back home again

Before I tell you about our sojourn in Rome, which already feels like a dream, I have to report the ulti­mate com­fort food din­ner.  And it’s EASY.  Allow 2 1/2 hours start to fin­ish, and the beau­ty of it is, most of the time you don’t have to do anything!

First, get a good large roast­ing chick­en, around 4–5 pounds.  Buy four or so good big boil­ing pota­toes, a bunch of broc­coli, two lemons, a head of gar­lic and two large onions (this is for two adults and a child, you can imag­ine why my pro­por­tions are such).  A bunch of rose­mary, some grat­ed parme­san cheese, about six strips of bacon, some rough salt, some not-great white wine, a half pint of half and half and two sticks of but­ter.  Make sure you have some olive oil, and enough alu­minum (or alu­mini­um, as they say here) foil to cov­er two oven-proof dish­es.  Pre­heat your oven to 425.

Now is the easy part.  You line a dish big enough for your chick­en with foil.  Lay down some sprigs of rose­mary.  Put the chick­en on top and sprin­kle lib­er­al­ly with salt.  Drape with the bacon.  Cut the lemons in quar­ters and stuff one whole lemon into the chick­en.  Pour some white wine around the chick­en and stick it in the oven.  It’s done for 2 sol­id hours, noth­ing to do with it AT ALL.  While it’s cook­ing, peel your pota­toes and put them in salt­ed water on the stove.  Cut the broc­coli in flo­rets and throw them in a skil­let with olive oil and salt.  Don’t turn it on.  Now, cut the top half off your two onions.  Peel off the skin from the tops and chop the onion bits.  Chop three cloves of gar­lic too and saute the two chopped bits in some olive oil.  Add some chopped rose­mary.  When they’re soft, add maybe a third of a cup of half and half, and a good hand­ful of parme­san cheese and let them melt.  Take it off the stove, and with a spoon scoop out most of the insides of the onions.  Save for some­thing else.  Spoon the cheesy stuff into the onions and put them in a dish lined with foil.  Now you have a good hour and a half or so to watch curl­ing on the Olympics and hope your child’s col­lege edu­ca­tion results in some­thing a bit less… absurd.

Half an hour before the chick­en’s done, turn on the pota­toes and put the onions in the oven.  While they cook, saute the broc­coli real­ly slow­ly.  Melt a good stick of but­ter with hot milk.  Now you need some­body to help you.  While you mash the pota­toes, the helper can take the chick­en out of the oven and carve it up.  You can be stir­ring the broc­coli.  As every­thing else is on the table, take the onions out, which will be bub­bly and brown.  IMPOR­TANT: eat at least one bite of EVERY­THING togeth­er.  A bite of chick­en, a bite of broc­coli, spear­ing some cheesy onion and dip­ping it all in mashed pota­to as you go.

HEAV­EN.

We had this tonight with some real­ly awful red wine, sor­ry, while Avery’s friend Anna was here spend­ing the night.  We decid­ed to spare them the wine.  Last I saw they were play­ing some elab­o­rate game that involved Avery crawl­ing on all fours with a long scarf around her neck as a leash, bark­ing.  The cats are intrigued to say the least.

Rome.  What to say?  We arrived around dusk, Avery had her first enor­mous gela­to, a creme caramel, and was an instant con­vert.  Fueled by sug­ar, we decid­ed to walk to the Vat­i­can, since we could see it from the river’s edge so close to our lit­tle alber­go.  It was quite a walk!  Close to two miles, I’d say, but it set the tone for what Avery feels was our Marathon Trip to Rome, since we walked prob­a­bly six miles a day each day.  The Vat­i­can was only tan­ta­liz­ing in the dark­ness, albeit lit up, so we deter­mined to go back the next day and went back to our cute lit­tle neigh­bor­hood, Cam­po dei Fiori, to get a per­fect­ly ade­quate but aver­age pas­ta din­ner out and be grate­ful for food.  Avery got super tired and I made the colos­sal error of believ­ing that she could find the way home, so we left John to set­tle the bill with what­ev­er the wait­er’s equiv­a­lent oppo­site of “eyes in the back of his head” is, as in, he could see noth­ing of our attempts to get the bill!  She and I ven­tured out and prompt­ly had no idea where we were, so we clung to each oth­er like babes in the for­est, final­ly ask­ing direc­tions from a nice taxi guy, just as John walked up to us resigned­ly, know­ing we had got com­plete­ly lost.  Incred­i­ble but true.

