if you've never read this, you must. It is the funniest thing I've ever (ever) read. Run, don't walk, to your favorite bookstore or library and acquire it. Be prepared to laugh. Have tissues handy.
Cooking With Fernet Branca
Chapter 1.
If you will insist on arriving at Pisa airport in the summer
you will probably have to fight your way out of the terminal
building past incoming sun-reddened Brits, snappish
with clinking luggage. They are twenty minutes late for their
Ryanair cheapo return to Stansted ("I said carry your sister's
bloody bag, Crispin, not drag it. If we miss this flight your life
won't be worth living ..."). Ignoring them and once safely outside,
you can retrieve your car in leisurely fashion from the
long-term park and hit the northbound motorway following
the "Genova" signs. Within a mere twenty minutes you are off
again at the Viareggio exit. Don't panic: you are not destined
for the beach which stretches its tottering crop of sun umbrellas
like poison-hued mushrooms for miles of unexciting coastline.
No. You are heading safely inland through the little town
of Camaiore.
Abruptly the road starts to climb into the Apuan Alps: great
crags and slopes thick with chestnut forest and peaks the
colour of weathered marble-which is mostly what they are.
After some tortuous hairpins you will come to the village of
Casoli, whose apparent surliness is probably owing to its having
watched outlying portions of itself disappear into the valley
below every few years in winter landslides. Carry on
through and up. More forest, broken at the hairpins by spectacular
views. Restored stone houses with Alpine fripperies
tacked on (shutters with heart-shaped holes) and Bavarian-registered
BMWs parked outside. Keep going: the world is still
sucking at your heels but you are leaving it behind. Up and up,
until even the warbling blue Lazzi buses are deterred and turn
round in a specially asphalted area. Not far beyond is what
looks like a cart track. Follow this for a hundred metres and
you will come upon an area known as Le Rocce and the house
I have rashly bought. Even more rashly, I am trying to make it
habitable while at the same time attempting to earn a living by
writing a commissioned book too ludicrous for further mention.
The view, though, is amazing. As we British are so fond
of saying, the three most important things about a house are
Position, Position and Position. (For some reason Americans
call it "location".) The British say this with a wise smile, as if
imparting an original insight culled from years of experience
and reflection rather than repeating a stale piece of businessman's
wisdom they have heard in a dozen pubs. Whatever you
think of this particular house, you have to admit it's got
Position coming out of its ears. Apart from a portion of stone
roof barely visible through the trees some way off, there is solitude
in every direction.
You're not tired from your journey? Well, I am; so I set
about preparing a little something suited to what will be the
grand panorama from the terrace once the prehistoric privy
overhanging the gulf has been removed. Great swathes of
mountainside. Between them, lots of blue air with circling buzzards
and a distant view of Viareggio and the sea. On a clear
day the small island of Gorgona is visible; on a really clear day,
I'm told, Corsica. So what shall it be? Something at once
marine and disdainful, I fancy, to show how much we care for
local frutti di mare and how little for rented beach umbrellas
and ice creams. Here we are, then:
Mussels in Chocolate
You flinch? But that's only because you are gastronomically
unadventurous. (Your Saturday evening visits to the Koh-i-Noor
Balti House do not count. These days conveyor-belt
curry is as safe a taste as Mozart.)
Ingredients
2 dozen fresh mussels, shelled and cleaned
Good quantity olive oil
Rosemary
Soy sauce
100 gm finely grated Valrhona dark chocolate
You will need quite a lot of olive oil because you are going
to deep-fry the mussels, and no, that bright green stuff claiming
to be Extra-Special First Pressing Verginissimo olive oil
with a handwritten parchment label isn't necessary. Anyway,
how can there possibly be degrees of virginity? Olive oil snobs
are even worse than wine snobs. You're far better off, not least
financially, with ordinary local stuff that has been cut in the traditional
fashion with maize oil, machine oil, green dye etc.
Heat this until small bubbles appear (before it begins to
seethe). Toss in a good handful of fresh rosemary. Meanwhile,
dunk each mussel in soy sauce and roll it in the bitter chocolate.
(Unlike the oil, the chocolate must be of the best possible
quality. If it even crosses your mind to use Cadbury's Dairy
Milk you should stop reading this book at once and give it to
a charity shop. You will learn nothing from it.) Put the mussels
in the deep-fryer basket and plunge them into the oil. Exactly
one minute and fifty seconds later lift them out, drain them on
kitchen paper and shake them into a bowl of pale porcelain to
set off their rich mahogany colour. Listen to how agreeably
they rustle! Most people are surprised by their sound, which is
not unlike that of dead leaves in a gutter. This is because of the
interesting action of soy sauce on chocolate at high temperatures.
