sense of logic and gastronomy. How could one cook a chicken in its mother’s milk?

Fish, on the other hand, gave Davido the opportunity to work with cheese, which he enjoyed greatly. Ever since he and his kin began raising their own animals, Davido had rather lost his taste for meat. The idea of eating one of the cows, goats or sheep that he had helped rear and could not help but adore now had little appeal. Thankfully, the farm’s five sheep, four goats and two cows were needed for their milk, not their meat. Even the farm’s thirty or so chickens—more valuable for their eggs, soil-nourishing manure and insect-eating prowess— got to live a long life before finding their way into the cook pot or onto a spit. While meat had become of less and less interest to Davido, vegetables and cheese—vegetables he grew and the goat, sheep and cow’s milk cheeses he and Uncle Uccello had begun to make—had never before been so precious and delicious to him.

Cooking too. Since moving onto the farm, the preparing of food had taken on a whole new attraction for Davido, and he threw himself into it with all his heart. It was the culmination of the cycle of life that so enamored him: earth, seed, plant, blossom, vegetable, fruit, cutting board, cook pot and finally table. It was also something that came naturally to him and that he did exceedingly well, the one thing he understood and did better than Nonno ever had.

Back in Florence, Davido’s grandfather seemed to have a mastery of everything in which Davido struggled and Ebrei were judged by. Though they lived humbly in Florence (best not to raise the suspicion of the ruling gentile class), every Ebreo knew that Nonno was the richest man in the ghetto and the de facto leader of the Ebreo community. His life story was legendary. At age twenty-three, little older than Davido, back in Toledo, Nonno’s skill with numbers had vaulted him to the position of finance minister for Ferdinand and Isabella. He had voyaged with Cristoforo Colombo and spent ten years living among the island natives before returning to Europe. The man was smart beyond comprehension; in addition to Italiano, he spoke Spagnolo, Francese, Portoghese, Tedesco, Latino, even the ancient Ebreo language which was only used for prayer. And sometimes, when his grandfather’s siesta slumber was especially deep, Nonno could be overheard mumbling in that bizarre tongue that he claimed to have learned from the Indiani of Il Nuovo Mundo. But when it came to the farm and kitchen, Nonno was all thumbs and none of them green. True, the old man loved his tomatoes and was singularly responsible for introducing them to Europe, but his expertise was only in eating them. Here, among the trees and plants, fruits and vegetables, cook pots and roasting fires was where Davido shined, and his illustrious Nonno had little choice but to defer to his knowledge and instinct.

Despite an early rise, a three-hour donkey ride from Florence, a two-hour effort in the kitchen, a full belly and the cool weight of tomatoes shading his eyes and perfuming the air around him, Davido couldn’t sleep. This was especially disconcerting to him, as just being around his tomato plants tended to calm his mind and deepen his breath. There was something about the smell of tomato plants that Davido adored so profoundly that from first planting in early May through last picking in late October, he would sneak away to siesta in between their rows every day, with the zeal of a young lover off to visit his paramour. With certainty, he could be found just a few dozen meters from the barn, between the first and second rows of plants, lying on his back with a ripe tomato upon each eye to block out the sun and young green leaves under his nostrils to sweeten his suspiration. To him, the plant’s fragrance was sublime and sacred. A scent that transcended his olfactory organs to purify his heart and cleanse his mind.

Now, as any wise parent will attest, few things create quite as much curiosity in children as the quietly confident and completely abnormal behavior of an adult, and it wasn’t long before Davido’s siesta habits were mimicked by most of the farm’s children. The youngsters were Davido’s cousins, the children of his aunts and uncles who had moved onto the farm at Nonno’s insistence. As such, few of their parents took umbrage to the