Assorted sensory pleasures encountered this week
Because sometimes you need some eye/ear/tastebud candy…
For the eyes: Zoom Quilt (how did they do that? — via things magazine); Balnea, a virtual museum of sea-bathing (via Ramage, which I can’t believe I didn’t discover earlier)
For the ears: the jazzy Brazilian French Japanese Italian noirish lounge stylings of Pink Martini. Their cover of "Que Sera, Sera," available in its entirety on the site, is one of the most sinister and disturbing yet gorgeously melancholy songs I’ve ever heard: it’s like Doris Day wandered into a David Lynch movie and got a job singing in an eerie blue-lighted nightclub. Go listen to it.
For the nose: Thanks to Cleis, I’m ordering some Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab perfume oils. I’ve always wanted to smell like a turn-of-the-century aesthete! Or a Roman emperor. Or a corrupt French aristocrat.
And, for the palate, a favorite recipe for the end of the week:
No-Stress Pasta Puttanesca
Chop up some olives as fine as you like until you have maybe half a cup. Peel a couple of cloves of garlic. Open and drain a can of Italian oil-packed tuna. Have on hand: a big can of tomatoes, some capers, and if you feel fancy, a few artichoke hearts (chopped). Start a pot of water boiling for pasta.
Heat some olive oil in a pan. Throw in garlic and a few flakes of crushed red pepper. Remove the garlic when it’s done cooking (it’s there to perfume the oil, mostly). Then throw in the drained tuna and sauté it until it’s had a chance to brown a bit. Add the tomatoes and let the sauce simmer. Meanwhile, cook your favorite pasta. When the sauce has thickened somewhat, add the chopped olives, capers to taste, and the optional artichoke hearts.
(If you really want to be authentic, use anchovies instead of tuna. If the tuna/tomato thing strikes you as too weird, you can leave the seafood component out entirely, but you’ll be missing out big time.)
When the pasta is done, top with the sauce, sit down with a big bowl of it, and temporarily forget the mess the world is in. Unless you’re feeding several people, there will be abundant leftovers for later occasions.
Hey, love that Pink Martini! Thanks for the recommendation.
What she said
Via Household Opera, have a Pink Martini.