Death of an Italian Chef

The recipe I will be sharing today is one of my absolute favorite pasta recipes! This one, I have to say, is very close to my heart, because it includes one of my all-time favorite ingredients in any dish—cheese! And this particular recipe boasts not one, not two, but three—count ’em—three different cheeses! Is your mouth already watering like mine?

I have loved cheese since as far back as I can remember. My mother once said I ate so much cheese, she expected me to sprout whiskers, which reminds me of a story that happened last month. Bruce and I had driven down to Portland for a weekend getaway off the island. A must-stop whenever we take a road trip on the 95 freeway to southern Maine is at the Cheese Shop on Washington Avenue. Whenever I step into that shop, it’s like I have died and bypassed God’s waiting room, entering directly into heaven! What a wide variety of delectable cheese to choose from! Anyway, on that particular trip, in addition to the twelve blocks for me, I also picked up a nice Gouda for my brother Randy, who loves nothing better than to make a nice comforting Gouda mac-and-cheese casserole every now and then, especially when his husband Sergio is out of town, or working those long overnights at the police department.

I already knew what I was going to make when we got home with my bounty of cheeses. It was no contest: My simple, but life-changing, three-cheese rigatoni. So a few days later, I got Bruce settled into his recliner in the living room with one of his favorite crime novels, so I could have the kitchen all to myself to prepare my rigatoni dish. I had just gathered my ingredients, when my phone started ringing on the counter. It was my brother Randy.

“Hi, Randy! Have you tried the Gouda I brought over for you yet?” I asked into the phone.

All I could hear was heavy breathing.

“Randy, are you there?”

More heavy breathing.

“Hello?”

That’s when I heard my brother frantically whisper, “He’s coming!”

I was starting to get a little nervous.

“Who, Randy? Who’s coming?”

Before he had a chance to answer, there was a short scream and then the phone went dead. I ran for the back door, yelling at Bruce to get his butt out of the recliner and come with me! Something was seriously wrong at Randy’s house and we needed to get there right away!

We broke speed records flying across town to Randy’s sprawling house off the shore path with breathtaking ocean views. Bruce screeched to a stop on the gravel driveway, and we both jumped out of the car and bolted toward the front door. I didn’t bother ringing the bell. We just charged inside, where I ran from room to room, yelling like a madwoman as Bruce tried catching up to me, huffing and puffing.

Suddenly I stopped cold in the middle of the living room.

I heard Randy calling for help from upstairs.

Bruce and I bounded up the steps to the second floor to the main bedroom. The door was shut. Bruce pushed in front of me and tried the knob. It was locked. He began pounding his fist on the door, screaming Randy’s name. Before he got an answer, Bruce ordered me to step aside, and then he backed up into the hallway and charged like a bull, full speed ahead with his head down, shoulder out. He hurled his whole body at the door, just as the door was flung open by a relieved-looking Randy, who was so happy to see us. Poor Bruce went flying headfirst right though the doorway and landed with a loud thud on the bedroom floor, which unfortunately for Bruce, was made of hardwood.

I hugged Randy, asking him if he was okay and what in the world was going on. Randy said he would explain over coffee, and we were halfway out of the room, when Bruce asked if we would mind helping him up off the floor first. We rushed over and hauled an achy Bruce to his feet before retreating down to the kitchen for pie and coffee and an explanation.

Apparently Randy’s saga had begun a few days earlier, while he was enjoying his morning coffee, sitting on the couch in the living room and watching the morning news. Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he thought he spotted something scurry across the floor. When he got up to investigate, his eyes fell upon something very large and furry running around to the other side of the kitchen island.

At this point Bruce interrupted Randy, and asked, “Large and furry?”

Randy sighed. Maybe in hindsight, it wasn’t all that large or all that furry, but it really didn’t matter because anything running around in his kitchen was terrifying, especially since the house was built like Fort Knox and absolutely no woodland creatures of any kind were ever supposed to get inside.

Randy then went on to explain that he headed around the kitchen island in time to see a tail disappear between the refrigerator and the counter, and that’s when he went into a full-blown panic. He grabbed his phone and ran to the bathroom off the pantry and locked himself inside. He stuffed towels under the door for added protection, then called Sergio to tell him he needed to come home immediately to get rid of a gargantuan-sized rodent that had invaded their home.

When it comes to household pests, it’s safe to say my brother Randy will never be cast as the lead in a remake of Braveheart.

Sergio was having an unusually busy day at the police station, and could not come home to deal with this particular crisis, and so he told Randy he would just have to take care of the problem himself. Now to Sergio, who grew up on a farm in Brazil, this meant that Randy should place a simple trap down and catch the mouse, but in Randy’s mind, this was far too big for one person to handle. He needed to call in reinforcements and that meant the best exterminator in town, Mr. Peabody, whose slogan was, “No More Mr. Mice Guy.”

Mr. Peabody proved extremely helpful, and after a thorough search of the entire house, summed up the good news. In the whole three-story house, there was only one entry point for a rodent, and that was under the kitchen sink where a board had come loose. So Mr. Peabody set his cheese-baited trap, using some delicious Gouda Randy was happy to provide, and told Randy he would be back in twenty-four hours, once the unwanted guest was caught, to dispose of it and seal up the point of entry.

Randy asked how he would know if and when the creature was caught. Mr. Peabody gently explained, “If you hear a loud snap underneath the sink, then you will know your worries are over!”

This did not calm Randy’s nerves, it just freaked him out even more, to the point where he thought moving to a bed-and-breakfast for a few days might be a good idea. But ultimately he decided it was just one mouse (yes, by now the large, furry creature had been downgraded to a tiny mouse), so he could tough it out, at least until Sergio got home.

The next day, Mr. Peabody returned on schedule, but when he opened the cupboard underneath the sink, he shook his head in surprise and pulled out the empty trap. Apparently, the mouse managed to eat all the cheese without setting off the trap. Mr. Peabody piled on more Gouda this time on two separate traps, hoping this would finally do the trick, and told Randy to give it a couple more days.

Which brings us to the frantic phone call where this story started.

After Mr. Peabody left, all that talk of cheese had given Randy a craving. He figured a big Gouda mac-and-cheese casserole would relax him and do wonders for his frayed nerves. It would also go a long way toward patching up things between him and Sergio. Apparently, Sergio blew a gasket when he found out Randy hired Mr. Peabody, whose hourly rate was fifty dollars, rather than just set a two-dollar mousetrap! But he adored Randy’s Gouda mac-and-cheese, so it was the perfect peace offering.

Randy began gathering his necessary ingredients, first shredding the cheese at the counter. He turned around just for a second to grab a bowl from a cabinet, and when he turned back, right there on the kitchen counter, not six inches away from him, was the unwanted guest, nibbling on a piece of Gouda cheese (Randy swore that little mouse was smirking at him too!). That’s when Randy ran upstairs and locked himself in the bedroom and called me!

And as Randy poured us coffee, feeling better that there was safety in numbers and he wasn’t going to have to face this ordeal alone, that’s right about the time we all heard a loud snap.

After all that excitement, a cocktail was in order. Randy loves his mojitos, but I am not really a big fan of mint. However, that completely changed when my daughter Gemma, aware of my aversion to mojitos, emailed me a recipe using basil instead, which I gave a try. I just loved it! And I am positive you will too! The bonus is I have an overabundance of basil in my fresh herb garden, so now I have something else to make besides pesto for my pasta.