Aftertaste - Meredith Mileti [58]
Secondi
She who forgets the pasta is destined to reheat it.
—Anonymous
chapter 13
“Look,” he says, “so thin you can see through it.” The man behind the counter holds up the piece of prosciutto draped over the back of his hand, a gossamer wisp of meat for me to admire. “Melt in your mouth, this will,” he says, curling his lips into a smile.
“Yes, it’s beautiful,” I agree.
“I’ll put a paper in between each piece ’cause if I don’t they’ll all stick together. At twenty bucks a pound, I know yins don’t want that.” He speaks slowly, as if he means to teach me something, his accent pure Pittsburghese. He curls his hand into a fist and allows the wafer thin pieces of ham to drape over it.
Then, with a bravado-infused flick of his wrist, he delicately transfers the wisps of meat onto the sheet of butcher paper. With one fluid motion he wraps the package, ties it neatly with butcher’s string, and hands it to me.
“A piece for the little one? I got something she gonna like. No prosciutto di Parma. Don’t waste that when she got no teeth,” he chuckles.
“How about this,” he says, thrusting a large, fat-flecked sausage at me over the counter. “Mortadella, a good mild taste. Not spicy.” He cuts Chloe a piece and removes the casing before putting it into her outstretched hands. She begins to gnaw.
“Look,” he says, laughing. “She know what’s good, that little girl.” We both look at her admiringly.
Chloe and I have spent the first few days settling in, buying the various things I didn’t own or hadn’t packed, which, as it turned out, was a lot. In addition to things like shampoo and conditioner, which my father hasn’t needed since roughly 1979, we also had to pick up safety gates for the stairways, little plugs for the electrical outlets, and corner protectors for the coffee and end tables, necessities now that Chloe is becoming mobile.
We’ve been here three days already, and I’ve yet to cook a single meal. The night we arrived, my dad ordered Chinese takeout from the old Cantonese restaurant around the corner, where they still serve the best egg foo yung, light and fluffy and swimming in rich, brown gravy. Then there had been Mineo’s pizza and corned beef sandwiches from the kosher deli on Murray, all my childhood favorites. But last night I’d fallen asleep reading Arthur Schwartz’s Naples at Table and had dreamed of pizza rustica, so when I awoke early on Saturday morning with a powerful craving for Italian peasant food, I decided to go shopping. Besides, I don’t ever really feel at home anywhere until I’ve cooked a meal.
The Strip is down by the Allegheny River, a five- or six-block stretch filled with produce markets, old-fashioned butcher shops, fishmongers, cheese shops, flower stalls, and a shop that sells coffee that’s been roasted on the premises. It used to be, and perhaps still is, where chefs pick up their produce and order cheeses, meats, and fish. The side streets and alleys are littered with moldering vegetables, fruits, and discarded lettuce leaves, and the smell in places is vaguely unpleasant. There are lots of beautiful, old warehouse buildings, brick with lovely arched windows, some of which are now, to my surprise, being converted into trendy loft apartments.
If you’re a restaurateur you get here early, four or five in the morning. Around seven or eight o’clock, home cooks, tourists, and various passers-through begin to clog the Strip, aggressively vying for the precious few available parking spaces, not to mention tables at Pamela’s, a retro diner that serves the best hotcakes in Pittsburgh.
On weekends, street vendors crowd the sidewalks, selling beaded necklaces, used CDs, bandanas in exotic colors, cheap, plastic running shoes, and Steelers paraphernalia by the ton. It’s a loud, jostling, carnivalesque experience and one of the best things about Pittsburgh. There’s even a bakery called Bruno’s that sells only biscotti—at least fifteen different varieties daily. Bruno used to be an accountant