Mister Minestrone

Sim ple Cook ing ISSUE NO. 84 FIVE DOLLARS Hanging Out at Mister Minestrone the No-Name A Diner Story (with Recipes) The Story So Far: On a run-down part of Water Street sits There are...dozens of versions of minestrone, which is a a tiny, brightly painted, nameless diner. Alec, our nar- really solid soup thick with vegetables and cheese and rice ra tor, who owns a used-book store in the row of Victorian or pasta and intended, with bread and wine, to constitute commercial buildings that loom beside it, has gradually the entire midday meal of hungry working people. become a regular, getting to know the Professor—the burly, — The London Sunday Times (March 29, 1959) bearded proprietor and grill cook—and Greg—the Gen-X In America, “minestrone” is just a fancy name for vegetable waitron-busboy-dishwasher. In the last episode, Alec and soup. We buy it in cans. We fi nd it offered as the soup of his wife, Jo, neither of them cooks, fretted over what to the day in coffee shops.... Around here, it isn’t a dish, serve the Professor, who, with his daughter, Jess, has been it’s a cliché. In Italy, on the other hand, and especially in Liguria, it’s not just a dish but an eagerly appreciated invited to their house for sup per. Tonight is that night. one—a celebration of the season. —Colman Andrews, FLAVORS OF THE RIVIERA T SIX-THIRTY SHARP the doorbell rang. With Sasha wrig- Agling frantically between my legs, I opened the door Y MOTHER MOVED this January to a retirement com- and ushered in the Professor, who, in a heavy maroon munity on the coast of Maine, and I stayed a bit parka well-dusted with snow, looked a bit like a sardonic Mafterwards to help her settle in. Each member Santa. Jess turned out to be taller than I had expected, is required to attend several dinners a month in the with bright-dyed orange hair showing black roots, an common dining room, and one of my major tasks was to earring in one nostril, and a charming smile. She stooped accompany her when she went the fi rst time. To do so, down to greet Sasha and was immediately subjected to however, meant making a reservation the day before, and a wild bout of face licking. what with one thing and another we didn’t get around to As I showed them where to hang their coats, the this until two days before I planned to leave. Professor produced two bottles. “Vino rosso,” he said as Soon after she moved in, I went to the main I took them. “Dug from the depths of my wine cellar.” building to pick up a copy of the menu for the week. “Dad!” said Jess. “How about grabbed off the My mother had heard that the place was known for the discount shelf at Green Street Wine and Liquor?” quality of its meals, and, on the menu at least, several The Professor was unfazed. “That shelf is my seemed quite inviting to me—except, of course, the one wine cellar,” he said. “In fact, in this town, it’s just about being served the night we would be eating there. On that everybody’s wine cellar.” evening, diners were offered a choice between moussaka We had progressed to the kitchen, where I had and pasta alla puttanesca. As it happens, I like both these been busy when the doorbell rang. (Jo, as usual, had just dishes, but it seemed to me rather unlikely that the chef at gotten out of the shower and was frantically getting dressed a Maine retirement community would manage simultane- upstairs.) I led them over to the counter where I was fi nish- ously to cater to cautious palates and imbue these dishes ing up my big contribution to the meal. with enough gusto to bring them to life. ❁ ❁ ❁ It is beyond my powers to convey the full experience of the meal, starting with our entry into the huge NOW, NEARLY EVERYONE, no matter how resistant to cooking dining hall. It proved to be nearly empty, except for two they may be, encounters at least one prepared edible in or three large tables occupied by various cliques of very life that forces them through that barrier as if shot from elderly folk (my mother, at eighty-one, seemed positively a cannon. For me, this item was garlic bread. I loved it; I young in comparison), who obviously dined there every craved it; and yet, made by other people, it always seemed night. They were being served by a two-person waitstaff, to promise more than it delivered. The dizzy-making smell one male, one female, both in their teens. of bread and garlic heating in the oven, the anticipation I had imagined a room full of lively chatter, but concluded on page 6 this place, despite the bright lights, was crepuscular, even