Aldo Buzzi - The Perfect Egg: and Other Secrets

THE PERFECT EGG
AND OTHER SECRETS

by

Aldo Buzzi

Recipes, curiosities, secrets of high- and low-brow cookery, from watered salad to boarding-house pastina in brodo, from Apicius to Michel Guerard, from Alexandre Dumas to Carlo Emilio Gadda, from the Cure de Bregnier to St Nikolaus von Flue

Translated from the Italian by Guido Waldman

With fourteen drawings by Saul Steinberg

BLOOMSBURY

First published in Great Britain 2005
Copyright 1979 Adelphi Edizioni S.P.A. Milano
Translation copyright 2005 Guido Waldman

The publishers gratefully acknowledge Ponte Alle Grazie for their permission to reproduce a number of passages.

Drawings by Saul Steinberg The Saul Steinberg Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS) New York. The fourteen drawings represent works, or photocopies of works, that Steinberg sent to Buzzi from the 1950s on.

This electronic edition published 2010 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

The right of Aldo Buzzito be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 36 Soho Square, London W1D 3QY

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 4088 2078 0

www.bloomsbury.com/aldobuzzi

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'Me, I like my pancake broad but thick/

Traveller on the Milan-Bergamo line

CONTENTS

It was a fine spring day, the sky was the colour of blotting paper. It was hot, one might have been out there at Merida, in Yucatan (Mexico). I crossed the hotel patio; in the middle of the lawn there was the pretence of a well, with two large parrots perched on it the whole time, too many colours by half. Out in the sun-dazzled road, with the short, black shadows of midday, I stopped a carriage, a very narrow thing (it existed only in profile), and had it take me to the Dos Tulipancitos, the best restaurant in town. Its speciality was sopa de lima, lime soup, a delectable, light soup, a feast for the eyes, and, although served hot, just the ticket even in the tropical heat. The lima is a miniature tropical lemon, perfectly round and the size of a golf ball, green like a frog, full of juice, and it doesn't taste like a lemon. Lima, plural lime, is the Italian word for the Spanish lima, plural limas, and the English lime, plural limes. As the prime meaning of lima (and generally the only one given in Italian dictionaries) is that of the well-known metal utensil, the idea of a lima soup is, at first blush, a repulsive absurdity.

For years I've been wanting another taste of sopa de lima. But it is not easy: above all limes are not readily available; they are only to be found now and then at a high-class greengrocer's. Limes are used in making daiquiris - if lemon is used the result is a fake daiquiri.

To obtain the recipe I try writing to Carletto Tibon, whom I knew back then in Mexico City; he it was who had suggested the soup to me when I had gone for a (delicious) meal at his house. Years have passed, and Tibon has retired to Cuernavaca.

Dear Signor Buzzi,

I have your message: If I were kind, I should say I remember you well. But alas no, not even that there were three of you when you went to make a film in Yucatan. Patellani, a Genoese marchese, and the lady, Lattuada, the sister of our good friend. What about you? Do send me a photograph to reawaken my flagging memory. Your visit must go back dozens of years, when my mother was still alive - she came here from Monte Olimpino (Cardina) in 1956. []

As for the sopa de lima, I shall try to obtain the recipe from some Yucatan folk and add it at the end of this letter. I have tasted it: it is light and flavoursome. But what about the limes? We always used to get them from Sicily and from Rossano in Calabria: from the first crop, in November if I'm not mistaken. The tortillas, which are cut into thin strips, can easily be replaced by strips of pancake; in Austria they make a broth and cut in strips of omelette. Here the tortilla is done in a roll (taco), then sliced. However, coming to the soup you're asking about, the tortilla is fried in oil until crisp. In Italy you might settle for potato chips or slices of toast.

Here, now, is the recipe:

Chicken breasts are cooked in salted water with onion and garlic.

Small cubes of tomato are fried and tossed into the broth, to colour it, along with slices of bitter lime.

Once the chicken breasts are cooked, they are cut into thin slices.

The strips of tortilla are fried (toasted).

The onions, limes and garlic are removed from the broth.

The strips of chicken and tortilla are put into soup bowls and the broth is poured over them.

Serve with limes cut in two, which guests may squeeze into the soup as required.

I think that in Italy you might use only one or two limes for the broth, then add lemon juice.

That's all I can tell you. I know a little about cooking, but it's all theory: in practice I'm pretty useless.

With fondest greetings.

My reply evoked a further reply from Tibon.

Dear Signor Buzzi,

Although your letter absolves me from replying, I am answering nonetheless so as to be able to file it with the previous correspondence.

We did get our limes from Rossano in Calabria.

There was a pharmacist (I believe he was killed by the partisans) called Rizzo Corallo. But you could write and ask the mayor, or even inquire at the Chamber of Commerce at Catania or Palermo, and find out who grows them and who exports them.

In any event, as I think I've told you, sopa de lima is not a traditional dish; it was invented in Yucatan but it's been so successful it's now served in every restaurant [] I have written a fair number of recipes for a small fashion paper run by my friends at Garzanti [the Italian publishers]. They were terribly complicated recipes that ended with Toss the whole lot into the dustbin and make for the nearest rosticcieria' []

Warmest greetings from this hot-spot, Cuernavaca.

The limes have arrived. For the broth, instead of potato chips or omelette I have used home-made piadine romagnole (thin slabs of unleavened dough enriched with lard) cooked on the griddle and carefully cut into strips a centimetre wide, so that they do not break; then they are toasted on the griddle, without burning them: half apiadina per person. And I haven't omitted the small onion cut in two or the two slices of lime. The important thing is that the stock should be extra-special, as it always is in poor countries: like Mexico and the Abruzzi With the advent of Progress the chicken mutates into chicken cubes.

I have made a daiquiri by way of aperitif: a small glass of Bacardi rum carte blanche, the juice of half a lime and a small half-spoonful of sugar shaken up rapidly with ice (dry!) in the shaker and poured into a small crystal goblet that has spent some time in the freezer, its rim abundantly frosted with finely crushed ice. The daiquiri takes on the colour of water that has frozen, with vague yellow-green reflections from the lime juice: a nacreous mother-of-pearl hue ideally as depicted by Manet.