Slim Man Cooks Luigi’s Chicken

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Luigi carried a gun.  A 32 automatic.

Luigi was my grandfather.  Luigi Quintiliano.  Grandpa Luke is what I called him.  He was quite a character, a tough guy, Italian immigrant.  He left Italy, came to New York City, got his start as a tailor in a sweatshop, then got involved in the labor unions.

Luigi was an anarchist.  Just so you don’t have to look it up, an anarchist is someone who doesn’t believe in government, thinks we might be better off running things on our own.

Luigi was a political activist; he helped edit the ant-Fascist Italian newspaper Il Martello, which was started by labor organizer Carlo Tresca.  Tresca survived an assassination attempt by Fascists, but was later gunned down by the Mafia because he insulted a mob boss.

So I guess Luigi felt like he needed to carry a gun.

Luigi was also secretary of the Italian Committee for Political Victims, which raised money to defend Italians that had been imprisoned because of their political beliefs.  Luigi helped raise funds for Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italian anarchists that had been accused of murder and robbery.

Most folks conclude that they were railroaded.  Luigi testified at their trial.  Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted of murder in 1921.  The case was appealed.  For the next six years, the Sacco and Vanzetti case got worldwide attention.  Protests were held in most major cities in the world.

Luigi helped raise money for the appeals process.  But in 1927, the verdict was upheld, and Sacco and Vanzetti were executed.  Most scholars conclude that they were convicted because of their anarchist beliefs, not because they were guilty of murder.

Luigi wasn’t my real grandfather.  My real grandfather died before I was born.  Luigi was my grandmother, Angela’s…boyfriend?  That sounds weird.  Lover?  Even weirder, especially for a grandson.  They were in love, Angela and Luigi.  That sounds best.

But to a lot of folks they were known as husband and wife.  To us kids, he was Grandpa Luke.  In the US census in 1940, they were listed as Luigi and Angela Quintiliano.  Back in those days, two people in love didn’t just shack up.  They usually got married if they wanted to live together.  But Luigi, being an anarchist and all, didn’t believe in marriage.  Even though they never got married, I know they loved each other…

Luigi had a sister, Estherina, who was a nun.  She was in a convent in Italy, and then was assigned to a convent in New Jersey.  Estherina wasn’t too happy about her situation in Jersey.  Apparently, the convent in Italy was a lot more respectful of the nuns than the convent in Jersey.  I imagine the food in the Italian convent was a little bit better, too.

Estherina was miserable.

Luigi was more than happy to help Estherina leave the convent.  Luigi told Estherina that his friend, Joe, had agreed to marry her, so she could stay in this country.  Luigi arranged for my uncle Oscar—Angela’s oldest son–to get her out of the convent.

So Oscar and a friend drove to Jersey, snuck Estherina out of a window, and over a wall, and they drove Estherina to Baltimore.  Luigi introduced Estherina to his friend Joe, and they got married.  Luigi wanted Estherina to get married in order to become a US citizen, but he didn’t want her to stay married.  But something crazy happened…

Estherina and Joe fell in love.  They moved up to Flushing, Queens and lived happily ever after in New York.

Luigi continued his anti-marriage crusade.  When Oscar was getting ready to get married, not only was Luigi against it, Oscar’s fiancé’s family was against it.  They offered Oscar money not to get married.

That didn’t work.

Oscar’s fiancé’s family threatened Luigi with a gun.  Luigi said…

“You better not miss, because I never do.”

There was a lot of animosity between the families, but never any gunfire.  Oscar got married anyway.

When my Dad fell in love with my Mom and wanted to get married, he brought her to meet Angela and Luigi.  Luigi made a feast.  He made antipasti, pasta, cutlets, sauces, meats, and he kept serving my Mom.

My Mom, being so gracious, ate what was served.  Luigi was amazed that she hung in there like a real Italian.  It was like he was testing her, and she passed with flying colors.  Luigi loved my Mom.

But Luigi was against marriage, so I guess that’s why my Mom and Dad eloped and got married in New Orleans.

Luigi was always real sweet to me and all the grandkids.  He was gentle and kind, and I remember he used to hand me silver dollars at Sunday dinners and tell me to keep my mouth shut.

Luigi took me to New York City a couple of times.  He’d cross in the middle of the street, hold up his hand like he was king, and traffic would come to a screeching halt, as I gripped his other hand as hard as I could.

Luigi and Angela eventually broke up.  I guess a girl can only take not being married for so long.  So Angela broke it off, somewhat reluctantly.  I have letters from Angela to Luigi, and they are kinda sad…I got the sense from reading those letters that Luigi wasn’t fully committed.

What a shame.

When Angela died, I was going through her stuff, and found Luigi’s gun at the bottom of a trunk.  I still have it.  It’s the only thing of Luigi’s I have, besides a few letters and this recipe…

Luigi’s Chicken

Luigi used to make this dish with rabbit.  I don’t know if it’s because I love Bugs Bunny so much, but I’m not a big fan of rabbit.

So when I cook this dish, I use chicken.  Most times, I use organic free-range chicken, although in all the western movies I’ve seen, and in all my travels, I’ve never seen herds of wild chickens roaming the free range.

I’ve seen buffalo.  I’ve seen horses.  But never chickens running free out on the range.

I use chicken on the bone.  I have my butcher dude chop each breast into 3 or 4 pieces, and each thigh into 2 pieces.

But when I cooked this recently for a lady people friend of mine, she mentioned that chicken cut like that would never fly in a restaurant–people might choke on the bones.

I felt like grabbing Luigi’s gun and firing a couple of rounds in the ceiling, but I didn’t.  I just agreed.

And you know what?  She’s probably right.  So if you want to use boneless chicken breasts and thighs, go ahead.  Just don’t cut them into pieces that are too small—you don’t want them falling apart.  You need thick pieces.  And don’t cook ‘em as long.

INGREDIENTS

2 large chicken breasts, skin removed, each cut in 3 or 4 small pieces

4 chicken thighs, skin removed, each cut in two

3 dozen or so pearl onions peeled (drop in boiling water for a few minutes, remove, cut off the root end, squeeze off the skin, yields about 2 cups)

3 celery stalks, leaves cut off, diced (about 1 ½ cups)

4 white mushrooms, sliced (about 3 cups)

1 tablespoon fresh chopped rosemary

5 garlic cloves, chopped fine (about 2 tablespoons)

1 cup red wine

3 cups chicken stock

Cognac, about 2 or 3 ounces

Extra virgin olive oil

Flour

HERE WE GO!

Rinse your chicken pieces in cold water.

Pat dry with paper towels.

Take some flour, put it on a plate.

Take each piece of chicken, and roll it in the flour, coating all sides lightly.

Do this with all the chicken.

Put some olive oil, about 3 tablespoons, in the bottom of a large pan or Dutch oven—large enough to hold EVERYTHING–over medium heat.

When it’s warm, add the chicken and the onions, don’t stir, and let them brown for 3 to 5 minutes.

Flip ‘em over and brown on the other side–don’t stir–for 3 to 5 minutes…

Remove the chicken, leave the onions in.

Take 2 or 3 ounces of cognac, add it to the onions/sauce.

Get a lighter with a long handle, and stand back!  Light the cognac on fire.

When the flames die down, and your wig has stopped burning, add the mushrooms and celery.

Give ‘em a stir.  Scrape the stuff off the bottom of the pan.

Let the celery and mushrooms cook for 5 minutes or more.

Add the garlic, cook for a few minutes.

Put the chicken back in the pan.

Add 2 cups of chicken stock.

Add a cup of red wine.

Add the rosemary.

Turn the heat on high.

When it comes to a boil, let it boil for a few minutes, then reduce the heat to a simmer, and cook, covered, for 30 minutes or so.

The sauce needs to be thick, like gravy.  If it ain’t, take a cup of warm chicken stock, add a tablespoon of flour, and mix it up.

Add it to the sauce, gradually, until the sauce thickens.

Taste the sauce for salt and pepper and adjust.

You can serve it as is, with some crusty bread for your crusty friends…Or you can serve it over egg noodles.

Cook the egg noodles according to the instructions.  Drain, put in a bowl and drizzle with a little olive oil.

Then pour some of Luigi’s chicken over the egg noodles, mick ‘em up, and…

MANGIAMO!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

Slim Man Cooks Asparagus with Parmiggiano

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Two weeks of complete and total silence.  Not a word, a sound a whisper or a moan or groan or grunt.

That’s what the doctor ordered.  Fourteen days of absolute vocal rest.

A few weeks earlier, I was singing in a club in Baltimore—a place called Nightlife in a strip mall.  My band, BootCamp, was doing a show there, and my voice cracked.

 

It sounded like I was going through puberty.  Except I had already gone through that back in 1867.  I had no idea what was happening with my voice.  I would sing, and my voice would crack.  It was embarrassing.  BootCamp was a really good band.  It was the 80’s (the 1980’s, not the 1880’s) and we sounded like a mix between the Cars, the Police and Journey.  Our hairdos were Flock of Seagulls Meets Queen.

Except we were nowhere near as popular as those guys.  But we were tryin’!  We started off at a club called Mack and Myer’s in Essex, Maryland.   Then we got a gig in the Hamptons at a place called the Neptune Beach Club.  We worked 6 nights a week—10 PM to 4 AM, with doubles on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.