Thurs­day we had a love­ly break­fast at the hotel, and then we did every­thing!  It was alter­nate­ly rain­ing a lot, and rain­ing a lit­tle, but since we’re from Lon­don this seemed per­fect­ly nor­mal, so we per­se­vered.  We were absolute­ly deter­mined, after the evening before, to go to the Vat­i­can and see what all the fuss was about, so off we went.  A sur­pris­ing­ly quick very long queue, and then to the Basil­i­ca, about which I knew embar­rass­ing­ly lit­tle con­sid­er­ing that only 15 years ago I was deep in a PhD in art his­to­ry, a good part of which was to be on the Ital­ian Renais­sance.  I excuse myself on the grounds that every­thing I knew about Michelan­ge­lo has been replaced by an ency­clo­pe­dic knowl­edge of chil­dren’s pic­ture books and cook­ery prin­ci­ples.  We took the lift (so fun­ny, the tick­et spec­i­fied “round trip”!!) and then walked the sup­ple­men­tary 320 steps after that.  I think the warn­ing that peo­ple with heart con­di­tions should “con­sid­er” whether they want to make the trip is com­plete­ly inad­e­quate!  Any­one not real­ly, real­ly fit and THIN would be chal­lenged by the tee­ny tiny wind­ing stair­case that leaned pre­cip­i­tous­ly toward what I real­ized, with huge fright, was the inside of the DOME itself.  Eeek!  We made it to the top and Avery’s claus­tro­pho­bia and my fear of heights were con­quered by the lus­cious view of Rome.  Stun­ning.  Avery was amused to see the backs of the sculp­tures we had seen from the ground, com­plete with a pigeon on every head.  Lovely.

We were gut­ted, as the Eng­lish would say, to find that the Sis­tine Chapel was “chiu­so” on Thurs­days, but the upshot of my excel­lent Ital­ian accent was that the rest of the guard’s expla­na­tion was com­plete­ly a mys­tery.  Pos­si­bly it will open again some­day in the future, but his com­ments were far too exten­sive to be of any help.  I should have been flat­tered that he thought I could under­stand.  Whew.  From there, we head­ed close to home for more gela­to for Avery and a nap for John.  I real­ized I was peck­ish myself, and ven­tured for a snack I had seen from the win­dow of a cute wine bar: tiny lit­tle tartlets filled with every­thing under the sun, each for a euro!  I chose a crab­meat with lemon and may­on­naise, and a lan­gous­tine with aioli and pars­ley.  Heav­en­ly, could have eat­en twen­ty of them, with caviar (OK, maybe not that), egg­plant, roast­ed red pep­pers, sun­dried toma­toes, prawns in lemon mous­se­line.  MMM­m­mm!  We went back and woke up John and head­ed out to try to find two major sights, both from “Roman Hol­i­day” and on the must-see list from my moth­er and sis­ter.  We found the Tre­vi Foun­tain with­out too much trou­ble, and it was worth the trip.  A grey, heavy, lead­en sky, with the mar­ble hors­es rear­ing and the mist from the foun­tain soak­ing the tourists, of whom there were a sur­pris­ing num­ber giv­en the sea­son and the rain.  Love­ly.  Then to the Span­ish Steps, YAWN!  So much small­er than I expect­ed!  But we got a pic­ture of Avery to rival any­thing Audrey Hep­burn had to offer, and decid­ed to call it a day.  How­ev­er, on the way home we stum­bled on the Pan­theon, which set off all sorts of exam­i­na­tion alarms in my post-grad­u­ate head, and the glo­ri­ous Piaz­za Navon­na, such gor­geous foun­tains.  The find of the day: a leather good store where for about 25 dol­lars, John got his birth­day present, a black wal­let of but­tery soft­ness with his ini­tials stamped on it, and I got a black belt with a sil­ver buck­le, and Avery got a tiny lit­tle back­pack to clip onto her back­pack from school, as all the girls do.  I com­mit­ted my usu­al error of fig­ur­ing out how to ask a real­ly com­plex ques­tion, and then not hav­ing the lan­guage skills to under­stand the answer!  “Should we wait for the engrav­ing, or come back for it?” I asked, all full of myself and my lin­guisitic aplomb.  “Blah blah blah blah!” was the response, only in Ital­ian, and I was lost!

