Cooking With Fernet Branca

by James Hamilton-Paterson

  For several days I poke listlessly through the typescript of The Chequered Fag, correcting typos and still trying to think up an acceptable title. Like all racing drivers Per Snoilsson is constantly besieged by girls he laconically refers to as ‘pit bunnies’ or ‘screwdrivers’: part of the perks of hi-glam living. The readership wants plenty of detail about that, of course, and I have dutifully packed the text with titillating vignettes of post-race celebrations. These include the obligatory showers wearing nothing but the victor’s wreath, also the champagne-soaked knickers draped over silver ice buckets. There is even a description of the Pit Stop Game as played by three Ferrari drivers in a Monaco hotel suite. This had involved each driver pretending to be a car coming into the pits and being besieged by a team of girls whose duty was to attend to various parts of his body and have him away (aliter dictum ‘back in the race’) in record time. Pointless to apologize for such unedifying episodes, they’re what readers want. But they don’t help with the title. I rack my Fernet-damaged frontal lobes. Why couldn’t this stupid Swede have had the enterprise to be something unusual, like that American driver who is an evangelical preacher between races and for whom the title Rev would have been a natural? Then I remember Per’s having once allowed some medical researchers to cover his body with electrodes which transmitted intimate physiological details during a race in Brazil. He informed me proudly that his buttocks had reached a temperature of 41 °C Bingo! Hot Seat!

  Oh yes, I like that. It suggests the weight of responsibility, danger, even lethality, as well as gruelling conditions. At a more private level it brings to my mind indentations made in quick-setting foam at a Surrey works. The phrase is so familiar I wonder if it’s already in use as a title but then think the editor can worry about that. Hot Seat! is good enough for me. Exclamation marks sell books! so I make some copies of the disk and take one down to Camaiore, where I consign it to the post office. Another job jobbed. In the market I find some plump and yearning langoustines and on another stall a refrigerated tray containing pieces of lontra. Farmed, of course: you can’t get wild lontra these days for love or money and I have tried both. Still, irresistible. I buy one and a half kilos for a sum that will appreciably dent my next advance, but what the hell. On the way back I pick up my mail from the bar and by the time I’m home my spirits have soared. Not only have I finished the book and got it out of the house but up here among the trees and crags the summer’s day that was sweltering at sea level is cooled by altitude to a pleasant warmth. I also realize my headache has gone, the last traces of shonka having been purged from my body.

  This calls for some celebratory cooking. The chance proximity in the market of the two major items I have bought prompt my culinary ingenuity to come up with an ideal marriage between river and sea, as it were. I see … yes … a cold dish, a race-day picnic-out-of-the-Bentley’s-boot sort of dish, a perfect complement to mood and weather. I come up with an inspired variant of a little something I once pioneered in the water meadows near Oxford:

  Otter with Lobster Sauce

  Before you rush off to try this dish for yourself, a caveat. Otter is a far subtler meat than rabbit (for instance), as no less an authority than Gavin Maxwell attested – and he was referring to sea otter at that. It should be cooked with the greatest care to preserve its uniquely delicate riverine flavour: like that of kingfishers fed on watercress. It is easily ruined by brutal treatment. Banish Clint Eastwood metaphors to another universe. Imagine a dish prepared by the Water Rat in The Wind in the Willows in a mood of wistful hyperaesthesia and you will have some idea of the sensitivity you will need to bring off this masterpiece:

  ♦

  Ingredients

  1.5 kg otter chunks

  8 tablespoons sunflower oil

  8 medium nasturtium leaves, chopped

  1 sliced shallot

  150 ml dry white wine

  ¼ teaspoon sugar

  1 saffron stamen (really and truly: one single thread)

  300 gm lobster meat

  1 anchovy fillet

  1 tablespoon tiny capers

  1 teaspoon olive oil

  1 teaspoon Fernet Branca

  Mayonnaise

  ♦

  Wash the otter well in cold running water and pat dry with paper towels. Ironically, given the animal’s natural habitat, otter is a dry meat and to keep it succulent it needs to be cooked in just enough liquid as will cover it. The chunks are put into an iron pot together with the oil, nasturtium leaves (2 medium sprigs of watercress are nearly as good), the sliced shallot, saffron, sugar and white wine. Add as much water as required to cover the meat. Now remove the meat and bring the remainder of the ingredients to a boil with the lid on. Add the otter chunks and, when it has all come back to the boil, put the lid back on leaving a crack the thickness of a credit card. Reduce heat to a slow simmer for twenty-six minutes. Remove pot from stove, close lid tight and allow the otter to cool in its own juices until it can be put in the fridge.

