Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

by Barbara Kingsolver

  As with the chickens, the nutritional benefits in beef are directly proportional to the fraction of the steer's life it spent at home on the range eating grass instead of grain-gruel. Free-range beef also has less danger of bacterial contamination because feeding on grass maintains normal levels of acidity in the animal's stomach. At the risk of making you not want to sit at my table, I should tell you that the high-acid stomachs of grain-fed cattle commonly harbor acid-resistant strains of E. coli that are very dangerous to humans. Because CAFOs are so widespread in our country, this particular strain of deadly bacteria is starting to turn up more and more commonly in soil, water, and even other animals, causing contamination incidents like the nationwide outbreak of spinach-related illnesses and deaths in 2006. Free-range grazing is not just kinder to the animals and the surrounding environment; it produces an entirely different product. With that said, I leave the decision to you.

  Pasture-finished meat is increasingly available, and free-range eggs are now sold almost everywhere. Here is the recipe for one of my family's standard, easy egg-based meals. If you feel more adventurous, you can get some free-range turkey meat and freak out your kids' friends with my parents' sausage recipe.

  VEGGIE FRITTATA

  Olive oil for pan

  8 eggs

  1/2 cup milk

  Beat eggs and milk together, then pour into oiled, oven-proof skillet over medium heat.

  Chopped kale, broccoli, asparagus, or spinach, depending on the season

  Salt and pepper to taste

  Feta or other cheese (optional)

  Promptly add vegetables and stir evenly into egg mixture. At this point you can also add feta or other cheeses. Cook on low without stirring until eggs are mostly set, then transfer to oven and broil 2-4 minutes, until lightly golden on top. Cool to set before serving.

  SPICY TURKEY SAUSAGE

  21/2 pounds raw turkey meat, diced, including dark meat and fat

  1/2 cup chopped onion

  1/4 cup chopped garlic

  1/2 tablespoon paprika

  11/2 teaspoons ground cumin

  2 teaspoons fresh oregano (or 1 teaspoon dry)

  2 teaspoons fresh thyme (or 1 teaspoon dry)

  1 teaspoon ground black pepper 2 teaspoons cayenne (optional)

  Hog casings (ask your butcher, optional)

  Combine seasonings in a large bowl and mix well. Toss with turkey meat until thoroughly coated. If the meat is very lean, you may need to add olive oil to moisten. Cover and refrigerate overnight. Then grind the mixture in a meat grinder or food processor. You can make patties, or stuff casings to make sausage links. An inexpensive sausage-stuffing attachment is available for KitchenAid and other grinders; your butcher may know a source for organic hog casings.

  Download these and all other Animal, Vegetable, Miracle recipes at www.AnimalVegetableMiracle.com

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  15 * WHERE FISH WEAR CROWNS

  September

  Steven came downstairs with the suitcases and found me in the kitchen studying a box full of papery bulbs. My mail-order seed garlic had just arrived.

  His face fell. "You're going to plant those now?"

  In two hours we were taking off on our first real vacation without kids since our honeymoon--a trip to Italy we'd dreamed of for nearly a decade. My new passport had escaped, by one day, the hurricane that destroyed the New Orleans office of its issue. We had scrupulously organized child care for Lily, backup child care, backup-backup plus the animal chores and so forth. We'd put the garden away for the season, cleaned the house, and finally were really going to do this: the romantic dinners alfresco, the Tuscan sun. The second-honeymoon bride reeking of garlic...

  "Sorry," I said. I put the bulbs back in the box.

  I confess to a ludicrous flair for last-minute projects before big events. I moved nine cubic yards of topsoil the day before going into labor with my first child. (She was overdue, so yes, I was trying.) On the evening of my once-in-a-lifetime dinner at the White House with President and Mrs. Clinton, my hands were stained slightly purple because I'd been canning olives the day before. I have hoed, planted, and even butchered poultry in the hours before stepping onstage for a fund-raising gala. Some divas get a manicure before a performance; I just try to make sure there's nothing real scary under my fingernails. My mother raised children who feel we need to earn what this world means to give us. When I sat back and relaxed on the flight to Rome, I left behind a spit-shined kitchen, a year's harvest put away, and some unplanted garlic. I'd live with it.

