Last Bite: A Novel of Culinary Romance (22 page)

We finished the setup just before noon, when our
TV americano
group pulled up in the Mercedes and a van. Sonya introduced me to the crew: Nicole, responsible for makeup, was Italian. The camera, sound, and lighting crew were English. Sonya had worked with them before and she told me that they worked hard and played hard. The playing part didn’t surprise me; they looked a lot like a seventies heavy-metal band, and the head cameraman’s name was Rocket. You don’t get a nickname like that by being captain of the chess club. The director, John, was American; I had met him a few times before on location. He was easygoing, and he and Sonya worked well together.

While the crew was setting up cameras and equipment and Nicole was attending to Anna Maria’s makeup, one of her daughters made us lunch,
fritti di Parma
. She took pieces of pasta dough, rolled them paper-thin, and deep-fried them in
vegetable oil until they puffed up like fat little pillows. She drained them on paper towels, split them open, and filled them with thin slices of Parma ham and Parmesan cheese. They were insanely delicious.

By the time we were ready to shoot, assorted sizes of children, grandchildren, spouses, and more than a few neighbors had formed a small crowd in the kitchen. The room was sufficiently large to hold them all, and after warning them not to make a sound, John called for a run-through and then for action. Using some Italian and some English, Anna Maria and Sally walked us, and eventually millions of viewers, through
tagliatelle di Parma
.

“
Primo, la pasta
,” Anna Maria said, scooping flour from a large crockery bowl onto the counter and shaping it into a mound.

“Looks like about three cups,” Sally said.

“
Sì
. Now you make
una fontana
.” She used her hand to form a well, which she called a fountain, in the center of the flour and broke three eggs into it.

“Those are three large eggs.” Anna Maria had collected them from her chicken coop so there was no egg carton marked “large,” but Sally knew a large egg when she saw one.

“
Battate con una forchetta
.” Anna Maria beat the eggs rapidly with a fork until they were a deep, orange-yellow mass, supporting the outside of the flour well with one hand as she replaced the beating with a swirling motion.

“Her fork is gradually drawing in bits of flour from the inside wall,” Sally explained. When the eggs were no longer runny, Anna Maria put down the fork and used both hands to cave her wall in over the doughy mass. Then she pushed and squeezed the mass until it resembled a pasta-dough wannabe. Sally pinched it and said that it was still crumbly but held together.

“Now you must first clean the surface,” said Anna Maria, setting aside the paste she had made and scraping the counter clean. “Then you knead
la pasta
.” She pushed the crumbly paste with the heel of her hand, several times, then folded it, turned it over, and pushed, folded, and turned several more times.

“How long do you knead it?” Sally asked.

Anna Maria shrugged. “Until it is smooth and feels like pasta dough. Perhaps
dieci minuti
.” She lifted a kitchen towel off the ball of dough we had made that morning and handed it to Sally. “Like this,” she said.

Sally patted the dough and declared it “as smooth as a baby’s bottom.” She asked, “What’s next?”

“Now we stretch it.” Anna Maria shifted the pasta machine from the end of the counter to the center, as we had gone over that morning. She broke off a piece of the dough and rolled it several times through the machine, letting Sally pick up the sheet as it came through. When it was as thin as Anna Maria wanted, Sally held the long strip up, draping an end over each hand. “This is perfectly lovely, Anna Maria. It’s so thin I can see through it. How do we cut the
tagliatelle
?”

Anna Maria, God bless her, had remembered all our stage directions and was in the process of changing the head on the pasta machine. When she had the cutting attachment in place, she took the pasta from Sally, sliced it into three pieces, then let Sally roll a piece through so that it came out the other end as ribbons of
tagliatelle
. “That’s wonderful!” Sally said, admiring her perfect strands of
tagliatelle
. Anna Maria scooped up the strands and deftly twisted them into little nests that she set on a floured towel with the other nests we had made that morning.

We had to break there so that the camera could move to the
stove, where we had a large pot of boiling water for the pasta and a good-sized sauté pan for the sauce. We put butter in the pan, and when it was almost completely melted, the cameras began to roll again.

