Omelette and a Glass of Wine (19 page)

Giulia

Giulia Piccini was Tuscan. She came from a hill village near Florence, and during the fifties she cooked for Derek Hill, the English painter, who at that time occupied the
villino
in the garden of I Tatti, Bernard Berenson’s villa at Settignano. Giulia’s cooking was like herself, elegant and delicate – in bearing she was more the fastidious aristocrat than the sturdy peasant – subtly seasoned, but with unexpected contrasts, as in a cold, uncooked tomato sauce which she served with hot dry rice. Conversely,
riso ricco
, or rich rice, consists of plain white rice left to cool until barely more than lukewarm, when a hot cheese sauce resembling a
fonduta
is poured over it. Not an easy dish to get right, but when it comes off, glorious.

GIULIA’S RISO RICCO

This is Giulia’s own recipe written out by her husband, Emilio. ‘For 500 gr. of rice: put 3 litres of water in a large boiling pot, and when it boils throw in the rice and a little salt, and cook it for about 15 to 17 minutes, stirring so that it doesn’t stick. Turn it into a colander, and then into a buttered mould and leave it to cool. (The mould can be plain or with a central tube).

‘Meanwhile prepare the sauce: into ½ litre of barely tepid milk put 250 gr. of Gruyère cut in small thin slices; then leave them for about an hour in this tepid bath, until the cheese has softened and
melted and is forming threads. At this point add 4 egg yolks, whisking them in to obtain a cream which you then cook over a very slow fire.

‘The sauce made, turn the rice into a serving dish and pour the sauce over it, first putting little flakes of butter over the rice.’

Notes

The only point Giulia doesn’t make quite clear is that the milk and Gruyère should be held ‘barely tepid’ during the hour it takes for the cheese to melt, so a bain-marie or a double saucepan is indicated. Provided the water underneath or surrounding the milk is hot when you add the cheese, there should not be any necessity for further cooking at this stage. But keep the milk and cheese covered.

When it comes to adding the egg yolks and the final cooking of the sauce to a smooth custard-like cream I find it necessary, for the sake of speed, to have recourse to the blender, giving the yolks and the milk-cheese mixture a quick whirl, then returning them to the saucepan to thicken over very gentle heat. The sauce is not supposed to be thicker than double cream.

Both for flavour and melting property I prefer the Italian Fontina cheese to Gruyère which in England is of such variable quality, and inclined to turn into rubbery knots when heated. The rice should be Italian round-grained risotto rice. Giulia reckoned 500 gr. for 6 people.

GIULIA’S TOMATO SAUCE AND DRY RICE

With a dish of dry rice cooked in the manner of a pilau, Giulia used to serve the simplest possible tomato sauce. She sliced ripe tomatoes into a bowl (I don’t think she skinned them. I do, but that’s a matter of choice), mixed them with olive oil, wine vinegar, salt, pepper and a scrap of onion. The important points are to prepare the mixture two hours in advance, and immediately before serving to stir in a pinch of sugar.

For the
riso secco
use long-grain rice. Put half a small onion in a deep saucepan or casserole with olive oil and butter. When the onion turns pale gold, extract it, throw in 500 gr. of rice (for 6 people) and let it cook until it turns a pale blond colour; now pour in salted water or broth, and cook, covered, for 20 minutes. Take care that the rice is not too liquid; it is sufficient for the water to cover it by one finger’s depth or less; when cooked turn it on to a serving dish and on top put, here and there, some flakes of butter and some grated cheese.’

The tomato sauce is served separately. ‘
Riso secco
may sound dull,’ says Derek Hill, ‘but the contrast of the hard hot rice and the cold tomato “salad” is absolutely delectable. It’s most important, I remember, that the rice should not be shaken about or disturbed.’

Another Tuscan cook – Lina by name – from whom I learned several excellent dishes, used to serve a very similar uncooked tomato sauce with
riso in bianco
, plain boiled rice, but she skinned the tomatoes and chopped them almost into a purée. In Piedmont, just such a sauce is often offered with
bollito misto
, that splendid dish of mixed boiled meats. Indeed I wonder if Lina’s method was not the very first way the Italians knew of making a tomato sauce. Not so long ago I came across almost the same recipe in Antonio Latini’s
Lo Scalco alla Moderna
, or
The Modern Steward
, published in Naples in 1692. Latini, a native of Colle Amato di Fabbriano in the Marche, was steward to Don Stefano y Salcedo, Spanish Prime Minister of Naples. He called his recipe
Salsa di Pomodoro, alla Spagnuola
. Half a dozen ripe tomatoes were to be roasted in the embers and diligently skinned, then finely chopped with onions
a discretione
, also minutely chopped, pepper and creeping thyme or
piperna
¹
in small quantity. ‘Mix all together, season it with a little salt, olive oil, vinegar, and it will make a most excellent sauce for boiled meats, or other.’ The basis, it will be seen, of the modern Spanish gazpacho.

Although it is fortunately not true, as is so often asserted, that modern Italian cooking has foundered in tomato sauce, it is difficult not to regret the days when the tomato was treated with caution, and kept in its place. But it is also agreeable to recall, in savouring a simple sauce such as Latini’s, something of the shock of surprise and pleasure some of his contemporaries must have experienced when they first tasted those cool, sweet-acid tomatoes in the heat of a Naples summer.

Petits Propos Culinaires
No. 9, 1980

1.
If you have a deep enough pot, the jars can be stood upright. Obviously, using bottles, it was necessary for Mafalda to lay them flat in the pan.

