My Mario Batali by Elizabeth Bastos

Mario, Mario, Mario! What great meaty hands you have; how easily they might grasp a fresh organic free-range grass-fed chicken from my coop. Would that I were a hand, fresh-floured with stone-ground flour from Tuscany, that I might hold your hand, still bloody from the slaughter of an Abruzzo lamb. What have you done to me? Used to be I was vegan. And before that, my favorite ravioli came in a can. I was allowed to eat such only at other people’s houses. The same houses where, on a Sunday morning after a sleep over, I was allowed to watch cartoons.

Used to be I liked tall bearded men who avoided honey. Men who wore shoes made of hemp. Yet you! Mario! You have me singing Soprano I, going operatic in my small apartment galley kitchen while simultaneously making fresh homemade ricotta. Is there anything like fresh homemade ricotta? I know you would say no! It is so good! Yet, if we made it together, it would be better still, elevated to the sweet light breath of the milky angels. Dear Mario, I’m begging you, make cheese with me.

Failing that, how about arancini stuffed with fontina and pistachios? Sweet ricotta pie? You resist me! And yet your resistance serves 6-8; it only makes me want you more! I would be as the orange Croc sandal on your foot. I desire that which I cannot have, just as I did when I was seven, and the biscotti my nonna made she laid away where my grasping hands could not reach, in a cookie jar on top the fridge.

Do you want simply to crack your farm-fresh pullet egg into my mound of fresh semolina on the table and make homemade pasta? I do. I do. I do, Mario. Tell me you do. I will lie here, on the countertop, covered only with thinly-sliced pork cheek, lardo and other salumi, and await your heavy footsteps on my lintel.

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