Amore and Amaretti (22 page)

È più forte di me

It is stronger than me

Early September and the weather is cooling down. My morning walks take me past grapes that bulge in thick fat bunches of burgundy through the endlessly unscrolling vineyards. It is the season of
schiacciata all' uva
– the sweet flatbread studded with new grapes – and in all the Florentine bakeries large slabs of moist sticky bread dough, glittering with black-crimson grapes, are sold by the hundred grams or by the square. I make up batches from the vast quantities of grapes plundered by Alvaro from neighbouring vineyards after his vinous lunches.

I am determined to get them perfectly right – although my dough is inevitably too thick and puffy, when thin is best. They are always delicious, but always generate heated discussion around the table of tasters: too much like bread, not light enough, too sweet, not enough grapes, too many grapes. One time, bored with the
uva
component, I decide to add sultanas, walnuts, pine nuts, orange rind and coarsely chopped cooking chocolate to the mixture, which I then shape into a careful plait and brush with egg yolk. It looks sensational when baked, though we all agree it is a little heavy.

The olives, meanwhile, are still green. Our old friend Vincenzo Sabatini, with whom I went to stay when Gianfranco and I broke up, towers above everyone in our kitchen. He explains how this is the optimum stage for turning them into oil so that it emerges a little tart, and fruity, glorious green. Only in Tuscany and Umbria, he goes on, are the olives not left to fall to the ground (where they bruise and spoil and attract worms) but are still picked from the trees – by hand, occasionally, though now mostly by machines.

Vincenzo's visits are always highlights: he and his wife Claudia were always like second parents to me, and it still feels that way. Mid-mornings, the kitchen will suddenly seem diminished with the arrival of Vincenzo, his huge bulk encased in denim overalls, who helps himself to a panino of prosciutto and tips an entire glass of white wine down his throat in a single gulp as he stands there telling us stories. One day he draws me aside to give me some advice. Never, he warns, give away a complete recipe; always remember to leave out just one ingredient. I wrap my arms around the familiarity of his girth, cosily complicit.

Gianfranco is making a little pizza with dough left over from the previous evening's
schiacciata all' uva
. There have been fewer customers these past evenings and they are leaving earlier. This is an excuse for Gianfranco to do the cooking he rarely does any more. He is stretching the dough out into the thinnest possible disc and scattering it with olive oil, salt and needles of fresh rosemary. He slides it into a very hot oven for five minutes, and when he removes it we fall upon it, gobbling it down hot and crunchy with transparent slices of prosciutto, our chins shiny with oil.

Another morning he attempts a
sfogliata di rape
, trying to remember how his mother used to make it. I had almost forgotten the snake-shaped pastries he and I used to eat cold in the early morning kitchen at his village, washed down with red wine, but now watching him the vision returns with force. The
rape
(turnip tops), he has cooked the previous day, large bunches of deep green leaves similar to spinach which he simmers in oil, garlic and a little
brodo
– broth. The result is salty beyond belief. (
‘Serpentato!'
exclaims Gianfranco, furious the rare times his cooking goes wrong.)

Now he is finely chopping the vegetable and stirring through freshly grated Parmesan and a few sloshes of olive oil. The dough is wafer-thin and fragile; he rolls it out and fills it with the
rape
mixture, curling it up into sausages, then coiling them into a baking dish. When they are extracted, all golden and crunchy, we sample them. He admits to not being completely happy: the dough should have been even thinner, almost completely transparent so the vegetable shows through. Silverbeet, he is telling us, is what Mamma always used – and I look over at him and see that this is one of the ways I love him best, his cheeks curving into the smile of pride which mentions of his mother unfailingly inspire. His
sfogliata
I find delicious, probably more refined than I remember hers being.

Ho una fame da lupo

I have the hunger of a wolf

We rarely eat together after service, the principals continuing to make their escape as early as they can. I have my private doubts about the little family of Gianfranco, Cinzia and Tonino, but I can see that they are trying hard, or at least Gianfranco is now trying hard, while Cinzia always has. Ignazio is still at his parents' apartment with his broken healing limb, visiting a physiotherapist, still dogged by the black-eyed, wild, laughing Donatella in a relationship that continues to baffle me. She seems in such contrast to me. I wonder what common qualities we could possibly possess, and meanwhile reciprocate the disdain she constantly spears in my direction. I also wonder if she knows the history of Ignazio and me.

As long as it is still mild enough for outdoor dining, a motley group of us collects around a table with our assorted meals, but once the evening cold begins in earnest, Alvaro and I fall into the cosiness of meals in his room. Like a middle-aged couple, we settle in front of television on the unmade bed, plates in our laps, chatting desultorily, drinking too much. Alvaro stubs out cigarettes into malodorous, unemptied ashtrays. His socks kicked free of the clogs he wears for work give off a warmly vegetal, faintly fetid odour; we push aside clothing and newspapers to make room for the civilisation of dinner, and there is a quality of such homeliness, safety and companionship in the room that I begin to look forward to the evenings. His girlfriend waitresses in a restaurant several villages away and occasionally after work will drive over to visit. I like Rita, who is birdlike with thick-lensed glasses and a sort of bossy maternal way with Alvaro. Like so many couples, this one strikes me as odd.

I am quite enjoying my pastry-making course at the Cordon Bleu Institute. The classes take place in a building near Via Ghibellina and the apartment Ignazio and I used to share. Up a flight of steps I carry my bags of Florentine shopping each Tuesday and settle at one of the chairs arranged in a circle in the big kitchen.

Annamaria and Silvia are surely too slender and too beautiful to be pastry chefs – they look like models, young women in their twenties whose aprons and tailored trousers seem too smart for the business of food preparation. Their long bony fingers with pearly manicured nails move with deft confidence, however, through each procedure, and their final creations invariably provoke sighs of admiration.

Each week the making of several different desserts and pastries is taught, demonstrated, then tasted; the class is encouraged to participate after the demonstrations. And so we whisk egg whites endlessly in copper bowls, simmer diced apple in butter and spices before filling apple charlottes, gently heat sugar syrups, and roll out pastry. Whenever pastry is concerned, it is Silvia who takes over.
‘Ha le mani fredde'
– she has cold hands – explains Annamaria, essential for the delicate matter of pastry-making and the difference between light and leaden.