It’s always necessary to pontificate every now and then on the culinary endeavors that don’t exactly mesh well with our expectations. You plan out this meal with lofty ambitions, only to have them torn asunder once you pull an indescribable mess out of the oven. The story that follows isn’t exactly a complete calamity, but still feels like a slight disappointment in hindsight.
A couple years back, I attempted to recreate the extravagant pasta dish known as Timpano, which had become more or less a cultural sensation since it’s debut in Stanley Tucci’s 1996 opus Big Night. My interest in the dish grew once I saw it’s faithful recreation in the kitchen of Andrew Rea, one of the most prolific internet home cooks. This overly ambitious pasta dish required layering a plethora of pasta, cheese, eggs, and meat, and our own adjustments made even more of a grease fest then the intended product. The scariest component of this dish however, was the homemade “shell” of pasta in which all the ingredients were encased (if there’s a more official term for this please let me know). Our first crack at this dish had us use multiple layers of filo pastry as an exterior, but you can imagine how that turned out. Meatballs and ragout everywhere. So for our next crack at Timpano, I figured why not make the exterior ourselves. The outcome was slightly more desirable than our previous attempt, but not by much. I expected an immaculate cake-like slice with a bit of every ingredient present, much like Rea’s or Tucci’s iterations, but no such like. Everything more or less fell out of the casing the minute we cut into it. The thin slices of provolone cheese we used more or less dissolved under all the heat, and had we used something more hardy like mozzarella, a more immaculate structural integrity would have been achieved. It still tasted good, but didn’t exactly live up to my expectations, as lofty as they were. Who knows, maybe I’ll take another crack at this now that I’m a little more nuanced in pasta making.
But I wonder, am I being too self deprecating? You should always be critical about the art you make, and cooking is no exception, but I guess if I accentuate the negative, be it for personal gain or entertainment, I overlook the small achievements I’ve made. I’m still seeking that equilibrium; a desire to look for improvement without selling myself short.
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