“You have about six tablespoons of butter melting, Anna Maria. Now what?” Sally asked.

“
Adesso, il prosciutto di Parma
,” said Anna Maria, picking up a plate that held narrow strips of prosciutto. Sally popped one in her mouth and said, “About a cup of Parma ham cut into julienne pieces.” Anna Maria offered the plate to Sally to see if she wanted more. Sally held up her hand and shook her head no, so Anna Maria tipped them into the pan and stirred them around a bit. Then she poured heavy cream from a pitcher into the pan.

“That’s about two cups of
real
heavy cream. And that has to boil and reduce.” That was the cue for John to stop tape while the cream reduced. When it had, they picked up again on a close-up of the reduced cream.

“The cream is reduced to about a cup,” Sally said before asking Anna Maria what came next.

“
I pomodori
.” Anna Maria spooned a few tablespoons of tomato puree into the pan, immediately turning the white sauce into a pale pink about the color of her dress. She stirred in some salt, pepper, and nutmeg, and said, “
Basta
,” then turned to the boiling water. She dropped a couple of tablespoons of salt and several strands of
tagliatelle
into the water. After a few minutes that would eventually be edited out, she retrieved the plump strands with a long-handled, weathered pasta scoop, tossed them in the sauce, and then transferred them to a pasta dish and grated a snowy mound of Parmesan on top. She handed to Sally, who already had a fork in her hand. “
Mangia
,” said Anna Maria, and Sally did as she was
told and declared it
delizioso
. John declared the spot
delizioso
. With hugs, grazies, and arrivedercis, we packed up and left for Bologna, the Fat.

Bologna is called “the Fat” because of its good food, and we arrived just in time to head out for dinner. We quickly checked into the hotel, left our luggage for the bellman to deliver to our rooms, and set out in search of the restaurant Sonya said had been highly recommended to her. Our hotel was in the old part of the city near the main piazza, Piazza Maggiore, and we soon found ourselves walking along the miles of sidewalks protected by arched roofs. Sally remarked on what a good idea it was to build “arcade umbrellas” in case it rained.

“They have an interesting story,” said Sonya. Boy, it was nice having her along. “In the eleventh century, Bologna was a wealthy city but very crowded. People from all over were immigrating here because it had the first university in Europe—built in 1088. There was no room to build more living space, so people began to expand their houses out over the sidewalks, and that made these porticos. The first one was built in 1211, I think it was. Before long it became a city law that if you built a house, you had to build a portico. These go on for miles.”

“That’s fascinating,” said Sally.

“Wow. I love my people,” I said.

We continued under the porticos stopping every now and then to admire the architecture and to look in shop windows, until we came to Sonya’s restaurant. It served traditional Bolognese food, so we decided to order the
bollito misto
.
Bollito misto
means “mixed boil,” and the mix seems to include every four-legged farm creature known to man. Our waiter wheeled an elaborate cart up to our table and began to lift ingredient after ingredient out of simmering broth. He carved and placed on our plates calf’s tongue, veal breast, chicken, beef brisket, a
sausage he told us was a local
cotechino
, and sausages that looked like the sweet Italian sausage from home. In case we might feel we weren’t getting our money’s worth, he added some small whole potatoes. He placed two different tangy, cold sauces, mustard and a pickle relish called
mostardo
, on the table and left us to eat ourselves to death. I really regretted having let Mary talk me out of clothes with elastic waistbands.

When we finally cried uncle and refused the dessert he wiggled under our noses, he told us to “
fate una passeggiata
.” That means “take a walk,” but he wasn’t kicking us out. That’s what the Bolognese do after dinner under all those porticos; they take a stroll. With food like this, I understand the law requiring those passages to be built.

I walked Sally to her room, wondering if she was up for talking, but when we got to her door she said, “I am going right to sleep. That dinner wore me out. Good night, honey.”

