I assume people meant my ethnicity, not the city I currently live in, but even that has no easy answer. Three decades of my life so far are sort of evenly spent in three different locations. The country I was born in but haven’t lived in for more than 2 decades. The country I spent all my teens therefore granted me a citizenship of. Then there’s the city I feel most at home, where it shaped me into an individual and till this day, still defines me. So which one are they talking about? Oh, and of course this shithole place where I’m currently residing in for the past 3 years, where I don’t even want my name to go anywhere near the close proximity of. I think it’s safe to say that I’m a product of the environment of a shrinking globe.
As much as I would like to apply total professionalism to this little web space of mine, a chain of unfortunate events has delayed this particular story, which I’m very excited about, for days. But now the demon-like jet lag is slowly but surely departing my body, and my dear boy is on his way to hopefully complete recovery, let me get back to the happier things in life. Like my satellite that comes with complete HD Food Network Channel. I wish I could take total credit for this dish, but it came from a little segment featuring a little Italian restaurant in the Lower East Side. I mean of course, why didn’t I think of this?! It’s the reincarnation of the Cajun dirty rice, reborn as an Italian in pasta form! Of course! Totally makes sense! Their sauce is a combination of liver puree and duck stock that delivers the brownish “dirt-look”. But why not make it even richer with this incredibly comforting and aromatic duck ragu that I make ALL the time.
Then came the effort the correct it. And then, TOTAL insomnia. As I tried pushing through the day without submitting to the brain-paralyzing exhaustion, the nights remained sleepless where I go in-and-out of consciousness and wake up feeling even more tired than the day before. The cherry on my cake was, on top of this build up of 14 days without proper sleep, that my oldest son, 11-year-old Maltese, Dumpling had to go through a completely unexpected surgery yesterday. If I haven’t properly introduced myself, this IS the top three on my worst-things-that-could-happen list. So all in all, the past week has been… really poor.
I’m going to start this story by making a confession. I have…never been to Rome.
I forged this recipe after the Rome episode from my favorite travel channel host, Anthony Bourdain’s show, “The Layover“. His show is one of the humble luxury I have being here, that I get to pay $20 on iTune which would otherwise be free in the US. No no no, Slingbox doesn’t work here. If the internet in China is personified it would be a 800 year-old granny with walking stick that is broken.
