Read Online The Umbrian Thursday Night Supper Club by Marlena de Blasi - Free Book Online Page B

the wine is absorbed. Add more wine, let the pasta drink it in. Add more. Small doses. In about twelve minutes the pasta becomes rosy, perfectly al dente and all plumped with the wine. In this case the only sauce would be a bit more oil, some pepper and …’ Here I falter, not quite ready to tell them how I’ll finish the dish. I’m grateful when Miranda steps in.
    â€˜
E poi
, and then? What will be next?’
    â€˜Loins of caramelised pork braised in more
novello
with …’ I hesitate again before saying, ‘with prunes and cloves and cinnamon and …’
    I look to Ninuccia, see her perplexity.
This strange American; prunes with her pork?
But it’s Paolina who saves me, she having sifted through childhood to find a memory.
    â€˜I remember that my mother would make a braise of pork with dried prunes. And spices, too. Cinnamon. Surely she used cinnamon. But I don’t know if she cooked it in wine or broth. It must have been wine …’
    Now it’s Ninuccia who recalls: ‘I remember a neighbour woman who came to help each December when we slaughtered a pig. She was from Lubriano, or maybe it was Bagnoregio, but anyhow she would make a kind of sausage with trimmings and prunes and spices, shape the paste into ovals and fry them dark and crisp. We’d stand by the stove, my cousins and I, wait for her to stuff one or two between thin slices of bread. We’d grab them and run away fast as we could, out of the house and up into the woods, clutching the hot little parcels tight to our chests as though someone would try to steal them. How good they were. I don’t know why we always ran up into the woods with them rather than just inhale them on the spot. I wonder. I hadn’t thought about that in forty years.’
    I watch Miranda watching the others, listening to them, and I think she is content for this small exchange of memory and nostalgia. Miranda, too,
must always have a story with her bread
.
    â€˜And then don’t you think we should have something with chestnuts?’ I ask. ‘Fried chestnut-flour cakes with raisins. And chestnuts cooked in spiced wine. The tastes of these are like a reprise of the pork … continuation. In fact, the little cakes and the drunken chestnuts could be served
with
the pork. It would all work together.’
    â€˜
Adesso, io ho fame
. Now I’m hungry,’ says Ninuccia.
    â€˜
Anch’io
. Me, too,’ says an old cousin who’d seated himself, prick-eared, at the end of the table with his tumbler and a pitcher of wine, intent on our homey discourse. Miranda shoos him away and, as he moves back toward his watch over the grinding stones, he turns around and says, ‘
A Natale ci sposeremo
. At Christmas, we’ll be married.’
    â€˜
Scemo, cretino
.’ She calls him a fool, a cretin, her blush belying her pleasure.
    Everyone putters about clearing the table and washing up, each one saying what she’ll bring along to the mill later that evening or in the morning to contribute to the supper. I’m about to leave, too, when Ninuccia says, ‘Wait a bit, won’t you?
Faccio un caffé
,’ she says, riffling through a cupboard drawer for the parts to a Bialetti.
    I’m tired and want mostly to get home to Fernando and to a bath and a rest, to think about our own Thursday supper. But having found all the pieces to the little pot, she’s already packed it tightly with ground espresso, set it on the flame. I sit down again, take off my shawl and wonder – has she waited until now to tell me her impressions of the dishes I talked about? I am thinking that I do like this Ninuccia. And that maybe I do
seek
her friendship. Or is it Miranda’s powers of suggestion at work?
    An elbow on the table, I rest my chin in the hollow of my hand and watch her fussing about the cups and searching for sugar. A great mass of bound Titian hair, her skin is pale and freckled, the