H. K. G. Lowery is a writer from Newcastle upon Tyne. He graduated from Lancaster University with a MA in Creative Writing (Distinction) where he was honoured to win the 2021/2022 Portfolio Prize for his work.
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My name is Paolo Russo, and I believe in cooking. I learnt all I know from my Nonna Nina. My God, she was a beautiful woman. And her dough? Il migliore. The best. For any pasta – Carbonara, Arrabbiata, Bolognese – it was famous. Everybody in our hometown, Trapani, knew my Nonna Nina.
When I was just a little boy, I would watch my Nonna Nina cook. My espresso-brown eyes level with the counter full of flour, passion, amore. My tiny fingertips, gripping those rough edges just to have a peek, as though I were hanging from Mount Etna. I remember when Nonna Nina plated her pasta and lifted me up onto her lap. The flour would fall gently, like confetti in our kitchen, and my sides would sting with safety. And then, I would wait for those two words. They translate, literally, to ‘good appetite’. Nonna Nina always told me that those words date back thousands of years, to a time when servants were invited to feasts, following fruitful harvests, and their masters would say something like, ‘Today, you can eat more than usual. Enjoy.’ I always had the biggest appetite for Nonna Nina’s cooking, but it took me many years to find my appetite for life: that little boy in this big world, dimples dusted with flour, pomodoro sauce staining the ends of his innocent smile. I don’t think I’ve been so happy since.
My entire life I lived in Nonna Nina’s trattoria, ‘Come A Casa’. The red and white chequered tablecloths. The candles crammed into forgotten vintages of Chianti or Barolo. The stone bricks. The steadfast, creaking chairs, each a hue of ragù. And the bulbs of garlic and the greens of parsley draped above the bread baskets below. This was the place. This was the place where people came together. Tough day at work? Come A Casa. Heartbreak? Come A Casa. Someone’s passing? Come A Casa. Everyone came to Come A Casa, because everyone was welcome. The farmers. The butchers. The tourists. The lovers. The loners. The young, and the old. Everyone was welcome at Come A Casa. (And, because the food was so fucking good!) A thousand stories must have been shared there, and another thousand loved ones must have been remembered there, through choruses of ‘Salute’, said with some glass raised in hand. I see them all now: old Isabella in her corner, Roberto and Maria, Marco Lungo and all the happy children, whose first love was their mother and those mothers whose last love would be their children. I think this is what it is all about. To have a full belly is to have a full heart. To feed is to love. To be fed is to be loved.
Later in life, I remember the last meal my Nonna Nina cooked for me. It was the most simple. Pasta pomodoro. But, somehow, she made it taste like nothing I have ever tasted before. A part of me, after all this time, thinks she knew. That is why it was so beautiful. Eventually, we had to give up Come A Casa. I think some chain of convenience store is there now. As for me, I am making sure each and every plate is perfect, flawless. Tonight, I am a kitchen porter. Long story short, there were two spaces for apprenticeship under world-renowned chef, Louis Bardot. His restaurant, D’or, in New York has just become Michelin three star. After culinary school and working in restaurants across Italy, France and England, I had risen in the ranks to be chosen. Why am I scrubbing tableware, then, you might ask? Let us go back to yesterday.
It was my first day. To prove why we earned our places, Bardot set the other Commis Chef, Sophia, and I to make him our ‘best dish’. I was warned things run a little differently in a Bardot kitchen. Sophia made lobster ravioli with foie gras and saffron so beautifully that my stomach started performing somersaults. I cooked Swordfish Milanese, with a Sicilian lemon caper sauce and arugula salad. I remember the way the silvered pricks of Bardot’s fork pierced Sophia’s fish first. Bardot stood, his face thunderous like the gaze of God in Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam. The joke with Bardot was that you could never tell if he liked you or wanted to punch you in the face. This time, he was happy. Commis Chef Sophia was given her apron. Then, it was my turn. With one mouthful, Bardot’s bold, bristling eyebrows bashed into one another in a furious frown, like two bulls battling for their territory. The silence hung, long and loud as a dream. Bardot turned his back as my mouth began to curve cheek to cheek, that I had earned my apron. But my smile vanished for my neck twisting into my chest so instantly as to duck to dodge the plate being propelled at my head. The smash insisted every ear in the kitchen prick, every eye edge a glance. As though I had seen Medusa, I stood, broken porcelain peppered all around me, Bardot damning me to the sink under every French profanity and more. It took only a look of Bardot’s for the chefs to flinch back into their duties, and me, trying to pick up the broken pieces.
