The Body in the Piazza - By Katherine Hall Page Page 0,10
on one of her favorites: spaghetti alla foriana, that heavenly combination of anchovies, raisins, plenty of garlic, walnuts, and pignoli (see recipe in Excerpts from Have Faith in Your Kitchen). The waiter placed another appetizer on the table. It was the baccalà. Small chunks of cod that looked like the fish part of fish and chips, seemingly commonplace. But these morsels! Anything but commonplace. Perfectly done, and it was hard to believe they hadn’t come right from the ocean, bypassing boats and markets. Freddy advised a tiny squeeze of lemon that brought the flavor out even more. Judging from the starters, it was going to be a memorable meal.
She sighed and sipped some wine. Octavia’s portico was facing her, and for a moment she gave a thought to the kind of monument she might erect for Tom’s difficult sister, Betsey. Her own sister was easy. She already worked in a temple of sorts—one not to a deity, but mammon. Quite apart from that, Faith would choose something elegant yet warm for Hope—maybe a Carrara marble plinth. She smiled to herself at the direction her thoughts were taking.
Freddy was smiling, too, as he watched them eat with such obvious relish. “Before the artichokes arrive, which will require our utmost concentration—it is my favorite dish in Rome—tell me, what did you look at today?”
Faith abandoned her sculptural speculations. “People mostly, mobile, and immobile as in the Piazza Navona Berninis. We had a picnic lunch there.”
“I like that piazza, although it’s a bit large. Our Piazza Farnese is more intimate. And of course those poor Berninis in the Navona. You Yanks snapped off their fingers as souvenirs when you were bivouacked there during the Liberation. Odd thing to put on a mantel.”
“As odd as your Lord Elgin’s Greek trophies? As I recall there was a bit of statuary pillage there, too,” Tom said.
“Ah, you have me there, I’m afraid, Reverend. But we digress. Any Caravaggios today? My favorites are just off the Piazza Navona in Chiesa San Luigi dei Francesci. The Saint Matthew cycle. Stop in if you missed them. I suppose I go back whenever I’m here because I am poised to identify with him as an old man, as he is depicted in the last of the three paintings. Wrinkles abound and Matthew’s taking dictation from an angel—unfortunately mine own writing has quite obviously never had the benefit of divine intervention, but I hope to share those noble marks of age, lines earned by living. And then of course there are his marvelously filthy feet.”
“Filthy feet?” Tom said, scraping the last flakes of cod from his plate.
Freddy lifted his foot from under the table. It was clad in the same well-worn desert boot as earlier, unless he had numerous pairs of similar vintage. “Yes, quite a brouhaha about it. Not the thing, don’t you know, to portray a saint with plebian dust on his soles.”
His imitation of a “tebbily” upper-crust Brit was all too accurate and Faith found herself wondering what his mysterious middle name was. Something from Debrett’s, like Cholmondeley, pronounced for reasons no doubt dating back to William the Conqueror as “Chumley”?
Before she could ask, the waiter placed one of the carciofi alla giudias in front of her. The sight of the crisp, steaming artichoke, its choke removed and the petals fanned out like a sunflower, drove all thoughts from her mind save one: eating it. She was familiar with the dish—a kind of artichoke onion blossom—but had never tasted it and vowed it would be the first thing she tried to replicate back home. Although it might lose something in the translation, or rather transportation. It seemed meant to be eaten just where she was, under the Roman sky.
Her husband had what could only be described as a dopey grin on his face, the kind engendered by either good food, good sex, or both.
“Do you think Francesca could teach us how to make this?” he asked.
“Old friends of ours, Francesca Rossi and her husband, Gianni, live in Tuscany and have just started a cooking school. We’re going there for its first week, their maiden voyage,” Faith explained to Freddy. She’d told him they were in Italy to celebrate their anniversary but hadn’t mentioned the school.
Freddy looked surprised. “It’s a common name, all three, but I rented a small place from a Rossi family near Montepulciano while I was writing a book on the hill towns many years ago. Of course it’s the people you know. Maria and Mario