The Food of Love (2 page)

In fact, Laura Patterson was deeply troubled, or as troubled as it is possible for a twenty-two-year-old American girl to be in Rome on a fine spring morning, which was why she was glad to discover

that it was her Italian friend Carlotta who was calling. Carlotta worked for a magazine called Stozzi in Milan. She was also part of the reason that Laura had come to Italy, having been a very good college friend back home.

”Pronto.” In Italy it is customary to answer the phone by snapping ‘Ready!’, for reasons which are now obscure.

‘Laura. It’s me. What are you up to?’

‘Oh - hi, Carlotta. Well, I was looking for Santa Cecilia, as it happens. She’s in possession of some rather fine frescoes by

Cavallini. But it seems Santa Cecilia doesn’t want to be found, so I’m having coffee instead.’

Carlotta ignored this nonsense and cut straight to the reason

for her call. ‘And last night? How was your date?’

‘Ah. Well, it was fine,’ Laura said in a voice that made clear that it hadn’t really been fine at all. She had to tread a little carefully, because the date in question had been a friend of a friend of

Carlotta’s own brother. ‘He, Paolo, was perfectly nice, and he

knew a lot about architecture -‘ at the other end of the phone,

Carlotta snorted derisively - ‘and he took me to a really interesting restaurant near the Villa Borghese.’

‘What were you wearing?’

‘Urn - the red top and the black trousers.’

‘Jacket?’

‘No jacket. It’s warm down here.’

There was an audible sigh at the other end. Carlotta, like all

Italian women, thought that anyone who committed offences

against fashion had only themselves to blame for whatever calamities subsequently befell them. ‘Did you wear sneakers?’ she

demanded suspiciously.

‘Of course I didn’t wear sneakers. Carlotta, you’re missing the

point. Anyway, as I was saying, the meal was good. I had squid

pasta and a really nice lamb thing.’

‘And?’

‘Nothing else. Just coffee.’

‘And afterwards?’ Carlotta said impatiently. ‘What happened

afterwards?’

‘Ah. Afterwards, we went for a walk around the Giardino di

Lago, and that’s when he jumped me. Literally, because unfortunately there was a slight discrepancy in our respective heights,

which meant he had to actually propel himself off the ground in

order to stick his tongue where he wanted to. Then after that, of course, he was trying to get me into bed - well, not bed exactly, since he still lives with his parents, so an actual bed was not part of the offer, but he was certainly trying to get me into the bushes.

And before you say anything, I really don’t think wearing a jacket would have made much difference.’

Another sigh. ‘Are you going to see him again?’

‘No. Honestly, Carlotta, thanks for the introduction and everything, but I think I’ve had it with Italian men. They’re all so

ridiculously over-sexed and, well, just clumsy. That’s my fourth disaster in a row. I think I’m going to have to go back to dating Americans for a while.’

Carlotta was horrified. ‘C#ra, coming to Rome and dating

Americans would be like going to the Piazza di Spagna and eating at McDonald’s.’

‘Actually, a few of us did that the other day,’ Laura admitted. ‘It was kind of fun.’

There was an exasperated tut at the other end. ‘Imagine what

a waste your year in Italy will have been if the only men you’ve dated are people you could have met back home.’

‘Imagine what a waste it’ll have been if the only people I’ve

dated are frustrated Italian rapists who still live with their mothers,’

Laura retorted.

‘You’re just meeting the wrong people. Look at my last

boyfriend. Filippo was a sensational lover. Considerate, inventive, slow, passionate—’

‘And currently, I think you said, working in a restaurant in a ski resort, precise whereabouts unknown.’

‘True, but it was great while it lasted. That’s the thing about

chefs. They know how to use their hands. It’s all that chopping

and slicing they do. It makes them dextrous.’

‘Hmm,’ Laura said, a little wistfully, “I have to admit, dextrous would be a nice change.’

‘Then, cara, you simply have to make sure your dates can cook

before you agree to go out with them,’ Carlotta said decisively.

She lowered her voice. ‘I’ll tell you something else about Filippo.

He liked to taste everything as he cooked it, if you know what I mean.’

Laura laughed. She had a remarkably dirty laugh, and the

sound permeated into the interior of Gennaro’s bar, causing the

young men inside to glance up appreciatively from their cornetti.