  With the runway of the Leonardo da Vinci airport finally in sight and our hearts all set for andiamo, at the last possible moment the pilot aborted our landing. Wind shear, he announced succinctly. We circled Rome, flying low over ruddy September fields, tile-roofed farmhouses, and paddocks enclosed by low stone walls. The overnight flight had gone smoothly, but now I had ten extra minutes to examine my second thoughts. Would this trip be everything we'd waited for? Could I forget about work and the kids, indulging in the luxury of hotels and meals prepared by someone else?

  Finally the nose cone tipped down and our 767 roared low over a plowed field next to the airport. Drifting in the interzone between waiting and beginning, suspended by modern aerodynamics over an ancient field of pebbled black soil, I found myself studying freshly turned furrows and then the farmer himself. A stone's throw from the bustle of Rome's international airport, this elderly farmer was plowing with harnessed draft horses. For reasons I didn't really understand yet, I thought: I've come home.

  I am Italian by marriage: both Steven's maternal grandparents were born there, emigrating as young adults. His mother and aunts grew up in an Italian-speaking home, deeply identified with the foodways and all other ways of the mother country. Steven has ancestors from other parts of the world too, but we don't know much about them. It's my observation that when Italian genes are present, all others duck and cover. His daughter looks like the apple that fell not very far from the olive tree; when asked, Lily identifies herself as American and invariably adds, "but really I'm Italian."

  After arriving on the ancestral soil I figured out pretty quickly why that heritage swamps all competition. It's a culture that sweeps you in, sits you down in the kitchen, and feeds you so well you really don't want to leave. In the whole of Italy we could not find a bad meal. Not that we were looking. But a spontaneous traveler inevitably will end up with the tummy gauge suddenly on empty, in some place where cuisine is not really the point: a museum cafeteria, or late-night snack bar across from the concert hall.

  Eating establishments where cuisine isn't the point--is that a strange notion? Maybe, but in the United States we have them galore: fast-food joints where "fast" is the point; cafeterias where it's all about efficient caloric load; sports bars where the purported agenda is "sports" and the real one is to close down the arteries to the diameter of a pin. In most airport restaurants the premise is "captive starving audience." In our country it's a reasonable presumption that unless you have gone out of your way to find good food, you'll be settling for mediocre at best.

  What we discovered in Italy was that if an establishment serves food, then food is the point. Museum cafeterias offer crusty panini and homemade desserts; any simple diner serving the lunch crowd is likely to roll and cut its own pasta, served up with truffles or special house combinations. Pizzerias smother their pizzas with fresh local ingredients in widely recognized combinations with evocative names. I took to reading these aloud from the menu. Most of the named meals I'd ever known about had butch monikers like Whopper, Monster, and Gulp. I was enchanted with the idea of a lunch named Margherita, Capricciosa, or Quattro Stagioni.

  Reading the menus was reliable entertainment for other reasons too. More Italians were going to chef school, apparently, than translator school. This is not a complaint; it's my belief that when in Rome, you speak the best darn Italian you can muster. So we mustered. I speak some languages, but that isn't one of them. Steven's Italian c
onsisted of only the endearments and swear words he grew up hearing from his Nonnie. I knew the Italian vocabulary of classical music, plus that one song from Lady and the Tramp. But still, I'd be darned if I was going to be one of those Americans who stomp around Italy barking commands in ever-louder English. I was going to be one of those Americans who traversed Italy with my forehead knit in concentration, divining words from their Latin roots and answering by wedging French cognates into Italian pronunciations spliced onto a standard Spanish verb conjugation.

  To my astonishment, this technique served really well about 80 percent of the time. Italians are a deeply forgiving people. Or else they are polite, and still laughing. Va bene. With a dictionary and grammar book in hand, learning a little more actual Italian each day, we traveled in our rental car from Rome up the winding mountain roads to Steven's grandmother's hometown in Abruzzi, then north through the farmsteads of Umbria and Tuscany, and finally by train to Venice, having fascinating conversations along the way with people who did not speak English. I've always depended on the kindness of strangers. In this case they were kind enough to dumb down their explanations and patiently unscramble a romance language omelet.

