by Peter King
The birthday boy, Silvio Pellegrini, had worked his way through the still-thickening crowd. His smooth, well-fed face had a prickle of perspiration and he had a glass of champagne in his hand which was surely not the first. He caught sight of me and approached.
“Ah, amico mio, are you enjoying yourself with all these wonderful people?”
Ottavio’s biting comments about somebody’s wife were raising shouts of critical disagreement but I wasn’t going to spoil Pellegrini’s birthday by pointing out that “wonderful” might not apply universally. Instead, I told him that I was having a great time.
“Some of Bernardo’s plant and flower antipasti are really excellent,” I added. “Do you supply him with any of those?”
“No, he forages for those himself. Before dawn sometimes,” he said with a smile. “A very dedicated man,”
“It’s good of him to throw this birthday party,” I said.
“Oh, several chefs in the region do this—taking it in turns. They are all my very good customers.” He looked around, making sure that no one was in earshot. Some were but the noise level was spreading like a blanket. Satisfied, he went on, “Have you thought any more about the buffalo incident?”
I hesitated, then told him of my encounter in the duomo at Modena. His eyes widened. “Extraordinary! Then perhaps it was you that the buffalo were intended to trample!”
“Can’t imagine why.”
He looked at me slyly, tapping the side of his nose in that typically Italian gesture that implies secrecy. “The chefs,” he said, “that must be the reason.”
I tried to look as if I didn’t understand. He continued, taking a different tack. “I examined the few charred remains of the fireworks. No clues there—you can buy them anywhere. I could find nothing else in the area.”
“Have you told the police?” I asked casually.
He looked away. “No. It would not be good for my business.”
“Is there anyone who might want to kill you?”
He smiled, slightly uneasily. “Several, I suppose. A man in my position has enemies in business—that is inevitable.”
“But none specifically?”
He shrugged. “I am involved now in negotiations to buy some rice fields and that is causing some anger but no, not murder.”
“It’s a puzzle,” I said, trying to draw him into further references to the chefs, but he moved on to another topic. “It is a shame you did not get to see my cheese factories,” he said.
“I’d like to see them very much.”
“Good. What about tomorrow?”
We agreed upon the details and he pushed back into the throng, receiving claps on the back from the men and kisses from the women. I spied a tray of what appeared to be a close relative of Mexican tostadas. The mashed beans were mixed with olives and avocado slices and the waiter told me that the leaves and petals were borage and lilac.
The lawyer, Tomasso Rinaldo, and his wife, Clara, struggled out of the crowd. Clara was a tall coppery-haired woman who might have been a singer for she had a strong, well-modulated voice. “How goes the quest?” Tomasso wanted to know with a conspiratorial wink.
RAI, the Italian television network, must have run a program on my mission. Everybody seemed to know about it. “My quest at the moment is to get a refill on this excellent champagne,” I replied. It was an Italian version of champagne, I knew, and as such not strictly entitled to be called champagne, which must come from the Champagne region of France. But Italians (and some winegrowers in other countries) poo-poo such trivialities and are belligerent in defense of their right to produce sparkling wines which they feel should be judged on their merits and not according to where they are produced.
My decoy worked. As a lawyer and as an Italian, Tomasso was bound to contest champagne’s determination to remain unique. He did. “This is Prosecco from Conegliano. Just as good as champagne—maybe better. Here, let me get you another.” Italians have no qualms about waving, shouting, pointing, and all the other gauche things that Anglo-Saxons studiously avoid. Tomasso did all three and I had a fresh glass of champagne in my hand before you could say Gina Lollobrigida. I should have known, though, that as a lawyer, he would not be sidetracked.
“Our host tonight, Bernardo, is a most resourceful and original chef, don’t you think?” I agreed that he was. “But then, so is Giacomo,” he resumed. “It is impossible to imagine a difficulty that Giacomo could not overcome.”
