It was my first time in Italy since childhood, in Puglia. My parents had rented a villa with its own trulli — the odd loose stony houses of the Itria Valley which look like animal-made structures, with that orderliness animals, not men, can make out of nature. Lo’ and I slept in one with a locked wooden chest (what was in it? Old linen as thick as pasta?) and small windows which let in a diffuse light. Trulli were built of loose rocks so they could be quickly taken apart, a landlord’s tax dodge. Their Wikipedia page says that they are popular with German and English tourists, which is true, and reminds me of the kindness of Mediterranean who will always say “well at least the English are not as as bad as the Germans” to an Englishman, or “well at least the Germans aren’t as bad as the English” to a German.
Being the perfect sort of holiday we mostly stayed at the house — with a garden full of cacti with cacti fruit, whose prickles, tiny and imperceptible, ruin one’s whole day — swam in the pool, cooked, and went to markets in the morning. It was here I first had orecchiette — which seems odd, since it’s now so ubiquitous and this was only six or so years ago. The orecchiette we cooked with large crustaceans and they were delicious, though we’d followed no recipe. Something I rarely do in other countries, following recipes;, is for home in London, and for remembering elsewhere. But while elsewhere I like to bring my alienness to bear on new ingredients, to be novel and for intuition to lead my cooking. “And you put that with that?” someone’s mother might ask and I’ll grin and hope to be forgiven. For the real thing I’ll eat in a taverna or someone’s house. Puglia was also the first place I bought ricotta so fresh it was still warm and the first time I found the language of hands and money were all one needed in a foreign market. Outside the towns the grass was yellowish and everywhere else was stone.
We took a trip to Polignaro a Mare, a town of cliff-clinging buildings — mimicking the stones they sit on — and a special much photographed beach, snug in a cove. Of course, the water was like bathwater, of course, the town smelt of salt and beneath that a little of cooking fish and of garlic, of course, it was thronged with smartly dressed Italians impervious to the heat. Such things I remember only lightly. More prominent a funeral — we had just arrived and were hot and bothered, rushing though I’ve no idea why. Eight of us, our eyes assaulted by sun on white stone. And then a procession came along, a clamouring of noises, slow, dirgy — trumpets I know, and I remember drums, but that may be a figment. At its head in black the priest, hatted, unsmiling, behind him a profusion of crows in mourning, fat besuited men with bright ties, young women in tight dresses, and in their midst a coffin held aloft, wobbling, quite jaunty in the tussle of the crowd. And so we stood to the side, amazed, silenced while everyone else carried on — waiters with trays of espresso and beer, bathers on their way to the beach, even a Vespa pushed its way past. Of course, of course they did. Life does not stop for a cortege. Life goes on within the cortege.
Later, churchpeeping, I interrupted the funeral mass — and there, to the side, saw a fat man in a black suit, with closed eyes, his last bed comfortably padded in pink satin, his face grey save for his cheeks, which bore a little rouge. All this I saw in a couple of seconds, saw too weeping women and incense swinging about the church, the bloody Christ, the serious men. I turned around and almost ran out. I’m not sure if I had seen a dead body before. I do not think I have seen a dead body since. How much of this man’s body had I made up then, have I made up now? Was the rouge an echo of Christ’s blood, a shadow of the pink satin? Outside I gulped for air, feeling I’d been beneath the sea, and the air was hot and soft, hardly life giving.
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The wine of Puglia is Primotivo, a wine roasted to deep sweetness and strength by the sun. The vineyards look half dead, in other fields tomatoes sun-roast on the vine. Everywhere is stone and then, driving, there is a Byzantine ruin or a Norman church. Here is Magna Grecia and here the question what is Italy? is posed again and again. I feel similarly in Celtic places in the UK — in Cornwall, especially, since though bereft of language its cairnss,and near-mythic mines are proof of itself. In Cornwall I feel more an interloper than almost anywhere else, an unwelcome Gulliver. Followed always by the eyes of a Celtic cross, dogged, vengeful. The wine of Cornwall is cider, the orchards are bright and alive, the tomatoes sit plump in poly tunnels.
We drove to the Puglian coast and found there sparsely populated beaches and ur-Adriatic sea. Pleased with ourselves we noted that almost everyone there was Italian, that ours were the only pink burnt faces. When is it not pleasurable to say, well, this restaurant is for locals only (in loud English) or this beach is where the Italian tourists swim? When not picking our way to the sea we huddled beneath a rocky outcrop, sweating and thirsty, drawing pictures in the flat sand. Mermaids, beasts, seaweed. The sea contained nothing and had not the violence of the Devon sea, it was so welcoming it worried me a little. Could I make out Tirana in the distance? Hear the garbled Greek of a Byzantine galley?
