And while I have you here, I thought you might like to hear a great little shortcut for smoothing out a lumpy béarnaise...
"And while I have you here, I thought you might like to hear a great little shortcut for smoothing out a lumpy béarnaise..." Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for (RED)

I don't entirely know who Mario Batali is, but I've definitely seen his name a lot. I do know that he's a celebrity chef, which ranks just next to "celebrity fashion designer" and "race car driver" on the list of things I reserve a private right to reject the validity of, because as with fashion, food is not art, and as with car driving, what's so special about driving around fast in circles?

In a way, though, the celebrity chef thing seems worse to me. Gaining fame and wealth for aestheticizing sustenance in a time of scarcity (or, at least, of uneven distribution) seems especially ghoulish.

I'm not sure if Batali is the one who shouts out "razzle dazzle" or whatever, or the British one, or the abusive one, or the abusive British one, or the stubble one, or the motorcycle one, or one of the other ones, but to my mind, "celebrity chef" essentially means that you have accrued wealth beyond the dreams of avarice by successfully tricking rich assholes into waiting in line for the joy of paying $175 for a couple of sand dabs drizzled in some obscure sauce while starving people are banging on the plate glass window of your chain of massively lucrative restaurants in the hopes of not freezing to death.

Which is to say: of course they're common in 2018. "You can't break eggs without making an omelette," wrote the late, great Randall Jarrell. "That's what they tell the eggs."

Or maybe Batali is a really great cook and a fantastic guy—though multiple reports from his former colleagues and employees last month argued otherwise. Which is why he took a leave from his chain of 24 restaurants, and his TV show was reprimanded and "required to undergo training."

CNN reported that in a public letter posted on December 18, Batali acknowledged that he had made "many mistakes" and offered an apology to "my friends, my family, my fans and my team."

"My behavior was wrong and there are no excuses," Batali wrote. "I take full responsibility. Sharing the joys of Italian food, tradition and hospitality with all of you, each week, is an honor and privilege. Without the support of all of you — my fans — I would never have a forum in which to expound on this. I will work every day to regain your respect and trust."

In closing, as though making a special effort to ensure that the apology he had made rang as hollow as possible, Batali wrote the following post script:

"in case you're searching for a holiday-inspired breakfast, these Pizza Dough Cinnamon Rolls are a fan favorite."

Then he added a link to his very own recipe for the rolls. Many, many people commented on the profound lapse of judgment that attended this choice—like, would anyone have read the letter he wrote and been left wondering why he hadn't attached a recipe to it?—but until yesterday, no one on the whole internet had tackled the underlying question that all compulsive eaters of indefensible snacks secretly wondered about l'affaire des PDCR: Are they actually any good?

Geraldine DeRuiter, whose funny, excellent blog is called the Everywhereist, published I Made the Pizza Cinnamon Rolls from Mario Batali’s Sexual Misconduct Apology Letter. The piece is funny and excellent.

"I find myself fluctuating between apathy and anger as I try to follow Batali’s recipe, which is sparse on details," DeRuiter writes. "The base of the rolls is pizza dough – Batali notes that you can either buy it, or use his recipe to make your own.

"I make my own, because I’m a woman, and for us there are no fucking shortcuts. We spend 25 years working our asses off to be the most qualified Presidential candidate in U.S. history and we get beaten out by a sexual deviant who likely needs to call the front desk for help when he’s trying to order pornos in his hotel room.

Donald Trump is President, so I’m making the goddamn dough by scratch."

I don't mean to spoil it for you—writing, like baking apparently, is more journey than destination, full of tangents and observations that pile layers of meaning on top of each other: "Pizza dough is chewy and crispy, not tender – the latter is what you’d hope cinnamon rolls would be. It’s a savory recipe – incorporating white wine and a generous amount of salt – and I feel like he’s shoe-horning it into a dessert where it doesn’t belong. He’s cutting corners because he gets to cut corners."

In a sense, the whole project of making the rolls is really just a delivery device for DeRuiter's shrewd observations about what Batali's inclusion of "a half-written recipe" really signifies about the current moment.

"Most women don’t even need to hear the shitty comments made to us anymore," she writes. "We’ve heard them so many times, we can create our own."

You should read it.

But it may surprise you to learn that the rolls emerge sounding conspicuously worse than the tube of Pillsbury stodge you can get for $3 at any grocery store. Which are now all I want.