A journal by Cetta

The rain came back in the night and left everything rinsed by morning, so I walked up the hill behind the house before the next shower arrived. The vineyards are nearly finished — you can see where the picking has already been through, and the smell off the wet leaves is one of my favorite things about this time of year. Somebody’s pear tree is still holding on to a dozen fruit at the very top where nobody can reach them, which I find funny every single September. I came home with wet shoes and the good kind of tired.

Then I finally dealt with the bedroom window latch, which has rattled in every wind since June and has been waking me up in a way I kept pretending it wasn’t. I’d assumed it needed a new latch, but it only needed the strike plate nudged — two turns of the screwdriver and a thin shim of leather behind it, and the catch sits firm. I stood there shaking the frame like an idiot just to hear it not rattle. Ten minutes of work I’d been putting off for three months, and I’m starting to believe the ratio of dread to actual difficulty on these little jobs is about ten to one, every time.

Supper was pasta e patate, which I make the way my aunt did: a little soffritto first, the potatoes tossed in the oil until the edges go glossy, then the water, and the pasta cooked right in it. The neighbor across the way makes it the other way — everything into the pot cold, potatoes, pasta, water, and let it find its own way. Hers is softer and asks nothing of you; mine has a bit more depth and needs watching or the potatoes catch. I’ve decided they aren’t really competing. Hers is for a night when you’re tired, mine for when you want to stand at the stove with a glass of wine and stir. Same three ingredients, two different evenings.

Which put me in mind of the difference between a copy and a hard link, the same idea wearing different clothes. cp gives you a second file with a life of its own — change one, the other doesn’t care. ln gives the same file a second name, so a change made through either one shows up in both, because it was never two things to begin with. Neither is better; it depends whether you want them to stay in step. My aunt and the neighbor, if you follow me. The pot is still warm on the stove, the window is quiet, and I’ll take that.

Recipe: Pasta e Patate

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• 1 carrot and 1 celery stalk, finely chopped (optional)
• 2 medium potatoes, peeled and cut into small chunks
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste or 2 tablespoons passata (optional)
• 1.2 litres water or light stock
• 200 g short pasta (mixed pasta or ditalini)
• salt and black pepper
• grated pecorino or parmesan, to serve

Preparation

1. Warm the oil in a heavy pot and cook the onion (with carrot and celery, if using) gently until soft, about 8 minutes.
2. Add the potatoes and stir for 2–3 minutes so they take on a little colour, then stir in the tomato paste if using.
3. Pour in the water, season with salt, and simmer until the potatoes are nearly tender, about 15 minutes. Break a few against the side of the pot to thicken it.
4. Add the pasta and cook in the same pot until al dente, stirring now and then; it should end up thick and spoonable, not soupy. Add a little hot water if it tightens too much.
5. Check the salt, grind in some pepper, and serve with a drizzle of raw olive oil and a spoon of grated cheese. Better after ten minutes off the heat, and very good the next day.

The neighbour across the way has a fig tree that’s been dropping fruit onto her step for a fortnight, and this morning she caught me coming back from the market and put a basin of them into my hands before I could say anything useful. Black figs, most of them split and sticky, with a warning that the wasps were winning and she’d had enough of them. I ate three before I’d even taken my coat off. There is no dignified way to eat a fresh fig and I’ve stopped looking for one.

So the afternoon went to jam. A kilo of them, wiped, topped and quartered, the same weight in sugar, the juice of a lemon, and nothing else — no vanilla, no rosemary, none of my usual meddling. Figs carry very little pectin of their own, which is why the lemon matters more than you’d expect; it isn’t really there for the taste, it’s there so the thing actually sets. I cooked it slowly and skimmed the foam until the colour went from purple-black to something closer to dark honey.

The trick I keep meaning to pass on is the saucer in the freezer. Put a small plate in there before you start, and when the jam looks about right, drop a spoonful onto the cold plate, wait half a minute, and push it with your finger. If it wrinkles and holds a skin, it’s done. If it slides, you cook it another five minutes and try again. Far better than guessing, and it costs nothing but a saucer.

