from Blood Horses

This is an excerpt from Blood Horses: Notes of a Sportswriter's Son by John Jeremiah Sullivan, a beautiful book I've been reading this spring and summer. (I read slowly, and tend to juggle multiple books at a time... )

The book is part memoir, part reportage, part history. It is a meditation on horse racing, beauty, and Sullivan's complicated relationship with his father. I read this bit last night and it shattered me. It's set on the evening of Sullivan's father's wake. I don't know if it will work as an excerpt, but I just had to post it here.

I think this writer gets the relationship between sadness and beauty better than just about anyone writing today. (Which is to say, you've been warned.)

Very late that night — It must have been early the next morning—my brother and I were in the hotel room that my grandmother had rented for those of our friends who had traveled to come [to my father's funeral]. There were clothed and sleeping bodies draped like refugees across the beds and floor. It was quiet. The two of us sat up Indian-style, facing each other with watery eyes, passing a bottle of Bourbon back and forth and whispering. We were going on about the Beach Boys, for some reason, and one of the last things I remember my brother saying before I fell back against the bed, was that in his opinion the greatest single moment in all of popular music was the complete bar of vocal silence near the beginning of "Good Vibrations," after Carl Wilson sings "I" but before he sings, "I love the colorful clothes she wears." My brother was weaving as he counted out the four empty beats on the carpet. "It's like..." he said, "it's like the whole universe is in that silence."

Then we were silent, drinking. Before it went black, my mind was already driving through the dark, with headlight vision, leaving the parking lot, taking a left onto Richmond Road, following Richmond as it turned one-way and become, without any signage to mark the change, Main Street, which I knew was deserted, the stoplights flashing yellow, then across the bridge, to where the cemeteries were, left into Calvary, curving along the paths back to a corner where two hedges met, where my father's body was already under the ground. Is it cold there, even in summer?

My brother shook his head. He said, "I can't believe Dad's dead."

Tortellini Primavera

Finally. I am back. Yes. There was a lapse. My camera walked away from me, so I had to take a hiatus from photographing food. This seemed to manifest a hiatus from preparing food, oddly enough. It's as if I'm unwilling to cook a lovely meal if I can't photograph it.

But I'm back, spatula in hand, and I would like to tell you about a beautiful little main course that you will enjoy making in your own kitchen.

Tortellini Primavera is a light, easy, summery recipe that is full of the beautiful colors and subtle flavors that make summer produce such a treat. I prepared this meal with my friends Lalah and Jean last week. We served it with some white wine and Ina Garten's scrumptious pesto pea salad, and enjoyed berries with fresh whipped cream for dessert. The whole night was really quite heavenly.

First, you will want to shell a bunch of peas. I used zipper peas from the farmer's market. Truthfully, they looked so much like beans that it was hard to tell if they qualified as peas:



But there is something really satisfying about using fresh shelled peas in a summery recipe. Even if they are just beans in disguise.



Pay no attention to your friends when they complain about how much work it is to shell a pound and a half of peas! Choose to believe that they are secretly loving it.

After the peas are shelled, put them in a beautiful ceramic bowl and take them outside to be photographed:



Be sure to get a shot of Jean's bare feet in the grass:



After you're done chopping and shelling everything, the recipe comes together very quickly. A few minutes in a saucepan for the pasta, then a few minutes in a skillet for the vegetables:



Here is the recipe. I'll definitely be making this one again.

Tortellini Primavera
4 quarts water
1 (9-ounce) package fresh three-cheese tortellini, uncooked (really, you can use any kind of cute pre-made pasta — something vegetarian is best — we went with a cheese ravioletti)
1 cup vertically sliced baby carrots
1 1/2 cups fresh shelled green peas (about 1 1/2 pounds unshelled)
2 teaspoons olive oil
1/3 cup thinly sliced green onions
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 cup canned vegetable broth
2 cups quartered baby pattypan squash (you can use regular varieties of squash if you have the misfortune of not being able to find pattypan. Just cut the squash into smaller pieces)
1 cup vertically sliced baby zucchini
2 cups torn arugula
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh parsley
1 tablespoon minced fresh chives
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon black pepper

1. Bring 4 quarts water to boil in a large Dutch oven. Add pasta; cook 5 minutes. Add carrots; cook 2 minutes. Add peas; cook 30 seconds. Drain and rinse with cold water; drain well.
2. Heat oil in large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add the green onions and garlic; sauté for 2 minutes. Add pasta mixture, broth, pattypan squash, and zucchini. Bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer until thoroughly heated. Stir in arugula and remaining ingredients.

Yield: 6 servings. Source: Cooking Light.