Last Bite: A Novel of Culinary Romance

by Nancy Verde Barr

  “Mourning period?”

  “You know, from your breakup.”

  “I’m not mourning. That’s not why I don’t want to go out with you.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Because I was going to tell you that the accepted wisdom is that you’re supposed to get right back on the horse when you’re thrown.”

  “Danny, when I get back on the horse, it can’t be a wild one. It’s not what I want.”

  “I’m not that wild, Casey. I can get you good letters of recommendations from old girlfriends, if you like.”

  “Is it a very large stack? I don’t have much free time to read.”

  Before he could answer, a car pulled up and Kim the greeter rolled down her window and chirped, “Sorry, Danny. The traffic was horrifying. Am I very late?”

  “Your timing is perfect,” I said and walked away.

  Chapter 15

  On the road again.

  —Willie Nelson

  Thursday evening, I met Sonya at JFK for our flight to Milan. If Sally had been with us, there would have been a strong possibility of being upgraded to first class, but she had left for London on Saturday, so I resigned myself to coach. I had packed little sandwiches of brown bread and tequila-cured salmon, and when the drink cart stopped at our seats, we each ordered some white wine and unwrapped the sandwiches.

  “Where are we meeting Sally?” I asked between mouthfuls.

  “In Parma. Tomorrow.” Sonya reached for another sandwich.

  I hated to risk acid reflux, but I had to ask. “And George?”

  “I don’t know. When he called to say he would be in Italy, he asked me to fax him our itinerary but didn’t say when he was coming. I asked Sally but she didn’t know, either.”

  “Wouldn’t it be cool if he didn’t show at all?”

  “A blessing.” She pulled an apple and a pear out of her carry-on and gave me a choice. The pear looked deliciously ripe and I took it.

  I bit into the pear and put my head back for a moment, overwhelmed with thoughts of all that Sally had going on. It seemed that she would soon be dealing with a new publisher and, God forbid, maybe a new television network. She was giving up her London flat, which had been such a part of her life with Peter. That was another thing—Peter. She’d learned something about him that hurt. And worst of all, it seemed to me, was having to deal with George. I knew she thought she could tough it all out, but I wasn’t so sure.

  “Do you think having George around will affect Sally’s performance?” I asked.

  “I thought about that, but I’ve seen Sally go through some tough times and never show it on camera. She’s such a professional. I’m betting that she’ll be okay. He’ll just ruin life for the rest of us.”

  Ain’t that the truth?

  WE LANDED IN MILAN early in the morning, and after grazie-ing and prego-ing our way through customs we met Giuseppe, who was waiting for us with a sign that said BUON GIORNO IN AMERICA. Giuseppe would be our driver for the entire trip. He was a man in his sixties, perfectly groomed and wearing a tweed jacket, pale yellow sweater vest, and a necktie. He was courteous and protective and immediately took us under his Harris tweed wing.

  He packed our luggage and our jet-lagged bodies into his impeccably clean Mercedes-Benz and headed for the autostrada. “Ah, la Parma,” he said. “He is the queen of cities. City of art, of music, food—incredibile, the food.” It turned out that Giuseppe was from Parma and, like most Italians, suffered from a chronic case of campanilismo, extreme partiality to one’s own city.

  About three hours later, we arrived at the Palace Maria Luigia, in the center of Parma, and while Sonya was checking us in, I called Sally from the house phone.

  “Hi, there,” I said when she picked up.

  “Is that Signorina Casey Costello?”

  “Sì, Signora Woods. Come stai?”

  “Wait a minute. I have to look that up.” I could hear pages turning. “Molte bene. Grazie.”

  “Brava. What are you up to?”

  “Just going over the scripts. Why don’t you and Sonya come up to my room?”

  “Perfect! We’ll drop our bags and be right there.”

  “Arrivederci,” she said.

  “Ciao.”

  “That’s right. Ciao.”

  Sally had a knockout penthouse room with huge windows that framed the city center. The three of us stood looking out and I was totally blown away by the reality that here I was in Italy, with my people. I was feeling really connected and wished that my mother and Nonna could have been here with me.

