Chapter Eight

THE PERFECT LIFE

After a few months on the road and such a transcendent cooking-school experience, I suppose I was due for a spanking.

My next scheduled stage, near Chiusi, came highly touted. The chef, I was told, had been teaching Tuscan cooking for years and would welcome a lightly seasoned student like me, someone with a little macaroni under his belt. It sounded like a great refresher after Torre Guelfa, sort of like Pasta 201. The idea of consistency appealed to me; it would give me something to build on and, possibly, to perfect.

The week kicked off with a welcome dinner at “an authentic Tuscan restaurant” in Montepulciano, where others who signed up for the class had gathered. My heart sank as I pulled into the parking lot. The tour buses were a dead giveaway. They were parked bumper to bumper along the curb, like the elephants under Barnum & Bailey’s big top. A tourist trap. Shit! Inside, the place was a three-ring circus. One side of the restaurant was packed with Germans wedged into tables so close together that the food had to be passed overhead, like recovered luggage. On the other side were my fellow students, thirty-five couples from a small town in Connecticut, chaperoned by a local celebrity who did some cooking on a cable news show. They were already fairly toasted on supermarket Chianti and kept hoisting wine glasses, shouting out “Ay-y-y-y,” as they imagined an Italian might do, even though it sounded more like the Fonz.

The meal was awful, no better than cafeteria food, and it was literally thrown at us by two scornful waiters, their faces as blank and lifeless as the grilled mackerel being served. The others wolfed down everything in sight.

“Oh, I simply love these sugared raviolis,” a woman across from me exclaimed, piling enough on her plate for what could only be a relief mission.

“That’s actually nutmeg, not sugar,” I told her.

“Nutmeg? Can we get that in America?”

I had been on my best behavior up until now. Even during the hors d’oeurves, when one of the tipsy husbands ran down his Sonny Corleone impression, I’d held my tongue. But my self-control, as we know, is about as durable as a strand of pasta. The woman’s question struck the wrong chord and I couldn’t help myself.

“You’re from Connecticut, right? Do you think the fact that it’s the Nutmeg State might be a clue?”

After I was moved to another table, the sing-along started. When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amorrrrrayyyy…. I excused myself and went out for some air. Through the open windows, I could hear another delirious refrain. Volare, whoa-ho, contare, whoa-oh-oh-oh….

This was a new experience for me, of course, thanks to careful planning and good karma; but my luck, it appeared, had about run its course. I had heard all the nightmarish tales about how Americans travel in Europe, the way they insist that everyone, even the pets, speak English. These were the extremes, of course, but this gang…they took the cake. They were like the Joad family, only funny. I had interpreted the clowning as something deliberate, reassuring, a familiar chord they struck with each other to give them an identity overseas. That, at least, was the excuse I’d made for them. Now and then I overheard someone express his fear of traveling abroad for the first time, and I felt a little ashamed of my easy comfort level, but any sympathy soon evaporated with a burst of goofy chatter.

The cooking class itself was held in Palazzo Bandino, an eighteenth-century villa surrounded by vineyards that had once been a private residence but had since been renovated for package tours. Aside from me, only women attended the classes; their husbands either played golf or were shuttled around the knotted skein of commercial tasting sites, buying caseloads of wine to ship home. There were so many of us crammed into the class that we were broken up into flights of thirty or so students, each presided over by the TV chaperone, a real go-getter named Hilda, who herded us into corners of the room where we sat by open windows, drinking wine and watching yellow jackets feasting on the fat clusters of Malvasia and Sangiovese grapes clinging to the vines below the sill.

I was becoming convinced that I’d made a mistake coming here. Even though it was in the heart of Tuscany, with a tradition that stretched back to the Etruscans, there was something too slick, too contrived, about the whole glossy setup. It was a take on what Americans thought Tuscany should be, which, of course, was more compatible with the Venetian or the Bellagio in Las Vegas. Nothing about the place felt as authentic as Figline Valdarno, least of all the chef, who came to us by way of Central Casting.

Luciano Benocci was a strange, cold man with hooded eyes and an operatic girth, like Stromboli, whose apparent lack of English allowed him to plow through a lesson without so much as a shiver of interaction. I don’t think he even looked up at us once. If he did, it was to shoot someone the kind of bloodthirsty stare that silenced unnecessary chatter. Hilda, standing sentry at his side, provided a running commentary. Actually, it was less a translation than her own unique take on the recipes that cried out for serious editing. Ingredients were misidentified, procedures ignored. During a demonstration of sausage making, Luciano trucked out a huge metal device that butchers in Italy used for commercial preparation.

“Where in the world am I going to find one of those in New Haven?” a woman asked.

It was probably rhetorical, but I suggested she could do the same thing at home with a pastry bag and some casings.

“No! Impossible!” Hilda said, throwing me a look she no doubt learned from the chef. “Of course, if you would rather teach the class….”

This was an ominous development (another ominous development). I recognized in her admonishment a certain pattern. Like all cooking-school veterans, I had developed a familiarity in the kitchen and with it a tendency to, shall we say, open my big mouth.

I didn’t say anything more—either to Hilda or to Luciano, who had been following our little set-to with apparent relish. His movements took on a certain jaunty bounce, and after each demo he’d glance up over his knife, first at me, then at Hilda, skying an eyebrow as if it might jump-start a spirited reprise.

I had been in some remarkable kitchens and my tolerance for bullshit was next to zero. In any case, the grace period for chefs was dwindling with each day of experience. I was impatient to learn something new, eager to build on the gift I’d been given. A free-for-all like this seemed like a waste of precious time. The truth was, I didn’t belong in a class like this. In a perfect world, there would have been categories of cooking schools to satisfy every level of student, but since I’d waded into what was obviously an explosive new phenomenon, there was no way to distinguish among the good, the bad, and the cheesy.

The class at Palazzo Bandino seesawed among all three extremes. There was a pici-making demonstration given with a kind of fox-trot monotony, along with four sauces to accompany the dish. The first one—nothing but a sorry paste of bread crumbs, garlic, and olive oil—was ridiculously uninspired and thrown together. (Where was the love that finished Claudio’s and Enrico’s recipes?) I checked out mentally and stopped taking notes. Eventually, Hilda came around to inspect our results, but she made a detour around me that was comical. Most likely I radiated something scary. In any case, she knew enough not to tangle with me.

The chef also must have sensed my frustration. After the class disbanded, he motioned me into the kitchen like a man with a secret. In what I took to be pretty good English, he said, “I going to teach you zump-zing extra.”

He produced a few beefsteak tomatoes, filling several bowls with bread crumbs, parsley, oregano, and chopped garlic. My heart sank again as recognition set in. The bonus was nothing more than a baked-stuffed-tomato lesson, the simplest, most basic of antipasti taught in the Italian equivalent of Home Ec. He’d underestimated me, misread my eager smile. Unable to hide my dismay, I watched with indifference as Luciano mashed everything in a bowl, bound it with olive oil, and popped it into the oven, all in less than a minute flat. Afterward, he let me watch him make pizza, with the emphasis on watch, and not exactly make it, either. The dough had already been prepared, so he rolled out a large round, spooned on some tomato sauce from a can, followed by a sprinkling of grated mozzarella, and slid it into the oven next to the tomatoes. With apologies to Claudio, I clapped twice and said, “Voilà!”

Luciano patted me on the head like an obedient dog: “Tomorrow, you come back. We make gnocchi together.”

I didn’t tell him he’d have to shoot me first.

In the lobby, the Germans and the Yankees were drinking and singing again, this time noisy choruses of their respective national anthems, in a scene that seemed lifted right out of Casablanca. Where was Claude Rains when you really needed him? In his place, however, strolled a character named Patrick, a fifty-something pseudo-stud in a white silk shirt unbuttoned to his navel, tight jeans, retro ponytail, and requisite earring. I’d seen him hanging around the fringes, no doubt to provide some mock-hip Italian–LA appeal. From what I could tell, he seemed to be very popular with the Connecticut wives, who flirted shamelessly with him. In any case, he was a facilitator, an aide-de-camp to keep the paying customers happy. The first words out of his mouth to anyone were: “Can I get anything for you?” He was clearly disappointed each time I responded with an emphatic “No.”

