Vegan

Not a terribly sweet sort of breakfast jam, not really a true marmalade, this is the rough condiment Alfonso’s grandmother made when she had a few extra lemons and some even more precious sugar at hand. She served it with her home-smoked swordfish as well as the salt-cured reading. Too, he remembers her smearing it on justbaked bread for him to eat with a slice of fresh ricotta when times were flush.

Glorious Selinunte was raised up seven centuries before Christ and named by the Greeks after the wild, celerylike plant selinon, which then blanketed its riparian hills that fell to the sea. For us, the rests at Selinunte, more than any of the other Greek evidences, are the masterworks transcendent on Sicilia. There one can enter the great temples rather than stay, dutifully, achingly, behind a cordon. Hence, the temples there seem more familiar. One can remain, for a while, in the company of the old gods, to see the light change or to watch four chestnut horses, a newly foaled colt, and a fat, fluffy-haired donkey roaming over the fallow of broken marbles as though it were some ordinary meadow. One can eavesdrop on the discourse between two white doves until the silence comes—piano, pianissimo, save only the whisperings of wings. Some of the people we met who live in Castelvetrano, near Selinunte, spoke to us of a soup they remembered their grandmothers and aunts having made from a selinon-like plant that grew along the coast. They remembered it being smooth and cold, with a strong, almost bitter sort of celery flavor. Alas, neither selinon nor other wild grasses of its ilk are to be found. But prompted by our friends’ taste memories and our own sweet keepsakes of Selinunte, we fashioned this satiny, soothing soup to be offered on the warmest of days.

A humble prescript that flaunts the goodness of summer tomatoes, that asks their roasting over wood, concentrating, ennobling their sweet juices. Propped, then, on crusty seats of bread with a gloss of good green oil and the grace of basil and mint, they soothe hungers for purity.

Traditionally, pettole are fried in bubbling oil, but here follows a version of the gloriously bay-perfumed breads—their faces glossed with diabolical olio santo—that are simply baked. The fat little breads are wonderful to serve with the Lucanian sausages (page 157) or some great platter of dried sausages, salame, and piquant cheeses. Even unaccessorized, they are wholly absorbing, their warm, crunchy goodness complemented by some cold white wine.

If I were given the task of choosing one bread from all the bakers of Italy, one that I could eat everyday and forever, it would be the golden-fleshed bread of Altamura, its thick skin, parched, crackled, its form a fat, crisped heart, cleaved nearly in two.

Should there be, one day in your life, both a handful of still-warm-from-the-tree ripe figs and the juice-dripping flesh of a melon, go quickly to find leaves of mint, some good green olive oil, and the juice of a lemon to make this little salad. Use only flawless components and arrange them for someone wonderful with whom to rhapsodize over it. You might, then, need heady, appropriate conversation. You could choose to speak of Platina—one Bartolomeo Sacchi—the Vatican librarian and author, in 1475, of Platine de Honestate Voluptate. The work’s argument concerns the history of Roman cuisine and was the first officially published cookbook since those written during the Republic. Or you might want to chatter a bit about Cantalupo in Sabina—the Singing Wolf of the Sabines—once a papal garden property outside the Roman walls where a strain of tiny, orange-fleshed melons were cultivated, they, no doubt, being the precursors to those we call cantaloupe. Perhaps you might choose not to speak at all, thus distracting nothing from the sweet little figs.

These are Rome’s other artichokes. Softened rather than crisped in their oil bath, they are of an extravagant goodness.

It was nearly eleven on Saturday and Fernando was standing under the open roof in the rain, tender, silvered glissades of it plashing quietly, as it has for two thousand years, onto the black and white marble of the temple floor. He, not minding, stood directly in the puddle, its depths caressing the tops of his shoes, looking up at the sky like a child in wonder, the water settling in fine mists on his cheeks and eyelids. He turned fifty that morning in the Pantheon. His spiritual birthday thus celebrated, he pronounced that his carnal festival was to be solemnized in not less than six of his preferred ostarie/trattorie/ristoranti. Fernando wanted to eat artichokes. More, he wanted an artichoke crawl—a critical journey up and down the vicoli (narrow streets), an earnest search for great, golden-green, crisped Roman roses—as many of them as he might vanquish in a day and its evening in a half dozen genuine houses—we were in search of the one perfect carciofo alla giudia. Ten years ago, I might have propelled him into the arms of the trattoria da Giggetto, when I was still convinced of the authenticity of its cooking. Sidled up as it is to the edge of the Portico d’Ottavia, perhaps it was only the taberna’s majestic old neighbor that wooed me. Fernando had his own ideas. At midday, we made quick aperitivi e antipasti visits to Arancio d’Oro in Via Monte d’Oro and La Campana in Vicolo della Campana, taking only one or two artichokes and a glass of white wine. We would settle in at Agata e Romeo in Via Carlo Alberto for a proper lunch that would start with another of the little beauties. The evening’s gallop would open at Tram Tram in Via dei Reti before a stint at Il Dito e la Luna in Via dei Sabelli, where we would crunch on more fried thistles. Our palates veneered in stainless steel, our bellies convulsing, plumped, we brushed sea salt and crisp freckles from our lips and our chests and stepped at last inside the dimmed sanctum of Piperno in Via Monte dei Cenci. Murmuring something to our waiter about not having much appetite, he assured us that he would carry to us only those plates that could titillate a dead man. He started us with a salad of puntarelle—a thick-bladed wild grass collected in the Alban hills— glossed in sauce of anchovies. Then came the misty comfort of stracciatella, chicken broth scribbled with a paste of egg and pecorino. Expert by now, able to whiff their very presence from twenty meters, we knew then the artichokes were only moments away. He set them down, clucking over their beauty, assuring us their salty vaporousness would coax our hunger. He was right. We continued with la coda alla vaccinara—oxtail stew—abbacchio—roast suckling lamb—a few crumbles of a hard, piquant pecorino pepato—peppered pecorino—a soft brown pear, and sealed it all with a great fluff of roasted chestnut mousse that we ate with small silver spoons.