The Food Season VI: Some Meals Are Snapshots

Many nights of meals are snapshots rather than portraits.

Vermont, New Year’s Eve, a long time ago.  Maybe 1997.  Ignazio and Tina and their young daughter joined us and other good friends and family for a late night meal. Before coming to visit Ignazio went mushrooming in the woods near Siena and brought his foraged, dried mushrooms to America.  We decided to use them for our New Year’s Eve dinner.  We used the coffee grinder to turn them into a fine dust.  Ignazio made the sauce and the pasta; I cooked the sides and a roast beef stuffed with garlic, parsley, old bread, onion and cilantro.  We were all excited about a sauce made of foraged mushrooms from Italy.

While we cooked, our guests all hung around the kitchen.  Ignazio told about a neighbor near the old farmhouse near Siena, a woman who knew the woods around her home as well as she knew her two children.  The children, a young boy and girl were sweet and polite.  The boy funny, the girl serious.  The mother was a masterly cook and wonderful neighbor.  One day the mother went hunting for mushrooms near her home, the same place Ignazio told us he found the mushrooms for our New Year’s Sauce.  This was a thing the mother did often and had done for years, learning the skill from her mother before her. 

That night, when her children were home from school and had done their chores, when the husband was home from work, everyone finally sat down for dinner.  The mushrooms looked so much like the good ones, the sauce tasted the same, but the mushrooms were not the good ones.  They were poison.  The children died.  Both of the parents were violently ill and recovered, but not really. 

We all stopped talking.  Our celebration ground to dust just like the mushrooms.  After a minute Ignazio broke the silence.  ‘It is okay,’ he said.  ‘We test the mushrooms.’  He told us how he and Fabio and another friend, his best man at his wedding, Antonio, got together before he left Italy and made a meal just like our New Year’s dinner.  ‘The mushrooms are okay,’ he said.  The conversations ramped back up and we left the sad tale behind us.

And then we ate.  My little Sicilian brother-in-law was drunk.  The conversation rolled like surf onto a beach.  The food was good; the pasta sauce was shockingly good.  Deep into the meal, Ignazio started banging on his wine glass with his fork.  I thought he was going to break the glass.  We all stopped and looked his way. 

“I kidding!” he said in his highest, almost falsetto, most animated voice.  He was laughing.  “We not test the mushrooms!”  I could tell he thought this was the funniest thing he had ever said.  He put his head on the table and banged his fist next to his plate.  “We not test,” he cried and laughed and rolled his head back and forth.

Our dear friend Kristina – Swedish, proper, elegant – dropped her fork and gasped.  Her husband Dean, the judge, tossed his napkin down in disgust with a harrumph.  We all looked at each other.  Ignazio was the only one laughing.  But then, what the hell, the food was so good.  Someone made a joke.  We calmed down. We all laughed and ate. 

Late that night I woke up with crippling psychosomatic leg cramps.  I tried to walk to the bathroom.  The cramps dropped me to the floor.  At least I think the cramps were psychosomatic.  Kristina said she did not sleep a wink.  We all had similar stories.  I wonder to this day if Ignazio made up the whole thing.  We survived.

Italy, another meal, sometime in the 1990’s.  This time Tina, Ignazio, Marzia and Fabio and I traveled to a house owned by Marzia’s family in the mountains near Bologna.  She apologized, “It is very old, very rustic, not very nice.”  The drive to the mountains was fantastic.  We drove along dry roads under a bright sun and then, in an instant, would submerge into fog so thick we would need to stop the cars, get out and walk away from the highway, so sure were my friends a Lamborghini driven by a madman, or a truck, or a van full of nuns would drive into the back of one of the cars, causing a calamity.  And then the fog would lift and we’d drive on until we hit another patch of deep mist.

We arrived late in the day.  The old, rustic, ‘not very nice’ house was in fact a four hundred year old farmhouse.  It had no heat but did have three-foot thick stone walls, a fireplace as big as a garage, candelabras and deep, tall medieval windows.  We made a roaring fire; we lit candles throughout the house.  This was the place and the time Ignazio taught me to make the garlic bread in an open fire.  Ignazio and Fabio somehow roasted whole eggs in the coals.  To this day I don’t know how they did it so the eggs did not blow up.  As we breathed thick wood smoke we played cards, ate eggs and garlic bread, drank wine.

Vermont, November 11, 1994.  When Jackie turned thirty, shortly after we were married, we drove to a restaurant on the other side of our mountain.  We live in Stowe, Vermont, on the eastern side of Mt. Mansfield and to the south of the village of Jeffersonville.  Jeffersonville sits at the northern hem of our mountain, the State’s largest.  Another peak, Madonna, works with Mansfield to all but hem us in.  A narrow notch between the two mountains is the only direct way from Stowe to Jeff.  In the winter, once there is any snow on the ground, the road is closed.

