Amore and Amaretti

by Victoria Cosford

  I read and walk in the afternoons instead of early mornings. I write lots of letters, and at night watch dreadful variety programmes on television as I spoon gelato into my mouth.

  Mangia che ti passa

  Eat and you will feel better

  For most of that intensely hot summer, both the hot water system and the toilet in our bathroom are out of order. Essential functions and services breaking down is a facet of everyday life taken for granted in this battered ancient country, as presumably it is in all other countries not ‘new’ like Australia – the general response is philosophical.

  Since my first time in Italy, I have experienced on innumerable occasions the disappearance of water for no apparent reason. The time it occurred on an extremely busy night at the first restaurant is the most memorable. Crates of mineral water had to be emptied into the enormous pasta pot; into the sink, for washing up; over our hands, for regular hand-washing. The chaos was extraordinary, and yet outside the kitchen the customers calmly enjoyed their meals without the slightest suspicion. In the Via Ghibellina flat shared with Ignazio, the shower water once stopped just as I was about to rinse off the foamy white conditioner from my hair. Fortunately, we had a barber shop directly below us into which I could drip so I could finish the job. On the Isle of Elba, it happened so frequently that I became adept at showering with the aid of bottles of mineral water – lathering up, rinsing off – and, on the nights I needed to wash my hair, would require a store of eight bottles do so effectively.

  After two months, Fabio, our jack of all trades – a massive man whose large, loose jeans hang low around his hips, whose Florentine accent is almost incomprehensibly thick, whose soul is infinitely gentle – arrives to bring salvation. Until then, the cold baths I have been sinking into every afternoon in the heat are all I desire, and flinging a bucket of water down the toilet to flush away the contents seems as efficient a method as any. Once Fabio has left, all he has fixed we experience as absolute luxuries; this sense of luxury and privilege and ease of life remains with us for a long time afterwards.

  There is an unexpected phone call from Emba – beloved mother-figure from I’ Che C’è C’è – who has invited Piero and me to her place on a day off but not until late afternoon, allowing me to first visit the Valentino exhibition at the Accademia. I am up even earlier than usual to catch the bus into Florence, which deposits me behind the Santa Maria Novella station a little before nine o’clock. I spend an entrancing two hours in the lofty gallery, where David has been surrounded by shop dummies attired in red evening gowns falling to the floor in drapes and folds, pleats and swirls; most of them have been loaned, for the purposes of the exhibition, by movie stars like Sharon Stone and Glenn Close, according to tiny plaques beside each one. The drama of contrast, making that sublime statue whose imitations and reproductions are ubiquitous throughout the city the naked centrepiece for a room of red-gowned headless women, is both audacious and ingenious. Or perhaps just quintessentially Italian… I am still filled with the wonder of it when the bus tips me out at Spedaluzzo, so that shortly afterwards, when Piero arrives, it is all I can breathlessly talk about.

  Piero is excited for other reasons: he has a brand-new BMW, larger than the previous motorcycle, and is eager to roar back toward Florence, to where Emba and her family live.

  It is to be the first time I have seen her in years and years, but she is exactly as I remember her: round and soft and sweet and warm, if a little greyer. Ever since I’ Che C’è C’è days, she and Piero have called me ‘coniglietta’, or ‘little rabbit’ – and thus I am called all that very long afternoon-into-evening. The apartment she shares with her gentle silent husband, two bossy grown-up daughters and Maurizio – who, thinner than before, makes a brief appearance – has as its hub a small kitchen around whose table we settle, all talking over the top of each other. Even though Emba no longer works in restaurants, food and cooking remain her great joys, and so, over glasses of the superior expensive spumante Piero has supplied, these largely constitute our conversation. And then the table is being set and the dishes brought out. There is buristo, the Sienese equivalent of boudin, or blood sausage, which Emba has sliced thinly, dipped in flour and fried in a little oil. We eat it with bread, like pâté. Pecorino al tartufo is fresh pecorino seamed with black truffles and is both earthy and creamy. The local green olives inspire Piero – who has become an expert in olives and grapes while taking group tours through vineyards – to tell us that green olives make the best extra virgin olive oil because of their asperity and their greenness, although obviously their yield is always much lower than that of the fully ripe, juicy black ones. There is a platter of rape, deep green leaves like spinach, which Emba has simmered in olive oil, garlic and a little brodo (chicken stock).

