A Fork In The Road: Tales of Food, Pleasure and Discovery On The Road (Lonely Planet Travel Literature)

by Lonely Planet

  The next morning I woke up late and jumped in the shower before breakfast. When I returned to my room, all of my clothes had been removed from my luggage and folded neatly or hung up in the closet. I swung around to see if my mum was there, until I remembered that not even my mum would unpack my bags. This was old-world Italy and there was no running from it.

  It took four days for me to find my groove. I had got up early, rejuvenated at last from the sleep deprivation of Greece, and tiptoed downstairs to make a cup of coffee. I entered the kitchen to find three generations of women, ages twenty to eighty, rolling pasta, making sausages and preparing fresh tomato sauce. Nonna, who at full height came up to my armpit, brushed by me carrying an enormous pot of water. Someone handed me a cup of coffee, which she had made to full-bodied perfection in the caffettiera on the stovetop, and I sat down to watch.

  It sounds crazy, but I hadn’t realised until that moment that these women had crafted every bite of food I had consumed in the last three days. It hit me that the fat pig outside was destined to become the salami hanging in the larder, while the tomatoes and eggplants ripening on the vines were the same ones we would devour over handmade fusilli at lunch. These women cured their own olives and made their own goat’s cheese. They planted crops and butchered livestock. One day a week, Nonna baked bread in the wood-fire oven out back. She’d stack the loaves on top of the stone wall by the front gate, and neighbours on their way by would grab a loaf and drop off whatever they had in surplus as payment. Food in Calabria was pride, self-sufficiency and community all mixed together in one mouthful.

  And food was largely the work of women, with the exception of salami and wine, which the men always made. In our modern world, where fathers change diapers and women run multinational corporations, it all sounds a bit dated, if not outright sexist, to say that the women slaved away in the kitchen while the men trudged off to work. But tradition reigned supreme in southern Italy and, rather than stifling, it seemed to reflect an elegant symbiosis within the family, founded on mutual respect for what everyone brought to the table. It was the basis of their extreme closeness. You could feel the love and appreciation every time we all sat down for a meal.

  What makes the people of Calabria so special is their undying appreciation, not just of food, but also of the cultivation of the ingredients that become family legacy. Neighbouring families war over who makes the best, most authentic, recipe for everything from tomato sauce to minestrone. And while the outsider may not be able to appreciate the nuance, an extra pass of the tomatoes through the mill—a technique handed down from generation to generation—makes all the difference.

  After that morning, I spent a lot of time in the kitchen. The women would give me small jobs, dicing onions or slicing eggplant, and eventually I graduated to making pasta and canning enough sauce to carry them through the cold weather months. There were never any recipes to read or measuring cups to gauge the proper amount and I still didn’t speak a lick of Italian. I just had to watch and follow their lead.

  I literally followed the entire family’s lead every night after dinner when they’d take their evening stroll through town. There wasn’t much to see except a church and some villas, but sightseeing wasn’t the goal. All along the path, neighbours would join us for a while, snaking throughout the group, talking about the day’s news, sharing local gossip, and solving the world’s problems. It makes perfect sense that the slow-food movement began in Italy. That relaxed, leisurely philosophy to cooking permeated everything they did.

  Except perhaps driving. To this day, I have never ridden in a car that moved as fast as the tricked-out Alfa Romeo driven by Tommy’s cousin. He was bringing us on a short holiday down the coast to Tropea, a seaside resort town built high on the cliffs overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. It was a 40-kilometre trip that by reasonably law-breaking speeds should have taken forty-five minutes. We got there in twenty, though my stomach didn’t catch up for hours.

  Compared to Francavilla, Tropea felt like a metropolis though it still had that quiet Calabria vibe. Glowing historic buildings made of gold-coloured stone lined cobblestoned streets featuring bars and clubs and eateries that served frittatas made with cipolle di Tropea, the revered local red onion. We walked the 200 stone steps from the high cliffs to the beach below and played endless matches of table soccer. At night, the clubs came alive but, unlike in the Greek Islands, the crowd was made up entirely of locals. After two days, our skin brown from lounging in the sun, we took the white-knuckle ride back to Francavilla.

