*UPDATE: Our math was corrected (we kid you not) in an email from a former Goldman Sachs executive director: "Please note that 1 square meter = 10.76 square feet. Based on the correct conversion ratio, prices per square foot in Paris seem to be in line with New York." Is that true? Can any Francophile mathematicians set us straight?

- Max Abelson

Provence Lights Up Broadway

The zaniest dessert on the menu at Aix is the licorice panna cotta, served with tangerines and bergamot sauce. "It tastes of cigarette butts," said my husband. "But it's actually very good."

This strange comment came at the end of a meal that had included foie gras in a pistachio crust, pistou laced with diced raw sardines, and venison with cocoa-coffee sauce-not the sort of dishes you'd expect to find on the Upper West Side, where this modern French restaurant has become a smash hit.

Didier Virot was formerly executive chef at JoJo and Jean Georges and had a short-lived restaurant bearing his name in a midtown boutique hotel called the Dylan. I liked Virot's food very much, but the dining room belonged in a provincial hotel in Bulgaria. At the door, a scraggly metal bird was perched on one leg near a stand of matchbooks printed with the restaurant's name. As we waited for our table one evening, my husband, who had left his Roger Tory Peterson field guide at home, stared at the bird and the name on the matchbooks, trying to make the connection. " Qu'est-ce que c'est q'un 'virot '?" he asked the hostess at last.

" Un virot … " she struggled for a moment before answering: " C'est le nom du chef !"

Virot is a rare bird. Now extinct in midtown, it has found its niche in a neighborhood known more for lox and bagels and strollers parked by the table than far-out, cerebral cuisine. The three-level restaurant, designed by Etienne Coffinier, is decorated in bright Provençal red, orange and yellow. The tables in the center of the downstairs dining room, where the overhead lighting is as bright as an afternoon in Provence, are placed comfortably far apart. But it's annoying, when you've booked three weeks in advance, to be marched straight to the back to a high-backed orange plastic booth that feels like the inside of a Tupperware bowl. Places had been laid at either end of our long table, and two in between on the same side, as though set for a stage. We were only four, and in order to have a conversation we had to huddle together in the corner.

Many of Mr. Virot's dishes resemble works of art: The food is bright and colorful and is served on giant plates (some made from glass), or in gigantic bowls with orange and blue rims. The foie gras, which I first tasted at his last restaurant, still looks like a miniature furry bath mat, studded with pistachio and garnished with potato and quince crumble. The crispy outer coating provided an intriguing foil for the buttery foie gras, its richness cut with an apricot coulis and a splash of balsamic vinegar. Another dish consisted of thin slices of tuna sashimi set out on a glass platter with cucumber strips, coriander and a bite of a fresh horseradish and sheep's milk yogurt sauce. Gnocchi-so often heavy and boring-were airy and delicate, and served with small wedges of Jerusalem artichokes in a black truffle cream. So far, so good.

Mr. Virot likes to create dishes that deliver a surprise, if not a shock. Where did he get the idea of serving pistou with a tartare of sardines? The soup itself was made with a good, thick vegetable broth, but it tasted as though someone had dropped in the day's catch by mistake. Crabmeat cannelloni were also a disappointment, wrapped in a leathery dough, and the millet pancake served with the roast pork was as dry as a ship's biscuit. Daurade, on the other hand, was a revelation: It arrived on a green pool of fennel sauce that was subtle but pervasive, and was garnished with slivered shiitake mushrooms and cooked radishes.

The chef's sautéed venison loin is inspired, served with roast vegetable purée and a lovely, crisp quince beet strudel and a rich, dark cocoa-coffee sauce that brought out the flavor of the meat. Roast chicken-which my husband ordered with a martyred air, since the others at the table had already put in their choices and it was one of the few things left-was one of the best I've tasted anywhere. The crisp-skinned bird, which had a real farmyard flavor, was glazed with honey and star anise and came with mushrooms, artichokes and roasted fingerling potatoes.

Aix has a particularly good wine list-predominantly French, with over 300 selections, many of them from the Loire Valley, Alsace, Provence, Corsica and the Southwest. There are plenty of choices at the lower end, too.

Mr. Virot brought along his pastry chef, Jehangir Mehta, who previously worked at Jean Georges and Union Pacific. He is one of the most original pastry chefs I've come across in New York. Some of his creations taste like food from another planet. (I'll never forget his astonishing caramel tapioca tart, which was seasoned with sea salt and served under a slippery layer of marinated mango. It was weird, all right-but I loved it.) His Provence salad is made with candied celery, slivers of melon and green tomato, no less, and topped with a dark green zeppelin made not with herbes de Provence, but mint. It's interesting, even refreshing, but not as satisfying as the apple rosemary brioche, which comes with honey calvados sauce and a lovely citrus ice cream. The nut soufflé is first-rate, served with caramelized chestnuts and a delightful sauce that has the consistency of tar, while the roasted pineapple sorbet that comes with the pineapple ricotta cake is a revelation.

