Dream-enweirdening pasta with scallops

The symbolism in my dreams is usually so obvious and hackneyed it’s ridiculous. Like, if my subconscious was enrolled in a creative writing class its classmates would constantly be making “Oh my god, not again” eye contact with each other behind its back. Example: when I used to (over)work at a publishing house, I had a recurring dream that I was preparing to leave the house in the morning by picking up various of those canvas totebags full of manuscripts by which we can identify low-to-midlevel publishing staffers on the subway. I tried to pick up two ordinary-looking bags and found that I couldn’t — they were so heavy I was unable to lift them. Whoa! Like, what’s that about?

Last night’s dream was a bit more opaque. I dreamt that I had recently given birth to an adorable black kitten. No one but me was really acknowledging that it was a kitten, though? Everyone else seemed to want to treat it like an ordinary baby, cooing over it. I didn’t have anything to carry the kitten around in, so I bought one of those cloth slings people keep their babies in at a boutique on N. 6th street in Williamsburg — it was expensive, but so cute! Then I took the kitten baby with me to work. I worked at an ad agency. My dad was there and he was really supportive of my giving presentations to clients and stuff with the kitten baby strapped to me. I breast-fed the kitten baby, or tried to — the kitten baby wasn’t really into it. I tasted the breast milk and it tasted just like honey. I worried that the kitten baby would starve, so I bought it some cat food and fed it secretly under my desk, but I still pretended to breastfeed it so people wouldn’t think I was a bad mother.

I blame this pasta, which I ate a ton of.

Ingredients:

olive oil, butter

3/4 lb whole wheat spaghetti

2 very ripe tomatoes — the kind with a real meaty flavor — diced. Remember when we all learned the word umami at the same time and went around trying to work it into sentences? Or I did. Reserve juices.

1 small shallot, minced

dry white wine

1 tsp grated lemon zest

2 tablespoons heavy cream

1 lb scallops

2 tablespoons (or, you know, whatever) snipped chives

sea salt

Sautee the shallot in olive oil, then add the tomatoes with their juice and salt to taste. Cook them until they begin to break down and then add a splash of wine and the lemon zest. Stir and simmer on low, covered, while cooking the pasta (you know how to cook pasta) and the scallops. You probably know how to cook scallops too: in a heavy skillet with lots of butter on a very high heat for hardly any time at all, flipping them so they get a nice brown crust. They’ll finish cooking while they sit on a plate and then later, a bit, in the sauce. Uncover the tomato sauce and check it out — it should be thickish with lumps of broken-down tomato. Here’s where you’d stick an immersion blender in it if you had one. I don’t so I used a whisk to smush it up a bit before whisking in the cream. Heat through but don’t boil. Add the scallops to the sauce, then the pasta. Stir. Serve topped with chives.

Yum. I’m going to go eat the leftovers right now, while trying not to think about that kitten at my breast. Seriously can this have really made that big of an impact on me? Well, ninth grade was a very formative time.

18 comments to Dream-enweirdening pasta with scallops

  • owapapercut

    That recipe is meowth-watering

  • Tim

    This meal should induce dreams of the Mediterranean.

  • In Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz makes a similar point about obvious dreams–that they’re the worst. At first I thought he was being a lazy writer, because it’s easier to conjure up an obvious dream than a confusing one. Then I started having obvious dreams all the time and they really are terrible. It’s like, okay, subconscious, I know I’m have issues. Give me a break.

  • Shit this was funny. All I kept thinking was “That’s gotta like, I dunno, hurt.” But hey, maybe you’re into that sorta thing…

  • Three recipes in a week.

    Neat!

    What’s next? Diet tips?

  • Wow, that was amazing. I can’t believe you tried to breastfeed the kitten baby. I’ll bet it was real cute, though. This morning I dreamed that I was in the ending of Planet of the Apes. Hm.

  • Rebecca A.

    I want a book with recipes. Please deliver within the next year so I can give it as Christmas presents next year.

    thanks.

    Also, I was thinking that your style of writing is so enhanced by links. How are you going to duplicate this in your book? Somehow, a footnote is JUST not going to be the same thing. In particular, the recipes are enhanced so much by the links in them. They make the recipe more real time fun…”here, read this instead of writing or whatever you know you should be doing…”.

    How to duplicate? I’m glad it’s not my problem to figure that out@! Once you can count on almost everyone having a kindle, of course, it will no longer be an issue. Perhaps you are just a woman ahead of your time. In the meantime, keep providing recipes here. Thanks.

  • Rebecca A.

    I don’t know why a link appeared in my post. Weird.

  • Austin

    That’s two recipe posts that have jinxed me. This time, I had one of those god awful metaphor dreams. I was sitting a prospective client’s house (which was far more modest than her real house) trying to be her family’s friend while my mother’s ghost sat on the couch disapprovingly with a small cameo by the Red Hot Chili Peppers (who I wouldn’t recognize) playing poker.

  • Madeleline

    Why ya gotta rip off Like Water For Chocolate?

  • emily

    Madeleine do you mean that my dream rips off that book, or that writing a little story around a recipe is ripping off that book? Because I am pretty sure that I am actually ripping off Nora Ephron and Ruth Reichl and Amanda Hesser and Ayun Halliday way more.

  • Perhaps this is how Behemoth of Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita fame was brought into the world. Now I’m starting to feel a bit paranoid as I had scallops this evening.

  • [...] lol-ed when I read Emily Gould’s post a few months ago about dreams: The symbolism in my dreams is usually so obvious and hackneyed [...]

  • Timmy

    Hey! Why did my post not post? This is “Web 2.0,” and everyone counts. This is a time for hope. Post my post. Post this post. Post. “Web 2.0.” “We’re all connected,” don’t you know?

  • Timmy

    Thank you, forward-thinking Emily Magazine.

  • Francis

    Timmy was right. This conversation went right over a cliff. Why did you delete Timmy’s observation? Nice job, “forward-thinking,” “Web 2.0″ pretender.

  • emily

    Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention and I thought it was spam. Deep breaths!

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