Taste: My Life through Food(36)

“I thought I might just cook for us,” she said in her beautifully accented English.

Let it be known that Claudia is very smart, very kind, and very pretty. She is half German, half Italian, with fair skin and large light blue eyes, and speaks English perfectly with a delicate Italian accent. She somehow eats pasta every day yet remains slender, is chic without spending absurd amounts on clothing, smokes hand-rolled cigarettes but never to excess, and loves to drink wine. Wisely, she no longer works in the film business; instead she designs hats and lives in Rome with her husband, a photographer who is even nicer than she is. In short, I want to be her. Or him. Or both of them.

Anyway, in response to her offer to cook for us, I said, “Oh, don’t go to any trouble.”

“It’s no trouble. I make lunch most days anyway,” said she.

I first met Claudia during my first press junket for a Hollywood comedy that was great fun to make but, like many I’ve done, was a bomb at the box office. I was sent to do press in Italy and Spain in advance of the film’s foreign release. Claudia was working freelance then and had been assigned to look after Kate and me during our stay in Rome, and we have remained friends ever since.

As we chatted about this and that, she filled a large pot with water and put it on the stove to boil. She then took two small zucchine and sliced them into thin rounds, and a clove of garlic, which she cut in half lengthwise. Pouring a glug of very dark green extra-virgin olive oil into a pan, she dropped in the garlic along with a few pepperoncini. After they had simmered for a few minutes, she removed them, placed two handfuls of spaghetti into the now-boiling water, and began to sauté the zucchine. When the pasta was cooked, she strained it and mixed it together in the pan with some of the starchy pasta water.

With the exception of my father’s Friday night specialty, pasta con aglio e olio, this might have been the simplest dish of pasta I’d ever eaten. The deeply flavorsome olive oil coated the sweet zucchine, helping it cling to the pasta, while just a suggestion of garlic emerged as the pepperoncini gave subtle heat to it all. Following my family’s tradition, I had never really cooked with extra-virgin olive oil—we used “regular olive oil” (oil from olives that have been through many pressings, making it lighter but much less tasty)—nor did we ever use pepperoncini, as neither of my parents cared for anything spicy, so this unassuming dish was a bit of a revelation for me.

I know it sounds silly, but out of all the meals I have eaten it still remains one of my favorites. This is partly because it was cooked by and shared with my dear friend Claudia, but also because it was the perfect balance of five simple ingredients. As I travel, research, and cook more over the years, I find this culinary equilibrium is realized with the most humble ingredients time and time again in the Italian kitchen. Even in a very small one in the back of an office in Rome many years ago.





A Pause for a Libation: The Old-Fashioned


Purportedly this legendary libation was created in 1806 in upstate New York and is the first drink to be called a “cocktail.” Whiskey, bitters, sugar, water. That was basically it. By the middle part of that century the cocktail eventually became more and more complex, with the addition of a variety of liquors, like orange cura?ao, absinthe, and who knows what else. Drinkers looking for the simpler version would ask for it to be made “the old-fashioned way,” hence its now-famous moniker. I am not a big bourbon drinker but this cocktail is very hard not to want.

Here’s how to make it:

1 teaspoon simple syrup

A few dashes Angostura bitters

2 shots rye or bourbon

Ice

Orange slice and cherry, to garnish



Pour the simple syrup into an “old-fashioned glass,” meaning a rocks glass.

Add the Angostura bitters.

Add the booze.

Add the ice.

Stir.

Add the garnish.





You could also make this with scotch, or Irish whiskey if you prefer.



* * *



A great drink for any season or reason.





10


Eating catered food on movie sets is often a terrifying prospect. Basically the way it works is, the bigger the budget, the better the food. When and for how long a lunch break is taken on any film is dictated by union rules, which differ from country to country. However, instead of taking a lunch break, which is the norm, I much prefer, as an actor as well as a director, to shoot “continuous days,” or what are called “French hours.” This is also known as a “running lunch,” meaning that small plates of food or sandwiches are always available throughout the day, and a short break is taken about halfway through the day, where cast and crew can grab a quick bite or a little rest. I have always found that this makes the shooting day not only shorter but more efficient.

French hours are much more welcomed in England and in Europe but not as often in the United States, for reasons I have never fully understood. I know I am not writing a book about the machinations of the film industry, which would be even more tedious than this memoir, but it is important to know that food on set not only feeds people but also has a significant effect on the budget, the structure of a shooting day, and how a cast and crew work together successfully.

Now that you’re about to nod off, here’s a taste of how catering typically functions on most films.