After a wel­come cock­tail and hot water bot­tle break at the hotel, we dashed out to meet my friend Michele Bam­bling and her fam­i­ly at their apart­ment near the Colos­se­um.  Her hus­band Bill is the Wall Street Jour­nal bureau chief for Europe and Africa and was full of alarm­ing and enter­tain­ing sto­ries about his work.  Their two chil­dren, Jack­son and Adele, are just younger than Avery and she was hap­py to relax in a Roman apart­ment and play doll­house while we adults had a drink and caught up.  Michele and I used to talk “nihon­ga,” a Japan­ese paint­ing tech­nique that she was study­ing for her PhD and which was the lynch­pin of my won­der­ful gallery painter Mako­to Fujimu­ra’s style.  We repaired to a pizze­ria that sim­ply defies descrip­tion in any Amer­i­can con­text.  Filled to capac­i­ty with Roman natives, it was warm and spicy on a rainy night.  We set­tled for a selec­tion of four piz­zas and pounced on them all, as the chil­dren had basic margher­i­tas (toma­to and moz­zarel­la).  Our choic­es were all piled on the thinnest and crispi­est of crusts.  We had funghi and porci­ni with pro­volone, car­ciofi­ni (the tiny Roman baby arti­chokes), beef carpac­cio (although I think it was aged rather than sim­ply raw) with argu­la and parme­san, and my per­son­al favorite, a very unusu­al com­bi­na­tion of radic­chio, anchovy cream and shaved grana padano (a supe­ri­or parme­san).  Quite eas­i­ly the most stim­u­lat­ing and enjoy­able com­bi­na­tion of tastes I have ever had.  Glo­ri­ous!  Lots of fun to catch up with the fam­i­ly and imag­ine what’s hap­pen­ing in Tribeca, which feels a mil­lion miles away.  Dropoff and pick­up at PS 234 togeth­er is like a dream that hap­pened to some­one else.  Their apart­ment is a glo­ry of sim­plic­i­ty: old, old tiles on the floor, carved plas­ter mould­ings on the ceil­ing, floor to ceil­ing win­dows.  It’s tempt­ing to chuck it all here and join them.  Home exhausted!

Fri­day we decid­ed to tack­le the Colos­se­um, but we had asked Bill the night before to point out on a map how to find my sis­ter’s oth­er must-do, the “Mouth of Truth.”  It took some doing to find under scaf­fold­ing, but we found it.  John was dis­be­liev­ing that we were going to brave the enor­mous tourist line to put out hands in a dumb stone mouth, but we were adamant.  My sin­gle favorite pho­to­graph of my moth­er is of her about to do just that, at age 20 or so, so sweet.  So we wait­ed, and in the end, the sight of Avery fak­ing her bit­ten-off hand inside her sweater cuff is the best pho­to of the trip.  Hilar­i­ous!  From there to the Colos­se­um, which just amazed us all with its scale, of course.  Avery was quite able to regale us with the com­plete sto­ry of Romu­lus and Remus, and lots of oth­er Roman triv­ia.  And thank good­ness, there were KIT­TIES.  Jill told us there would be!

We were all wilt­ing, so we repaired after some wrong turns to the restau­rant Michele had want­ed to take us to but was full: the Trat­to­ria La Domeni­ca, a tucked-away glo­ry no one would find with­out know­ing, where the menu was entire­ly in Ital­ian as was the staff, so Avery went for safe­ty and ordered fet­tucine alla ragu, I con­vinced John to go for some­thing alla cala­maret­ti, which I was pret­ty sure was baby cala­mari, and I myself ordered some­thing bear­ing the word “vitel­lo”, and since noth­ing with veal can be bad, I felt pret­ty secure.  Luck­i­ly, I like liv­er, because it was that of a calf!  Love­ly, though, grilled with lemon.  Such fun to find a lit­tle unknown neigh­bor­hood place.  Across the street was the glo­ri­ous Basil­i­ca San Clemente, where you can descend, if you’re brave enough, deep, DEEP into the ground to see ear­ly Roman fres­coes and columns and fresh water springs.   A bit of a diver­sion, in its cold damp­ness, to the hot sun­shine outside.

From there, we head­ed across the riv­er to the lit­tle neigh­bor­hood of Trasta­vere, where I had thought our hotel was to be, to find a dar­ling book­store Avery des­per­ate­ly need­ed, the Almost Cor­ner Book­shop, for sup­plies to get her though the trip home.  This place is an ivy-cov­ered oasis in the twist­ing, mossy, slight­ly men­ac­ing but tempt­ing streets of this art­sy area, owned by a man of inde­ter­mi­nate accent (maybe South African?  maybe New Zealand?) who told us who he had come upon the shop six years ago and fall­en in love with it.  Short­ly after his vis­it, back home in Sau­di Ara­bia (?) he received a phone call that the own­er want­ed to sell.  Can you imag­ine sim­ply lift­ing up your life and mov­ing to Rome to run a book­store?  I have to remind myself that this is a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion.  Avery came away with a huge pile of books, and then we vis­it­ed the gor­geous church, San­ta Maria in Traste­vere, and sat in the piaz­za lis­ten­ing to a gui­tarist and tam­bourine play­er, and then real­ized we need­ed to head to the airport.

What a whirl­wind.  We walked, talked (I so enjoyed air­ing my bad Ital­ian!), ate our heads off, enjoyed each oth­er’s com­pa­ny enor­mous­ly, and real­ized that we’ve got to do this a lot while we’re here.  With­in a two-hour radius by plane we can hear 10 lan­guages at least being spo­ken, and I for one would like to join them, how­ev­er badly.