At 18 I married my Italian boyfriend and left Sixties London to set up house in Rome. Life, I told myself, was going to be one long, exciting sun-drenched holiday. I was right about the sun-drenched and exciting bit, wrong about the holiday. I spent much of the next two decades sweeping, scrubbing and trying my damnedest to cook like a real Italian signora. Every morning I walked the one-and-a-half mile round trip to my local market, where I haggled and cajoled ('Go on, throw in some parsley and a couple of carrots, won't you?') before heading home laden like a mule. Haggling and cajoling I was good at. I was also good at staying friendly with stallholders I'd got into arguments with. The mushroom man, for instance - who also sold dates, walnuts and the best olives I've ever eaten - treated me better after an epic row over maggoty porcini which secured the refund I was after and also attracted a small approving crowd. It was when I got the stuff home that the trouble started. This was because what I did with it frequently failed to get the appreciation I thought it deserved. As a result mealtimes, which were always loud and lively, often became fractious too.
As an Italian marrying a nice Jewish girl from Golders Green, my husband did not choose me for my culinary skills. Over time, however, the lack of them (or what he perceived as a lack) became an issue. The most frequent complaints were: 1. I'd used too much salt. 2. I'd used too much garlic (the concept of 'too much' garlic is something I still can't get my head around). 3. I'd overcooked the pasta. Overcooking pasta is unspeakably heinous so this last accusation was the worst. The first indication it had supposedly happened was a look of frozen horror as he took his first bite. Then came an outraged howl of 'ma questa è scotta, per dio!', followed by despairing forehead-slapping as he berated the universe for the fact I was still committing this terrible crime. I always denied the charge hotly, of course. 'Sei un cretino!' (you're an idiot), I would shriek, waving a bitten strand/tube/ shell/quill in his face, 'Can't you see that little white bit? No? Well, it's there!'
While this was going on, our two boys were busily investigating their own pasta for 'white bits' ('white bits' being those traces of raw paste crucial to the al dente bite). Positive evidence was hailed with triumphant cries of 'Eccola!' and handed around for inspection. If there was no positive evidence then the debate raged on. Having trained myself to hover over steaming pasta pots in readiness for that mystic moment in the cooking process when al dente perfection is achieved, I refused to concede I ever got it wrong. And I was equally defensive if my pasta e ceci was criticised.
I got my pasta e ceci recipe from my mother-in-law, Giulia. Giulia was a short, round matriarch who once she got used to my foreignness loved me as the daughter she'd never had. One reason for this was that, unlike the other daughter-in-law, I did not mind being bossed around. Another was the gluttonous appetite that ensured I was wholeheartedly enthusiastic about everything she gave me to eat. Originally from Abruzzo, Giulia moved to Genoa as a young bride and her culinary repertoire reflected both regions. From Liguria there was Trenetti al pesto, Torta Pasqualina (Swiss chard and artichoke pie) and onion focaccia peppered with coarse sea salt that adequately replaced my English toast and marmalade breakfast. From Abruzzo came calamari, patate e pancetta (squid, potatoes and bacon) and the famous spaghetti alla chitarra produced using an old-fashioned wooden frame strung with wires that looked as though it had been knocked together in someone's shed. It was the chickpea and pasta soup, however, prepared according to her great grandmother's recipe, that most surprised and delighted my tastebuds.
Meals in Giulia's household were taken in a small room opposite the kitchen referred to as the tinello. The first time I ate there my husband's young nephew threw a tantrum. As all attempts to placate him failed he was carted off screaming to have his bottom smacked. My family did not use corporal punishment so this shocked me, a reaction Giulia found genuinely puzzling. Her own three sons - whom she was still cheerfully cuffing into their twenties - had always been walloped when they were naughty. And if walloping didn't work then she got out the carpet beater. For really serious crimes, which included fighting and bunking off school, they were made to kneel on dry chickpeas in a corner of the tinello which by the time I arrived was occupied by the television. And there they stayed until their knees were pitted like colanders and they tearfully repented all. According to my husband, however, this torture had done him no harm whatsoever. On the contrary, he credited chickpeas (sublime in pasta e ceci, hateful digging into knees) with teaching him that heaven and hell are merely flip sides of the same coin. And how many eight-year-olds, he challenged, know that?
There are various ways to prepare pasta e ceci. It can include basil, rosemary, onions, even cotechino and pecorino cheese, and every recipe seems to call for tomatoes. Except for Giulia's recipe, that is, which is simply chickpeas, bay leaves, two/three heads of garlic, fresh maltagliati or De Cecco's ditaloni and lots of freshly ground black pepper. I soon started making it myself, serving it every Friday as she did. Fridays are traditional for ceci con baccalà (chickpeas with dried salted cod), and on this day ready-soaked chickpeas can be found in every alimentari, a labour-saving convenience Giulia scorned but I seized upon. In my alimentari it was Signora Anita who took responsibility for this task. (Her husband, Arturo, a Padre Padrone autocrat, sliced the salamis, cut the cheeses and did the 'skilled' jobs. Daughter Lydia ran the greengrocer section, daughter Carla presided over the till, son-in-law Aldo - nicknamed Alain Delon for his sexy good looks - did the deliveries.) Signora Anita and I had a great relationship except when it came to her pre-soaked chickpeas. Some weeks they cooked perfectly, on others they just would not get soft. And when that happened I'd get on the phone and we'd have an animated discussion about it.
