My article is in the winter issue, in the very good company of Robert Draper, Donald Sutherland, Jack Turner, Nan McElroy and others who love the non-touristy, cultural side of this most enchanting of cities.
I used to follow her instruction to use “1 cup good-quality flavorless vegetable oil (or use part olive oil if you wish).” I was always bothered by her “flavorless” adjective, and a few years ago, I started using all olive oil.
There I had the soup the color of the Arno, a rich broth with lots of porcini.
The pendant lights were made in Murano at Schiavon Vetreria Artistica. And having a grand time. On a building facing Piazza Maggiore, we spotted a wall of photographs of partisans who died in World War II. These baklavas demonstrate the wonderful combining of flavors–pomegranate and saffron, raisins with pomegranate, fig with walnuts, mint with hazelnuts.Now we are back in Hillsborough NC for this lovely late summer bounty of the garden and farmers’ markets. My old yellow wooden table finally succumbed to age, and was not helped by a worker spilling a gallon of black creosote on it. As in the novel, this villa was a large brick house, two kilometers from Cortona, completely restored. Bologna is full of bookstores, intriguing doorways, and interesting looking people. Intense but exhilarating! I found this old iron table base and had the stone top cut to seat twelve. We do the same with chicken tenders. Ed is driving with me and we get to spend the night on lovely Pawley’s Island. We were proud that he was willing to try very unfamiliar seafood and sophisticated preparations of more familiar food. Ed has his sink and I have mine, both cut from single pieces of marble. The oven is my dream oven.That’s pasta with sausage and four cheeses coming out. We have a small olive oil crop this year, due to crazy weather, but the oil is, as always, sublime. Florence is amazingly short on house and kitchen stores. She’s on a quest. I would always like to be in the South for tomato, butterbean, corn, okra, yellow squash and peppers that burgeon in the garden. He made Florence an open walking city. Now I’m hoping for a calm August and time, time, time to write.Hope your summer, too, has been full of good surprises!As you can see, this is one well-worn cookbook. We also removed a staircase, which gave a little more room.
On the left, parmigiano aged 45 months, on the right, aged 24 months.
More later…..At the end of the book, I included an essay, “A Life on Paper.” I write about why anyone would want to attempt a memoir. People used to say it was because it is too hot in the valley in summer and too foggy in the winter but now that houses are insulated, heated, and cooled, this no longer explains. First, asbestos all over the basement.