Erica De Mane

Warming up for an evening at Le Jardin.

Here’s another excerpt from my work in progress The Making of an Italian Cook.

Disco Pasta

Recipe: Cavatelli with Italian Tuna, Capers, and Celery Leaves

I get the feeling some little hormonal glitch turned me into a fag hag at a relatively young age (although honestly I’m not sure at what age that typically hits). In any case I began collecting boyfriends in school, and in the early seventies they steered me to many of the new gay discos that were opening up in the city. Especially beloved was Le Jardin, at the old Diplomat Hotel on 43rd Street. It became my home away from home.

I never thought post high school would feel so confused, but I suppose that’s what happens when you don’t have a plan. I was still messing around in my mother’s kitchen, which certainly had its rewards, but my heavy cooking in this period was possibly more occupational therapy than anything forward moving, and since nobody at home seemed too concerned about my future, I figured I’d cook and dance my life away, until my true purpose for being stepped up and slapped me in the face.

The starting point for a night at Le Jardin, or the Leisure Den, as we came to call it, was always Mo’s closet. My mother was oddly unperturbed when Liti and the boys and I ripped through her wardrobe several times a week to assemble the most perfect get-ups we could manage. Beauty or even attractiveness were never the point. Our priority was to be whirling works of art. The mix, at least on my end, presented itself as part ballerina, part Mamma Roma, and part Locust Valley socialite, the look tilting more toward one or the other on any given night depending on my mood and what was left after the boys finished their digging.

After achieving the desired effect, costume wise, we’d all down a few gin and Frescas, hop in my rickety Renault 10, with its passenger door roped shut (more or less), and sped away into the city, WBLS cranked to the hilt, the station that played the most fabulous up-to-the-second disco. We usually pulled up to the Leisure Den after about 30 minutes of raucous driving, paid our six bucks cover, which included two drinks—not a bad deal—and no I.D. check required, which was a good thing since my sister Liti was about fifteen. We were immediately pulled in, I’d say almost consumed, by the pounding, screaming, whistle-blowing, slippery bodies, mostly men of course, the vibrating floor, the strobe ball, the mix of everyone’s sweat and perfume. We’d order a vodka and grapefruit juice from Joey or Jackson, the two ultra-cute bar guys, and within minutes I was spinning my equilibrium away with Egon Von Furstenberg, a popper intermittently held under my nose by an anonymous dance floormate (god, what a horrid smell that was, but I suppose the dirty sock aroma appealed to a portion of the clientele).

“Honey Bee,” “Rock the Boat,” “Soul Makossa” (loved that one), “I’ll Always Love my Mama” (oh the boys went ballistic for that tune), “The Theme from Shaft” (an unlikely hit, in my opinion), “Doctor’s Orders,” “Dirty Old Man,” “Love Train,” “Armed and Extremely Dangerous,” “The Love I Lost,” “Corazon” (a personal fave), “Pillow Talk” (not really disco, but it served its purpose), “Never, Never Gonna Give You Up,” by Barry White (he vas a genius), “Love Is the Message,” “Smarty Pants” (cute song), “When Will I See You Again,” by the Three Degrees (usually a winder-downer tune for the after 5 a.m. group). All these songs and a zillion more would throb through my body hour after hour, night after night. My abandon was real. I was extremely grateful to lose my sense of self, much like what happened while I cooked. I’d leave Le Jardin with my head still pulsating, preventing any anxiety from seeping in, and it would continue to do so hours after I left the place, sometimes even after I woke up, which was generally around 1 p.m. and almost always in my own bed, I might add, for in my case, dancing was not about enticing, it was about being isolated and lost, but in a decidedly positive way. This was obviously not the case with everyone there, considering the antics that went on in the bathrooms, but Le Jardin made a place for everyone, Truman Capote, Jackie Kennedy, and even me. As much of a cliché as this is, and it is in certain circles, I felt like a gay man trapped in a woman’s body. Not a bad place to be if I didn’t examine it too closely.

