Food and Drink

So, as I usually do when I'm by myself, I'm watching TCM, the greatest television channel ever invented. All they do is show classic movies from sunrise to sunup, generally films from the 1930s and 1940s, with an occasional foray into the 1950s. But to my dismay, I discovered that they were showing the film Smokey and the Bandit. It's not that it's such a horrible movie – but it's one of the films that I saw growing up, one of the essential films from the 1970s. Is this like when you hear music you listened to in high school—in the supermarket? Is it yet another sign of age, that films of my childhood are now "classic"? Anyway, it turns out that TCM is showing Smokey and the Bandit as part of their Father's Day series of movies. More on why in a moment.

One of the hosts of TCM is Ben Mankiewicz, and he was the host for Smokey. The Mankiewicz family is an unbelievable fairytale about both immigrants in the US and in Hollywood. For Father's Day, Ben brought in his dad Frank, who fought in WW II, was a journalist, Robert Kennedy's press secretary, and later on, President of National Public Radio (he had previously worked for George McGovern, attempting to get McGovern to capitalize on the fact that he had been an incredible war hero, which McGovern refused to do. This then set the stage for Democratic presidential candidates for decades to come.) Frank was, among other things, the person officially responsible for announcing the death of John F. Kennedy. Ben's grandfather, Herman Mankiewicz, was one of the co-writers for Citizen Kane, which in the film world is a little bit like saying you're one of the co-writers of the Bible (he also worked on a little film that you may have heard of called The Wizard of Oz).

Frank's uncle, Herman, directed All about Eve, quite possibly still the best film ever made about women, family and careers, and certainly one of the best films ever made. Lilya introduced it to me, I don't know how many years ago. Herman also wrote Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which I've written about it—if ever so briefly. It is not, technically speaking, the funniest film ever made by classic Hollywood: that would be Some Like It Hot. But it is a delightful and quite funny film all on its own. There is a literally unbelievable anecdote involving Herman Mankiewicz, a fish, and white wine, which I will not repeat on this blog. But in any event, it is enough to note that Herman died on the same day, in the same year, as Joseph Stalin, and Sergei Prokofiev. It would seem that all great Slavs think alike.

The final upshot for all of this is that after Ben Mankiewicz had made his introductions, he explained that it was his father who chosen Smokey and the Bandit, and not him. He agreed it was an odd choice for him, but it has the defining thing he wants to see in a movie: a clear character that you're supposed to root for.

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Because I have not done enough today, I decided to make chiles en nogada for dinner. My history with this dish goes back many decades, and I don't have the time to relate all of it right now. Suffice it to say, I first read about this dish in a brilliant long short story, or short novella, bye Italo Calvino. I tried it for the first time in Mexico City, many years ago, on a trip that I took there with Lilya. You take a poblano pepper, you roast it, and then you stuff it with pork, dried fruit, fresh fruit, tomatoes, onions, garlic, raisins, and chopped nuts. If done properly, it takes a very long time to make. I've done it properly once before, but I was not prepared to do so again today, and so did it over the course of an hour or two. This was a highly abbreviated form of chiles en nogada. But it worked out pretty well. Lilya and I always make fun of these recipes: ragù alla bolognese in 10 minutes. Fresh croissants in half an hour, immortalized in the now-epic thread on recipes for ice cubes. "I made your fantastic spaghetti alla carbonara recipe, but I substituted elbow macaroni for spaghetti, lettuce for pancetta, and dirty dish water for parmesan—my husband loved it!"

In any event, I made something closer to Chiles à nogade, including a roux in place of the queso fresco, which I didn't have, and pecans in lieu of the walnuts. It was pretty delicious. What we're looking at here is ground pork, onions, almonds, raisins, garlic, bell peppers, tomatoes, and a few other ingredients, stuffed into a roasted poblano pepper, then covered with a walnut pecan cream sauce, sprinkled with parsley, and chopped red bell peppers. Take a look at this dish which, like pizza Margherita in Italy, was designed around the new Mexican flag. These are the dishes of Romantic Nationalism. 

What rounded things out quite nicely was the classic dinner accompaniment, the Manhattan. I have recently acquired, I shall not say how, the ability to make perfectly spherical ice cubes. And it turns out that, even when you don't have a dining room table, or really for that matter any other furniture in the house, that you can still make pretty great drinks if you have a good bourbon, a good vermouth, and some excellent homemade bitters—which I have:

All right—I'm off to enjoy To Kill a Mockingbird. Happy Father's Day to all fathers, potential fathers, potential humans about to be fathered, and—let's be honest—really, mostly mothers, who do 99.99% of the heavy lifting in this whole parenthood thing. Peace out.