This time, he popped the question and turned away before I answered, certain that he had me pegged as an American unwilling to play.

Instead, I said, “How about a taxi?”

Fifteen minutes later, I was on a train heading north.

I bought a one-way ticket to Florence on the three-forty train. From the outset, I had been hearing about a cooking school outside Lucca that was worth a separate trip, so I decided to head there right away, as opposed to a few weeks later, when I had planned to go.

My bags had never really been unpacked in Chiusi. I swung by the hotel and, while the taxi idled, threw together the rest of my gear, paid the bill, apologized to the young couple who owned the place, and beat it out of there, as fast as I could, before anyone else could say “gnocchi.” There were a few souvenirs from Palazzo Bandino—an apron, some mimeographed recipes, and a gift box containing wine—that I left on the nightstand beside the bed. As callous as it may sound, I didn’t want any reminder of the place. The adventure, so far, had been a remarkable, if unorthodox affair, and I wanted nothing to put a drag on the momentum.

Aside from that maniac in Beaune, this was as close as I had come to making a getaway. I was a fugitive from a generic Tuscan kitchen where the sauces were indistinguishable from the paint being slapped on the barn across the road. It was high time I learned this all-important life lesson: There is no point in staying with people who are wrong for me.

The place in Lucca, I was confident, would offer a radically different approach. It was supposed to be a luxurious, highly civilized school that attracted a more worldly, if not serious, crowd of cooking enthusiasts. The chef, Valter Roman, was renowned for teaching an energetic hands-on class, although I heard stories, depending on who told them, that he had either stomped out or been fired from Le Mas des Oliviers in the days before Frédéric Rivière arrived. In fact, this new setup was literally around the corner from Villa Lucia, a sister property of Le Mas that catered to the same clientele. Rumor had it that if you looked up every now and then, you could see the sparks flying between the competing kitchens. How utterly Italian, I thought. In case the school turned out to be another bust, the situation promised the equivalent of good opera.

The Tuscan Chef, as the course billed itself, was located in Vorno, a tony suburb of villas and bungalows that was established in the fourteenth century as a summer residence for Lucca’s noble families. All winter, they lived within the walled city, where enormous fireplaces provided heat. But in the summer, when the weather turned sweltering, they packed their belongings into elegant horse-drawn carriages and moved, with friends, guests, and servants, to the higher altitude in the shadow of Mount Pisano, where they remained until just after the October harvest.

Villa al Boschiglia was quite the swanky pad, a seventeenth-century gated mansion on the apron of a magnificent lawn, surrounded by a grove of plane trees and feathery thin larches lining the gravel driveway. A giant urn planted with geraniums stood in a nest of fallen pine needles. The place reminded me of Tara before the war, with its sweep and splendor. A faint sweet fragrance filled the air, lemon mixed with lavender, a scent so delicate, so perfect, that I imagined it was piped in from the Guerlain plant.

An attractive young couple greeted me at the door, and thereupon I was escorted into a formal dining room intended for a banquet. Sunlight flooded through the floor-to-ceiling windows, warming the room with golden heat. Valter Roman took my bags, his wife, Julia, replacing them with a slim flute of prosecco. “You look like you could use something delicious to eat,” she said, veddy British.

What a difference a day made. The room was lovely, elegant, well suited to a segment of Masterpiece Theatre. There were several good antiques, muted pastel-colored silks on the chairs and draperies. The table was laid with sculptural arrangements of flowers and tapered candles to match the silks. I can’t remember if there was art on the walls, but archways carved out along one side of the room opened onto a handsome kitchen, where unseen elves and gremlins labored over God’s work.

It seemed as if only seconds passed before a feast appeared on the table. We ate some fresh homemade pasta and creamy sharp sheep cheese sizzling in a casserole; grilled zucchini and roasted peppers; and plump, well-charred boar sausages oozing garlic and wild fennel. The mixed green salad with Parmesan shavings was worth the journey by itself.

Valter Roman was boyishly handsome, fine-boned and slim, with a voice that had traces of a flinty German accent. There was something standoffish in his nature, something impersonal, but perhaps that was Germanic too, although I suspect it had more to do with the circumstances at the villa. Valter was a chef’s chef, the real McCoy, you could see it in his eyes and the way he carried himself in the kitchen, with confidence and imperiousness, but the cooking school demanded more of a stretch, so that he doubled as a sort of jack-of-all-trades. He planned the menus, of course, and taught the daily lessons, but there were various marginal responsibilities, like welcoming the guests, assigning rooms, conducting tours to markets and vineyards, handling complaints, all the frothy details that impinged on his craft. He was running a camp instead of a kitchen, which must have frustrated him no end.

Still, he made the best of it, as far as I could tell, without apparent condescension, and when the guests began filtering in a few hours later, he and Julia launched into action.

It was an odd unusual group, not at all what I’d expected. There were several couples in their sixties drawn from all corners of the States; two longtime friends from Massachusetts—she a working mom, he gay; a few gals from the Deep South; and that familiar compulsive cooking-freak writer nursing a broken heart. As always, there was an awkward cocktail hour during which we stood around shyly, giving each other the once-over. And, as always, I jumped to a few rash conclusions. It was easy, considering the revolving doors I’d spun through, all the characters who’d left unexpected impressions. It was a form of self-protection, I guess, seldom accurate but a resourceful gamble nevertheless. Valter predicted an intriguing week, but judging from appearances it was anyone’s guess.

We cooked together that first afternoon, and later that evening we sat down at the long table and ate platters full of stuffed, deep-fried zucchini blossoms, several types of crostini, paper-thin tagliatelle with rich wild boar ragú, toasted almond biscotti, and tiramisu made from ladyfingers soaked in rum with a coffee-and-cocoa-flavored mascarpone.

The recipes were good, very good, and the working conditions, for the most part, were sprawling and well equipped. It was the best-appointed kitchen I’d been in so far: thoughtfully designed, acres of counter space, airy and well-lit, stocked with everything under the sun, from anchovies to zolfini beans. Valter was incredibly well organized and specific during class, delivering our instruction in a clear, flat voice, but he didn’t do well, it seemed, with group chatter. When people got goofy, as vacationers always do, his back stiffened like a cat; he was unable to hide his irritation. A whisk accidentally dropped on the floor drew a sharp reproachful stare. Silly questions were curtly deflected or ignored. There was no room for horseplay, which erupted from the start.

The older couples were especially loose. They’d come to Italy to unwind, using the cooking school as a layover between sightseeing tours. There was a consensus among them that the experience should be fun. They were good-natured participants, all except for Wendy, a housewife from Detroit who would have preferred a public flogging to pasta-making.

“Oh, what have you gotten me into?” she moaned, blinking at her husband as if it might make him disappear. She held up her apron as if it were a burka. “Well, I’ll wear it, but I’ll never really use it.”

Normally, I might have stepped forward to offer some friendly reassurance. I was, after all, something of a veteran of these situations. But I had my own demon to contend with. During a demonstration of puttanesca sauce, one of the single southerners, a meaty gal named Cheryl Lynn, tapped me on the shoulder. “You have to move so everyone can see,” she said in a drawl as thick as polenta. Not: “Would you mind moving?” Or: “Sorry, honey, but I can’t see around you.” You have to move so everyone can see.

Strangely, no one, aside from Cheryl Lynn, was standing within five feet of me. I didn’t even have time to react, when she tapped me again, this time digging in with a steely little finger. “You obviously didn’t hear me.”

Later, while I was taking a picture of the sauce, she stuck her paw in the frame, ruining the shot. “Oh, why ’scuse me,” she said. Her smirk appeared pleased.

I made every effort to stay out of Cheryl Lynn’s way. Nonetheless she managed to get under my skin. Often, during class, she refused to pass me a necessary ingredient I’d requested; she’d pretend not to hear me or look away with an annoying little gesture. A flicker of satisfaction played on her lips. Sometimes, when I was talking, I’d see her mimic me to a friend. I was determined to ignore it, but it made my blood boil.