As for the licorice panna cotta, it got my husband thinking along similar lines as the chefs at Aix. "It makes me wonder why no one has developed a cuisine of cigarettes, something served with 'an infusion of minted Gauloises' or 'smoked over a packet of Gitanes'-dishes you can enjoy in the smoking section of a restaurant," he said. "Or, once Bloomberg's law goes into effect, this could even be what passes for smoking."

Aix is an odd restaurant with some fine food. You may not love everything on the menu, but you sure as hell won't get bored.

Let the Spirit of the St. John family embrace

You and yours as we discover

The magical wonder of this

Holiday Season.

This Hallmarkish little sonnet, along with a rather tarty window mannequin traipsing through a bejeweled Winter Wonderland in a shellacked wig, currently adorns the holiday windows of the St. John fashion store on Fifth Avenue. Don't mock! The good people of St. John are just trying to be appropriate. Laura Bush, too! No matter how dark the hour, the President's wife always has a little try-one-of-my-home-baked-muffins smile upturning the corners of her mouth. At one televised memorial, I even saw her giving a toodle-oo wave to her mother-in-law as she exited the church.

May courage, strength and spirit

Lead us hand in hand through

This wondrous holiday Season,

the St. John sonnet continues. Oy vey ! Keep commerce and tragedy separate. And, re 9/11, give me Churchillian solemnity or don't bother.

Planning a traditional–and potentially twee–holiday party? Don't do it! This season, it's more important than ever to relieve your guests of the obligation to make serious conversation. To that end, why not go to the opposite extreme and throw a product party, complete with sales reps? Apart from being novel and divertingly camp, product parties–or "home parties," as they're called in the industry–are a terrorist-proof way to do your holiday shopping. Additionally, the presence of a poised spokesperson-stranger will guarantee that your more obstreperous, alcohol-oriented friends moderate their behavior. Choose from the following:

Option No. 1. Host a Mary Kay maquillage party, and don't forget the black armbands. Yes, the great Mary Kay–the Dallas-based cosmetics goddess–popped her clogs on Thanksgiving at the ripe old age of 83. A lethal combo of Barbara Cartland, Liberace and Bill Gates, this God-fearin', pink-lovin' superwoman built, over the course of 38 years, a staggering $1.2 billion cosmetics empire. The key to her success was her system of "independent sales directors," upon whom she lavished recognition, encouragement and pink Cadillacs. There are currently 850,000 of these super-sellin' beauty vixens worldwide, any one of whom would be more than happy to come to your house and host a Mary Kay event. Yes, despite the recent cataclysmic loss of M.K. herself, it's business as usual over at Mary Kay. To quote the memorial Web site, "the torch is carried on."

To find a Mary Kay beauty consultant in your area, simply visit the consultant locator at www.marykay.com and type in your zip. Your Mary Kay event can be themed to match the needs of your invitees. For example: a Tootsie Footsie pedicure party; Pamper Perfect, a glam way to beat holiday stress; and Teen Time, an opportunity for youngsters to learn proper skin care and makeup-application techniques with products designed especially for teens. The latter event would also be great for your middle-aged friends who have been mainlining botox this year and now have acquired teenagerish skin.

Re the Mary Kay product: I'm assured by West Coast makeup superstar Jeff Judd that the goods are top-notch. "A few of my celebs secretly use them. They're not as glam as Chanel, but they're not tested on animals. I swear by the Simply Glowing Shimmering Body Gel [$14 for 3.75 fl. oz.] when I'm doing rap and hip-hop music videos. It gives a fantastic glow to darker skin." Mr. Judd credits Mary Kay with sparking his interest in maquillage . "Growing up in Oregon, I would live for the day the Mary Kay lady would come to the house in her pink Cadillac and matching shift dress. I wanted to eat the makeup."

Option No. 2. Shocking statistic of the week: A Tupperware party is–according to the official press kit–started every two seconds somewhere in the world. Nearly half a century has passed since Earl Tupper (he perfected the plastic) and Brownie Wise (she spearheaded the party program) revolutionized the humdrum lives of American housewives with this airtight system of food storage. Earl and Brownie burped their way into the homes of America and made Tupperware parties as famous as the product itself–and the brand is still going strong. The colors have changed, but the functional kitschy items–cake takers ($25), bacon keepers ($9.50), snackatizer trays ($25)–are all still available. To find your Tupperware consultant, log onto www.my.tupperware.com.

Caution: A Tupperware party could really fall flat if you try and inflict it on a bunch of earnest, irony-is-dead-type friends. If in doubt, augment the proceedings with a celebrity look-alike. What could be more surreal than having a mysterious celebu-stranger lurking at your Tupperware party–sort of like a more personable version of the Ancient Mariner? Call Elaine Chéz of the Chéz Company (718-956-7287), or check out some of Elaine's options at www.lookalike-stars.com: e.g., Howard Stern, Jackie Mason, Monica Lewinsky, Joey Buttafuoco, etc., etc. (A one-hour visitation starts at $300.) Elaine is responsive to requests for obscure celebs: She was recently asked for–and successfully delivered–a Wolf Blitzer.

