The power of food

GALLINA VECCHIA FA BUON BRODO (old hen makes good broth)

Sounds like a headline in the Daily Barnyard. It’s actually a sort of recipe in proverb form, telling you to start with an old hen (or stewing hen, as they were once called) when making chicken soup. It’s also a metaphor for the wisdom that comes with age.

The other day I wanted to make some soup, so I went to our local supermarket, Oliver’s. This market is amazing, offering local, organic, grass-fed, free-range and bulk products along with their more commonplace preservative-, antibiotic-, growth-hormone- and pesticide-ridden counterparts. I walked up to the meat counter and announced I wanted a stewing hen. The butcher looked at me like I was speaking an alien language. First I was offered a free-range chicken. “No,” I said. “I’m looking for an old hen.” Then he offered me a frying chicken. “No,” said I, “I want an old bird for soup.” “They don’t make them,” was the reply. In desperation, I resorted to logic. “I just want an old, useless, retired laying hen,” I explained, but I could tell it was no use. The stare remained blank.

Oliver’s had failed me, a fact that undermined my respect for the only supermarket around with a fine array of goods without the fancy over-pricing of Whole Foods. Here was a meat expert who was clueless about something as basic as broth.

I was reminded me of a news clip I had heard a few days before announcing a record number of flu cases. “Campbell’s Chicken Soup is flying off the shelves,” said the reporter.  A sad day in the home remedy department. Once the cornerstone of comfort food, chicken soup had been replaced by a can of tasteless, salty broth with strings of soggy noodles. I thought of my mother’s description of the chicken soup her grandmother always made for her when she was under the weather. The description was so rich and warm that it made me feel better just to hear it, and I wasn’t even sick.

My great-grandmother was a smart old bird. She, too, made good broth.

Power can’t be touched or photographed or kept on the kitchen counter next to the sugar bowl, but there’s no mistaking it. The funny thing about power is that we can all have it; it’s just a matter of recognizing it. It’s simple.

Expression is an art, and a powerful work of art has a well-defined message. To find the essence of what you want to express, you have to get rid of the clutter, just as Michelangelo described sculpture as taking away what doesn’t belong. Oddly, simplicity takes practice. When conveying your message to an audience, the trick is to enhance but not overdo. Effective artistry requires deft expression: too little or too much bores your audience, but staying with your core concept keeps your expression powerful.

Cooking requires similar elements. A roast can be done to perfection, but only with the right atmosphere, company and side dishes can a meal be great. Simplicity in cooking means harmony, where single ingredients are allowed an equal voice, with sauces and sides playing supporting roles rather than trying to fight their way to the foreground. Take a reduction sauce for example. It should be pure poetry, but never overwhelm. Guests are also a factor in the harmony of a meal, which is why table manners are so important. The table setting itself needs to follow the same rules: understated, yet practical and clean. Conversation, timing, presentation: every aspect of the meal contributes to its success, and you control all these elements. Then, like the closing chapter of a novel, dessert will either bring relief that the ordeal is over or be the crowning glory of a memorable event. It’s your call.

When it comes to digestion, either Italians have connective nerves between their digestive tracts and their brains that others don’t or they’re a mass of hypochondriacs. Case in point: I was at out to lunch in San Francisco with my son and an Italian we had just met, and of course the topic was food. (What else would you talk about when eating?) The subject of meat came up, leading to a discussion of the frightening treatment of animals and processing of the meat that is sold in vast quantities at cheap hamburger joints. Our guest mentioned a memorable dining experience at one such place, where the meat was hardly identifiable as such and the side dishes were all fried. “I didn’t digest for two days!” he exclaimed.

Phrases like “I haven’t digested yet,” or “there, he just digested” when a baby burps remain meaningless to me. Nor can I tell if my liver is swollen or out of sorts, which any Italian can. Admittedly, I don’t even know exactly where mine is. The popular closing wish when leaving the table of buona digestione (loosely translated, “may your digestion be uneventful”) is, of course, wasted on me, but I respond in kind out of courtesy for their upcoming uncertainties.  After nearly two decades in Italy, there’s only one language barrier I’m still faced with: my internal composting system has yet to communicate with me.

My son and his girlfriend recently spent a month in Italy. The trip included a visit with relatives in Bologna that he hadn’t seen since he was a child. Unfortunately, one of his great uncles had just suffered a stroke before they arrived, the good news being that he was expected to make a full recovery. Hearing about the medical emergency by phone, my son naturally told his aunt they would be happy to bring a simple lunch, telling her there was no need to prepare a meal for them. The offer was brushed aside and she assured him she wouldn’t get carried away.

Daniel and Mary’s visit was such a monumental event that both sons, their wives and children were also invited to lunch at Alfio and Giorgina’s. Far from putting out a few snacks, Daniel and Mary arrived to find a banquet had been laid out for them. There were hand-made tortellini in broth, three different roasts, pickled vegetables, salad and dessert. An exceptional local wine purchased by the demijohn and aged in their own cellar was served. It was the visit of a lifetime. When Daniel told his great-uncle he wished he could have met his brother (Daniel’s grandfather), Alfio said: “You’re looking at him. We looked exactly like each other.”

It was a perfect afternoon. The only flaw was found by Giorgina, who served the tortellini with an apology: “I’m really sorry–it’s been so chaotic around here that I just didn’t have time to make the tortellini myself. I had to have the butcher’s wife make them.”

I recently made a quick fix lunch for a friend’s children: pasta with butter and parmigiano. He’s from Rome, and when he found out what I had made for lunch, he told me the Romans called that “adulteress pasta” (la pasta dei cornuti). The reason? If you didn’t spend the entire morning cooking the noon meal, then the “logical” assumption is that you must have used the time to dash out for a quick roll in the hay with another man. The name makes anyone chuckle, but it also shows how the farther south in Italy you go, the more narrow are the constraints that determine (or undermine) a man’s reputation.