Angelina's Bachelors

by Brian O'Reilly

  METHOD FOR THE RAVIOLI FILLING AND ASSEMBLY

  Place the pecans in a blender and with the blender running, add enough of the olive oil in a slow, thin stream through the feed opening to make a paste. Transfer to a bowl and mix in the raisins. Season to taste with salt and black pepper.

  Have a bowl of water handy to moisten and seal the dough. Divide the dough into thirds and work with ⅓ of the dough at a time, keeping the balance wrapped in plastic wrap to prevent it from drying out. Divide the first ⅓ of the dough in half. Use a pasta machine to gradually roll down each of these sections, successively reducing the setting on the machine until it is at its thinnest setting, and lay the sheet of dough onto a floured dough board. Spoon a rounded ½ teaspoon of the filling at 4-inch intervals on the pasta dough. Dip your fingers into the bowl of water and moisten the area surrounding the filling. Cover the filling with the other rolled-out piece of dough and press gently around the filling to seal, being careful not to flatten the filling or tear the dough. Using a pastry or pizza cutter, cut the filled dough into ravioli squares. Remove each ravioli to a floured surface, pressing the edges firmly together as you do so. Cover the ravioli with a clean (nonterry) kitchen towel and set aside for 30 minutes while you begin making the sauce.

  METHOD FOR THE BUTTERNUT SQUASH SAUCE

  Heat the oil over medium-high heat in a large sauté pan. When it begins to shimmer, add the shallot cloves and cook them until they turn translucent, stirring frequently to prevent burning, about 2 minutes. Deglaze the pan with the wine and allow most of it to evaporate. Then add the chicken stock, thyme, bay leaf, allspice, cloves, and cardamom, and allow the chicken stock to reduce to 1 cup, about 15 minutes. (This is a good time to begin tenderizing the veal.)

  Strain the sauce into a large bowl and wipe out the pan. Whisk the pureed squash into the sauce. Strain again into the pan pushing the squash through the sieve. Add the cream and heat through over medium heat. Season to taste with salt and pepper, cover, and reheat just before service if needed.

  METHOD FOR THE VEAL MEDALLIONS

  Cover a large cutting board with lengths of plastic wrap, tucking the edges under the board to secure. Lay the veal on the plastic and cover with additional lengths of plastic wrap to help keep the mess down as you tenderize, tucking the edges under in the same way. Use a meat mallet to pound the veal thin. You will have to do this in batches.

  (This is a good time to strain and finish up the sauce.)

  Mix the flour with salt and pepper, and spread on a flat work surface such as sheets of wax paper. Dip the veal slices in milk to moisten them and dredge them in the flour allowing any excess flour to fall away.

  Spread the bread crumbs on a flat work surface. Beat the eggs in a shallow bowl and dip the floured veal in the eggs, then into the bread crumbs to coat, allowing any excess to fall away.

  Heat 2 tablespoons of the canola oil over medium heat in a large skillet and melt 2 tablespoons of the butter in it. Sauté both sides of the breaded veal, leaving each side undisturbed for 2 minutes or so to let the coatings integrate into the surface of the meat and to prevent “crusting off.” You will need to do this in batches, using 2 tablespoons of butter melted in 2 tablespoons of oil for each batch. Transfer the veal to paper towels to drain as you finish cooking them. Cover them with a large pot lid or aluminum foil to keep them warm. (The covered veal can be stowed for a short while in the oven heated on its “warm” setting.)

  COOKING METHOD FOR RAVIOLI

  Bring a large shallow pan of water to a boil.

  Salt the now boiling water, add the ravioli in batches, reducing the heat and cooking gently just until the dough sets up and the filling is heated through, about 5 minutes, then remove the ravioli with a slotted spoon, transferring them to a utility platter.

  PRESENTATION

  Place several pieces of veal in the center of each serving plate. Arrange 6 to 8 ravioli around the veal. Spoon about ¼ cup of the butternut squash sauce over the ravioli, and sprinkle each serving with 1 teaspoon minced fresh basil leaves. Sprinkle minced parsley over the veal medallions.

