Sweet and Spicy Pepper Pasta. Rey Lopez/photo; Lisa Cherkasky/food styling for The Washington Post This pasta, with its punchy tumble of sweet and spicy peppers, garlic, parmesan, toasted breadcrumbs, and herbs, was inspired by a very special stuffed pepper I first encountered 16 years ago, when, at least to that 26-year-old me, it seemed like the world was falling apart. On the morning of Sept.
26, 2008, I was walking to work along West Third Street in Los Angeles when the reality of the Great Recession first hit me. About 50 feet away, workers on a hydraulic lift were using a piece of tarp and bungee cords to cover the sign on the neighborhood bank as uniformed officers chained and locked the door. Washington Mutual had failed the day before.
It remains the largest bank failure in U.S. history.
Lots of other terrible things happened that year, the most personally consequential of which was that I, along with many other people, was laid off. At some point, after weeks of submitting job applications in a panic as I watched my bank balance plummet, I heard that a professional acquaintance needed an extra set of hands a few days a week. I didn’t even know what the job would entail, but I was in.
Initially, I knew Dominick DiBartolomeo only as an employee at the Cheese Store of Beverly Hills, a client of my previous employer (and, at least in my mind, a national treasure). I was friendly with the place and its people, so I knew that DiBartolomeo had a side business making pest.