The next day, on the way to a vineyard in Greve, we made a pit stop at a rest station and I somehow got locked in the bathroom. It took some doing to extricate myself, and once settled back on the bus, I related the story with plenty of comic touches. “Man,” I said, “I was worried no one would find me.”

“Or no one would care,” Cheryl Lynn said.

I don’t know what I had done to offend this toad, but this was going to end badly.

Valter, who had watched this episode unfold, walked alongside me to a trattoria where we were having lunch. “It seems like you and Cheryl Lynn have gotten off on the wrong foot,” he said.

“Which foot would that be, Valter?”

“Please don’t make this any more difficult. She seems to have some kind of grudge against you.” He looked around uncomfortably. “Did you, perhaps, come on to her?”

“You must be joking!”

“Then maybe you should.”

“I’d sooner come on to a porcupine. Really, Valter, that woman is a menace. I’m usually a good sport when it comes to these group dynamics, but I’m warning you, if she keeps this up, you may find her floating in the bollito misto.”

Cheryl Lynn’s presence in the class formed the perfect opportunity to concentrate on the cooking. Social interaction seemed out of the question. It was a practical solution, but it annoyed me; the world’s downward spiral seems to be perpetuated by such jerks.

Our late-afternoon class offered plenty to distract me. We made pasta the old-fashioned way, by dumping a mountain of semolina onto the counter, cracking eggs into a well in the center, and incorporating the flour from inside the well, slowly working outward until the eggs had been absorbed. I’d done this before, kneading the dough until it was smooth and then feeding it into a little hand-cranked pasta machine. But Valter had an attachment for the KitchenAid mixer that did all the hard work. You just pressed a button and—instant pasta! It was a huge shortcut, just about foolproof, and we made perfectly smooth ribbons that begged for a creative twist. But—what?

Bud and Sally, who were from Florida, suggested spaghetti and meatballs. Valter stared at them, blank-faced, as if they had said Twinkies. In the end, he didn’t even respond, which was probably a good thing. Thankfully, Ed, who was from Boston, bailed him out by mentioning that he loved ravioli, which jarred Valter from his trance. He had just the recipe—a wild–asparagus–filled ravioli with truffle butter. Once we had the pasta, it seemed like a perfect match, and we set about the process with liveliness.

WILD-ASPARAGUS RAVIOLI WITH TRUFFLE BUTTER

½ red onion

1 garlic clove

9 oz. very thin asparagus

extra-virgin olive oil

1 chili pepper, minced

7 oz. ricotta cheese

salt and freshly ground pepper

½ cup grated Parmesan

pasta for ravioli

1 egg, beaten

¾ stick unsalted butter

black truffle, shaved

Prepare the filling: Chop the onion, the garlic, and the asparagus and sauté in 2 tablespoons of olive oil, adding a little bit of water (or stock) after a minute of cooking. Cook until vegetables are soft. Add the chili pepper and combine. Transfer to a metal bowl, add the ricotta, and mix thoroughly with a wooden spoon. Season to taste with salt, pepper, and ¼ cup Parmesan. Combine.

Prepare homemade pasta, rolling out the dough into thin sheets. Take one sheet of pasta and lightly wash the surface with the beaten egg. Mark, but do not cut, the positions of the ravioli with a cutter or knife, and place a teaspoon of filling in the center of each one. Cover with another thin sheet of pasta. Using a cookie cutter or knife, cut and seal into the desired shape. Cook in salted boiling water until al dente, about 4 minutes.

Combine the butter with ¼ cup Parmesan in a saucepan until just melted. Mix with the ravioli and serve immediately, with a few light shavings of truffle on top.

Serves 4

We also rolled out a few pasta sheets and cut them into fine ribbons of tagliolini, which we served with a simple cherry-tomato sauce that, according to Valter, “you cannot beat.” There was nothing to it; everything came together in a little over five minutes.

CHERRY TOMATO AND BASIL SAUCE

extra-virgin olive oil

1 garlic clove, minced

1 ¾ lb. cherry tomatoes, quartered

salt and freshly ground pepper

handful of whole basil leaves

homemade pasta

grated Parmesan

Heat the oil in a frying pan and lightly fry the garlic. Add the cherry tomatoes, salt and pepper well, and top with basil. Cook 5 minutes. Mix with fresh homemade pasta and top with fresh basil leaves and grated Parmesan.

We’d been cooking for almost two hours without a break when Valter said, “Tonight, one more classic: risotto.” He spoke in a respectful, rhapsodic voice when describing the legendary preparation, which I instantly related to, having spent countless nights doubled over a steaming pot, stirring like a maniac in an attempt to produce the creamiest possible consistency. It was a mainstay of my repertoire. Short of a great roasted chicken, there was nothing more comforting than well-made risotto. The sweet butter, perfumey wine, savory stock, nutty rice, and any number of assorted mix-ins—they were an aphrodisiac to those of us for whom eating was a sensual experience.

“I must tell you…,” Valter said, pausing to great effect and looking meaningfully into our eyes with something close to indecency, “I am a lover—a lover of risotto.”

Amen, brother.

“And to capture my heart, to make my insides explode with pleasure…”

Uh-oh, this was getting weird.

“…you need patience. Patience, and the right stuff.”

“Exactly what right stuff?” a woman named Deanna asked on cue.

A flurry of titters leaked out when Valter said, “Rice, for one thing. You need a good starchy rice, like Carnaroli or Arborio, which adds the proper glue. Basmati, or any other type, doesn’t have the right texture, and the essential ingredients don’t blend with it. The same goes for stock. It has to be very good, no cutting corners, otherwise you sacrifice all flavor.”

Earlier, he had started a vegetable stock for our benefit, infusing a huge pot of water with a sliced zucchini, three carrots, a stalk of celery with its leafy crown, an onion that had been cut in half and roasted in a dry pan, and a few denuded parsley stems that were otherwise headed for the bin. There were several other ingredients at our disposal as well, although it was not a foregone conclusion whether we would use any of them. Everything depended on the type of dish we desired. Risotto, in a funny way, was something of a kindred spirit to pizza; it tasted wonderful on its own, but there were times when that plain cheese pie begged for pepperoni, peppers, or mushrooms. Likewise, you could dress the risotto in almost any accessory, so long as you didn’t go too wild, like the “special” at my local Rowayton Pizza, which was the works, just about everything in the shop. In the past, I had been partial to saffron and sea scallops. Valter suggested we start more simply, perhaps sticking to some sliced porcini mushrooms, which we had admired in the Pistoia market. They were flawless, the color of deerskin, with massive meaty stems and a good peaty scent.

The stock made from those few timid vegetables was a bit too pallid for my taste—perhaps they needed more time to release their flavor into the water, or maybe a chicken to punch up the character—but Valter blended it so skillfully with the other ingredients that it flattered the rice without compromising the overall brightness. What it lacked in tanginess, he made up for with panache and pleasure, managing to convey the romance he felt to all of us who were stirring away at our stations.

On paper, my risotto technique must have resembled a fancy football play, what with all the x’s and arrows scrawled over my recipe, the crossovers to and from the stove, furtive hand checks, and deep passes of the ladle, with the occasional fumble. I felt like a quarterback under siege, everything coming at me in a flash.

“You seem too high strung, too on edge,” Valter said as he came up behind my mise-en-place. “Relax. You’re not doing brain surgery here. Risotto is very forgiving, as long as you are well organized.” He poured two generous glasses of nebbiolo and handed one to me. “Let’s have a little drink, enjoy the evening. In the meantime, we can tend to things, keeping an eye on our risotto.”

In what seemed like slow motion, we made another portion together: shallots sizzling in a pool of butter and oil; rice glistening in the fat; a glass of wine reduced to a faint, flowery whiff; six cups of stock trembling just below the boiling point; grated Parmesan as fine as talc; dull gray sea salt; more sweet butter, more; a generous sprinkling of chopped mint leaves; and, of course, the mushrooms, firm, smooth, beautifully shaved, and just wilted.

It was nothing more than an assembly-line operation, not at all worth the nervous breakdown I’d been cultivating, and a crowdpleaser that managed to boost our collective mood.

