Every Day in Tuscany (3 page)

The piazza speaks pure Italian—speaks of who lives here and why. Alberto, my architect friend, and I once tried to quantify the meaning of the piazza in purely practical terms. We measured and analyzed piazzas all over Tuscany, looking at their numbers of entrances, the kinds of buildings and businesses that contribute to the liveliness of a piazza, those that are dead spaces, the patterns of entrances and exits, and still there was something mysterious.

T
HIS MORNING A
lone tourist appears, guidebook in hand, bundled in down. In the gelid light, she looks like a just-hatched bird, mouth open as she stares at the town hall clock and the surrounding buildings. She removes her knitted hat and her wispy hair, damp against her head, looks as though a little albumen still sticks to her. She glances toward the antiques in a just-polished window. Two shop owners stand in their doorways, eyeing her movements: the hawks and the fledgling.

I’m done.
Buongiorno, Luca
. See you tomorrow. My rounds: groceries, bookstore, post office, many stops to say hello, flower shop for a few yellow roses for my desk. I shouldn’t have bothered. En route home, another Claudio gives me a pot of pansies; Gilda drops off camellias, mimosas, and pink hyacinths at Bramasole; and Fabio leaves on the step a handsome creamy cymbidium. Vittoria brings a bouquet of viburnums to our shrine. I’ve never before heard of Women’s Day, a national holiday in Italy, which commemorates lives lost in a New York factory fire in 1911, but I’m overwhelmed by the gifts of so many flowers. By the end of my first day back, flowers ignite every room of my house, giving the impression of warmth to stony rooms that have absorbed the brunt of winter.

T
HE NIGHT FINISHES
at Corys, down the road from us at the Torreone crossroad. Renato and Giuseppe, the co-managers of the hotel-restaurant, are busy serving a table of twenty teenagers who now and then break into song. Ah, no, “Volare”—oh, oh, oh, oh. Papa-bear Giuseppe envelops Ed and me together in a grand hug. Of Lebanese background, he was raised in Rome and has brought to Cortona an unerring good taste in food and wine. He always tells us exactly what we are to eat and drink. He brings over a bloodstone red wine we’ve never seen, from just around the bend near Lago Trasimeno. Renato catches us up on the news. He is building a “beauty farm” in the old stone parish house attached to the church across the road. He is a wiry man with lank black curls and intense eyes, a consummate Italian cynic with a wild humor. He talks with his whole body. Electrical charges run through his veins. I love to watch him, especially when he’s furious with the hunters who are parking in his spaces. He almost levitates with anger. I expect him to tear out his hair at any moment or go up in a puff of smoke. Then the anger dissolves and he’s joking again.

“A spa and a church together? The body and the spirit?” Ed asks.

“Yes, finally, and the graveyard is there, too, so everything can be taken care of.”

Seems surreal, but I can see us heading there for the massages, manicures, and steam bath. “Are we invited?”

“
Certo, cara
”—certainly, darling. “I am building it for you.”

After the antipasto table with fifty tastes, and a big plate of ravioli stuffed with pecorino and speck, and chicken cooked under a brick, Giuseppe brings over five boxes of Amedei chocolates for tasting. The beans come from Madagascar, Trinidad, Jamaica, all over the chocolate map. Then with a diabolical grin, he puts down a plate of
gorgonzola cremosa
so delicious that I’m wanting to lick the scoop. Just as we are about to push back, he pours a
digestivo
we’ve never tried, a Barolo Chinato, aged Barolo with what we finally figure out is quinine. It’s complex and meditative, unlike many
digestivi
that bring to mind being force-fed cough syrup as a child, my mother prying the spoon between my clenched teeth. We are mellow and
commossi
, emotionally moved, by the largesse of our friends. As we leave, Giuseppe’s young daughter, Leda, brings me a branch of mimosa.

T
HE GIVING
, the fun, and the spontaneity of everyday life here shock me and return me immediately to a munificent state of being that gradually starts to feel normal. I begin to notice, here at Bramasole, that my skin fits perfectly over my body, just as this house sits so serenely and naturally on this hillside.

At last, to bed. Seems like days ago that I pushed up the plane window shade at dawn, and looked down on silver-edged snowy billows. Think of all the centuries when that view was impossible. Signorelli’s point of view, like most Renaissance artists’, was straight frontal. I almost see him in his green cloak, flying out of Florence and over the white Alps. How strangely immune we are to the beauty of the clouds from above. The bed is made up with apricot sheets, airy white comforter, and soft pillows. Sliding under the covers, I feel as though I’m sinking through the paradisiacal sky I flew through—when?—only last night. For an instant, I relive descending through flocculent clouds, when all direction seems lost, then the skeins of wispy veils, then the sudden breakthrough, when the green fields, immortal Roman farmhouses, and clumps of sheep appear. Just as he falls asleep, Ed says, “This was a Renaissance day …”

R
AVIOLI
R
IPIENI DI
P
ATATE CON
Z
UCCHINE E
S
PECK AL
P
ECORINO
Potato Ravioli with Zucchini, Speck, and Pecorino

At Corys, the hotel-restaurant down the road from Bramasole, this outstanding ravioli is always on the menu. Corys’s chef, Eva, shares her secret recipe.

Speck (smoked prosciutto) can be used in all the ways prosciutto is used. You can substitute
parmigiano
if you can’t locate aged pecorino.

Serves 4

FOR THE FILLING

½
pound Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled

1 cup milk

1 cup water

1 tablespoon
parmigiano

1 egg yolk

½
teaspoon salt Pinch of nutmeg

FOR THE PASTA

2 cups flour

½
teaspoon salt

2 eggs, plus one yolk beaten for egg wash

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

FOR THE SAUCE

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 slices speck or smoked bacon, diced

zucchini, chopped

2 tomatoes, chopped

1 shallot, minced

1 tablespoon butter

½
teaspoon pepper

Pecorino, shaved, as needed

Cook the peeled potatoes in the milk and water for 20 minutes, put through a ricer, and add the
parmigiano
, the egg yolk, salt, and nutmeg. Let cool.

For the ravioli: You can use store-bought fresh sheets of pasta to make your ravioli or you can make your own. For the latter, do the following:

Mound the flour on a countertop, make a well, and add the salt and 2 whole eggs and oil, mix gently at first with a fork or your fingertips, and shortly you’ll have formed a rather sticky dough. Knead for 10 minutes, adding more flour as needed. Shape into a mound, cover with a dishtowel, and let rest for 30 minutes to an hour, and then divide into quarters. Roll out each quarter with a rolling pin until the sheets are quite thin—hold them up to the window and they should be translucent. If you have a pasta machine, run the quartered pasta dough through lower and lower settings.

Next, place one sheet, about 6 inches by 12 inches, on the countertop, and in the lower half of the sheet, place 1 teaspoon of the potato filling at 1-inch intervals. Brush an egg yolk wash on the top half of the sheet, then fold over the sheet lengthwise, covering the filling. Gently press out any air in the ravioli, and then cut them into equal squares. Pinch edges together.

Put a pot of water on high heat, adding 2 tablespoons of salt when it has reached a boil.

For the sauce: In a sauté pan, heat the oil, then add the next 4 ingredients and sauté for 5 minutes, then add the butter and pepper and cook for 3 minutes. Add 4 ounces of water and cook for another 4 minutes.

Cook the ravioli in the boiling water for 3 to 5 minutes, then drain. Arrange on a plate and pour the sauce over them. Finish by scattering shavings of an aged pecorino or
parmigiano
.