We did that all summer long, every week for four months.

When we got back to Baltimore, all that time on stage paid off.  We started getting gigs…all the time.  We played a lot in and around Baltimore.  We had a following in New York, too—mostly the Bronx.

Then a guy named Larry Hargrove came out to see us play at a club in Baltimore called Girard’s.  Larry loved BootCamp.  He wanted to be our manager.  Larry booked the Painters Mill Music Fair.  It was a theater in the round.  There was a small circular stage in the middle of the theater.  It rotated ever so slowly as you played.

I’d been to Painters Mill before.  My Mom and I went to see Gladys Knight and the Pips there.  An amazing show.  I saw a bunch of acts there…comedians, bands, singers…Larry booked the acts for Painters Mill.  And whenever he thought it was appropriate, he’d ask BootCamp to open up the show.

So, we played with…the B-52s, The Tubes, Squeeze, Split Enz, Johnny Winter…

My Mom had the first Johnny Winter album, the one with the black cover and a headshot of him with his white hair and a gold chain and a black leather vest.  It was 1969.  I played the hell out of that Johnny Winter album.  And when BootCamp had the chance to open up for Johnny Winter, you could imagine how excited I was.

When we took the stage at Painters Mill, I looked out at the crowd.  It was mostly bikers.  Not Lance Armstrong bikers, more like Hells Angels bikers.

We started our first song and we got nothin’.  Not a clap.  Not a cheer.  We played a few more songs, same thing.  I decided it was best to cut our set short when a flying bottle of Jack Daniels hit the top of my bass guitar.  True story.

I took it as a sign.

My favorite Painters Mill show was when we opened for Squeeze.  I loved that band.  We invited them back to my Mom’s house after the show.  We had such a great time.  Squeeze!  At my Mom’s!

My Mom always told me that I was singing too high in BootCamp.  She always told me to sing in the lower registers.  I was a stubborn young knucklehead, and I didn’t heed her advice.

And after years of screaming at the top of my lungs, six days a week, almost every week of the year for a couple years, my voice started to crack.  I went to see my doctor, who is my cousin.

He looked down my throat and told me I had nodules on my vocal cords.  He explained that nodules are like little calluses that you get from singing and talking too much.  He sent me to a specialist.  The guy wanted to operate.  Immediately.  I don’t know why, but I refused.  I kept on seeing specialist after specialist, and they all wanted to operate.

I refused.  Like I said, I was a stubborn young knucklehead.

I didn’t give up.  I went to Sinai Hospital one afternoon.  I saw a specialist named Ury Kalehy.  He came in and looked down my throat, looked up my nose, pulled out my tongue, and then he said…

“You chew on the left side of your mouth.  You sleep on your right side…”

He kept going on and on about all my sleeping and chewing and singing habits.  He was right about everything.  How he knew all this, I don’t know.  But I knew he was The Guy.

He told me that we didn’t have to operate, we could do something else.  I told him I’d do anything to get out of going under the knife.

He told me to shut up for two weeks.  Not a word, not a peep, not a whisper or a groan or a grunt or a moan.  Complete and total silence.  He asked me if I could do it.  I said yes.  Anything to avoid the operating table.

So for two weeks, I shut the hell up.  I wrote things down a lot.  It was weird at first.  And then I started realizing how useless most conversation is.  I started getting annoyed with all the small talk.

I didn’t answer the phone.  I didn’t say a word for two weeks.  I actually began to enjoy it.  I went back to Dr. Kalehy…He looked down my throat and told me the calluses were gone.  He told me I could talk.

When I spoke…my voice had changed.  It had gone up a few registers.  I sounded like Michael Jackson instead of Barry White.  When I sang with the band, I sounded like John Anderson from Yes.  All the grit had gone.

Do you remember Michael McDonald, the guy who sang in the later version of the Doobie Brothers?  Takin’ It To The Streets?  What A Fool Believes?  Minute By Minute?

The guy from the Baltimore Sunpapers said in an article that I sounded like “…a castrated Michael McDonald.”

So I took my Mom’s advice, and started singing low and slow.  BootCamp died, and Slim Man was born.

One door closes, another opens.

Asparagus with Parmiggiano

It’s ridiculous how simple most cooking is.  I don’t get tired of things cooked simply, cooked well.  My Dad used to say…”It’s all the same shit–garlic, olive oil, parsley…”

I guess he’s right.  But I don’t get sick of eating stuff like that.  Whenever someone brings me a menu at a restaurant and it has something like disintegrated pomegranate seeds, I just shake my huge overgrown donkey head.

I just fixed this dish tonight.  I’ve cooked it a few times, but didn’t get it right.  But tonight, it turned out deliozo.  Only one thing…

Why does asparagus make your pee pee smell funny?  Such a nutty odor!

Try to find asparagus that’s not the size of a tree trunk.  As a general rule, the larger the vegetable, the tougher it is.  Really big asparagus need to have the skin peeled off.  So use smaller ones…

This dish should serve 3 or 4 people, depending on the people.  The way the knuckleheads in my crazy family eat, I usually allow about 1/3 of a pound per person.  So, if I cook a pound of asparagus, or a pound of pasta, I figure it will feed three of my relatives.

A pound of pasta could normally feed a family of ten, but my family eat like horses—they strap on the feedbag and keep on going ‘til it’s gone.

Ingredients

1 pound of asparagus (for the record, I used a little more than a pound)

¼ cup of fresh grated parmiggiano-reggiano cheese, a little more for shprinkling

2 tablespoons or so of olive oil

Kosher salt ( I use it ‘cause I like it, not for religious reasons)

Fresh cracked black pepper

Here we go…

You need to break the bottom ends off the asparagus.  Grab an asparagus spear.  Grab one end with your thumb and forefinger, and the other end with the thumb and forefinger of your other hand, and break until it snaps.

Do this to all the asparagus.  Rinse well, pat dry with paper towels.

Put them in a baking dish.

Drizzle with olive oil, about 2 tablespoons

Mix them by hand, make sure each spear is coated

Wipe your hands off!  Add some kosher salt and some pepper.

Mix again with your hands in the baking dish

Put the dish in the oven

Bake for 20 minutes

Take the dish out of the oven, sprinkle the asparagus with the grated cheese

Put the dish back in the oven for A MINUTE OR TWO!

Take the baking dish out of the oven, try an asparagus spear, make sure it’s edible, wait a few seconds, make sure you don’t gag, then…

MANGIAMO!!!!!!!!!!!!

Slim Man Cooks Broccoli and Peppers

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My Dad hated technology.  I don’t use the word ‘hate’ a lot, but he did.  When he found his dream spot on top of a mountain in the Catskills in upstate New York, he didn’t even want to have a TV.

A couple of winters up there cured all that.  There is a ton of snow on the ground four months a year.  He had to have front-loaders remove the snow from his driveway—and it was a long one.

 

He had to get somebody to shovel off the snow and ice from his roof so it wouldn’t cave in.  It wasn’t an easy place to get to, and not easy to get out of. So as he got a bit older, I knew he needed a cell phone.

He used to drive his Subaru station wagon from on Top of Ol’ Smokey down to the town, and he drove fast.  Most old people drive slow.  Not my Dad.  I used to jog from his house down the side of the mountain, and I could here him a mile away, tearing up the dirt road, a cloud of dust behind him.

I would dive off the side of the road, afraid he wouldn’t see me and kill me.  He’d drive by without recognizing me, his hands gripping the steering wheel, whizzing by like he’d just robbed a bank.

He once drove into a snow bank.  He got stuck there for a while.  So I decided to get him a cell phone.

I got him in my car, and we drove down to Oneonta to the AT&T store.  The drive is about 40 minutes from his house.  He wasn’t real pleased about getting a cell phone.  It was like driving someone to get their arm amputated.

AT&T is the only carrier that works up at my Dad’s place.  We got to the store, and my Dad wasn’t too happy.  Keep in mind; he wasn’t a happy guy to begin with.  And when we went into the store, and everybody was a little too friendly, it pissed him off.  We went up to the counter, a salesguy came over–a young kid, friendly and clean-cut.  I told him what I wanted…

 

A cell phone.  One with big numbers.  One that was easy to operate.  I didn’t need it to check email, or FaceBook, or Twitter.  I didn’t need a phone that tuned my guitar.  I didn’t need a phone that was also a microwave oven.

I just wanted a phone for my Dad for emergencies and stuff.  Maybe a phone where he could receive text messages and photos from his kids.  I thought that would be nice for the old grouch.

The salesguy looked at me, then looked at my Dad.  He asked us if we wanted a one-year plan, a two year- plan or a five-year plan.

My Dad looked at him and said…

“Are you fuckin’ kiddin’ me?  I’m 86 years old!  Give me the shortest plan you got, ‘cause I don’t know how much fuckin’ longer I’m gonna be around.”

That’s the way my Dad talked, excuse the language.  He cussed a lot, and was not apologetic about it.  I use it here for verisimilitude. My dad was rough, gruff and tough.  He never minced words, he gave it to you straight between the eyes.

I explained to the guy, we just need a phone with a pay-as-you-go plan.  A phone that was cheap, easy, so simple that a chimpanzee could figure it out.

I asked salesdude if we could get a number my Dad could remember, like…607 Slimman.  They guy explained that there weren’t a whole lot of numbers available for that area.  I had no idea what he was talking about, but he told me a number had just become available–some guy had just cancelled his service.