After dinner, everyone drifted off into separate areas of the villa, some to read, others to play backgammon. A few even elected to watch TV, which seemed almost disrespectful to the magnificent surroundings. There was no great urge to talk, no effort made to get to know one another. Even at Le Mas, where guests eventually squared off like Afghan tribal factions, there had been a tug of curiosity that drew us into each others’ lives. That was the beauty, I realized, of these vacation-oriented cooking schools. The social aspect, the camaraderie, was an attraction all its own. The diversity here in Tuscany might provide a compelling little sideshow, but aside from the two older couples traveling together, no one wanted anything to do with anyone else.

Like anything else, I decided, it came down to the right mix of personalities and serendipity. Why couldn’t the Yankees win with a lineup of Jeter, A-Rod, Giambi, and Mussina? My guess is that after the games, some went to read, others to play backgammon or to watch TV or…In any case, this group wasn’t headed to the World Series.

This was not good news for me. The last thing I needed was solitude, to be alone with my thoughts. Instead I decided to take a walk through the village. The full moon was so bright it seemed to live on the rooftops, shifting through the line of the trees, revealing a cluster of narrow pathways on the other side of the road. Stefania, the local kitchen assistant, lived somewhere over there, and I volunteered to keep her company on her way home.

She was a pretty young thing, olive-skinned and so solemn, with wispy chin-length hair that fell over one eye. Her slight frame was boyishly bony; even in her twenties, more girl than woman. I had watched her grind along in the kitchen, where her presence seemed almost ghostlike, chastened. A guardedness had claimed her, and we walked in silence for much of the way. As we came to a juncture near a ruin, she stopped suddenly, as if deciding whether to go on.

“I wonder…” Stefania said, with studied seriousness, “would you like to have a drink at the bar in the village?”

It was a very sweet invitation. Lissa’s Caffé was the only game in town, the place everyone eventually passed through at some point in the night. The phone booth in its courtyard served the entire scene. At a little after nine, Lissa’s was already packed; Stefania knew all the kids who hung out there, probably from childhood, since they had all been schoolmates. Still, she had no compunction about walking in with me, a man more than twice her age, and talking earnestly at the bar over ice-cold prosecco, without any distraction.

Was this, I wanted to know, a place her friends always came back to when they were in town?

“You assume we move away,” she said in careful, unaccented English.

“Well, yes. It’s usually the natural life cycle in towns like these. The younger generation goes off to school and returns sporadically to visit.”

“That would be the case in a perfect world. Maybe in America, where everything goes according to plan.” She smiled wryly, and we both laughed. “But you are in Tuscany, which is small and mostly poor, and we don’t have the wherewithal to move on like that.”

“Perhaps when you are finished with your apprenticeship…,” I suggested.

A look of discontent tinged with irony crossed her face: “Is that what you think I am doing? An apprenticeship in the kitchen of Villa al Boschiglia?”

I let my silence pass as affirmation.

“You don’t know how funny that sounds,” Stefania said humorlessly. “It may seem that way, but it is nothing more than the most menial position. Something to keep me from going mad.” She lit a cigarette and inhaled, wearied by any discussion of her situation. “An apprenticeship! I should have thought of that when I was a teenager, before…”

An acquaintance caught her attention in the mirror over the bar, and waves were automatically exchanged.

“Before what?” I said, prompting her.

She looked directly into my face and seemed to know that whatever was written there had already missed the point.

“Before I took my vows. It is an Italian girl’s duty; we dedicate ourselves to service, solitude, and poverty. No matter what goal we reach for, it always comes to that.” She took a sip of prosecco, looking over the top of the flute to see if I was following the spirit of her remarks. “Do you know, I speak five languages? And there were four years at university, where I trained to be an elementary-school teacher, for which there is no vacant job. The one school in Vorno is permanently closed. So I took the only position available: setting tables and washing up. That is the extent of my apprenticeship, as you call it. Otherwise, I live with my parents, which is like living in a box. It would be wonderful to—how did you put it?—to move on, but without any prospects, I cannot afford even to go to another town on my own. I am trapped here.”

She talked to me, drinking and smoking, for at least another hour. At one point, there was a commotion in the bar as another young woman barged in, sobbing uncontrollably. A swirl of available bodies converged around her, clinging. Stefania went to see what was wrong, weaving her way inside the huddling crowd.

“She accidentally hit Bella, Villa Lucia’s dog, with a car, and killed her,” Stefania reported.

The hair on my arms touched all nerves. Two days earlier, I had rung the bell at Villa Lucia, hoping for an invitation to cook there, and a sweet, goofy-looking mutt bounded out, jumping playfully at me.

A few minutes later, the girl stumbled toward us and collapsed, weeping, in Stefania’s arms. We folded her into a seat and got her a drink, something strong and homemade, as she buried her head and tried to smother cries in a tangle of shirtsleeves. She held a napkin to her face and moaned into it. Young couples followed the action from tables, uncertain whether to approach. Eventually, I enlisted one of the boys to take the girl back to the villa, where someone could keep an eye on her.

I returned to the bar. “She’ll be okay; she just needs something to distract her,” I said to Stefania, with too much apparent empathy. Her face responded, curious. What? I obviously missed something. To change the subject, I gave Stefania a thumbnail sketch of my ongoing cooking odyssey, then instantly regretted it. The words that tumbled out of my mouth sounded privileged and proud.

“You have a perfect life,” she said, without a trace of irony.

“You must be kidding. Really, it’s not at all what you think, and certainly it’s anything but perfect.” There was no point in dredging up the whole sad story, but I shared a bit of the kind of turmoil the last three years had wrought.

She listened, occasionally nodding, without revealing much of what she was thinking. When I had finished, she said, “You will get past it, and then you will resume your perfect life.”

Stefania’s words continued to resonate during the next few days in Vorno. Even though they were far from the mark, there was an element of truth in what she had said. However you gauged it, I was a survivor, ahead of the game, doing what I love, healthy, and free. There was no box out of which I couldn’t crawl; I wasn’t out of prospects—or trapped. Over time, I’d gotten some clarity on my messy life, there was some daylight. The divorce, as friends assured me, would turn out to be a blessing in disguise. I could rebuild my life, emerge from under the pile of debt. As far as my romantic portfolio went, more rebuilding was in order. The worst anyone could lay on me was a gift for chaos. Or my inability to perfect an Italian meringue.

My life was anything but perfect, but plenty of promise lay ahead. I decided to enjoy the rest of my travels. I owed myself that much.

The remaining cooking scheduled for our sessions was straightforward. We made steaks grilled with porcini mushrooms, arugula, and zolfini beans; eggplant Parmesan; chicken cacciatore (in place of rabbit, which the others flat-out refused) on cakes of polenta studded with green beans; more sea bass baked en papillote; a high-octane limoncello; pear-and-marzipan tart; Amaretto peaches with cinnamon ice cream; and chocolate biscotti. Valter conducted the classes with as much enthusiasm as possible, but I could tell from experience that he was going through the motions, like an accomplished jazz musician moonlighting in a wedding band.

“Should we make a chicken stock for an extra blast of flavor?” I asked, during the preparation for a wild mushroom soup that had the old-world elegance of vichyssoise about it.

“We could,” he said, “but I don’t think it will make much difference. We’ll use water instead, to save everyone the extra work.”

This seemed a bit perfunctory coming from Valter. Since we’d arrived at Villa al Boschiglia, he had stressed using only the best ingredients in our cooking, so cutting corners like this seemed out of character.

There were other signs that indicated his frustration. A few times, on the verge of introducing a new recipe, he’d look up from the page, scan the gallery of wide-eyed empty faces, and ultimately scrap a preparation in favor of something simpler, something I’d already learned elsewhere that required no practice. Usually the class would respond with enthusiasm. They would snap into action, completing each detail with mechanical precision, but it never inspired much enthusiasm in Valter. He was a dedicated teacher, but he drew his energy from the students and, in this case, there just wasn’t enough intensity to wind him up.