‘And I suppose, being a chef, he had a great sense of timing?’

‘Exactly. And he never rushed. You know how we Italians like

to eat - at least a dozen courses.’

‘But all of them very small ones,’ Laura teased.

‘Yes, but believe me, by the end you can’t eat another thing.’

Even as Laura continued to joke, a part of her couldn’t help

admitting her friend might have a point. Someone creative, who

understood taste, and texture, who knew how to combine ingredients for the purpose of sensual pleasure … if only she’d met

someone like that during her time in Italy.

‘Well, there you are then,’ Carlotta was saying. ‘It shouldn’t be hard. Rome’s full of restaurants. It stands to reason it must be full of chefs as well.’

‘Maybe,’ Laura said.

‘Listen, I’ll tell you something else Filippo did …’

By the time Laura rang off she had half-jokingly, half-seriously promised her friend that from now on she was definitely only

going to date men who knew their Bearnaise from their Bechamel.

Tommaso had made up his mind he was going to speak to the

American girl. Who could resist a laugh like that? As Vincent had said, he had an excellent track record with female tourists, who seemed to melt when they saw his big-featured, handsome head

with its shock of corkscrew ringlets. Not that Roman girls didn’t melt as well, but Roman girls had a tendency to want him to meet their parents afterwards. Foreigners were altogether less complicated.

He

waited for the right moment. The American girl stayed on

the phone, occasionally sipping slowly at her macchiato - no

wonder she’d wanted it hot - until Tommaso realised with a sigh

that he was going to have to go. He would already be late getting to the restaurant. He slapped a few coins on the counter and

waved a farewell to Gennaro. His motorino was parked outside,

next to the girl’s table, and he lingered for a last moment as he crouched down to unlock it, savouring one more glance at the

slim honey-brown calves stretched over the chair opposite.

‘No more Italians, then. Not unless they can cook,’ she was

saying. ‘From now on, I don’t date anyone who isn’t in the Good

Food Guide.”

Tommaso’s ears pricked up.

She reached into her cup for the final frothy globs of latte,

scooping them out and licking them off her finger. ‘My God, this coffee is fantastic. Hold on. Yes?’

Unable to stop himself, Tommaso had tapped her on her

shoulder.

‘I’m sorry to interrupt your call,’ he began in his best English.

“I just wanted to tell you that your beauty has broken my heart.’

She smiled appreciatively, if a little warily. Nevertheless, she tried to sound polite as she replied, ”Vatte a fa3 ‘u giro, afessa ‘e mammata’ using the words that her first Italian date had told her to employ whenever she was paid a compliment. Tommaso’s face

fell. ‘OK, OK,’ he said, backing off and throwing his leg across the scooter.

Laura watched him go, then turned her attention back to

Carlotta. ‘Who was that?’ her friend wanted to know.

‘Just some guy.’

‘Laura,’ her friend said carefully, ‘what do you think you said to him?’

Which was how Laura discovered that she had actually been

telling the young men of Rome in perfect idiomatic Italian to piss off back up the orifices of their mothers from which they were

delivered.

‘Oh,’ Laura said. ‘Oh dear. That’s a shame. He was quite cute,

too. But it doesn’t really matter, does it? Because from now on

I’m holding out for someone who can cook.’

‘Once the general and commonsense principles of menu

planning become clear, the choices remaining before us are

an infinite number of agreeable and workable combinations …’

Marcella Hazan, The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking

It was a week before Tommaso saw the girl again. He had gone to

Gigliemi, the great food shop near the Piazza Venezia, to pick up some supplies for the restaurant. Earlier there had been a phone call to say that a hunter, one of dozens in the Castelli Romani who supplied Gigliemi with specialities, had driven in from the countryside that very morning, with his Fiat full offender young lepre; baby hares, the first of the season. Tommaso had been instructed to be quick, so he walked straight through to the back, shouldered the box which Adriano gave him with only the briefest of pauses

to discuss Adriano’s family, his uncle’s marriage, his second

cousin’s business and his brother’s new girlfriend, and was hurrying out again when a movement in the corner of his eye caught his

attention. It was a girl. She was reaching up to the top shelf for a packet of pasta, exposing a band of taut stomach. Tommaso

caught a glimpse of a tiny whorl of belly button, as intricate and perfect as the knot of a balloon. A keen aficionado of female

beauty, he muttered, I Fosse ya Madonna!’ under his breath.