My Nonna Nina, if only you could see your boy in New York: cabs, the colour of tortellini, covering cracked concrete, and the street stampede, yelling in the gaps, selfies for stories and planned candid poses posting, influencers scrolling, feeding on feeds, cancelling celebrities, the unfathomable amount of pixels advertising the latest trends and the new and improved, the shaking interns, sweating, rushing with baggy-eyed bosses, crossing the Big Apple Lego-layout, and hypocritical hipsters, sipping Starbucks in threadbare Carhartt with cracked iPhones, headphones speaking spoken word poetry, the happy homeless joining hands and giving thanks for quarters clinking in their cups, the dive bars, the hotdog stands and the one dollar pizza slices greasing paper plates, and through the side street chain-smoking, aprons and rags hanging from overworked and unpaid staff, and into D’or, the straight-faced waiters springing through the swinging door, checking checks for Bardot, bellowing: “Halibut!”, “Lamb!” and “Rabbit!”, and Alix, the Chef de Partie, stirring sauces, prancing for pots, tasting between trays and tiles, the Sous Chef, Guillaume, spooning sizzling fat over searing steaks, pulling pans to flambé, the flames rising and dying before his wide eyes, and Bardot, garnishing, drawing sauce in spirals around tender cuts, bashing the service bell, and the crates of plates and cutlery and lipstick-stained glasses insisting in this Einaudi ensemble of chaos, ‘you are just a grain of salt.’
It was another fully booked night at D’or. The last stains concede to the hose, water hot as Sicily’s sweetest summer. On Papa’s Panerai, I see the minute hand chasing the hour hand to twelve. It takes me to straighten my shoulders to realise I have been hunched over all day, like a Hugo protagonist. Nonna Nina always begged me to stand up straight, her hands pushing back my shoulder blades. She would tell me, ‘This is the place where our wings used to be. After a life of hard work, of good work, you will get them back to become an angel.’ I always thought Nonna Nina was an angel, even without wings.
“Paolo,” I am ripped from my daydream. The other chefs freeze in the fire exit around Bardot. “You lock up tonight.”
I pretend I’m unaware of the stares from the other cooks as they pretend they can discern if it’s the sweat or tears sizzling on my passata-red cheeks. The mutters and snickers from Bardot’s hell-bent disciples scatter into the street. They usually dash for a digestivo at Stefano’s around this time.
“Oh, and Paolo,” Bardot ends, my knuckles whitening around the tea towel in my hand, “There are some potatoes spare. Maybe you can try making something nice this time.”
As the door slams shut, I realise I am releasing the air my lungs had held during that entire passage in the form of a stubborn, ‘La dolce vita.’ Only the monotone hum of the extractor fan and the last of the dirty dishes are with me. I toss the tea towel around my shoulder, season and drizzle olive oil over a tray of potatoes, and the oven door closes.
I only smoke because my Papa did. The thick clouds of Marlborough taste of safety to me. Maybe it’s how I deal with the cooking. Maybe it’s the ashes of all my childhood dreams. I miss Italy. The crescendos and diminuendos of Vespas. The Serie A games on some tiny television in the corner of some backstreet bar. The duets of young lovers, skipping allegro down cobblestone streets, or twirling spaghetti for each other in a square on a cool summer’s night. Once you leave home, you are left to forever yearn. There is always somewhere to be missed, and there is always someone to be missed. You always wish to be in two places at once, and home is never what it was. When I feel this way, there is always one dish I cook. With a last toke, I flick the end of my cigarette into the gutter and return to the white light of the kitchen.