  I love most the pasta dish, with Emba’s own salsa erbe, or herb sauce, which she has folded through fresh tagliatelle. In between mouthfuls, I copy down the recipe on the torn-off sheet of a pharmaceutical company notepad.

  Salsa erbe

  (Herb sauce)

  4 leeks, white part only, cleaned thoroughly and chopped coarsely

  4 sticks celery, chopped roughly

  1/2 cup rosemary leaves

  1 bunch fresh sage, roughly chopped

  Olive oil

  2 heaped teaspoons dried tarragon

  2 heaped teaspoons dried marjoram

  3 fat cloves garlic, finely chopped

  1/2 bunch continental parsley, finely chopped

  Salt and pepper

  Cream

  In a food processor, whizz together leeks, celery, rosemary and sage, until they form a paste. Heat olive oil in a pan and sauté vegetables on moderate heat, stirring frequently, until softened – about 12 to 15 minutes. Add dried herbs and about 2 1/2 to 3 cups water. Bring to the boil, then simmer slowly until reduced and fairly dense – up to 30 minutes. Season with salt and pepper, and stir through garlic and parsley. Simmer another 5 minutes. To serve, slosh in a little cream. Simmer for several minutes, then toss in the cooked, drained pasta, coating thoroughly over a high heat. (For salsa ai’che c’è c’è, combine equal parts salsa erbe with basic tomato sauce, add cream, check seasoning and bring to a simmer before adding cooked, drained pasta.)

  All through the afternoon and the evening, and until it becomes dark, we eat and talk and laugh and pose for photos. I am exhausted – the day has been almost too rich. And out come Emba’s sticky orange biscuits which she made especially for her small Australian rabbit – and the ones we do not eat she bundles up for me to take home, even though, sated beyond comfort, I have vowed never to eat again.

  I am relieved when Piero eventually announces that we must leave; I have almost depleted my store of brightness. The fact that for half a day, however, I have been called a coniglietta has had the effect – like a tonic – of dispelling my usual self-regard, that of a middle-aged woman (di una certa eta – of a certain age) blundering thickly through the days, creating the occasional miracle of a dessert but mostly making no difference at all in the grand scheme of things. We roar off, Piero and I, into the night, swathed separately and together in the love and generosity of a glorious woman.

  Once Ferragosto is over, summer starts to slide away. The groups of glittering golden Florentines – the thin, bosomy women dressed in white, the beautiful ponytailed men dangling linen jackets from one shoulder – are suddenly no longer there to transform Saturday nights into lavish garden parties.

  Angelo the mushroom man arrives with crate after crate of porcini mushrooms brought in from Romania and Hungary – it is still too soon for local supply – haggling endlessly with Gianfranco over the price. Porcini feature in risottos, on crostini, as pasta sauces, sliced paper-thin on top of carpaccio, grilled whole, studded with garlic and, of course, cresting Gianfranco’s famous tagliate.

  After he finishes unloading the crates from his truck, Angelo comes int
o the kitchen and stands so close to me that I can hear the private rumblings of his stomach. The second time he comes to us, he thrusts me up against the sink with his groin and tells me how much he likes me; twenty-five years of untrustworthy men behind me enable me to retort that, since we have never had a conversation, I find it difficult to believe. Nonetheless, his attentions are flattering – I also suspect his untrustworthiness is part of his charm. He is tall and skinny with a moustache that droops, baggy eyes and a husky cigarette voice; his energy and self-confidence make me look forward to his visits, despite Gianfranco’s words of caution. Of course he is married, a minor detail which fails to prevent him from asking me out on a date. The date – a drink somewhere, some night, after I have finished work – is mentioned, but never takes place.

