Amore and Amaretti (20 page)

It is such a pleasurable process carrying with care the tiny zucchini or perfectly ripe tomatoes from the garden into the kitchen and transforming them into a dish, and imbued with a meaning greater than the sum of the small gestures involved. I love most the bay leaves that I snap from their tree, their almost medicinal aroma and especially the note they add to the
salsa di guanciale
, which I make every few days. This is a spectacular pasta sauce made of ripe plum tomatoes and quantities of
guanciale
– the bacon-like flesh taken from the cheek of a pig with a fat ratio equal to that of the meat. The
guanciale
is sliced into batons five millimetres thick, and added to lots of thinly cut red onions in a large pan, where the flavours intermingle and they turn translucent. Dried chilli is crumbled in at this stage, then a generous slosh of white wine, and finally the tomatoes, which are cut into
spicchi
or thin wedges. And then, the bay leaf! The sauce is brought to a boil, then reduced to a simmer, and after forty minutes it acquires a consistency both jammy and unctuous. It is sublime tossed through spaghetti.

Upstairs, in the space separating Vito the dishwasher's tiny bedroom from Ignazio's larger one, Gianfranco has created a chaotic storeroom to house box after box of wine and mineral water, but also culinary provisions and general junk. I search through squashed cartons until I triumphantly retrieve my set of spring-form baking pans and fluted tart tins. I come across other treasures, like boxes of Tortagel (to glaze cheesecakes and fruit flans) and sachets of vanilla-scented baking powder. There are also endless tins of prunes, purchased by Gianfranco well before my time, to turn into desserts for which he lost inspiration and which, two years previously, I had gradually been using up in moist chocolate cakes that I christened Wombat Cakes. Gianfranco tells me that, for several months after my last departure, customers would drive from Florence to La Cantinetta for a slice of my cheesecake, only to meet with disappointment. Fired with self-confidence, I launch into my
dolce
and, as usual, I am met with an ambivalent attitude from Gianfranco, whose tolerance of my sweet-making is determined utterly by his mood.

The task of washing up my chocolate-coated basins and saucepans, my flour-encrusted chopping boards and rolling pin, my batter-sticky bowls and whisks, starts as a source of amusement for Vito. Those first weeks I am still a novelty. I have no idea what drama is ahead. Meanwhile, I have decided to enrol in a Cordon Bleu course in pastry-making, held conveniently each Tuesday evening over eight weeks in Florence where, as before, I am generally to be found on my day off.

L'appetito vien mangiando!

Appetite comes while you are eating!

Ignazio props his torso on a bench-top and swings the arm which is not in a sling from side to side, looking so like an elephant swinging its trunk that I burst into laughter every time. He smiles wanly – since his accident, he seems permanently wan and somehow diminished – but we are getting along well enough. His father drives him to and from the restaurant, and it is clear that he resents the loss of independence. I have yet to meet his girlfriend, the famous Donatella, of whom everyone speaks in tones of both awe and amusement, and who apparently also does a lot of the ferrying around of Ignazio.

Gossip gleaned from Alvaro and Cinzia reveals that several years previously Donatella and Ignazio were involved, turbulently, then broke up, only to resume the relationship earlier this year. No one seems to actually approve of Donatella or her effect on Ignazio. Surprisingly, it is Gianfranco who has the few positive things to say about her. (When I meet her, I understand immediately; they are of the same mould.) It was after one of their high-spirited arguments that Ignazio tore off into the night and crashed his car. Somehow one-armed Ignazio manages most of his front-of-house duties, although they are more about public relations. Gianfranco, freed from the kitchen, breezes from table to table being his glorious exuberant self.

Alvaro and I have taken very little time to settle into our positions. In the mornings, with Vito stacking the dishwasher quietly in his corner, I am conscious of the absence of tension as just the two of us work our way through preparation and cooking. Tension is always around Gianfranco, whatever his mood. Alvaro is even and jolly; he whistles and sings along to the radio and comes up behind me to place his hands on my waist.

