We met at 8am and I gave a breakfast talk as we ate. Some Florentine history with religious torture and inquisitions, with some plague tossed in. It's just what everyone needs with their eggs and bacon. These folks seem to be spotty on their world history, so I kept it to bullet-points only and didn't go really in-depth.
Our appointment for the first day of cooking classes at La Diva Cucina was at 10, so we ambled over to Diana's home/ kitchen/ theater/ studio/ magic castle. I have been waiting to meet her since about 2003, when we became “buddies” on a travel posting board. She has been in Florence since 1983 when she arrived from Wisconsin for a semester at University and fell in love with a local. After deciding to stay in Florence to be with him, she began a culinary training school to pick up a trade to get work and be able to stay and worked for 15 years in restaurants, a very male-dominated career, especially over here. She's an amazing cook, and incredibly helpful whenever anyone online raises a question about tuscan cooking. Diana has been giving lessons and tuscan farm tours for more than ten years and she's a hero of mine. When I learned a few months ago that I would be getting to sit on lessons at her place I actually squealed a little.
Now because it's Sunday and the markets are closed, we cannot go for her usual tour of the Mercato Centrale to buy all the day's ingredients in the grocers' stalls, so the menu plan was more about using less perishable items, things you keep in stock regularly in the home and “reusable” items like stale bread or cooking with canned tomatoes.
Don't ever count canned tomatoes out, especially those whose origins are in Italy; San Marzano, for example. As with all commercial canning, it is done when the tomatoes are at their peak of freshness, so you are getting them at their best. San Marzanos are arguably the best in the world. Anyone who has read my yammerings about food grown in Italy knows that I am a huge fan of the volcanic soil here for the natural flavors of the vegetables grown here. Tomatoes taste different, cantaloupes taste different, basil tastes different. It's all in the soil. So when you can, pick up a can of real San Marzanos in a US grocery store for cooking – you pay a bit more, but it's worth it. Trust me.
What a great experience meeting Diana was! She gave me a great big hug upon meeting me and said “At last, face to face!” A very kind woman, and a beast in the kitchen. I am definitely inspired. The clients had a great time learning from her, as did I. And I didn't even have to chop anything. Fortune smiled on me today.
Diana and I were able to talk while all the food prep was going on and fingers were avoiding being sliced. I was able to get some advice on improving techniques and making some of my Italian-inspired dishes more authentic. We have had conversations about Giada de Laurentiis & Rachel Ray online before, and how to make their food more “official” Italian. They both may be of Italian heritage, but they Americanize their recipes and dumb them down for tv unnecessarily. The point of Italian cooking is that it is usually rustic, because it's Mamma's cooking and great grandma's recipes – that kind of thing – so even recipes that slow cook all day long, like a stew or braciole, while the flavors are complex, the techniques involved are usually incredibly simple. She knows I get most of my “family” recipes from the Veneto area (from Mamma in Venice) so I still need some assistance in tuscan cuisine, especially with game dishes and she's such a wealth of knowledge. She also knows I'm lost when it comes to pasta-making. I am not a fan of rolling out dough if I don't have to. She is like me in the belief that there are plenty of qualified people out there to make my pasta for me so I can buy it from them. I like this woman!
We were making a boatload of dishes for a tasting lunch for ourselves, or rather, they were cooking and I was taking copious notes. Just ask, I'll send you the recipes. Eventually!
Our menu del giorno:
crostini di fegato – liver pate on toasted bread
ribollita - soup with veggies and beans and thickened by reboiling with bread
rosticciana – bbq pork ribs
verdure alla griglia – grilled eggplant, zucchini, peppers
filetto al balsamico – beef steak with balsamic reduction glaze, and a little lemon & garlic
fagioli al fiasco – cannellini beans cooked in a glass flask until creamy with sage, oil, garlic
piselli fiorentino – peas with oil, parsley, garlic, pancetta
pecorino all'olio tartufo – sheepsmilk cheese with truffle oil
Oh my, there was a lot of food. It was all so good. We waddled across the city center afterward, making our way to the hotel, to rest up a bit.