Once, he brought out an orange-scented ricotta grain tart, tucked lavishly into a hand-painted tin that anyone could tell was a family heirloom. He was flushed and impish for a change, and it was clear that he felt like a character in a Hallmark special, sharing a treasure that had been given to him by some revered guru. Serving with exaggerated ceremony to the chatter of indiscreet mouths, he gave each triangle a sprinkling of confectioner’s sugar like pixie dust from a sorcerer’s magic wand. Everyone dug in with gusto, as Valter’s eyes danced with anticipation, but it was impossible to disguise the letdown.

Deanna leaned into me and whispered, “What are we going to do? He’ll be insulted, but I just can’t eat this.”

“I could pretend to pass out,” I offered. “While everyone is reviving me, you can launch this stuff.”

She turned colors, trying hard not to laugh. We were beginning to attract Valter’s attention when Cheryl Lynn, to her credit, bailed us out. With a loud whoosh, she pushed her plate to the middle of the table and groaned.

“I can’t put this stuff in my mouth! Y’know, Walter, Americans don’t consider rice pudd’n any special kinda dessert.”

He stared at her darkly, frowning, unable to speak.

“It’s not rice, Cheryl Lynn,” I said. “It’s spelt, a kind of grain.”

“Then why don’t you just say grain? Talk plain English, instead of using all these highfalutin words. No one is impressed.”

“Calling it grain would be like reducing this glass of wine to a color, red, instead of calling it pinot noir, which would be more than you could grasp.”

“Am I going to have to separate you two?” Ed asked, only half-joking.

Deanna leaned toward me and whispered, “I think you’re entitled to take a whack at her.”

Cheryl Lynn stood there openmouthed, a hand to her chest, as though wounded. I had to admire her performance.

Before anyone knew it, the other couples inched closer, waiting to see which of us drew blood, and Valter, having recovered, was urging us diplomatically, but firmly, away from the counter and toward the upstairs drawing room, where there was some prosecco waiting to be served.

Later, Valter discussed the menu for our next class, and upon hearing it was gnocchi, I knew it was time for me to move on.

If I had any second thoughts, they were eliminated at breakfast the next morning. Cheryl Lynn smiled dismissively at me as I pulled up a chair, then launched into a monologue about the travel demands of her corporate job and how she softened the grind by staying at the same hotel chain in every city.

“Explain to me about these Courtyards,” Valter suggested, triggering a treatise on the amenities and how one could “always get a big batch o’ eggs in the mornin’ with hash browns, grits, and lotsa buttered toast.”

As she was explaining this, Tiberio, the kitchen assistant, brought me some strong Italian coffee in a thimble-size cup. As he put it down, Cheryl Lynn interrupted her piece, glowered, and wrinkled up her nose.

“I don’t know how you can drink that stuff,” she said, without looking at me. “It’s awful.”

“You ought to try it,” I said. “It’s the way Italians drink their coffee.”

“I don’t have to try it. I can smell it, and it stinks.”

Valter gave me a pleading look, and I shrugged to let him know he had nothing to worry about. Instead, I thanked Tiberio for making the coffee especially for me.

I stood looking at Cheryl Lynn across the table, not saying anything, just wishing I had a whipped-cream pie in my hand. Finally I broke out laughing. I couldn’t help myself. She was as unpleasant as anyone I’d met, but it had gone past that; it was so irrational I was becoming amused.

“Cheryl Lynn,” I said, “you are just great! It’s a shame we can’t spend more time together. Something tells me I could grow to like you.”

“You’re nuts!” she said, and I laughed more heartily than before. Then she flapped both hands at me and turned back to the others, extolling the bounties of the Courtyards’ mini-bars.

I set out after breakfast, leaving earlier than planned. Even so, I felt satisfied that I had scored some great recipes and, despite the odious Cheryl Lynn, an appreciation for the mellow approach of the others. In a way, I kind of envied the way they enjoyed themselves without taking the work too seriously or especially to heart. Unlike so much of French cooking, which demanded precision, many Italian recipes invited a more casual, improvisational touch, and my uptight approach was beginning to melt away. I had seen that the payoff for my classmates was, perhaps, the breezy spirit in the kitchen, the understanding that their cooking will never win Michelin stars or even forks, but that it will also never fail to please. For most people, that payoff is enough, it makes the entire experience worthwhile. There wouldn’t be gnocchi and tiramisu if that weren’t so.

I kept turning that over on the slow train to Naples. Surprising as it seems, I was questioning my mission to cook as the great French and Italian chefs cook. It was hard to imagine, considering the goals I’d set for myself: mastering technique, perfecting new recipes, staging a dining experience extraordinaire. All of those things still mattered, perhaps had even intensified over the long months on the road, but I had to admit that here in Italy my outlook had changed.

I was beginning to understand that there are two kinds of cooks. There are the perfectionists, who spend their entire lives chasing down the green flash, the moment when all the lessons they have learned, all the mysteries penetrated by trial and error, come together on the plate and send a jolt of rapture to the senses. And then there are the enthusiasts, those who cook for pure selfish pleasure, to make something delicious and satisfy whatever creative impulse drives them toward that end. For the longest time, the perfectionist in me had prevailed, but that strategy, as you’ve seen, didn’t always bring me satisfaction.

Some of my old anxiety had resurfaced in Valter Roman’s kitchen. I still felt compelled to learn as much as possible in the limited time allotted, and the energy I put out, my single-mindedness, obviously ruffled the Cheryl Lynns of the world. I had no interest in making vanilla ice cream (again), biscotti (again), pesce al cartoccio (sea bass in parcels–papillote!—again), or arugula-filled Parmesan baskets. (Hadn’t everyone seen Martha Stewart’s or Rachael Ray’s version?) I had nothing to gain from a polenta demo. Did I say that—or was I merely thinking it? No doubt I was giving off some antsy vibes. In any case, the “farewell dinner,” an event I missed by leaving Vorno a day early, would be rife with comments about my intensity and impatience.

Still, the enthusiast in me had emerged at Claudio’s and in the last couple of days at Valter’s. I found myself watching a few of his demos without taking notes, just leaning against the counter, appreciating the rhythm of the cooking process, the syncopation of steps, the music of pots hitting the stove, the movement of the class, like a repertory company, across the kitchen floor. Everything moved at a nice, easy pace. The scene, to me, was like good theater—or at least a rehearsal. The actors kind of knew their lines and had a general idea where to stand, how to move, when to take a bow. You could tell that everything was coming together. And me—I felt like an understudy in the wings, waiting to make my entrance.

Near the end of the week, Valter had taught us how to make a pear-and-marzipan tart slathered with a creamy dark-chocolate sauce that turned a group of innocent bystanders into full-fledged cooks. I had been lusting after just such a recipe. Kate Hill had a similar version, but we’d never gotten around to making it. But something about this one caught everyone’s attention. My classmates pitched in with exuberance and delight, even Wendy, who volunteered to undertake the final assembly. We had a lot of fun putting that baby together: cooking the pears in a simple sugar syrup, rolling out a pâte sucrée, making the marzipan and the chocolate sauce. It was a group effort from top to bottom. We all worked together in a calm, relaxed manner, and when we clinked glasses in a post-show toast, everyone, even Cheryl Lynn and I, found an encouraging word to say.

Rain beat against the windows as the train rolled through Umbria toward the palatial contours of Rome. The hills were slick and stained with dampness, as if someone had just given them a second coat of paint. Somewhere after Assisi, my compartment emptied out and a new cast clambered aboard: a mother and her pregnant daughter, who began unwrapping sandwiches the moment they entered; a dashing older man with a persistent cough who helped me move my bags into the corridor every time someone needed to pass; and Aislinn, a very pretty Irish woman who was something of a mentor in her dissociated way. She had just been laid off from her job at a mortgage firm and was kicking off a yearlong odyssey through Europe and Africa, blowing her retirement account to keep from ever feeling indebted to that company, although when she talked about the place it reminded me of the way I talked about my failed marriage. Aislinn was tense and disoriented and bitter, but there was something courageous about her that I admired…another lesson in how to keep moving forward, looking for more.

She loved to cook, it ran in the family, of course, and she spent the next hour paging through the folio of recipes I’d collected. It felt reassuring, explaining them to her; each one had a story attached that was like a snapshot of my trip. I started with an impressionistic portrait of Bob Ash, whom she happened to know by reputation, and I had her laughing, even indignant for me, by the time we got to Cheryl Lynn, whose accent I’d perfected even if I laid it on a bit thick. Aislinn seemed charmed, even moved, by these odd, endearing sketches, and we opened a Super Tuscan I had picked up in Lucca that was intended as a gift.