So we took that number.  The salesguy was helpful.  I felt sorry for him, having to deal with my Dad.

We got in the car, started the long drive home, up the small, winding two-lane road that led to his house.  My Dad held the phone in his hand, like he was holding a severed animal head in his palm.

PING!  My dad got a text message.  He looked at me.

 

“What the hell is that?”

I grabbed the phone and looked at it.  It was a photo of a woman with no clothes on.  I appreciate a woman that has a little meat on the bone, but this gal was at least 400 pounds, completely naked, and it was hard to tell just what the hell you were looking at.  It wasn’t pretty—it looked like she was trying to scratch her head with her big toe.

My Dad took the phone and looked at the photo.

“Is that a vagina?”

For all of my Dad’s cussing, he used delicate words when it came to women folk.

“It’s kind of hard to tell, Paps, but yes, I think it is.”

A few minutes later…PING!  He looked at his phone.

“What the hell is that?”

It was another photo of an extra-large woman on her knees, completely naked, looked like she was looking on the floor for a contact lense.

Funny, my Dad wasn’t into any of that kind of stuff.  He never had girly mags around, never even had a Playboy.  I never found any of that stuff around the house when I was a kid, and I don’t use the word “never” a lot.

PING!

They kept coming.  My Dad asked if all cell phones were like this.  I explained to him that the guy who had the number before was probably into some kinky stuff, and that I would try and fix it when I got home.

We got to the house, Rat Tail Ridge, and I fixed his phone, blocked some numbers, cleared out some junk.  I programmed some numbers on the speed dial.  I explained to my Dad that all he had to do was press and hold the number 1 key, and it would call me.

Number 2 was his Off-Track Betting account, so he could play the horses.  Then I put in his wife’s number, my sister’s number, the other kids’ numbers, the nurse, the hospital, his proctologist–he was good to go.

As much as my Dad hated technology, the phone was a big help.  He was never much for chatting on the landline phone.  It was hard for him to get to—he had a hard time walking, and when you called, by the time he got to the phone, it almost always went to an answering machine.

That’s right, an answering machine.

My Dad started getting into his cell phone.  He never said hello when he called me.  He’d just start talking.  Most of the conversations were quick, to the point.  And then he’d hang up without saying goodbye.  No hello, no goodbye.

I loved my Dad, and he wasn’t an easy guy to love.  We started talking on the phone, just about everyday.

He passed away last year.  I still have his cell number on my phone.  Can’t bear to erase it.

Broccoli with red, yellow and orange bell peppers

My Dad didn’t like vegetables.  When he got older, I tried to get him to eat some salad and stuff, tell him it was good for him, and he’d say…

“I’m 86 years old.  I’ve made it this far without eating that crap, and I ain’t startin’ now.”

He wasn’t all warm and fuzzy.

This dish can be used as a side dish, or you can put it over rice, or on bruschetta.  It’s colorful and healthy and delizioso.

This will serve 4 people, unless you’re a member of my family, in which case this will serve 2 people…

Ingredients

Olive oil, about 4 tablespoons

6 cloves of garlic, sliced thin, about 3 tablespoons

Crushed red pepper (to taste)

¼ cup dry white wine

¾ cup of vegetable broth

1 orange bell pepper, seeds and stems removed, chopped

1 red bell pepper, seeds and stems removed, chopped

1 yellow bell pepper, seeds and stems removed, chopped

4 cups broccoli florets

Salt (to taste)

Here we go!

Get a large pan, put it over medium-low heat

Add the olive oil, then the garlic, cook for a couple minutes until the garlic is a light gold color

Add the white wine, turn the heat up to high, and cook for two minutes

Turn the heat back to medium-low

Add the peppers, cook for a few minutes

Add the broccoli

Add the vegetable broth, put the heat on high until it starts to bubble

Turn the heat down to a simmer and cook for about 6 minutes until the broccoli is done—stir often

Salt to taste

Some people like their broccoli crunchy.  I like it cooked, not mushy, but firm.

MANGIAMO!!!

 

Slim Man Cooks Monkfish Fra Diavolo

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My cousin told me I needed a colonoscopy.

This wasn’t just a conversation over drinks, or at a football game.

My cousin was my doctor.  Before that, his Dad–my uncle Oscar–was my doctor.

I like to keep it in the family.

 

Yes, it was a little embarrassing when it came time to…turn your head and cough and stuff.  But it was rather comforting to know that your doctor really had your best interests at heart.

They were both extraordinary doctors, and really wonderful human beings.  They took such good care of me.  They took really good care of my Dad, especially when he got old.

Old folks need our help.  That’s why I started the Old Folks Union a few years ago.

The OFU.

It never took off, but what I was trying to do was to help old people.  I was actually trying to help all of us.  I set up some rules…

1.  Old people should not wear shorts, or open-toe sandals, or short sleeve shirts.  The more Old Folks cover up, the better for all of us.  All that flabby skin flappin’ around, those gnarly lookin’ toes, their bony legs…

2.  Old folks should also make sure they keep up on their personal grooming.  The older you get, the hairier you get.  Get some tweezers, some scissors, or a weed-wacker if you have to, but make sure you trim the shrubbery.  Uptown, downtown, all-around town, trim it up.

3.  Old Folks should keep all the details about daily bodily functions (or lack thereof) to themselves, and save those fascinating tidbits for the professionals.

But it’s important to take good care of yourself, get check-ups, do the things that need to be done.

So when my cousin the doctor, told me I needed a colonoscopy, I knew I needed to heed his advice.  He was a thorough kind of guy who wouldn’t give you an aspirin without a complete pre-op physical, so I knew I needed to get it done.

I went to the doctor’s office in Baltimore.  It was a friendly place.  The doctor was gregarious, the nurses good-looking, and I felt as comfortable as I could, under the circumstances.

They asked me to take off my clothes, and put on one of those robes.  Why do they give you those robes that are open in the back?  Can’t they just give you a normal robe, the kind that belts up in the front?

So I had on the open-ass robe, and they asked me to lie down on the operating table.  They covered me with a white blanket, and one of the nurses started talking to me…

“How are you?  Where are you from?”  It was just pleasant little small talk.  We chatted for a little while, and then she said…

“I think I recognize your voice!”

I had a radio show in Baltimore for about 8 years.  I played jazz on Sunday mornings.  It was the big Adult Contemporary station in town (Elton John, Olivia Newton John, Celine Dion) and the program director had asked me if I wanted to do a jazz show on Sunday mornings.

I had never done radio.  I told him so, and he said it didn’t matter.  Just play the music I wanted to play, and see what happened.  I gotta give it to the guy—Gary Balaban—he stayed with it for years.  I wasn’t very good when I started, but I really got into it.

Listeners complained at first.  I got a lot of nasty phone calls while I was on the air, folks bitchin’ about not hearing Michael Bolton and whatnot.  But I just kept on doing my thing.

They let me play whatever I wanted to play.  So I did.  I’d play Louis Armstrong, and then some Dave Grusin.  I’d play Miles Davis and then segue into Marc Antoine.  I played Herb Alpert and follow it up with some Marcus Miller.  I stuttered and stammered when I first started, and then I got into the swing of things.

I started interviewing artists.  I would give local musicians I liked some airtime.  I was enjoying it.

The radio station never paid me.  They told me they would, but I when I was starting out, I really wasn’t very good.  So I never asked them about the money.  It wasn’t until I’d been doing it for years that they started paying me…$50 bucks a show.  For a four-hour gig.

But I grew to love doing it.  And they don’t keep you on the air for 8 years if you’re not getting ratings.  It was a pretty popular show.  Record companies started sending me CDs.  Managers called me up to try and get their artists interviewed.  Promoters were trying to get their records played.

I had complete control, and only wanted to play and promote guys and gals that I liked.  I was on every Sunday.  When I went on tour, I’d pre-record the show.  We ended up calling it The Cool Jazz Café.  Ratings were good, folks were tuning in.

So, it wasn’t a huge surprise when the nurse told me she recognized my voice.

“Are you Slim Man?”

I told her…

“Yes I am.”

She yelled out…

“You have the radio show on Sundays.  I know you!”

I looked at her and said…

“You’re about to know me a whole lot better.”

It was weird, yes.  But what are you gonna do?  Jump up off the table and run out of the place, bare-ass hanging out as you jog to your car?.  They put the anesthesia mask over my face…

Next thing I knew, I was in the recovery room.  The nurse was smiling at me.  She said…

“Everything looks good.”

It sounded a little strange, the way she said it.  I looked at her and said…

“I guess this makes us friends.”

Later on, I wondered…did the nurse go home and tell her friends?  Did she take some photos, post them on Facebook?  Instagram, Twitter?

I didn’t Google “Slim Man colonoscopy”.

And don’t you, either.

Monkfish Fra Diavolo

The literal translation of fra diavolo is “from the devil.”  The expression is used these days to mean a dish that’s spicy.

This dish is usually made with lobster.  I like lobster, but it’s a pain in the ass—like a colonoscopy!  It’s expensive, hard to cook, and hard to clean up after.  It’s hard to crack the claws and the shells.

