May 17 San Pascual Baylon

Today in Paradise: There are millions of people, as evidenced by the popularity of cooking channels, who dream about flavors and textures. They dice like robots on meth. They whip up creme fraiche or raspberry vinaigrette without having to visit the store. They make ribs circle like Stonehenge and rice so fluffy it floats around the kitchen like snow. Farmers’ markets to food-people are like week-old fishes to dogs. They snap at the whiff; they want to roll in them. Their files contain recipes in sepia ink passed down from great-great-Aunt Minnie, recipes typed by their mothers on 3×5 index cards, they have rows and rows of cookbooks that have been opened. Many times. And used. Stained with oily, bloody, caramelized, cream-cheese frosted, pesto-y fingerprints. Their facebook pictures are of platters of food. My son, who doubtless learned to cook out of self-preservation, sometimes posts a plate of green chile enchiladas; he’s a whiz with chile. My friend Laura, a wonderful cook, always prefaces her thousand-course meals with “Oh, we’ll just make something simple.” It’s the same spooky thing the chef said on the cooking show I watched for five minutes. “It’s zzzo zimple.” Him with pots of every size and species and great honking cauldrons and spatulas and brushes and whisks and knives of all lengths and serrations and 40 frightened minions out of camera range, monitoring the quirk of his eyebrow.

An ironic retort when I was in grade school, say, to “Could I ride your bike sometime?” was: YOU WISH. Well, I wish.

I do. However. Once, and I was 19 then, I left a single egg boiling on an electric stove and came back to find charcoal and a half-melted pot. Yesterday I incinerated another grilled cheese sandwich. Blackened the pan, which I’ve scrubbed and scrubbed with Bon Ami scouring powder. Whoever named Bon Ami understood my genotype, for Bon Ami is my friend. Our friend, for the existence of Bon Ami proves the existence of others like me. We put food in a pan, light the burner and mean to come back straightaway, we do, we really do, but in what seems only a quarter-teaspoon of time we smell smoke.  And in the meantime, not mean time at all, something fascinatingly flavored and textured has seized our attention.

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San Pascual began as a little shepherd boy more drawn to reading than to keeping an eye on his father’s sheep, which wandered farther and farther away. He grew into a cheerful man whose counsel was sought by people of every station; he was particularly tender to the poor and the sick. A story tells that one night his Franciscan brothers came upon Pascual Baylon flushed and dancing at the altar, an ecstasy of light radiating from his body.

But legend puts him in the monastery’s kitchen, for Pascual is known as the patron of cooks. Zabaione, a dish of egg yolks whipped with sugar and wine, was said to be an invention of his. The recipe for this fluffy pudding was easily remembered as 1+2+2+1: Pascual the cook mixed one egg yolk with two spoonfuls of sugar, two eggshells of wine, and, ever mindful of the poor who could not afford much wine, one eggshell of water. As was his custom, he prayed while he worked. Thus angels hovered nearby to save Pascual’s custard from burning.

YOU WISH.