The
first thing I ever cooked for Patrick was a birthday cake. We'd only met
a few weeks earlier, in the Trastevere neighborhood of Rome. My friend
Elizabeth came to me one day in May '99 and said, "I met your future
boyfriend today" (which still makes me chuckle) -- he owned the Lavarapido, where she'd gone to
do her laundry because it was one of few places in the city with dryers.
Patrick was the owner: an American, she'd said, my age, cute, and very
nice. And then one lazy Sunday afternoon at Stardust, the bar that would
become our second home in Rome, I showed up for brunch and there he was
outside the bar, sitting on a bench against an ivy-covered stone wall.
He was wearing a blue t-shirt: I remember because it matched his eyes.
(Blue still makes me think of Patrick). He was cute, yes -- but more importantly, he was incredibly sweet, with an infectious, full-body laugh. We
instantly hit it off over our capacity for snark and jokey, sarcastic
comments made at the expense of our new mutual friend Martin, the
American bartender at Stardust who served us our drinks and lots of
conversation to go with them. It was all in good fun, and it didn't take
us long to assemble the beginnings of what would become our group of
expats and colorful Italians that eventually formed our famiglia romana -- our Roman family.
And so I
found myself baking Patrick a birthday cake on June 10th,1999. I'd found a
shop down the street from my apartment off the Campo de' Fiori that sold
some specialty items from the U.S., including Betty Crocker cake mix
and Philadelphia cream cheese. I wanted to make a retro, all-American
cake of the kind my mother made for my birthdays in grade school:
chocolate cake with cream cheese icing. Martin was having a gathering at
his place in honor of Patrick's 27th birthday. But sadly, by the time
9:00 rolled around and I arrived proudly with cake in hand, Patrick had
gone home. Seems he'd had a little too much to drink and had to call it a night before the sun went down. I remember being disappointed --
but it was just like Patrick to pull out all the stops, as early as
possible, and occasionally burn out before the party got started!
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| Patrick in June 1999 |
A few weeks later, I hosted my first real dinner party in Rome
(shades of many future nights to come). I'd invited Martin and
Elizabeth, my English friend Monica and my Italian friend Federico, and
Patrick. This was the summer before I started culinary school, and so
while I enjoyed cooking, I was by no means yet a professional. (I hadn't
even figured out how to work the oven in my apartment. It gave off a
terrible odor every time I turned it on, and I found out the night of my
dinner party that I needed to manually light the pilot light...so I'd
basically been gassing everything I'd baked!) Anyway, that
evening, I served a salad and a pasta, and had made a flourless
chocolate cake, from scratch, for dessert. I served it with fresh local
strawberries from the nearby hill town of Nemi, and a sprinkling of
powdered sugar. Or so I thought. I'd been running low on powdered sugar,
so had picked up another pouch of it-- same brand, almost same
packaging. After sprinkling a few slices of cake with the sugar I
had on hand, I started on the new pouch.
I served all the cake slices at
one time, with a sweep of the wrist and a "buon appetito!" to all of my
guests. We tasted the cake -- always a crowd-pleaser -- and
everyone noted how delicious it was. But some guests said, "you know,
this is interesting, it's really coming alive in my mouth." I thought it
was a slightly strange descriptive for the dessert, but shrugged it
off. And after a few more bites, Patrick said, "it's kind of like Pop
Rocks. Don't get me wrong, it's tasty, but this cake is...frizzante," a
word used to describe fizzy water, meaning sparkling or
carbonated. At which point a light bulb went on in Martin's head, and he
pulled me into the kitchen. "Show me the sugar you sprinkled on this
cake," he said, and when I did, his eyebrows raised: "this is bicarbonato:
it's baking soda!" We immediately broke out into hysterics, Martin
falling against the kitchen door, hand covering his
mouth, cackling. I was doubled over, holding my stomach in happy pain. "Why don't you sprinkle some baking soda on it?" became a running joke at my expense in Rome. And, I was 0
for 2 on cakes.
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| View of Trastevere |
Fast-forward to
the summer of 2003. It was the hottest summer anyone could remember,
when people were literally dropping from the heat all over southern Europe. I was the executive chef of a place called Ristorante Cibus, in
the same Trastevere neighborhood where we passed so many of our days and
nights in Rome. Patrick and I had become pretty inseparable, and now I
was working full-time in our "hood." He used to come visit me at the
restaurant, passing through the air conditioned dining room back into
the kitchen, where it was always 10 degrees hotter than anywhere else,
with 8 burners, 2 ovens, and one huge hot water boiler for pasta -- all
of which were constantly going during the 9-10 hours of our prep and
dinner service. "Oh wow, it's hot in here!" is what he (and everyone)
said upon entering the kitchen, as if it was some revelation to me, standing there melting! Sometimes Patrick would bring me an icy granita
to help me cool off. Sometimes he'd show up when we were wrapping
things up, after a night where I'd been sweating my butt off and he'd
been cooling his off in a chair sipping Jack-and-Cokes next door. For
his birthday that year, we decided that our group of friends would
celebrate with a dinner at Cibus, and I would prepare a special menu for
the group, as well as a very special gourmet birthday cake.
