In a country where food must always be served at the right time and temperature, I find Sunday brunch the easiest way to entertain. I say this for two simple reasons. First, I am a morning person who makes a mean pancake. Second, the prospect of serving pasta to al dente-obsessed Italian guests scares the living daylights out of me. Thirty misplaced seconds of boiling time decides whether or not your friends will go away hungry. And I just can’t take that kind pressure.
A few Italian friends came for brunch last weekend. As we waited for the teapot to whistle and the coffee to ‘come up’, my guests engaged in a spontaneous round of beverage-based trivia. To get a coffee come si deve you have to go to Naples: the water is somehow special there and it makes all the difference. To drink tea come si deve you have to give the pot a teabag of its own. To get a cappuccino come si deve, you must avoid re-heating the milk. Otherwise, the fat evaporates and the foam becomes pure air.
I listened carefully to the canons of properly fixing breakfast drinks and no one caught my fugitive smile. Italians are a rather flexible people, but mealtimes somehow propel all their non-negotiable expectations to the surface. The phrase come si deve or ‘as things must be’ suddenly sprouts out of nowhere, the way mushrooms come up after a rain. In truth, the only safe way to feed Florentines is to fix something they have no idea how to make. Otherwise, you’ll tempt your guests to spend the entire meal telling you how things were supposed to taste.
It took me at least five years to master this principle and double that time to understand that this Italian brand of boldness is not meant to offend the cook. Still—one must be brave when cooking for Italians. Try as you might, there will always be something to correct. In this country, the table is common ground for comment and though your final product may taste good, it still could have been prepared ‘badly’. When it comes to cuisine, the end does not always justify the means.
To Italian taste buds, the art of cooking is like playing a good game of cards. To win you’ve got to know where the face cards stand in relationship to each other. If the ace takes the king and the lady takes the jack, then you’ve got to play that way. Peas take parsley. Mashed potatoes take nutmeg. Spinach takes garlic. Those are the rules. Changing the condiment constitutes cheating. So, to make fried meats come si deve you’ve got to use sage. Proper rump roast calls for rosemary. Tomatoes will always take basil and nipitella goes with funghi. The fact that you’ve never even heard of nipitella is of relevance to no one-you still should have used it to season your mushrooms.
Come si deve does not just apply to food, of course. To be a dottore come si deve you’ve got to really listen to your patient’s heart. To be a hairdresser come si deve you’ve got to look at the shape of your client’s face before you cut her hair. To be a politician come si deve, you’ve just got to stop practicing politics. The phrase ‘as one must be’ testifies to personal excellence and moral soundness. I love to see it used for food. After all, food is a moral issue in Italy.
But the rigid sense of expectation with which Italians await their plates is only partly a question of the palate. Italy is a dynamic country, where rules change with astounding frequency. Laws are written, approved and then quickly re-drafted to suggest the exact opposite. Two-lane roads toss in their sleep and turn one-way overnight. Alley-ways get their names changed and no one warns the neighbors. If you live in a world where obstacles can be found everywhere but on the restaurant menu, it’s comforting to know that food can be trusted to taste as it should. English speakers may combat chaos by keeping single file lines and choosing street names that follow the order of the alphabet. Italians gratify their sense of order by making sure their herbs are in all the right places.
When I turned my attention back to my friends and their brunch-time debate, Filippo was bragging about his intimidating visit to the breakfast cereal aisle in an American grocery store. At the time, he’d felt panicked by the overwhelming amount of choices. In retrospect, he was impressed. ‘In Italy we have only three cereals and still manage to lead fulfilling lives. I don’t know how we do it’, he said, reaching over to squeeze my shoulder.
‘For cereal come si deve, you’ve got to pour cold milk on top and eat it while it’s still crunchy’, I told him. ‘Italians pour their cornflakes into warm milk and wait for them to get soggy. You people may lead life right, but you do breakfast cereal entirely wrong’.
‘So, you like your cereal al dente?’
‘There’s really no other way, baby.’
My friend and I laughed together. It was barely past mid-day and we’d somehow reached a summit of cross-cultural understanding. Some things just are the way they are. And there’s nothing like the sweet comfort that comes with allowing them to be ‘as they must’.
