Snapshots...

by Paulette Licitra
(page 2)

In Grazia's kitchen I cook my brains out. Roasted chicken with fresh vegetables; I learn abbacchio (Roman style lamb cooked with rosemary); stuffed artichokes (comparing recipes with Grazia); fresh tomato sauce with pork, with beef, with mushrooms.

Grazia usually makes lunch. Thin slices of beef, pan-fried in olive oil and red wine, topped by a sunny side up egg; or lentils cooked with rosemary mixed with triangles of crusty bread sauteed in garlic olive oil; or a spaghetti frittata, leftover spaghetti made into a little crispy pillow.

At midnight she invites me to join her on strolls through Trastevere, down tiny streets, through mysterious darks, lights, doorways. She knocks on a door which opens on a warmly lit room filled with people, drinking, nibbling, smoking and philosophizing. We disappear inside, leaving the street to its dark, quiet self.

My friend Malena married a Roman man. He worked at a clothes shop across the street from her apartment on Via Sistina. She used to watch him from her window as he stood outside having a smoke. Her parents had just left for the states. Being a Navy brat she'd lived everywhere between Virginia, Rome and Japan, but she grew into an adult in Rome. She wasn't leaving.

Claudio fell instantly in love with the tall, striking, smiles-easily Malena. They moved into a studio apartment one block from Piazza Navona, worked in the theatre, and had a dog, a daughter (Eleonora), and a son (Lorenzo).

They continued to live in that studio apartment despite the expanding family (rents and apartment availability in Rome are impossible). Every day Malena makes lunch and dinner, and has learned a lot about that from her husband. Roman men take part in cooking. They know how to do it, and if it's done for them, they want it done a certain way. It wasn't enough to know the recipe -- sure, penne arrabiate takes chopped parsley, but how small should it be chopped, and exactly when do you put it into the sauce? These details are important.

One afternoon I joined them for the cooking of lunch. All three adults blabbing, laughing, and chopping together, and Claudio conducting our small chamber orchestra down to the al-dente-ness of the pasta (not just al dente, but how al dente). A taste of domestic bliss.