Excerpt from Heat by Bill Buford
Context: The staff of Babbo, (Mario Batali's Italian restaurant in New York City), including our intrepid narrator, is catering a benefit dinner in Nashville, TN. They will be serving 200 dinners, and so have called for local volunteers to help with the plating. Volunteers turn up, most of them chefs in their own right, hoping to cook with Batali. Something like 40 people turn up, and until the last minute when it's time to plate, they have nothing to do. They stand around the kitchen like vultures, watching the Babbo regulars do all the actual cooking. One guy in particular stands out: "One man was waring a giant toque, the hat associated with French kitchens. He stood perfectly erect, his arm crooked with a crisp white towel draped from it, in pin-striped trousers and a jacket made with a whiter-than-white fine cotton. The others seemed to be avoiding him, although it's possible he would have had no part of them anyway. He was very serious."
Our narrator is going to encounter him again, as he makes polenta:
"My polenta, meanwhile, had changed: it was different to the touch (sticky) and to look at (almost shiny). Starch, which is the principal component of all grains, breaks down at high temperatures -- for corn, between a hundred fifty and two hundred degrees -- when the granules are then able to bond with water. This was why the water I'd added at the outset needed to be hot: to prevent the temperature from dropping and postponing this stage -- the break-it-down-and-bond-it-back stage. The process is called "gelatinizing," when the cereal granules swell and become more wetly viscous. When I'd begun, I'd been stirring the polenta with a whisk with a long handle. But as the granules bonded with the water, the polenta expanded and, creeping up the length of the whisk, was encroaching on the handle.
I added a splash more water -- not much (after all, the polenta and water, in their happy new molecular relationship, were getting along just fine) -- and resumed my stirring. The polenta crept up a little more. When would it stop? I wondered. Then a question occurred to me: Would it stop? Silly notion. Of course it would stop. But knowing when could be useful.
Another splash of water, some more stirring. It crept up further.
This was modestly alarming -- not five-bell alarming, but a concern: to stir the polenta, I was beginning to feel I had to be in the polenta. Would I finish cooking it before I was enveloped by it and became the darkly sauced meaty thing it was served with? The sensible thing would be to remove the whisk and go for a walk. The polenta had already told me I didn't need to hang around. But with so much kitchen competition I was afraid to abandon my whisk, convinced that a thrusting Nashville volunteer would seize it and take over my task. That chef with the hat, for instance. He was now standing inches behind me. I'd been monitoring him in my peripheral vision. He had liberated himself from the others and crossed an invisible line that separated the Nashville volunteers from the cooking area. He'd done this one step at a time and after each step, seeing he hadn't been rebuked, he'd taken one more.
"Sooooo," he said. I pretended not to hear.
"Sooooo," he repeated. I knew what he wanted: my whisk. I was sure of it. I concentrated on my stirring.
He sighed. "Sooooo," he said again, and added for emphasis: "Po-len-ta!" It was an alarmingly Italian pronunciation. I'd never heard the word said with such a forceful accent. I glanced at him sideways and noticed an Italian flag sewn into the neck of his pressed white jacket. This surprised me. I had thought that, dressed thus, he must be French. I looked again and saw on his jacket: Alfresco Pasta.
"Po-LEN-ta!" he said again, stretching out the middle syllable and flapping the roof of his mouth with his "t." Yes, I agreed. Polenta.
"Permit me to introduce myself. I call myself Riccardo." I moved the whisk from my right hand to my left, shook Riccardo's hand, rapidly transferred the whisk back, and resumed my stirring. "I call myself Riccardo. From Bologna. I am here eight years."
So Riccardo was the real thing. Not only from Italy, but from northern Italy, from Emilia-Romagna, right up there in polenta land, adjacent to Lombardy, the homes of Maestro Martino and Alessandro Manzoni. Riccardo was probably a genuine mangiopolenta, with childhood memories of beechwood and a grandmother with a big spoon. But what was a chef from Bologna doing in Tennessee? You don't meet many people from Bologna. Life there is too good too leave it. I eyed him suspiciously. He was looking at my whisk (and there was no other word to describe his manner) covetously. I turned my back, slightly, thinking: thou shalt not covet my whisk.
He moved closer. I could hear his breathing. If he says "Po-LEN-ta" one more time, I'm going to smack him with my whisk.
Frankie appeared. He had to walk around Riccardo (who, having achieved his spot, wasn't about to give it up). Frankie squeezed in between us, avoided eye contact with this strange man wearing a souffle for a hat, did that quick dip-the-finger trick, and tasted the polenta. He added more salt. "Nothing is simple," he said, "Everything needs to be made with love."
"Po-LEN-ta!" Riccardo said again, looking expectantly at Frankie, who walked away without pausing to reply. Riccardo then turned back to me. He stood, watching.
I stirred.
Riccardo didn't move.
I didn't stop stirring.
"Sooooo," he said finally, "Tell me a thing. Are you coming from New York?"
Yes, I said, I'm from New York. I looked at him. Why did he drape his towel on his forearm, anyway?
"Ah, New York," he said. I stirred.
"How is New York?" he asked.
"New York is fine," I said.
"Ah, New York," he said. The polenta had inched so far up my whisk that I was stirring with the last inch of the handle. I stopped and tasted my knuckles.
"You know," Riccardo said, "I do not know why I have come here to Nashville. I think but I cannot remember. There must have been a reason. I have wanted to go to New York. But when I have come here, I have met a girl. I did not come here to meet a girl. But I have met a girl. I have fell in love, I have got married, and now I am a chef at Alfresco Pasta," he said, adding, after a pause, "in Nashville." He sighed.