“You must be quite a cook,” Aislinn said, while perusing the list of ingredients that went into Claudio’s gangrenous francizina.

The remark sounded ludicrous, and I swatted it away like a mosquito. But…I wondered. What was the upshot of all these exploits, this handiwork?

The variety of recipes, seeing them through Aislinn’s eyes, had caught me off guard. I’d forgotten how much cooking had been done on my odyssey, and all of the ways it had been presented and explained to me. The concentration of work, the range of experiences was even richer than I’d realized. Meanwhile, I’d benefited from an extravagance of advice currently rumbling around my head. Baffling observations that had been neatly filed away—the proper trussing of a roast, the browning of meat, paring of citrus fruit (a technique Fred Rivière taught me called pelé à vif )—seemed profound, profoundly enlightening in this context. All that dabbling, the groping and fumbling, the embarrassment, coalesced into a foundation that seemed impressive, even if I knew it was as unstable as plutonium. Quite a cook? I wasn’t at all sure, but somewhere along the way, I’d become a decent work in progress.

In any case, I needed to practice what I’d learned, to crank out a few dishes that were fresh in my mind. Where would I start? Kate Hill’s rabbit stew? Yannick’s omelet? Valter’s eggplant Parmesan? Arpège’s tarte Tatin? I fantasized a few fabulous menus that would tantalize my friends. Those Friday-night dinners, it occurred to me, would never be the same. Could I pull it off? Would my soufflé rise or tank? You’ve got soup! You idiot! It was anyone’s guess.

I continued to shuffle the possibilities on the gorgeous but hair-raising drive from Naples, bypassing Sorrento, and up the slender switchbacks that lead to the mountaintop village of Sant’Agata. On either side lay a sheer drop with a corresponding drop-dead view worthy of being the last one I might see in this lifetime. We were sui due Golfi, the driver told me—between two gulfs: Salerno to the left and Naples on the right, with a commanding view to the south of sirenic Capri.

It was stunning, like a painted 1950s movie backdrop, a turquoise paradise, but difficult to absorb. The car took the turns like a juiced-up Wild Mouse. Before leaving Naples, I had wolfed down a prosciutto-and-cheese sandwich, and now I struggled to keep it down as we rocked and rolled our way upward. My stomach lifted as if in flight above the receding city of Sorrento, which twinkled in the late-afternoon light. “It is only seven kilometers,” I mumbled through tightly clenched teeth. “How long will it take us to get there?”

Augusto, my driver, threw me a wicked little smile. “About half an hour. The roads are very narrow. It takes time. Enjoy the view.”

The view. I couldn’t focus on anything that might require motion. The slightest movement, this way or that, would lead to an embarrassing accident via the open car window. Instead, I folded my slack body into the crease of the seat and tried to hypnotize myself with a silent singsong mantra. Sooey-dewy-golfi…sooey-dewy-golfi…above the coast of Amalfi…sooey-dewy-golfi.

It worked for a while, until Augusto lurched into a lower gear. I needed another drastic tactic, aside from screaming, Stop the fucking car! I remembered a remedy my boating friends used to ward off seasickness, entailing a fixed point on the horizon. Frantically, my eyes sought out something rock solid that would buy a little time.

“I thought Mount Everest was in Tibet,” I said, acknowledging a cloud-capped peak occupying the middle of our windshield.

“That is Vesuvio,” said Augusto, with appropriate respect. “The black stretch underneath it is lava and rock.”

Information was exchanged about its last recorded eruption, which, if I got it straight, amounted to a Richter-size hiccup. “It is supposed to have small discharges every eight years,” Augusto said, “but the last one was in 1941. As you can expect, we are worried about the next one. Everyone thinks that when it comes it will be big.”

I did the math—sixty-three years. Could I be that unlucky? I wondered.

Incredibly enough, my luck was already changing. The Relais Oasi Olimpia in Sant’Agata was a sight for sore eyes, a renovated mansion transformed by a pale-peach wash that glinted like a jewel in the setting sun. Right off the bat, I realized I had come to a magnificent place, a hidden gem. The hotel was perfectly sited at the top of a knobby rise, with views of Capri through a copse of trees. The grounds surrounding it were vast and lushly landscaped, with bougainvillea growing up the walls to sweeten the air and lavender lining each of the practical quarry-stone paths.

“The pool is beyond those trees,” Augusto said, pointing to a thick oasis of palms, “and behind it, the heliport and tennis courts. If you feel like a swim, I will organize a lifeguard and a bartender, though not necessarily in that order.”

A Campari would have done nicely to rinse the nausea from my mouth, but before I had time to answer, another voice rang out.

“Ciao, Bob—I am Carmen, and you…you are late.”

The woman, Carmen Mazzola, was surprisingly young to be the executive chef and manager of such a posh hotel. Just twenty-seven, dark and strong, with Valentine-shaped lips and a full figure that she used to good effect, she looked as though she had stepped out of an Italian family comedy. She was exotic and offbeat and warm and high-spirited, as if she were trying to supply enough enthusiasm for two. In every respect, she was a full-fledged character, a natural, who traded on her personality as a way of compensating for her age.

“Here is what you are going to do, Mr. Late Pants,” she said, eyeing my luggage with pop-eyed astonishment. “Get settled in your room. There is a bathtub there as big as a pond. Take a little dip. I will send up a glass of wine, which you undoubtedly will pay for. And then come down to where the rest of us are waiting for a get-acquainted dinner.”

The room was fantastic, a lovely honey-yellow mini-suite, with a bed that looked big enough to hold André the Giant, a tiled terrace the size of Hoboken, and the enormous tub with a Jacuzzi that I immediately swung into action. A moment later, a knock at the door brought the wine, an icy Livia Felluga pinot grigio no less, in a balloon-shaped snifter. Perfect: Screw the cooking school; I was never leaving my room.

Instead, I did a mental inventory of Neapolitan specialties. At their most basic, they are an American’s idea of Italian food, like the dishes we encounter in those red-checkered tablecloth joints in the Little Italys of this world: spaghetti and meatballs smothered in red sauce, stuffed tomatoes and eggplants, deep-fried mozzarella (in Carrozza), Caprese salad, braciola, and, of course, pizza. As the Italians say: “Chow, baby!”

When I finally struggled into the dining room, it was alive with unusual spirit—a vibrant, sophisticated energy that I hadn’t encountered on the circuit until now. There were six people seated at a table with Carmen: two couples from the West and a pair of women from Chicago, all of whom were around my age, attractive, well dressed, and already acquainted. They were engaged in a lively conversation and rolled me right into it, a debate about the vicissitudes of American pasta.

“The dried variety doesn’t do it for me,” a woman said gently. “It’s not at all sensual.”

“You find pasta sensual?” asked her seatmate, a man whose kind amused smile invited her to take the plunge without fear.

“Honey, you just haven’t lived until tortelli turns you on.”

Another man who sat next to Carmen said, “Now that you mention it, I always suspected Tortelli, a lawyer from the Heights. He and you must have gotten it on while I was away on business, that trip to Singapore.”

“Relax, we just noodled around. Anyway, as we were saying, I prefer getting fresh.”

Encouraged, everyone played along and exchanged barbs, political views, opinions on books and music and art and, of course, food. It was a welcome relief from the crew at Villa al Boschiglia. This was my kind of table talk, like good theater. By the end of the night, we were all fast friends.

Some time after dessert, as Carmen replenished the limoncello in our pencil-thin glasses, Giuseppe, the pale young desk clerk with almond-shaped Picasso eyes, drifted over to our table and stood at attention, with his hands clasped behind his back. He fixed his stare at a place on the wall behind us and without any fanfare broke into a gorgeous rendition of “O Sole Mio.” In any other restaurant and with any other group, this might have devolved into a sidesplitter, but Giuseppe had a rich, beautiful tenor and he sang the familiar ballad so convincingly, and with such passion. The tender liquid lines of his delicate mouth formed each word as if it were poetry. It was a moving performance, and when he finished, we broke into spontaneous and sincere applause.