Option No. 3. Looking to freak people out? Then host a Risqué Business party. According to their Web site, a Risqué Business "pleasure party" provides an opportunity to "spend a fun-filled evening with friends, family members and co-workers to learn about and explore a variety of sensual products." A Risqué Business sensuality consultant will, free of charge, come to your home and introduce you and your chosen group of funsters to a variety of products: Piña Colada-flavored Lickety Lube ($10), Body Pudding (chocolate or strawberry, $9), scented massage oils, playful teddies and an embarrassingly comprehensive range of "enhancers," a.k.a vibrators and cock rings (see: Dual Wabbit, $16; Swan Dive, $35; Pumpin' Peter, $58).

Bawdy, arty drunks and erotic-art collectors will love the 70's Plato's Retreat vibe. Call sensuality consultant Jenae LaCroux (877-551-SEXY). Caution: Most family members will be appalled, and prim co-workers may well try to sue you for emotional distress. In other words, it's a great thing to inflict on a bunch of twee people you hope to never see again.

Season's greetings!

"All I have to do is nail my wife once every two weeks, and I get to keep it," he said. Bleary-eyed, he took a swallow of his drink.

"Tough work," Guest No. 2 chimed in. Chuckles.

"Especially getting her off first," No. 3 volunteered. Gales.

Now I have no real problem with dirty jokes. It's just that I don't love guys making them at their wives' expense. And I prefer them funny.

"It's not so bad," our host offered, his words evaporating into the twilight like the flicker of the fireflies. He finished his drink. He sighed. His gaze was distant, his prominent jaw muscles bunching as he set in to chewing on his ice.

I'm new in the suburbs; it took me a moment to realize he wasn't joking.

During the course of the next three hours (which felt like 10), I was plied relentlessly with hors d'oeuvres by the catering staff, with drinks and cocaine by some guests, with information by others.

It seems our hostess-the host's wife, an attractive, vivacious fortysomething woman-had built a fine career for herself in investment banking over the past decade. While the host left a family business for an erratic career as a financial adviser, the hostess plugged away. He'd been unemployed at various times over the past three years until recently. Meanwhile, the company the wife worked for was bought, and she cashed out to the tune of about $8 million. She'd bought the house.

The host had quite a reputation for partying. During a recent party he'd thrown, he'd passed out and been carried upstairs, only to awake vomiting, with blood shooting from his nose. This was all told to him, since he'd blacked out.

I drifted through the living room, tuning in to conversations.

One male guest's custom was to drink beyond all repair so that there was absolutely no question who-he or his wife-had to drive home. He was in observance of his custom again this night.

Another male guest shared his dream: bending his wife over the top step of their swimming pool. Yet another boasted openly about "getting" his wife in the shower the previous weekend.

One man at the party, a good earner, was the envy of all the others. He was building an expansive addition to his already spacious house. The reason: to accommodate a ping-pong room-not for his kids, but for himself.

The tone of these conversations harked back to at least the 70's, to those I'd overheard between my parents' friends. Or perhaps even further, to the 50's, to ones I'd seen on television and in movies. In those, the women, huddled in the kitchen, sneaked cigarettes and complained about (or bragged about) the sex they had to make do with, or provide, in direct relation to their latest shopping conquest. The talk conjured a time when men were men, and women wrangled the Tupperware.

But now, it was the women who were in the trenches and the men who picked up their daughters at ballet classes and handled the ordering-in. I felt like I was in a Sinclair Lewis novel, with coarser dialogue and the roles reversed.

This reversal could have been a healthy, welcome one-strong women sharing the burden of earning and decision-making, the way the Cosmo articles claimed they should-except for the toll it seemed to be taking on the men. They had the air of stand-up eunuchs as they hid their desperation behind rocks glasses and took off-color pot shots at their spouses.

Across the room, a female advertising executive-also well-kept and fortysomething-regaled the assembled ladies with a tale of a giant water rat that had menaced the household. She'd had a showdown with the aggressive rodent in the kitchen, while her husband, "the pussy" (her term for him), refused to answer the call of duty and instead cowered in the bedroom.

I only half-heard this tale, because I was in a conversation with said husband and a few other guys. The husband told of a company retreat he'd been on; the executives he worked with-men and women-rotated in choosing each year's destination. Last year, a female vice president chose a hunting lodge where the urban-suburban white-collar bunch had spent three or four days in an effort to find and shoot white-tailed deer.

Dinners at night consisted of each hunter contributing a dish. I heard the long-form version of the husband's Caesar-salad recipe, right down to his searching the local market for a seasoned bowl in which to make the salad.

The female exec tramped the hills in bitter cold, looking for her buck until the last possible moment, while the men waited in the warm lodge, bags packed, for the last day and a half-hoping, I suppose, that the Romaine stayed crisp.