  None of us had eaten lunch, so we found a nearby trattoria where the menu was only in Italian, a good sign. Just about every item listed was a specialty of the area. We knew this because the name of the dish was followed by the words di Parma. That meant that it contained either Parmesan cheese or Parma ham or, if you were lucky, both. Sonya ordered tortelli d’erbetta di Parma, a kind of elongated ravioli filled with cooked beet greens, ricotta, and Parmesan cheeses and served swimming in butter and more Parmesan. Sally and I ordered tagliatelle di Parma, thin ribbons of egg pasta with a sauce of butter, Parma ham, a little tomato, and lots of cream and Parmesan cheese. It doesn’t get much better. For our second course, we each ordered rollatini di vitello di Parma, thin slices of veal rolled around Parma ham and Parmesan cheese and braised in Marsala.

  We spent the next two hours eating our food di Parma, sipping local wine, and practicing our limited Italian on the waiters. Sonya knew only “good day,” “please,” “thank you,” and “where’s the WC?” but Sally had been studying and knew a lot of useful phrases, such as una bottiglia di vino rosso, subito, and il conto, per favore. I could understand most of what was said to me and with enough red wine was able to respond to anything. Sally and Sonya said I sounded just like a native. It’s in the genes.

  Sally never mentioned London, and neither did we. It didn’t seem like a happy subject. After dessert and espresso, Sonya paid il conto, courtesy of the network, and we walked back to the hotel through the Parco Ducale. We were immediately blown away by the expanse of green right in the center of the city. That was probably the way tourists felt about New York’s Central Park.

  “Look at the size of those trees,” Sally said.

  “Many of them were actually planted in the fifteen hundreds, when the ruling Farnese family established it as a park,” Sonya explained. “Then, in the mid–seventeen hundreds, a Frenchman named Petitot redesigned the gardens for the French Bourbon rulers of Parma. That’s why they’re in the French style.” Sonya knew these things because she’d had to research as much as possible about each city we’d visit in order to decide what she wanted for B-roll. B-roll consists of hours of tape a cameraman records around the city without the talent; an editor then cuts it down into seconds of footage. The edited tape is used to introduce a scene, establish the location, and provide atmosphere. Sally will provide the voice-over that tells the audience what they are seeing.

  “Well, they are perfectly lovely,” Sally said. “And I love seeing all these Italian women walking arm in arm. It just seems like the right thing to do with friends.” She linked her arms in ours. “You know any Italian songs, Casey?”

  “Is the pope Catholic?” I asked, and I taught them “Funicoli, Funicola,” which Nonna had taught us as kids. I don’t think I had the words quite right, but who would know? One meal in Italy and we were already feeling totally Italian. Tomorrow, I’d have to teach them the tarantella. We were a giddy, jolly threesome when we arrived back at the hotel. We made plans to meet for dinner and then crashed for a siesta. What a country!

  IN SPITE OF THE fact that my body was still on New York middle-of-the-night time, I was wide awake and psyched to get going when Giuseppe picked us up at seven the next morning. Our routine in each of the cities would be the same. Mornings, Sonya, Sally, the director, and the camera crew would go out in the field to tape Sally at a place of culinary interest. I would go to the restaurant to work with the talent and get
things prepped for the afternoon cooking shoot. I realized that this schedule gave me very little time alone with Sally, and I wanted so much to talk to her about the land mines she was trying to avoid. Then again, maybe it was best to skirt them altogether while we were in Italy.

  Giuseppe dropped me off first and then drove Sally and Sonya to meet the crew on location. Among other culinary marvels, they were going to tape Sally stirring curds and whey with a parmigiano-reggiano cheesemaker and then patting the little pigs that ate the whey and wound up as Parma hams.

