The Food of Love Read Free Page A

aficionado of female
    beauty, he muttered, I Fosse ya Madonna!’ under his breath.
    Quickly he swung the box down again. cMo?nento^ he called to
    her; wait up. He reached up, got the packet for her, and handed it to her with a smile. ‘Prego.” Then he realised he’d seen her somewhere before.
    She smiled. ‘Grazie, faccia di culo.”1 Thank you, assface.
    Of course - he remembered now. The girl from Gennaro’s. He
    also remembered her saying that she was only going to sleep
    with - well, date, but it was famously the same thing with
    American girls - someone who could cook, and if she was buying
    her own pasta, the chances were that she hadn’t yet found that
    someone. Which was remarkable because Rome was absolutely full
    of cooks, while blonde American girls were somewhat scarcer.
    It was his opportunity, and he took it.
    ‘Spaghetti,” he said, glancing at the packet in her hand. ‘How
    nice.’ Even to him, this sounded a little flat.
    ‘Well, I hope so.’
    ‘And what are you cooking it with? What sauce?’
    ‘Well - I thought perhaps Bolognese.’
    His look of bewilderment was not feigned. ‘But you can’t,’ he
    objected.
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘First, because you’re not in Bologna,’ he pointed out reasonably.
    ‘And secondly, because what you have in your hand is spaghetti.”
    ‘Yes. Spaghetti Bolognese.’ She saw his expression. ‘That’s not
    a good idea, is it?’
    ‘It’s just impossible,’ he explained. ‘Ragu Bolognese is a sauce for tagliatelle or gnocchi, or possibly tortellini.’ He pointed to Gigliemi’s glass-fronted display case. ‘These are tortellini.” He snapped his fingers at the assistant, who handed him one of the
    soft, doughy parcels on a piece of tissue paper. He held it out to Laura to show her. ‘The shape is based on the shape of a
    woman’s - what do you call it?’
    She peered anxiously at the tortellini. ‘I’m not sure.’
    He pointed to his own stomach. ‘Tummy popper?’
    ‘Button. Of course,’ she said, relieved.
    He remembered that glimpse of midriff and the tiny little whorl
    of her navel. It had not, in fact, looked very like the thing he was holding in his hand at all, which resembled nothing so much as a big fat oyster of ricotta cheese, or possibly a woman’s fica. ‘Anyway,’ he said dismissively, ‘we are in Rome, and Roman sauces are better. Well, strictly speaking we are in Lazio, but it’s the same thing. We eat spaghetti alVamatriciana, with a sauce of’guanciale, which is the pig’s -‘ he ran his finger down her cheek, briefly, a touch so fleeting she was hardly aware it had happened - ‘this part of the pig’s face. We fry it in olive oil with a little chilli, some tomatoes and of course some grated pecorino romano, hard cheese.
    Or if you don’t want spaghetti you could have bucatoni, or calscioni, or fettuccinie, or pappardelle, or tagliolini, or rigatoni, or linguine, or garganeHi, or tonnarelli, or fusilli, or conchiglie, or vermicelli, or maccheroni, but,’ he held up a warning finger, ‘each of them demands a different kind of sauce. For example, an oily
    sauce goes with dried pasta, but a butter sauce goes better with fresh. Take fusilli.” He held up a packet to show her. ‘People say this pasta was designed by Leonardo da Vinci himself. The spiral fins carry the biggest amount of sauce relative to the surface area, you see? But it only works with a thick, heavy sauce that can cling to the grooves. Conchiglie, on the other hand, is like a shell, so it holds a thin, liquid sauce inside it perfectly.’
    ‘Are you a cook?’ she asked, understanding dawning in her eyes.
    ‘I am a chef, yes, at one of Rome’s best restaurants,’ Tommaso
    said proudly.
    She hesitated. ‘Can I ask you - what would you make if you
    were me? I don’t do a lot of cooking, but my father’s flown in for a few days and I stupidly said I’d make something for him. I’d love to cook him something Roman.’
    If I were you …’