The restaurant, ‘Le Cheval D’Or,’ was stuck in a small front on a quiet street in the compact village of Jeff.  Inside, the walls were dark.  In the hall there was an autographed photograph of an Apollo Astronaut, who had found and loved the restaurant.  This was a fancy, romantic and mysterious place.  So on a cold, snowy November night we drove the long way, literally around the mountain, to have dinner at Le Cheval D’Or.

I don’t remember everything we ate but I remember we talked non-stop.  I remember I ordered quail for my main course.  It was stuffed with wild rice and mushrooms.  It was delicious but very hard to eat.  I picked the meat off the tiny bones with my fingers.  I remember my desert – it was a maple crème brulee with a maple crust.  It had a thin maple cookie resting on top.  We drank good, dark coffee and sat by the fire. 

It had been quiet in the restaurant when we arrived and then got quite busy.  It was empty when we finished.  The meal cost an arm and a leg but nothing had ever been better.  When we left the restaurant, drunk, content, full, happy, young, married, in love, I turned toward the Notch Road, feeling empowered to navigate the slippery turns up and over our mountain despite the snow.  I careened up and down that closed road, sliding on the ice, repeatedly nearly losing control. We survived it.  Crazy.  It was thrilling and stupid.  We laughed at it.

Five hours in a restaurant and not noticing the time, not caring when the food might come; feeling when the meal ends it has ended to soon; watching the staff lean against the bar, staring at their hands, bored and wanting to go home; leaving the empty room still talking and laughing.

Ontario, Canada, 1993.  The best diner breakfast ever, somewhere between Niagara Falls, Ontario and Detroit.  We were on a secondary road facing Lake Erie.  The diner was in the narrowest building I’ve ever seen – a trailer wedged between a motel and a house.  The lot must have been a driveway at one point.  There was a counter with stools and behind the counter, along the far wall, was a row of hooks for coats and hats.  With barely enough room to walk between the coats and the people it was an awkward place. 

The only decoration was a framed map of wrecks on Lake Erie.  It hung on the back wall, by the coats.  The people were dour and cold.  No one said hello.  I ordered bacon and eggs with potatoes.  The eggs were fried perfectly with ample salt; the bacon was thick and meaty, well smoked and served half way from raw to crispy; the potatoes were fresh made and crisp, with onion and hot sauce and bits of sausage mixed in.  The coffee was excellent.  Five Canadian dollars passed hands and we were back on the road.  I could not find the place again if I spent a week looking.  I will remember the breakfast my entire life.  I would love to go back there.

            Each place, each time, each memory is nothing less than life.  I will try to write down some of the recipes.  Share life.  But just not right now.

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

The Food Season V -- A Hot Meal On Beach Day

As I write, in my kitchen in Vermont, it is a cold and rainy day heading to winter. Although gray and windy, the leaves long ago blown off the trees, I am not stuck in this stick season. I am thinking about another visit to my sister in Italy (check last week’s post), but the trip I am thinking about now was in the heat of summer.

It was over a year later, and by this summer visit Marzia and Fabio’s relationship had become rocky; I was soon to marry Jackie, who was with me on this trip; Tina and Ignazio had a little baby.

My sister Tina lived then in Prato, a textile town, and in the summer the sun burnt down upon it. Tina’s apartment did not, of course, have air conditioning. To escape the heat we planned a trip to the beach with Marzia and Fabio. We would stay with them for a night or two.

On the morning of the trip I, ever the American, was up early. I woke Jackie, who scowled, and I made her help me get ready for our excursion. We packed for the beach. I made coffee. We dressed. And then we sat and waited for the sounds of people waking up. They didn’t.

Ignazio, Tina and Giulia slept on so we drank the coffee and talked, moving to the small porch looking across to other apartment buildings. We watched a woman beat a rug; a man drink his own coffee, a cigarette dangling between his fingers, he watching us watch him; two kids playing; a man water potted plants. We finished our coffees and went back inside. The others still slept.

I went for a walk to the station to get a Herald Tribune. The air was attic-closet hot and still. I tried not to move as I walked. Forty minutes later, when I returned, the house was still dark but at least it was cool. I made more coffee. I watched soccer on Italian TV while Jackie read.

Finally, my sister got up. She made coffee. I asked when we would go. She shrugged and said, as if it were obvious, which I guess it was, ‘everyone is still asleep.’ I watched more soccer.