Five jars, one of which went back across the road before it had properly cooled. The kitchen is still tacky in the places I’ll discover tomorrow, and the jars are ticking quietly as they cool, which is a sound I never get tired of. The rest are on the shelf beside the peppers now, and the wasps can have whatever’s left on the tree — I think that’s how the arrangement was always meant to work.

Recipe: Fig Jam

Ingredients

• 1 kg ripe figs, washed and stemmed
• 500 g sugar
• juice of 1 lemon

Preparation

1. Quarter the figs and put them in a wide, heavy pot with the sugar and lemon juice. Stir and leave 30 minutes so the sugar starts to draw out the juice.
2. Bring slowly to a simmer over medium heat, stirring until the sugar has dissolved completely.
3. Cook at a gentle boil, skimming off the foam now and then, until the jam thickens and darkens, 40–60 minutes depending on the figs.
4. Test for set with a chilled saucer: drop a spoonful on the cold plate, wait 30 seconds, and push it with a finger — if it wrinkles, it’s ready; if not, cook 5 minutes more and test again.
5. Pour into clean, warm jars, seal, and turn upside down for 5 minutes. Keeps several months in a cool dark place; refrigerate after opening.

The rain finally came today, all of it at once, the way it does when the sky has been holding it in for weeks. I got caught twice — once going out for the post, once coming back from the shop — and by the second soaking I gave up hurrying and just walked. The gutters were roaring, and the leaves on the pavement had gone that dark, slippery gold that means somebody is going to slip on them before the week is out. I came in, changed my socks, and put the kettle on like a woman who had earned it.

Then I did the thing I’d been avoiding all week: the grey wool sweater with the little hole at the elbow. I’d been wearing it with the hole turned toward the table, which is a strategy, but not a good one. So I dug out the tin of threads and darned it — not beautifully, but small and tight, the way my aunt used to do it while talking, never once looking down. Twenty minutes, and now it’s a sweater again instead of a thing I have to think about. Moths are the one houseguest I have no hospitality for, so the clean ones went into the chest with a cedar block between the layers, and I’ll check them again in a month.

The rain made the kitchen the only sensible room in the house, so I’d put a bowl of cannellini to soak in the morning and cooked them slowly in the afternoon with a whole head of garlic, sage from the pot by the window, and a good glug of oil. That’s supper, with a heel of bread and nothing else required. And the small thought I kept turning over while they simmered: beans are the cheapest lesson in patience I know. There’s no clever way to hurry them — you salt at the end, you keep the water barely moving, and you let them tell you when they’re done. I made the mistake once of boiling them hard to save time and got a pot of skins and regret. I’ve stopped looking for shortcuts on the things that don’t have any.

I ate at the table for once, with the rain on the window, and the socks drying on the radiator behind me. The house smells of sage. Not the worst way to end a Friday.

Recipe: Cannellini with Sage and Garlic

Ingredients

• 300 g dried cannellini beans, soaked overnight
• 1 whole head of garlic, halved crosswise
• 4–5 fresh sage leaves
• 1 bay leaf
• 4 tablespoons olive oil, plus more to finish
• salt and black pepper

Preparation

1. Drain the soaked beans and put them in a heavy pot with cold water to cover by about 5 cm (2 inches).
2. Add the garlic halves, sage, bay leaf, and 2 tablespoons of the oil. Bring just to a simmer, then lower the heat so the water barely moves.
3. Cook gently, topping up with hot water if needed, until the beans are completely tender, 60–90 minutes depending on their age. Do not salt yet.
4. Salt generously at the end and let them sit off the heat for 10 minutes. Fish out the bay leaf and garlic skins, taste, and adjust.
5. Serve in bowls with plenty of the cooking liquid, a drizzle of raw olive oil, and black pepper. Good hot, and just as good the next day.

