Chapter 22
“Chop, chop, Juliana. Put your strength into it.” Nonna hovers at my shoulder later that afternoon, instructing me in the fine art of making almond biscotti.
This was my favorite treat when I was growing up, a few biscotti dipped in a cup of hot cocoa.
I’d devour three or four in a sitting. I want to include the recipe in my cookbook, so Nonna is giving me a refresher course on how to make biscotti properly.
I lean down and redouble my efforts to chop the roasted almonds to just the right coarse consistency.
“There, good. Stop now, and add your flour mixture to your bowl of eggs,” Nonna instructs.
I obey, adding the flour, baking powder, and sugar to the bowl containing a beaten mixture of eggs, good olive oil, vanilla, and the zest of a lemon.
My mouth waters at the aroma. I glance at Alex, who is sitting at the table with her headphones on, listening to something and mouthing the words as she taps on her phone.
“Bruna!” Lorenzo bangs on the window over the sink, startling us. “Come outside.” He’s holding a shovel that is grimy with dirt.
“You scemo,” Nonna snaps, putting her hand on her heart.
“One day you will give me a heart attack doing that.” She rolls her eyes and heads for the door.
“Shape the dough into two logs,” she reminds me.
I have other ideas, however. As soon as she’s out the door, I wash my hands and make a dash for the drawer where I saw her stash the cookbook earlier this morning.
I slide it out, fingers caressing the worn buttery-soft leather cover, and flip it open to roughly the spot where I saw the tortellini recipe.
There is nothing there. Every page is blank.
“What in the world? This is crazy.” Keeping one ear tuned for Nonna’s return, I carefully look through the entire book twice.
Every single page is now blank, but I know what I saw this morning.
There are recipes that show up in this book, just not when I am looking for them.
There’s something strange going on, something I don’t understand.
I think about what Nonna said about kitchen magic.
Maybe she’s right. I have a sudden inspiration.
“Alex,” I hiss, waving my hand to draw her attention. She’s concentrating on her phone, but glances up and takes off one headphone reluctantly.
“Yeah?”
I hand the cookbook to her. “Can you do me a favor and flip through this? Stop if you see anything written on any of the pages.”
She takes the book warily. “Okay…why are we doing this?” She shoots me a skeptical look.
“Just…please? And hurry.” I glance at the kitchen door. Nonna could be back at any moment. I have a feeling she’s not going to like it if she sees me with the cookbook again. She seems to want to keep it away from me for some reason.
Alex sighs and opens the book to somewhere near the front, then holds it out for me to see.
There is a recipe written on the page, plain as day.
It’s for pizza brushed with olive oil and garlic and covered in basil, mushrooms, artichokes, and fresh mozzarella.
I skim the recipe in surprise. I’ve never seen a pizza recipe in this cookbook.
“What’s it for?” she asks, frowning at the Italian words. I translate for her.
“Vegetarian pizza?” Alex murmurs.
I glance over the ingredients. She’s right. “Let me see that.” I reach out and take the book, holding my place at the pizza recipe with my finger and flipping to another page. The new page is blank. Of course it is. I flip back to the pizza recipe. It is blank now too.
Alex looks up from the empty page and our eyes meet. Hers are wide and puzzled.
“Did you just see that?” I whisper.
She nods slowly. “What’s going on?” she asks, looking unnerved.
“I don’t have any idea…”
“Juliana, Alessandra, what are you doing?” Nonna is standing in the doorway to the kitchen, hands on her hips. We didn’t hear her come in. We both scramble to attention like guilty children.
“Nonna, what is happening with this book?” I hold the cookbook out to her. “Alex just opened it and there was a recipe for vegetarian pizza, but when I open it, everything is blank.”
“Juliana.” Nonna marches across the room and grabs the book from my hand, attempting to close it, but I hold on.
We both glance down. Where my hand is, the page is blank.
But on the other side, where Nonna’s fingers grip it, the torn recipe for Orange Blossom Cake has suddenly appeared on the paper.
