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Sicilian Culture: News & Views
When in Rome
By Amanda Hesser, New York Times
January 27, 2002 - - ...After her first trip out of the country the year before, my grandmother said there was one more place she would like to go: Rome.
For more than a decade, she had been the host at a fancy Italian-American restaurant in Pennsylvania. This was her chance to see, and taste, the real thing. My mother, my sister, Rhonda, and I had planned carefully, arranging a trip that was a mix of Roman ruins, the food market, churches and street life. I was in charge of making sure we ate well.
...I plotted a good trattoria each day for lunch. We decided, that lunch should be our big meal and that trattorias would be, the most accommodating. It was an easy compromise. In most of Italy, and Rome in particular, that's where the best food is.
Our first night, my mother, grandmother and I went to a restaurant called Perilli, in Testaccio, a neighborhood known for its butchers and for its restaurants, which serve classic Roman dishes like pajata (calves' intestines on pasta), involtini (stuffed rolled veal) and rabbit cacciatore.
We arrived at 8, just as the restaurant was opening, and were immediately pegged as tourists. I stumbled through the menu, translating as best I could and distinguishing between the classic and new dishes. My mother pinched her face at the various offerings of liver, tripe and pork jowl and ordered penne all'arrabbiata, which has a simple, spicy tomato sauce. My grandmother, to my delight, ordered rigatoni con sugo di coda, or rigatoni with oxtail sauce.
''What would you like after?'' the waiter asked us. I explained to everyone that in Rome, people usually begin with pasta and then have meat or fish as a main course."Oh, no, that will be plenty,'' my grandmother said. ''Do they have salad?'' my mother asked. The waiter pressed his lips together.
My grandmother nibbled her pasta as she always eats, nimbly, in small bites, with her eyes on her plate and her arms held closely, like a mouse, until there wasn't a speck of sauce left in the bowl. Then she lamented that there wasn't more meat in the sauce. The rigatoni had been coated in a rich, velvety jus with a single oxtail nestled among the noodles.
''They serve it that way,'' I said rather stiffly, ''because that kind of dish was something poor people ate.You only got a single oxtail, because meat was scarce. The pasta helped make a meal out of it.'' She shrugged.
Things didn't improve much. Every morning at our hotel's pleasant but standard buffet breakfast, she would feast, and no gentle nudging would stop her. She might have a piece of lemon crostada or cereal, then move on to a plate of cured meats. There were good, crisp rosetta rolls, and she ate them too.
By the time we reached our lunch destination, she was barely hungry. She would order soup, or a pasta, or perhaps a salad, a dish Romans consider no more than an accessory to the main course. As much as I tried to persuade her, she never dined in courses. And yet, even when she said she wasn't all that hungry, she would clean her plate.
It is not that I wanted her to gorge herself like a goose destined for foie gras, but I felt she was missing the chance to understand how another culture eats. She would go home thinking Italians eat just the same as we pretend they do here.
My grandmother did, however, choose well from menus. And so after a deliriously good meal of braised oxtails for me, and rabbit cacciatore (braised, with a simple sauce of vinegar, cooking juices and rosemary) for her, I tried once more to explain how Italians dine.
''I wouldn't be able to finish it all,'' she said, after I made my case.
''You don't have to,'' I said. ''It's more about the variety and rhythm of the meal.''
''Well, I just wasn't raised that way.''
''I know,'' I said, ''but it's the difference between eating for sustenance and dining. People eat in restaurants because they have money to pay someone to make and serve their meals. So the food is not so scarce or precious. You should taste everything you want to taste...''
...it occurred to me that if my grandmother couldn't appreciate dining, then she probably had no sense of what I did for a living or what my life was like.
''When I was young,'' she said firmly, ''Pop and I, on our way to the market, would stop at the bar. If you bought a beer, you'd get a free sandwich. So he'd go in, order a beer and eat his sandwich. Then he'd order another beer and bring the sandwich out to me. That was lunch and that was dining out.''
My mother leapt in to mend the situation. ''It's all right, Judy,'' my grandmother said to her, ''she's young yet. She's got a lot to learn.'' I thought I might self-combust.
O.K., I thought, she had found a way to live that made her happy. But now I decided to pursue my own way.
And so, I ordered braised lamb and roasted porcini. I devoured Roman artichokes (braised with pennyroyal) and leggy puntarelle, a chicory served with a garlicky anchovy dressing. I savored stracciatella, the egg-drop soup, which, as the name suggests, looks like ''rags,'' and bucatini all'amatriciana, a spaghetti-like pasta served with guanciale, tomato, cheese and onion. I drank wine at lunch and ate dessert alone. I loved Rome more than ever, and I wanted to swallow it up with me.
www.nytimes.com/2002/01/27/magazine/27FOOD.html?ex=1013186137&ei=1&en=999a5a8bbd762c37
Required Reading for
Italian-Americans...
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