I looked around at the men in the living room. Madras shirts, bellies, baldness. The women, if not dynamite, were at least high-octane in comparison. The old saw that there were always younger, prettier women out there had apparently motivated these ladies, while the same wisdom had encouraged us, the men, to let ourselves go intellectually, if not physically, slovenly.

If these wives hadn't yet wondered what else was out there for them, I thought, maybe they should. It couldn't be long, I predicted as I drained my raspberry vodka, before young male muffins as trophy second husbands come into vogue for these still-good-looking, still-young, self-moneyed wives.

Everyone's got their reasons for leaving the city and trying something else, especially lately. I'd moved out to a small house on a wooded, hilly, rugged two and a half acres harboring an isolationist fantasy: I couldn't see my neighbors, they couldn't see me. But that's not the way it went. Instead my wife, an attorney, said it was "time for us to meet friends."

So much for fantasies. Here I was, at a late-season garden party that she told me to come to. She was across the room laughing it up with the gals, while I glanced furtively at the other men, exhibiting all the self-determination of the average grunt in Vietnam-ducking low, waiting for orders, fully expecting to get greased.

He entered his apartment, a duplex that is mostly utilized by his wife of over 30 years, Georgianne, who works in Manhattan as a casting agent. To the right, in the spacious living room, were two enormous canvases painted by his good friend, Julian Schnabel. To the left, with a breakfast nook looking out onto West 80th Street, was the kitchen. Pottery bowls with chopped vegetables–zucchini, summer squash, and onion–sat on the counter, above which, on a shelf, was an old cigar box painted with the word "Smile" next to a photograph of a cute cat, who, he explained, crestfallen, succumbed to "that feline leukemia." In the corner, near a telephone was a black-and-white print of Jerry Lewis, doing his signature drinking-glass-in-the-mouth bit, taken at the Tony Awards.

Christopher Walken crushed a whole bulb of garlic with alarming force on the countertop, as though he were performing CPR, and began chopping the garlic with a menacing-looking butcher knife. He pulled out a Lincoln Wear Ever fry pan outfitted with a blue plastic Cool Handle II, put it down on the white Whirlpool electric stove, and began rummaging through the drawers for a spatula, which he seemed unable to find.

"It's a long time since I was cooking here," said Christopher Walken. "My wife uses this place. She buys this stuff. I have gas in Connecticut, which is much nicer. This is hard. An electric oven isn't bad, but a gas top is much better. In Connecticut I have an electric oven with a gas top. This is hard. I don't know what's going to happen. You don't look very comfortable. Why don't you sit down? Oh, great, I forgot to turn the burner on.

"Cooking is like the family business. My father was a baker all his life. He comes from a big family in Germany. His father was a baker. His brothers are bakers. He came to America and opened a bakery in Queens and had it for 60 years. That's where I came from this morning. My mother broke her hip. It's a drag, because they live in a house and suddenly they can't go up and down stairs."

Christopher Walken began his first dish, Zucchini Linguine, by heating olive oil in the skillet.

"I'm putting some garlic in. New York is great for produce. Those Korean markets always have very fresh stuff.

"My brothers and I were in show business when we were kids, but we also worked in the bakery. I used to deliver cakes in a station wagon and work in the back. I was the guy that put the jelly in the doughnuts. In those days, you'd have a huge can with a plunger on it. It had these two really big needles sticking out each side. You'd take two doughnuts–they'd already be cooked–stick them on those needle things. Then you push the plunger down, and you feel them fill up. There'd usually be a little dribble of jelly on the end. Actually, it was rather sensual."

To the sizzling pan, Christopher Walken added onion first, then red pepper, then the zucchini and summer squash.

"My mother wasn't much of a cook. I mean she was okay . She used to overcook everything. She came over from Scotland and used to make interesting things, things that I never see anymore, like oxtails–you know, real … I guess the word is 'peasant' food. Things like the linings of things.

"My father likes that German food. He used to drink sauerkraut juice. He's 97 years old and he eats this incredibly high-cholesterol stuff. All those big sausages. He eats knockwurst and washes it down with beer. And he eats head cheese, which is basically these big chunks of fat in gelatin and made into a loaf. It's like eating solid fat . And he's a skinny guy. My cholesterol is good. Every time I go to the doctor, he swoons in ecstasy over my blood pressure. I've got some incredible blood pressure. When I was a kid, I'd pass out sometimes, because I'd get real slow. The blood, you know. But when you get older, that's good."

Christopher Walken tossed vegetables, added dill and juiced a lemon into the pan, picking out the seeds afterward. He immersed dry pasta in boiling water.

"This is good pasta, De Cecco," he said. "At one point I had a pasta machine. I tried that. They make it look easy. But it's not. Making your own pasta is not easy.

"Now I could put some olives here. You like olives? I put some lemon juice in there, too.

"When I was a kid, every day in the house there was cake, cookies, chocolate cream pies. Every week, the cleaning lady would take home a huge bag of stuff. You'd think it'd be great. In the bakery, I used to make these big vats of melted chocolate. The smell of sugar in that quantity is overwhelming. It's almost too much.