“Nonna,” I say softly. “Please tell me: What is going on?”
Nonna glances up at me, then at Alex.
“Why is the book blank for me but not for Alex?” I press. “And what in the world is Orange Blossom Cake?”
“Something weird is going on around here,” Alex pipes up unexpectedly. Nonna looks from one to the other of us and her shoulders sag. She lets go of the book. I stumble back a little, then sit down hard in a chair and clutch the cookbook to my chest protectively.
“You want to know what is happening?” she says heavily.
“Okay, I will tell you what you want to know. First, though, we must finish the biscotti. I’ll explain all to you as it bakes.
” She goes over to the prep table and gestures for me to follow.
I obey, setting the cookbook on the table.
Alex gets up and joins us, taking a couple of quick photos with her phone as Nonna and I shape the dough into two long logs on a baking tray.
Nonna slides the tray into the oven, sets a timer, and sinks down in a chair at the table, gesturing for us to follow.
“This book,” she says, patting the cookbook’s grease-spotted leather cover, “has been in our family for many generations. It has been passed down through the women in our family, both the book and the special ability it contains.” She glances from Alex to me.
We are both silent, waiting. “It first belonged to my great-great-grandmother Angelica,” Nonna says.
“She saved a religious pilgrim who was on her way to Venice. The pilgrim, a noblewoman named Margaret, was traveling disguised as a man, heading to Venice to fulfill a vow to pray at the Basilica di San Marco.” Nonna pauses, takes a drink of water, and continues.
“Margaret was a pious woman, a mystic from a convent in England. Near Verona she fell into the hands of robbers who took all she had of value and abused her quite badly. By the time Margaret came across our farm, she was desperate for help—sick and hungry and weak. It was a time of great poverty and conflict and suffering in the region.” Nonna looks grave, glancing between us.
Neither of us moves a muscle. She continues.
“Yet my great-great-grandmother Angelica took compassion on this needy stranger. She killed a chicken, a rare luxury in those days, and made soup from a recipe in this very cookbook, feeding Margaret and offering her shelter, binding her wounds. In return, when Margaret recovered and left our farm, she gave Angelica a blessing.” Nonna smiles softly, her fingers caressing the cookbook reverently.
“The story goes that the saintly Margaret placed her hand on this cookbook and anointed it with holy olive oil from Jerusalem, from the Mount of Olives. She proclaimed that from that day on, anyone seeking aid or wisdom could turn to the book for help. And from that moment, this cookbook has given just that.” Nonna Bruna pauses, fixing us with a firm look.
“You see, this book is special. It does not have many recipes filling its pages like most cookbooks. When someone opens it, the book shows just one recipe at a time, the recipe that person needs most. And if the person makes that recipe, they find help in unexpected ways.”
She pauses expectantly. Alex and I exchange a dubious glance.
“What sort of ways?” I ask.
Nonna purses her lips and thinks for a moment.
“Last year a woman from Riva del Garda came to me. She had been longing for a baby for many months. She opened the cookbook and there was a recipe for Risotto with Amarone wine. That night her husband, who had been very busy with work matters, took the time to eat the delicious risotto she made. And after dinner, they made passionate love. Nine months later, she sent me a photo of their beautiful little daughter.”
“Maybe that wasn’t the recipe, though,” I counter. “Maybe it just worked out that way?”
“Or it was the wine,” Alex murmurs skeptically.
Nonna gives a small shrug. “Perhaps you’re right,” she says, looking completely unconcerned. “But it happens over and over. I don’t know how. I don’t need to know how. It just works.”
“The young women this morning…”
“Are all looking for love. One is single, one longs for a man she works with, and one wants her boyfriend of two years to propose. We made the recipes the cookbook showed us for each girl. Now we wait and see.” Nonna smiles with satisfaction.
“And already it is working. Look.” She pulls out an ancient cell phone and shows me a text.
It’s a photo of the young woman with the long brown hair.
She’s standing smiling with a cute Italian guy in a suit.
