The Big Week, and onwards from there
Prosecco & porchetta (exhaustion, too)
Hello, friends! I don’t know where to begin this week, so I will begin with fregola.
Every RSFP intern gets the chance to design a dinner menu from start to finish as the culmination of their time at the Academy, and mine is on Thursday, June 22nd. For my menu, I decided to undertake the project of homemade fregola, the Sardinian oven-roasted couscous-like pasta. It was a gradual decision. My initial idea came months ago upon browsing Instagram and seeing a photo of a saffron-tomato-seafood situation from Hart’s back in the day. The seafood-studded, reddish-gold broth appealed to me, and I thought, “That would be good with fregola.” I mentioned the idea to my friend and coworker Giorgia, who suggested that we should try making the fregola ourselves for my intern dinner. A few days ago, we started the fregola process.
I used to think homemade pasta was a silly concept — a waste of time when we can buy such high quality dried pastas at the supermarket. Now, while I still see dried pasta as a wonderful thing, I also consider the act of preparing homemade pasta as an art, as well as a soothing, tactile, worthwhile practice.
For my intern dinner, my goal is to make at least 3 kilograms of fregola, which is roughly equivalent to 6.5 bags of American dried pasta. The way I’m making the pasta requires rolling each speck of dough between 2 fingertips until it is spherical. Needless to say, it’s a time-consuming undertaking, so I’ve begun to recruit help from the Academy community. I’ve found that sitting in the courtyard and rolling fregola as the fellows wrap up lunch leads people to join me. And then we’re sitting together, working much faster than I could on my own and having a much nicer time than I would on my own. One last thing about making homemade pasta: I like how repetitive and sometimes tedious it is. After a big, dizzying week like last week, I’m happy to plop myself somewhere and roll fregola until my fingertips refuse to pinch anymore.
Last week was The Big Week at the Academy. Alice Waters was around the whole week, the trustees all gathered, and the fellows shared their work at a big event called Open Studios, which the public was also invited to enjoy. Nearly every meal was for at least twice as many people as we typically serve. As any professional cook knows, 100 is a far cry from 50, and 120 is a far cry from 60, and so on. Feeding vast quantities of people food that is creative, thoughtfully prepared, and consistent is near-impossible. We were lucky to have our sous chef Sara around, who’s been at the Academy for 10 years and has thus survived her fair share of Big Weeks. As a kitchen, we approached the task both solemnly prepared and appropriately fearful.
All things considered, The Big Week went swimmingly from the kitchen’s perspective. The food throughout the week was excellent — juicy, crunchy tomato panzanella, melt-in-your-mouth roasted eggplant and zucchini soaked in olive oil and red wine vinegar, and porchetta with crackly, garlicky skin that we broke off in not-so-discreet shards before serving it up. There were lemon poppyseed shortbread cookies and ricotta gnocchi pillows and crisp-tender green bean salads with wedges of peaches and tangles of spicy arugula from the garden. As a final exclamation point, there was a chocolate olive oil cake draped with zabaione — butter yellow and light as air.
As we churned out food in the kitchen, my boyfriend Teo and his parents arrived at the Academy. Teo’s mom is a trustee at the Academy, which is — believe it or not — a coincidence. She became a trustee this year, after I’d undertaken the application process for the 2nd time to work with the RSFP. I found myself explaining the situation to coworkers and fellows over and over again, emphasizing “coincidence” as if it were crucial to defend my right to be here. It was an ugly feeling, because I know that I deserve to be here, and that I’ve worked my way to this position, but also because I love that I get to share the Academy with Teo’s mom. She and I have many interests in common (cooking, art, etc.), and it makes sense that we’d both be drawn to this place. I just want to acknowledge that it was a strange sensation to live between two worlds for the week: hustling and sweating in the brightly illuminated kitchen, then drinking prosecco at the gala’s open bar, basked in golden hour light.
By the end of each day, I felt depleted, and bullied myself to go to sleep as fast as I could so that I’d have enough energy to get through the next day. Thank goodness Teo was here, really, because The Big Week was made much easier with him by my side as a witness and comfort. He even decided to extend his trip a couple days so that we could spend the weekend together out of the city. After gathering ideas from the RSFP team, we decided on renting a car and driving to Lake Bolsena, a volcanic lake in northern Lazio. It was just what I needed: a plunge into cold, calm water, lots of naps in our wood-paneled attic Airbnb, and not much else.
This past week we went back to our usual numbers, and it felt so quiet and slow (in the best way) compared to the prior week.
My goal now is to enjoy summer in Rome, and my last month at the Academy. Inspired by Cup of Jo, here is a low-key checklist for the rest of my time here.
Eat so many tomatoes.
Invite people to have a coffee or a glass of wine with me.
Go to an outdoor movie in Piazza San Cosimato.
Order a maritozzo (a classic Roman pastry that’s filled with whipped cream) for breakfast.
Walk and stretch and sleep.
Dine al fresco.
Lots of love,
Phoebe
As always Phoebe, you inspire me. Your food, style, advice, and this time a cool blog! I love Cup of Joe! Good luck with the last month. XO