The milk was two days from turning, so this morning it stopped being a race with the fridge and became ricotta instead. I forget, most of the time, that this is something a person can just do at home: a litre of whole milk, a couple of lemons, and about half an hour of paying attention. I heated it slowly, took it off just before it wanted to boil, stirred in the juice, and then stood there watching what looked like nothing at all — until it separated all at once into soft white curds and a pot of pale yellow whey. Straining it is the only part that takes patience, and I like it a little loose in the middle, so I don’t let it hang too long.

I ate a spoonful while it was still warm, with olive oil, salt, and a lot of black pepper, and it was so much better than anything in a tub that I’m mildly annoyed at myself for not doing this years ago. The rest went onto toast with a thread of honey for lunch, and there’s a dish left for tomorrow with the last of the market tomatoes. The whey I poured into a jar and put in the fridge — it goes into the pasta water, and the bread likes it too. It feels good to get a second thing out of the first thing.

While it drained I did the monthly pantry count, which I’ve taken to keeping as a plain text file on the laptop: what’s in the cupboard, what’s in the freezer, roughly how much. The whole point is to stop buying a fourth jar of something I already own. This time I compared the new list against last month’s, and diff old.txt new.txt printed exactly the lines that had changed — what I’d used up, what I’d added — without making me reread the whole thing twice. The comparison is where the useful information lives, not the list. That’s true of a lot of things, now that I think about it.

The afternoon went quiet after that. I wiped the counter, put the kettle on, and sat with tea and what’s left of the light, which is arriving noticeably later every week. Nothing urgent left on the list, which is my favorite way for a day to end.

Recipe: Homemade Ricotta

Ingredients

• 2 litres whole milk (not ultra-pasteurized if you can find it)
• 4–5 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (about 2 lemons), strained
• 1/2 teaspoon fine salt, or to taste

Preparation

1. Pour the milk into a heavy pot and heat gently over medium-low, stirring now and then so it doesn’t catch, until it reaches about 85°C (185°F) — hot, steaming, but not boiling.
2. Take the pot off the heat and add the lemon juice. Stir gently once or twice, then leave it completely undisturbed for 10–15 minutes, until the curds have separated from the yellow whey.
3. Line a colander with a double layer of cheesecloth or a clean thin cloth and set it over a deep bowl. Ladle the curds in gently — don’t pour the whole pot at once or you’ll break them up.
4. Let it drain 20 minutes for a soft, spoonable ricotta, or up to an hour for a firmer one. Stir the salt through at the end, then refrigerate in a covered container for up to four days. Keep the whey in a jar — it’s excellent for cooking pasta or enriching bread dough.

The porch light has been dead for the better part of a week, and I’d been coming up the steps in the dark like a woman who doesn’t own a torch, which is exactly what I am. So this morning I finally walked down to the ferramenta — the little hardware shop that smells of oil and sawdust and has been in the same family longer than I’ve been alive. I asked for a bulb and a washer for the kitchen tap, which has been dripping since the weekend, and the old man behind the counter went through a drawer of loose brass fittings until he found one that fit, charged me almost nothing, and pointed out that I could have brought the old washer in with me. Which is true. I fixed both in ten minutes once I was home, the tap first because the dripping is loudest at night, and it’s remarkable how much better a house feels when it stops making a noise you’d quietly gotten used to.

On the way back I passed the vegetable stall and came home with a box of the long sweet peppers that are the last of the season — the pale ones that turn red if you’re patient and sweet if you roast them. So I did the proper Calabrian thing with them: grilled them whole until the skins blistered black, covered them with a plate to let them steam, then peeled them and laid the strips in a jar with sliced garlic, parsley, and a pinch of oregano, and covered the lot with olive oil. They’ll be better in a week than they are today. The pantry shelf now holds the passata, the dried herbs, and this jar of peppers, which is starting to look less like a shelf and more like a small dispensa. My grandmother would approve, though she’d tell me I could have used more oil.

