Simmer Down

thing about my parents is that they love company, and they always have twice as much food as we need.”
    “Okay. Are you feeling better now?” Ade asked me.
    “Yeah, I’m just irritated. But I’m going to bake a hazelnut tart for tonight, and that’ll take my mind off this Hannah disaster.”
    I hung up, called my parents, and left a message on their machine to say that Adrianna and Owen would be joining us for dinner. Then I ran into Shaw’s supermarket and picked up what I needed for the tart. I had a limited repertoire of things I knew how to bake, but this hazelnut tart was always delicious, and it was perfect for the winter season. Sweet, rich, gooey, syrupy filling covered the bottom of the piecrust. The chopped hazelnuts rose to the top of the tart and took on a glistening sheen from the sugary ingredients. I’d never made the dessert for Josh but felt confident that it was a surefire way to impress even a chef.
    Cooking for a chef is scary. The week before Christmas, I’d tried on three occasions to make lace cookies. I could swear that I followed all three recipes to the letter, but my globs of dough had never melted into gorgeous, bubbling, lacy disks, and each time I’d had to throw everything in the trash can. Although I know what good food tastes like, I can’t always cook it myself, so when I cooked for Josh, I usually stuck with a few dishes that I trusted myself to make. There is nothing more embarrassing than serving icky food to a chef. Take the time I concocted what I thought was going to be a wonderfully rich and flavorful past^ dish made with tagliatelle, summer squash, zucchini, grape tomatoes, Calamata olives, garlic, onions, heavy cream, a splash of chicken stock, tons of fresh herbs, and Parmesan cheese. The thing had no flavor. None whatsoever. In fact, it had an outright absence of flavor. Josh was completely nice about my failure and even rescued the meal by tossing in a little balsamic vinegar, but I was still humiliated. Once in a while I came up with a recipe on my own that turned out to be delicious, but it never looked as attractive as Josh’s food did. My reliable consolation when I made an ugly-looking dish was a memory of a Martha Stewart Christmas special that had been on years ago, long before she was sent to Camp Cupcake. Martha and her guest, Julia Child, stood side by side erecting towers of cream puffs to form Christmas-treeshaped desserts. Martha’s was a two-foot-tall piece of confectionary perfection, and Julia’s was so far beyond lopsided that it threatened to fall over. But Julia Child was Julia Child, and you just knew that even if her cream puffs toppled onto the floor, they’d still taste a million times better than Martha’s. I was no Julia, but I did trust myself with a hazelnut tart.
    I arrived home to find an unfamiliar car parked in my space. Just what I needed. My condo was on the third floor of a house that had been converted into individual units, each of which came with an assigned parking spot in a little paved area next to the building. Since there is practically never any on-street parking available in the neighborhood, I assumed that the strange car belonged to some desperate soul who hoped no one would notice its presence. I parked temporarily in a neighbor’s spot and headed upstairs. I was climbing the steep steps that ran up the back of my building when I ran into Noah. Ick!
    Noah lived on the second floor. I’d made the mistake of having a fling with him last summer, just before I’d met Josh. Cocky, arrogant, slick, and good-looking, Noah had somehow tricked me into thinking he might be worth my time. Our short-lived relationship, if it could even be called that, had ended when I’d discovered that Noah felt the need to share himself with every twenty-something in the greater Boston area. The pig! Today, seated on the landing reading the paper, he was wearing nothing but sweatpants. It was a warm day for December in Boston, but it was not that warm. Any excuse to show off, and he was all over it.
    “Hello, Ms. Carter.” Noah grinned saucily.
    “Hello, asshole.” I kept walking. Noah showed no reaction to my usual greeting. I probably wasn’t the only woman who said hello to him that way.
    “I didn’t realize you were around,” he said. “My friend is parked in your space, but she’s leaving in a minute anyhow.” He flipped the paper over and let out a contented sigh obviously meant to suggest satisfaction with his