  My stop was a restaurant located in a converted farmhouse, but one that must have been occupied by a rich padrone and not the likes of my farmer ancestors, who, according to Nonna, had been lucky to have a mud floor under their feet. It was a two-story stone farmhouse with a terra-cotta roof and a thick, ancient front door, to which was taped a sign that said APERTO OGGI PER TV AMERICANO. The restaurant was a family-run business with the seventy-five-year-old nonna, the talent, at the helm. Anna Maria reminded me of my own Nonna. She was short, round, and grandmotherly. I guessed that she had been to the beauty parlor that morning, because each strand of her gray hair was twisted into a perfect curl and I could smell hair-spray; her fingernails were newly painted a bright pink. Her pale pink housedress was starched and ironed. I loved her. She was going to demonstrate tagliatelle di Parma, the same dish Sally and I had drooled over at lunch yesterday.

  We finished the setup just before noon, when our TV americano group pulled up in the Mercedes and a van. Sonya introduced me to the crew: Nicole, responsible for makeup, was Italian. The camera, sound, and lighting crew were English. Sonya had worked with them before and she told me that they worked hard and played hard. The playing part didn’t surprise me; they looked a lot like a seventies heavy-metal band, and the head cameraman’s name was Rocket. You don’t get a nickname like that by being captain of the chess club. The director, John, was American; I had met him a few times before on location. He was easygoing, and he and Sonya worked well together.

  While the crew was setting up cameras and equipment and Nicole was attending to Anna Maria’s makeup, one of her daughters made us lunch, fritti di Parma. She took pieces of pasta dough, rolled them paper-thin, and deep-fried them in vegetable oil until they puffed up like fat little pillows. She drained them on paper towels, split them open, and filled them with thin slices of Parma ham and Parmesan cheese. They were insanely delicious.

  By the time we were ready to shoot, assorted sizes of children, grandchildren, spouses, and more than a few neighbors had formed a small crowd in the kitchen. The room was sufficiently large to hold them all, and after warning them not to make a sound, John called for a run-through and then for action. Using some Italian and some English, Anna Maria and Sally walked us, and eventually millions of viewers, through tagliatelle di Parma.

  “Primo, la pasta,” Anna Maria said, scooping flour from a large crockery bowl onto the counter and shaping it into a mound.

  “Looks like about three cups,” Sally said.

  “Sì. Now you make una fontana.” She used her hand to form a well, which she called a fountain, in the center of the flour and broke three eggs into it.

  “Those are three large eggs.” Anna Maria had collected them from her chicken coop so there was no egg carton marked “large,” but Sally knew a large egg when she saw one.

  “Battate con una forchetta.” Anna Maria beat the eggs rapidly with a fork until they were a deep, orange-yellow mass, supporting the outside of the flour well with one hand as she replaced the beating with a swirling motion.

  “Her fork is gradually drawing in bits of flour from the inside wall,” Sally explained. When the eggs were no longer runny, Anna Maria put down the fork and used both hands to cave her wall in over the doughy mass. Then she pushed and squeezed the mass until it resembled a pasta-dough wannabe. Sally pinched it and said that it was still crumbly but held together.

  “Now you must first clean the surface,” said Anna Maria, setting aside the paste she had made and scraping the counter clean. “Then you knead la pasta.” She pushed the crumbly paste with the heel of her hand, several times, then folded it, turned it over, and pushed, folded, and turned several more times.

  “How long do you knead it?” Sally asked.

  Anna Maria shrugged. “Until it is smooth and feels like pasta dough. Perhaps dieci minuti.” She lifted a kitchen towel off the ball of dough we had made that morning and handed it to Sally. “Like this,” she said.

  Sally patted the dough and declared it “as smooth as a baby’s bottom.” She asked, “What’s next?”

  “Now we stretch it.” Anna Maria shifted the pasta machine from the end of the counter to the center, as we had gone over that morning. She broke off a piece of the dough and rolled it several times through the machine, letting Sally pick up the sheet as it came through. When it was as thin as Anna Maria wanted, Sally held the long strip up, draping an end over each hand. “This is perfectly lovely, Anna Maria. It’s so thin I can see through it. How do we cut the tagliatelle?”

  Anna Maria, God bless her, had remembered all our stage directions and was in the process of changing the head on the pasta machine. When she had the cutting attachment in place, she took the pasta from Sally, sliced it into three pieces, then let Sally roll a piece through so that it came out the other end as ribbons of tagliatelle. “That’s wonderful!” Sally said, admiring her perfect strands of tagliatelle. Anna Maria scooped up the strands and deftly twisted them into little nests that she set on a floured towel with the other nests we had made that morning.