"Now, I never eat dessert. I eat sweets very rarely. I don't eat sugar. In the morning, when I have coffee, I put molasses in it. It's very good. When I go to a restaurant, people always have dessert, and I always skip it. I might have some cheese or something like that."

Christopher Walken poured the sautéed vegetables into a bowl and put them aside, then tasted the pasta, which was not yet done. He reached into the refrigerator and emerged with a white-paper-wrapped package, which he began to unwrap.

"On pasta, they say 12 minutes," he said, "but I always try to keep an eye on it. This is salmon from Citarella. There's one right down the street. I was just working in Nova Scotia and Halifax. You get the most incredible fish there. Mussels that don't really taste like mussels you ever had before. The salmon, it's unbelievable. Chilean sea bass, you know you don't get it a lot here, but when I go to California, they have it a lot. It's such a gorgeous thing. You get a great big chunk of it and you bake it. It's just fabulous. In California they have all these great things like abalone. It's fabulous. But it's very expensive.

"For me, cooking is something that I do when I'm studying scripts. I put the script on the counter and I cook and study my lines at the same time. It's the power of distraction, I find. I've read that a lot of people do one thing while there's something that they're doing at the same time. Some people play cards or garden. I cook. My wife doesn't cook. That's actually common. I think more men cook than women cook."

Christopher Walken laid the salmon on the counter and began cutting into it.

"I don't cut through the skin," he said. "I just score it in portion sizes and leave the skin hanging off.

"You need to watch your weight in the movie business. It's just a practical thing. Actors are always on some sort of diet. There's a lot of sitting around on movie sets and actors are always sitting on their chairs and talking about food. It may be because they're on a diet and thinking about it a lot. It's true that the camera is very cruel. It makes you look heavier than you are. And movie food is generally very good, because they have to make sure the technicians are happy. They like a nice big lunch with dessert. It's tempting. You've got to watch yourself.

"Buffets are very dangerous. A lot of actors I know gain 15 pounds when they make a movie. I was in a movie once–I don't want to say which–that took eight months to make. Movies are not shot in sequence, so you could watch it and see the people in the movie getting bigger and smaller. Sometimes I go to these movie events, and there'll be a buffet with very good food. You'll see all these important, wealthy people standing on line getting huge plates of it. They don't need it. But psychologically, I guess it's some primitive thing . Somebody's got to eat it.

"I try to keep the icebox fairly empty, and just buy things as I want them. I only eat once a day. Usually about 7 o'clock. If I have things to do, eating slows me down. I feel like I'm under water."

Christopher Walken left the fish for a moment, and ripped open a paper-wrapped jar, the dark, gelatinous contents of which he spooned into a mixing bowl.

"That's chutney," he said, "and I'm going to put a big thing of it in there. And I have some garlic that's already chopped. And sea salt. I'm going to put a little lemon in there and mix it up. I have some cilantro here. People don't use cilantro much, but it's really good.

"I eat slowly. It takes me a long time. I usually watch TV, just flip around and find these great movies that I didn't even know existed. That's the best thing about that cable. I just saw an incredible musical with a lot of black performers called Stormy Weather . The last 20 minutes of that are as good as any musical I ever saw. Then I fall right asleep.

"I don't go out to eat much. Occasionally I go to these very fancy restaurants on an anniversary or a birthday or something. I don't want to name any names, but I haven't really been knocked out in the last few years. In the old days–this is 20 years ago–I used to take my wife to Lutèce on her anniversary or birthday. That used to be wonderful. It probably still is. But I went to one of the big ones recently. The check was unbelievable. For three people it was like 300 bucks apiece. I had duck or something like that. Anyway, it was good . But I make a tremendous duck. You have to steam a duck first. I don't think many people do that. This amazing amount of fat comes off. Then you put it on a rack. You stuff it with garlic and oranges, you know, salt, pepper, some herb, whatever that might be. And you put it on the rack and roast it, and it comes out really crispy. I got that from the Julia Child cookbook. Her cookbooks are wonderful, Julia Child."

After tossing the linguini into a collander, Christopher Walken brought the chutney sauce over to the salmon fillet and began massaging the sauce into the fish.

"Oh, incidentally," he said, "my hands may look dirty, but that's paint on them. I was painting. I'm going to take this sauce and put this on the top. You scored it, so it kind of gets down into the holes.

"I love Mexican cooking. It's so much more than people know. Here it's, you know, guacamole and enchiladas. I like eating spaghetti. I could eat it every day and I have to watch that. I like French food but sometimes it's very rich. I was in Japan once, and I said to the people I was with, you know, 'I love Japanese food, so I would like to have some real authentic Japanese food.' And they took me to this restaurant and gave me a bowl of what looked like some pasta. I looked at it. There were all these little eyes, and the whole thing was moving. I think they were little white eels. I did have some of it to be polite. That was tough. I had to take it down with some beer."

Christopher Walken carried the fish over to where a baking tray is arrayed with a bed of onions, and slapped the fish, sauce-side down, onto the onions.