It is August, and I march past bunches of tiny black grapes lining one side of Via Chiantigiana and, on the other, very small olives that are still green. On those first morning walks, I deliver myself brief, stern lectures about how this time I will behave beautifully, exclude myself less, involve myself more, not cave in to self-imposed, self-absorbed loneliness and gloomy, furtive binge-eating. I am only here for twelve weeks and this time around it feels infinitely more comfortable and familiar.

I return invigorated and sweaty, and shower in the nasty bathroom, Vito and Alvaro still asleep. First into the kitchen (like last time), I perform the ritual of setting up: the enormous pot – or
bagna
– filled with water, salted and straddled across a low flame of gas, the ovens lit, the radio and espresso machine switched on, my list of things to do consulted. Wet-haired Alvaro whistles his way in, secures the apron strings below his paunch, and organises a cigarette and shot of strong coffee.

Gianfranco's four-wheel drive clatters across gravel to a halt mid-morning and the texture of the air changes immediately. Even though he is not in the kitchen with us, his moods continue to be the barometer by which the rest of the day is measured. He is unloading box after box of fruit, vegetables and meat from the markets where he shops daily, and the kitchen is cluttered and chaotic until we have unpacked and dispatched the produce. Cinzia floats and wafts: motherhood has brought out a silliness in her that I had not noticed before, or perhaps it has become her defence at being barked at by Gianfranco.

‘Cazzo fai
?
'
he is now demanding of me, hovering over my cake-making preparations, and I am babbling like a child as I explain that it is a new and delicious cake, when we both know I should be starting with the pasta sauces, the
cinghiale
(wild boar) or the
anatra
(duck) or the
pappa ai porcini
. Like so many of the ingredients with which we cook and that are not picked up from the markets by Gianfranco, the porcini are delivered to us. This year the
funghaio
(mushroom man) is a comic-faced Florentine called Mario with an enormous moustache and devoid, gratifyingly, of the sleaziness which characterised dear Angelo from two years ago.

Crate upon crate of huge fleshy mushrooms are unloaded from his truck and stacked in the coolroom. The
pappa ai porcini
is a variation on the Tuscan classic
pappa al pomodoro
, that gorgeous sweet tomato soup rendered thick by coarse bread, which simmers until it collapses into a pulp. In the place of tomatoes, the porcini are sliced thickly and left to bubble and perfume the bready broth.

Our next-door neighbour Elio supplies our house wine, the
vino da tavola
. Elio often stands in the kitchen talking to us as we weave around him. Now he is telling us how badly one eats in Genova, where he has just made a short trip – the only good thing was, at least, the pesto. I have been reading in
La Nazione
that, due to a relatively cool summer and the recent spates of rain and thunderstorms, there has been talk of adding sugar during the wine-making process to augment the level of alcohol. I am told this is something Italy has resisted doing until now and I discuss this with Elio, who assures me that in spite of everything he is expecting his wine to be good this year.

Another morning, Ignazio's gentle father arrives clutching a cane basket lined with bright-green vine leaves that contains three types of grape. Apart from the fat green and small black, there is a small white grape called
uva fragola
, so called because of its strawberry flavour. It is intense, perfumed and spicy. I find the flavours of everything to be so sharp, as if the food I eat in Australia is muted, a little bland. The tomatoes, of course, are sweet beyond belief and I eat vast quantities of them, slicked with green oil, accompanying springy, milky mozzarella and bread. Everything as it should be. And, in spite of the morning lectures, of course I am eating too much again.

I finally meet the famous Donatella, fascinated to see what sort of tempestuous, irresistible woman my sweet angel has moved on to in his romantic life. Suddenly there she is, one damp grey morning, tall and dark with a wiry wildness about her, an easy, loping self-assurance as she ranges restlessly, familiarly, around our kitchen. I see how quickly possessive I become, and instinctively armed to dislike her.