Episode 3: Bruschetta with the Catullos
I recently finished reading Under the Tuscan Sun and I had such warm feelings thinking about the wonderful way Frances Mayes laid out her adventure in Italy. I was transported into that wonderful world of sun and antiquity. While reading, I was especially interested in Mayes’s description of bruschetta, which is basically toasted, crusty bread, which is then topped with many various things.
When I was in grade school, my morning routine was to forego any breakfast at home. Only a large mug of coffee, very sweet and very light—then tear up the street (one block) to my best friend Joe Catullo’s house. Invariably, he was never quite ready to go, so I was invited into his parents’ kitchen. Picture a big square table, spindle-back chairs, and kitchen cabinets with glass-pane doors up to an eleven-foot ceiling. Matteo, Joe’s father, was always seated in the chair that faced the back door through which I entered, and he always had an old-fashioned toaster—a sort of pyramid with hinged doors on each side, that toasted the bread first on one side and then the other—sitting in front of him. “You wanna soma toasta?” he would ask. Always, I answered “Yes!”
This started a ritual which never varied. Joe’s mother would take a large, round loaf of bread, hold it against her breast, and with a long, sharp knife, cut a one-inch slab of the tasty staff of life. The slab was cut in half and handed to Matteo, who then toasted it to perfection, and then called for the butter. The butter was never kept in the refrigerator, but rather on a shelf behind the glass cabinet doors. It was always very deep yellow, and very soft and spreadable. When the domed butter dish was presented to him, he then spread a thick layer of the nutty stuff on the warm crusty toast. I ate it without ever stopping to say a word, until it was gone.
Now that was bruschetta!
