HINGEING ON POLPETTE
Sean T. Barnes
WORDS BY TILLY GRAOVAC
What happens when you combine a first date, a government-mandated lockdown and three over-eager housemates willing to try anything (in the kitchen) to impress someone they’ve never met? The following is a cautionary tale in recipe experimentation: sometimes you’re better off sticking to the original.
Just as enthralling as it is to hear a good date story, so too is it equally pleasurable to hear that didn’t go down smoothly. Is it because it’s humanising? Relatable? A secret dose of schadenfreude? Whatever the reason, we’re putting ours on the table. Yes, ours. One belonging to two of my housemates and me—because, for a time that lasted almost as long as Melbourne’s never-ending lockdowns, we were inextricably linked. We’d do everything together. Cook dinner every night. Watch every film. Play a game or two of Bananagrams. Read our books side by side in the sun. Together. So when C opted in as so many did to lockdown dating—what felt like one of the few sanctioned extra-curricular activities in a pandemic—M and I wholeheartedly supported it.
The excitement was palpable. The energy was titillating. Cast your mind back to the depths of lockdown—the threshold for excitement was low. A trip to the market? Yes! A masked walk to fetch a takeaway pastry? Obviously! Another lap of Princes Park? Obsessed!
So when C proposed going on a date outside the confines of our shabby Carlton home, she was met with a puzzled response from M and I about why she’d willingly separate from our cosy and comforting little group. We quickly shut the idea down. There would be no question—the lucky suitor would come to ours. If C was dating, then so were we.
With little else on our agenda, the three of us perched around our rickety coffee table, sandwiched between the poky kitchen and bathroom of our strangely-designed sharehouse. Suggestions were aired. Between us, we unfurled and examined ideas from every angle until we’d come up with the perfect date. A drink in the backyard that would morph into hosting an elaborate dinner. And so it was settled—we’d invite him over and cook.
Tell him to come early, we’ll do a cheese board, I said. M—the designated baker—would take care of dessert. Scouring my memory bank for a foolproof recipe for the main course, I mentally trawled the archives of dishes I’d made from my favourite chef, Anna Jones. Dependable, impressive and not-too-tricky Anna Jones. Each time I tried one of her recipes, it always worked out.
Leave it with me, I told them.
The time between our ‘roundtable of ideas’ and the date passed by in a whirl of feverish activity. The pét nat was purchased on one of our silly little walks. The cheeses were carefully positioned atop the only presentable wooden chopping board in the house. M and I were tasked with strict instructions to ‘look chill’ around the aforementioned coffee table—as if the cheese board and the touch-over-$25 bottle of wine were something we did every night and wasn’t solely because we had a date.
When he arrived, we took turns entertaining and conversing and charming (or so we thought).
As daylight in the ‘backyard’ (a concrete slab and a couple of withering pot plants) faded, it was time to serve the main course. Leaving M to engage with our date, C and I retreated to the kitchen, expecting to find a tray of New Age polpette (which for those unaware is Italian for meatballs)—made lovingly with a combination of zucchini, pistachio, ricotta and herbs.
And yet, dependable, impressive Anna Jones failed us. Or rather, we failed dependable, impressive Anna Jones.
As I cast my mind back to just an hour prior, the signs had all been there. I’d ignored C’s puzzled expression as we mixed grated zucchini and cooked quinoa with chopped herbs in our sturdy silver mixing bowl, assuring her that yes, I had definitely made these fritters before.
‘… just as we’d desperately reached for yoghurt only to find it had turned bad, so too did we clutch at the proverbial straws of conversation topics only to find that they, too, had turned bad. As quickly as the date had begun, it was over.’
As we plunged our hands into the collection of ingredients, I shrugged off the watery zucchini residue at the bottom of the bowl, which had left the mixture unmistakably wet and sticky. C had hesitantly asked whether we definitely just put the damp balls in the oven on a baking tray, but I’d swatted her away to choose an outfit—one artfully curated by M.
Instead, the result was as if the soggy zucchini and gloopy quinoa, once previously resembling relatively even spheres from our diligent rolling, had simply given up, and had instead collapsed into pools of mush on the baking tray. Not even our surprisingly sturdy oven could save them.
We could give it a few minutes, I told C, who by this time was barely able to stifle her laughter.
We have time, we can save them, I insisted.
But time we had not. A looming curfew cast a shadow over the evening; we were reluctant to assume he’d stay past the government-mandated order to remain inside your own home between the hours of 9 pm and 5 am. Pulling the tray from the oven, we examined the wet, sticky pancakes before us. C poked one, but it refused to retain its shape. Quickly, we grabbed a spatula and tried to gently pick one up from the tray. The soggy mixture seeped through the gaps of the utensil and back onto the tray below. Now hot with embarrassment and desperately trying to mask the sound of our laughter, I pulled out a frying pan and C doused it liberally with oil before slapping portions of the wannabe polpette onto the surface. C was then quickly ushered back to her date to trade places with M, who’d used our group’s telepathic energy to realise something was amiss in the kitchen. Rewarded for her efforts, M was hastily given the honour of parading the baked-then-fried (now blackened and crumbling) polpette into the dining room, while I made a last-ditch effort to fry off the remnants. C returned to the kitchen to source condiments.
I threw open the fridge, attempting to muffle our laughter in the cavernous space within. We grabbed the usuals: Lao Gan Ma crispy chilli oil, sriracha ... anything flavoursome enough to cover the sad excuse for a main we were serving the poor guest. Yoghurt? Why not. Desperate times called for desperate measures. C peeled back the lid to reveal flecks of mould encased in the weeks-old creamy Greek yoghurt. No matter. An easy fix. We scraped out the evidence of the out-of-date yoghurt and slapped the container down on the dining table.
Despite insistence from our polite guest that it tasted just fine, and despite a generous helping of M’s apple crumble to help mask the taste, the failed polpette was arguably where we lost our footing. For just as we’d desperately reached for yoghurt only to find it had turned bad, so too did we clutch at the proverbial straws of conversation topics only to find that they, too, had turned bad. As quickly as the date had begun, it was over.
Perhaps he was merely unsettled by the looming 9 pm curfew, or maybe a three-course meal with not one, but three of us, told him all he needed to know.