Free The Art of Killing Well by Marco Malvaldi, Howard Curtis Page A

sieve, adding a spoonful of flour thickened with two ounces of butyrate, let this fricassee boil for five minutes, stirring it all the while, then add aliaison of two egg yolks, the juice of half a lemon, a little chopped parsley, pour the whole mixture over the brain already cut into pieces, and piece by piece together with a little sauce coat it with breadcrumbs and emborage it, and make it hard by frying in the boiling fat; serve with fried parsley.’”
    Cecilia looked at him with a scowl.
    â€œI read it once, and didn’t understand a thing,” he went on. “I tried again, and thought I had grasped the meaning, and tried to do what I thought I had grasped. I lost my temper and did it all wrong. Those poor brains came out as one of the most disgusting, most inedible fried dishes I have ever come across. I had taken good brains and completely ruined them.”
    Artusi raised his eyebrows, in that age-old gesture that means, “Would you like to know what I did then?”
    â€œSeeing that delicacy, which had cost me a fair amount of money, reduced to nothing, I was overcome with a fit of anger. Emborage? Brasure? What kinds of words were those? How big was that spoonful meant to be, and how much flour should I have put in? How on earth could I open a book, convinced I would find a recipe in it, and find instead a puzzle to be solved? I thought of what my mother, a woman who could barely write a letter that wasn’t full of mistakes, would have been able to put together with that book in front of her, and made my decision.”
    Artusi stiffened his back, in an almost military fashion, and concluded peremptorily with these words:
    â€œA cookery book should be understandable to all, because we all eat and we all have a right to eat good food well cooked, itshould be written in Italian, because we’re Italians, and not in that French jargon which is understood only in northern regions, and it should give the quantities, damn it, in grams and litres, which are the same for everyone, and not in ounces or ladlefuls or pinches or hints, when they deign to give the amounts at all. And if such a book does not exist, I’ll write it myself. And that’s what I did.”
    Having said this, Artusi looked at Cecilia, with a self-satisfied expression on his face, and smoothed his unkempt whiskers with one finger.
    Cecilia laughed. “You see? You are someone who can cope in a thousand situations. In your place, people like my father and my brothers would not have succeeded at anything. And I think that’s why my brothers show you their contempt.”
    â€œDon’t be so hard on your father, Signorina Cecilia. Basically, you have been clothed, educated and brought up by him.”
    â€œYou’re right. Anything I need, I just have to ask for it and it is given to me, provided it is suitable for me. But what I really need – to learn to do something – is either unsuitable or forbidden. So my fate is to remain here, embalmed in all these corsets, waiting for a suitor a little less stupid and unbearable than those who have been presented to me over the past year. So I will get married, have lots of nice children who will grow up just as useless to the world as I am, perhaps even more so, and quite unaware of what is around them and … I’m sorry, I’m talking too much.”
    â€œI beg you, signorina, continue. It is a pleasure for me to see that at least one of the baron’s three children trusts me.”
    â€œOh, as far as that goes … Gaddo sees you as someone who has succeeded in doing something, and that irritates him like smoke in the eyes. He isn’t stupid, nor is he wicked: if someone taught him, and made him realise that success doesn’t descend on one by divine right, just because one is noble, he might succeed at many things.”
    Cecilia was silent for a moment, as if to convince Artusi that what she was saying was not dictated by