  * * *

  One day shortly after her dining group reconvened, Angelina returned home from a last-minute shopping trip, grabbed the mail from the box, and noticed an envelope stuck in the front door marked CITY OF PHILADELPHIA. She dropped it into her shopping bag along with the rest of the mail as she shifted it to her hip and pulled out her front-door key.

  In the rush of relieving Gia of her babysitting duty, unpacking the groceries, and getting the evening meal started for the men, Angelina had forgotten to open the envelope until dinner was well under way. She spied it again on her way past the telephone table and tore it open as she walked back into the dining room. Her audible gasp caused all the men to stop eating and to turn to see what was the matter as she read the yellow notice with the heading DEPARTMENT OF LICENSES AND INSPECTIONS.

  It was a cease-and-desist order and notice of a $500 fine. None of the preprinted boxes were checked, but in the bottom Comments section was scrawled Operating an unlicensed eating establishment.

  For someone who’d never even had so much as a parking ticket, it hit Angelina like a punch in the gut. She wordlessly handed the slip of paper to Basil, who read it and passed it around the table to the others.

  Basil hung his head gravely and murmured, “Bureaucratic entanglement. I should have seen this coming. I blame myself.”

  Angelina looked up and watched each man’s face in turn as he read the paper. She had to fight back the tears welling up in her eyes. Her life had changed so much, and the thought that the magic of her little group might not last forever had been bearing down upon her more and more with each passing day. This notice was yet another unforeseen threat to the emotional bonds that had been forged at her dining table.

  They were all silent for a long moment until Jerry said, “We’re not an eating establishment. We’re family.”

  Angelina felt helpless and violated, knowing that someone unknown and unseen had been spying on her, maybe even through her windows, maybe over the back fence. Not only was she being watched, but someone had actually gone the nasty extra mile and snitched on her to the authorities.

  The men finished the meal mostly in shocked silence. Once they’d gone, Angelina could only clean up, settle Francis down, and take her overpowering sense of defeat to bed and try to get some sleep.

  That night, as Angelina lay in bed, she couldn’t help but give in to the desperate thought that everything was about to change for the worst. Why was it that no matter what she did, something always seemed to be sneaking up on her, crouching around the corner, waiting until she was at her happiest, then pushing her where she didn’t want to go, when she wasn’t nearly ready to go? Lying quietly in the middle of the night, her greatest fear snuggled in close and nested next to her, like a coiling serpent of doubt—that she’d used up her last reserves of strength. What if she’d used herself up burying her husband, surviving the loss of her job, cooking day in and day out for those wonderful, kindhearted men, no matter how much she loved doing it, and bringing her child into the world? A tear slipped past her ear and onto the pillow.

  God, I miss Frank, she thought. He always, always had her back—they had each other’s. And now that she needed him most, especially with the baby … her mother used to say, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.” All she had wanted desperately to do was to hang on to the status quo at least until Francis’s first birthday. Instead, some horrid city agency was shutting down her “operation,” as Don Eddie used to say. She’d have to get a job, there was no other option. She’d have to rely on Gia or some teenager at a day care center to take care of her baby and hope for the best. Good luck and clear sailing just wasn’t in the cards for her. She felt as if a noose were curling around her ankles and dragging her down into quicksand.

  Off in the nursery, Angelina heard Francis crying. She sat up. She’d get up in the dark, go down the hall, pick him up, an
d hold him close. She’d kiss him back to sleep and never let on just how low and hopeless she felt. As she crossed the hall, Angelina thought about miracles and happy endings. They just don’t happen, she thought. The hand of God doesn’t reach down and pull you out of the fire; it just flips you in the pan so you get done evenly on both sides.

  Angelina rode the elevator up to the eleventh floor in the office building where the Department of Licenses and Inspections was housed. Two days after she’d received the legal summons, she’d gotten a call from a woman named Hardy and was given an appointment to come in and “discuss the matter.” The woman had seemed stern and unsympathetic over the phone.

