“I have no idea who she came to meet,” he said, scowling.
“Well, do not worry, my love,” said his wife cheerfully. “Gracia will be here by morning to take over. She is a fine woman—nurse to me and to my children,” she explained to the group at large. “When her husband died, I saw to it that she went to school so that she could become the manager of my husband’s office. Even as we grieve, the meeting must go on, and Gracia will see to it. The Sindaccos have been servants to the Tassones for centuries.”
“The woman’s an old witch,” Ruggiero muttered to me.
“Really? I’ve never met one,” I replied. “I think they’re extinct from Rome north.”
“One what?” demanded Constanza, who had not invited me to call her by her first name. When I shrugged, she said, “It is very sad that Paolina was so distressed over her love life that she would kill herself. I hope she went to confession before doing so. It might ameliorate her fate in the afterlife, for we all know that suicide is a sin, but suicide unshriven—ah, here is the
tonno alla Palermitana
. That is tuna fish in the style of Palermo. Do not look so gloomy, Ruggiero. Our guests will think you do not like the menu I have chosen. Each dish,” she said to the table at large, “I have chosen to make you familiar with the delights of Sicilian cuisine, which is different from any in the world. Signora Blue, may I ask why you are writing on a notepad. Is something wrong with the fish?”
Carolyn looked up and smiled beatifically. “It’s too wonderful for words, Signora. I write about food for American newspapers, and this is a meal that I must describe.”
“Ah. I am happy to think that Americans will have a chance to read about fine cuisine.”
The woman was as pretentious and arrogant as the Frenchies, I thought, and then smiled at Ruggiero when he patted my knee and asked if he could help me to more fish. “You must come to Rome, where we have wonderful
veal Marsala
, a Sicilian dish, which I recommend to you,” I responded.
“Perhaps after the birth of your child,” he replied in an intimate undertone. I’d have to tell Carolyn that he didn’t seem to be so broken up over the death of Paolina that he wasn’t on the lookout for a new love, assuming that Paolina had been his love. I did not know that.
“I shall see that you are provided with recipes for these dishes if you desire them,” Constanza said to Carolyn, who agreed enthusiastically. Then laughing with delight at the thought, she told us that recipes in historic cookbooks had interesting size and time instructions.
“For instance, there’s a recipe for ravioli that advises the chef to make the ravioli the size of a half chestnut and to cook the pasta while saying the Lord’s Prayer two times, then take it off the fire. In fact,” she continued, “the Italian word for recipe comes from a Latin word
recepta
, which referred to a doctor’s prescription for his patient or for a pharmacist.”
Constanza stared at her. “You seem to know a lot about food and its history. Let me assure you that any recipe I provide will have no medicinal quality beyond nourishment and will contain modern measurement instructions, although you may have to translate European measures into—is something the matter, Signora Blue?”
A look of horror had passed over Carolyn’s face. Then her body jerked back, she grasped the edge of the table, and a canine howl followed.
“
Mon Dieu
,” exclaimed Adrien Guillot. “Albertine, I believe your wretched dog is again hounding Madame Blue.”
The Frenchie rose in as dignified a manner as possible, considering that her dog had obviously been guilty of some antisocial behavior, such as nosing the crotch of a fellow diner. Albertine ordered Charles de Gaulle out from under the table, pointed toward a curved wall, and snapped her fingers, sending him into exile with his head hanging, again. “Sit,” she commanded in French, her voice dripping with ice. Poor dog. I’d have been miserable too if she were my mistress.
“Are you all right, my dear Signora Blue?” asked our hostess. Poor Carolyn, whose hands were shaking and whose face was pale, nodded. “Good,” said the very self-absorbed Sicilian. “I must add a caution to my offer of recipes,” she continued. “The quality of the ingredients is most important in the preparation of these dishes. Such fine ingredients may not be available in the United States, which, I’m told, is a land of food that is preprepared in boxes and frozen lumps.” Nonetheless, she looked gratified at Carolyn’s interest, although when she tasted the tuna herself, she remarked to the headwaiter that the white wine used in its preparation was not dry enough.