Giuseppe’s face blazed with joy as he bowed slightly before heading back to his post at the reservation desk.

“Have you ever experienced anything like that?” asked Jeff, an IT manager with a secret artistic dash to him. He was a dedicated blues guitarist with an encyclopedic knowledge of rock ’n roll.

All of us nodded in incredulous agreement. We decided not to belabor it, so as not to talk away the magic. At any rate, for the next four nights we never failed to summon Giuseppe to the table after dinner, to which he eagerly responded. “I believe you like ‘O Sole Mio,’ he’d say gallantly, before reprising the song. One night, we begged for an encore, and he delivered an equally lovely version of “Come Back to Sorrento.”

The cooking classes benefited from the same kind of civility, with everyone pulling for one another and lending sympathetic hands. It would be safe to say that the facility contributed to the overall good mood, an airy glass-enclosed conservatory attached to the kitchen that was the gold standard as far as places like these went. There were clean, stainless-steel work surfaces with acres of elbow room, good natural lighting, state-of-the-art equipment, and unlimited varieties of food, all just steps from the master kitchen, where we gravitated after prep. All of us enjoyed cooking in that felicitous room. Through it all, Carmen Mazzola set the tone with her brand of manic gregariousness. She kept up a hilarious running commentary that combined elements of teaching with social direction that gave the enterprise a loose salon-type feel.

“I’ve been thinking that you and Carmen might get something going,” suggested Debbie, a wiry, dark-haired woman from Chicago with a boyish boniness who had taken me on as her personal reclamation project.

“I’m sure she’d be a terrific companion at any father-daughter function,” I said. “Besides, if I am not mistaken, she’s already involved.”

There had been mounting speculation about Carmen’s relationship with the owner of the hotel, a lovely mutt of a guy named Salvatore, whom she ordered around like the hired help.

“What!” Carmen, listening in, nearly lifted off her bar stool like an Orion space capsule. “He’s so…old!”

“Really?” I asked, dispirited by her explanation. If we had guessed correctly, Salvatore was somewhere in his mid to late fifties, possessed of an eternally youthful spirit. “Exactly how old is old? Are there any great-grandchildren in the picture?”

“He’s forty-six…” I knew I shouldn’t have asked. “…and I am a mere child. What would I do with such a whiskery geezer?”

“Well, that leaves me out,” I said, looking my most pitiful.

Carmen draped an arm playfully over my shoulder. “On the contrary,” she said, displaying a brilliant grin. “Haven’t you heard? Americans are my weakness. C’mon, baby, why do you think there is no lock on your bedroom door?”

As it was, I had nothing to worry about—or secretly wish for. I had it on good word that Carmen and Salvatore had been carrying on a longtime torrid romance. There was a wife stashed somewhere nearby, attached irrevocably by Church doctrine, but the marriage, from what I’d been told, had been finished for years. Salvatore had, in effect, bought the hotel for Carmen, sent her to Accademia della Cucina in Rome to cultivate her passion for cooking, and endured her constant needling, playing Desi to her Lucy.

“He adores her,” said Lynn, another classmate. “Just look at the way he follows her around.”

The night before, I noticed Salvatore sitting by himself at a table in the corner of the dining room, pretending not to keep an eye on us, and waved him over to join our group.

“Yes, yes, Salvatore,” Carmen insisted, “be friendly to these lovely Americans.”

He nodded in agreement, even though he didn’t understand a word of English. And then I had seen the adoring look for myself and knew for sure they were in love.

“Today, we start by making tomatoes stuffed with risotto,” Carmen said, as we filed behind our places in the test kitchen. Also on the agenda was a spicy calamari casserole, and roasted peppers stuffed with an olive, caper, and Parmesan paste, all of which were simple and delicious recipes, though fairly unchallenging. It didn’t matter. The class was captivated and Carmen proved patient and capable, but I had done this kind of cooking before, and with more flair. One recipe, however, grabbed me by the short hairs. It was an attractive starter called fagotino di zucchini, which I have made consistently since returning from Italy and routinely share with friends who refuse to leave without the recipe.

FAGOTINOdiZUCCHINI

2 long zucchini, sliced lengthwise

½ cup olive oil

1 Tbl. mozzarella, chopped

1 Tbl. ham, chopped

2 Tbl. butter, cut in pieces

grated Parmesan

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Slice each zucchini lengthwise into four pieces and sauté in olive oil over high heat until golden brown but not crisp. Immediately drain the zucchini on plenty of paper towels.

On a flat surface, arrange the four pieces of each zucchini in an asterisk shape—two pieces crossed over each other, two on the diagonal so that a little mound forms in the center—overlapping each. In the middle of the asterisk, place a teaspoon of chopped mozzarella and an equal amount of ham. Press down slightly with the heel of your hand.

Fold over the flaps of zucchini and secure with a toothpick. Dot each package with a tablespoon of butter. Sprinkle with grated Parmesan, and bake 10 minutes.

Makes 3–4

I loved making these appetizers because they combined so many decadent flavors in one fell burst and because they drew a smile each time they were served. But, when it came to the nitty-gritty, they didn’t deepen my understanding of Italian cooking.

The truth was, I was growing bored. It had set in while I was in Vorno, making more salsa di pomodoro and more tiramisu, and my prospects in Sant’Agata seemed no more promising than that. Carmen’s classes were lively and well taught, but they were loaded with introductory technique—browning onions slowly, so they wouldn’t burn; making risotto with enough hot stock; peeling and seeding tomatoes; removing pinbones from fish. I knew all this, more or less, even if Carmen’s methods improved slightly on those of others before her. In a quiet moment, while my classmates were stuffing their tomatoes, I asked to see the syllabus for the rest of the week.

It was a good program, from what I could tell, with plenty of cooking mixed in among the excursions, but it was familiar terrain: more eggplant Parmesan, more fresh pasta-making, more braciole, more stuffed vegetables, and, just in case I had doubts, more gnocchi and more tiramisu. Carmen must have read the disappointment on my face.

“You don’t know everything, Mr. Kitchen Wizard,” she said, after I had paged through the schedule and respectfully pronounced it excellent. “I’ve seen you in the cucina; you could use some good advice.”

It was hard to argue that point. There was plenty I didn’t know, plenty to learn about handling food and combining ingredients and the way things cook, even kitchen etiquette. But, not to take anything away from Carmen, I wouldn’t add much more to my knowledge here. These classes were structured for the beginner; it was a wonderful introduction to Italian cooking, certainly a lot of fun for a week, but I needed to practice and apply what I’d learned. I realized that my most fulfilling experiences, if also the hardest, had been working in the restaurant kitchens, cooking food for other people to eat. I needed to cook—on my own, in my own kitchen, experimenting with the recipes that were already spewing out of my notebook like overdue homework.

In any case, I needed to get home, to put everything together. I wanted to cook for my daughter and my friends, to show off all the amazing things I’d learned. To bring some order to my kitchen, some calm to my life. I needed to sort things out—at least for myself.

That evening, before dinner, I wandered down to the hotel lounge and had a glass of wine with Debbie, who had just gotten married and positively glowed with contentment. Needless to say, I envied how she felt, being so happy and in love. I was reluctant to throw any kind of cloud over that, to discuss the depth of my loneliness and how disoriented I was still. Besides, I felt a little ashamed of the enduring sadness and the shadow it cast.

“You know, a few of us have been talking and we think you’re a great guy,” she said, indifferent to my embarrassment. “We really enjoy your company, all of us. I really mean it. In fact, just an hour ago,” and she named one of the wives, “was saying that if she wasn’t already married, you would be a great catch, and we all, the four gals, pretty much agreed with her. It’s really a shame that you are in such a terrible place. That woman who did a number on you…Any woman worth your heart doesn’t treat a man that way, or send him a ‘Dear John’ letter by email. Especially after you planned to take her on a four-month vacation. That’s too damned cruel, and besides, it’s just not classy. In any case, you deserve better.”