  Upon further reflection, Angelina had the thought that this Miss Hardy obviously couldn’t afford to care about the problems of the insignificant people who were paraded before her. If she did, how would the woman ever be able to get through a single day? Angelina knew that she’d just be another in an endless roll call of faceless people who had consciously, inadvertently, or stupidly run afoul of an indifferent municipal agency, and that depressed her even further, if that was possible.

  She had hardly slept a wink for the last four days. It had now been well over a year since Frank died, but she felt his absence more these past few nights than she had even just after the baby had been born. She cooked her way through the daily meals without enthusiasm, going through the motions, and she felt that the men knew it. It showed on the plate. They’d been uncharacteristically somber at the table. No doubt they felt as powerless as she did.

  “Mrs. D’Angelo?”

  A heavyset woman with swollen ankles called her name, breaking the haze that had surrounded her as she’d quietly sat thinking in the waiting room, which smelled of disinfectant and fusty old magazines. Angelina got up from the cold metal chair. A rip in the cheap green vinyl on the seat scraped against her skirt and pulled a knot in the gray tweed, which made her wince.

  Angelina followed the woman, who trundled laboriously around the corner and down an alleyway of cubicles until she left Angelina at the entrance to the office of a severe-looking, unadorned woman who, according to the cheap sign screwed crookedly next to the door frame, was Cordelia Hardy.

  Angelina took a deep breath and crossed the threshold. Miss Hardy indicated a chair with a twitch of her left eyebrow, and Angelina took it. She’d prepared her arguments again and again as she’d lain in bed awake, but they all seemed pale, unconvincing, and foolish to her now in this cramped office.

  Miss Hardy finished scratching some notes in one folder, then efficiently picked up the next out of her in-box and spread it before her.

  Angelina leaned in ever so slightly to try to get an upside-down peek at the papers.

  “Mrs… . Dangelo, is it?” Miss Hardy had run the name together to make it sound like danjelo.

  “It’s D’Angelo.” Angelina immediately regretted having corrected her for fear that they had already gotten off on the wrong foot.

  It was as quiet as the inside of a cold oven as Miss Hardy reviewed the facts in the file. She looked up and held out her spindly hand. “Did you bring your check?”

  Angelina opened her purse and pulled out the check for $500, which she’d placed right on top for this moment of relinquishment. She felt a pang of humiliation and a bleak sense of despair as she passed it across the desk. Miss Hardy took it with practiced authority. She was clearly used to people handing things over to her.

  Angelina cleared her throat. “Miss Hardy, I wanted to ask you about this … that it says here, the part about ‘cease and desist.’ “

  Miss Hardy looked up and held the check in front of her, lightly by each end, as if it were something that she were about to eat. She seemed to be enjoying the moment, which made the hair stand up on the back of Angelina’s neck.

  “You know you’re not supposed to be using your house as a diner, don’t you, honey?”

  Angelina looked down. She thought of the guys, her guys. They’d kept her afloat in more ways than just financially. Each of them had earned his place at her table. They valued each other’s company. They shared their problems and stories with each other, what their days were like, what they did over the weekend. Instead of dining alone day after day without the pleasure of a good meal shared in good company, they had cheated loneliness and, against all odds, they had become a family; a family that had to be defended… .

  Angelina heard a quiet ripping sound, a whisper, really.

  Miss Hardy had tenderly torn Angelina’s check in half. She tore it again in quarters, then slid the pieces toward her across the desk. “Someone’s interceded on your behalf. I’m revoking the fine and we’ll consider the matter closed. You can go.”

  Angelina wanted to leave, but she couldn’t move. She stared at the remnants of the check. Miss Hardy looked at her kindly, closed the file, and put it aside.

  “Who?” said Angelina finally.

  “Sister Bartholomew.”

  Angelina raked her befuddled memory for a match, but came up blank.

  Miss Hardy stepped in. “At the Sacred Heart Home. She was my seventh- and eighth-grade teacher. I received a call… .”