  Past experience never managed to teach me how to distinguish loneliness from lust. It is Ignazio, for all his wariness, who satisfies the latter on two occasions. We end up in bed together – the first time at his initiation and the second at mine – in the early months of La Cantinetta. Both times are as sweetly, easily, excitingly familiar as love-making with ex-lovers always is, although the second occasion concludes with a serious discussion about his girlfriend Milena, in which we surprise ourselves by agreeing like grown-ups that it isn’t really fair on her and that we should desist. Our eyes pointedly refuse to meet when we sit over dinner in her company the following evening. Somehow, this seals the decision.

  Several sets of friends visit me over the summer, but the most significant of them are Valerie and Douglas Hammerfield, a couple I had met at a cooking class in Sydney. On the brink of their trip to Tuscany, Valerie had been having her hair styled in a Balmain salon where she happened to read an article about Villa Vignamaggio, the setting for Kenneth Branagh’s film version of Much Ado About Nothing. This is where they are staying, they tell me breathlessly when they arrive at La Cantinetta for lunch one day. Inspired by its beauty, they have hit upon the idea of bringing small groups of people over from Australia for week-long residential cooking courses there. Would I be interested in the position of cooking teacher?

  Some months previously, Ignazio took me to the Villa Vignamaggio. It is one of the smaller estates, comprising a vineyard and olive groves, and its wines are considered to be superior. Various myths surround the villa. One is that Mona Lisa was born there; another is that it has a system of underground caves in which espionage took place during the last war, but one truth is its glorious beauty. For Branagh’s film, it was repainted a rosy pink and now sits in its new colour among cool walls of cypress, a huge ornamental garden, lemon trees in giant urns, hedges and shrubbery clipped into topiaries.

  Valerie’s idea is that, towards late October, when I finish at La Cantinetta, we move into the villa in readiness for the group she will hopefully muster together upon her return to Australia. In the meantime, I am to prepare a week’s worth of cooking classes, visits to vineyards, cheese factories and hill towns, and other activities I consider worth including. It seems like a wildly ambitious scheme, even when she assures me that she has already discussed it with the villa’s manager. I decide to see how Valerie fares back in Australia before drawing up a programme, although I do talk about it with Gianfranco, who is enthusiastic and promises to help me with the cooking class menus.

  My October walks are punctuated by the sounds of rifle shots of the hunting season. Men in camouflage become a common sight at that hour, and my mother writes urging me not to let myself be mistaken for a wild boar. Our menu has various game dishes on it – Gianfranco’s casserole of pheasant with pancetta is particularly glorious – and he himself darts off at intervals to go hunting with friends. Now it has turned cool, business has slowed to a point where I am bored and longing for it all to be over; I find myself counting down the time remaining, feeling the absence of home and family and friends more acutely than ever. I sit in my little spot by the stoves, my head lowered purposefully over novel after novel, sipping surreptitious glasses of Chianti and chewing chunks of tangy Parmesan, while all around me the others clown, tell amusing anecdotes, have earnest discussions about sport and watch the little television we have propped up at the end of the workbench.

  One of my jobs each evening is to chop handfuls of potatoes and throw them into a baking dish with fresh rosemary, garlic cloves and olive oil, and then roast them until they are crisply golden on the outside and creamy in the middle. I pick at them all night, guilty, furtive nibbling with my mouth barely moving, my thighs encased in larger looser trousers, ever-spreading. (I am already planning a grim campaign of Jenny Craig diet and daily vigorous swimming the minute I arrive back in Australia.)

  Valerie confirms that eight people are booked into the Villa Vignamaggio cooking week, and I abandon my ritual of afternoon letter-writing to concentrate instead on organising the programme. Piero has promised to help, as well, offering to escort the group on a day trip to Siena with lunch thrown in at one of his favourite restaurants, and to hold a wine-and-cheese-tasting session another evening. I begin to post parcels of personal belongings back home, and suddenly it is my last week at La Cantinetta and I am packing up the contents of my spartan little room and preparing to leave.