  Hair-raising speed has a plus side, particularly when you’re itching to be somewhere. Tropea was a slender slice of paradise, but I missed the sleepy village and the people who had so graciously embraced me as one of their own. In just a few weeks, I had fallen in love with the culture of long lunches, homemade fare and family. Coming back, the question wasn’t what am I doing in Francavilla, but how did the rest of the world get so far away from the Calabrian way of life?

  Tommy and I would leave just after the tomato harvest to travel around Italy. But as autumn closed in, I was nearly broke, so we said goodbye and I set off for London. There, I knocked on the door of Marco Pierre White’s Café Royal and offered to work for free just for the opportunity to learn from the Michelin-starred genius. I would end up staying for eight years, sweating my way from peeling potatoes to head chef and from sleeping on my mate’s couch to actually having a flat. It was a wild time full of fine food, fancy dining and furious tempers. I’ve often said that Marco taught me everything I know about cooking, and that’s true. But Francavilla taught me everything about why I wanted to cook.

  GAEL GREENE was the diva of restaurant criticism as the Insatiable Critic for New York magazine for 40 years. Among her seven books are two bestselling erotic novels, Blue Skies, No Candy and Dr. Love, and a memoir, Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess. With the late James Beard, Greene co-founded Citymeals on Wheels in 1981 to help feed New York City’s homebound elderly.

  AFLOAT ON THE AMAZON

  Gael Greene

  Machu Picchu before my knees caved was the goal. It was a trip we’d wanted to make and postponed too long. Granted, I would be the last kid on my block to do the Inca tour. Was there a must-see not everyone had done yet?

  We are persuaded to start tropical on an Amazon cruise. Don’t tell anyone, please, but I thought the Amazon was in Brazil. The consulting chef from Lima will be on board to tell us about Amazon products. Okay, digging out malaria pills.

  Ten days before departure I get a call. The boat has been robbed by bandits. ‘It never happened before,’ our agent notes. ‘It will never happen again. No one was hurt. The police are patrolling. The government won’t let them threaten tourism.’

  At dinner that night our Fodor writer pal Harry fills us in. ‘It’s not bandits you need to worry about,’ says Harry. ‘It’s panthers. And tarantulas. You need a tarantula whistle to scare them off.’ He suggests I call Hammacher Schlemmer.

  Two days before takeoff for Lima, a very chastened travel agent calls. The boat has been robbed by bandits again. It seems they took everything: money, of course, credit cards, watches and jewelry, computers, cell phones, iPods, even couturier clothes.

  ‘Where were the police?’ I ask. ‘Didn’t you say it couldn’t happen again?’

  ‘It was foggy and the bandits came up on the other side. The police couldn’t see. The trip has been cancelled.’

  Next day she calls again: ‘We just heard from a couple we couldn’t reach yesterday because they were at a conference in Chile. They still want to go. Are you game?’

  Our contact insists, contrary to news reports, no one was bound or gagged in the robbery. I have been bound but never gagged. Wish I were younger. Been wishing that a lot lately.

  In Lima our hotel, the Country Club, loans us a suite so we can shower and repack before we fly to Iquitos to board the boat. We’ve slept through the entire flight on LAN’s stretch-out beds. Ambien sleeping tabs, just to be
sure. We will check Lima dress-up baggage here, and repack hiking boots and tropical gear. I’ve never gone anywhere completely naked of jewelry before. Steven is deciding what camera he can live without. We leave everything we can’t afford to lose—passports, credit cards, big cash, computer, telephones, two cameras, my precious green ombre pashmina—in the Aqua Expeditions office safe and take $200 in Peruvian solas to stash in our room safe—no sense being killed by bandits enraged at finding nothing worth stealing. I’m so paranoid now I even worry that my silver Tiffany taxi whistle might scare away tarantulas in the rainforest and attract a panther.

  Our boat looks like a floating motel from afar but up close it’s definitely five star, with a staff of twenty-two at our service, tented deck, a library of books in the bar, and a vast king-size bed with poufy comforter facing a sweep of window in our air-conditioned suite. We meet our fellow passengers, the fearless duo, Whit and Jill. He’s career army. She’s a perfect army wife. Travels cheerfully. Carries a complete medic kit. ‘We are both expert shots,’ she assures me. ‘If they give us guns, we can take care of any bandits.’