 

I was in Paris once and they had lotte on the menu.  The waiter told me it was the poor-man’s lobster.  I should have cracked him one, but I just ordered it.  I loved it.  Here in the good ol’ USA, they call it monkfish.  It’s one of the ugliest fishes you’ll ever see.  But man, does it taste good.  It has a taste and a texture similar to lobster, and it’s a whole lot cheaper, and nowhere near as much a pain to deal with.

Make sure to use monkfish filets.  Remove all the gray and tan membranes, and cut it up into bite-size chunks.

 

I love this dish!

 

INGREDIENTS 

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons sliced garlic, about 3 or 4 cloves

4 tablespoons minced shallots, about 1 medium shallot

Crushed red pepper to taste (it’s “fra diavolo”–from the devil–so make it spicy!)

1 cup white wine

One 28 ounce can (3 and ½ cups) of San Marzano or Italian tomatoes, smooshed up, yellow cores removed

3 tablespoons basil–a small handful

½ teaspoon dried oregano

1 pound monkfish filet, all gray/tan membranes removed, cut into bite size chunks

 Here we go…

If you are going to put this over pasta, grab a large pot, fill it with the coldest water you gots, and put it on the highest heat you gots.

As the water starts to heat up, let’s cook our monkfish sauce.

 

Put the olive oil in the bottom of a large pan, large enough to hold the sauce AND THE PASTA!

Turn the heat to medium.

When the oil gets warm, add the fish.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Cook the fish on one side for 2 minutes or so.  Then turn over.  Cook for 2 more minutes on the other side.

Remove the fish from the pan, and put on a plate.

Add the garlic and shallots and crushed red pepper (to taste) to the pan.  Let them cook for about 3 minutes, stirring every minute or so.

Then add the wine.  Turn up the heat to medium-high, and let the wine cook off for 3 minutes or so.  Stir frequently.

Then add the tomatoes.  Grab your basil, and a pair of scissors, and snip the basil leaves into small pieces, right into the sauce.  Then add the oregano.  Turn the heat to high.  When the tomatoes come to a boil, reduce the heat to medium-low, and cook for 10 minutes.

Then, add the fish to the sauce.  Stir once.  Cook for five minutes on medium-low.  Don’t stir too often—we don’t want the fish pieces to break up.

NOW FOR THE PASTA…

When the water comes to a full boil, add about 3 or 4 tablespoons of Kosher salt.

Then add a pound of linguine.

Stir.  Stir it often.

When the pasta is al dente, firm to the bite, drain it, and put it in a large bowl.

Drizzle the pasta with about a tablespoon or two of olive oil, and toss.

Get some tongs.  Grab some pasta out of the bowl, and add the pasta to the sauce in the pot.  I used about ¾ pound of the pasta.  I did not use the whole pound–the rest I put in a Tupperware for Batu.

Mix the pasta with the sauce.  Plate it up!  Put some pasta in a plate, add a spoonful or two of sauce on top, and garnish with a basil leaf or two.  And…

MANGIAMO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Slim Man Makes Tomato Salad

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A-rabs

The “A” is long, like “A”–Rod.  Except A-rabs are a lot more like-able.

In Baltimore, they used to have street A-rabs.  These guys had brightly colored wagons, pulled by small horses, that were decorated with bells and feathers and scarves   The wagons were full of fresh fruits and vegetables.

 

The horses would slowly pull the small carriages through the alleys of Baltimore City, selling produce to the fine denizens of that quirky berg.

Baltimore has a lot of alleys–a whole network of alleys.  When we were kids, we’d ride our bikes for hours through the alleys.  We’d get home from school, and ride the alleys until dinnertime.

I always had a bike.  It was the way I got around as a kid.  All the neighborhood kids had bikes.  One of my heroes as a kid was Lawrence of Arabia.  I thought of my bike as my camel.

I was a strange kid.

Sometimes, I’d put baseball cards, attached with clothespins, on the front and back forks, and when the spokes would spin against the cards, they’d make a flapping sound that I imagined sounded like a chopper.

Other times, I would put balloons on the forks, and when the spokes slapped up against the balloons, it made a much louder ‘popping’ sound—you could hear me coming from blocks away.

We never wore helmets, not like people do today.  Back then, I guess it was nature’s way of weeding out the knuckleheads.  Funny, nobody ever got hurt.

I was lucky; my Mom let me find my own way.  It’s not like she didn’t care—you’d never meet a more caring woman in your life—she just wanted me to figure things out on my own.  So if I needed to go somewhere, I’d figure out how to get there on my bike.

Plus, my Mom didn’t drive.  She stayed home a lot, and in the summer, she’d have the windows up, and the front door would be open.  My Mom hardly ever locked the front door.  She wasn’t naïve, just trusting.   It was that kind of neighborhood.

For folks that didn’t drive, having the store come to you was a good thing.  When the A-rabs came to the neighborhood, you could hear them from blocks away.  They’d holler…”Watermelon!  Cantaloupe!”  They’d call out the names of whatever stuff they had in the back of the wagon.

They were mostly small black guys—I don’t know if they were African-American, or Indian, or Jamaican or Aboriginal tribesmen.

My Mom would hear them coming, walk out of the house, and buy fruits and vegetables.

I don’t know where the A-rabs got their produce from, but it was always so funky fresh.  My Mom would pick out some stuff, and the A-rabs would weigh it on the small scale hanging off the back of the wagon, and put it in a brown paper bag.

Summertime!  One of my Mom’s favorite things?  Home-grown tomatoes.

My Mom would make tomato sandwiches, just a thick slice of tomato on bread with a dab of mayo and a sprinkle of salt and pepper.  Bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches with home-grown tomatoes?  The best.

My Mom would also make tomato salad, which was so simple and so good.

She bought me a bike a few years ago.  I hadn’t ridden since I’d gotten my driver’s license–about a hundred years ago.  It was the perfect bike—a red, 18-speed trail bike.  I was living in Roland Park, not far from her house.

I used the bike to run errands–the bank, the post office, grocery shopping.  I’d also ride through the alleys to my Mom’s house, which was a couple miles away.  I’d check in on her.

That bike meant a lot to me.  My Mom bought it for me right before she died.  Right after she passed away, it got stolen.  My uncle Oscar found out about it, and bought me the same bike.  How wonderful is that?

I still ride that bike to this day.

I now live in Nashville—it doesn’t have a lot of alleys.  But I still ride my bike to run errands. The post office is a couple miles away from the shack.  Right across the street is a fruit and vegetable place.  I rode my bike past there a few weeks ago–mid-September–and they had baskets and baskets of home-grown tomatoes.

I picked out a couple, and put them in my bag.  When I got back to the house, I made a little tomato salad.

Tomato Salad

Not every thing you cook or make has to be hard, or take a lot of time.  I’m not ashamed at how simple and delizioso this dish is. In general, I like fresh herbs.  But I prefer dried oregano on this dish.  Fresh oregano is OK, but I prefer the dried on these tomatoes.

That’s the way my Mom used to do it.

This is one of the simplest, quickest, freshest dishes you can make.

Serves 2

INGREDIENTS 

2 ripe tomatoes

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 teaspoons of balsamic vinegar

1 teaspoon oregano

salt and pepper

Slice each tomato into wedges, 6 wedges per tomato.  Get 2 small bowls, salad bowls work well.  Put 6 wedges in each bowl.  Using half the ingredients…

Drizzle with olive oil (1 tablespoon per bowl).

Sprinkle with balsamic vinegar (1 teaspoon per bowl).

Schpreckle with oregano (1/2 teaspoon per bowl).

Add salt and fresh cracked black pepper.

Don’t toss!  When you toss tomatoes, they lose their form.

Serve it up with some crusty bread to your crusty friends and…

MANGIAMO!

Slim Man Cooks Zucchini with summer squash and eggplant

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Everything I am I owe to pasta.

You know who said that?

Sophia Loren.

I’ve had a crush on her for a long time.  My Uncle Oscar once sat next to her on an airplane. They flew from New York to Rome.  A long flight, for sure.

But if I were sitting next to Sophia Loren, I would have been praying that we’d get stuck on the tarmac for a few days.

Or better yet–crash into the ocean, where we’d be the only two survivors, stuck on a small island for the rest of our lives.

I can dream, can’t I?

Sophia Loren loves pasta.  So do I.  Sophia Loren is not fat, neither am I.

The key to eating pasta on a regular basis is…don’t eat a wheelbarrow full!!!  Italians eat small amounts of pasta.  Italian-American restaurants serve buckets full of pasta, all covered in cheese and sauce and goo.  That’s the problem.

Take your hands.  Cup them together.  That’s the amount of pasta you put on a plate.

Let me tell you a little story, a heart-warming tale about a boy, a bike and a zucchini.

I rode my bike to the post office.  I dropped off some thank you notes—I write a lot of them, I have a lot to be thankful for—and saw some beautiful mums outside the fruit and vegetable stand across the street.

I walked in to the red and white striped tent, and there were so many vegetables and fruits…it was amazing.  They had baskets and baskets of home grown tomatoes.  So much stuff to choose from.

Only one problem…I had a five-dollar bill in my pocket.

 

So, I picked out a green zucchini, a yellow summer squash, and a brown eggplant.  I had enough left over for a bulb of garlic and a shallot.  The total was $4 and change.  I put the stuff in my messenger bag and rode home.  It was a beautiful fall day in Nashville, sunny, cool, and clear.  On my way home, I stopped by a friend’s restaurant.  They grow basil outside.  I took a small handful (he doesn’t mind), and put it in my bag.