I stirred, but, despite myself, I was feeling something -- I don't know what. Sympathy? Pity? How could I feel pity? I'd just met this stranger, wearing a piece of pastry as a headdress, confirming yet again that cooks are some of the the weirdest people on the planet, and now he was wanting both my whisk and to tell me his life story.
"Nashville is very nice," I offered.
"I could have been a New York chef."
He said nothing for a long time, reflecting, staring at the round pot of polenta being stirred by me. "Instead I am a Nashville chef." He was very melancholy. "Love," he said, "Amore."
"Amore," I agreed.
Our narrator is going to encounter him again, as he makes polenta:
"My polenta, meanwhile, had changed: it was different to the touch (sticky) and to look at (almost shiny). Starch, which is the principal component of all grains, breaks down at high temperatures -- for corn, between a hundred fifty and two hundred degrees -- when the granules are then able to bond with water. This was why the water I'd added at the outset needed to be hot: to prevent the temperature from dropping and postponing this stage -- the break-it-down-and-bond-it-back stage. The process is called "gelatinizing," when the cereal granules swell and become more wetly viscous. When I'd begun, I'd been stirring the polenta with a whisk with a long handle. But as the granules bonded with the water, the polenta expanded and, creeping up the length of the whisk, was encroaching on the handle.
I added a splash more water -- not much (after all, the polenta and water, in their happy new molecular relationship, were getting along just fine) -- and resumed my stirring. The polenta crept up a little more. When would it stop? I wondered. Then a question occurred to me: Would it stop? Silly notion. Of course it would stop. But knowing when could be useful.
Another splash of water, some more stirring. It crept up further.
This was modestly alarming -- not five-bell alarming, but a concern: to stir the polenta, I was beginning to feel I had to be in the polenta. Would I finish cooking it before I was enveloped by it and became the darkly sauced meaty thing it was served with? The sensible thing would be to remove the whisk and go for a walk. The polenta had already told me I didn't need to hang around. But with so much kitchen competition I was afraid to abandon my whisk, convinced that a thrusting Nashville volunteer would seize it and take over my task. That chef with the hat, for instance. He was now standing inches behind me. I'd been monitoring him in my peripheral vision. He had liberated himself from the others and crossed an invisible line that separated the Nashville volunteers from the cooking area. He'd done this one step at a time and after each step, seeing he hadn't been rebuked, he'd taken one more.
"Sooooo," he said. I pretended not to hear.
"Sooooo," he repeated. I knew what he wanted: my whisk. I was sure of it. I concentrated on my stirring.
He sighed. "Sooooo," he said again, and added for emphasis: "Po-len-ta!" It was an alarmingly Italian pronunciation. I'd never heard the word said with such a forceful accent. I glanced at him sideways and noticed an Italian flag sewn into the neck of his pressed white jacket. This surprised me. I had thought that, dressed thus, he must be French. I looked again and saw on his jacket: Alfresco Pasta.
"Po-LEN-ta!" he said again, stretching out the middle syllable and flapping the roof of his mouth with his "t." Yes, I agreed. Polenta.
"Permit me to introduce myself. I call myself Riccardo." I moved the whisk from my right hand to my left, shook Riccardo's hand, rapidly transferred the whisk back, and resumed my stirring. "I call myself Riccardo. From Bologna. I am here eight years."
So Riccardo was the real thing. Not only from Italy, but from northern Italy, from Emilia-Romagna, right up there in polenta land, adjacent to Lombardy, the homes of Maestro Martino and Alessandro Manzoni. Riccardo was probably a genuine mangiopolenta, with childhood memories of beechwood and a grandmother with a big spoon. But what was a chef from Bologna doing in Tennessee? You don't meet many people from Bologna. Life there is too good too leave it. I eyed him suspiciously. He was looking at my whisk (and there was no other word to describe his manner) covetously. I turned my back, slightly, thinking: thou shalt not covet my whisk.
He moved closer. I could hear his breathing. If he says "Po-LEN-ta" one more time, I'm going to smack him with my whisk.
Frankie appeared. He had to walk around Riccardo (who, having achieved his spot, wasn't about to give it up). Frankie squeezed in between us, avoided eye contact with this strange man wearing a souffle for a hat, did that quick dip-the-finger trick, and tasted the polenta. He added more salt. "Nothing is simple," he said, "Everything needs to be made with love."
"Po-LEN-ta!" Riccardo said again, looking expectantly at Frankie, who walked away without pausing to reply. Riccardo then turned back to me. He stood, watching.
I stirred.
Riccardo didn't move.
I didn't stop stirring.
"Sooooo," he said finally, "Tell me a thing. Are you coming from New York?"
Yes, I said, I'm from New York. I looked at him. Why did he drape his towel on his forearm, anyway?
"Ah, New York," he said. I stirred.
"How is New York?" he asked.
"New York is fine," I said.
"Ah, New York," he said. The polenta had inched so far up my whisk that I was stirring with the last inch of the handle. I stopped and tasted my knuckles.
"You know," Riccardo said, "I do not know why I have come here to Nashville. I think but I cannot remember. There must have been a reason. I have wanted to go to New York. But when I have come here, I have met a girl. I did not come here to meet a girl. But I have met a girl. I have fell in love, I have got married, and now I am a chef at Alfresco Pasta," he said, adding, after a pause, "in Nashville." He sighed.
I stirred, but, despite myself, I was feeling something -- I don't know what. Sympathy? Pity? How could I feel pity? I'd just met this stranger, wearing a piece of pastry as a headdress, confirming yet again that cooks are some of the the weirdest people on the planet, and now he was wanting both my whisk and to tell me his life story.
"Nashville is very nice," I offered.
"I could have been a New York chef."
He said nothing for a long time, reflecting, staring at the round pot of polenta being stirred by me. "Instead I am a Nashville chef." He was very melancholy. "Love," he said, "Amore."
"Amore," I agreed.