The sauce needed to simmer for at least an hour. I attached the rails of the pot-holding apparatus around the edges of the stove, and then affixed the guards to secure the saucepan. Even though the wind was light and we wouldn’t heel much, I wanted to test the system. Satisfied that the pot would hold, I went on deck to help take us out of port. I decided to stay up there after the sails were up to enjoy the day for a little while. It was good to get outside after the confinement of the galley.
The pungent smell of tomato sauce began to rise to the foredeck. The only noise I could hear was the calming swish of the bow wake as Serenity gently glided through the water. The smell of the sauce was making everyone hungry. I went below to stir it and taste for seasoning.
We were still an hour away from Sestri, where we would drop anchor and have lunch, so I went on deck again. I was surprised to see other boats come fairly close to us, often altering their speed to match ours. They showed their admiration by blowing their horns and waving. One fancy fifty-something-foot motor yacht, a Riva, made circles around us with the guests yelling, “Bravissimo! Bravissimo! Che bella!” It didn’t take long for the Riva’s wake to begin rocking us, slowly at first but then with increased regularity. This enrages sailors, and I could see our crew getting annoyed. In the light wind, the motorboat was making our sails luff, which in turn dumped what precious wind they were trimmed to catch. This slowed us down from the already gentle pace Serenity was making. I got so involved with what was happening to the sails that I forgot about the sauce. Eventually, the sweet smell of simmering tomatoes changed to a powerful scent of over-caramelized sauce approaching burn.
I bolted down the crew ladder to the galley, afraid of what I would find. A large pool of sauce was boiling on the surface of the stove, its burning edge the only thing keeping it from spreading. Because the whole stove was made out of thin metal, the top got pretty hot. There was sauce all over the side of the pot and the burner plate. Plus, not having been stirred, the tomato solids clustered on a hot spot right over the flame and burned on the bottom of the pot. The whole batch was ruined. And cleaning up would be a hassle.
Finally, after I mopped up the sauce, I went back up to help drop and stow the sails, and after finding a good hold on the anchor, the crew broke to have lunch. I stayed on deck and saw that we weren’t far offshore and alone in the anchorage. Sestri made a beautiful backdrop, and the coastal terrain of the Italian Riviera cascading in the distance would flank the guests while they dined under a large canopy rigged over the table on deck. Il Dottore and his buddies had gone for a swim. I had to go below and get ready to serve them.
What a great way to entertain, I thought. Arrive in Portofino on a private helicopter. Cruise on a classic sailing yacht. Swim in a quiet anchorage with gorgeous surroundings. Enjoy a graciously served lunch of crispy fried bianchetti, augmented with seasonal market vegetables, fresh fruits, and white burgundy. Finish with a nap or idle chat with friends on deck. It didn’t get any better than this.
By three in the afternoon, sails went up again, and I went back down to the galley to start dinner prep. In order to be available for maneuvers, I constantly listened to the activity on deck so I could time my tasks to those needs. From time to time, I went up top to take a look, ask Kevin what was happening with the sail, and catch some fresh air. We were back at the marina by six, and now my work was cut out for me: cocktails and canapés subito—immediately—for the owners and guests, crew dinner at seven, owner dinner at nine, clean up by eleven-thirty. I figured I would be lucky to hit the rack—go to bed—by midnight. Life in the galley, I started to see, would become a constant juggle of diligence, productivity, organization, and cleanliness.
I had built the dinner menu around the ciappa since it was such a unique method of cooking that I thought would be interesting for the guests. It didn’t come with any instructions for use, so I took a guess at how to prepare it for its debut in the Serenity galley. I gave it a wash with only a little dish soap and warm water, and then attempted to season it with a thin coat of oil. I heated it on a burner of the stove, which created a lot of smoke and in turn set off a screeching alarm. Scott dashed into the galley and was relieved to find nothing serious had happened, only a false alarm from what I considered a standard kitchen procedure. I could see Patrick, Kevin, and il Dottore through the hatch above me, and I explained through the window that there was no reason for concern. Harmless, yes, but I was a little embarrassed nonetheless.
