TASTE BUDS

       In this sensory memoir, I have enhanced my memory of the cheese, citing a method of ageing that I only recently became aware of. You can age Parmesan or Romano cheese in a way that creates insanely flavorful grated cheese by doing the following. 1] soak cheesecloth in vinegar and mostly dry it before wrapping it tightly around the three-inch-by-four-inch (approx.) pieces of cheese you are going to age; 2] place the wrapped cheese in a cool dry place where it gets some air; 3] leave it for several months....What happens is that the moisture evaporates very slowly, after which what remains of the oil tightens the cheese and causes the piece to become harder than some woods. When it reaches this hardened state, it will be real exercise to grate it. It is too tough to be grated on anything but the finest grater, and the result will look like sawdust--sawdust with more cheese flavor packed into it than you could ever imagine. [When the pieces have been grated so far down that more grating risks skinned knuckles do not throw them away. Simmer them in broth, chicken soup, whatever. More amazing flavor boost!]

Taste Buds--art gatti

The hot room with its high, doily-covered dressers,

their mute, framed faces staring down at me:

Men in black cassocks

showing me where my gene pool ended

in that small corner of the Old World –

scattered, sterile seeds,

lost in cavernous, dark seminaries.

An ice box in the corner,

drip pan beneath, sparse provisions within.

All the rest victims of the hot room with

its thick, drawn drapery.

Hard cheeses, sour auras redolent when you’re near,

wrapped in cheesecloth,

aging in the open air;

flagons of wine

and a green viscous oil that it would take years

for my American palate to love.

My grandparents would mutter

in their strange and fluid tongue

and urge me to mangia.

I was too thin–“Fagiole!”

The salad of crisp green--

cool, ignoring the August day–

greens and orange slices.

My little face cries silently at the first taste--

why did they douse it like that?

I liked olives–if they were pitted...

and dyed black, and swimming in a can

under murky, innocuous water.

But this green oil was from no olive I knew.

And with the black pepper, too,

the oranges were spoiled for me.

Bitter and sweet, bitter and sweet.

Why did the old people mix bitter with life’s joys?

I would not mangia,

me, with taste buds

not yet born into the flavors of my people.