  So we didn't expect English translations on the menu. No problem. Often there was no menu at all, just the meal of the day in a couple of variations. But restaurants with printed menus generally offered some translation, especially around cities and tourist destinations. I felt less abashed about my own wacky patois as I puzzled through entries such as "Nose Fish," "Pizza with fungus," and the even less appetizing "Polyps, baked or grilled." It seemed "Porky mushrooms" were in season everywhere, along with the perennial favorite (but biologically challenging) "bull mozzarella."

  The fun didn't stop with printed menus: an impressive sculpture in the Vatican Museum was identified as the "Patron Genius of Childbirth." (So that's who thought it up.) A National Park brochure advised us about hiking preparedness, closing with this helpful tip: "Be sure you have the necessary equipments to make funny outings in respects of nature!" One morning after breakfast we found a polite little sign in our hotel room that warned: "Due to general works in the village, no water or electricity 8:30 to 11:00. Thank you for your comprehension."

  Comprehension is just what was called for in these situations. Sooner or later we always figured out the menus, though we remained permanently mystified by a recurring item called "oven-baked rhombus." We were tempted to order it just to put the question to rest, but never did. Too square, I guess.

  Italian food is not delicious for its fussiness or complexity, but for the opposite reason: it's simple. And it's an obsession. For a while I thought I was making this up, an outsider's exaggerated sensitivity to a new cultural expression. But I really wasn't. In the famous Siena cathedral I used my binoculars to study the marble carvings over the entry door (positioned higher than the Donatello frescoes), discovering these icons to be eggplants, tomatoes, cabbages, and zucchini. In sidewalk cafes and trattoria with checkered tablecloths, we eavesdropped on Italians at other tables engaging in spirited arguments, with lots of hand gestures. Gradually we were able to understand they were disagreeing over not politics, but olive oils or the best wines. (Or soccer teams.) In small towns the restaurant staff always urged us to try the local oil, and then told us in confidence that the olive oil from the next town over was terrible. Really, worse than terrible: (sotto voce) it was mierda! Restaurateurs in the next town over, naturally, would repeat the same story in reverse. We always agreed. Everything was the best.

  Simple cuisine does not mean spare, however. An Italian meal is like a play with many acts, except if you don't watch it you'll be stuffed to the gills before intermission. It took us a while to learn to pace ourselves. First comes the antipasto--in September this was thinly sliced prosciutto and fresh melon, or a crostini of toasted bread with ripe tomatoes and olive oil. That, for me, could be lunch. But it's not. Next comes the pasta, usually handmade, in-house, the same day, served with a sauce of truffles or a grate of pecorino cheese and chopped pomodoro. And that, for me, could be supper. But it's not, we're still at the lunch table. Next comes the secondo (actually the third), a meat or fish course. In the mountains, in autumn, it was often rabbit stewed "hunter's style" or wild boar sausage served with porcini mushrooms; near the coast it was eels, crayfish, anchovies, or some other fresh catch sauteed with lemon juice and fresh olive oil.

  With all this under the belt, the diner comes into the home stretch with the salad or contorno--a dish of roasted red peppers, eggplants, or sliced tomatoes with basil. Finally--in case you've just escaped from a kidnapping ordeal and find you are still hungry--comes the option of dessert, the only course that can be turned down with impunity. I tried politely declining other courses, but this could generate consternations over why we disliked the food, whether the damage could somehow be repaired, until I was left wondering what part of "No, grazie" was an insult to the cook. Once when I really insisted on skipping the pasta, our server consented only on the condition that he bring us, instead, the house antipasto, which turned out to be a platter of prosciutto, mixed cheeses, pickled vegetables, stuffed mushrooms, fried zucchini flowers stuffed with ham, and several kinds of meat pastries. (The secondo was still coming.) Also nearly obligatory are the postprandial coffee and liqueur: grappa, limoncello, meloncello (made from cantaloupes), or some other potent regional specialty.