Quickly he swung the box down again. cMo?nento^ he called to

her; wait up. He reached up, got the packet for her, and handed it to her with a smile. ‘Prego.” Then he realised he’d seen her somewhere before.

She smiled. ‘Grazie, faccia di culo.”1 Thank you, assface.

Of course - he remembered now. The girl from Gennaro’s. He

also remembered her saying that she was only going to sleep

with - well, date, but it was famously the same thing with

American girls - someone who could cook, and if she was buying

her own pasta, the chances were that she hadn’t yet found that

someone. Which was remarkable because Rome was absolutely full

of cooks, while blonde American girls were somewhat scarcer.

It was his opportunity, and he took it.

‘Spaghetti,” he said, glancing at the packet in her hand. ‘How

nice.’ Even to him, this sounded a little flat.

‘Well, I hope so.’

‘And what are you cooking it with? What sauce?’

‘Well - I thought perhaps Bolognese.’

His look of bewilderment was not feigned. ‘But you can’t,’ he

objected.

‘Why not?’

‘First, because you’re not in Bologna,’ he pointed out reasonably.

‘And secondly, because what you have in your hand is spaghetti.”

‘Yes. Spaghetti Bolognese.’ She saw his expression. ‘That’s not

a good idea, is it?’

‘It’s just impossible,’ he explained. ‘Ragu Bolognese is a sauce for tagliatelle or gnocchi, or possibly tortellini.’ He pointed to Gigliemi’s glass-fronted display case. ‘These are tortellini.” He snapped his fingers at the assistant, who handed him one of the

soft, doughy parcels on a piece of tissue paper. He held it out to Laura to show her. ‘The shape is based on the shape of a

woman’s - what do you call it?’

She peered anxiously at the tortellini. ‘I’m not sure.’

He pointed to his own stomach. ‘Tummy popper?’

‘Button. Of course,’ she said, relieved.

He remembered that glimpse of midriff and the tiny little whorl

of her navel. It had not, in fact, looked very like the thing he was holding in his hand at all, which resembled nothing so much as a big fat oyster of ricotta cheese, or possibly a woman’s fica. ‘Anyway,’ he said dismissively, ‘we are in Rome, and Roman sauces are better. Well, strictly speaking we are in Lazio, but it’s the same thing. We eat spaghetti alVamatriciana, with a sauce of’guanciale, which is the pig’s -‘ he ran his finger down her cheek, briefly, a touch so fleeting she was hardly aware it had happened - ‘this part of the pig’s face. We fry it in olive oil with a little chilli, some tomatoes and of course some grated pecorino romano, hard cheese.

Or if you don’t want spaghetti you could have bucatoni, or calscioni, or fettuccinie, or pappardelle, or tagliolini, or rigatoni, or linguine, or garganeHi, or tonnarelli, or fusilli, or conchiglie, or vermicelli, or maccheroni, but,’ he held up a warning finger, ‘each of them demands a different kind of sauce. For example, an oily

sauce goes with dried pasta, but a butter sauce goes better with fresh. Take fusilli.” He held up a packet to show her. ‘People say this pasta was designed by Leonardo da Vinci himself. The spiral fins carry the biggest amount of sauce relative to the surface area, you see? But it only works with a thick, heavy sauce that can cling to the grooves. Conchiglie, on the other hand, is like a shell, so it holds a thin, liquid sauce inside it perfectly.’

‘Are you a cook?’ she asked, understanding dawning in her eyes.

‘I am a chef, yes, at one of Rome’s best restaurants,’ Tommaso

said proudly.

She hesitated. ‘Can I ask you - what would you make if you

were me? I don’t do a lot of cooking, but my father’s flown in for a few days and I stupidly said I’d make something for him. I’d love to cook him something Roman.’

If I were you …’ Tommaso thought hard. Then his eyes fell

on the box of baby hares. “I would cook pasta con sugo di lepre; pappardelle with hare sauce,’ he said triumphantly. ‘The hares are never better than when they’re young and tender.’

Is it easy?’

‘It’s fantastically simple. You cook the hare in onion and garlic for a little while, then you add some red wine, some cloves, some cinnamon, and that’s it.’