The Food Season IV: Meals and Cooking on the Run Up to Thanksgiving - what we remember

Last week’s post for the food season was fiction, but memories of real meals form the cornerstones in my life. 

January 1994.  Rural China.  We traveled by bus to a distant, cold, rain soaked town near Burma.  We were hungry and tired.

We found a noodle stand on a corner.  It was crowded and buzzing.  The people who worked there seemed smart, content, at least smiling and competent. 

We sat down and ordered.  We pointed to piles of meat and vegetables to communicate what we wanted with our noodles.  We watched the cook make the noodles.  He took a ball of dough in his hands and wove it through his fingers as if a cat’s cradle.  He turned the ball of dough into long noodles right before our eyes.  I’d never seen anything like it.  The cook rotated his hands, made the dough swing and splay and then he quickly flipped the newly minted strands into a pot of boiling water and just as quickly from the pot into a burning hot wok.  They sizzled.  He added some meat and vegetables; he stirred it all and tossed it and added a sauce.  He cracked two eggs and let them sit on the top of the stir-fry.  They cooked as he slid the meal into two bowls.  In seconds we devoured the best Chinese food ever.  No.  Some of the best food ever, period.

            On that night a man ordered fish and we watched the cook take a swimming fat monster and toss it live from a small tub into a pan and serve it completely whole.  While we ate a group of men played a raucous drinking game.  Everything was loud and exotic.  It was hot and full.  Some people were mocking us gently, laughing.  One man came up and took the chopsticks out of my left hand and put them into my right.  The entire room laughed as he did it.  We didn’t care.  We smiled back. 

Dipping into a culture by sharing a meal is somehow intimate.  It makes communion.  It is a connection.  As I remember the details of this and other meals from twenty years ago in China, the cook at the noodle stand might remember us too.  At least we joined his life for a short while.  We didn’t just walk by.  Of all the things we did and experienced in China the making of a bowl of noodles at a corner eatery is one of the most important to me.

Meals are also memorable because they are comfortable and close, like anyone’s grandmother’s kitchen.

My baby sister Tina gave me a tremendous gift twenty five or more years ago when she moved to Italy.  What started as just a commitment to visit my sister is now a need to keep in touch with dear friends and special places a long way away.  And I remember it mostly through meals.

            1989.  I visited my sister alone.  Tina and her husband Ignazio took me to a place in the mountains north of Prato, in Tuscany, where they lived at the time (where Ignazio still does; divorced, my sister and darling niece live in Rome).  The restaurant was just a roadside tavern, stuck close to the cars crawling by on switchbacks into the mountains.  It was cold and rainy, mid-winter.  The air smelled of coal and wood smoke, car exhaust.  (These are the smells of Italy to me and therefore they are smells I love.)

Ignazio parked his tiny Peugeot along the side of the narrow road, not exactly out of the traffic.  We ran across the busy road and I was sure we would be killed. We’d been driving for a while, so I was happy to be out of the car, but I was not excited about where this long drive had taken us.  I was underwhelmed by the look of the place.  I remember the building as small and nondescript.  It sat on the downward side of the hill, below us.  It seemed cold.  It was not.

We ran into the small room and immediately I was hit with warmth and noise.  It was crowded, mellow and calm.  It smelled great.  The place was jammed. ‘Maybe it is not so bad,’ I thought.  The only dish on the menu was a sampling of four pastas and four sauces.  No choice at all.  They had one red table wine.  No choice. We sat at a communal table and settled into conversation.   We ordered.  It was easy.  Red wine.  Three meals.

I don’t remember all of the sauces.  One was mushroom.  One was certainly 4-cheese.  Although I don’t remember each sauce, each pasta, I remember how good the meal was.  I am hungry just thinking about it.  I think I remember the name of the restaurant: La Tinaia.  If that was the place, it was in Barberino di Mugello.  (This is rare for me.  I mostly don’t remember the names of places.)

There had been a small plane crash in the mountains and the police came in.  These carabinieri essentially filled the room, tall men with thin, slicked-back black hair, wearing beautifully designed, post-fascist uniforms, peaked caps and tall, black leather boots, all animated and arguing, gesticulating and shouting.  I couldn’t understand a word and thought they were about to fight.  I thought something was about to happen.  I asked my sister what the trouble was. 

“There was a plane crash.  A small one.  Plane.”

“Why are they fighting?”

