The Food of Love (15 page)

wrong ingredients? Thank God there had been no complaints,

though it said something very strange about the customers at

Templi that they hadn’t dared to mention that their desserts were full of salt and their fruit slathered in aniseed.

Marching over to where Hugo Kass was holding court to a

small group of acolytes, Bruno pushed him roughly on the shoulder, making him turn around.

‘Did you mess around with my mise)’ he demanded.

‘Of course not,’ Hugo said shortly.

One of the acolytes sniggered. It was the only excuse Bruno

needed. All his frustrations suddenly boiled up into one moment

of complete fury. Pulling back his fist, he punched the Frenchman right on the chin, sending Hugo crashing back against a pile of

vegetable crates. It felt fantastic, even though Karl saw the whole thing from the other side of the kitchen and immediately marched Bruno off for a tongue-lashing from Alain Dufrais and an instant demotion. From now on Bruno would have to report to Hugo;

and, Alain informed him icily, if Hugo wasn’t happy with his work, Bruno would be out on his ear.

Laura, at the residencia, receives a call from the porter to say that there’s a delivery for her. She comes downstairs and is surprised to be handed a curious-looking bouquet.

Only on closer inspection does it become apparent that this is,

in fact, a bunch of candied flowers - pale orange blossoms, bright blue florets of borage, even tender young rosebuds, all encased in hard clear shells of sugar, like tiny toffee apples.

There’s no note, but she knows that there’s only one person in

the world who could make her such a present. She goes to sleep

with the sweetness of toffee on her lips, and dreams of her Roman lover with the crazy, passionate eyes.

Bruno, standing in his little kitchen, looks out at the sleeping city and touches a morsel of the crunchy caramel to his lips. As the

sweetness floods his mouth he thinks: this is what her mouth tastes like, right this moment, as she eats my gift. His heart fills with joy as he imagines her now, experiencing the same taste at the same

moment he does, like a kiss flying between them across the

rooftops.

qM>

trie

Bruno had decided that the only way Tommaso could possibly

pass off a meal cooked in Carlotta’s parents’ apartment as his own was to assemble and cook everything beforehand. He would make

something simple but impressive that could be smuggled into the

other kitchen for Tommaso to heat up. And since there is nothing simpler or more impressive than really good fresh pasta, that was what he was busy making.

He had placed a large wooden board on top of his work surface.

Handmade pasta is never prepared on marble; its coldness

stiffens the dough and prevents the breakdown of glutens. A pile of Tipo 00, the finest grade of flour, stood to one side, light as ash, its top gently flattened to make a small crater. Into this he had poured some beaten eggs. Drawing flour over the egg mixture

with the tines of a fork, he worked the two together a little

at a time. Then he put the fork aside and started to use his fingers.

Gradually, the sliminess of the eggs and the dryness of the

flour became one smooth, muscular mass, worked and reworked

until there was no trace of stickiness. After Bruno had washed

and dried his hands, he was able to press his thumb into the

mixture and pull it out again without the dough clinging to his

skin at all.

Using the heel of his palm, he pushed the dough away from

him, then folded it over. A quick half-turn and then he did the

same again, slowly breaking down its inner resistance. Push, fold, turn. Push, fold, turn. Pasta-making is a ritual, both in the kneading and the stretching; the same hand motions performed over

and over again, as automatic and precise as the movements of a

master plasterer or a pianist. Bruno kept up his kneading for

exactly eight minutes. It was hard, physical work and he was soon perspiring freely, but slowly the dough became elastic, its surface as smooth as Laura’s skin.

Inevitably, as he worked he found his thoughts returning to

her. The physical exertion was having a corresponding effect on

his mind, filling his head with erotic daydreams. Push, fold,

turn … His arms ached with the longing to hold her, and his

body tensed with sexual frustration. Feverish images danced

through his mind. Push, fold, turn. I will make her a dessert that will set her blood on fire, he decided. I will let her feel what I am feeling now. Although a part of him recognised that it was

Tommaso, not him, who would reap the benefits, the need to

express his feelings as food was overwhelming.

