Read The Food of Love for Free Online Page B

‘You’re the one who’s always telling me to follow
    my heart.’
    Sure. Just as long as you’re clear where it is you’re following it to. Do me a favour - take some goldoni, will you? That’s something else Italian men aren’t always good at.’
    ‘Well, I’ve had plenty of practice at fending off unwanted attentions,’
    Laura said, a little huffily. ‘Besides, I told you, he’s nice.
    And he does have an apartment, so at least we’re not talking about a grope in the bushes.’
    ‘Aha. You are going to sleep with him.’
    ‘Maybe,’ Laura admitted. ‘I haven’t made up my mind. But a
    wild fling is certainly on the cards.’
    ‘Then you should definitely take condoms. And remember whatever
    you do, no sneakers.’
     
    It was Bruno’s morning off, and he spent most of it at the
    Mercato di San Cosimato, Trastevere’s main food market, looking
    for ingredients for Tommaso’s great meal of seduction. He had no menu at this stage, and no plan. He simply walked around, seeing what was available, listening to the competing shouts of the stallholders and letting an idea of the seasonal delicacies sink into his
    mind. The carciofini were good at the moment, particularly the romagnolo, a variety of artichoke exclusive to the region, so sweet and tender it could even be eaten raw. Puntarelle, a local bitter chicory, would make a heavenly salad. In the Vini e Olio he found a rare Torre Ercolana, a wine that combined Merlot with the local Cesanese grape. The latter had been paired with the flavours of
    Roman cuisine for over a thousand years: they went together like an old married couple. There was spring lamb in abundance, and
    he was able to track down some good abbacchio - suckling lamb
    that had been slaughtered even before it had tasted grass.
    From opportunities like these, he began to fashion a menu, letting the theme develop in his mind. A Roman meal, yes; but more
    than that. A springtime feast, in which every morsel spoke of
     
    Condoms.
    resurgence and renewal, old flavours restated with tenderness and delicacy, just as they had been every spring since time began. He bought a bottle of oil that came from a tiny estate he knew of, a fresh pressing whose green, youthful flavours tasted like a bowl of olives just off the tree. He hesitated before a stall full of fat white asparagus from Bassano del Grappa, on the banks of the fast
    flowing river Brenta. It was outrageously expensive, but worth it for such quality, he decided, as the stallholder wrapped a dozen of the pale fronds in damp paper and handed it to Bruno with a flourish like a bouquet of the finest flowers.
    His theme clarified itself the more he thought about it. It was to be a celebration of youth - youth cut short, youth triumphant, youth that must be seized and celebrated. He wouldn’t tell Tommaso that, of course. His friend got a nosebleed whenever Bruno tried to explain the deeper patterns he saw in cooking.
    The point was that it would work, at some subconscious level.
    At the end of his tour of the market he came across an old man sitting in a dilapidated deckchair, snoozing. At his feet was a creased old carrier bag. Bruno crouched down and opened the bag carefully. Inside, like eggs in a nest of straw, were half a dozen ricotte. The old man opened his eyes.
    ‘All from my own animals,’ he said proudly. ‘And made by my own wife.’
    Bruno eased one of the cheeses to the surface and inhaled.
    Instantly he was transported to the tiny pastures of the Castelli Romani, the hilly countryside around Rome. There was a touch of silage in the scent of the cheese, from winter feed, but there was fresh grass, too, and sunlight, and the faintest tang of thyme where it grew wild in the meadows and had been eaten by the sheep along with the grass. He didn’t really need any more food, but the ncotta was so perfect that he knew he would find a place for it somewhere in his meal, perhaps served as a dessert with a dusting of cinnamon and a dab