I got back to the shack and decided to make a little sauce.  I put the sauce over pasta, but keep in mind, you can use a dish like this for anything…a side dish, on bruschetta, a pizza, over rice, brown rice…use your imagination.

I’ve been the same weight for most of my adult life.  I’m 6’2”, and I weigh about 195.  I eat pasta a few times a week.  I don’t use a lot of cream sauces.  I don’t do a lot of cheese sauces.

So I made a sauce with these incredibly fresh and beautiful vegetables.  Only one problem…when it came time to put in a little broth, I was out of chicken and vegetable broth.  All I had was beef broth.  So I used beef broth.  It turned out great.  The dish was delizioso.  Start to finish, it took 30 minutes.  And it cost about 5 bucks.  My kinda dish!

 

I added some freshly grated carrots, about a ¼ cup, for a little color, and a little crunch.

This should serve about 3 people, unless those people are teenage boys, in which case this will serve one.

Ingredients

1 green zucchini, ends cut off, chopped into 1” triangular pieces (about a cup and a half)

1 yellow summer squash, ends cut off, chopped into 1” triangular pieces (about a cup and a half)

1 small eggplant, ends cut off, chopped into 1” triangular pieces (about a cup and a half)

1/4 cup fresh grated carrots

Small handful of fresh basil

4 tablespoons of olive oil

6 cloves of garlic, peeled, sliced into thin slices, about 1 1/2 tablespoons

1 small shallot, peeled, minced, about 1 1/2 tablespoons

1/3 cup of white wine

1 cup of broth (chicken or vegetable might be good, I used beef, and it was real good for some reason—maybe because I was starving!)

¾ pound of spaghetti, or fusilli, or farfalle (I used spaghetti because it was all I had!)

Salt and crushed red pepper.

 

Put a large pan over medium-low heat.  Add the olive oil.

Add the garlic and shallots and some crushed red pepper (to taste!), cook for 3 or 4 minutes, until the shallots are clear, and the garlic is pale gold.

 

Turn the heat to high for 1 minute.  Then add the white wine, let it cook for a minute or two.

Turn the heat down to medium low, add all the vegetables.

Add the stock, and salt to taste.

Let it cook over medium low heat for 10 minutes.  Stir every so often.

Taste the vegetables.  You want them firm–not crunchy (underdone) or mushy (overdone).

Adjust for salt and pepper.

Take your basil, and snip it with scissors right into the sauce.  Give it a stir.

Remove from the heat.

If you want to use this over pasta, get a large pot, fill it with cold water and put it on the highest heat you got.

When the water comes to a boil, add 3 tablespoons of salt (I use Kosher salt, not for religious reasons—I just like the way it tastes!).

Then add your pasta.  Stir it up every few minutes, so it don’t stick together.  People should stick together, pasta should not.

When the pasta is al dente—firm to the bite–drain it in a colander.

Put the pasta in a large bowl.  Drizzle with a little olive oil and mix it up.

Add most of the sauce, save a large spoonful for each plate (save 3 large spoonfuls).

Mix it up.  Then plate it up!

Put a small amount on a plate.  Add a spoonful of sauce on top.  You can add some freshly grated cheese if you like—Parmiggiano-Reggiano or Romano (not Velveeta)—and…

MANGIAMO!

Slim Man Cooks Pasta Carbonara

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Pasta Carbonara

It was by far the biggest paying gig ever for the Slim Men.  Not only that, but the promoter was going to buy us all dinner at the club after the show.

The club was called Odessa, it was in Laguna Beach, California.  It was a fine-dining, very elegant nightclub/restaurant. Swanky.  Stylishly luxurious.  And that’s what the place was.

Because it was so swanky and spanking new, and because they were paying us a lot of do-re-mi, we decided to pull out all the stops.  We invited some guest soloists—guitarist Richard Smith and trumpet player Tony Guerrero.

We made sure our shoes were shined, and our suits were pressed, and I even made the Slim Men shave their backs.   Showtime!

John E Coale was on drums.  The keyboard player that night was David Bach—one of his first shows with us.  Mombo Hernandez played percussion.

We got ready for the Big Show.  It was pretty crowded, a good turnout of Slim People.  We were scheduled to do two sets, each about 90 minutes long.  We did the first set, and…

It wasn’t our best.  It’s not like we were drunk, or didn’t care, or weren’t prepared.  Things just weren’t clicking on stage for the first set.  One thing about the Slim Man Band, we take great pride in what we do.  We want to be excellent every night.  And most nights, we hit the mark.  But, even Elvis had an off-night every now and then.  Or so I was told…

In between sets, they held a drawing for dinner with the band.  There was a big fishbowl filled with tickets.  They brought it up on stage, and I picked a number from the bowl and called it out to the crowd.  There was a short silence.  Then a guy stood up.  He didn’t yell or scream.  He just stood up and walked to the stage.

He was tall, thin, blond hair.  He was dressed casually.  He showed me his ticket.  He had the winning number.  So he and his wife were gonna join us for the post-concert dinner and celebration.

And celebrate we did.  After the second set–which was a little better than the first–we walked over to the restaurant area of the club.  They had a huge table set for us, like we were some kinda rock stars.  I sat next to the couple that won the dinner drawing.  It turned out to be quite a conversation.

They introduced themselves.  I gave them nicknames—the guy, Normy, his wife, Sam.  Normy was kinda quiet, kinda quirky.

So Normy and I start talking, and he told me that he does clay models for Porsche.  Clay models are what they use to make the shells for the body of the car.  They look exactly like the car–same size and shape–but they’re made of clay.

And Normy worked with the designers making new Porsche sports cars.  I gotta tell ya, I was fascinated.  We talked for hours about sports cars, and clay models, and Porsche, and horsepower and how Normy came up with these clay models.

We were having a great conversation.

We ordered food.  We got appetizers.  We got salads.  We drank more than a few bottles of wine.  We had main courses.  We had desserts.  We had after-dinner drinks.

It must have been around midnight when the waitress–who had been working so hard all night–gave me the bill.  I was kinda embarrassed, but I told her that the promoter was picking up the tab.

She told me she knew the promoter was paying the bill.

But he was nowhere to be found.

I got up, and started looking frantically around the club, in front, out back, the Men’s room, the Ladies room, the kitchen…I looked everywhere.  Promoter dude had vanished.

So I took out the old credit card, and prayed that the cops wouldn’t leap out of the woodwork and arrest me on the spot when it got declined.  The wine alone must have cost a thousand bucks.  Dinner for at least twelve people in a place like that?

I was just hoping I wouldn’t have to wash dishes for the rest of my life.

I was guessing I had just about enough room on the card for booze and dinner.  But I didn’t want to take a chance with the tip, so we took a collection for the waitress.  We scrounged up a really nice tip…

And the credit card went through.   We left the club that night a bit weary, somewhat embarrassed and a lot lighter in the wallet.

The promoter never sent us the $$$ he owed us.  I ended up paying the band anyway.

The total loss for that night was probably around 10 grand.  But here’s the rest of the story…

Normy and Sam became real good friends.  How good?  I see them at least a couple times a year, just about every year…for the past 15 years!  We talk on the phone once a month or so.

After the Odessa gig, we saw Normy and Sam on Catalina Island, in California.  We played the Jazz Fest, and afterwards we drank a little too much wine.  Imagine that.  Catalina doesn’t allow cars, so folks drink a bit more than usual.

We had a great time that night with Normy and Sam, drinking, talking, joking, hanging out.  When we were saying our goodbyes, Normy and Sam said…

“If we don’t see you again, it’s been a real pleasure.”

I pulled out a hundred-dollar bill.  I told them I was gonna tear it in half, and give them half and keep the other until we saw each other again.  But…

I just gave Normy the hundred-dollar bill.  I told him that we would have to see each other again because he now owed me a hundred bucks.

We’ve seen each other dozens of times since then.  They came and saw us on the Queen Mary in Long Beach.  After the show, we sat in the bar and drank and retreated to the lobby after hours.

Normy has a knack for saying and doing some crazy stuff.  That night, he told us that Marvin Gaye had been a professional wrestler.  The thought of Marvin Gaye—of all people—being a pro wrestler had us laughing so hard we were crying.

One night, after a Slim Gig in Catalina, we all went out and played pool.  Normy, usually quiet and cool, started telling us that he loved us.  Not in a quiet way, more like…

“I LOVE YOU GUYS!  I MEAN IT!  I REALLY LOVE YOU GUYS!”

He was so loud and boisterous, that we ended up leaving the place.  We were getting lots of strange looks.  He kept on saying, no matter where we went…

“REALLY!  I’M NOT JUST SAYING THIS!!  I REALLY LOVE YOU GUYS!”

The next morning, at breakfast, Normy was unusually quiet, turning whiter shades of pale with each bite.  We told him we really loved him about a million times that morning.  We were relentless.  To this day, when we see him, that’s what we say.

One time, Normy was in Germany while I was there.  He was headed to the Porsche factory in Stuttgart.  I was hanging out in Dusseldorf.  So Normy came to Dusseldorf, and we were hanging out for a couple days, drinking wine and eating Italian food om a barge on the Rhine river.

Normy and Sam pop up a couple times a year at Slim Shows.  They don’t ask to be put on the guest list.  They don’t call in advance.  It’s always a pleasant surprise when they show up.  They usually manage to stay in whatever hotel the band is staying.