All that gyrating really got me hungry. While dancing I never noticed hunger, that’s how transfixing disco was for me, but coming home to Greenvale at 5 a.m., starving, makeup smeared, and freezing with dried sweat (“my chiffon is wet, darling, my chiffon is wet”), was a catalyst for a new branch of my self-imposed cooking class, an opportunity to learn how to cook pasta, improvisationally and very quickly. The opening of a 24-hour Pathmark right near our house made post-disco shopping a dream (sure felt like a dream). That and Mo’s well-stocked Italian pantry, and in summer Dick’s vegetable garden, had me covered. I can trace some of the best food aromas of my life back to those giddy, urgent olive-oil-laced 5 a.m. cooking forays.

At that time, culinarily speaking, I made many grave mistakes. For instance I learned that spaghetti, semi-raw green bell pepper, gorgonzola, and anchovies were not, at least in my young hands, a successful combination. There were other creations as dreadful and now thankfully forgotten, at least by me. I don’t know if any of my long lost boy pals are still harboring resentment, but if they are, all I can say is, hey, it was a beginning. I came a long way. I did learn how to use flourishes with some skill and  made great strides in incorporating lemon zest, capers, prosciutto, wine (adding it early on, not at the end), leftover bits of salami, capicola, olives, and hot chilies into my pastas with good results. I finally understood how to control my garlic, an ingredient that at the time was sorely abused by both Italian-Americans and hippies running health food restaurants.

Constructing a well balanced pasta sauce, as I soon discovered, was not as easy as it looked. Throwing a handful of raw vegetables into a pan of bubbling tomatoes resulted in something that tasted like a really bad diner version of minestrone. This was when I learned to sauté to coax out flavor from broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, all the vegetables that can be so insipid unless lovingly tended to.  And in my haste to get the food on the table I came upon a truism: Canned tomatoes were at their best when cooked boldly and quickly over a high flame. This was something not practiced by most Italian-Americans at the time. The slow simmer was the usual approach, which is fine for a ragu but not when you want to turn out a fresh little tomato sauce. I also found little use for tomato paste, a household staple. Years later I would abandon it altogether. I realized that underpinnings for pasta sauces—onions, celery, carrot, even frantically thrown together ones—needed to cook in olive oil or butter before anything else got added, so they could release their beautiful sugars and aromas. Cooking was a complicated business, and being my own teacher made me at times feel both stubborn and retarded, taking ten times longer to understand basics than if I were at a real school, but that’s were I was at that time and place. I was starving, and I wanted to cook nice things for all my hungry friends.

Cavatelli with Italian Tuna, Capers, and Celery Leaves

(Serves 4 or 5 as a 6 a.m. pick-me-up)

Extra-virgin olive oil
A small piece of fatty prosciutto end, chopped (about ½ cup)
2 small, tender inner celery stalks, cut into small dice, plus a handful of celery leaves, stemmed but left whole (you’ll want about ½ cup)
1 small onion, preferably a fresh summer type
A small palmful of fennel seeds
2 garlic cloves, peeled and thinly sliced
A tiny splash of Sambuca
4 large, round summer tomatoes, peeled and diced, or 1 35-ounce can of plum tomatoes, well chopped, with the juice
Salt
A small palmful of dried chili flakes
1 pound cavatelli pasta
1 can Italian tuna packed in olive oil, drained
A big palmful of salt-packed Sicilian capers, soaked for about 10 minutes, rinsed and dried

Set up a large pot of pasta cooking water over high heat, and bring it to a boil.

In a large skillet heat 3 tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat. Add the prosciutto, the celery, the onion, and the fennel seeds, and sauté until everything is soft and fragrant, about 3 or 4 minutes. Add the garlic, and let it cook for about a minute without coloring. Add the Sambuca, and let it boil away. Add the tomatoes, season with salt and the dried chili flakes, and cook, uncovered, at a lively bubble for about 10 minutes. Turn off the heat.

Add a generous amount of salt to the boiling water, and then drop in the cavatelli, giving it a stir to make sure it’s not sticking.

When the cavatelli is al dente, drain it, and pour it into a large serving bowl. Drizzle on a generous amount of fresh olive oil, and add the celery leaves. Give it a quick toss. Add the tuna and capers, leaving the tuna in biggish chunks. Add the tomato sauce, and toss again gently. Serve right away.