"All right now," he said. "I have this pan with all these onions I did. I sautéed them a little bit.

"During movies, I bring my own food. I have various Tupperware containers. And every time I go away for any extended time, I'll stay in an apartment or a hotel that has a kitchen. When I was a kid, I was in musicals, and there'd be the dancers, you know, these crazy Gypsies. They'd show up in the little hotel with a suitcase, open it up, and it had every kind of cooking utensil. They would cook these incredible dinners from nothing. Thanksgiving would come and they'd cook this huge turkey in the room. I don't know how they did it."

Christopher Walken popped the salmon into the oven.

"It's on broil," he said. "I don't time it. You can sort of tell by touching it.

"I've had to stay in places where there only was a microwave. It's not recommended, but you can actually cook certain fish in a microwave. Salmon you can cook practically anywhere. And if you're living like a hobo in a hotel room, you can make amazing things in crock pots. You can stick a chicken in there with some vegetables. Turn it on real low and just leave it there all day. And when you come back it's fabulous."

Christopher Walken pulled out a package of jumbo shrimp from the refrigerator and, grasping them in his hands, cut through them with the butcher knife, then ran them under water.

"This is a little dangerous," he said. "You know you're never supposed to cut like this. You can cut your hand off. You see, you butterfly it. And then there's this vein in there. You want to get rid of that. It's guts, I guess. You want to get those nice and clean.

"I almost did a cooking show. I went to Bravo and MTV and the Comedy Channel. I had meetings with these people and I was going to do this show. It was either 10 or 12 segments. I can't remember. I was going to have some sort of kitchen set-up. I wanted it to be a little like Pee-Wee's Playhouse . I love that show. And I'd have maybe a showgirl, you know, with a little thing on, chopping my vegetables. Maybe some musicians. And an audience. Some people to talk to."

Christopher Walken laid the shrimp into a sizzling frying pan, in which he had sautéed some chopped garlic in olive oil. He squeezed an orange into a coffee mug that read "Notre Dame High School, 25th Class Reunion, Class of 1967."

"I'm going to throw a little more garlic in there," he said. "You want a little more cilantro in the shrimps. You put them in shell down in the hot oil–but the next part is a little tricky, some say dangerous. What I got here is some rum, and I'm squeezing a little bit of orange juice in the rum. You got to wait until these shrimps get a little white. These are big, so they're taking a while.

"I remember Dean Martin's old shows, when he had the Gold Diggers. It was a fabulous show. They say they had the whole thing set up and he'd get in his car and drive from his house, park the car, walk into the studio and do it completely off the cuff. You watch it and you could tell that he didn't really know what was going on. And every time things got a little rough, these showgirls called the Gold Diggers–these gorgeous girls–would come on and do this dance number. That's sort of what I had in mind."

Satisfied the shrimp were sufficiently opaque, Christopher Walken grabbed the rum, turned the burner up and tossed the rum into the pan, then quickly covered it with a lid. It sizzled loudly.

"This top isn't quite tight enough, but it works," he said. "It's like a big sudden steam bath.

"With the cable, the thing was, when it got down to it, every one of them wanted something much more precise. They wanted it to be much more planned. Much more of a pragmatic, fabricated thing that could be repeated. They wanted to have a comic actor with me. They wanted to have a script. Jokes. I like jokes. But I wouldn't want to have to say the jokes, you know. Because certain times things are funny anyway. I mean, funny people are funny. And I said to them I wouldn't be able to do that. I wanted it to be like the Dean Martin show."

The meal was done. Christopher Walken tossed the vegetables and pasta together, pulled out some small wine glasses, a couple of plates and a half bottle of 1998 Corvo, a white Italian table wine. He carried a canister of sour cream over to the table for the pasta.

"I usually put some sour cream on that," he said. "It's up to you. I'll tell you a really simple thing if you're going to have people over. It's expensive, but you get a thing of caviar–but you can use the red caviar. But one of the best things in the world is linguine, a big thing of sour cream in the middle and a big scoop of caviar. With some pepper. It's like the best. Anybody can make it. Piece of bread? It's nice bread. Just a little corner? I'll get you a napkin. I'm gonna give you food. I'm not going to eat today. I'll eat later."

Christopher Walken washed the dishes. He cleaned the sink with a sponge. He put the leftovers in Tupperware. Then he tossed a few paper towels on the ground and wiped the floor by skating around on top of the towel with a stockinged foot.

"Cilantro is very hard to clean," he said. "All these little green things.

"If I wasn't so lazy, I'll tell you what I would do. I saw this thing on television. This whole thing with people putting cameras in their house, for the Net. I understand that people outfit their houses with these things, and some guy's girlfriend finds out that she's been naked all over the Internet. You hear about that. If everybody can do it, it can't be that hard. You just need to figure out where to tune in, right? I would need some help with this. I don't quite understand how the Internet works. I don't have a computer. You know, 12-year-old kids know all about that.

