Something to Make: One-Pot pasta a limone
Plus, my hot takes on Mirror Worlds . . . and SPACE
I’m just back from Italy, where I spent a glorious five days talking about journalism, an experience that can be summed up as: great weather, great people, bad vibes. That said, if you’re going to talk about how it’s now necessary to bring a burner phone into the United States of America, it’s nice to do it on a terrace with a strong aperol spritz in hand.
(Also, due to some very on brand Italian public transit mixup / rail replacement works, I ended up in rural Umbria where a very old man outside a train station transitioned from pinching my cheek to lightly groping me. This was after asking, apparently hopefully, if I was Ukrainian or Russian. When I told him I was Canadian, he said, “Ah, Americano!” Then I had to claim to be pregnant to try and get rid of him, which I’m not and which didn’t work. Honestly, bad all around. I’m now committed to this story being at least a little funny, instead of just awful.)
But despite the rail issues and the sexual harassment and the T-word1 and the fact that I started considering tomato sauce a vegetable after two days, it was still a wonderful trip to see lots of great people I adore. And when I came home, I made the most obvious and natural choice: I made more pasta.
I had never made a one-pot pasta before, but it went off without a hitch—Anna Jones won’t steer you wrong. Her pasta a limone is buttercup yellow and exquisitely buttery, and not too lemony. (I fucked up my tastebuds for life as a 9 year old with a mania for Black Cherry Warheads, so everyone in my life knows I like aggressive sourness. This recipe is at a lemony-level for a normal person, like my dinner guest Saabira, so don’t fear.) This is from her very good, not too complex, vegetarian cookbook Easy Wins.
In the past, I have made an exquisitely-rich version of lemony linguine from Nigella, which includes copious cream. I would never not recommend Nigella, but hers is a bit more tricksy (though still very simple). Anna Jones’ version is just-landed-and-exhausted-simple, and I suspect her version with tomatoes and kale is also nice.
I served it alongside her agrodolce courgettes and sticky onions with ricotta, which is basically the same as my own, loose recipe for this dish. Here’s my formula (“agrodolce veg with everything”) if you want to riff a little. People always love it and there’s not much to it besides a splash of vinegar and a little sugar and lots of oil. Serve with nice crusty bread.
And other recommendations:
I spent my time in Italy blasting through Naomi Klein’s brilliant, bruising Doppelganger, a hard-to-categorise take on how liberals and the far-left can end up aligned with the far-right. The opening premise is about Klein’s own doppelganger, the writer Naomi Wolf, who went from Democratic Party/Feminist Darling of the 90s, to “Covid passports are fascism.”
But from there, it looks at all kinds of political “doublings”, and is introspective and self-critical, a map through the up-is-down-and-down-is-up phenomenon that is reshaping words and politics (or simply, as they told me in Georgia—the country—last September, just reviving the old Soviet hall of mirrors and repression, but now with smartphones). One of my favourite chapters was on how people can go from bad birth experiences and Crossfit mania to believing in QAnon—not new, certainly, but the best explanation I’ve seen so far. It’s a very good one to pair with anything by Peter Pomerantsev, if you can stomach it.
I’m now reading Fuschia Dunlop’s Invitation to a Feast, about the history of Chinese food. But even though this is fascinating and so readable, I’ll admit I’m ready for some comfort food. Time for the new Emily Henry book to come out, I think. Then I’m emotionally ready to work my way through the Women’s Prize Shortlist, which looks amazing this year. (I keep getting recommended The Safekeep, and I bought Fundamentally for my friend Caitlin. I bought Good Girl, about a young German-Afghani woman in Berlin, for myself.)
In the mean time, for something that’s both provocative and touching, I loved the Black Mirror episode “Hotel Reverie”, about a recasting of an Old Hollywood film and an AI romance that goes movingly awry. (Don’t google it! There are spoilers everywhere!)
After my Meghan Markle hot take the other week (otherwise known as: arranging crudités while the world burns), I’m trying to resist the urge to riff extensively on the Girlboss Space Flight, and instead refer you to two great takes: Marina Hyde in the Guardian2, and my friend Emma in Fortune, who actually watched this whole thing in real time, and saw the ground-kisses with her own eyes!
The overall vibe — the stupid outfits, the hair extensions, the claim this is somehow feminist — reminded me of a hilarious and brutal line in the ever-excellent Sophia Money-Coutts’ newsletter this week, in which she admits that sometimes while listening to long conversations about engagement rings, she thinks: ‘You know when the Pankhursts were campaigning for the vote? I’m not sure they meant you.’
Obviously, even Katy Perry deserves the vote, even if she doesn’t deserve to go to space. That’s feminism, baby! But what’s also feminism, I think, is having the right to roll your eyes until you collapse from nausea when someone tries to sell you injectibles, rocket fuel, and being just kind of an inane asshole to people (this is an extra-flammable hot take I’ll save for another time), as inherently empowering. What’s empowering is having actual power. POWER. It’s literally in the word3!
On top of this, give me one to two glasses of wine and I will be happy to give you my extended thoughts on the obsession with space when the world seems unmanageable. It is not a coincidence, in my opinion, that the Little Rock Nine and the mania over the launch of Sputnik occurred in the same year — 1957! It is also part of a long tradition, in my other opinion, that a certain kind of man feels compulsively drawn to the mysteries and promises of space (not the science of it, mind, nor the actual cosmic mysteries—more the Big Blast Off Energy), but has no interest in acknowledging his patchy legacy on earth.
Please Google Wernher von Braun and then, in one year, pre-order my book, which features a lot of this kind of thing, for yourself or your Dad. (These little reminders will keep coming, don’t you worry.)
Trump. The T-word is Trump.
‘Ultimately, it felt like a sign of the times that everything was about personal growth rather than affording any new understanding of wider humanity. As King put it: “I’m so proud of me right now.”’
And here is where I would add “girlies”, but I refuse. You know what’s NOT empowering? A 35 year old woman using the word “girlies.” I am not a girly! I have crow’s feet and a pension! Also, pilates is not for princesses, it’s for boring people OR people who know it’s extremely good for injury prevention! (My friend Stu.)