Now pour yourself a cold glass of Nastro Azzurro beer
and, mussels to hand, find a seat from which the privy can't be
seen. Gaze out over your domain and reflect on the Arrivals
queue at Stansted airport where even now the mulish Crispin
is taking it out on his sister by treading down the backs of her
trainers. Enjoy.
2.
The day has dawned bright in every sense and I am making
good progress up a ladder painting the kitchen-the most
important room in the house-in contrasting shades of mushroom
and eau de Nil. Anyone can do the white-walls-and-black-beams
bit, but it takes aesthetic confidence and an original
mind to make something of a Tuscan mountain farmhouse
that isn't merely Frances Mayes. It also takes a complete
absence of salt-of-the-earth peasants and their immemorial
aesthetic input. It is all rather heartening and as I work I break
cheerfully into song. I have been told by friendly cognoscenti
that I have a pleasant light tenor, and I am just giving a Rossini
aria a good run for its money when suddenly a voice shouts up
from near my ankles: "Excuse, please. I am Marta. Is open
your door, see, and I am come." I break off at "tutte le norme
vigenti" and look down to find a shock of frizzy hair with an
upturned sebaceous face at its centre.
This is ominous, but I descend with an exemplary display of
patience. Michelangelo, busy with Adam's finger on the
Sistine Chapel ceiling, would have been similarly miffed to be
told he was wanted on the phone. The stocky lady is apologetic
and claims to be my neighbour, feels strongly we should
be acquainted, has come bearing an ice-breaking bottle of
Fernet Branca. My heart sinks during these explanations and
still further as I find myself sitting at the table sniffing cautiously
at the Fernet, a drink whose charm is discreeter even
than that of the bourgeoisie, being black and bitter. I'd always
thought people only ever drank it for hangovers. Seeing no
way out I admit to being Gerald Samper while refraining from
adding "One of the Shropshire Sampers", which, while true,
would obviously be wasted on her. "I disturb," says Marta
confidently as I cast my eyes towards the unfinished ceiling.
"No, no," I lie feebly. "One can always do with a break." I am
kicking myself for having underestimated the threat posed by
that glimpse of stone roof some way off. Months ago my specious
little agent, Signor Benedetti, told me it belonged to a
house lived in only for a month each year by "a mouse-quiet
foreigner". Having made sure he didn't mean a fellow Briton
I dismissed the whole matter and, indeed, had practically forgotten
that my splendid tranquillity might be compromised by
a neighbour.
What can I say now about this person who, during most of
a long, hot summer and for much of the ensuing long, hot
autumn, becomes the principal bane of my life, or primo pesto,
as I expect they say in Chiantishire? In this role Marta faces
formidable competition from Italian bureaucrats and
enforcers of building regulations, but she outclasses them easily.
I gather she comes from somewhere in that confused area
between the Pripet Marshes and the Caucasus. My ignorance
of geography, I ought to point out, knows no bounds and
hence no frontiers.
"Is that Poland?" I hazard.
Marta looks profoundly shocked.
"Er ... Belarus?"
She thumps the table. Her bangles jangle.
"Sort of Latvia way?" I try despairingly.
She fixes me with large dark eyes which, I now notice, have
fragments of glittery material adhering to their upper lids.
"No," she says fiercely, "I am Voyde, puremost of blood. Yes!
We of Voynovia are Christians when Slavs and Russians still
barbars much more even than today. I tell you history. Many
five hundred years ..."
I tune out at this point, staring sadly at my empty glass and
feeling the paint splashes drying on my arms. In a kind of rueful
dull rage I curse myself for weakness. Who but an over-mannerly
British gent would allow himself to be interrupted in the
middle of painting a ceiling in order to be harangued in his own
kitchen by a perfect stranger speaking abominable English?
Weak, weak, weak. Well, this time the worm is going to turn. I
am regrettably going to have to take a very firm hand with
Marta, if only she will stop talking. Fragments of her speech
snag my attention, like carrier-bags floating down the River
Vistula. Apparently Voynovia is one of those enclaves that was
on the fringes of the Holy Roman Empire and ruled for centuries
by Margraves or Electors or something, clinging to its
ethnic identity through thick and thin: thick being represented
by the Soviet era and thin by the post-Soviet era. The more
Marta talks, the more I can see every excuse for those unsung
Margraves' despotism. I wish to acquaint her with knouts.
"So we will becoming close here, you and me," she is saying.
"I love you British queens and kings tradition. I want to learn.
I want to learn you all of Voynovia, the fooding number one of
all. Voynovian fooding best in all Europa, best in all of world.
Is ... mm." She kisses her fingertips in a frightful gesture probably
copied from a Maurice Chevalier film. "But you will learn
me other things, yes, Gerree?"
