Creation

Maybe it's because I've been watching alot of Top Chef. Maybe it's the cooking blogs I've been reading -- particularly Annie's A Good American Wife, which has inspired me to branch out and expand my repertoire. Maybe I'm trying to improve Jason's palate so he develops a taste for good food that isn't covered in chili sauce. Most likely, it's because work is slow, and I've got all of this energy I'd normally use being productive at work and I need to direct it somewhere.

But whatever the reason, I've been completely obsessed with cooking lately.

In the past week or so, I've made:

- chicken & rice cooked with wine wine, tomatoes, saffron and peas (insanely delicious -- Jason and I couldn't even hold a conversation while we were eating because the taste of the food was zapping all of our brainpower);

- Indian chicken biryani

- red Thai curry chicken

- Greek potatoes, Greek green beans (sauteed with tomatoes and onions -- I'm not a big green bean fan, and I couldn't get enough) and spanakopita (spinach pie)

- about 3 or 4 different variations of homemade pasta sauce

Every day I wake up and think, "what new thing can I make today?" And the more complicated it is, the better.

Did you ever see the movie Big Night? It's about these two Italian brothers who are trying to maintain a successful Italian restaurant, and as a last ditch effort to keep the place open, they host a huge dinner party, making all of their best dishes, in the hopes that the singer Louis Prima will show up and make them famous and popular and successful. One of the dishes they make is called a timpano -- a giant pastry filled with layers of pasta and sausage and eggs and about a million other things, all baked together. When I saw it in the movie, I was so mesmerized that I was determined to make it. So I did. I found a recipe, and my friend Karen and I hosted a dinner party in which we made the timpano (it took us about 10 hours altogether) and served it with three different kinds of risotto in the colors of the Italian flag (also featured in the movie).

I get this way from time to time. I learn how to do something, or in the case of cooking, revisit it after a long hiatus, and I get crazy. I go on a knitting frenzy and I make fishermen's sweaters with 5 different kinds of cables and popcorn stitches and whatever else I can think of. I watch a couple of episodes of Trading Spaces and I go out and buy a sewing machine and start making curtains and pillow covers.

It could be that I have an overwhelming need to be productive and creative.

Or just further confirmation that I'm more than a little nuts.

Anyway, here's the wonderful scene from Big Night that inspired me. May it inspire you as well.