  I was not a complete stranger to meals served in this way. But prior to our trip I'd expected to encounter such cuisine only in fancy, expensive restaurants. Silly me. Whether it's in the country or the town, frequented by tourists or office workers or garage workers or wedding guests, a sitdown restaurant in Italy aims for you to sit down and stay there. Steven and I immediately began to wonder if we would fit into the airplane seats we had booked for our return in two weeks. How is it possible that every citizen of Italy doesn't weigh three hundred pounds? They don't, I can tell you that.

  By observing our neighbors we learned to get through the marathon of lunch (followed by the saga of dinner) by accepting each course as a morsel. City dining is often more formal, but the rural places we preferred generally served family style, allowing us to take just a little from the offered tray. If a particular course was a favorite it was fine to take more, but in most cases a few bites seemed to be the norm. Then slow chewing, and joy. Watching Italians eat (especially men, I have to say) is a form of tourism the books don't tell you about. They close their eyes, raise their eyebrows into accent marks, and make sounds of acute appreciation. It's fairly sexy. Of course I don't know how these men behave at home, if they help with the cooking or are vain and boorish and mistreat their wives. I realize Mediterranean cultures have their issues. Fine, don't burst my bubble. I didn't want to marry these guys, I just wanted to watch.

  The point of eating one course at a time, rather than mixing them all on a single loaded plate, seems to be the opportunity to concentrate one's attention on each flavor, each perfect ingredient, one uncluttered recipe at a time. A consumer trained to such mindful ingestion would not darken the door of a sports bar serving deep-fried indigestibles. And consumption controls the market, or so the economists tell us. That's why it's hard to find a bad meal in Italy. When McDonald's opened in Rome, chefs and consumers together staged a gastronomic protest on the Spanish Steps that led to the founding of Slow Food International.

  We did have some close gastronomic shaves in our travels, or so we thought anyway, until the meal came. Early in the trip when we were still jet-lagged and forgetting to eat at proper mealtimes, we found ourselves one afternoon on a remote rural road, suddenly ravenous. Somehow we'd missed breakfast and then lunchtime, by a wide margin. The map showed no towns within an hour's reach. As my blood sugar dipped past grouchy into the zone of stupefaction, Steven made the promise we have all, at some point, made and regretted: he'd stop the car at the very next place that looked open.

  We rejoiced when a hotel-restaurant materialized at a motorway crossroads, b
ut to be honest, we were also a little disappointed. How quickly the saved can get picky! It looked generic: a budget chain hotel of the type that would, in the United States, serve steam-table food from SYSCO. We resigned ourselves to a ho-hum lunch.

  In the parking lot, every member of a rambunctious bridal party was busy taking snapshots of all the others with raised champagne glasses. We tiptoed past them, to be met at the restaurant entrance by a worried-looking hostess. "Mi dispiace!" she cried, truly distressed. The whole dining room was booked all afternoon for a late wedding luncheon. While trying not to sink to my knees, I tried to convey our desperation. The words affamatto and affogato blurred in my mind. (One means "hungry" and the other is, I think, a poached egg.) The hostess let us in, determined in her soul to find a spot for these weary pilgrims from Esperanto. She seated us near the kitchen, literally behind a potted palm. It was perfect. From this secret vantage point we could be wedding crashers, spies, even poached eggs if that was our personal preference, and we could eat lunch.

  The hostess scurried to bring us antipasto, then some of the best pasta I've ever tasted. We didn't poach on the wedding banquet, just the three ordinary courses they'd whipped up to feed the staff. While we ate and recovered our senses we watched the banquet pass by, one ornate entry after another. Forget all previous remarks about simplicity being the soul of Italian cuisine, this was an edible Rose Bowl parade. The climax was the Coronated Swordfish: an entire sea creature, at least four feet long from snout to tail, stuffed and baked and presented in a semi-lounging "S" shape on its own rolling cart. It seemed to be smiling as it reclined in languid, fishy glory on a bed of colorful autumn vegetables, all cupped delicately in a nest of cabbage leaves. Upon its head, set at a rakish angle, the fish wore a crown carved from a huge red bell pepper. Its sharp nose poked out over the edge of the cart, just at eye level to all the bambini running around, so in the interest of public safety the tip of His Majesty's sword was discreetly capped with a lemon cut into the shape of a tulip.