New Yorkers in the Kitchen again

A friend from highschool, Jillian, is staying with me in Rome for about a week, and because she speaks decent Italian and is interested in food I thought it wouldn't be too inappropriate to bring her to the kitchen. Fortunately, it turned out I was right, and we came on a day they needed all the help they could get.

We walked into the restaurant and as I was going to get aprons for us I could already hear yelling from the kitchen. They first words I heard upon entering the kitchen were "Siamo in guerra!" (We're at war!). It is generally a pretty tranquil place so it was a bit surprising, especially for 10 in the morning. It turned out the aprons hadn't come back from the cleaners yet, but that wasn't all. On top of that, the gas on one entire side of the restaurant wasn't working. Antonio was not pleased about this. It was unclear exactly who the battle cry was directed at, but Umberto, one of the waiters, was getting the brunt of it. However, Antonio, always jovial, was not being all that serious, or at least was rapidly placated when the gas was finally turned back on.

In the picture below you can see Antonio in the background making a very common Italian gesture. The motion is pinching you middle finger, pointer finger and thumb together, holding your hand out with a slight bend in the elbow (the angrier the less the bend) and move your forearm up a down a bit, shaking your wrist for to show extra agitation. This can be accompanied with a various vulgar sayings, but even a mute can get his point across forcefully. The most appropriate translation would be "What the hell do you want?"

I'm in the foreground going through my morning routine of selecting (good ones in the big bin, bad ones in the small), cleaning and then cutting tomatoes.



After I finished the tomatoes the aprons came and I went downstairs to get the basil. When I returned Antonio suggested Jillian give me a hand with the basil rather than just stand there. However, before she started working, she needed a chef's hat, which Antonio happily went and got for her, whistling all along. He handed it to her, she opened and placed it on her head. Antonio's response was, "adesso e piu carina" (now that's better - or literally - now she's cuter).

Jillian and I blew through the basil pretty easily. When we were finished I went to bring some more things up from the basement and when I got back Giovanni had set Jillian to work cleaning squash blossoms. I had brought a bucket of onions and a bunch of bags of fresh pasta up from the basement and awaited Antonio's instructions on what to do with them. We started with the onions. He wanted them all peeled, and showed me how you usually went about doing it. He held them particularly far away from himself and when I asked why he said so he didn't cry. This seemed like such a logical solution, keep them as far away from your eyes as possible. This was a question I had been too timid to ask for some time. I guess I was expecting someone to say you just get used to it, so this answer was actually comforting.

After the onions I helped set up his mise-en-place, all the little things he gets ready for easy access before the meal kicks in. One of the things he does is divide up portions of the fresh pastas, fettucini, tagliolini, tagliatelle etc. He showed me what each portion looks like, a small fistful, and then said each one should weigh 80 grams. I looked at him skeptically, how can you get them that precise with just your hand? He immediately told me to follow him to the scale, he dropped the ball he had just formed on it, exactly 80 grams. I just started laughing. Guess he's been doing this for a while. It felt a bit like when I asked how he knows when pasta is done cooking and he said "when it feels right". Similar to my dad's explanation for when waffles are cooked, "when they smell brown."

When I finished that we sat down for lunch. We had a very simple fresh basil and tomato pasta, Giovanni's beef with carrots and onions, and potatoes with pancetta and red onions. When we finished lunch and went back into the kitchen, Antonio asked if Jillian and I had had a coffee yet. We hadn't and he immediately marched us back out of the kitchen and said he was going to show me how the espresso machine works. It was a considerably simpler than I had imagined, but better someone showed me that trying to figure it out on my own. He handed us our cups and then said "now you can make your own...and mine."

Coffee having headed of our slight food coma from eating a second helping of potatoes, we were back to work. Antonio needed to make an anchovy ragu so we needed to behead and de-bone a large stack of the little fish. I wasn't quite sure if Jillian would be up for it, but she handled it quite well.

Here's what we started with...



and here's the uglier half of the end result...



After the anchovies, we peeled a pile of shrimp for Giovanni and then Jillian went to stuff the squash blossoms with mozzarella and anchovies while I helped Antonio with the first pasta orders as they started coming in. We got out before the real rush came because of an appointment at the Vatican.