We took a cab at 6 from the hotel through the Oltrarno area across the river, and up to Piazzale Michelangelo for a view of the city before dinner. Reservations at 7pm for 4 Leoni. During dinner I received a couple of text messages from Marco in Venice asking me to contact him. After the second one within the hour I started to get worried that something is wrong with Mamma. And then he called, so I excused myself and went outside to take the call.
He started dating a girl two months ago, I already knew this, and I am very happy for him. He works long hours and is always everyone's “go to” guy in his union, so he picks up extra hours and works his days off at other hotels when people are too ill (or lazy) to work. For him to take the time out and start a relationship is a huge deal. I also think he's also finally feeling the pressure to find someone and get married before too long. Good for him.
But he called to talk to me before I return to Venice to tell me that his girlfriend Donatella is not entirely comfortable with our friendship, and with my friendship with his mother. He asked me to ease up on visiting Mamma outside of going to church with her, until Donatella is more comfortable and more understanding of my relationship with this family.
Say what?
Now, I have more than eight years of history with this family. I have earned my place in this family with the years I have been coming here, building a foundation and support system in a foreign country. His parents opened their home to me, teaching me the family recipes, sharing family photos, and his parents who do not speak English have always gone out of their way to make me welcome and understand what's on the television or radio when we relax in the living room. In the years since his father passed away I have gone to the cemetery on religious days to tend his grave. I bring his mother medicines from the US. Last year when they were hit with the double whammy of his sister and his niece passing away in two months' time I was there for the funerals (and ultimately lost my job as a result, if truth be told.) I have mourned with them, and it brought his mother and I even closer, as she looks at me as if I'm another child of hers; she introduces me as such.
She left the greater Venice area for the first time in decades to come join my tour last fall in Rome and Florence, and she beamed like a proud mother watching me work. We are family.
I felt like I had been punched in the gut.
Of course it's natural to expect I would not be spending much of my free time with him, since he has someone new in his life. It happens with friends in your life sometimes. It's not particularly common in this country for adult men and women to be friends, I get that. I get that the new girlfriend may not be hep to him spending time with another woman. That he would ask me to put the brakes on my relationship with his mother is asking too much. He helped cultivate this relationship and this closeness that she and I share, and now he wants to pull the rug out from under me for someone who has been around a minute and a half, in the grand scheme of things.
Too much. Over the line.
I didn't absolutely flip out, but I did ask pointed questions: Are you serious about this??? Are you serious about this girl? Do you love her? Answers: yes, sort of, I don't know yet. Not good enough for me, sorry. I told him he needed to think about what he was asking me to do, and he needed to think about his mothers' feelings as well. Does SHE know he was asking this of me? No, she doesn't.
I asked him if Donatella was the one asking for this or was it his idea. She is not comfortable with the idea of me being closer to his mother than she is. And at this point I pretty much sent death rays into the phone. “Because she hasn't known her as long as I have. Have you lost your mind?”
All I could do was tell him that I would think about this, but I would not promise him anything. I also told him that I thought this was very wrong for him to ask this of me, and wrong of the new girlfriend to try and impose demands such as this on anyone. We agreed to talk when I arrive in Venice on Tuesday.
I called my mother afterward for some moral support. Am I wrong in being upset by this? Am I being unreasonable? I needed some emotional support to talk me off the ledge before walking back into the restaurant and acting “natural” again. Not to mention wanting to drive up to Venice and settle it all for good tonight. Moms are good for these kind of conversations. Especially my mom.
I can't wait to meet this woman. What a piece of work she must be. My foot can't wait to meet her ass, is more like it.
Made it through the dinner and got us back to the hotel, where I pretty much tossed and turned all night.
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