I let Debbie speak her piece without saying a word. I knew she was right. I’d probably known it all along. Here in the free-spirited kitchens of Italy, I was beginning to come to terms with my need to let go of the anger and frustrations of the last several years. In any case, I wanted some closure. I wanted to return to my real life, refreshed and ready to be on my own, or, if it wasn’t too much to hope for, to find something crucial that was mine.

“It’s time to put your life back together,” Debbie continued. “It’s time to be happy for a change. You’ve got so much going for you. It’d be horrible to waste a minute pining after someone who doesn’t love you. Take it from me—I can’t get enough of my husband, and I’m willing to bet he’d say the same about me. You know the feeling. My guess is it was all one-sided with you and that woman….”

Debbie continued to talk, but I was no longer listening. Suddenly jumping up, I said, “Excuse me, Deb, but I have to go to my room.” I darted off toward the staircase near where Giuseppe was tending the bar.

“Hey…wait! You’re not going to do anything drastic, are you?” she called after me, worried she’d said too much, had pushed too hard.

I spun around and gave her a radiant smile. “You bet I am,” I practically shouted. Then I took the stairs two at a time.

There wasn’t much to work out. I had a handful of cooking schools left on my itinerary: two in Sicily—in Catania and Taormina—an enoteca in Parma, followed by a one-day stage with Paola Budel in Milan before flying back to the States at the end of next month. I managed to cancel them all without sparking a vendetta. Something told me there would be other gnocchis and tiramisus on a future plate.

I took care of all these things and many more, and when Carmen finally cornered me after dinner, I stood without speaking for a minute.

She wore a sympathetic look on her face, and said, “You need to do something fabulous tomorrow so that you remember this week at Oasi Olimpia.”

I had opted out of the scheduled group excursion to Capri, a place more suited to lovers, wondering if, instead, Carmen and I might spend the day together, working on something special at the stove.

“I’ve done better than that,” she said, with an enigmatic grin. “Meet me in the lobby after you’ve had your breakfast.”

The next morning, after the others left for Capri, I reported to the front desk, where Carmen was already lingering by the door. “We’re walking,” she said, hooking her arm through mine and leading me off the property. We made our way with caution along the pavement, careful to sidestep the Vespas buzzing like angry hornets as they took the sharp turn up the hill toward the Amalfi coastal roadway. A few blocks away, on Via Deserto, she detoured into Lo Stuzzichino, a modest trattoria right off the main drag. We pushed through strands of plastic beads that obscured the doorway into a little caffè with a small communal dining room located off to one side. The place was deserted, aside from a few saucepans simmering noisily on the stove.

“Hello, everybody—I’m here!” Carmen sang out, as she cruised behind the counter and opened a few refrigerated display cabinets, poking through the dishes of cold antipasti. “Where are you all hiding?”

“Jesus, Carmen, you’re going to get us shot,” I said, pulling her by a sleeve toward the door.

“Look at all this pretty stuff,” she said, wrinkling her nose comically. “Let’s take a fork and help ourselves.”

“You’d better not.” A bear of a man loped around the corner from a room in the back.

“Mimmo!” Carmen cried, jumping into his arms. “I’ve brought you Bob from America, who knows absolutely nothing about Italian food.”

He wrapped my hand in his huge paw and welcomed me to his family cucina. “My father will be here in a moment. This is my cousin,” he said, acknowledging another man who paraded through the kitchen balancing a metal tray on each hand. Mimmo’s wife, Dora, was preparing the front room for lunch. “You are going to cook with us?” Mimmo asked.

I glanced at Carmen, who nodded wilily.

“I would…love that,” I said, accepting a folded apron.

The whole family converged on me like a sacrifice, and for two high-speed hours we cooked up a storm. Paolo De Gregorio, the padrone, was a small, wiry man with the energy of a teenager, ever more peculiar considering he’d cooked all day long for sixty years running. It left him no time for anything as frivolous as learning English, so we covered all bases in his mother tongue. Paolo spoke slowly, with comic emphasis, and pointed fitfully as he talked, enabling me to understand and follow directions—lucky for me, because we worked at a breakneck pace.

Paolo had a culture to uphold. It may have been lunch, but no one was going to leave his place with an inch of room remaining under his belt.

We made mouthwatering potato croquettes, oozing mozzarella and strong green olive oil, coated in a light batter of herbed bread crumbs; a typical well-salted bruschetta, that found the perfect balance of tomato, garlic, and olive oil; knuckle-size marbles of bocconcini wrapped in basil leaves and transparent pink curls of prosciutto, skewered and grilled until nicely browned, which Paolo called spiedino; big plates of sliced, spongy local mozzarella draped with roasted peppers and sun-dried tomatoes and gently bathed in oil; a thick hand-kneaded tagliatelle-like pasta called scialatielli—“shall-ya-tyel-li,” Paolo enunciated, hitting each syllable like Mel Torme—that he sauced with salsa di pomodoro and slabs of sautéed eggplant; a powerful emulsion he called zuppa di verdure del colle “Deserto” that was so thick he served it, reheated, on slices of Parmesan-encrusted crostini; a couple of those sumptuous tartino di melanzana, filled with chopped ham, eggplant, mozzarella, tomato bruschetta, and Parmesan; and a local specialty of shrimp grilled on fragrant lemon leaves and crusted with a dense layer of chopped capers, peppers, and oil.

My favorite preparation was a Neapolitan variation of arancini, the traditional breaded risotto balls that were deep-fried until the molten mozzarella core erupted like Vesuvio. I’d made one in Vorno, with Valter Roman, that was less elaborate and not as jeweled with bits of ham and onion, or as creamy. This version was unforgettable and fairly easy to prepare.

ARANCINI

½ onion, chopped finely

½ cup plus 2 Tbl. olive oil

2 oz. ham, chopped finely

¼ cup dry white wine

3 Tbl. fresh tomato sauce

2 ½ cups beef stock

salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 lb. Arborio rice

¼ cup Parmesan, grated

4 oz. mozzarella, small dice

1 egg, beaten lightly with a little salt

fine bread crumbs

In a medium saucepan, sauté the onion in 2 tablespoons olive oil. When softened, add the ham and cook a few minutes, then add the wine and the tomato sauce and reduce by half.

Add the stock and season to taste with salt and pepper. When it comes to a boil, add the rice all at once and boil vigorously until the water is absorbed, about 10 to 12 minutes. Stir in the Parmesan to taste. Transfer the rice to a metal bowl and cool thoroughly. Adjust seasoning if necessary.

Wet your hands with water and roll the rice into golf-ball shapes. Poke a hole in each with a finger, push in a few dice of mozzarella, then spackle over the hole with more rice. (These can be prepared to this point and kept refrigerated up to one day in advance.)

Wet your hands with water and wipe a little around each rice ball. Dip each one into the beaten egg and then roll in the bread crumbs. Deep-fry batches of arancini in olive oil heated to 330 degrees, until the rice turns a rich golden brown (about 4 minutes). Serve piping hot.

Makes between 22 to 30, depending on size of arancini

Of course, someone should have warned me about the molten mozzarella, because I blistered the roof of my mouth with the first impetuous bite. The antic little dance I did between the stove and the watercooler struck everyone there as funny, an indication, I suppose, of Neapolitan humor. In any case, I left plenty of time before the next bite, which Paolo hastened by plying me with flutes of prosecco.

He spun me from recipe to recipe with hardly a breath in between, feeding me the luscious spoils of each until I thought I would burst. Cooks like Paolo can’t help themselves, I concluded. They are compelled by the urge to feed people, and the generosity to share their kitchens with anyone who aspires to cook as their Italian ancestors did.

I realized I wasn’t anxious. I was having fun. My broken hand didn’t even hurt anymore.

“We did well for a morning,” Mimmo said, as he walked me around the corner to a coffee bar run by yet another cousin. It was a hot October afternoon, and the combination of food, alcohol, and sunshine were working their languorous spell.

“For a morning!” I said, laughing at the absurdity of his reflection. “My friend, I’ve done well enough for a lifetime.”

We hugged each other and said our good-byes. With considerable effort, I beached myself at a table on the terrace, a contented solid creature learning to thrive on his own. Then I put my head on my hands and fell into a deep, satisfied sleep.