Patrick shared a
birthday with our friend Caroline, and both were present to celebrate
that summer. The meal itself consisted of what was surely a pasta dish and probably a beef fillet for the main course. I don't remember the details. But I
definitely remember that I made a baked chocolate mousse cake with chocolate buttercream and ganache. And
that cake? A winner! It was rich
and chocolaty and light as air. It seemed the third time was a charm
indeed.
This year on June 10th, I did not bake Patrick a birthday cake. I
went out and bought the cream cheese and powdered sugar, got the hand mixer from a friend
here in Rome, and tried to find chocolate cake mix -- just for old
time's sake, and for our friend Caroline, who was back in Rome this year and
spent her birthday with us, with our extended famiglia romana.
But I couldn't bring myself to actually make the cake. Patrick would
have been 39 years old on June 10th this year. Instead, he is forever 38
and 1/2. Patrick was born 3 months and 24 days before I was born, but
now I'm older than he is, and I can't get my head around that concept.
This
year on June 10th, instead of baking Patrick a birthday cake, we
gathered our "Roman family" from near and far, to celebrate Patrick's life. Roman style.
We
returned to Trastevere, our neighborhood full of wonderful memories.
Stardust no longer exists, and though Patrick's laundromat is still
there, sign and all, he sold it when he left Rome in '05 and it's now shuttered. But still, this will always be our neighborhood. So, we found a beautiful
apartment around the corner from those spots. And we came together, from
Rome, from all over Italy and Europe, from Malta, from the United
States. We drank to Patrick's full life, we exchanged stories and
memories, we saw videos and photos of those golden years in Rome that
Patrick felt were some of the best of his life. We ate at one of our favorite neighborhood trattorias,
we toasted to his life, we sang, we cried, but most of all we laughed,
remembering Patrick's full-body guffaw and his capacity to laugh about
everything, even in the face of tragedy. He was able to see the good in
everyone and everything, which is what made Patrick so sweet, so refreshingly optimistic, and so beloved by so many.
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| At Alle Fratte |
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| Erica, Patrick's older sister, with me |
In the whirlwind and haze of that Roman evening, which for me was surreal, I did notice something. Many people
wore white, the complete opposite of the traditional black that
signifies mourning, and a color that celebrates light and life. But more interesting still: even more people wore blue -- unwittingly, I think, but it was Patrick's
color, and it was so fitting. He was the one thing so obviously missing from a birthday party he would have LOVED. But there we were, friends and family, gathered together to eat, drink, and celebrate the life of our lovely Patrick, dressed in colors of light and summer and Patrick's pool-blue eyes. He had, once again, pulled out all the stops and left the party early, way too early. But we celebrated on into the night, and to sunrise, in his honor.
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| Patrick on his 30th Birthday in Rome (with a cake his Mom made and is presenting to him) |
We love you, Patrick, and miss you terribly.
Auguri, auguri, auguri, from your
Famiglia Romana...
There's nothing that captures the essence of the estate romana (Roman summer) like eating a seafood meal at the beach. Rome is only 22 kilometers (about 15 miles) from the Mediterranean Sea, which makes it an easy day trip in a car or even on a scooter. If you're free, it's great to go midweek for lunch, when it's less crowded, or on the weekend mid-afternoon to stay for aperitivi, sunset, and a seafood dinner. Dining alfresco while looking at the water really heightens the enjoyment of a great meal of antipasto, pasta, frutti di mare, and pesce. 
Along the coast near Rome, the beaches of Ostia, Torvaianica, and Fregene are filled with locals coming to enjoy the sun, the sea, the sand, and the foods of summer. Popular dishes include antipasti like alici marinati (marinated fresh anchovies), and polpo con patate (octopus and potato salad), dressed in extra virgin olive oil with a spritz of lemon. These dishes are perfect with a crisp white wine or even a glass of prosecco, as is customary as an aperitivo in Italy. 
After the antipasto, moving on to a primo piatto featuring local ingredients is a must. The classics? Either spaghetti con le vongole veraci (spaghetti with tiny clams in a garlic, olive oil, and white wine sauce), or pasta allo scoglio (a mix of shellfish, shrimp, calamari -- whatever is local and fresh -- with tomatoes, olive oil, parsley, garlic, and a splash of white wine). 
In Lazio and south, oversized paccheri are often featured with shellfish -- we enjoyed this one particular version with shrimp, cherry tomatoes, and arugula. No matter which pasta you choose, these dishes are made to then "fare una scarpetta," using some crusty bread to sop up all the delicious sauce. The go-to main dish along the coastline, the dish by which you can judge a restaurant's seafood chops, is the fritto misto, or mixed fish fry. 
