“Festina tarde was a renaissance concept: make haste slowly.”
It’s taken me a long time to get to Under the Tuscan Sun, but it’s not for lack of cooking. On Saturday night, I threw a massive dinner party at my house. I invited ten people, and crafted a perfect menu: apératif of Tomato Bruschetta and Wild Mushroom Crostini, Risotto with Parmeggiano-Reggiano for a starter, and then Under the Tuscan Sun’s Chicken with Lemon and Basil. The dessert was tarte tatin. I spent all day Saturday prepping, making sure that everything would be easy once my guests arrived. I made the tarte dough, precooked my risotto (a restaurant trick I learned while waiting tables), made my salad dressing, tomatoes, and dressing for the chicken, and precooked the mushrooms. I had very little to do once my guests arrived.
… If they arrived. I guess one of the drawbacks of having so many international friends is not being aware of their customs. Example? Apparently, in a lot of South America, it’s considered rude to show up somewhere on time. So while my American friends arrived about ten to fifteen minutes late (like my mother told me, and apparently their mothers told them, you are supposed to do), the others didn’t show up for two hours.
Bear in mind, also, that this is rugby night in France, and France is playing England for a chance in the semifinals. We’ve opened the wine, eaten all the bruschetta, and the five of us have gotten quite tipsy while trying to find a way to watch the game online. When my friends finally arrived, I managed to get everything on the table (I forgot about the salad though), but my chicken didn’t brown the way I wanted to because I’d lost my sense of timing (thank you, Bordeaux), I didn’t have time to take any pictures of the plated dishes, and by the time we’d finished with the risotto and the chicken, we wanted to watch the rugby game, so we abandoned the finished pie in the cold oven and went down to the Champs de Mars.
The French lost, and the next morning I had to wash essentially all the dishes in my house. But later that evening, my friend Emese came by to help me finish the tarte tatin, and as we sat together on my couch, sharing half a pie between us, I realized that this was what I had wanted. Just to haves some friends, even one friend, over to my house, to cook something delicious, and to talk for awhile. I don’t know if I’ve learned how to make haste slowly, but I know that eating that one pie slowly was much more fun than any dinner party could have been.
The Menu:
Tomato Bruschetta
Wild Mushroom Crostini
Risotto with Parmeggiano-Reggiano
Basil and Lemon Chicken
In a large bowl, mix 1/2 cup each of chopped spring onions and basil leaves. Add the juice of one lemon, salt, and pepper. Mix and rub onto 6 chicken pieces (I used chicken thighs) and place in a well-oiled baking pan. Dribble with a little olive oil. Roast, uncovered, at 450 for ten minutes and at 350 for about an additional twenty, depending on the size of the chicken. Garnish with more basil leaves and lemon slices.
Tarte Tatin