The other errand was the post office, where I stood in a queue long enough to read two posters about things I don’t need. I was sending my cousin in Rogliano the oregano from the beam and a few recipe cards she asked for, since she’s been trying to make our aunt’s almond biscuits and keeps getting them wrong. It all went into one small box, which is the trick of sending anything: you gather a dozen separate things, wrap them together, and they travel as one parcel. The computer has the same idea and calls it tar, which bundles a whole folder of files into a single archive you can move in one go — tar -czf parcel.tar.gz folder packs it, tar -xzf parcel.tar.gz unpacks it. I like that the command exists because somebody had the same instinct as a person with string and brown paper.

Supper was plain — bread, a little cheese, and the two peppers that didn’t fit in the jar, which is the cook’s privilege. The porch light works again, and the kitchen is quiet in the way that means nothing is leaking. A good Wednesday.

Recipe: Peperoni Sott’olio

Ingredients

• 1 kg long sweet peppers (the pale green or red frying kind)
• 3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
• a small bunch of flat-leaf parsley, chopped
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• olive oil, plenty of it
• salt

Preparation

1. Grill or roast the peppers whole until the skins are blackened and blistered all over, turning as needed.
2. Put them in a covered bowl or a paper bag and let them steam 15 minutes — the skins will slip off easily.
3. Peel the peppers, remove the stems and seeds, and tear the flesh into strips. Salt them lightly and leave in a colander 20 minutes to drain.
4. Layer the strips in a clean jar with the garlic, parsley, and oregano, pressing them down firmly so there are no air pockets.
5. Pour in olive oil until everything is completely covered. Seal and keep in the refrigerator; they’re best after a few days and will keep several weeks. Bring to room temperature before serving.

The rain started before I was properly awake and then simply refused to stop, so the whole day rearranged itself around being indoors. I’d planned a walk to the market anyway and went, under the umbrella that turns inside out at every gust — I came home with two aubergines, a bunch of basil, and thoroughly wet ankles. The neighbor’s cat was waiting on my step looking like a drowned opinion, so she got toweled off and a saucer of milk and spent the rest of the afternoon asleep on the chair by the radiator, which is more than I managed.

The aubergines turned into a proper melanzane alla parmigiana, the sort of dish that takes an afternoon and almost no skill, only patience with the frying. I sliced them, salted them, and left them in a colander for an hour — they give up a surprising amount of water — then fried them in olive oil, layered them with tomato, basil, and a mix of mozzarella and Pecorino, and baked it until it bubbled at the edges. The kitchen went warm and smelled of basil and hot oil, and the rain on the window made it feel like a legitimate way to spend a Tuesday.

While the slices were draining I finally dealt with the kettle, which had gone white and furry inside and was taking forever to boil. Half water, half vinegar, boil, let it sit, rinse twice — ten minutes and it was bright inside again, and the water tastes of water. It struck me I’d spent the afternoon doing the same trick twice: the salt pulling the water out of the aubergines, the vinegar pulling the scale out of the kettle. Take out the thing that doesn’t belong and what’s left behaves the way it should. I ate a square of the parmigiana cold, standing at the counter, later in the evening, and honestly it was better than warm.

Recipe: Melanzane alla Parmigiana

Ingredients

• 2 large aubergines, sliced lengthwise about 1 cm thick
• salt
• olive oil for frying
• 500 g ripe tomatoes, chopped (or a jar of passata)
• 2 cloves garlic
• a handful of basil leaves
• 200 g mozzarella, torn and drained
• 60 g Pecorino or Parmesan, grated
• black pepper

Preparation

1. Salt the aubergine slices and leave them in a colander 45–60 minutes. Press them dry with a cloth.
2. Meanwhile, make a quick sauce: cook the garlic in a little olive oil, add the tomatoes and a pinch of salt, and simmer 15–20 minutes until thickened. Tear in some basil.
3. Fry the aubergine slices in olive oil until golden on both sides, and drain on paper.
4. Heat the oven to 180°C (350°F). In a baking dish, layer sauce, aubergine, mozzarella, Pecorino, and basil, repeating until the dish is full and finishing with sauce and cheese.
5. Bake 30–35 minutes until bubbling and browned on top. Let it rest at least 20 minutes before cutting — it holds together much better, and it’s excellent at room temperature the next day.

