These Delicious Things by Jane Hodson Lucas Hollweg and Clerkenwell Boy

Author:Jane Hodson, Lucas Hollweg and Clerkenwell Boy [Hodson, Jane, Hollweg, Lucas and Boy, Clerkenwell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2023-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Barny Haughton

RISOTTO MILANESE

The first real risotto I had was in a restaurant a street or two away from the central train station in Milan. I was 14 years old and on my way back to London after a holiday at our Italian cousin’s house near Venice. I was being driven to Milan by a friend of our cousin in her ancient Mini. Every so often the car would overheat and we would stop at a roadside bar to let the engine cool down. I would go into the bar, buy bottled water, and Faith and I would stand and drink it in the shade, watching the lorries thundering past in the heat. The journey took seven hours. We arrived at Milan central station in the late afternoon.

We unloaded the suitcases and bags from the car and carried them up onto the concourse steps, which overlooked the Piazza Duca d’Aosta. I sat with them while Faith drove the car away. A little later, she returned on foot and sat down next to me and held my hand. We were both wearing espadrilles. The piazza dazzled white in the late afternoon sun. I didn’t want to go home.

“Shall we go and eat something?” Faith asked. And so we walked to a restaurant just a few minutes away from the station to have supper before catching the night train to London.

I went back to Milan a few years ago, sat on those same steps and looked down at the new modern piazza and the traffic. I searched for the restaurant, too, with my clear memory of walking into its cool interior, of the old black-and-white photographs on the walls, of the table we sat at and the bare white tablecloth, which was only laid after we sat down.

I never did find the restaurant again. But the memory of the risotto returns to me from time to time, like a guardian angel of endings and beginnings, of sadness and happiness. The rice, creamy yet firm, was an almost sunflower yellow, its rich savouriness beyond anything I had ever tasted. And the little silver dish of grated Parmesan – it felt like coming home.

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