After their exertions, both dough and cook had to rest. Bruno

prepared his secondo, which was to be saltimbocca, the classic

Roman sandwich of veal beaten paper-thin and folded over a slice of prosciutto and a couple of sage leaves. Once prepared, the saltimbocca could be flash-fried in minutes, something even Tommaso couldn’t mess up.

After about ten minutes Bruno returned to his dough,

squashed it down a little and picked up his pasta-rolling pin. The pin was as long as a sword - thirty-two inches or eighty centimetres, to be precise - and thinner than a conventional rolling pin, so that it would spin faster between his hands as he pushed it over the

pasta. The trick was not to use force. You were not so much

squeezing the pasta flat as pushing it gently outwards, like spreading icing across the surface of a cake.

When the rolled dough was the size of a pizza base he changed

the movements of his hands, letting them slide sideways along the pin as he worked it, distributing pressure evenly along its length.

This was the hardest part. Bruno knew he was not as good at this as a housewife somewhere like Emilia-Romagna, who did it every

day of her life, but there was no time to be cautious. If he went too slowly, the pasta would lose its moisture and crack before he was done. He felt his way into the dough, stretching it little by little until it became as thin and filmy as silk, fluttering a few centimetres off the table each time he rolled it. It was time to stop

and cut the pasta into tortellini.

‘Signora, do you have a colander?’ Tommaso called through the

kitchen door. Carlotta’s mother bustled in to open a cupboard and show him where the implement was kept, passing a critical eye as she did so over the array of ingredients he had assembled on the work surface.

‘You are making fresh pasta?’ she said in surprise, looking at the pile of flour and the eggs which he had ostentatiously placed to the fore.

‘Of course.’

‘Do you want to borrow a rolling machine?’

Tommaso looked down his nose haughtily. “I never use them.

I prefer to do everything by hand.’

‘But do you have a rolling pin?’

Tommaso waved his hand airily. ‘I’ll improvise.’

Carlotta’s mother looked sceptical. ‘How can you possibly

improvise a rolling pin for pasta?’

Tommaso decided it was time to change the subject. ‘I’ll need

a large jug, please, signora, ceramic not glass, and six egg cup>s of different sizes. Oh, and a bottle of good marsala, the best

your husband has.’ That should keep them distracted, he thought, watching her scurrying off to do as he had asked. He hoped

Bruno wasn’t going to be long. This was turning out to be harder than he’d expected.

‘How’s it going?’ Carlotta asked her mother. The would-be diners had been banished to the dining room to await Tommaso’s masterpiece, and everyone was getting impatient.

‘He hasn’t started the pasta yet, and he’s been chopping the

same stick of celery for twenty minutes. Now he wants egg cups.

And a bottle of marsala.’

“Iil get it,’ Dr Ferrara said quickly, getting to his feet. He still wasn’t quite sure how it had come about that a stranger had commandeered his wife’s kitchen, but after years of living with her he

knew a potentially explosive situation when he encountered one.

Costanza Ferrara’s mouth was set in a thin line, and she had pulled her hair back so tightly that her scalp had gone white.

“I promise you it’ll be worth it in the end,’ Laura said loyally.

From the kitchen the sound of pans crashing together could be

heard, followed by a burst of song from Tommaso. Andrea,

Carlotta’s boyfriend, laughed and lit another cigarette.

The Piazza Agnelli was in the middle of a grid of identical streets, each containing dozens of identical white apartment blocks. After scouring the area on Tommaso’s scooter for half an hour, Bruno

finally located the right place and sounded his horn twice. Above him, on the second floor, a window flew open.

LPe’ ventinove e trentaj Tommaso said urgently. ‘Tengo certi

cazzi che mi abballano per }a capo. You’re just in time: this is doing my head in.’

‘Sorry. I got lost.’

Pe) ventinove e trenta - literally: ‘For twenty-nine and thirty.’ Tengo certi cazzi che mi abballano per ‘a capo - literally: ‘There are so many dicks dancing in my head.’