For a chill moment I imagine her voice suggests a leer, then
reject this as absurd. I am surely not especially good-looking,
although discerning people naturally recognize that a certain
refinement of manner and mind can more than compensate for
a trivial lack of Adonis-like qualities. I scarcely think this
frizzy-haired frump slurping Fernet Branca at my kitchen table
at ten o'clock in the morning is even on nodding terms with
refinement.
"Tonight you will come at dinner."
"Oh, no, er ..." I hear myself temporizing. I am thinking of
the treat I have promised myself-a dish of poached salmon
with wild cherry sauce which I modestly claim is not the least
successful of my little inspirations. "No, perhaps not
tonight."
"OK, tomorrow," she says with the implacability of a JCB
sinking its scoop in a trench. "You may bringing your wife." It
is her parting shot. This time there can be no doubt about the
leer, which lingers on the air behind her like the Cheshire Cat's
grin. She obviously doesn't believe I have a wife. And why not,
might I ask? I could easily have one. At any moment during the
past hour a wholesome creature like Felicity Kendal in The
Good Life could have wandered down the stairs, spattered
with distemper, to counter the Fernet with a bottle of homemade
nettle wine. It is entirely presumptuous of Marta to make
such an airy assumption.
I wearily pick up the paintbrush which has stiffened into a
birch-twig besom. As I climb back up the ladder I notice that
quite half the contents of the bottle she brought have gone.
Rather disgusting, the way she tucked into her own present. I
resume painting. It is hot up here and the ceiling seems to sway
a little. I do not at all feel like singing now. The truth is, this
neighbourly intrusion has had an upsetting effect on me and I
really feel I shall have to go and lie down. This I do; and such
is the strain that Marta's visit has produced in me that I fall
unconscious for several hours and awake with a headache to
find much of the day has vanished. I fully intended to give the
recipe for my salmon-in-cherries dish here because like any
true creative artist I am eager for a little sliver of immortality.
But alas the moment has passed and immortality will have to
be postponed.
Next morning I awake in a spirit of mischief, more than a little
goaded by the thought of having let myself in for dinner
with the ghastly Marta while under the influence of Fernet
Branca. Being properly brought up, I'm unable to go out even
on unwelcome social occasions without bearing a gift of sorts,
so I shall have to think of something. Thank goodness I'm
going by myself. Sometimes in the company of others I find a
disagreeable spirit of competitiveness kicks in and each person
is shamed into spending rather more than he would have
wished. This is a historically established syndrome, of course.
One Magus going to Bethlehem would probably have sprung
for a box of After Eights. Three Magi on the same trip found
themselves laden with gold, frankincense and myrrh and bitterly
contemplating their overdrafts.
So to the mischief. What shall it be? Rossini-come to my
aid! And he does, bless him. Only a few bars into "Vedi la data
indicata" I remember he was himself an excellent cook who
invented several original dishes (Tournedos Rossini being only
one) and had a predilection for ice cream. Ice cream, eh? It
being hot in Tuscany in late June, even up here in the mountains,
I reason one can't go far wrong bearing home-made ice
cream to a dinner. I further reason that Marta requires something
punitive to remind her not to make a habit of these
neighbourly invitations. So what better than
Garlic and Fernet Branca Ice Cream
Ingredients
15 large cloves of garlic
Put the garlic and the sugar into a blender and empty over
them the remains of a bottle of Fernet Branca with paint splashes
on its label. This will yield a curious compound the colour of
Iodex, which older readers will remember as an embrocation
made from seaweed extract that sporty school-boys used to rub
on their little stiffnesses. Whip the cream, but only until it starts
to thicken. Then stir in the Iodex mixture. An attractive tawny
shade emerges while the garlic note brings tears to the eyes.
Excellent. Pot it and leave in the fridge for an hour. Then turn
it into your ice cream freezer and proceed as usual. When going
out to dinner with someone you would be relieved to learn had
died during the course of the day, remove the ice cream as you
leave the house. It will have the consistency of a brick but by 10
p.m. will have softened just enough to become the evening's
pièce d'occasion. If after that she ever invites you round again,
you are in very much worse trouble than you thought. Oh, and
a spray of fennel embedded in the surface looks well.
By now I am in an ice cream sort of mood so with the fennel
right to hand on the chopping board I knock up a batch of
Fennel and Strawberry Ice Cream for myself. This particular
glace à la Samper is definitely one of my entries for the immortality
stakes. It is a sensational combo and I urge you to try it
out on friends and make them guess what it is. They may think
of Pernod because of the aniseedy taste, yet if you do make
Pernod and Strawberry Ice Cream it tastes quite different.
Fennel and Strawberry actually tastes green, while looking puce
(use the stalks and foliage rather than the bulb).
(Continues...)
It's the first in a hilarious and wonderfully written trilogy. Hamilton-Paterson is a wonder.
NY Times Review: link
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