"I thought I'd get a couple of those cameras and put them in my kitchen in Connecticut and just, you know, turn it on whenever I felt like it. Maybe I would have a particular time of day I would do it, or something like that. You could charge people to take hits, or something like that. And it would just be me cooking. And I thought to make it amusing, I thought I would have a hotline–you know, a red telephone. And they could call and I could give them advice about their love life. I mean silly stuff, personal questions, about them, you know, 'What should I do?' In the old days, there used to be these things–I can't remember what they're called, but it's a Spanish word. Like a bodega, but something else. They'd be on the corners. You could buy a love potion. You could buy, you know, something, if you were mad at somebody, you could buy a hex. They even had aerosol, I remember–you could spray somebody to get them to fall in love with you or something. I could provide services like that. Or just talk while I'm cooking."

Christopher Walken sat down at the kitchen table.

"And you remember a program called This Is Your Life ? I thought I'd have a curtain over to one side and once in a while I'd have a mystery guest. You know, actors are always coming over to my house. Maybe Joe Pesci comes over and makes his tomato sauce. Everybody makes something, you know what I mean. Don't you think that might be amusing?

"Or I could do restaurant reviews. Like Ruth Reichl, I could walk in with a big disguise. Like a great big wig. Like everybody would know, they'd be like, "Oh, here comes Chris with a big wig. Who's he kidding with those big dark glasses?" Or I could dress up like a woman. Get dressed up with a big fur coat, and I could pretend it's not me."

Christopher Walken said he would eat later.

Christopher Walken's T.N.T. Shrimp Appetizer

(serves four)

1 cup dark rum

Juice of 1 orange

4 jumbo shrimp, fresh, with shells left on

Salt and pepper

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

2 tablespoons olive oil

Combine the rum and orange juice. Leaving the shell on, butterfly the shrimp by slicing them with a sharp knife, cutting from back to legs, so that the shrimp lies flat, shell side down, and the two halves approximate the shape of a heart. Wash and devein the shrimp under cold water. Salt and pepper the shrimp liberally. In a skillet over medium heat, brown the garlic. Arrange the shrimp in the pan, shell side down, and sauté for about four minutes, or until most of the shrimp body has become opaque. Turn the heat to high. When the skillet begins to sizzle, add the rum-and-orange-juice mixture and immediately slam a tight cover on the skillet, pressing down firmly so that very little steam can escape. Keep the cover pressed down for about 3 minutes. Remove from heat, and uncover. Shrimp should look fat, blackened and engorged. Serve from the pan, shell-side down, covering the shrimp with the remaining rum sauce.

Christopher Walken's Zucchini Linguine

(serves four)

3 cloves garlic, minced

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 onion, diced

2 red bell peppers, diced

2 zucchini, cut into 1/4-inch half-wheels

2 summer squash, cut similarly

Salt and pepper

1/2 cup fresh dill weed, chopped

10 large kalamata olives, sliced (optional)

Juice of 1 lemon

1 box De Cecco linguine

4 tablespoons sour cream

Lightly brown the garlic in the olive oil in a large skillet, on medium heat. Add the onion and red peppers, and sauté until soft. Add the zucchini and summer squash, and sauté until soft but not wilted. Salt and pepper to taste. Finally, add the dill, lemon juice and olives. Toss together and remove from heat. Toss the mixture with al dente linguine. Garnish with a dollop of sour cream.

Christopher Walken's New Delhi Salmon

(serves four)

11/2 pounds fresh salmon fillet, skin left on

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon sea salt

1 onion, chopped into 1/2-inch segments

1 jar Major Grey's chutney

3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped

Juice of 1 lemon

Preheat the broiler. With a sharp knife, cut the salmon fillet crosswise into four portions, but do not break the salmon skin. Rub about two tablespoons of olive oil on the scored piece of salmon and into its crevices, then rub in about a tablespoon of sea salt. Put aside. In a saucepan, lightly brown the onion slices. Pile the browned onion into a cookie sheet or Pyrex plate, forming a bed of onions with the approximate area as the salmon fillet. In a small mixing bowl, combine the chutney, garlic, cilantro and lemon juice. Massage this mixture onto the top of the salmon fillet, making sure that some sauce falls into the crevices. Then take the salmon fillet and slam it down on top of the onion bed, so that the skin is facing up and the sauce side is down. Place the pan close to the broiler and broil for about 20 minutes, or until the skin is burnt and the middle of the fillet is hot to the touch and dark pink. Remove the skin and serve from the pan, sauce- and onion-side down.

One of our worst fights was over pesto. I was standing in my cramped kitchen on Mulberry Street, trying to act all excited about preparing a meal together. As he rinsed the basil, he started explaining, ever so slowly, how to wash it properly, and I rolled my eyes. He threw the basil into the trash and stormed out of the apartment. We never did make that pesto.

In fact, we rarely got anything made, because he would stand next to me and say things like, "Are you sure you want to cut the onions like that ?" and I would slam the knife down, escape into the other room and do something I felt more comfortable with–like checking my messages. I was being watched and judged. I felt like he was testing me and I was always failing his food test. A few minutes later, he would come in and apologize and then we would prepare the rest of the meal together, silently fuming. It was our little Cooking Ritual.