Since my nicotine daydream, the skins of the russets have dried and darkened. Out of the oven, the potatoes shine, sizzling like big-bellied Brits on the golden stretches of Sicilian beaches. Potatoes are an ingredient that have always fascinated me. There are so many ways to cook them, and they are a part of so many cuisines. I learnt from potatoes that sometimes all we need is a little bit of nurture for something to be sustainable, to be brilliant – Bardot did not exactly leave me the Bistecca Firenze. With fistfuls of flour, I circle the steely surface, studying how the flour floats and falls onto the prep station, which seems like an altar compared to the sink. I remember how Nonna Nina floured her bench, how she looked like Antonio Vivaldi or Giuseppe Verdi, composing their finest opera. Now, the pricks of the fork pose one question to the potatoes. Perfetto. The russets are ready. The skins are sliced in two for the spoon to scoop out the fluffy flesh. I push the potatoes through a ricer, and I hear Nonna Nina again, ‘Fine, always very, very fine,’ and with a pinch of salt and pepper, they are ready.
Two eggs, Paolo. No more, no less. When I first cracked eggs cooking with my Nonna, small pieces of shell would stare back at me, stuck in the whites. I tried for ages, to pick out the shell, the broken pieces slipping from my fingers just when I thought I was picking them up. The shells were stubborn, but so was I. In time, I learnt how to concentrate. I learnt how to be gentle. I have the hands of a man now, and they are for God’s work. In my right hand, the shell splits on the steel surface, my thumb piercing and tearing the egg the way grief did my heart when God decided Nonna Nina had done all she needed to do on this Earth. Separating the yolk from the white in my hands, what I realise is that I’m actually holding a life, one that won’t live the life its mother had wished, but I will try so that it lives one nearly as beautiful: that is the promise I have made it.
My palms pass each yolk to one another so that the whites slip over my skin, falling through my fingers. I cradle each yolk in my hands before a flashback fires me to that young boy, his hair and tie straightened by his Nonna on the day of his first Holy Communion. Having lowered the yolks into the riced potato, my hands begin their passion. Nice and gentle. Never knead. The potato and yolk begin to become one, better together. The flour clings to the dough scraper, like Nonna Nina did to God in her finest hour, her final hour. Trust the process, Paolo. Change is beautiful. There is an art to it, one only fools resist. I tell myself I am exactly where I am meant to be. All of this – New York, Bardot, being porter for the night – all of this is happening to make me into the man I was always meant to be. I see myself in the gnocchi: something small, something helpless, something pleading for something to take it and mould it into what it can be. Always cook in batches. I divide the dough. My palms gently roll the dough into lines, like big breadsticks, never too much pressure. The stretches of dough are judged into inches, the gnocchi beginning to form as each little piece is pressed down the rigagnocchi. I remember Nonna Nina’s secret: the gnocchi needs small divots to catch the sauce, for the best flavour. And with that, the dough is ready.
The sauce is simple. The butter melts like gelato in June. I scatter sage into the golden base, sunlight swirling and unfurling in the pan. Besides this dance of warmth and earth, salt plunges into the water which bubbles and bubbles and bubbles, telling me it is time for the gnocchi to be baptised. The gnocchi sinks and asks only we wait. Patience, Paolo. With a little bit of faith, the gnocchi rises to the surface, one by one, how Nonna Nina said we would return to God. I let them bob in the bubbles – for twenty seconds, or so – and then they are one with the butter, the sage and a splash of the pasta water. Everything will fall in its place, Paolo.
I begin to plate the gnocchi. You were a beautiful boy, Paolo, and now you are a good man. Do not weep for me, for God has given me wings. All that is left is the Parmigiano Reggiano, and that is when I notice. Staring from the doorway is Bardot. His outstretched palm tells me to continue. The last flake of parmigiano falls through the steam. I wipe the tea towel around the edge of the bowl and push the gnocchi forward.
Buon appetito.
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