I must have missed something along the way preparing the stone because the end result for the tuna steaks was only satisfactory at best. I couldn’t get the sear and browning on the outside of the fish that I wanted. It was probably a result of not having the stone hot enough. I figured the stove burners were not powerful enough to do it justice, even at full. My solution the next time would be to keep it in the oven at 500°F and use it like a pizza stone. With the heat hitting it on all sides, the ciappa, I hoped, would yield better results. Or maybe it just needed more use in order to get it properly seasoned. Regardless of my ultimate disappointment in the searing, the finished platter looked nice, with thick steaks of tuna cooked to medium-rare, each topped with a small mound of oily olive paste and a cluster of roughly chopped parsley then garnished with soigné trimmed and seedless lemon wedges.
Rick came into the galley with an empty dessert platter. “Your dinner was a big hit,” he said. “La Signora wants to see you in the salon.”
I walked into the salon, not sure what to expect. “Davide,” la Signora said, “tell everyone what you cooked the tuna on. I have never seen that!” Even though I was less than pleased with the result, I launched into a discourse on how I came to use the ciappa. La Signora looked very pleased—a good way to end, I thought—and then, changing gears, she pointed to her dessert plate. An empty disk of china that had shadows of chocolate near the rim. La Signora said to me, “And this, stupenda.”
The almost flourless chocolate cake with espresso crema di mascarpone was the finish to the meal. I had cut it into ten portions, and since there were only six at the table, I figured some had seconds. I could only imagine what it must have tasted like because I had never paired those recipes before—two different textures and a mocha-like flavor that was flavorful but not heavy and overpowering. Thankfully, mascarpone has pretty good shelf life, so I would keep it on hand from now on. It was nice to get some positive feedback, and it inspired me to prepare the next meal.
Sunday found us slowly cruising along the northern end of the Cinque Terre, a rugged high-terrain region that stretches along eighteen miles of the coast where five quaint seaside villages stand, hence the name, Five Lands. I remembered that there was a local train and boat services that stop at each, as well as the famous hiking path that connects all of them called La Via dell’Amore—Love Street. From sea level, the sense of scale next to the steep and fertile coastline behind them was a magnificent vista, a hazy silhouette as it continued to the distant south. Rows of vineyards tracked in parallel lines along the high coastline like a topographic map. It amazed me that people could grow and harvest grapes and make wine on this rugged terrain with funny names like Pigato and Sciacchetrà. I thought about the increasing migration to the larger cities by the children of the contadini that worked the land, looking for more action, and wondered how this humble and isolated lifestyle would survive successive generations.
In the market the prior morning, I had seen avocados for the first time in my years in Italy, revealing a supply line of Israeli agricultural exports from the eastern Mediterranean to the west. I thought it would be interesting for the owners to have something unique, so I had brought some back to the boat. My idea was to serve them as an antipasto with sliced Prosciutto di Parma dolce. Dolce refers to a style of curing the ham that uses less salt, rendering a moister texture and “sweeter” flavor than other methods of curing. The combination made sense to me.
When the first course was served, I had to go to the chart house to talk to Patric
k. I noticed that the owners and their guests were eating with surprisingly little talk at the table amidships. This was unusual. Lunch was usually boisterous, before the afternoon heat and Chablis slowed down everyone’s pace. As I passed the table, il Dottore stopped eating and looked up at me.
“Davide, what are these green things on the platter?” he asked.
“Avocados,” I answered. I decided to explain myself. “I had never seen them in Italy before. They were in the market the other day, so I couldn’t resist,” I politely responded. Then everyone else stopped eating to hear the conversation.
“Why did you serve them?” he pressed.
“I thought they would be great with the prosciutto.”
“I don’t like these. They’re too strange,” he said as he uncharacteristically pulled up his lip in a look of disgust.
