concerning lemon pasta

Today was grumpy baby day. The kind of day where you eat a piece of bread and three ice cubes and consider yourself fortunate to have had that much. So by early afternoon I was Hungry. Hungry with a capital H. I knew exactly what I wanted to eat, I wanted Lemon Pasta. I've made this dish before, it's in Laura Calder's excellent cookbook, French Food At Home and it's really the sort of dish that you eat when you feel like comfort food. I have to admit, on grumpy baby day I felt like a little comfort food. So I packed up the grumpy baby into the stroller that he detests riding in and we actually made it out the door but not off the driveway before the screaming started and we had to head back in. Thirty minutes of sobbing and rocking and nursing and hiccuping later, he was in the carrier that he detests riding in (but moderately less so than the stroller) and we were off. All I needed, dear reader, was lemons and cream. I mean, the recipe calls for more than that but I've adjusted this recipe to fit my fridge in the past and I know from experience that all I really needed was stuff I had on hand, plus lemons and cream. We were in a race against time because I KNEW (in the way that you just KNOW sometimes) that we would not make it to the grocery store, which is a twenty minute walk away, but that we might make it to the corner store with a little luck.

We tried the new market on the corner, and they did not have lemons, or lemon juice. We tried the gas station, and they had cream but no lemons. We tried the Cowtown Market and they had, like, five apples in stock total so no luck there. I bought some chocolate because I figured dinner was not going to happen at this rate and we headed home. Thirty minutes of rocking and nursing and fussing later the grumpy baby was actually IN his bed and not screaming so I race for the kitchen and grab the recipe. Now I know that I don't have all of the ingredients, but I figure I can improvise. Cream-based sauces are not complicated things and I'm sure I have enough stuff to mask even a big mistake, should I make one. I melt the butter and add the cream, bringing it slowly to a boil.

It starts sort of exploding. In big bubbles of boiling cream. I've made this before and it never ever did this so I turn the heat down and whisk it a bit. I'm running through things in my head. The butter was salted rather than unsalted like Laura calls for, but that shouldn't do this. I'm using one of my good pots, with the copper bottoms, so nice even heat. My cream is fresh...what is making it do this? A giant exploding cream bubble almost burns me and I'm thinking "I don't have time for this. The brief lull in grumpy baby day is just that, a brief lull. If I don't finish cooking this in ten minutes I may as well eat another ice cube because that's about all I'll get tonight." I throw pasta in the boiling pasta pot and make an executive decision to take the cream sauce off the heat even though it hasn't thickened yet. Maybe it will thicken while cooling? I add the cheese and salt and pepper. No lemons means we have two choices for lemon pasta, I can use the remaining two tablespoons of lemon juice in the fridge or I can use orange juice. I opt for the lemon juice until I open the bottle and hear a distinct effervescence. Why would my lemon juice be carbonated? A smell of the bottle makes me think it might be starting to, um, ferment a bit. And while I'm usually up for a cocktail this might not be the best decision at the moment, and I can hear the grumpy baby starting up in the other room, so I grab the orange juice and pour some slowly in the cream sauce, whisking the whole while. I taste it and can't really taste citrus but I don't want to risk too much orange juice since I've already done a dozen things wrong in this recipe already. So I just drain my pasta and pour some sauce over.

*Glug*

It is like soup. Pasta with cheesy-orange soup. It is a testament to hungry mothers everywhere that I gamely ate it anyway. When I go to put the rest of the sauce away I notice a sort of oddness on the bottom of the pot. On closer inspection I discover it's the pulp from the orange juice. I hadn't strained it of course and the pulp lay on the bottom of the pot.

Sometimes the ice cubes are better.