  The buffet lunch that first day is Italian but, afterward, consulting chef Pedro Miguel Schiaffino, slight and slim in khakis, assures me that I am eating Amazon potatoes and shrimp from a nearby river. Schiaffino, a Culinary Institute of America alum, did a master’s in Italian restaurants, before becoming fired up with fusing Andean and rainforest products and European technique with a passion that is contagious.

  In our first afternoon exploring the Amazon with our guides (with no other guests, two of them are sharing us), Steven catches a piranha and then tosses it back. So does everyone else. I’m not into birds. But Whit and Jill are. Each of us has been given a small booklet to check off whatever mammal, reptile, bird or insect we see and I’m hopelessly competitive. Jill is almost as beady-eyed as the guides who see White-headed Marsh Tyrants where I see only bark and leaves. I take their word for Cobalt-winged Parakeet, Lineated Woodpecker, Yellow-rumped Cacique, and check them off. Pretty soon I’m seeing spider monkeys and Masked Crimson Tanagers too. Well, something red flew by. And no way could I miss the thrill of pink dolphins leaping into the air and splashing all around the boat. One evening the guides bring mimosas to serve at sunset with plantain chips before we set off in search of nocturnal critters. Usiel captures a caiman lizard, holding its snout tight shut while he lectures and checks to see if it has a two-pronged penis—no, it’s just a female. Just.

  We are served Brazilian nut soup, star-fruit chutney with a beef brochette and deep-fried yucca beignets with ice cream made from the palm fruit, aguaje. When the guide, Riccardo, swears we will not encounter a malaria mosquito anywhere on our itinerary, I quit the dreaded medication. To celebrate I order a pisco sour; one night I have two. I complain to Pedro Miguel that the dinner menus are boring: too often beef or catfish. ‘The catfish is local,’ he says, defending the onboard dining crew. ‘Well, maybe it is too safe,’ he agrees. The company is more concerned about frightening fussy eaters than about gourmandlich fantasies.

  I’m happiest with the native touches in the lunch buffet. Star-fruit vinaigrette. Steamed vegetables, not all of them recognizable. Roasted pork with particularly tangy pineapple. Deep-fried won tons filled with chicken and pork in a camu camu sauce. A rainforest fruit the size of a large grape with a purplish red skin, also known as rumberry; it is supposedly one of the world’s richest sources of vitamin C.

  Fresh hearts of palm are a rare delicacy for us in a soufflé and also in a salad with a vinaigrette of cocona at Tuesday’s ‘Amazon Lunch’. Pedro Miguel breaks one of the yellow plum-like fruits open to show us the pulp, and says it’s related to tomatoes and eggplants, high in niacin, used in juice, ice cream, sorbet and jams or mixed with chili peppers for a hot sauce. There are local river snails, with sweet pepper salsa, local beans, grilled plantains, and fresh water prawns wrapped in mysterious local leaves. Look up cashew at Rain-tree.com and its alleged curative powers are astonishing. I am not that impressed with white chocolate mousse. But then I’m no fan of white chocolate in any iteration. Tuesday’s tangy camu camu tart is more like it. The huito flavoring the semifreddo (with Brazilian guava sauce) is also used medicinally or is cooked with sugar to make a preserve and comes from a tree Amazon natives climb to gather palm fruit.

  A soaking rain our last day washes out plans to visit a small local market with Pedro Miguel. I’m cranky, wondering why we waited till the last minute. But then criss-crossing Peru over the next ten days, we linger in a dozen markets—our canny guide quickly realizes that we’re hooked on markets more than poets’ graves or ancient amphitheaters. One Sunday we visit a bread-baking town outside of Cuzco, then a pit stop devoted to guinea pigs from roadside ovens and a few miles away, chicharrónes heaven, a village where seemingly everyone on either side of the road hawks fried pork rinds.

  Back in Lima we catch up with the chef at Malabar, the upscale restaurant he opened with his parents—their collections of Venetian glass, Japanese porcelain, African sculpture and contemporary art give the place a living-room feel. At the bar with our new best friend and guide, pisco brewer Guillermo Ferreyros, I discover I prefer my pisco sour ‘dry’—it’s headier, more tangy, not so aggressively sweet.