Two weeks ago, I was in Palm Springs, California.  Normy and Sam came out to see me play at a real swanky hotel called The Riviera.   We had dinner that night after the show.  We partied in the hotel room after dinner, drinking wine and whatnot.

The next morning we had breakfast.  I reminded him of the hundred-dollar bill I gave him.  He told me he still has it. But he hasn’t given it back, yet.  Which is actually comforting in a strange way.

 

It means I’ll get to see my amigos again.

Here is the wrap-up…We would never have met Normy and Sam if it weren’t for the Odessa gig.  Sure, I lost a ton of dough.  But would you trade two really good friends for ten grand?

Let me think about that one…

Pasta Carbonara

I see Normy and Sam a couple times a year.  You can only eat pasta carbonara a couple times a year. Any more than that and you’ll have to walk around with a defibrillator duct-taped to your chest.

It’s a heart-stoppin’, artery-cloggin dish that might kill ya.  It’s one of my favorites.  This is my own version.  I added white wine, which gives it a little kick.

But if you’re having it for breakfast—it is after all eggs and bacon—you might want to leave out the wine.  You might…I don’t.

I use Parmiggiano-Reggiano cheese, most recipes call for Romano, which I find a little too salty for this dish.  You got enough sodium in the pancetta to float a boat, so I use Parmiggiana, which is a little sweeter.

The name comes from the Italian word for coal, carbona.  Legend has it that coal miners would put a couple eggs, a piece of pancetta (Italian bacon) and a hunk of cheese in their pockets, and make this on their lunch break, all in one pot.

Putting eggs in your pocket doesn’t sound like a good idea to me, but what the hell do I know?

INGREDIENTS:

8 ounces pancetta, diced into tiny pieces

4 cloves of garlic, peeled, and smashed/flattened with the broad side of a knife

¼ cup white wine

 

2 tablespoons fresh Italian flat leaf parsley, chopped

3 eggs

1 cup fresh grated Parmiggiano-Reggiano cheese

1 pound of spaghetti

We’ll do this all in real time.  Here goes:

Get a large pot.  Fill it with cold water.  Put it on the highest heat you got.  As it heats up…

Get a large bowl, one big enough to hold all the pasta and stuff.

Break three eggs into the bowl.  Add the cheese.  Add the chopped parsley.  Add some fresh cracked black pepper.  Hold off on the salt for now—the pancetta can be a bit salty, so you don’t really need any extra.

Beat all this stuff with a fork.  Now let’s cook our pancetta.

Pancetta is Italian bacon.  So treat it like bacon.  Don’t be flippin’ it all around.  You want it to brown on each side.

Get a small fry pan.  Put it over medium heat.  Put the diced pancetta in.  Let it brown for about 3 to 5 minutes.

Flip it over, give it a stir, let it brown on the other side, 3 to 5 minutes.

When the pancetta is done, use a slotted spoon to get it out of the pan.  Put the pancetta in the bowl with the eggs and stuff.  Give it a stir.

You should have some pancetta drippings left in the bottom of the pan.  Get rid of most of the drippings.  You want to leave a little in the bottom of the pan, just enough to cook the garlic.

Put the pan on medium-low heat.

Add the garlic, cook for a couple minutes on each side until light golden brown.

Turn up the heat to high.  Add the wine; let it cook off for a minute or so.  Turn off the heat.

Back to the pasta…when the pasta water comes to a boil, add a couple tablespoons of kosher salt.   Add the pasta.

When the pasta is al dente, drain it well.

IMMEDIATELY toss the pasta into the bowl with the eggs.  Add the garlic and white wine.  Toss gently for a minute or two.  You want the heat from the pasta to cook the eggs.

When it all looks right, plate it up.  Garnish with a piece of parsley, and…

MANGIAMO!!!!!

 

Slim Man Cooks Chicken Piccata

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Follow a transvestite while he/she shops for clothes.  Go to an underground tattoo parlor, get a tattoo.  Then go to a dermatologist and get it removed with a laser.

Those are just a few of the things we did for the TV show we called…Hobnobbin’ With Slim Slimski.

 

 

Rei Spinnicchio was the director.  And the camerman.  The editor, the light guy, the sound guy, the idea guy.  He was the guy.  The guy behind the camera.

I was the guy in front of the camera.

We would go around our hometown of Baltimore, Maryland, and do all these crazy things.  Most of the stuff was spontaneous.  Well, we’d make appointments.  But what we did when we got there was just run and gun—improvise, see what happens.  It was a lot of fun.  Nerve-wracking fun.

Rei had the idea of following a tranvestite while he shopped for clothes.  ‘He’ was a guy named Marilyn, dressed as a woman.  Most of the clothes shops we visited were in Fells Point, which is a funkified neighborhood deep in the heart of Baltimore.

We did not get a lot of weird looks.  Which in itself was weird.  People didn’t stare or point or anything.

We sat around for hours as Marilyn tried on a million things, but ended up buying NOTHING.

Just like a real woman!  And about as much fun, too.

The underground tattoo parlor was also pretty weird.  It was in this guy’s kitchen, in his small apartment, in a nasty section of town.  Strange looking folks were waiting around to get tattoos.  It wasn’t the cleanest place in the world.  And he was making some of the most bizarre tattoos I’ve ever seen.

I’m not a big tattoo guy.  I know they’re really popular.  Just not my thing.  One thing I do know about tattoos, is that after about 10 years or so, the ink starts to dissipate.  By the time you’re hauling around your grandkids, you look like you’ve been run over by a steamroller.  All those tattoos look like big dark bruises.  All the forms are gone, turned into indistinguishable blobs.  The words are illegible.

So I got one.  The tattoo guy asked me what I wanted, and I asked for a simple heart with “Mom” in the middle.  Something small, on the inside of my forearm, like the anchor tattoo Popeye had.

So I got tattoed.  The guy didn’t use any ink.  So I felt the pain but got no stain.  It didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would.  Even without the ink, you could clearly see the tattoo.

First thing I did was go see my Mom.  Rei walked in with the camera rolling.  I sat down at the kitchen table and told my Mom what I’d done.  She just smiled when I rolled up my sleeve and showed her.

“Hey, Ma.  See what it says?  It says ‘MOM’.”

She took a look.  It wasn’t a look of pride.  Then I said…

“When I look at it, you know what it says, from my perpective?”

My Mom said…”WOW.”

We had a laugh, then I left.

I went to the dermatologist soon after to see what it was like to get a tattoo removed.  I wasn’t the first in line.  There was a woman before me who wanted to get a big eagle tattoo removed from her chest.  She was complaining that the wings of the eagle looked like chest hair when she wore low-cut shirts.

Imagine that.  The dermatologist let us sit in on the tattoo removal session.  We had to wear special glasses, so the laser wouldn’t burn our eyeballs.  The doctor zapped the tattoo hundreds of times.  The woman flinched with each zap.  She looked like she was having some kind of strange seizures every couple seconds.

I wasn’t looking forward to my session…

The woman got out of her chair.  The tattoo was still visible.  Doctor Dude told us that a tattoo that big and dark would need a couple of sessions to remove.  What fun.

I sat down in the chair.  The doctor revved up the laser and zapped me.  It felt like someone snapping a rubber band onto my forearm.  It didn’t hurt as much as the time I got my genitalia caught in my zipper, but it was close.  After a bunch of zaps, my skin was on fire.

For the last part of the Hobnobbin’ TV show, we decided to go to the Timonium Fairgrounds for the 4 H festival.  4 H stands for Head, Heart, Health, and Hands.  It’s a collection of young folks trying to improve urban, suburban and rural communities.

I walked into a large barn, with Rei following and filming.  Some young folks were demonstrating how to milk a cow.

I like farm animals.  They look OK from a distance.  But I never felt the strong urge to get real close to any of them, let alone start mangling their mammaries.  The cow I was supposed to milk was a skinny cow.  That’s where skim milk comes from.  Her name was Leslie.  Really.

I walked up to Leslie and she turned her huge head around and stared me up and down with these dark eyeballs, and I looked down at her udders and…

It was a little too soon for me.  Call me old-fashioned, but I think it’s more appropriate to go out on a few dates, have some drinks, get to know each other before you start yanking on a female’s breastages.

Then she winked.  I think she liked me.  I liked her, too.  But sadly, that was the end of our relationship.  I walked away knowing I did the honorable thing.

The highlight of the 4H festival was when Rei was following me around, cameras rolling, as I walked among the fairgrounds, checking out the games.  You know, the kind of games where you throw a ball and try to knock down some pins, or you try to shoot a basketball into a hoop a million times in a row.  You can throw darts at balloons.  Toss ping-pong balls into small gold fish bowls.

If you succeed, they give you prizes, like stuffed animals.

I walked by a dunking booth.  Let me explain the dunking booth.  A guy sits on a chair over  a pool of water.  There is a target over his head.  You buy three balls, and if you hit the bulls-eye, the guy gets dunked into the water.

This guy was hurling insults at people as they passed by…

“Hey Fatso!  Get your big ass over here!  You got more chins than a Chinese phone book!”

“Hey Roy Rogers!  You!  With that stupid-looking cowboy hat!!  Is that a belt buckle or a pizza pan?!?  We all know why they call you cowpokes!”