  Meanwhile prepare and boil the langoustines in the usual way. When cool enough to handle, shell them. Put the shells, claws and legs into a blender together with the anchovy, capers, Fernet and olive oil and reduce to a fine paste. Reserve. Then make about half a pint (300 ml) of mayonnaise. Incidentally, this is the only recipe I know that is associated with a curse. Two acquaintances who tried to make the dish died within the month, one in Buckinghamshire and the other in Somerset. By the quirkiest of mishaps both fell into rivers in spate and vanished into mill-races. The cleric’s body was found three weeks later, much disfigured. The drama teacher was never seen again. On enquiring I discovered that each had used commercial mayonnaise purchased in a supermarket for this recipe, so there is some justice in this world after all, even if a bit on the lenient side. Certainly the Bishop should have known better. No decent cook gets to heaven by way of Hellman’s. For present purposes you should use half olive oil and half grape seed oil (mix them beforehand) because we don’t wish to drown the flavour of the otter. Use the yolks of two eggs – ducks’ for preference because they add richness without pungency. Now fold the langoustines’ meat together with the paste from the blender carefully but thoroughly into the mayonnaise. You may need to add a smidgin of salt, depending on how salty the capers and anchovy were.

  When everything is cold doff the otter’s hat and you will find him sitting happily in a little savoury jelly. Bone his meat gently and lay it on your finest serving dish together with the jelly. Around it spread the mayonnaise mixture and garnish in a suitably restrained fashion. Slices of hardboiled thrush eggs, though fiddly to peel and cut, look exquisite arranged in shell patterns. Dedicated foodies with patience, eyesight and steadiness of hand may do the same using kingfisher eggs, as I did in the prototype of this dish. (I here salute my friends in Thames Conservancy, without whose help I should never have established – let alone obtained – the right ingredients). Then pop the dish in the fridge for at least six hours. Serve with reverence, a panoramic view and a crisp white wine.

  *

  So cheerful do I become while preparing this wondrous dish that I break into song – Ennio’s exhilarating aria ‘Non disperdere nell’ambiente, cara’ from Lo stronzolo segreto. It’s when Nedda is threatening to throw away the little flask of tears she has wept for him and he begs her not to. By all means the tears (he sings), for roses will spring up wherever they fall to earth; but not the antique Venetian bottle I bought for you … This may, in fact, be the earliest example of environmentalism in opera. As I whip the mayonnaise and sing away in my newly painted kitchen I become aware from time to time of some jarring noises off. Finally, I pause to listen. There is no mistaking that discordant plonking: Marta is taking her piano for a trial gallop. My hand freezes aloft, mayonnaise falling from the fork in disregarded clumps. ‘Aha,’ I think. ‘So that’s it, huh?’ Grimly I resume beating. The plonking continues too, distant though quite intrusive, as no doubt intended.

  That damned house agent, the weaselly Mr
Benedetti. My ‘quiet foreign neighbour’ was to be here just one month a year, eh? It is a situation that calls for immediate investigation.

  Marta

  7

  Dearest Marja

  Greetings from your exiled sister, ‘who holds precious thoughts of you & the family as it were a wren’s egg in her palm …’ Do you remember? That’s how Grandmother Vrilja taught us we should always start our letters, all in that old High Voyde style. There was something else, too, about Mt Sluszic continuing to stand guard over our clan & lands, but I forget it exactly. Perhaps that was the correct formula for ending letters, not starting them?

  So here is a progress report on my ‘crazy damned career’, as our beloved father calls it. I do hope things have become easier now I’ve left. I dread to hear that he’s still going around the castle in a black cloud, kicking the dogs & shouting at poor Mili. Anyway, I shall leave it to your discretion how much of my letters you actually read to him. His not being a reading man is rather fortunate in some ways, ek ni? (as the woodcutters say.) Our menfolk hold our clan’s fortunes in their hands, not flimsy pieces of paper – it’s true! But it’s also true we women can write things among ourselves that the men have no need to know.