  The Heaven Hotel. So Johnny had told his grandmom, and old Mrs. Cappuccio had taken it upon herself to prove, once again, that nothing got by her, and frail though she might be, she could still be mighty when the need arose. She and the former Maggie O’Healy had saved the day.

  “I don’t say no to Sister Bartholomew,” said Miss Hardy. “I doubt anybody ever has. And, yes, I do have better things to do with my time than to ‘bother nice ladies who are just trying to make ends meet.’ “

  Angelina brushed the torn pieces of paper into her purse, and Miss Hardy stood up to walk her to the door.

  “You know, honey,” she said, “I wish I could promise you that this kind of thing isn’t going to come up again, but I can’t. Maybe you should consider getting a regular job.”

  “I’ll … I’ll think about it,” said Angelina, reluctantly accepting that her good fortune might well be only temporary. “Thank you so much,” she said, shaking Miss Hardy’s hand.

  Angelina walked out of the building and onto the street. It seemed like a sunnier day now than it had going in. She’d walked into that office braced for the worst and walked out now with at least the beginnings of her shattered faith restored that good things could happen when they were least expected.

  She knew at least one thing for sure—some richly deserving older ladies were about to be on the receiving end of some serious pie.

  Angelina was serving breakfast to a full house on a sunny Wednesday in August: Mr. Cupertino, Johnny, Jerry, Don Eddie, Phil, Guy, and Mr. Pettibone were all in attendance. As far as the guys were concerned, the storm clouds had miraculously been lifted as unexpectedly as they had gathered, and much to their relief, it was all clear skies, blueberry waffles, and sunshine again.

  Angelina had set four beautiful frittatas on the table, sliced in wedges. She had topped them, in turn, with caramelized shallots and ricotta; grape tomatoes, fresh basil, and mozzarella; bacon and cheddar and broccoli rabe; and roasted garlic and grated Parmigiano-Reggiano. She had laid a cast-iron pan filled with fried potatoes on the table and placed fresh-baked, frosted sweet rolls in a basket in the middle. Everyone had been served his first helpings and was on his way to seconds, and Francis was fed and nestled comfortably in his rocking swing.

  “Here you go, everybody, fresh coffee,” said Angelina.

  One by one, she topped off everyone’s cup. She put down the pot and took off her apron, then pulled Frank’s chair out at the head of the table and took his seat.

  This got everyone’s attention. In memory, even at Christmastime, she’d never sat down at the table with them, let alone in this chair; it had become a memorial, a sanctified place of pride and respect. The sounds of eating and sipping and the murmur of light conversation ceased. Angelina leaned her elbows on the table to bring the meeting to order.

  “Hey, it got
quiet all of a sudden,” she said.

  They looked at her and she looked back. Nobody spoke.

  Angelina glanced up at the ceiling, gathered herself, and took in a quick, sharp breath. “I wanted to talk to you all since we’re all here together. I wanted to talk to you about the future.”

  “What about it?” said Jerry.

  Angelina looked at him gratefully, just for breaking their collective silence.

  “First, and I think you all know this, that thing with the city scared me half to death. And, truthfully, I’ve been thinking more about the future since the baby was born. I mean, you kind of have no choice, right? It’s not just me and the house to take care of anymore. There’s a child here now and I have to be responsible and start thinking about what’s going to happen next.”

  Basil nodded and Pettibone took a tentative sip of coffee.

  “Frank and I, whenever we talked about having a baby, we always talked about doing the best for him, sending him to good schools and summer camp and even a good college someday. So, what I’m saying is, I don’t think I can keep doing this anymore.”

  She hesitated. The room was silent and still as they waited for her to continue.

  “I have a proposition for you men. A business proposition.”

  All eyes were on her now.

  “What is it?” asked Mr. Pettibone.

  “A restaurant. I want to open a restaurant, and I’m asking you all if you want to invest in it. In me.”

  The room fell quiet again as the reality of what she was asking set in.

  “Hmm,” said Basil. “That’s a big step, Angelina.”