In the very spot where her father had taken his last breath, she took her first steps in the competition.
With a sharp knife she gathered bundles of the frond-tops, as well as some of the younger stalks, coloured enough to have matured for their taste, yet juvenile enough to be tender to the bite. Then she pushed her fingers around in the soil, assessing each of the white bulbs for their size.
She hoicked one from the patch, exposing its tangled web of soil-laden roots. ‘You’re coming with me.’ With two sharp slashes of the knife, she stripped the fennel bulb of its base and stalks. She darted to a tap on the lower level of the garden and gave the bulb a good wash. ‘The soil stays here!’ she called up to the councillor, who nodded, collecting the tray and knife.
‘Andiamo!’ she called, collecting a few sprigs of rosemary on her way through.
Back in the trattoria’s kitchen she added to her collection: ‘00’ flour; semolina; saffron threads; salted butter; a small plastic tub of fresh ricotta; some dried fennel seeds, plus, of course, her little tazza della pasta.
Francesca looked to the wall above the workbench and stopped short, her heart skipping a beat.
Oh no! Where is it?! He’s gone!
She turned in a daze, only to find the councillor already holding the picture of San Francesco Caracciolo. ‘For luck,’ he said with a wink, and the pair shared a giggle before returning to the piazza.
* * *
The sun bathed the stage with its resonating heat, permeating even the PVC shade overhead.
As one o’clock neared, the shadows began to lengthen, but the sun’s rays still caught the backs of Francesca’s bare legs as she stood by her workstation. She could feel the sting of the burn building, but kept her hands and mind busy on her task. A little sunburn was the least of her concerns.
Just as she decided on the final knead of her egg dough, a cry from Elio’s supporters broke her attention. Francesca looked up to see Elio finally return to the stage with his councillor. They each carried a tray of ingredients and utensils, and a leg of goat was flung dramatically over Elio’s shoulder.
With a slimy grin he nodded to Francesca before turning to his crowd of followers. For good – and dramatic measure – he pulled the leg from his shoulder, slamming it down hard on the metal surface of his workbench. The implements and accessories all rattled and, clearly delighted with the melodrama of the moment, Elio feigned rolling up invisible sleeves, cricked his neck and stretched out his fingers. Out came a meat cleaver and BANG, the leg was split in two, bone and all.
Clearly, in Elio’s mind, today was just for show. Frustratingly for Francesca, he regarded this competition as a mere formality, an annoying stepping stone to his second title.
Don’t underestimate me just yet . . .
She couldn’t care less about the culinary fate of the goat leg, or whatever else Elio was about to concoct just a metre or two in front of her. But what was unsettling was that this time, this round, their workstations faced each other, their splashbacks pushed back to back. If she looked up, he was there.
No, head down. Focus on the pasta. Focus on you now!
She divided her dough in two and flattened one mass in her palm so that its size and shape would pass through the pasta machine. In it went for the first press. She pulled it out, doubled it over on itself, put it through again. Then again. She tightened the machine one notch, and back through went the dough. Over and over. She lost herself to the rhythm of the machine, the crank and the smooth metal. It soothed something inside her. And as the pasta sheet continued to flatten and lengthen, the initial thoughts she had for the dish began to sharpen in her mind.
CLANG!
The cleaver came down on the benchtop once again, more loudly this time.
She didn’t look up, knowing that this was all for theatrics. It was textbook ‘Elio Martino’.
She dusted her wooden pasta board with a swish of semolina and lay the pasta sheet down on top, careful not to fold or bunch the edges.
‘Is that your game face?’ she heard Elio murmur over the top of their splashbacks.
‘Go away.’
‘That’s not very neighbourly.’
She scoffed. ‘That’s rich, coming from you.’
The cleaver smashed down again twice in quick succession. ‘Ooofft. You’ll have to do better than that.’
‘I have no interest in beating your banter.’
‘Wasn’t talking about the banter.’
She could just imagine the snide, condescending look on his face. What she wanted to do was pull the crank from her machine and clobber him with it. But common sense prevailed and she simply kept going.