After a while, we would even argue about what to eat, and so even the suggestion of food became completely loaded. Eventually, we just gave up on cooking altogether and, after that, on eating together. We ended up just meeting for drinks to avoid what we called the "cooking fights."

Maybe it wasn't all his fault. He was a sweet guy who was worried I wasn't serious enough about him. In his mind, if I would just show a little interest in cooking, it would prove that I was interested in him. But my case of cooking anxiety went back into childhood. I can't remember ever feeling at ease in the kitchen. One summer, when I was home from college, my mom innocently asked me why there were six eggs in the freezer; I told her I was making egg salad. She looked puzzled, so I explained that egg salad was cold and you had to get the eggs cold somehow. She laughed a hysterical mocking laughter that seemed to go forever. The eggs-in-the-freezer incident became one of those "You'll never believe what Stacy did" stories that lasted for months afterward.

I tried to stay away from the whole topic of cooking. It made me nervous. So it was a little odd that I would end up dating a culinary fascist.

Anyway, we broke up. In my private spin on what happened between us and what went wrong, I reconsidered our cooking fights. Maybe the fascist was right. Maybe the cooking could have made for something nice between us, a quiet domesticity that I had rejected but now wished I had. Alone and lonely, I suddenly felt I had to learn to cook if I was going to be a "well-adjusted" person.

I started slowly, by reading the Dining In-Dining Out section of The New York Times , and soon I was actually making cooking plans with my friends and engaging in cooking-related conversations. I even went to the Union Square Farmer's Market and tried to stare at the vegetables lovingly.

Eventually, I had no choice–the time had come. I signed up for Peter Kump's School of Culinary Arts. This was serious. Five sessions of five-hour classes over five Wednesdays at a cost of $450. It was a huge commitment. The class was called Techniques 1, and we were promised that we would learn how to "intuit" meals–we were not going to be "slaves to the recipes." They informed me, upon enrollment, that certain supplies were required–so I packed my bag that first Wednesday with my new Peter Kump apron, a hand towel and two knives (paring and chef). I was secretly excited to be carrying around the tools of the trade and kept checking on my knives throughout the day. I was on my way toward reinventing myself.

When I walked into class that first night, I saw eight other cooking wannabes and Jerry, the teacher with heaps of curly hair. We sat around a long table, facing our knives and Peter Kump instruction notebooks (containing pages and pages of lesson plans, recipes, temperature charts, quizzes, equipment check lists, notes with subheadings like "How to Care for Your Cookware," "Meal Planning," and "Managing Your Cooking Time"). Each of us told the group (A.A.-style) why we were there.

"My name is Stacy and I have always been afraid of cooking," I said.

It was a group of all ages and races–a Met Life guy with a mustache, a lefty Legal Aid lawyer, a woman who was the descendant of the Second Avenue Deli family, a young Asian computer hacker-type, a Chiat-Day ad-dude from California, a cute visual artist and others.

After a while, I realized something: I wasn't the only one who was there as a byproduct of a failed romantic relationship.

The cute visual artist told me she was in the process of extracting herself from an eight-year relationship. She said that when she started dating her boyfriend, she would cook for him all the time. "Maybe it was because his mom was a career mom, but when I cooked, he never seemed to appreciate it; no one cared. I got disparaged and stopped. When I knew the relationship was over and that everything was falling apart, I was signing up for cooking classes. It was the only thing I wanted to do."

First she took a one-day intensive chicken class. "We learned 11 different ways to make chicken," she said. "It was the first class I could get into and I was so desperate to get into one so I took it, even though I was a vegetarian."

At midnight I would return from class with Tupperware containers filled with my gourmet successes: baked tomatoes, chocolate mousse, lamb shank. Sometimes I would cart my Peter Kump leftovers into my new relationship, stopping over at his apartment after class. I was deserting my camp, fleeing to the side of the Cooking Types, leaving my people behind. No longer would I be one of those people with only a jar of mustard in the fridge.

Then came my real test–the visit to Mom. Back in my pre-Peter Kump days, I would be the flaky daughter coming into the kitchen to pick while my mother and sister cooked. But this time I was right there with them. This time, I had a whole new role. Not only did I julienne the red peppers, but first I shaved off their membranes, running the blade delicately against the skins. The family fell silent with awe. Or at least that's how it seemed to me. So no more Stacy-in-the-kitchen stories.

And back in New York with the new boyfriend, I'm the one who's initiating the plans to cook together. But the points I would have gained in my last relationship from having an interest in cooking don't mean anything with the new guy. Now I know about the baking, the braising, the blanching–but he doesn't really care.

Not that things aren't great–because they are. It's just that things aren't great simply because I can cook. He'd be just as happy eating at Veselka. I mean, I'm glad I can cook and I'm glad it's not this big issue anymore and I'm glad my mom is impressed with me, but the truth is, I'm no better equipped to deal with a relationship because I know how to julienne.