  I have settled in perfectly well here, as I knew I should – thanks in no small part to the bank account dear Ljuka arranged for me in Viareggio. How is he, by the way? Are his clothes still full of Makarov pistols when you hug him? Our little brother! And he used to be so delicate, too. He certainly came back from the army a changed boy. I think this place would please you, although Ljuka pretends to find it peasant-like & infra dig in order to give himself the airs befitting someone of his rising eminence in the clan. Secretly, though, I know he’s charmed: it reminds us of that house at Bolk we loved so much on those fishing holidays, even though there’s no river here. But there are great crags & views as well as silences patrolled by eagles. I feel sure I shall fulfil my ambition here & do some commendable work &, despite Father’s misgivings, will bring honour to our family name. I’ve already had such a nice letter from Piero Pacini welcoming me to Italy & saying he can’t wait to get started. That’s the sort of encouragement a girl needs! He’s terribly famous here – the film director of the moment.

  Despite that, I’m afraid I’ve allowed myself to become a bit distracted – no, diverted would be more accurate – by the oddest neighbour imaginable. Yes, I know what you’re going to say: that plausible little house agent Signor Benedetti told Ljuka & me the other house was owned by a foreigner who was only ever here one month in the year. Well, we may yet need to have recourse to some lesson-teaching where that rogue is concerned. Anyway, this neighbour is an Englishman with a little paunch & one of those strange empty trouser-seats that always suggest an amputated bottom. They may be an English speciality. His name is Gerald Samper & he’s truly comic. I thought it would be neighbourly to pay him a visit & introduce myself, so I picked up a bottle & went over. I found him up a ladder, very pink and sweaty. He was obviously put out by the interruption, quite enough to make me want to stay for a bit. Late thirties, at a guess, but there’s something elderly about him so I could believe ten years older. Almost certainly dudi, I should say, as well as alcoholic, for he seized the bottle (it was an aperitif called Fernet Branca – a rather insipid version of that galasiya our hunters drink) with the offhand alacrity of the seasoned toper & started pouring. You know how it is with real drinkers – that way they have of always pouring about an inch more into their own glass than into everyone else’s as if by accident? It’s a dead giveaway.

  Well, I mustn’t be unfair to poor Gerald – though don’t ask me why. I must admit things aren’t helped by my inadequate English but something about him makes it even worse than usual & I can hear myself sounding like a caricature foreigner. Too infuriating but I suppose it’s not his fault. Really, though, I suspect he’s the sort of person you can fathom without words. I mean to say, he’s just the complete dudi, like that sad teacher who tried to follow

  Ljuka around until Father had Captain Panic pay him a visit. Gerald sings as he does his housework: squally arias from, I should think, wholly imaginary Italian operas. At any rate I don’t recognize them. But even without understanding everything he says I’m sure I get his gist: petty & snobbish with a kind of dandyish disdain. Dandyish! With that bottom & the thinning hair! Poor love! He was sitting there pretending he’d never heard of Voynovia to try & make me feel like a nobody from Central Europe, can you imagine? I’ve no idea what he does for a living, although he claims to write a bit. I’ve got him down as one of those dilettante types who dabble in this & that.

  I do wish you could have seen us, Mari. There I was at his kitchen table, taking the occasional sip & trying to make bright, cheerful conversation. And there he was, knocking back this Fernet stuff which, after half a bottle, began to have a noticeable effect. Funniest of all, every time I reached over to refill his glass or our hands touched by accident he shied away as though I might launch myself at him, pin him to the floor & ravish him. It made me laugh a lot & I was tempted to try it just to see his horror. I’m sure it would have blown all his fuses.

