Cooking Lessons!

 

 

 

 

October 10, 2008

Prior to leaving for Italy one frequently asked question was,"What will you do in Italy?" Many thought that one goal I'd have is to become fluent in Italian; while that would be nice, it's not. My goal was to find someone to teach me how to cook traditional Italian dishes. I'd fantasized finding a woman at the market and convincing her to take me home to teach me all of her secrets. Again, while I was in Seattle, Kim, who is our US ambassador, let it drop to one of our neighbors that I love to cook. Rita lives across the court yard from us. She is recently widowed and also lives next door to her daughter, grand daughter, and son in law--a long lived Italian tradition of family members remaining in close proximity. Word has gotten out that I am an acupuncturist and several of our neighbors have asked me for a treatment--including Rita. So, we made big plans: to go shopping together, do a treatment and then cook. For my lesson she chose cappelletti (little caps), a small tortellini wrapped around a meat mixture.

We went to one of the large supermercati and systematically purchased our ingredients. She taught me which quality of meats, flour, and herbs to buy as well as the ingredients for an excellent broth (which the cappelletti will be served in after cooking). All of this done with my broken, nonsensical Italian and her almost nonexistent English. I did pick up on her telling other shoppers at the meat counter that she was helping out the "Americana" who doesn't speak Italian and doesn't know how to cook in the Italian tradition; the other women nodding approvingly with great big smiles.

So, back home we came... and step one was to simmer the small pork roast (after careful trimming) in a half cube of butter for three hours. With that taken care of, I came back to our apartment for the rest hours and immediately fell asleep due to the brain drain of trying to keep up with her explanations and feeling rather stupid over my ineptitude...alas, there was more ineptitude to come so it was good that I did sleep.

You may wonder where Kim was in this process? She was nursing a cold and sore throat so did not join us on our shopping adventure (which she likely willed to happen as she so hates to grocery shop). Part of my brain drain, therefore, was that there was no one else to deflect the attention and attempt to translate. My shyness began boiling internally, sapping me of energy.

After rest hours, it was time to go and do the acupuncture treatment-- something I feel mostly capable of performing. It's harder here because I have no treatment table and have to figure out positioning on individual beds. Also, Chiara, Rita's seven year old grand daughter was not going to miss this event and had her sweet little nose about an inch from wherever I was working, bouncing the bed as I inserted the needles. Once the needles were in we left Rita to rest and Chiara decided that now would be a good time to give me a language lesson. She led me to the couch and handed me two of her school notebooks with words and spelling and had me read everything aloud; she was kind enough to correct my pronunciation with each word.

Time passed, the treatment concluded and it was time to hit the kitchen. Rita set everything up, including a counter space for Chiara who was doing her own pasta making. The rest of the afternoon evolved around making the filling ingredients (pork, prosciutto and freshly grated Parmesan cheese) and greeting various family members and friends who would drop by and cluck cluck at my attempts to learn. Early evening found us making the dough for the pasta- an intriguing process that involved making a moat of flour, putting eggs inside the moat and then mixing the flour and eggs with a knife--technique, technique, technique. Next came the kneading of the dough and Rita would gently push me aside and correct my shoddy attempts. Finally the dough was deemed to be the necessary consistency (I hope I remember) and it was time to use the cute old-style pasta making machine which after six passes at various settings produced the correct ribbon like size and thickness.

Next cut the squares, add the dollop of meat mixture and then try to fold the little suckers without making a total fool out of myself. I can't tell you how many tries I had to make before my brain absorbed the technique and sent the correct movement messages to my hands. Rita was kind and all I could do was laugh and point to my head and say, "zero, zero, zero". By this point, Kim had joined us with the camera. We'd been talking about her and I announced that it was time for her to join us. Chiara and I marched over to our apartment to let Kim know she must get out of bed and come over. How could she resist us in our little aprons standing at the side of her bed, me pleading for her to come for moral support and to join the fun of my ineptitude?

The din of the chatter and laughter increased with Kim's arrival, pictures were taken, and another relative arrived to greet. We were nearing the end of the cappelletti creations. She let us know that the week after next we would move on to something called "Rabatton"--a ricotta cheese and spinach creation (Kim was very pleased as it's one of her favorite combos). Rita sent us home with three trays worth of the folded cappelletti beauties with instructions on how to first freeze and then place in bags. We ran into other neighbors on our way out and people kindly oohed and ahhed while Barbara, our very next door neighbor remarked, "Rachel, you are always cooking. Will you start a restaurant in the US? I don't cook at all I prefer restaurants so that I can help others have jobs and allow our economy to flourish..." We laughed with Kim agreeing but also admitting that she had to do her part to be supportive of me. And yes, I slept very well last night. When I would occasionally awaken, I did think of the folding process, making sure it would now be burned into my brain.