“Amore, it’s okay,” la Signora said from the other side of the table. “It’s typical cuisine from California. They also grow them in the Mediterranean. Try something new.”
Il Dottore cut her off and started to argue with her: “But they’re not cucina italiana.” The guests were caught in the crossfire, but judging from their plates, everyone was doing just fine. He carried on about traditional food versus experimental food and how on a classic yacht there was nothing new or experimental about the way the boat was being sailed.
I realized that I still had to fine-tune my understanding of the owners’ likes, dislikes, and preferences and how far I could experiment. I took responsibility for my choice, politely saying as the Italians do, “Colpo mio”—it’s like saying “my bad”—an honorable admission.
“It’s all right, it’s all right,” il Dottore said and closed it with a look on his face like “get my drift?”
I would never have thought an avocado could stir up such controversy. It’s true the Italians are passionate about what they eat, and this confirmed for me that I should not stray from the familiar. It also confirmed that although la Signora drove the service agenda, il Dottore had a major say in how the boat would be run, both at the helm and in the galley.
That evening, upon our return to Portofino, we were greeted by a very large and elegant motor yacht called Debutante that sat at anchor near the mouth of the harbor. Kevin had worked on her the previous summer and viewed her like a long-lost friend. A few of the crew appeared on Debutante’s foredeck as we slowly passed across her bow.
“Congratulations! She looks great,” Debutante’s captain said from the rail.
“Che bella barca”—what a beautiful boat—la Signora politely said while admiring the sleek white yacht.
“Hey, Patrick, you guys got our spot!” the captain said half joking, but acknowledged the first-come, first-served rule of getting into Portofino. “The harbormaster said you’d be coming back in tonight.”
“Maybe ’cause you need two spots!” Patrick shouted back, ribbing the other captain about Debutante’s much wider width.
Kevin stood straight up on the foredeck. “There’s a stewardess on board I wouldn’t mind getting to know,” he said to me out of the side of his mouth. That night, after the owners and guests left until the next weekend, he passed off his watch duties to Ian and darted off in the launch to visit his alma mater.
Because of an early-morning departure time, I skipped my workout and went to the bakery to get some more focaccia for the ride. Mary, the friendly clerk, handed me a fresh sample no more than a half hour out of the oven and wished me well with my work: “Buon lavoro!” We were heading to Lerici, a small port town near the regional border where Liguria meets Tuscany, in an area called the Gulf of Poets.
Everyone’s friend Antonio the harbormaster untied us from the dock. I liked him. He represented the special way some Italians do business—cordial, genuine, and eager to please—and his methods ensured my desire to return. Debutante was gone, off to the next stop on their cruise. Soon, Portofino was hidden behind the terrain that protects it so well. Santa Margherita and Rapallo also faded into the distance. Then I saw Chiavari, where, high up in the hills behind, in a small locality called Leivi, the nine-table restaurant Cà Peo could be found.
Cà Peo was where I got my introduction to the vegetable-laden cuisine of Liguria. Franco and Melly Solari earned a Michelin star by building a menu and wine list that exploited an artisanal touch to the local ingredients they used. Melly made her signature pesto in a mortaio—mortar—every day, which I’d tried, but I wasn’t able to achieve the bright green color and smooth, pasty texture like hers. She told me the basil of the region was special. From offshore, you can see the long rows of greenhouses along the coastline where it is grown.
But pesto was half the story. Melly told me that during the Second World War, the occupying Germans took all the wheat out of the country and her mother was forced to make pasta out of chestnut flour. “It was the only farina that we had.” People came to the restaurant for her trenette or lasagnette chestnut flour noodles tossed with that pungent and herbaceous pesto. And with this, she practiced the value of preserving local necessity through her menus by remaining true to traditional methods.
We passed the Cinque Terre again, and the five towns that make up this famous stretch of coastline: Monterosso al Mare, Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola, and Riomaggiore.