In spite of the long day, I wasn’t ready to sleep. I had finished the book I was reading on the plane and foolishly hadn’t brought another one, so I tried to watch a little television. After an episode of
Friends
, dubbed in Italian, and a little CNN news I was getting antsy. Since we’d be in Bologna for two nights, I decided to wash out some underwear. That’s when I noticed that Sally’s carry-on had been delivered to my room by mistake. She’d have the latest food magazines; she always traveled with an adequate supply of reading material. She was probably asleep by this time, so I unzipped it and found several cooking CDs.
Great
. I’d wanted to look them over since Sally had mentioned them in New York. There were five of them, but only one was open, so I picked that one and got out my laptop. When I opened the CD case, I saw that there were two discs inside—one marked, the other not. I slipped the unmarked one into my laptop.

It was blank for a minute, and then I was looking at Peter Woods. He was sitting at a table in a small, unfamiliar kitchen, speaking to a man who was sitting to the side of him. I was confused for a moment, because Peter was not speaking English, and I thought maybe this was some type of comedy-show spoof. They were always doing takeoffs on Sally. But there was nothing funny about it, especially when the other man began to pound his fist on the table and rant at Peter.

“Boris. Speak English,” Peter interrupted in English. “You know I can’t follow your Russian when you rave like that.”

“I have told you,” Boris said, pounding the table again. “I will only pay the amount we agreed to. Not one dollar more.”

“We agreed to that amount before I had this new material. What I have now is worth more.” Peter rested his arms on the table and leaned toward the other man. “If you would just let me speak to whoever is in charge, I know I could convince him. I don’t think you understand how big this is. You’ll get five, ten times the money I’m asking from the Iranians alone. North Korea will pay even more. Why don’t you set up a meeting for me with the guy in charge?”

“
I
am in charge. Me. Boris Davinsky. I am my own leader.”

“We both know that’s not true.”

At that point, Boris stood up and tipped the table over. I saw Peter’s arms fly up, and then the CD went blank. I stared at it with my heart racing so fast that I had to take huge, deep breaths to slow it down. “Oh my God!” I said out loud. “Oh my God!” This is what Sally had found out about Peter. “Oh my God.” He was selling some kind of material to a Russian thug who was selling it to people who were not our friends. Peter worked in nuclear physics, so I could guess what kind of information. I began to pace the room, actually wringing my hands.

I thought about this man whom I had adored, with whom I had shared so many good times, and I felt sick to my stomach. I could only imagine the horror Sally must have felt when she’d found out such a thing about the man she had married. I ejected the CD and put it back in its case, regretting ever having seen it. Not only did I not want to know what I now knew, I didn’t know whether I should tell Sally I knew. Would she be grateful to have someone to share the hurt or would someone else knowing make it harder for her? I turned off the lights, and tossed and turned for a long time before falling asleep without an answer.

Postpone the pain.
—
Mark Chesnutt

T
he next morning, I knocked on Sally’s door on my way to the lobby. I handed her the carry-on and explained that it had been delivered to my room by mistake. I watched for any reaction that might open up a dialogue about Peter, but she simply thanked me and said she hadn’t even missed it. I had decided that if she didn’t mention it when I returned the carry-on, I would wait until we were back home to discuss it. I would visit her in Washington, so we would be away from the public. Until then, I was going to pull a Sally and just bull it through.

We met the others in the lobby, and Sally and Sonya took off to shoot balsamic vinegar, tortellini, and a 180-pound mortadella. I took off to a local restaurant to meet a 180-pound
buffone
. Gino Baffoni, the talent, was shorter than me, but his hair was a lot taller and died jet black. He was wearing an open-collared shirt with a red silk kerchief tied around his neck, and I swear he had on eye makeup. He was Italy’s
primo
,
numero uno
cookbook author and television personality; that’s what he told me the minute we met.

“Tell me,” he said standing so close I could smell salami breath, “how do I make my own show on American television.” He handed me his six very thin paperback cookbooks and three DVDs, all marked with his name.

Reincarnate yourself as another person, I thought. “I really don’t have anything to do with that,” I told him. “I’m just a prep cook.” He immediately took back his books and DVDs and gave me a look that combined disdain with dismissal. I knew the look; it was a Mrs. Alfano standard.