As I walked by, the guy got quiet.

“Hey, you!  Donkey Face!”

That’s what he said.  Donkey Face.  I kept walking.  Because if I stopped, well, you understand.  I would be admitting that I had a face like a donkey. I had long hair in a ponytail at that time.  The guy kept shouting…

“Hey you!  Donkey face.  With the ponytail!  You can’t cut off that pony tail ‘cause it goes with your donkey head!”

Well, that did it.  I had to stop.

“That’s right!  Donkey Face!  Uno, dos, tres, come on, hit me donkey face!”

He started chanting.

“Uno, dos, tres, come on, hit me Donkey Face!!”

 

I went over to the booth, got three balls, and nailed the target with the first one.  Bulls-eye.

But the damage was done.  When my friends and family saw that footage, you can imagine what happened.  They didn’t say…”Oh, poor sensitive Slimmy.  That must have been traumatic.”

Or…”That guy was so mean.  You don’t have a face like a donkey!  How could he verbally abuse our beloved amigo?  Let’s go get him!”

No.  They started calling me donkey face.  Friends, band members, family.  My own father would call me donkey face.  Not all the time.

Just holidays and birthdays.

Rei and I pitched the Hobnobbin’ With Slim Slimski TV show around to whoever would look.  We had a couple of people interested.  And then suddenly…nothing happened. I guess we were way ahead of our time.

Chicken Slimmata Piccata

Cook the chicken in two batches.  Most chicken breasts are too thick for this dish, so slice ‘em in half.  I used 3 large breasts, which I cut in half, so I had 6 cutlets, about a 1/2 inch thick or less.

 

 

INGREDIENTS

3 boneless skinless chicken breasts (1 1/3 pound) cut in half (6 cutlets)

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil (or at least one that has not been sleeping around town)

4 tablespoons butter

¼ cup of flour

salt and pepper

½ cup of chicken broth

¼ cup white wine

2 tablespoons of capers

3 tablespoons fresh squeezed lemon juice

Slice your breasts in half.  Not your breasts, the chicken breasts.

Put 2 tablespoons of butter, and 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a fry pan over medium heat.

Put the flour on a flat plate.  Add salt and fresh cracked black pepper.

Put each piece of chicken in the flour, turn it over, dust it off.

Put all pieces on a plate.

When the butter and olive oil is hot and bubbly, put the chicken in the pan.

Cook for three minutes.  Use some tongs and turn them over.

Cook for another 3 minutes.  Check for doneness.  If done, put them on a plate and put them in a warm oven.  If not, cook for another minute or so.

After the first batch is done, put the last 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and the last 2 tablespoons of butter in the fry pan.

Put the last 3 breast pieces in the pan.  Cook for 3 minutes.

Turn ‘em over.  Cook for another three minutes.  Check for doneness.  If they’re done, stick ‘em in the oven with the others.

Turn the heat on the empty fry pan to medium-high.  Add the white wine.  Let it cook off for a minute or so.  Add the chicken broth, lemon juice, and capers.  Cook for a two minutes.

Take your breasts out of the warm oven.  Put them on a nice platter.  Pour some sauce over them.  Garnish with a couple circular lemon slices here, a sprig of fresh parsley, there, and…

MANGIAMO!!!

Slim Man Cooks Tomato Sauce

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Click on the pic to see the YouTube video

Bonnie Raitt and I sat listening to the first Rufus CD, the one called “Rufus Featuring Chaka Khan”.

I was doing sound-alike records in a studio in Timonium Maryland.  The studio was called Blue Seas.  It was owned by Steve Boone, who was the bass player in a band called Lovin’ Spoonful.  Steve’s from New York. How he ended up in Baltimore, I don’t know.  I heard there was a woman involved.

Always seems to be the case…

I was working for K-Tel Records.  They made cover versions of hit songs, what they called sound-alikes.  That’s where I came in.  At the time, I was doing a version of “Rock The Boat”.  I was trying to make my voice sound like that guy’s.  When he hits that really high note at the very end of the song?  I tried to mimic that and almost gave myself a hernia.  I guess I did OK; they used my version.  It was more sound-kinda-like than sound-alike.

I loved being in the studio.  I still do, a hundred years later.  I especially like the big studios, with all the fancy gear, and grand pianos, and obsequious interns who wait on you hand and foot.  But I didn’t have any interns–I was in Studio B.  Who were the Big Shots in Studio A?

Little Feat.  One of my favorite bands.  They were working on “Feats Don’t Fail Me Now”.  Their recording sessions seemed pretty wild.  When I would peek in the door every now and then, there was a lot of partying going on, right there in the control room.  Don’t get me wrong–music was being made, some great sounding stuff.  But it was definitely festive.

It looked like fun.  I love Little Feat.  While they were doing their record, I was also playing in a band.  We used to play at a place called Mother Lode’s Wild Cherry.  It was a crazy rock and roll joint.  It had a curving sliding board in the club that went from the balcony, across the stage, to the dance floor.

My band used to play on this big stage, which was ten feet off the ground floor.  There were two bars on each side of the ground floor.  There was a balcony, which wrapped around the left hand side of the club.  The sliding board started in the balcony, cut across the wooden stage, and dumped you out on the dance floor.

The drummer in Little Feat, Richie Hayward, used to come and sit in with us when we played Mother Lode’s.  It was open until 2 AM.

And during the day, I was in the studio doing sound-alike records, and Richie was doing “Feats’ Don’t Fail Me Now”.  I used to get to the studio early.  I’m a knucklehead.  Unlike most musicians, I like to be well prepared.  Early.  Ready to go.

I got to the studio early that day.  About an hour early.  My Mom had just brought home the Rufus record the day before.  She brought home lots of great stuff.  There was a record store up the street from our house on Rosebank Avenue in Baltimore.  My Mom didn’t drive, so she’d walk up to the store.  They guy would tell her what was good, and she’d buy a record and bring it home.

She brought home a wide variety of some incredible stuff, way before anybody else…Aretha.  Isaac Hayes.  Judy Collins.  The Beatles.  The Band.  Donovan.  B.B. King.  She had Bonnie Raitt records before anybody knew who Bonnie Raitt was.  My Mom used to go see Bonnie Raitt in concert, back when she was playing small state colleges.  My Mom was a big Bonnie Raitt fan, and I became a big fan, too.

So, I was sitting in Studio B, in Timonium, Maryland, and I put the first Rufus record on the turntable and turned it up.  The first song came on…

“Tell Me Something Good.”

That’s when Bonnie Raitt walked in and asked me who it was.  I told her–Rufus featuring Chaka Khan.  That first song kicked both of us right in the head.  Bonnie Raitt told me she was in Studio A, singing back-ups for Little Feat.

Back-ups.  Bonnie Raitt.

We sat and listened to the whole album together.  We didn’t talk much.  We just listened.  Bonnie Effing Raitt.  And Yours Truly.  In the same studio.  The Rufus album ended, we said goodbye, and she walked out of the studio.  I never saw her again.

But I kept up with her music.  I love her stuff, it’s some of my favorite music. It’s been a dream of mine to get a song on one of her CDs.   I still love and listen to Bonnie Raitt.  “I Can’t Make You Love Me” is one of my favorite songs.  All-time.

Here’s the story behind the story…

A guy named Mike Reid wrote the song “I Can’t Make You Love Me”.  I saw him in concert here in Nashville, where I live now.  Just him and a grand piano.  He played and sang in an old converted movie theater.  He told stories.

Mike used to play football for the Cincinnati Bengals, went to the Pro Bowl twice.  He switched careers, became a songwriter, and got a Grammy for “Stranger In My House” and also wrote “I Can’t Make You Love Me.”

I spoke with a producer who told me that Mike Reid wrote “I Can’t Make You Love Me” as an up-tempo bluegrass song.  But the Producer Dude thought it would be better as a ballad, and the rest is history.

Another story behind the story…

“Tell Me Something Good.”

Carl Griffin discovered that song.  He was VP at Motown, and he was going through old Stevie Wonder songs, and he heard this really rough demo that Stevie did of “Tell Me Something Good.”  Carl loved the song, saw its potential, and placed it with Rufus on their debut album–the one I listened to with Bonnie Raitt.

I met Carl a few years later.  It was a strange coincidence, how I met him, but Carl ended up signing me as a songwriter to Motown.  The story about that is in my “meatballs” recipe.

One last story…

The Feats Don’t Fail Me Now record turned out to be an excellent album, although Little Feat never got the sales or credit they deserved.  Blue Seas relocated from Timonium, Maryland, to Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.  They put the studio on a house boat, where Bonnie Raitt recorded an album.  The house boat later sank, and rumor has it the studio wasn’t insured.

Basic Tomato Sauce

This basic tomato sauce is inexpensive, healthy, quick and you can get the ingredients anywhere.  There are a million ways to cook a tomato sauce.  You can use carrots, celery and onion as your base.  You can put mushrooms, cheese, ground beef, sausage, wine, vinegar, sugar, green peppers, shrimp—there are so many varieties of tomato sauce, it will make your head spin.

True story—my Dad once cooked a tomato sauce with woodchuck.  He once caught an eel and made a sauce with that.  Both were inedible.

Let me break it down.  This is a BASIC tomato sauce.  This is the sauce you go to when you make lasagna, or manicotti, or eggplant Parmiggiana.  You can also use this sauce over pasta.  Rice.  Cheerios.

