I always thought it was just a little affectation of mine that when I’d be “making my sauce,” I’d do it with flair. I would don my “Roma” apron (the only time Carol doesn’t have to demand I wear an apron when cooking with oil or tomatoes). Then I queue up “Italian dinner music” on Pandora, pour a glass of chianti into an old jelly glass (mandatory), start opening cans and then chopping garlic and onions. Quite performative for a simple spaghetti sauce, right?

My chef Javier, the cooking half of Language and Cooking, poured a glass of Andalusian sherry called Manzanilla (think battery acid cut with paint thinner), tuned in some Spanish guitar music on his speaker and then had me chopping onions, garlic and part of my pinky.

  So, imagine my surprise on my first of a three-day Spanish language and cooking class that, after a grueling hour and a half with Ruth (my language instructor) of pretending to understand the difference between the short past tense and the long. (The Spanish language is nothing if not elegantly indecipherable. It has to do with whether you did something one time and then were done with it – like I should have with Spanish – or whether you did it over and over again with no sign of it ending but expecting a different result? – as I am currently doing with Spanish.) Then, filled with a level of confidence that I wouldn’t even be able to boil water, I was led from the Spanish classroom to the Spanish kitchen , where I was treated to the following:

  My chef Javier, the cooking half of Language and Cooking, poured a glass of Andalusian sherry called Manzanilla (think battery acid cut with paint thinner), tuned in some Spanish guitar music on his speaker and then had me chopping onions, garlic and part of my pinky. (That last ingredient did almost happen, but only after the second glass of battery acid which I was slowly discovering to be an acquired taste.)

 
By the time the industrial aperitif had given way to a very nice, dry chardonnay, I had somehow assisted in the production of a wonderful chicken and pork paella classica, which was consumed with much gustaria along with perhaps my invention of a third past tense that might or might not refer to something that either did or did not take place within any dimension of time, (I’m calling it the wine past.)

  I waddled home and regaled Carol with stories of Spanish cooking set to flamenco guitar and Andalusian sherry that left her wondering how I managed to get through the first day without third degree burns or coming home with less than ten fingers.

 
In the days to come, we’d be tackling the simple yet delicate tortillas de camarones, a kind of shrimp fritter, fideua, a sort of upscale seafood Rice a Roni, tortilla de patatas, a tasty frittata where the art is all in the wrist to prevent wearing it instead of eating it, and carrillada, a three-day slow cook of some of the sweetest pork cheeks you’ll never kiss (unless the pig is wearing lipstick?)

 
All in all it was a wonderful three days of chopping, brothing, simmering and power blending that I can’t wait to try when I get back home. I have the apron and the music. All I’ll need is the Manzanilla. (I’ll check the shed for leftover solvents. A vintage WD-40 with a twist of lighter fluid should bring back the memories.)