  We had to break there so that the camera could move to the stove, where we had a large pot of boiling water for the pasta and a good-sized sauté pan for the sauce. We put butter in the pan, and when it was almost completely melted, the cameras began to roll again.

  “You have about six tablespoons of butter melting, Anna Maria. Now what?” Sally asked.

  “Adesso, il prosciutto di Parma,” said Anna Maria, picking up a plate that held narrow strips of prosciutto. Sally popped one in her mouth and said, “About a cup of Parma ham cut into julienne pieces.” Anna Maria offered the plate to Sally to see if she wanted more. Sally held up her hand and shook her head no, so Anna Maria tipped them into the pan and stirred them around a bit. Then she poured heavy cream from a pitcher into the pan.

  “That’s about two cups of real heavy cream. And that has to boil and reduce.” That was the cue for John to stop tape while the cream reduced. When it had, they picked up again on a close-up of the reduced cream.

  “The cream is reduced to about a cup,” Sally said before asking Anna Maria what came next.

  “I pomodori.” Anna Maria spooned a few tablespoons of tomato puree into the pan, immediately turning the white sauce into a pale pink about the color of her dress. She stirred in some salt, pepper, and nutmeg, and said, “Basta,” then turned to the boiling water. She dropped a couple of tablespoons of salt and several strands of tagliatelle into the water. After a few minutes that would eventually be edited out, she retrieved the plump strands with a long-handled, weathered pasta scoop, tossed them in the sauce, and then transferred them to a pasta dish and grated a snowy mound of Parmesan on top. She handed to Sally, who already had a fork in her hand. “Mangia,” said Anna Maria, and Sally did as she was told and declared it delizioso. John declared the spot delizioso. With hugs, grazies, and arrivedercis, we packed up and left for Bologna, the Fat.

  Bologna is called “the Fat” because of its good food, and we arrived just in time to head out for dinner. We quickly checked into the hotel, left our luggage for the bellman to deliver to our rooms, and set out in search of the restaurant Sonya said had been highly recommended to her. Our hotel was in the old part of the city near the main piazza, Piazza Maggiore, and we soon found ourselves walking along the miles of sidewalks protected by arched roofs. Sally remarked on what a good idea it was to build “arcade umbrellas” in case it rained.

  “They have an interes
ting story,” said Sonya. Boy, it was nice having her along. “In the eleventh century, Bologna was a wealthy city but very crowded. People from all over were immigrating here because it had the first university in Europe—built in 1088. There was no room to build more living space, so people began to expand their houses out over the sidewalks, and that made these porticos. The first one was built in 1211, I think it was. Before long it became a city law that if you built a house, you had to build a portico. These go on for miles.”

  “That’s fascinating,” said Sally.

  “Wow. I love my people,” I said.

  We continued under the porticos stopping every now and then to admire the architecture and to look in shop windows, until we came to Sonya’s restaurant. It served traditional Bolognese food, so we decided to order the bollito misto. Bollito misto means “mixed boil,” and the mix seems to include every four-legged farm creature known to man. Our waiter wheeled an elaborate cart up to our table and began to lift ingredient after ingredient out of simmering broth. He carved and placed on our plates calf’s tongue, veal breast, chicken, beef brisket, a sausage he told us was a local cotechino, and sausages that looked like the sweet Italian sausage from home. In case we might feel we weren’t getting our money’s worth, he added some small whole potatoes. He placed two different tangy, cold sauces, mustard and a pickle relish called mostardo, on the table and left us to eat ourselves to death. I really regretted having let Mary talk me out of clothes with elastic waistbands.

  When we finally cried uncle and refused the dessert he wiggled under our noses, he told us to “fate una passeggiata.” That means “take a walk,” but he wasn’t kicking us out. That’s what the Bolognese do after dinner under all those porticos; they take a stroll. With food like this, I understand the law requiring those passages to be built.

  I walked Sally to her room, wondering if she was up for talking, but when we got to her door she said, “I am going right to sleep. That dinner wore me out. Good night, honey.”