slightly creepy. We had been told to expect to join —to even lots of ingredients, while others interpret it as signifying that be welcomed by—another couple at a table for four, and the soup is meant to be a meal in itself. Italy is a country not being gifted at small talk I had rehearsed a few con- of hearty soups, so neither distinction takes us very far. versational gambits. A waste of time: there were no such Depending on where you look, you can fi nd support for couples, and we were led to an empty table for two, with either camp; the Waverley Root quote is unique in put- no one making any attempt to intercept us. ting the lie to both at once. Not only was his minestrone My mother did try to strike up a conversation conspicuously restrained in the number of ingredients, it with a solitary woman waiting for the rest of her party at was far from providing a meal. Before it, Root enjoyed an a nearby table, who not only responded pleasantly but appetizer of bianchetti (fried baby anchovies) and, after it, offered to lead us to the closet where we were meant to feasted on cappon magro (a rather overwhelming composed hang our coats. This exchange gained a certain poignancy dish of seafood and vegetables), plus dessert. when she repeated the offer three more times before her When push comes to shove, “minestrone” is—as companions arrived—as well as reintroducing herself and Anne Bianchi honestly admits in FROM THE T ABLES OF T USCAN asking our names again each time she did so. WOMEN—“a rather nebulous term....” Or, put another way, Meanwhile, Tiffany, our waitperson, had begun it is one of any number of dishes that Italians know when to bring our food. What appeared to be blueberry scones they see...cook...eat, and are content to leave at that. If turned out instead to be full of bits of olive and onion— anything, the word suggests something special—a soup tasty enough for me to later ask for a second round. As raised by some culinary magic to a higher power. As Col- a starter, my mother had ordered the “toss salad.” I, less man Andrews writes in FLAVORS OF THE RIVIERA, trustingly, had chosen the minestrone. (We both ordered In Genoa and vicinity, a particularly well-made minestrone, the moussaka.) In this, my mother made the better bet; with an abundance of ingredients—the kind one might although drenched in dressing, the salad was composed of make to honor a guest, for instance—is sometimes called mixed baby greens, with no iceberg in sight. On the other “Signor Minestrone,” or, in Genoese dialect, “Scignore hand, the minestrone was, well, minestrone...which, in my Menestron.” In local slang, a menestron is also a gourmet experience, might be defi ned by the absence of anything or connoisseur. you really like in a soup, with the remaining lackluster This means that the foreign cook who wants to ingredients boiled down to mush. master the art of minestrone in its largest form will fi rst As it turned out, attendance at dinner that have to learn the secrets of many different regional cooks, evening was unusually low (abetting my suspicion that since each part of Italy goes about preparing it in its own those who ate there by choice knew what was coming signature way. This was obviously beyond my scope, and, and opted out). My mother has been back since in other truth to tell, my ambition, so I decided to exit the fray company, and her spirits have been considerably lifted waving a white fl ag, and content myself with fi nding a from where they were when we made our way back to few minestrone recipes that (a) were to my taste, (b) had her cottage. But I found that I couldn’t get the taste of a manageable list of ingredients, and (c) offered a range of that minestrone out of my mouth. It was, if anything, perspectives on what makes a soup a minestrone. as good as any version I had sampled before, but that With this in mind, I turned fi rst to Pellegrino was pretty small praise. What was it about this soup Artusi’s great classic of Italian cooking SCIENCE IN THE that I don’t get? Or, to put it another way, was there an KITCHEN & THE A RT OF E ATING WELL, first published in 1891. authentic way of making it that I might actually like? Artusi concludes the introduction to his minestrone recipe by stating that he had spent some time polishing it to perfection, and the text that follows after is lengthy enough to give Minestronesome idea how he did so.* The next dish was the Genoese variety of minestrone with [SERVES 6] pesto.

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