Tsukuba Monogatari: Eighth post
When Koizumi-san was in California for training, my co-trainer Dan and I did a semi-social “Survival Cooking” session at Dan’s house to ensure that the trainees (all men), away from their families for 3+ months, would not starve. It was basically an excuse for some informal social time, but, forgetting that many Japanese dislike cheese, I thought I would show them how easy it was to make tortellinis in a few minutes.
Cooking in an unfamiliar kitchen is always a challenge. Also, when one generally cooks for one, it can be tricky to estimate amounts for groups. Armed with a couple of packages of dry tortellinis and jars of marinara sauce, I proceeded to boil water; then I threw in the tortellinis. Fifteen minutes later, voila! Right?
Well, I underestimated the degree to which tortellinis expand when boiled. The pot wasn’t big enough. As the minutes went by, tortellinis kept rising in the pot until they resembled a huge pod of beached whales. When the fifteen minutes were up, I drained the few remaining drops of water and turned the contents onto a plate. Voila! a dense mountain of tortellinis, molded into the shape of the pot. I always thought Japanese were supposed to be polite, but Koizumi-san and his colleagues were quite unrestrained in their mirth. The trainees called it “Pasta-san” (like Mt. Fuji).
Koizumi-san has never let me live it down. My fame spread throughout The Company, to the extent that people who were not even there knew the story. It was a great ice-breaker, actually, kind of like humiliating yourself at karaoke, and I ended up getting a LOT of mileage out of it.
“Tortellinis“: Courtesy of Sean T Evans. Licensed under cc by NC-ND 2.0
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