— Nietzsche’s Angel Food Cake Sample
ERNEST HEMINGWAY’S
BATTERED TESTICLES
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DIRECTIONS:
1. In Spain, the balls of fighting bulls are most prized. It’s a fine day. Go to the ring.
2. But make the excitement belong to you! Jump in the ring! Shadow the matador, and keep your head down!
3. When the bull falls, kneel beside him. Stroke his soft, heaving underbelly. Taking a blade from your pocket, weep from sunburnt eyes, and whisper “Adios, amigo.”
4. When using the blade, think puerilely about your own eventual death. Briefly remember your birth.
5. Stink like fresh bull genitalia as you return to Paris by train. In your cold water flat, and as your infant son sleeps, rinse the blood off the bull’s balls. Soak them for an hour in water and lemon juice.
6. Something about those testicles reminds you of your own literary wound.
7. Do not worry. That was a long time ago. Since then you have cooked well, and you will find the courage to cook again, in one true burst.
8. And so with the economy of a transatlantic cable, snatch off the bull’s balls’ membrane and discard it. You whore.
9. Now squeeze on more lemon juice, and give the balls a quick dip into boiling water.
10. Nervous for the first time about the athleticism of your prose, slice the balls into quarter-inch fillets. Do it standing up, man, one-handed! This is why you carry the knife you would use in the company of tramps!
11. Ha! Take that! And that!
12. When did you start talking to yourself aloud?
13. Soon there is bound to be bad weather. Even so, you must find a way to make this recipe come true.
14. Turn to the egg and flour, for they are words of one syllable. Dip the fillets. Coat them. Feel their gentle touch on your fingers and be happy.
15. Move on to stale breadcrumbs. Plop those fillets into the dust. Laugh at the poof.
16. Now! Fry the testicles!
17. The balls will make a slow, hissing sound. Malice is everywhere.
18. Those may not be bull testicles at all.
19. A cow in Spain has committed suicide.
20. You’ve had three wives but are still alone.
21. Urinate. Look at the stars.
22. That last part was fun, wasn’t it? Celebrate. Crash a
small plane. “Plane,” you must say, “I loved you very much.”
23. Crash another.
24. You are deeply tired, too tired to eat.
25. Address a package to the Spanish matador. As an act of apology, put the battered testicles in it. Call out to a small boy on the street, and pay him to take the package to the bureau de poste. You, certainly, are in no shape to find it.
26. Crawl into bed. As your wife tends to your blissfully pre-verbal babe, pull a blanket over your head. Sleep face down on newspaper. Drool enough to make the ink bleed.
THE PAPERBACK IS AN EXCELLENT GIFT BOOK FOR COOKS WHO LOVE. TO READ.