She got frustrated with me.  Gesticulated.  Spoke quickly.  Her voice tightened.  “They are not fighting.  They are just talking about it.”

“Like we are?”  I smiled.

“Shut up.”  She smiled.  

So they were there to eat.  They weren’t arguing.  They were just Italian.

I remember my sister smiling at something else I said.  We laughed a lot.  Ignazio and Tina laughed together and we talked for hours.  I remember Tina and Ignazio were in love then.

We left the restaurant full and warm with red wine.  We drove back to Prato in silence, letting the road noise fill the space.  It was dark when we stopped at Marzia’s house.  Marzia Mariottini, a beautiful woman, with a noble Italian nose and charcoal eyebrows on olive skin, her hair night-sky black and long and straight, very smart and curious.  She knows art and the architecture of her country.  She likes to share it.  She is funny.

She lived then with another great friend, Fabio.  A friend of Iganzio’s, a thin, fit man with a gangly, scraggly beard, his eyes close together.  A permanent winking smirk on his narrow face.  He is a gym teacher who loves old American noir films.

We had a few drinks with Marzia and Fabio.  We sat in a quite kitchen and just talked.  I think this was the night I tried Marzia’s Uncle's homemade artichoke liquor.  I can still taste it. 

* * * * *

Here are three recipes from Italy to accompany this post.  One, Cacio e pepe, I make a lot.  One is a variation I will write about in another post.  It's a funny story.  The last one my sister Tina told me about.  I have not made but my sister is an incredible cook so I trust her (and it sounds delicious).  (She also sent me a recipe for Cacio e pepe but I like it the way I make it better.)

Cacio e Pepe  This recipe is in a Gourmet Magazine. Here is the on line version.  It is incredibly simple.  It is spaghetti, black pepper and very good Pecorino Romano cheese.  

2 tablespoons black peppercorns, coarsely ground or ground with a mortar and pestle.

1/2 lb. spaghetti

3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons very finely grated Pecorino Romano cheese.

Gourmet says to toast the peppercorns.  Go ahead.  I don't.  It is best to use a thick spaghetti, like a number 5, or use rigatoni.  Cook the pasta until al dente.  Important: reserve about 1/2 cup of the pasta water ad then drain the pasta.  Do not shake off excess water.  Put the pasta in a warm bowl.  Sprinkle 3/4 cup cheese and 3 tablespoons cooking water evenly over spaghetti and toss quickly.  If pasta seems dry, toss with some additional cooking water.

Divide the pasta onto two warmed plates.  Sprinkle with the black pepper and another tablespoon of cheese each.  Serve immediately with additional cheese on the side.

Tina points out this is not a good pasta for large groups.  Cook it, serve it and eat it quickly.  We are a family of four and if you do a pound of pasta it's a great family meal.

Don't use inexpensive, pretender Romano cheese.  It will be a mess.

This is without a doubt the best pasta dish I have ever made or tasted.

My sister also recommends dried wild mushrooms from Scalvaia (a town near Sienna -- it is another story) grated together with the cheese and pepper as per above and then tossed with the pasta as with Cacio e Pepe.

Finally,  my sister suggests a nice summer pasta:  mix fresh ricotta cheese and cherry tomatoes with black pepper and Pecorino Romano and pasta.  But go ahead.  Make it in winter.
This noodle dish is not Italian -- It is fron the other side of the world from the book The Essential Asian Cookbook, White Cap Books, 1998 --  and it is easy to make and delicious.  Use chicken, beef or vegetables if you want:

10 large raw prawns
200 g (6 1/2 oz) Chinese barbecued pork
500 g (1 lb) Shanghai noodles
60 ml (1/4 cup) peanut oil
2 teaspoons finely chopped garlic
1 tablespoon black bean sauce
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon white vinegar
60 ml (1/4 cup) chicken stock
125 g (4 oz) fresh bean sprouts
3 spring onions, finely sliced
fresh coriander leaves, for garnish

Peel and devein the prawns.  Cut the pork evenly into thin slices.
Cook the noodles in a large pan of rapidly boiling water until just tender.  Drain and set aside.
Heat the oil, add the garlic and cook until it is pale gold.  Add the prawns and pork and stir for three minutes or until the prawns are pink.  Add the noodles to the wok with the black bean sauce, soy sauce, vinegar and stock.  Stir-fry over high heat until it makes your eyes water.
Add the bean sprouts and spring onion for one more minute.
I add hot chilles at the end.

David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2012 David Rocchio