You don’t want a whole lot of flavors going on.  Because when you use this sauce in lasagna, for example, you don’t want your sauce interfering with the rest of the stuff in your lasagna.

So if you’re making seafood lasagna, or spinach/mushroom lasagna, you want to taste those things.  The tomato sauce should play a supporting role, like Robert Duvall in the Godfather.

This sauce is like a consigliere to the Godfather.  Trusted.  Reliable.  To die for.

I love Costco.  I can get a 6 pound can of San Marzano tomatoes for 4 bucks.  The brand I buy is “Nina”.  I don’t get any money from them, but if they offer, I’m takin’.

This will make about 12 cups of sauce.  If you don’t want to use a 6-pound can of tomatoes, you can use two 28-ounce cans, and cut the rest of the recipe ingredients in half.

I have an Italian friend who doesn’t like garlic.  He’s still my friend.  If you don’t like garlic, use less.  Love garlic?  Use more.  I know a knucklehead who doesn’t like spicy stuff.  So if your idiot friends don’t like pepper, use less, or none.  As with any recipe, suit it up for you.  Or whatever numbskull you’re cooking for.  If you’re cooking for your wife or girlfriend, always cook it the way she wants.  If she wants peanut butter in your tomato sauce, just do it.

Because if the ladies ain’t happy…you, my friend, ain’t happy.

INGREDIENTS

¼ cup of olive oil (extra virgin, or at least one that hasn’t been sleeping around)

½ cup of garlic, sliced thin (about 12 medium-size cloves, peeled, sliced thin)

 

1 six-pound can of Italian tomatoes (I like San Marzano, the Nina brand at Costco)

2 handfuls fresh basil, about two cups—be gentle!  Smashed basil leaves look funky

Kosher salt and crushed red pepper to taste

INSTRUCTIONS

Put the tomatoes in a large bowl.  It’s 6 pounds, so you might need a wheelbarrow.

Smoosh the tomatoes with your hands.  Dig ‘em in there and squeeze your tomatoes.  There’s a small, bitter yellow core that needs to be removed.  Remove any skin, stems, and any other funky stuff.

Put your olive oil in a large pot over medium-low heat.

Put in the garlic.   Stir occasionally, and sauté until light gold.

Add your tomatoes.  Turn the heat on high.

Grab 1 handful of the basil leaves, and snip with scissors (or tear into small pieces by hand) right into the sauce.

Add salt and crushed red pepper to taste.  Salt is important.  Start small, and taste and add as you go.

When the sauce comes to a boil, reduce to medium-low heat, and simmer for about 25 minutes.  Stir it every few minutes.

Then, take the remaining handfuls of basil leaves, and snip/tear into the sauce.  Stir it up.

Remove from heat.  Taste for salt and pepper and adjust, if needed.

That’s it!!!

Slim Man Cooks Ahi With Lemon Honey Sauce

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I saw a tour bus driving north on Route 29.  I don’t know why, but I started following it.  And when it pulled over to the side of the highway, so did I.

I had just come from the recording studio in DC.  I had written another song for an incredible rock singer named Brian Jack.  I wrote ‘em, he sang ‘em.

 

The two of us lived in a house on Sue Creek, in a neighborhood called Essex—a funky waterfront neighborhood outside Baltimore.  Essex was a part of town that people made fun of.  It was kinda redneck.  A little rough around the edges.

The house we shared was incredible—21 Woody Road.  It was right on the water.  We had windsurfers, Sea-Doos, all that stuff.  None of it was ours.  People parked their things on our pier, and they’d let us use them in return.

Jessie Dog

The previous tenant had been hauled off to jail for insurance fraud.  I remember the first time I met him.  He was standing in the huge living room.  It had cathedral ceilings, a big fireplace, and a massive floor-to-ceiling wall of glass doors that led to a deck, which overlooked the pier and the river.  I’ll never forget what the guy said…

“I laid a lot of pipe in this house.”

 

I thought maybe the guy was a plumber.  Then it hit me—he wasn’t talking about no drainage system.

Brian and I moved in soon after the guy was taken off to prison.  Brian Jack was real hot at the time.  We’d done a CD; it was doing well on radio.  He was selling out thousand-seat venues.  I wrote and produced the songs.  Brian sang ‘em.  We were a great team.  It was taking off like a rocket.

We had just come from working on a new song in the studio when we saw the tour bus and started following it.  When it pulled over to the side of the highway, I pulled right behind it.

The driver got out of the bus.  He came back to my car.  He asked me if I knew the way to Meriweather Post Pavillion.  I told him I did, and to follow me.  He got back on the bus.  I pulled in front of him, and he followed me down the highway.

Of course I knew Meriweather Post Pavilion.  It was half-way between Baltimore and DC.  I saw the Doors at Meriweather Post Pavilion on their first tour.  I saw Led Zeppelin at Meriweather.  They opened up for the Who back in 1969—the only time that ever happened.  Procol Harum, Paul Simon, Frank Sinatra.  I’d seen them all there.

So yes, I knew where Meriweather Post Pavilion was.  And when the tour bus driver asked me how to get there, I knew exactly how to go. The big ass tour bus followed me in my little Honda.

We reached the security gate, and I told them what was going on, and they waved me in.  They didn’t even ask any questions.  I’m guessing they were well aware that whoever was on that tour bus was running late.

I got the them to the backstage area.   The bus driver parked, got out, and thanked me a million times.  He was amazed that I had gotten them there so quickly.

But it was pretty amazing who was the next one off the bus…

It was B.B. King.  I love B.B. King.  When I was a kid, my Mom had brought home an album of his called Indianola Mississippi Seeds.  Man, did I love that record.  I must have played it a million times.

And here he was standing right in front of me.  B.B. King.

He thanked me.  He asked me and Brian if we’d like to stay and see the show.  He told us he didn’t have time to get us any tickets, so he asked if we’d like to see the show from the side of the stage.

A few moments later, B.B King and his band took the stage.  And that’s where we watched the whole show, from the side of the stage, a couple yards away from B.B. King and his band.  It was an amazing show.

After the show, B.B. King invited us back to his dressing room.  He signed autographs for folks, told stories…He was charming and laid-back and as gracious as could be.

B.B. signed a photo for me.

I still have the autographed photo.  All I need to do is figure out where the hell it is.

A crazy thing…

Bi-Rite

About a year ago, I saw Robert Plant in a funky little grocery store in Nashville called Bi-Rite.  I reminded Robert Plant about that show at Meriweather with The Who.

Know what he said?  Robert Plant told me he never wanted to open up for The Who that day.  I’m guessing that Robert thought Led Zeppelin was better than the Who, and that The Who should have been opening up for them.

But I told Robert Plant that I was glad they did the show that day, because that Led Zeppelin show at Meriweather Post Pavilion with The Who changed my life.

Another crazy thing…

The guy who signed me to Motown as a songwriter, Carl Griffin, produced a CD for B.B. King called “Live At The Apollo”.  It won a Grammy for both B.B. and Carl.  I mentioned this to B.B. at Meriweather, and he couldn’t say enough good things about Carl.  Me, neither!

Baked Ahi Tuna with Scallion Lemon Marinade

This sauce goes well with just about any fish.  Even delicately flavored fish like salmon would be good with this sauce.  After I made this sauce last night, I couldn’t stop test-tasting it.  I kept dipping the fork in, and tasting.  It was that delicioso.

I guess you could call it a marinade.  But it’s not.  You could call it a glaze, but it ain’t.  So I’ll call it a sauce.  I mixed this sauce in a small dish, whisked it around with a fork, poured it over the fish, and baked it in the oven for 10 minutes.

It’s quick.  It’s simple.  It’s healthy.  It’s delicious.  You can find the ingredients anywhere.

OTHER THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND…cooking times are always relative.   Some ovens run hot, some run cooler.  Also, the thickness of the fish also has to be kept in mind.  A thicker piece takes longer, a thinner piece less time.  I always rinse off the fish and pat it dry with a paper towel.  I use filets, with the skin removed.

INGREDIENTS

1 pound Ahi tuna filets, or any fish you like

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons fresh squeezed lemon juice (make sure to remove the seeds!)

1 tablespoon honey—I used raw organic honey

¼ cup white wine

2 tablespoons chopped scallions, also known as green onions—cut off the bottom root part, and the tops of the leaves

INSTRUCTIONS:

Pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees

Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl.  Whisk for a minute or so.

Line a baking dish with aluminum foil

Rub a teeny bit of olive oil on both sides of the fish, so it won’t stick to the foil

Place the fish on the foil

Pour the marinade over the fish

Put the baking dish in the oven

Bake for 10 minutes—less for a thinner piece of fish, more for a thicker piece

Take it out of the oven and test for doneness.  Flake the fish with a fork.  If it flakes easily, it’s done.  Don’t be afraid to cut into the fish, either—especially if it’s your first time cooking in the oven you’re using.  Take a good look at the piece of fish you’ve cut, and see if it looks done.  Keep in mind; the fish is going to keep cooking after you’ve taken it out of the oven.  So you want it a touch underdone.

Then, plate it up.  Use a scallion as garnish, or a slice of lemon, or both.  Drizzle a little of the marinade from the dish over the fish.

Serve it up.  And…

MANGIAMO!