“Well, here you are!” exclaimed a familiar voice from the direction of the door. I turned my head and saw my mother-in-law, dressed for the occasion and all smiles. Where had she been? And how like her to arrive after I’d had to bring the children to the dinner. “Shall I take the little ones up to bed, Bianca?” she asked, although I was sure she had no intention of being left out of the fun.
“Don’t make us go upstairs, Mama,” cried Andrea, who had been devouring his fish with gusto. “The dinner’s so delicious. We want to finish, don’t we, Giulia?”
Constanza beamed at them. “Such sweet children. Of course, they must stay. It pleases me to see little ones appreciating good food.”
My daughter nodded vigorously over a pretty dress, now dotted with sauce from the pasta and a few sprigs of rosemary from the fish. Since she had a forkful of fish waving in time to her nods, a bit of rosemary sailed in my direction. However, used to such problems, I quickly draped a napkin over my shoulder in case it landed.
“Can’t Granny have dinner here, and then we’ll go upstairs?” Andrea asked. “Signora Blue is telling me and Papa what’s in everything, so we can tell you, Mama, and you can make these things. And then Granny can tell us a story before we go to bed.”
Lorenzo stood up to kiss his mother, who was then duly introduced and took a seat beside Hank Girol. He rose courteously to pull out her chair and greeted her warmly. Violetta is an amazing woman, all curls and flounces and pretty ways. She flirted right back over the next course, a
caponata
that raised questions about the capers from Constanza. She detected that they had been preserved in vinegar rather than brine, as was preferable. The dish was delicious. Obviously, she just liked to complain.
I could hear my mother-in-law telling Lorenzo that she had taken the wrong plane from Rome and ended up in Milan, rather than Naples, where a charming employee of Alitalia had been so sympathetic that he had taken her out for a wonderful meal, a
risotto
, which the Milanese do so well, until such time as she could get a plane to Naples. No one but my mother-in-law could manage to get on the wrong plane—she’d probably been flirting with the ticket-taker—and cap that off by getting a free meal and a free ticket to her original destination. However, she was good with the children and an amiable woman in general—she’d come to live with us after Lorenzo’s father died—except for her propensity to accuse me of a desire to be unfaithful to her son.
“Well, my husband’s colleagues are scandalized that we have a third child on the way,” I said in response to a remark from Ruggiero about the fecundity of beautiful women.
“There is no scandal in children,” said Constanza. “Children are a gift from God. What fault could Romans find in—”
“Oh, the good things of life that are taken away from the first children by each additional child—education, cottages on the beach, cultural opportunities,” I replied airily.
“Years of sleeplessness for the parents,” my husband added.
“One hires a nursemaid to take care of wakeful children,” said Constanza. “You should pay no attention to your husband’s colleagues, Signora Massoni. God has blessed you.” Then she looked at me narrowly, with the eye of a woman who has borne her own children, and added, “And he will bless you again very soon. I am surprised you felt able to leave Rome in your condition.”
“My doctor doesn’t seem to think the baby will arrive this week,” I replied, and switched the subject. “Having heard of how beautiful Paolina was, I’m surprised that she wasn’t married with children of her own.”
“You seem amazingly interested in a woman you did not know, Signora,” said our hostess.
“I did not know her, but Carolyn spent time with her before she died and was quite taken with Paolina, weren’t you, Carolyn?”
Carolyn nodded and swallowed a mouthful of her
caponata
. “Yes,” she agreed. “We had a mutual interest in poetry. In fact, Paolina wrote poetry, which I found admirable. Signora Ricci, this
caponata
is marvelous. I do love eggplant, and the strange thing is that when the Arabs brought it to Italy, people were suspicious of it. In fact, the Italian word for eggplant,
melanzana
, comes from
mela insana
, which means ‘unsound apple.’ It was thought to be vulgar and eaten only by the lower classes.”