  Finchè c’è vita c’è speranza

  Where there’s life there is hope

  ‘Much Ado About Chianti’ begins with torrents of rain beating down the sides of the hired minivan as we drive to Florence airport to pick up our group. Blessedly the rain disappears overnight, leaving a cool, dry week for our ramblings.

  Each day there is a cooking class either in the morning or the afternoon, held in a tiny galley-like kitchen attached to the guests’ dining area. Gnocchi, pasta sauces, casseroles and desserts are somehow produced around a domestic electric stove, which dies on the second last day, so that we are forced to rush the castagnaccia pressed into its round tin over to the manager’s private apartment, where her oven obligingly cooks it for us. (It is still pronounced too odd for enjoyment, this flat, rubbery cake made from chestnuts and seasoned with rosemary.) The rest of the time we are in and out of the minivan, visiting Greve markets, ceramic factories, vineyards, castles, a ricotta factory, and beautiful Siena, where Piero herds us into Osteria le Logge for buttery strands of fresh tagliatelle bathed in ovoli mushroom sauce, then later, an enoteca to sip Asti spumante in the thin afternoon sun.

  Valerie, Douglas and I share one of the apartments at the villa and hold exhausted post-mortems most evenings before bed. There is no doubt the week is a great success, and yet we had no idea that entertaining a small group of adults every waking minute would be quite so demanding.

  Baccala alla Fiorentina

  (Florentine salt cod)

  2 leeks

  Olive oil

  3 cloves garlic

  400 g peeled tomatoes

  Salt and pepper

  800 g salt cod, soaked overnight in several changes of water

  Flour

  Sprig rosemary

  To serve

  1 tablespoon chopped parsley

  Polenta

  For the tomato sauce, clean and finely slice leeks, then soften in olive oil together with 2 cloves of whole, peeled garlic. When the leeks are beginning to colour, add the tomatoes, season with salt and pepper and simmer for 30 to 40 minutes, adding extra water as required.

  Meanwhile, wash and drain the salt cod well and cut into large pieces. Flour and fry both sides in hot olive oil, to which you have added rosemary and 1 clove garlic. Drain on paper towels and, when the sauce is ready, lay salt cod on top in a single layer. Leave to simmer on low heat for 5 minutes. Check seasoning and serve sprinkled with finely chopped parsley on a bed of polenta.

  While we are preparing our final dinner in the Saturday-morning class, the owner of the villa unexpectedly visits us. He is a lawyer based in Rome who spends occasional weekends at the villa; we are delighted, confused and excited to mee
t him and thrown into complete disarray when he suggests that we bring all our prepared dishes up to the main house that evening to join him and his wife and several other guests for dinner. One of the older women in our group wonders, when he departs, if there is time for a quick facelift.

  That evening the lawyer seats me beside him at the top of the long table and we dine under chandeliers in a room straight from the Middle Ages, complete with busts of emperors above marble fireplaces and vast canvases of battles on the faded walls. I feel exhaustion and privilege in equally deep measures.

  Coming back for another season at La Cantinetta was always going to depend on Gianfranco; each time I write letters home, I have a different plan. Towards the very end, some small falling-out triggers the ultimate decision, as if I am just looking for a reason not to come back and face the loneliness and the long, tough hours all over again. I think that I may return at some time, when I have recovered. But my main desire now is to carry back with me all the events, the recipes, the people and the emotions, and calmly spread them out on the floor to begin to make sense of them all. When Valerie, Douglas and I have driven our little group back to Florence airport at the end of the week, we then head on to Perugia so that I can spend my last days in the always-soothing company of Raimondo and Annamaria. This has become the way that I leave Italy.

  Baccalà, fegato e ova – più si coce e più s’assoda

  Salt cod, liver and eggs – the more you cook them the tougher they become

  Back in Sydney, I move straight into a convenient spare bedroom in William’s Woollahra flat. But sharing my friend William’s small stylish flat is never going to work in the long term. Best friends at first, we become the worst enemies as I struggle naively to make a living by teaching cooking classes at creative venues and William gives up trying not to be gay. We are both deeply unhappy; after one screaming match, we stop talking to each other and I move out.