Scott pumped out the tanks and charged the batteries from the generator while Rick stripped the guest cabins and heads. Once we got to Lerici, we’d wash down the boat, get laundry out to a service, and do a massive cleaning inside and out. Then we’d take a two-day weekend, and Serenity would become “our boat.”
“Hey, David, check it out!” Rick came into the pantry with an armload of empty jewelry boxes.
“What’s all that?” I asked.
“They were in the cabins. It’s incredible. Host gifts.”
I didn’t even know what a host gift was until Rick explained to me that it was good etiquette to bring a token of appreciation for being one’s guest. There were velvet-covered boxes from Bulgari, Buccellati, and others I had never heard of like Chantecler in Capri, which was thoughtful given that at some point during the summer we’d be there.
“Also, it’s probably because this is the first season with the boat,” Rick concluded. He put the boxes in the galley garbage bin under the sink and went back to work while practicing his growing Italian vocabulary picked up from listening to the owners and guests: “Buonasera, Grazie, Prego…”
Suddenly I heard a violent popping sound and noticed the rancid smell of burning electric. Black smoke quickly filled the engine room, galley, and crew quarters. Alarms in the engine room went off. It was a sailor’s worst nightmare—a fire at sea. Scott, Kevin, and Patrick raced below to contain the flames. Thankfully, the fire in the electrical panel was put out quickly, but for extra precaution Scott covered the panel with a fireproof safety blanket. Fortunately, we would soon be close to La Spezia, a major harbor where parts could be found. For me, I had a major refrigeration challenge on my hands. At least this didn’t occur at the start of a weekend with reefers full of perishables.
Patrick opted for Lerici instead of the commercial and naval port of La Spezia for its good shelter, but also to put us in a quieter, less congested marina. It was still early enough in the season that the mass of visiting pleasure craft hadn’t arrived yet. The town itself was noticeably different from all the other ports along the Ligurian coast south of Genoa. The multicolor buildings ceased after Portovenere, and even there, gone were the ornate painted architectural details so characteristic of the Riviera. It was as if the craftsmen kept themselves in the Gulf of Genoa, and the geographical expanse of the rugged Cinque Terre acted as a natural border to this gateway on the Tuscan coast. It seemed like a nice enough place, almost like a hideaway off the beaten track of popular tourist destinations, and it turned out to be very good for provisioning. And just south we would discover beautiful small coves and bays where we could beach the tender and hang around.
Scott asked me to go with him to find
a chandler—a mariner’s hardware store—in La Spezia to act as translator. In the taxi on the way over, he surprised me by showing a little knowledge of our whereabouts.
“You know why this is called the Bay of Poets?” he asked.
“No, I’ve never heard of it before,” I said.
“It’s because the poets Shelley, Keats, and Lord Byron lived here.”
I wondered why a guy who had a cold attitude toward Italy stored this bit of information—until he said, “All British you know.”
While we were in La Spezia, I contacted one of the deckhands on the sailing yacht Pegasus that had co-hosted the party with us in Monte Carlo. The yacht’s home port was there, and my new friend Corrado, who grew up in the area, told me about the local frutti di mare, most notably the coveted datteri di mare—sea date mussels. They are so named because their light brown shells resemble dates. There is only one way to get them, however, and that’s not from the local fishmonger. We would have to free dive for them. Fortunately, Corrado clued me into a good spot to find them, just offshore in Portovenere.
The next morning, just after sunrise, Nigel and I boarded the tender and set out for the spot where, as Corrado had put it, “the mussels cling to the rocks and seawalls just outside of the town.” We stopped the boat where we thought might be the spot, but questioned whether we’d need a permit to do this since I remembered hearing from somewhere that they were regulated. But without too much hesitation or worry we donned fins and masks, and then dove in like a couple of escaped convicts—fast and quietly. Once our eyes were accustomed to the murky light underwater, we scanned the seawall. Sure enough, they were there, just as Corrado had said they would be.
Mediterranean Summer Page 14
