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The summer I turned 13 was my peak awkward era. I had braces and glasses. I had not figured out how to deal with my recently-curly hair, which had always been wavy, but now formed ringlets. I was very excited about my new bathing suit, which was Campari-red with black trim, extremely high cut, and had actual working zippers that ran vertically from the highest point of my hip to my under-pits. The first time my dad saw me in it, he told me to go change into a different one. I would not, which he tolerated, mostly because when I wore it to the lakeside beach, he barely looked up from the stack of newspapers, books, and magazine copy that he was consumed with all day.
The lake was in a Connecticut town called Salisbury, where my parents had rented a summer house. It didn’t have a pool, so we went to the lake every weekend day. Unlike the colonials that surrounded us, our rental was modern, boxy, and little; we only ever called it the Mouse House, then and now. I can barely remember a single thing I did last week, but I remember the tall plate-glass windows and sloped skylight that ran alongside and above the (little) kitchen, which had an L-shaped counter onto the living room. As this was a time very pre-cell phone, there is almost no way to verify my visual recall, which is fine, because memories are weird and untrustworthy anyway.
Food memories, though, are very specific and completely transporting. What I remember clearly is the big bowl of chopped high-season tomatoes and diced mozzarella that sat on the kitchen counter all day whenever my mom, Carole, was bringing a side dish to a friend’s place that night. The tomatoes and cheese were essentially submerged in extra-virgin olive oil, seasoned with thinly sliced raw garlic and lots of salt and pepper.
My mom would prep the tomatoes and mozz in the morning and then let the mixture sit all day in that warm and sunny spot, where the tomato juices mingled with the mozzarella liquid, and the olive oil was absorbed into both. It was my habit to cruise through the kitchen at regular intervals to peel back the plastic wrap and snag a bite of cheese from the bowl, keeping secret my absolute delight in the bouncy texture and fatty juices. On its own, that mixture would make an unbelievable bruschetta topping.
An hour or so before serving, or packing up for the car ride wherever we were going, she would put on a pot of water and turn it into an actual dish. I’m sure sometimes she couldn’t find radiatore, the (yep) radiator-shaped pasta that were first choice for this recipe. But the radiatore are the Proust madeleines in this story. After draining—and never rinsing—Carole would pour the steamy pasta right onto the tomato-mozz situation along with a big handful of fresh basil. Then she would toss, scooping everything up from the bottom of the bowl and spooning it over the top, until the tomatoes were warm and even softer, and the mozzarella started to melt into long skinny strands. This was the cheese pull of my youth.
I could have just made exactly that dish for this week’s video. But you don’t really need a recipe to recreate it, so for my version, I added some elements inspired by the cooking things I’ve learned in the years since. There are anchovies for oomph (and they’re eternal besties with tomato and mozz), a few extra herbs because I always overbuy in the summer, and a splash of vinegar to make this feel a little more salad-y.
For the record, Carole signed off on those changes, because she also loves to Spin It. I don’t have a big plate glass window in my galley kitchen in Brooklyn, but the first bite I took of my recreated recipe took me right back to one of the sweet and joyful feelings I got to enjoy during a very cringey time. The bathing suit, though, is retired forever.