The market had proper autumn peppers this morning — the long, sweet kind, deep red and gold and green — and I couldn’t resist a whole basket of them. The signora and I got to talking and she told me her mother’s way of doing peperonata, which was basically to let the peppers and onions get good and jammy over the lowest heat, no rushing, until the whole kitchen smells like the south of Italy. So that’s what I did this afternoon: a slow pot of peppers with onion, garlic, and a little tomato, and I had it with bread and a glass of wine while the light went golden. September keeps handing me these small afternoons that don’t need anything more than themselves.

While it simmered I was thinking about how I’d have lost that recipe entirely if I hadn’t happened to stand at the right stall at the right time — and it reminded me of a habit I use on the computer when I can’t remember where I put something. The find command will search a whole folder (and everything inside it) for a file by name, so instead of clicking through endless directories you can just type find . -name "peppers*" and it hands you the exact path, the way the signora handed me her mother’s trick. Both are really the same small victory: knowing exactly where the thing you want is living, instead of digging blindly.

I’ve decided the pepper basket is going to become a standing Sunday thing while the season lasts. There’s something deeply satisfying about a pot that starts bright and loud and ends up soft and quiet, the way the day itself seemed to. I’ll be eating this for days, and I don’t mind that one bit.

Recipe: Peperonata

Ingredients

• 4–5 long sweet peppers (red, gold, green), sliced into strips
• 2 onions, sliced
• 3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 ripe tomato, chopped (or 3 tablespoons passata)
• a splash of white wine (optional)
• salt and black pepper
• a few basil leaves

Preparation

1. Warm the olive oil in a wide, heavy pan over medium heat. Add the onions and cook gently until soft and translucent, about 8 minutes.
2. Add the garlic and cook another minute, then add the peppers, a pinch of salt, and stir well.
3. Lower the heat, add the tomato and the wine if using, and cook uncovered, stirring now and then, until the peppers are completely soft and jammy, 30–40 minutes.
4. Taste, adjust salt and pepper, and tear the basil over the top. Serve warm or at room temperature with bread.

A proper autumn afternoon today, the kind where the light goes low and golden early and you feel the season settling in for good. I took the coffee out to the step and the neighbor’s cat came to keep the appointment, then I spent a satisfying stretch of the day doing something I’d been saving for a rainy one: sorting the seed packets I’d saved from the summer into an old tin, the way my grandmother used to. Beans in one section, herbs in another, a few tomato seeds I wasn’t sure would still be any good but kept anyway because they cost nothing to hope for. I wrote the year on each packet, which I never used to bother with and always regretted by spring.

Since the kitchen was already warm, I made a simple supper out of what was left — a proper frittata with the last of the eggs, some of the market greens that were about to go soft, and a few shavings of the pecorino that’s been living in the fridge too long. It’s the kind of dish that feels like cheating because it’s barely any work, but it ate like a real meal, all golden on top and set just right in the middle, and I had a slice standing at the counter with bread. There’s a particular satisfaction in a meal that rescues a wilting handful of greens instead of letting them go to waste.

While it was in the pan I got to thinking about the word “recipe” itself — it comes from the Latin recipere, “to take,” the old way doctors opened prescriptions: recipe, “take thou.” So every recipe I’ve ever scribbled down is secretly still a doctor’s order, which tickles me more than it should. It made me think of the other old habit I lean on for finding things quickly: on a computer, grep will search right through a pile of files for a word or two, the way I flip through the tin for “basil” or “zucchini” and let my thumb find it faster than my eyes. Same instinct — don’t reread everything, just go straight for the name you know. The tin is shut now, the cat’s gone home, and I think that frittata might deserve a second slice.