If he wanted to play that game, so would I. “Whereas Ottavio shows unmistakeable flashes of originality,” I said.
Tomasso did not seem inclined to go along with that. Did his lip curl? I glanced at his wife. “What do you think of Ottavio?” I asked. “All the women seem to adore him.” Did her glance flicker from my face to Tomasso’s too quickly, as if this was a topic she did not care to delve into?
If she was going to answer, she was saved by the cantankerous voice of the temperamental chef himself. “Got to go. God knows what they’ll be up to in that kitchen of mine. Hopeless lot. Don’t know why I don’t fire them all and start again.” Like a good host, Bernardo protested such an early departure but Ottavio shook his locks of lank hair. “I’d be going anyway,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to stay for that camel soup of yours.”
I looked to Tomasso and Clara for some exposition of that remark. Both smiled. “It means bread soaked in water,” Clara said. “Children put it on their window sills at Christmas to feed the camels of the three wise men.” She seemed pleased to have been able to change the subject, and Tomasso took her roughly by the elbow and propelled her into a group of people who he said were waving to them.
Several others came and chatted with me, then, just as Francesca rejoined me, we were asked to sit down for dinner. “You’re looking sad,” I told her, untruthfully. “You didn’t have a chance to tell Ottavio how much you admire his pasta?”
“No, and now he’s gone.” She looked at the table, the great chef forgotten. “Doesn’t this look wonderful?”
It did. In one way, this was better for my supposedly secret mission. I would be able to assess several different dishes prepared by Bernardo rather than those few courses that I would order. There was tagliatelle with olives, peppers stuffed with rice and flavored with garlic and anchovies, and gnocchi Romagnola, a creamy delicacy that melted in the mouth. The filling was ground beef with red wine, chopped tomato pulp, grated carrot, and parmesan cheese. There was also cappelletti, little hats, a popular pasta like ravioli stuffed with ground turkey, prosciutto, mortadella, chicken livers, and ricotta while Francesca went wild over the asparagus wrapped in prosciutto and then baked with melted butter and parmesan.
“Do you not like our wonderful food?” asked a female voice.
It was the sultry, dark-haired Elena Pellegrini, looking like an opera star with her ample figure and wearing an emerald-green dress that must have taken a while to get into. She beamed a high candlepower smile at me.
“It truly is wonderful,” I agreed. “It would be difficult to pick out any favorites, it’s all so good. I suppose many of the ingredients come from your husband’s businesses?”
“Many of them, yes.”
“But you probably don’t have any interest in business?”
Her dark eyes flashed. “I am very interested. I help Silvio a lot. I could run the business better than he does. Mostly, though, I am busy with charity work. I am also on the board of the opera company, I am vice-president of the symphony orchestra association—I am active in many things.”
We chatted further, then she was approached by a woman who wanted to know about a meeting of one of Elena’s numerous activities. I returned to the food.
Bernardo was making full use of local ingredients, I noticed, and was not pressing too hard his beloved plants and flowers. Not that he had omitted these, for everyone admired the nasturtium fettucine and the cucumber salad with coriander flowers.
Main courses followed, small portions so that everyone could enjoy mor
e than one. Pieces of swordfish steak were served sautéed and covered with flowers that a chef sitting across the table, a man I had not met before, told me was Satureja. It gave a piquant spicy flavor and we eventually worked out that it is known in English as savory. Another well-informed guest further down the table said it was the first herb planted by the colonists in America.
The parade of master cooking was unrelenting. Moscardinetti, baby octopus cooked in oil with garlic, rosemary, and tomatoes; quartiretto, leg of kid stuffed with spinach, eggs, and cheese; rosettes di vitello, which was so good I set up another hunt around the table for clues on how it was prepared. The chef remembered having it at the Cipriani Hotel in Venice, where he said it was a specialty. The secret of the sauce, he said, was chopped ox tongue with truffles, gruyere cheese, ham, and mushrooms.
