. No, I’m more of a food rabbi with a small basement shtiebel. You guys know what a shtiebel is? AI says - A shtiebel (Yiddish for “little room,” pl. shtieblech) is a small, informal space used for Jewish communal prayer. Unlike formal synagogues, shtieblech are typically intimate, converted houses or storefronts where the atmosphere is highly casual, and the community is tightly knit.

My kitchen is a shtiebel
A place of humble prayer
Not arrogant nor feeble
More Bert Lahr than Fred Astaire

My kitchen is a shtiebel
For angels and for fiends
I serve both good and evil
And with a side of beans

I wonder if Italians have shtiebels. Little basement haunts where they intimately Catholicize. A small prayer hall/salumeria, where you eat a slice of soppressata between two wafers. Speaking of Italians, let me tell you about a recent guanciale episode I had. No, I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to brag about spending 134 bucks on a three-pound slab of pig face from Siena. That it went down like a drug deal; me and Julietta, the blonde Italian vendor at the Larchmont farmer’s market. Julietta, who calls me “Thomas” (Toemus) in a way that intrigues me but (luckily) doesn’t slay me. We had been doing small deals, nickel and dime shit, six ounces here and there. It was twenty clams a package and I was happy about it, because it was the real deal and had that simple Italian funk (what I imagine Sophia Loren’s feet must have smelled like after a long car trip). I always made “gricia” out of it or “gray” pasta, which is just guanciale, black pepper (the gray), pasta water and pecorino cheese. You may be all a-twitter about Carbonara, but I am content with the pure animal ooze of rendered pork jowl and don’t need an egg to thicken and richen. Don’t get me wrong, put a good Carbonara before me and I am ready to get yolky, but Swerdy is a purist, my credo: “As much flavor with as few steps and ingredients as possible.”

So, I’m getting my guancholl six ounces at time and damn happy about it, but then the slices start to get thin and it’s feeling more like mortadella than guanciale. I let Julietta know this is unsustainable and that I’m ready to go full Escobar and procure in bulk. This excites her, which excites me. She says will talk to Mr Big and if he approves, the hand off will be next Wednesday, but just know the slabs are usually three to four pounds and quaranta dollares a libbra. She takes my number and says if there’s a problem, she will send a text to alert (or a man named Rocco will hang a dead pigeon on my door), but once it’s on, it’s on and there’s no turning back.

I show up the following Wednesday wearing a hat and shades (I always do, but still). Julietta clocks me as she’s wrapping up a pesto exchange. She sends a “grazie mille” toward the customer, but she’s headed for me. We lock eyes. “I have it.” She goes to the cooler and hands me a football sized hunk of flesh. The pig skin, literally pigskin. I hand her my credit card and think to myself, “Why are you buying a $130 hunk of face bacon you lunatic?” But the truth is I know why. Because I’m no dilettante! Because the old ways (and the old country) are sacred. Because in a world that confronts me with endless falseness I need as much as real as I can get. Things made or grown by nameless masters, for it is the nameless masters that make life matter most!

Okay, I will step down off my pork box but let me just say that to lay a big slab of guanciale on the cutting board is a divine and slightly grotesque thrill. The way the knife struggles with the skin, then glides through that creamy jowl fat, as different from belly fat as silk is from cotton. I can get almost as big a thrill from the gai lan (Chinese broccoli) that I get from Jason, my Thai wizard, but there’s something about the Italian oeuvre that just speaks to me. Half the women I’ve been involved with have been Italian but that’s a different Substack (though not that different).

My kitchen is a shtiebel
We eat but we don’t binge
My apron is a tallis
There’s grease stains in the fringe

My kitchen is a shtiebel
My thyme and time in sprigs
Even the pork is Kosher
My rabbi raised the pigs

keeping the vegetarians engaged

I’m in a playful mood. We gotta play. Even when the balls are heavy you got to juggle ‘em while riding a unicycle. Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry and you end up having to listen to advice. But let’s get serious-- Here’s a major food tip. Of all the things I have posted on Substack: the sacred nonsense and confessional symphonics. The fried potato reveries and anchovy testimonials. The James Dean/Fellini hagiography and odes to mom and dad, this is the most important thing I have ever shared.

If you want to keep the crunch on your chips, crackers and cookies after you have opened the package, put them in the refrigerator. Yes, an open bag of kettle chips will last two weeks in the fridge. Refrigeration works by removing moisture. So, throw your chip clips OUT the window and put your breadsticks IN the ice box. I came to this late in the game, but it’s made a huge difference (not quite as much as realizing that my feelings are fluid and change quickly so, maybe I should wait twenty-four hours before I say something that will blow up my life, but close).

https://oliveoillovers.com/products/entelia-5l-bag-in-box

Here’s another food improvement. This is a link is to a very solid Greek extra virgin olive oil. 77 smackaroobies for 5ls. This is considerably cheaper (and better) than that California olive oil they sell at Whole Foods, Sprouts and supermarkets. Now you may say, “What I am going to do with five liters of olive oil?” and my answer to that is, “Do I have to teach you everything?”

My kitchen is a shtiebel
Let’s gather and commune
The nectarines are dripping
And it isn’t even June

My kitchen is a shtiebel
The floor is painted blue
The flavor Gods are dancing
Hallelujah, halleluj!

The floor really is blue