Cooking With Mandy: Get Your Ass In the Kitchen Slut and Spend Some Quality Time With Your Husband Pasta with Shrimp

I know, the name is cumbersome but I find it effective.

You need:

The Killers: Sam’s Town
Sweet onion the size of your fist or bigger
Box of baby or cut-up portobello mushrooms
Bag of baby spinach
Box of angel hair pasta (I like Barilla because the box is pretty)
Pint of whipping cream
Olive oil
1 pound of uncooked shrimp
A small block of really good Parmesan cheese, don’t skimp here!
Whatever leftover white wine is lying on the bottom shelf of your fridge since you only know one person who drinks white and they’re out of town and by the time you have another party it will be – does wine get stale?
Large pot
Large sauté pan with lid – not just a frying pan, because the deeper sides of a sauté pan will later be helpful
Sharp knife
Pasta drainer
Cheese grater
Slotted pasta scooping spoon
Sauté-ing implement of choice – I use whatever flattish utensil is in the big jar on the counter

Put on The Killers and wash your hands. I actually plugged my little ipod into the dock of one of those dock-your-ipod boomboxes and hit shuffle, but while I was peeling the shrimp, songs kept playing that reminded me of Lover (Vindicated, Suerte, Scusami, Jesus Christ why did we listen to so much music?) and it was a pain in the ass to keep washing my hands to press skip. So just go with The Killers. It’ll still remind me of Lover but you probably don’t have the same associations.

Fill the pot with water and put it on to boil.

Put the sauté pan on low heat and pour in a little olive oil.

Cut the onion in half and then cut it up in thin wedges. Break up the pieces and throw them into the sauté pan. Leave them alone and don’t stir – I’ll tell you when!

Start peeling the shrimp, unless you were smarter than me and bought them already peeled. Muse how there’s nothing like the texture of the female parts, except maybe a fresh fig, and that’s really more of a metaphor.

When the onion sounds “sizzle-y”, give it one quick stir, just to change sides.

Sing along to “When everybody else refrained, My Uncle Johnny did cocaine,” and speculate on whether it would in fact take away your pain, and if so, how much it would actually cost to stay high until the end of the month when maybe you wouldn’t care anymore. Imagine what you’d wear at Studio 54. It probably involves lamé.

Keep peeling shrimp. Call your significant other to help, which will be a lovely shared moment and get your mind off the cocaine. Imagine them at Studio 54, and do a little disco together in the kitchen. Then stir the onions again.

When the water boils, throw in the angel hair pasta and time it for one song or four minutes.

When the onions are brown around the edges, add the mushrooms, wait a minute, and stir.

Take the pasta out of the water with the pasta spoon and drop it into the drainer, leaving the pasta water in the pot. I know this sounds counter-intuitive, like not constantly checking Myspace to find out when you get moved out of the number one friend slot, but trust me, it will pay off with a similar lack of heartache. If you can manage it. Which I can with the pasta but the Myspace thing already stung me in the lip.

Add a little tiny bit of olive oil to the pasta and stir it around to keep it from getting sticky. Then add some hot water to the pasta water and put it back on the heat – voila! You’ve saved waiting for that sucker to boil from nothing again. Insert your choice of metaphor here.

Give the onions and mushrooms another stir, then add the whole bag of spinach on top. Pour in about a cup of wine and put the lid on the sauté pan.

Toss the shrimp into the boiling water for as long as it takes to pour something to drink and set the table for two.

Toss the pasta into the sauté pan and mix it all around. Drain the shrimp in the pasta drainer (you can dump the water this time).

Pour the whipping cream over the pasta-veg mix and salt and pepper to taste. Add the shrimp and ménage everything.

Dish out pasta. Top each serving with a generous grating of Parmesan. See if you can stay focused on the person you’re with for the duration of dinner. Bon attention!

Cooking with Mandy – Take Me Truffles

You need:

Nina Simone: Remixed and Reimagined
Bag of Ghirardelli semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate chips
Heavy whipping cream
Cinnamon
Cayenne pepper
Patron Tequila
Cocoa powder
Fork
Soup spoon
Medium-sized glass/ceramic/china bowl (glass holds heat in a way you need)
Small bowl of any material
Microwave
Aluminum foil
Plate or tupperware

Put on Nina Simone and wash your hands.

Pour the chocolate chips into the glass bowl and microwave for a minute and thirty seconds or until the chocolate chips are gooey. Just like anal, it’s better to start slow and end up going longer than you planned than to burn your chocolate and have to start over with unpleasant memories.

Stir the chocolate with the fork, adding a pinch of cayenne and a pinch of cinnamon. I advise shaking them gently out of the package rather than using your fingers, because you will later forget and touch your eyes and tragedy will ensue. Special Tip: Cayenne and cinnamon in the Hispanic foods aisle cost about half what they do in the baking and spices aisle.

Add a shot of tequila. (Don't get into the tequila yet or you won't be able to taste the truffles.)

Stir some more and taste. Keep adding cinnamon and cayenne until you like how it tastes and you think “well, it could be a little spicier.” It will get spicier later. Lick the fork clean.

Stir in two big spoonfuls of cold whipping cream. The chocolate may start to become pasty right away. If it does, add a little more liquid, either cream or tequila. If it doesn’t, put it in the fridge. Either way, leave it sit (fridge or counter) for as long as it takes you to gratify your partner while kneeling on the kitchen floor (or masturbate to completion). No fair pretending and watching TV instead. If you are quick, you might need to go twice.

Wash your hands again and put a sheet of aluminum foil on the counter.

Pour a few spoonfuls of cocoa powder into the other bowl, add a tiny pinch each of cayenne and cinnamon and stir with the fork. This cayenne is going to make first contact with your tongue when eating the truffles, so be sparing.

Use the spoon to dig out walnut-size chunks of chocolate paste and mold them into balls with your fingers – work quickly and discover why the M&M candy shell is such a big deal. Roll each ball in the cocoa powder and set it on the foil, spaced apart. If you run out of cocoa powder, make more.

Let truffles sit while you have a second round (cook's choice), unless you live in a hot climate with no A/C (skip to next step). I recommend bent over the sink or sitting on the counter, depending on counter height. When you're done, if the truffles are still moist, roll them in cocoa powder one more time.

Feed yourself and your lover a truffle or two, then tuck the rest away on a foil-covered plate or in tupperware while you head to the bedroom for round three.

I’m not sure whether “Bon Appetit” or “Bottoms Up” is more appropriate. Consider them both said.