  I can hear you chiding me. But you know me, Mari: I’m more mischievous than cruel. All the same, these are passages you’d do well to spare Father if ever you read him bits of this letter. So what else about the estimable Mr Samper? Inevitably, he’s a cookery queen as well as an opera queen and a DIY queen. In keeping with that grand old maxim of ours, ‘Beneath kindness a fortress will crumble’, I invited him to dinner. He put up some token resistance but dutifully turned up with a huge bowl of ice cream he’d made for the occasion. Rather sweet of him. He’d put himself out so I felt well disposed towards him, even a bit touched, & resolved to be on my best behaviour throughout the evening, not to scare him with sudden provocative gestures etc. My one oversight was to have forgotten that I’d run out of wine & hastily had to open some more Fernet Branca. Luckily I’d been given an entire case by the bank manager who came up to give me my cheque book, did I tell you? I now wonder if Ljuka had a hand in that. Anyway, what could I give my visitor to eat but your shonka & pavlu? An authentically Voyde meal, a little European gastronomy lesson. But oh, it so reminded me of home I had tears in my eyes – dear Mari, I’d have known that shonka anywhere in the world, it was so unmistakably from our estate.

  Poor Gerald started by being nervous & I suppose that’s why he ate & drank too much. I haven’t met enough Englishmen to know whether this is a national trait or not, their being unable to leave half-filled plates and bottles on a dinner table without feeling compelled to empty them as though they were a reproach to their manhood. Gerald’s manhood became steadily more & more like those Potemkin suburbs the Soviets put up in Voynograd: a rickety façade against which a dog dared not lift its leg for fear of collapse. He giggled. He became shrill. Eventually he ceremoniously brought on his bowl of ice cream & burst into song. As a matter of fact the ice cream wasn’t at all bad, though a bit bland. A sort of mild herbal flavour. But by then he was so drunk he simply went on eating it until he’d finished that, too.

  At length I became alarmed he might pass out in my kitchen so I took him for a walk ostensibly to look at the night sky (which was indeed magnificent & rimmed on all sides with mountain outlines). I craftily edged him back towards his own house where he stared at the sky, winced, belched, apologized, laughed uproariously & said ‘Next time you’re my guest.’ Then he added in a puzzled voice: ‘I didn’t really say “breast”, did I?’ & fell to the ground like a stunned peewit (as the Bunki say). So I left him there. But I know he survived because I’ve since heard him bawling arias in his kitchen. Really, he’s so awful I’m growing quite fond of him except that it may be difficult to work against the noise.

  Now I shall stop, Marja dearest, with all sorts of messages to the family & a fervent prayer that Mt Sluszic will indeed continue to stand guard over our clan & lands.

  Much love

  Marta
<
br />   8

  This morning I go down to Viareggio to meet Sasi Vlas, who has come over from Florence for the day to act as interpreter for me. She’s married to a local lawyer and acts as consul, cultural attaché and general representative of Voyde affairs in that city. A handsome lady with the narrow forehead so characteristic of the Bun region – a first impression confirmed as soon as she opens her mouth (a showcase of Soviet-era dentistry). Oh, that Bunki accent we Voyde mock so much at home! Yet on the concourse of an Italian station it’s a welcome and nostalgic sound. Here we are, all alone in a foreign world, allies under the skin, holders of the same shit-brown Voynovian passports as well as of permessi di soggiorno … Actually that is not quite how Sasi sees it, as soon becomes clear. Married to an Italian, fully fluent and acculturated with two small children, she probably has to overcome an instant’s irritation – even embarrassment – at this hick from her homeland before remembering who Father is and that I’m doing the music for a Piero Pacini film. She better had remember, too; so she’s pleasant and helpful. In due course we meet up with a couple of Pacini’s step’n’fetchits and drive out as arranged to view the prospective set.

  The coast road from Viareggio heading south towards Tirrenia and Livorno is scrubby and piney and agri to the left. On the right, once the estuary’s boatyards and marinas have thinned out, are beach resorts. These are faintly hysterical in their downmarket but pretentious rivalry, their walls of shrubbery and grandiose gateways and names in lightbulbs reading ‘Eden’ and ‘Nirvana’. It is the first time this landlocked girl from middle Europe has actually set foot on one of these golden rivieras, but I can’t say it’s much different from the beaches near Danzig where Marja and I were once taken. I suppose the sun’s hotter here but the dockyard cranes in the distance look the same. However, I’m expected to gaze seaward with due awe. According to Sasi we have only stopped ‘to give me my bearings’, but I suspect it was more to teach me my place.