Many missed this vital addition because it was not posted in the newsletter: In it, I discuss the possibility of Urban Terrior and follow glow-in-the-dark whipits.
Below is this weeks Midnight Snack
Midnight Snack:Meals from the Nightward
Yaga’s Lasagna
When it comes to home cooking, the family makes the food.
That, my friends, is a play on words—and, in this reporter’s humble opinion, one of the greatest tricks of the trade.
This week, I had the privilege of tasting not just a home-cooked meal, but one that has been faithfully made for over 200 years. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s rewind.
Get this: it turns out the boy from the market—the one who helped me escape—goes to my school.
Veedat Johan Cobel is quiet and unassuming. Once I found out he’s a fan of the blog, I immediately apologized for my comment about him looking like a rodent. I was mortified. Veedat let me off the hook and said he gets his looks from his Yaga’s side of the family. After some more investigating, I discovered that Veedat lives on the Packer’s Wallow border of the Nightward.
Before we get to the best lasagna I’ve ever had in my life, I need to tell you about our sponsor. This week’s edition of Midnight Snack is brought to you by Vlad’s Cape Emporium.
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Now, back to the story.
Veedat and I walked into a red-brick tenement under the Herod Street Bridge in Packer’s Wallow. The hallway smelled of mothballs and garlic. By the way, Nocturnals are not afraid of garlic—that’s just a silly rumor. Nothing could be further from the truth.
We knocked on the door, and a pair of weepy eyes peered at us through the crack. Veedat’s Yaga fixed us with a look, part scolding, part puzzled. After a moment’s hesitation, she opened the door. As we entered, something skittered out of the kitchen.
“Don’t mind the cats.” I didn’t see any cats, but it was dark. “Vee, who is this lovely girl?”
I was welcomed into a low-lit kitchen. A copper pot bubbled on the range. Wide sheets of pasta hung from racks on a flour-covered table.
“You like cats, Luv?”
Yaga inclined her head toward an oversized cookie jar in the corner. I opened the heavy lid and suddenly felt a tickling on the back of my neck. When I turned, and looked down, I saw two giant prawns, their flicking feelers inches from my face. They stared up at me, pleading, with shining black eyes. I tossed them the little squares of dried shrimp food from the jar. They retrieved their meal and retreated to a carpet-covered cat tree in the living room to feed.
Yaga’s lasagna was the very definition of comfort food. The pasta was tender yet sturdy. The sauce was bright, saturated with the tang of garlic and the heat of dried pepper flakes. Balance was achieved through clouds of ricotta that cut the tomato’s acidity. And it wouldn’t be a meal in the Nightward without some unique addition; layers of rice created a new dimension of starchiness, cementing the dish in my mind as the most comfort-forward meal I’ve ever tasted.
We ate in the dim light of Yaga’s kitchen, by a rough brick wall decorated floor to ceiling with framed photographs of pale, solemn Cobels—all with a signature overbite. Each one looked down at us as if remembering the taste.
What is good home cooking without family? Without the weirdness, the secret recipes, the old stories passed down like recessive genes?
When it comes to home cooking, the family makes the food, sure—but doesn’t the food sometimes make the family?
—Anna Okkes