  I don’t need to know the chef is a pioneer of exploiting the diversity of Peruvian ingredients to revel in his world-class cooking. But I imagine that American locavores will be impressed. Pedro Miguel’s mastery is on display, beginning with the nuts and seeds cooked in Sacha Inchi oil from the Amazon that he sends out as an amuse, the exotic fruit sauces, and an impressive array of house-baked breads. As a critic, I must taste each one. As an undisciplined eater, I ask for seconds of the nutted purple cornbread. His tataki of chita, a rockfish, scattered with leek green and chicharrón dust has been ‘cooked’ with lime. Peru has no lemons. ‘Lime is our lemon,’ the chef explains. The black scallops from the north in the risotto are allegedly aphrodisiacal. Exquisitely rolled spaghetti in a Parmesan foam hides nuggets of red-wine baked pigeon and duck foie gras. That could be aphrodisiacal too. The crackling skin of suckling pig plays against smoked eggplant and plaintain puree. A spring roll of custardy cherimoya fruit with mandarin juice, black mint and a sorbet of hierba buena is the dessert I remember.

  Steven asks for a Lima market tour. It is drizzling when we get to the wholesale fish stalls after bouncing over unpaved streets in the chef’s banged-up truck. Pedro Miguel gives us a primer on what we’re seeing, stopping to hug friends, or introduce us to a crab we’ve never seen before. In one corner he points out tables of Amazon seaweed and a woman specializing in rainforest products with the offhand air of a father playing down the exploits of a brilliant child. Himself in this case. His passionate use of indigenous products has inspired other chefs. Not far away in the Mercado Mayorista de Frutas, he marvels that strawberries are huge and ripe and any fruit can be found even out of season. He points out tree tomatoes, tomatillos, ‘very good pecans’, soursop and monster pineapples. He sips sugar-cane juice from a cart pressing the stalks, and drops some plums from a friend’s display into my tote. ‘It’s the season for cherimoya,’ he notes. Passing a truck unloading crates. We watch two women polishing limes with a shoe brush to make them shiny. ‘Now is watermelon season in the Amazon,’ he observes. ‘Want to stop by a neighborhood market?’ he asks. Yes, we would. But we need to get back to the hotel to dress for an earlyish lunch so we’ll be hungry again when it’s time for dinner. Our pisco-maker friend is determined to show us the best places in the four days that I plotted for sophisticated eating. Lima, it seems, is on its way to becoming a city of restless and demanding foodies. I can cross Machu Picchu off our must list but I know I’ll be going back to Lima one day soon for its annual fall food festival. It didn’t exist in 2009 when I tasted the new inventions of gifted chefs in an early contagion. But now it does.

  RITA MAE BROWN is the author of the iconic novel Rubyfruit Jungle. An Emmy-nominated screenwriter a
nd a poet, she lives in Afton, Virginia, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where she is an avid fox hunter and is master of her Fox Hunt Club.

  WHAT BECOMES A LADY

  Rita Mae Brown

  Until about the last forty years of the twentieth century even small towns published a morning paper and an evening paper, each one representing a different point of view. Dad insisted I read the editorial page in each paper. At the dinner table he would ask my opinion. After I answered, mother often quipped, ‘That might be too much opinion.’

  To even be allowed to eat at the dinner table with the adults was a rite of passage. Children ate in the kitchen until they proved they could use the utensils and, more importantly, be silent. To be asked something at the table was a sign you were growing up.

  By the time I was ten, I had mastered what I could say as well as learning that sometimes what you don’t say is as important as what you do. That dinner table was training for what lay beyond.

  Once a year, Mother (Juts) and Louise (Wheezie) would call on their cousin, Hazel Bowater, who lived in splendor on Philadelphia’s Main Line. Could I last the five hours’ drive due north without wrinkling my outfit? If I didn’t move, yes. As I rocked in the back of Aunt Wheezie’s big butt car, hood looming into next week, I reviewed which fork to use, which glass held what beverage and how to look interested when I was anything but.