While Carolyn was telling us more than I, for one, needed to know about eggplant, I noticed that Ruggiero looked surprised to hear that his secretary had been a poetess. Perhaps he hadn’t been her lover. Surely he would have known about the poetry if they were intimate. In fact, the only person who seemed to know anything personal about Paolina was Carolyn. I pondered whether their acquaintance had been of a longer duration than the one day Carolyn admitted to. Could Carolyn have been the lover who came to Paolina that night and then killed her? Amazing as it seems to me, there are women who make love to women. I’d definitely have to make discreet enquiries about the time the two women had spent together at the hotel.
“I believe our two missing scientists have arrived,” said Ruggiero heartily.
We all turned to see a rather short but handsome bearded man and a tall, red-haired woman, who would have been prettier without her glasses.
Hank Girol stopped flirting with my mother-in-law and rose to greet his wife. Carolyn did not rise to greet her husband. Instead she stared at Girol’s wife. I pondered what that might mean. The possibilities were: She was uninterested in her husband. She was interested in Girol’s wife. She was jealous of the two new arrivals. Or she, too, thought the glasses Girol’s wife wore would be better replaced by contact lenses.
Recipes from Sicily are much like those from the Campania because the cultural influences over the centuries—Greek, Roman, Arab, Norman, French, and Spanish—were similar. In the fish recipe that follows, the Arabs brought lemons to the island, and the sea provides tuna. Wine was a popular flavoring with both the Greeks and Romans. In the vegetable recipe, the use of sweet and sour flavoring was popular with both the Romans and the chefs of the Middle Ages, but the use of sugar, instead of honey, for sweet flavoring, came from Sicily, which grew sugar cane while the rest of Europe was still limited to honey. Both Sicily and the Campania have rich soil because of the volcanic eruptions of Etna and Vesuvius.
Tuna in the Style of Palermo
• Combine
8 ounces dry white wine with the juice of one lemon, several sprigs of rosemary, a crushed clove of garlic, salt, and freshly ground pepper
.
• Slice 1
1/4 pounds tuna fish
, wash well, and marinate in the wine mixture for 2 or more hours.
• Remove and drain the fish. Grill on both sides, basting with the marinade.
• Heat in a skillet
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
and, using a fork, mash in
3 sardine fillets
to form a paste, which is then spread on the tuna.
• Serve garnished with
rosemary and cherry tomatoes.
Caponata
• Wash and slice
1 pound small eggplants
, salt, and drain in a sieve to remove the bitter juices.
• Dice finely
1 pound onions
, blanch 4 stalks celery and cut in small pieces, halve 1 cup green olives and remove stones, and blanch and press
1 pound tomatoes
through a sieve. Rinse eggplants in cold running water, drain, and pat dry with paper towels.
• Heat eggplant on both sides to golden brown in
4 tablespoons hot vegetable oil
and drain on paper towels.
• Sauté onions gently in a saucepan in
6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil.
Add celery, olives, and tomatoes, sprinkle with
salt
and pepper, and simmer 5 minutes. Add
2 tablespoons sugar
,
7 tablespoons wine vinegar
, and
3 tablespoons capers
, and simmer 10 more minutes until vinegar odor has disappeared.
• Let vegetables cool before serving.
Carolyn Blue,
“Have Fork, Will Travel,”
Summit, NJ, News
10
The Return of an Errant Husband
My husband entered
the dining room beside a strange woman with whom he looked completely comfortable. She was quite tall and, although wearing flats, topped Jason by four or five inches. They both looked somewhat rumpled, certainly not dressed for this dinner party. All smiles, she embraced Hank and introduced him to Jason, making me feel like an outsider, someone watching my own husband’s arrival without any part in it. More introductions followed, and Bianca’s mother-in-law insisted on giving her seat to Sibyl Evers and taking the two children off with her.
Jason, instead of arranging a seat beside me by asking Lorenzo to move down by Bianca, sat down beside Sibyl, who told her husband that she and Jason met in the Paris airport the day the strike cancelled their flight and had been talking chemistry and writing formulas on Paris tablecloths ever since. Looking horrified at the idea of writing on tablecloths, Albertine Guillot asked if the restaurants had not protested such behavior. Her husband asked what compounds they had been discussing, and Ruggiero Ricci insisted that they discuss their ideas. They were reticent.