A Thousand Days in Tuscany by Marlena de Blasi

Author:Marlena de Blasi
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2004-02-15T16:00:00+00:00

OUR CHESTNUT FORAGES continue for weeks, interspersed and sometimes in tandem with porcini hunts. After night rains, in Wellies and wielding viper-discouraging sticks, we follow Barlozzo into thickets of oak woods, stalking wild mushrooms. Fernando and I sing.

“Must you provide accompaniment? Please be quiet,” he hisses.

He’s the only viper in these woods, I think. “Why do we have to be quiet? Who will we wake if we sing?”

“Eventually you’ll wake the moldering dead. You disturb concentration. I start listening to you, start trying to learn the words, and I get confounded.”

Fernando and I slide our full-voice duet down to a vampy whispering of “I’ve Got a Crush on You” and trot virtuously behind our conqueror deeper yet into the woods.

Though he was somewhat proprietary about his chestnut trees, Barlozzo is ruthless about guarding and concealing his own muddy haunts where porcini flourish. Sliding his way into gullies, prowling every chine and niche, lifting the camouflage of ancient ferns, the fraud of gnarled roots, he is conspiratorial, silent save his craggy breathing, as he digs the fungi called porcini—the name a titillating allegory to fat, newborn piglets. And while he’s at it, Barlozzo grabs a handful of berries from between the branches of a juniper, snatches a pinecone fat with the soft white jewels of his childhood.

We take the haul back to our place, wipe the porcini gently with a soft cloth, cleave them into thick, uneven slices which are ready, then, for the sauté pan. A sprig of mentuccia, wild mint, six, only six crushed junipers to a kilo of porcini, garlic, unpeeled, bruised with the thud of a black iron pan, a splash of white wine hissing up the fumes of earth and musk, a fistful of roasted pine nuts, and lunch is ready. Barlozzo is pouring wine, Fernando is tearing into the bread. Buon appetito.

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