Wine flowed in abundance, and I was pleased to note that Bernardo poured Gattinara among others. This was an old-time favorite of mine, but the quality had sadly dropped off in recent years and I was delighted to see it had bounced back resoundingly.
Desserts came and were sampled with cries of delight, but everyone was too replete to eat much of them. When we had said good-byes to everyone, congratulated Pellegrini on his birthday once more, and complimented Bernardo on his magnificent cuisine, Francesca and I sank thankfully into the comfortable seats of the limousine.
“Want to come in for a nightcap?” I asked her, but she rolled her eyes agonizingly.
“I have a lot of work to do tomorrow,” she said. “It will be a good opportunity while you are sampling all those wonderful cheeses with Signor Pellegrini.”
“Work?”
“Paperwork. In the office.”
“All right,” I said. “I’ll call you later in the day.”
“The minibar in your room has Fernet Branca. Best cure in the world for over eating and overdrinking.”
“I’ll remember that if I ever do either one.” She gave me a look which softened into a smile as the limo stopped, and she left me a purring “Ciao.”
CHAPTER NINE
THE TOUR THROUGH THE Pellegrini cheese factories was an indelible series of mental images: some ancient equipment in dark, echoing chambers with condensation trickling down the walls, and others sparkling new vessels and pipes with temperature indicators, time recorders, and flashing lights in red, white, and green. One minute, we were in the Middle Ages and the next we were on a 2010 science fiction movie set.
Women in white aprons and blue shirts operated machines, men in clean smocks peered through Ferrari glasses at dials and gauges and an occasional inspector walked by with a clipboard, a phone clipped to the waistband, a stopwatch in the hand, and an inquiring expression.
Old and new merged without conflict, the fifteenth century blurred into the twenty-first, and everybody looked professional and efficient in the steamy atmosphere permeated with the almost overpowering smell of sour cheese.
“Some areas are old,” explained Pellegrini. “I know we should update them and we will, but as long as they continue to be efficient, we keep them. Some processes in cheese-making are just not suitable to mechanization and still need the human touch.” I told him my knowledge of cheese-making was a couple of decades old and asked him to refresh my memory.
“Casein is a protein present in the milk of all mammals. When an acidic substance is added to it, it coagulates and ferments. Man’s early attempts at cheese-making used rennet and the process ended there—it was a very sour cheese by today’s standards.”
“Isn’t rennet something that comes from wild animals?”
“Yes, it’s their gastric juice and it is extremely potent; one part of rennet will ferment five million parts of milk. The kind we use now though is a chemical substitute—a single enzyme called rennin. Look,” he said, pointing, “they are adding some here.”
A row of copper cauldrons gleamed soft warm tints, and two workers were emptying a tub of thick white liquid into the warm milk. We walked over a slippery floor to the next building where the curds were being lifted out of wooden vats in large canvas scoops. “This is another operation we will be modernizing soon,” Pellegrini said. “Depending on what type of cheese is being made, there can be two or sometimes three operations like this. A stiffness, an elasticity develops—you can see it beginning.” As the mechanical paddles stirred, the pasty mass was thickening noticeably. “When it is firm enough, the temperature is lowered and the slabs removed. Treatment from then on varies with the kind of cheese.”
“How many kinds do you make?”
“Mozzarella is our biggest product.” He smiled. “Thanks to pizza, which is the biggest consumer. Also we make parmesan, and that’s thanks to spaghetti. Can you imagine eating a plate of spaghetti without a waiter asking you how much parmesan you want grated onto it? Provolone and caciovallo are our other main products.”
We walked on through more buildings, each handling one of the different types of cheese. “Drying can take a month, maturing can take up to a year,” Pellegrini was saying, but I was wondering how the workers could stand the smell. It seemed overpowering to me.
On his belt, a phone buzzed and he answered it briefly. “I must go back to the house for a few moments,” he said to me after he hung up. “You were particularly interested in seeing how the buffalo are milked, weren’t you?”
