Keeping the Feast by Paula Butturini Read Free Book Online

bits of furniture, clothes, and household gear to Warsaw arrived. The morning before moving day, I took a notebook instead of a shopping bag to the Campo dei Fiori and wrote down everything on offer at one of the more modest stands in the square. A truck farmer named Domenico presided over that stand, and much of what he sold he grew himself.
    On that sunny August morning, Domenico was selling fat, round heads of soft Bibb lettuce and wild-looking heads of curly endive. He had crates of romaine lettuce, whose elongated heads form the base of many salads, and tight little knobs of red radicchio, to add color. He had fistfuls of wild arugula, which the Romans call rughetta and use to add a peppery bite to a meal. He had foot-long bunches of Swiss chard, tiny new shoots of broccoli rabe, bunches of slim scallions. He had bouquets of zucchini flowers, which Romans stuff with mozzarella and anchovy, dip in a light flour-and-water batter, then deep-fry till golden.
    He had flat, green broad beans, the kind the Romans stew slowly in garlic, onion, and tomato. He had red and white runner beans, which housewives use to fill out a summer vegetable soup, and regular green beans, tiny, just picked, perfect for blanching and serving with a dribble of olive oil and lemon juice. Domenico also had the usual array of tomatoes, each with specific uses: tiny cherry tomatoes, so good halved and turned into a Neapolitan-style sauce; meaty, plum tomatoes used for endless tomato-based pasta sauces; salad tomatoes, always slightly green, as the Romans prefer them. He had Casilino tomatoes, too—small, flat, highly creased, with a sunlit, concentrated flavor, favored by Roman housewives for raw sauces during summer’s worst heat. He had gigantic beefsteak tomatoes, too, meant for stuffing and baking with rice, potato wedges, oil, and herbs.
    That day, Domenico was also selling carrots, celery, cucumbers, lemons. He had skinny frying peppers and fat bell peppers—red, yellow, and green—which the Romans love to roast and serve with oil and garlic. He had yellow- and red-skinned potatoes and the tough cow corn that Europeans seem to think people as well as cows can eat. He had fat, glossy, black-skinned eggplants, and long, narrow white ones with bright purple markings near the stem. He had hot red peperoncini , tiny peppers still on the stalk and ready for drying, and several types of zucchini, some a deep, dark green, others light and striated, none of them much bigger than an American hot dog, all sweet and free of seeds because of their tiny size. He was selling round yellow onions, sweet red onions, and flat white onions. He had garlic and fennel bulbs, their feathery tips a dark, cool green. He also had eggs, brown-shelled, as the Romans favor them, their shells never quite as clean as a shopper would hope.
    Domenico had nectarines and peaches, too, yellow-fleshed and white. He had the tiny figs, some green, some purple, known as settembrini , or “little September ones,” to distinguish them from the first growth of larger figs that appear in June. He had dark purple grapes; fat, round green grapes nearly as big as apricots; and long, narrow seedless grapes, always slightly tart. He had cantaloupes, some with smooth, green skins, others with veined yellow rinds, both with bright orange flesh. He also had bright yellow melons, whose white flesh lasts long after cantaloupes have gone by. He had watermelons, red plums, yellow plums, blue plums. He had yellow apples, green apples, and even a few red ones. He had case after case of prickly pears, so full of spines that they’re best eaten with gloves.
    And of course he had just-picked herbs—parsley, basil, sage, rosemary, and mentuccia , the small-leafed wild mint that Roman cooks often use to flavor artichokes or lamb. At any Italian market, sellers toss in these odori for free once a customer has completed his or her purchases. At the Campo, the usual odori included a carrot, a stalk of