Hungry we left the beach and drove along sandy dirt roads, past resorts and campsites, the roads shaded by a dry sort of pine, until again the seaside and a sign boasting Trattoria! before a large shaded terrace overlooking a beach — white plastic chairs and plastic chequered tablecloths, a few nautical asides on the walls (anchor, rope, life-aide). We took a table and, en mass aside from my mother, ran into the sea and its warm embrace, swimming until, hungry, she called us back. On the way up the stairs I noticed a man asleep beneath the terrace, and later saw the restaurant’s proprietress bring him a bottle of water and some pasta. When she saw me looking she shrugged, smiled sympathetically and said migrante.
A small menu: four pastas, all spaghetti — with fish, with meatballs, with tomato and with mussels; and seafood fritti. Perfect — we ordered enough for the table. Could we buy some white wine, I asked, and the waiter looked uncomfortable, stepped from one foot to another. “The beer is better, I recommend…” “No, but I would like some wine, surely you have wine?” “Yes but it is very bad.” “But is it cold?” “Sure, of course.” “So, could we?” “Ok, fine, ok wine.” No one else was drinking wine, it was true, but how poor could it be? The waiter re-emerged, in one hand carrying a bottle — its label coming off from re-use, its sides smeared with condensation — and a handful of glasses. “Here. I hope you enjoy.” I looked at the bottle. Gosh. In its bottom a strange thing: a sediment build-up that looked like a coral stalagmite.
A murmur from the table — surprise, polite disgust. I took a glass. “It’s fine,” and poured and drank. Oh heavens and gods, is there anything better than very cheap almost acerbic white wine served at 1 degree on a deck overlooking a warm sea? “It is fine!”. When it’s hot I think of this wine.
The food was served in little disposable plastic bowls, placed softly before each of us — the pastas we passed around the table, trying each. And each was magnificent, impossibly and simply good. At another table an Italian in a pink and white striped shirt — the sort bastards wear — was dispatching bowls in two or three forkfuls. We were scarcely more delicate. I think about this meal often when I think of Italian food — why I like Italian food, what I feel I’ve taken from it. It is a cuisine of restraint, of making good from little, of simplicity. Or the Italian food that conquered the world is, for they had their own 19th century excesses, their aristocratic and industrial missteps and over-complications. But the simplicity guides me in my sort of English cooking — “go into the garden and pick a bunch of sage and a bowl of crab apples. Lay the herbs beneath, and the apples beside, a belly of pork and add cider.”
We took the train to Rome soon after, a long, quiet ride up the country, the Italians aboard almost silent, diligent, working or looking out of the window. I sat beside a dentistry student who, at 12 exactly, removed a tinfoil package from his bag, in which his mother (one assumes) had wrapped a sandwich of ham and rocket. He munched thoughtfully, finishing at 12:10 exactly and returned to his work — gruesome pictures of human mouths, dark and gaping.
Stepping from the train in Rome was baptismal. Termini bustled around, angry as a wasp’s nest, loud and hot after the train. And outside The City and a taxi terminal with a driver who overcharged my father (mother: “just pay him, it’s hot”) and a short drive through the centre, muscling through alleys near the Trevi, our man blaring his horn, swearing and doing a good job of earning his fare.
Lo’ and I stayed in Rome after everyone else left, moving to a tiny room on the Vialle Marco Polo, swatting mosquitos all night. We saw time give up on linearity at the Baths of Caracalla, drank golden glasses of Godello in Testaccio’s main square, sat beside a poet’s grave in the shade of an Egyptian pyramid.
A Simple Tart
Slice four onions roughly, toss in a little oil and salt and place in the oven which you have turned on to reach 180c in time for the pastry to be blind baked. Throw a large handful of baby spinach in a pan to wilt, roughly chopped if using mature spinach , with a little water and the lid on. Beat six very good eggs (preferably laid yesterday by chickens belonging to your friends) together and crumble a block of feta into the (golden) into this. Line a tart tin with olive oil pastry and blind bake until firm but not too crisp. Squeeze the wilted spinach and add the the eggs, along with the onions which should be beginning to charr, along with a generous grating of nutmeg and a grinding of pepper. When the pastry is done remove from the oven and pour in the tart mixture, bake for half an hour or until the eggs are firm but not dry. Think of scrambled eggs. Have with salad, fresh mayonaise, sparkling red wine. After another tart, Bakewell, bought by your grandmother and one of the best you’ve ever eaten.