Game 60: Walter Matthau - Kasha and Pork Goulash
When you think of celebrity Laker fans, the usual suspects come to mind: Jack Nicholson, Dyan Cannon, Snoop Dogg, Anthony Keidis and Flea, Denzel Washington, etc. But how did they get their seats? Season tickets that close to the action don’t come up often and when they do, there’s a long list of people waiting in the wings. Like many things in Hollywood, it’s a little different if you’re a celebrity. When Denzel Washington won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in Glory, his star had risen high enough and his wallet had gotten fat enough to purchase a pair of tickets for himself. Those seats belonged to the original odd couple, no really, the ORIGINAL Odd Couple themselves, Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon.
Doris Day may have been the original celebrity Lakers fan, but Matthau and his good friend and on-screen partner weren’t far behind. Before Jack Kent Cooke opened The Forum and well before Jerry Buss turned Laker games into the Lake Show, basketball-loving celebrities like Day and Matthau watched Jerry West and Elgin Baylor play their games at the L.A. Sports Arena near USC. By the time the ‘80s rolled in and hot young stars like Rob Lowe were desperately trying to get tickets for Finals games, Matthau, a longtime Laker Faithful, had his at The Forum thanks to season ticket holder priority. Matthau even had a small role in one of the most violent events in NBA history. When Houston Rocket Rudy Tomjanovich was brutally suckerpunched by Laker Kermit Washington, Matthau was the first thing Rudy saw after getting up from the ground. With blood dripping down his face and spinal fluid leaking into his mouth, Tomjanovich saw Matthau sitting in a courtside seat and asked the Rockets’ trainer if the scoreboard had fallen on top of him.
Matthau may have grown up in NYC’s Lower East Side, the son of Lithuanian and Ukranian Jews, but he moved out to L.A. around the same time that the Dodgers and Lakers sought out a new home out west. Matthau and Lemmon were regulars at the Dodgers’ annual Hollywood Stars exhibition game. Sometimes they’d even play centerfield together as The Odd Couple. But the Lakers were his favorite. When the Lakers and Celtics had their first Finals match-up in two decades in 2008, Boston Herald writer Peter Gelzinis wrote that one of his favorite memories was Matthau telling him with a “wry smile how much he loved and admired the Celtics, but how much money he had on the Lakers.” I wouldn’t expect anything less from the man who brought Coach Morris Buttermaker to life.
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Kasha & Pork Goulash
2 eggs
1 cup whole buckwheat groats
Pinch of salt
3 cups chicken broth
Pieces of roasted or braised pork
1 can cream of celery soup
Beat eggs. Add 1 cup of whole buckwheat groats. Add pinch of salt. Pour mixture onto sizzling griddle and use fork to separate each groat as it cooks on griddle. Take 3 cups of simmering chicken broth, pour over kasha and simmer for 15 minutes. Take pieces of roast or braised pork, remove fat, chop finely, and toss into kasha with 1 can cream of celery soup.
In the ‘90s, Nickelodeon cornered the market on gross things that were slime adjacent. Gak was its main product, but I was always partial to Floam. FLOAM! It was Gak but with microbeads that gave it a crunchy texture. I never ate it but I spent hours as a kid rubbing it in between my fingers while I stared at Nickelodeon cartoons. Synergy.
I couldn’t find buckwheat groats anywhere. I looked in three different markets and ended up going with the internet’s substitute recommendation of quinoa. It’s nowhere near the same, but it would have to do. After roasting some chopped boneless pork in salt, pepper, thyme, and rosemary, I grilled the quinoa egg mixture and then poured in some sub-boiling chicken stock. My skilled JUMPED from the stove as the two mixtures had some kind of chemical reaction. I usually try to avoid eating food that causes the skillet to explode.
The end result was a mushy salty porridge. I am not having a great time cooking Eastern European food.