By noon Ignazio was up, had his coffee and was dressed. The baby gnawed on some hard biscuits, hot drool running down her front. Ignazio packed the car; Tina got the baby ready. Jackie and I were thrilled. Off we’d go! But.

We did not go to the car. ‘We need to see Rachele and Paolo,’ Tina said. They were Ignazio’s parents, both gone now. We need to go for ‘a little lunch,’ she said, 'we can’t not go.’ She opened her hands in a frustrated gesture, again as though it were obvious, which I guess it was.

Rachele must have been standing just on the other side of her apartment door because as soon as we came into the foyer of her building she appeared on the landing. She must have been listening for the creak of the big, heavy, ancient wooden door and then for the beast to slam shut. She smiled and watched us walk up. She was waving, talking. She pulled her hands together, in front of her heart, and clasped them tightly, smiling and talking.

Paolo was quiet. He talked to me in Sicilian. I didn’t understand but nodded. It was now about one o’clock. The apartment was dark, hot and close, like a museum. We went and sat on the balcony but there was no relief. Of course all I could think about was we should be at the beach, but we instead sat and talked and it seemed only I wanted to go. And then we were called to lunch.

Rachele put out some pasta tossed with a red sauce and veal. The sauce just touched the pasta and clung to it and the meat fell apart with each bite. The taste was rich and spicy but not heavy. The pasta was firm and thick (homemade). Delicious. Too hot for such a meal but an incredible pasta. As we mopped the sauce off the plate with fresh bread, completely satisfied, a bit drunk on thick red wine, me now thinking we would without a doubt be off to the beach, Rachele came back from the kitchen.

Plates of stuffed artichokes; a roast beef rolled with garlic, herbs and bread; cold broccoli rabe marinated in olive oil, garlic and lemon. I pulled the fragrant, seasoned artichoke leaves from the husk, drank more wine, stuffed down two thick slices of the roast. Next came some homemade biscotti and dark, dark coffee.

‘A little lunch,’ my sister had said. It was now three o’clock. We sat around the table and the conversation rolled from Italian to Sicilian to Italian to short English translation and back to Italian. We all laughed and smiled. It was interesting, fun, enjoyable.

We finally left, Giulia asleep in her father’s arms as we lumbered down the stairs, Rachele waving goodbye from the landing.  We climbed into the car for the drive to the beach, an hour away. I nodded off into a half sleep, full of odd dreams and fear of crashing, sweating, my head lolling, Giulia sleeping next to me, holding my finger in her small hand.

I listened through the haze of car-ride slumber to the sing-song talk of my sister and her husband. The baby woke up, cried and cooed. Sitting between Jackie and me in the back seat, she pulled my hair and laughed. She made Jackie laugh. The wind roared through the car as we sped toward the coast.

At the apartment by the beach we changed into our swimsuits. We went for a walk, a swim.

The beach was crowded and it was still hot even late in the day. We talked, and read, and watched Giulia throw sand at the sea. We watched the sun go down.

At dusk we all went for another long walk on the street by the waterfront. It seemed everyone in town was out, some wearing fine clothes; some, like us, still in their beach things, comfortable walking along in swimsuits and flip-flops and nothing else; others were casual and cool, in t-shirts and jeans, short skirts or cotton dresses. People walked arm in arm, talking, or sat on park benches. Conversation was all around. It was festive, calm, relaxed. It was just Italians at the beach for a Sunday evening.

We went back to the apartment and showered and dressed. Still full from lunch. It took eight hours to get to the beach, full as pythons, this trip to the beach not at all what we were used to.

At about ten that night we went back out. We headed south, walking along the promenade, the sea to our right. We arrived at a long, low, open wooden building, which formed a U facing the Mediterranean. It was a pizzeria. You could sit inside or choose to be outside under the stars. It was rustic and warm, all worn wooden benches and plank floors. There was a big fire burning outside where they made the pizzas. We sat at a communal table on the beach and ordered a ton of food – bruchetta, olives, roasted vegetables (eggplant, peppers, garlic, artichoke) and pizzas. I was still full from lunch. But I ate. And we drank wine. We sat and talked more. The baby was asleep in her stroller. She was not the only bambina under the stars.

I sat between Tina and Marzia. Jackie was across from me, smiling. Ignazio and Fabio were by the baby arguing about football or music or politics. Shouting, gesturing, rolling their words and making them long, piped, dramatic. Tina and I talked for a minute, she feeling maybe a bit homesick put her head on my shoulder for just a second. There were tears in her eyes, which she wiped away. She moved away and just touched the back of my neck. She turned to Jackie and changed the subject. We stayed out most of the night.

I have never been as full, content, engaged. 

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

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