“Yes but go ahead with your business in the house.”
“I must do it from the phone there, I have some papers—” He called over a fair-haired youngish man with a pleasant smile. “This is Gunther, he is from Austria. He will take you through the rest of the operations here.” He turned to Gunther. “I’ll meet you in the packing shed for provolone in about fifteen minutes and I can take the signor to the milking area from there.”
“Cheese is like wine—it does not travel well,” Gunther said as we walked through the packing shed. “You can see that there are several lines, each using a different packing material. You see, cheeses which continue to mature are wrapped in waxed paper and stored in wooden boxes. This way, the cheese can breathe after it has left the cellar. Other cheeses stop maturing as soon as they are taken out of the cellar and they have to be wrapped in plastic to preserve their humidity.”
“What about this smaller line here?” I asked. “Aren’t those soft cheeses?”
“Yes, and they require different packing too. Some are wrapped in leaves, some real, some synthetic. Others travel on a bed of straw.” He smiled at my expression. “Yes, even today this is still a popular method of packing certain of the more expensive soft cheeses. You’ll find it amusing that health regulations of the European Union have been altered so that artificial straw can be used in some instances.”
A further packing line was located near a massive spool taller than a man. It turned slowly, unrolling a wide sheet of aluminum foil. “That’s for full sealing,” said Gunther. “Some other soft cheeses are so sensitive, they must be dipped in liquid plastic.”
The powerful smell was everywhere and Gunther told me of a nearby village with a cheese factory where an electrical failure occurred. Every operation was paralyzed, and the smell from the storage warehouses, no longer temperature controlled, was so powerful that the village had to be evacuated. Electrical repair teams then went in wearing gas masks.
There was no sign of Pellegrini as we emerged into the sunlight so I took the opportunity to ask Gunther if mozzarella was the only cheese made from buffalo milk. “No, there are two others: provatura and provole. We make them both too but they have to be consumed within a day or two. They do not pack or travel well so they are consumed locally.” He cast an anxious glance around. Almost half an hour had passed and I said, “Look, you must have to get back. I’ll walk back to the farmhouse, Signor Pellegrini must still be there.” Gunther protested, but I insisted and enjoyed the relatively clear air of the hundred yard walk.
I knocked at the door of the farmhouse but there was no answer. I went in and called Pellegrini’s name but all was quiet. A
s I closed the door behind me, I noticed the robust aroma of coffee. It must come from that elaborate piece of Italian engineering on the table just inside the door and I instinctively looked there. The chrome-plated monster was quietly dozing steam but the big pot was gone.
I looked around the big room and the first thing that caught my eye was a trail of brown stains on the light-colored matting. They spread in a zigzag pattern and I followed them to find a dozen pieces of shattered china, apparently a coffee cup and saucer. Just beyond them was an overturned chair and the coffee pot, its contents a brown pool rapidly soaking into the floor covering.
Alarmed now, I called Pellegrini’s name but all I could hear was the trickle of water from the giant waterwheel in the pond at the end of the room. The trail I had followed lined up that way and I walked tentatively forward.
Then I saw Pellegrini.
He was floating on his back in the shallow pond.
A loud scream came from behind me. An elderly, gray-haired woman with a large sack in one hand stood in the side doorway. She looked from me to Pellegrini and her face was contorted. She screamed again, pointed at me, then turned and ran.
CHAPTER TEN
CAPTAIN CATALDO OF THE Carabiniere looked as if he had just come from a dress rehearsal at La Scala. Thigh boots shone as if they got an hour’s polishing every day. The black uniform with red piping was immaculate, and the hat with its high-swept brim and spray of feathers would have brought admiration from Hedda Hopper or Carmen Miranda. A sword clanked in a metal scabbard—not a feature seen in the police of very many countries. He introduced himself. His deep voice was beautifully modulated as if he took regular singing lessons.