Ciao, Bruna. I shared the gnocchi with my coworker Edoardo at lunch. He asked me to a concert in Bardolino next week!!! Grazie mille!
I stare at the text on the screen. My mind is reeling. There is no way this is true, except I’ve seen the cookbook change with my own eyes. Could it really be? “Nonna, do you really think this is a magic cookbook?”
Nonna shakes her head. “Not hocus-pocus magic, not witchcraft.” She makes a spitting gesture and the sign of the cross, warding off evil.
“You should know better than that,” she scolds gently.
“The mystic Margaret offered a beautiful gift to Angelica, and each generation of women in our family has been sharing this gift with those who need it ever since. It is a blessed book, a wise book that knows exactly what each person who seeks its help needs. It is a gift from above.”
“So it thinks I need pizza?” Alex pipes up skeptically. She looks unconvinced.
Nonna tips her head. “Alessandra, do you know what pizza symbolizes in Italian cooking? The circle of the pizza represents unity and togetherness. A pizza means you have others to share your table. Maybe it is not the pizza you need but someone to share it with.” She gives Alex a meaningful look.
Alex stares down at the table. She fiddles with her phone and says nothing.
“But what about me?” I challenge. “I desperately need to come up with a bunch of recipes, but the entire book is blank. Every page. How is that helpful?”
Nonna nods sagely. “This surprises me too. But mia cara, sometimes the book does not give us what we think we want. It gives us something deeper, what our heart really needs. You think you need fifty recipes, but perhaps that is not all you need. Perhaps the blank page holds the key.”
This is annoyingly unhelpful.
“Why is there half a torn recipe for Orange Blossom Cake when you open the book?” I ask.
At that question Nonna’s face shutters, and she stands abruptly, picking up the book.
“That’s enough for today,” she says curtly.
The timer rings, and she looks relieved.
“Come, your biscotti is done. We must slice it now while it is still warm.” She carefully tucks the cookbook back into the drawer and goes to the oven to pull out the biscotti.
As I carefully slice the biscotti into even sections, I reflect on Nonna’s revelation about the cookbook.
Of course it is absurd. There is simply no way our family has a magic cookbook that knows what each person needs and provides just the right recipe.
Her story is just a myth, a family fable, right?
But I cannot quite convince myself of that as I transfer the crescent-shaped biscotti back to the baking sheet and slide it into the hot oven.
As I set the kitchen timer for ten minutes, I think about all those summer mornings growing up, me flipping the cookbook open at random, and how Nonna and I would make the recipe that I flipped to.
How it always seemed to be just the right thing for that day.
In light of what Nonna shared, I wonder if every day little Juliana was flipping open the cookbook and it was giving me exactly what I needed.
No wonder it felt so magical! And now as an adult I’ve seen it with my own eyes.
I saw the recipes on the page transform—completely blank for me, the pasta from this morning for the young women, half a recipe for Orange Blossom Cake for Nonna, vegetarian pizza for Alex.
I don’t understand it, but I know it’s true.
I glance over at Alex, who has her headphones back on and is absorbed in something on her phone.
She looks so young, sitting there all by herself.
I envision a pizza cut into slices, how it’s meant to be shared around a table, shared with family and friends.
I think about how alone she must feel in the world.
How it seems she’s already grown used to being on her own.
How sad that is for anyone, let alone someone so young.
And again I feel a little ashamed for my own distance, for keeping her at arm’s length and in some small way holding her responsible for Lisa’s poor decisions.
Then I think about my own blank page of the cookbook. If the cookbook knows what I need, why is it not giving me recipes? It is withholding the exact thing I most desperately need. How is that helpful? It feels just the opposite.
The timer rings, and I take the baking sheet out of the oven.
Carefully, I transfer the biscotti to a big plate to cool and start to tidy up.
But my mind wanders back to Nonna and that torn half a recipe for Orange Blossom Cake, and I can’t help but wonder: What does all of this mean?
I shake my head, feeling more thwarted and more confused than ever.