For me, if the chickpeas failed to cook properly it was because Signora Anita, however indignantly she denied it, had forgotten to put them in to soak in time. For her part Signora Anita accused me of salting the water too early - she said this made them hard - not adding bicarbonate of soda, or exaggerating the amount of time they had been on the boil. 'You must have been distracted and misread the clock', was how she put it . On one occasion she even said the fault lay with my pot, which was obviously made of 'the wrong kind of metal'. I indignantly denied this, pointing out that I always cooked chickpeas in same receptacle and sometimes they turned out fine.
I had barely replaced the receiver when the doorbell rang. I opened it to find Signora Anita, breathless and minus her white apron, ready to check the situation for herself. After okaying the pot and declaring the consistency of the chickpeas 'un mistero', we spent a few minutes gossiping gleefully about a neighbour who the week before had shredded her unfaithful husband's Armani wardrobe. On leaving, she told me not to worry if the chickpeas were on the hard side. Flavour-wise, she declared, the soup was squisito. In fact, it was one of the best pasta e ceci she had tasted.
The cry 'questa è scotta!' applied only to allegedly overcooked pasta. 'Questo è immangiabile!' was the barked response to anything my husband deemed inedible. If pasta was fractionally on the soft side and the sauce too garlicky, then he joined them to form the thunderous condemnation 'questa è immangiabile e scotta!' Separate or joined, however, I was always ready with a defensive counterblast. Then one day a particularly tempestuous row over a mushroom risotto changed our mealtimes forever. I can no longer remember the details, only the moment when my husband tipped the unworthy contents of his plate onto the floor. After which he retired for his usual post-prandial siesta leaving me to clear up the mess. My first instinct was to bludgeon him with the ancient marble mortar I'd inherited from Giulia. But lacking the balls I pummelled cushions in an impotent frenzy instead. Eventually I calmed down sufficiently to reach a long overdue decision. Never-ever-come-what-may would I cook so much as a fried potato for the horrible chauvinistic biped again.
At first this suited my husband fine. Indeed, the prospect of stuffing gorgonzola and salami until they came out of his ears was most appealing. By day four, however, he'd had enough. Faced with the monotony of yet another panino he began eying the food the boys and I enjoyed with envy. An apology was out of the question - after all, there were people who had choked to death on that word 'sorry' - so he used flattery instead. Suddenly I was hearing stuff like 'mmm, that smells good', 'those rigatoni look wonderful' and 'I'll bet those peppers are done to perfection'. After a couple of weeks I relented, giving him a small portion of pasta al forno for which he was gratifyingly grateful. 'But criticise my cooking again and you're on bread and cheese forever,' I warned as I doled it out, 'so watch it.'
From then on when food was good he muttered 'buono', when it wasn't he kept quiet. This remarkable change was tested the following pasta e ceci Friday. Pasta e ceci touched something fundamental in my husband's core. It profoundly satisfied while simultaneously creating an insatiable appetite for more. Even when less than perfect, once he started eating he could not stop. Bowl followed bowl until his stomach inflated like a beach balloon and he staggered from the table on the verge of collapse. On this occasion, despite two hours' cooking (with bicarb, salt added at the end), the chickpeas had remained stubbornly crunchy. But my husband studiously avoided my challenging stare and said nothing. Eventually it was my eldest son who innocently said the unsayable. 'Hey', he exclaimed, picking a hard lump of chickpea out of his teeth. 'These ceci are like stones! Sono immangiabili.'
At this point my husband deemed it safe to raise his head. 'What are you looking at me for?', he grinned, meeting my glower full on. 'I'm eating it, aren't I? In fact, I'll probably finish the lot.' Which he did, ingesting six or seven hundred grams of half-raw chickpeas, which took his gastric juices 48 hardworking hours to digest.
Mamma Giulia's pasta e ceci
(approximate quantities for a great big pasta pot full)
masses of garlic (I never use fewer than 20 cloves)
8-12 bay leaves
600g fresh maltagliati or ditaloni rigati
8 tins of ready-boiled chickpeas (unless you want to risk soaking your own! In which case you will also need bicarbonate of soda)
vegetable stock cubes
salt
freshly ground black pepper
extra virgin olive oil
If using tinned chickpeas, bring to the boil the garlic and bay leaves in a pasta pot three-quarters full of water. Simmer for at least an hour, then add chickpeas. If using chickpeas you've soaked yourself, simmer them in fresh water with the garlic, bay leaves and a few pinches of bicarbonate of soda until they are (hopefully) tender. This can be done in advance. When you're ready to eat, bring the chickpeas (tinned or home-soaked) to the boil again, adding more water if necessary. Add stock cubes, salt, pepper and taste. When the broth is to your liking, add the pasta and continue cooking until it's al dente. Then stir in several generous lugs of extra virgin olive oil and serve.
This is a hearty dish and should be almost thick enough to stand your spoon in. In our family we like enough freshly ground black pepper to make our tongues tingle.
· Vida Adamoli's memoir 'La Bella Vita' is published in paperback by Summersdale at £7.99
