10. Breathe in, breathe out
Baby pigeon was considered a delicacy by ancient emperors and pharaohs.
From Squab Producers of California: “Squab today retains its rightful position on the menus of finer dining establishments everywhere.”
From Zio Paolo: “They live in my rafters. They make lots of noise. I eat them.”
Advice from Il Talismano: Dopo averli ritagliati in due, potete appoggiare ogni metà su un crostone di pane, completando la montatura della portata con qualche ciuffo di crescione: accompagnamento, questo, che è quasi di rigore in tutti gli arrosti eleganti.
"After having cut them in half, you can place each half [of the young, cooked, pigeon] on a crust of bread, completing the arrangement of the dish with a few bunches of watercress: an accompaniment almost de rigueur for all elegant roasts."
Watercress (crescione) is de rigueur as a garnish?
I googled it. And sure enough (from MedicalNewsToday.com):
“Watercress is a dark, leafy green grown in natural spring water. For the past few decades, watercress has been used as little more than a plate garnish; however, it is now seeing a resurgence in popularity as one of the next big super foods. An ancient green said to have been a staple in the diet of Roman soldiers, watercress is a part of the cruciferous (also known as brassica) family of vegetables along with kale, broccoli, arugula, and brussels sprouts. In fact, Hippocrates, the father of medicine, used watercress to treat his patients. It was widely available until the 19th century and watercress sandwiches were a staple of the working class diet in England.”
Wow. Watercress.
PAOLO WAS AN UNLIKELY COOK, preferring to tend to the egg-laying hens, his cages of rabbits, the acre of farmland adjacent to the property, the staked vines of merlot.
The cotton cloth on the kitchen table was stained from wine and gravy splashes, and the floor was swept dirt, but the food was always fresh and pure, the flavors vibrant and undisguised, the herbs picked directly from the garden: rosemary, basil, oregano, parsley, sage.
I asked him for the recipe as we prepared to leave. It had been my mother’s favorite: piccione arrosto (sautéed squab). My grandmother, on her trips to visit her brothers years ago, would hide them—deliciously braised then packaged in plastic and several layers of newsprint for insulation—in her handbag (or a deep coat pocket) and bring them back to Baltimore. When US customs officials asked if she were carrying any food items or had been on a farm, she’d smile and say No, not at all officer, and walk on through.
This was the way she did things, my mother, too, and even I to some extent. They taught me well. Some rules were clearly ridiculous, or certainly intended for others, not for her, or us, and in the case of the piccioni, there was no reason why she shouldn’t be allowed to have them, her brother had spent the afternoon carefully preparing then wrapping them, the birds had been young and fresh, now fully cooked, and they were a gift, after all.
(She was caught once on a return, but it wasn’t the piccioni that were found, rather two fresh salami that Paolo had made. She’d had them tucked inside the sleeves of a woolen coat, hidden from the human eye but not from the snout of a customs dog.)
Zio Paolo’s pigeons lived in the rafters of the farmhouse. It was the babies he chose, still covered in their dusty feather coats, still nest bound. He climbed a high ladder and took them before they’d managed to fly, before, he told me, the muscle developed and toughened the meat.
He thought briefly about my recipe request. Piccioni. E basta. Non è niente, he said.
But it was anything but nothing; it was the most aromatic, tender bird I’d ever tasted.
But how do you cook them? My small children were already in the car with my husband, anticipating the long drive back to our home north of Milan.
Paolo tried again: Sale. Pepe. Olio di oliva.
Grazie, zio. I realized what I wanted to know was the magic, his magic, something he could never spell out to me, something he didn't even know he possessed. A recipe is after all nothing more than a framework to which each cook brings his soul. Like a musical composition, the notes (ingredients) are provided, the dynamics, even style hints, but what a musician (cook) does with the information can be the difference between ordinary and unforgettable.
The baby pigeons: where would I find those?
Paolo shrugged and threw out his arms, as if to say They're everywhere.
And if I were ever to come across the little darlings, then what?
With his swollen, calloused fingers at his throat, he demonstrated how to press the windpipe closed, to stop the breath. Sono piccolini, he said, explaining that the birds were very small and one had to be gentle. Five seconds, he said, was usually long enough. I thought of the down feathers, the shaking body cupped in a hand, the tiny heart pulsing below innocent eyes that had seen nothing of the world yet, only the nest, her mamma. The slaughter of the bunny I got over. But this?
Breathe in, breathe out, little one. I want you to live.