2.
This is an extract from an article which originally appeared in the August 1958 number of London
Vogue
.

1.
Piperna
in this context may have been intended by Latini to mean
erba pipiritu
, one of several colloquial names for
Thymus vulgaris
, common thyme. (Battista & Giovanni Alessio.
Dizionario Etimologico Italiano
. Firenze 1954.) Latini could equally have meant
piperite
, to which, according to Florio’s
Worlde of Words
1611,
piperna
was an alternative. The English for
piperite
was ‘Ginny, Indian or Calicut pepper’. Ginny or Guinea pepper, also called Malagueta pepper and grains of Paradise, is the seed of
amomum melegueta
, a plant related to cardamom. What the tomato sauce required, clearly, was a mildly peppery seasoning, and in seventeenth century Italian cooking thyme was one of several herbs used in that context.

Have It Your Way

‘Always do as you please, and send everybody to Hell, and take the consequences. Damned good Rule of Life. N.’ I think we must both have been more than a little tipsy the evening Norman wrote those words on the back page of my copy of
Old Calabria
. They are in a pencilled untidy scrawl that is very different from the neat pen-and-ink inscription, dated 21 May 1940, on the flyleaf of the book, and from the methodical list of ‘misprints etc’ written on the title page when he gave me the book. ‘Old-fashioned stuff, my dear. Heavy going. I don’t know whether you’ll be able to get through it.’

I have forgotten the occasion that gave rise to Norman’s ferociously worded advice, although I fancy the message was written after a dinner during which he had tried to jolt me out of an entanglement which, as he could see without being told, had already become a burden to me. And the gentleman concerned was not very much to his liking.

‘You are leaving with him because you think it is your duty. Duty? Ha! Stay here with me. Let him make do without you.’

‘I can’t, Norman. I have to go.’

‘Have it your way, my dear, have it your way.’

Had I listened to Norman’s advice I should have been saved a deal of trouble. Also, I should not, perhaps, have seen Greece and the islands, not spent the war years working in Alexandria and Cairo, not have married and gone to India, not have returned to England, not become involved in the painful business of learning to write about food and cookery. And I should not now be writing this long-overdue tribute to Norman Douglas. Was he right? Was he wrong? Does it matter? I did what I pleased at the time. I took the consequences. That is all that Norman would have wanted to know.

When I met him first, Norman Douglas was seventy-two. I was twenty-four. It was that period in Norman’s life when, exiled from his home in Florence and from his possessions, he was living in far-from-prosperous circumstances in a room in the place Macé in Antibes.

Quite often we met for drinks or a meal together in one or another of the cafés or restaurants of the old lower town, a rather seedy place in those days. There was little evidence of that bacchanal existence that legend attributes to all Riviera resorts.

Norman Douglas, © photograph by Islay Lyons, reproduced by kind permission of the photographer

The establishment Norman chose when he fancied a pasta meal was in a narrow street near the old port. ‘We’ll meet at George’s and have a drink. Then we’ll go and tell them we’re coming for lunch. No sense in letting them know sooner. If we do, they’ll boil the macaroni in advance. Then all we shall get is heated-up muck. Worthless, my dear. We’ll give them just twenty minutes. Mind you meet me on the dot.’

At the restaurant he would produce from his pocket a hunk of Parmesan cheese. ‘Ask Pascal to be so good as to grate this at our table. Poor stuff, my dear, that Gruyère they give you in France. Useless for macaroni.’ And a bunch of fresh basil for the sauce. ‘Tear the leaves, mind. Don’t chop them. Spoils the flavour.’

Now and again Norman would waylay me as I was buying provisions in the market. ‘Let’s get out of this hole. Leave that basket at George’s. We’ll take the bus up toward Vence and go for a little stroll.’

The prospect of a day in Norman’s company was exhilarating; that little stroll rather less so. A feeble and unwilling walker, then as now, I found it arduous work trying to keep up with Norman. The way he went stumping up and down those steep and stony paths, myself shambling behind, reversed our ages. And well he knew it.

‘Had enough?’

‘Nearly.’

‘Can you tackle another half kilometre?’

‘Why can’t we stop here?’

‘
Pazienza
. You’ll see.’

‘I hope so.’

At that time I had not yet come to understand that in every step Norman took there was a perfectly sound purpose, and so was innocently impressed when at the end of that half kilometre, out in the scrub, at the back of beyond, there was a café. One of those two-chair, one-table, one-woman-and-a-dog establishments. Blessed scruffy café. Blessed crumbling crone and mangy dog.

‘Can we deal with a litre?’

‘Yes, and I’m hungry too.’

‘Ha! You won’t get much out of
her
. Nothing but bread and that beastly ham. Miserable insipid stuff.’ From out of his pocket came a hunk of salami and a clasp knife.

‘Do you always carry your own provisions in your pocket?’

‘Ha! I should say so. I should advise you to adopt the same rule.
Otherwise you may have to put up with what you get. No telling what it may be, nowadays.’

Certain famous passages in Norman Douglas’ work, among them Count Caloveglia’s dissertation in
South Wind
on the qualities necessary to a good cook, in
Siren Land
the explosive denunciation of Neapolitan fish soup, in
Alone
the passage in which he describes the authentic pre-1914 macaroni, ‘those macaroni of a lily-like candour’ (enviable phrase – who else could have written it?), have led many people to believe that Norman Douglas was a great epicure in matters gastronomical, and so he was – in an uncommon way; in a way few mortals can ever hope to become. His way was most certainly not the way of the solemn wine sipper or of the grave debater of recipes. Connoisseurship of this particular kind he left to others. He himself preferred the study of the original sources of his food and wine. Authenticity in these matters was of the first importance to him. (Of this, plenty of evidence can be found by those who care to look into
Old Calabria, Together, Siren Land, Alone
, and
Late Harvest
.) Cause and effect were eminently his concerns, and in their application he taught me some unforgettable lessons.