Recipe: Greens and Pecorino Frittata

Ingredients

• 6 eggs
• a splash of milk or cream
• a large handful of greens (spinach, chard, or whatever’s left), roughly chopped
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 clove garlic, sliced
• 40 g pecorino, shaved or grated
• salt and black pepper

Preparation

1. Beat the eggs with the milk, a good pinch of salt, and pepper. Set aside.
2. Warm the olive oil in a medium nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic and cook gently until fragrant, about 30 seconds, then add the greens and cook until wilted, a couple of minutes.
3. Pour the eggs over the greens, scatter the pecorino on top, and cook over medium-low heat without stirring until the edges are set, about 5 minutes.
4. Finish under a hot grill for 1–2 minutes until the top is golden and the middle is just set. Let rest a minute, then slide onto a plate and slice into wedges.

A proper autumn morning caught me by surprise today — that first one where the air has real bite and you’re glad for the heavier sweater. I took my coffee to the step and the neighbor’s cat came and settled in beside me without a word, which I’ve come to treat as an honor. By the time I finished my second cup the market had opened, and I came home with a bag of the last orchard apples of the season, the kind that are still a little too tart to eat raw but make the kitchen smell like October before October has even arrived.

So the afternoon turned into baking. I made a plain apple and walnut cake, the sort of thing that needs no occasion — butter and sugar creamed together, a couple of eggs, a spoon of the honey the neighbor gave me, grated apple folded through the batter so it stays tender, and walnuts toasted first because they behave better that way. It turned out exactly as I’d hoped, still faintly warm and a little fragrant, and I cut a slice to eat at the counter with a glass of milk like a child and no regrets at all. The neighbor got a doorstep portion before it had even cooled.

While the cake was in the oven I got to thinking about how much time I waste retyping things I’ve already said once. There’s a small habit I keep coming back to on the computer for exactly that: Ctrl+R at a terminal prompt searches backward through everything you’ve typed, so you can type a word or two of an old command and pull it up instead of writing it out again. It’s the same instinct as a cake you can make without looking at the card — the stuff you’ve done before shouldn’t cost you the same effort the second time. The kitchen smells like walnuts and honey, the cat has gone home, and I think I’ll take another slice before the light goes.

Recipe: Apple and Walnut Cake

Ingredients

• 175 g butter, softened
• 150 g sugar
• 3 eggs
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 200 g flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• a pinch of salt
• 2 apples, peeled, cored and grated
• 100 g walnuts, toasted and roughly chopped
• a little milk, if needed

Preparation

1. Heat the oven to 180°C (350°F) and line a loaf tin with parchment. Toast the walnuts in a dry pan until fragrant, then chop.
2. Cream the butter and sugar until pale, then beat in the eggs one at a time, then the honey.
3. Fold in the flour, baking powder and salt, then the grated apple and most of the walnuts. Add a splash of milk only if the batter seems stiff.
4. Spoon into the tin, scatter the remaining walnuts on top, and bake 45–50 minutes until a skewer comes out clean. Cool slightly before slicing.

September keeps finding ways to be kind. I woke to another of those cool, quiet mornings, the first where I really wanted the heavier blanket back, and took my coffee out to the step. The neighbor’s cat came by and sat with me without asking for anything, which I’ve decided is the highest form of politeness. We watched the sun burn the frost off the grass until the coffee was gone, and then she left the way she came, no ceremony at all.

This afternoon I finally dealt with the drawer where I keep the good dishtowels, which had turned into a chaos of half-folded cloth and a stray tea towel that doesn’t match anything. I pulled it all out, refolded what deserved it, and set a small pile aside for the neighbor, who I know would rather have them than see them ignored. It’s a tiny thing, but there’s a particular satisfaction in a drawer that closes without a fight, and every time I open it for the next month I’ll be unreasonably pleased with myself.

While I was folding, I kept thinking about how much of keeping things straight is just having a small system you can trust. I’ve been using the same instinct for the computer — before I change anything I care about, I grab a quick “before” picture. On a Mac that’s Cmd+Shift+3 for the whole screen or Cmd+Shift+4 to catch just one corner, so you always know what something looked like before you touched it. A copy, a picture, a note — it’s the same habit as the drawer, the same as the cat on the step. You put a little order in early so you don’t have to hunt for it later. The towels are folded, the evening is settling in, and I think September and I are still getting along just fine.