Tommaso was already lowering a bucket on a string which contained a mess of flour and eggs hurriedly scraped off the work

surface. When it reached the street below, Bruno carefully replaced it with a pan containing his parcels of pasta, which Tommaso

rapidly hauled up again. ‘These are the tortellini, siV he called.

‘Yes. The sauce is in the jar.’

‘Where are the saltimboccheV

‘Coming up next. Send down the ingredients.’

Tommaso sent down the raw veal and loose sage leaves, and

Bruno sent up the meat he’d prepared earlier. ‘You’ll remember

what to do?’ he called anxiously.

Tommaso tapped his head. ‘Of course. Years of remembering

orders. It’ll be fine.’

Bruno shrugged and got back on the scooter. He didn’t have

Tommaso’s confidence that this would work, but it was out of his hands now.

Tommaso burst out of the kitchen with a dish of tortellini and set it down on the table with a flourish. ‘Here, everybody. Time to

eat.’

Carlotta’s mother’s face was a picture of surprise. ‘It’s ready?’

‘Of course.’ Tommaso served them all with a flourish. ‘While

you eat that, I’ll get back to the kitchen and make the secondo.’

‘It smells amazing,’ Carlotta said.

‘It tastes pretty good,’ her boyfriend, who had already started

eating, confirmed.

Costanza sniffed. Men might call themselves chefs, but that was

a very different thing from being able to cook. She had rarely

eaten in a restaurant that in her opinion served food as good as that which she herself prepared at home. She speared one of the tortellini on her fork and held it up.

‘It’s not a good shape,’ she commented critically. She put it in her mouth. Everyone looked at her, waiting for her verdict.

‘Hmm,’ she said at last, spearing another. That was all she said until the end of the primo, but it was not lost on those around the table that she finished every single scrap of pasta on her plate.

even after that, there was a little dribble of sauce left on the side.

She eyed it hungrily. The others were all taking pieces of bread and wiping their sauce up. Costanza resisted for several minutes, then her plump hand snaked out and grabbed a piece to do the same.

As the meal wore on, Laura, who was seated to Dr Ferrara’s left, couldn’t help noticing two things. First, he seemed remarkably

eager to engage her in conversation; and second, during those

conversations he seemed to be making eye-contact with her

breasts rather than her face. By the time they had eaten the saltimbocche, he had draped his left arm around the back of her chair as

he told her breasts in some detail about the wonderful time he’d had in the 1960s living in a hippy commune in Tuscany. From

time to time his fingers brushed against Laura’s back as he emphasised a point.

On the other side of the table, Carlotta was making eyes at

Andrea. She slipped her shoe off and worked her foot up his leg, laughing at the effect this had on his attempts to make conversation with her mother, who was sitting next to him.

Eventually Costanza lurched unsteadily to her feet and

announced that she was going to see Tommaso in the kitchen.

Bouncing off the doorframe, she advanced on the young man

with outstretched arms and a cry of congratulation, folding him

into her ample bosom. Caught in her embrace, Tommaso felt her

hands pinching at him as if he were a piece of chicken she were

testing for freshness at the butcher’s.

‘The dolce^ he gasped. ‘We have another course still to come.’

Reluctantly, Costanza released him.

“Iil bring it in just a minute,’ he added.

The dessert was tartufo, a dark chocolate gelato dusted with

cocoa.

Around eighty-five per cent of the world’s chocolate is made

from the common-or-garden Forastero cocoa bean. About ten

per cent is made from the finer, more subtle Trinitario bean. And less than five per cent is made from the rare, aromatic Criollo

bean, which is found only in the remotest regions of Colombia

and Venezuela. These beans are so sought after that, kilo for kilo, they can command prices many times higher than the other local

crop, cocaine. Having been fermented, shipped, lightly roasted

and finely milled to a thickness of about fifteen microns, the beans are finally cooked into tablets, even a tiny crumb of which, placed on the tongue, explodes with flavour as it melts.

A tartufo is a chocolate jjelato shaped to look like a truffle, but it is an appropriate name for other reasons too. Made from egg