Panettone--Breakfast of movie stars!

December 21, 2019

We've had a large panettone, still in its box*, on our kitchen counter for about two weeks now. It won't be opened until after Christmas, not for any reason except that we went a bit nutty on Christmas goodies to eat this year, and simply haven't got there yet. And we won't, until after two days of traveling to see friends and two days of feasting with them.

Panettone is not something I grew up with. In fact, I had only seen it in bread cookbooks until a day about 15 years ago in Baltimore. I had a friend who lived in Charles Village, a part of Baltimore tucked in behind the Johns Hopkins campus and the rougher parts of downtown, to be very unfocused about it. It was close to Roland Park, too, a fairly upscale neighborhood. Itself? Well, Charles Village has much to recommend it including a stock of lovely brick and stone Victorian and Edwardian houses. My friend lived in one with her two sons and her husband, who is an Italian doctor who is generous in treating her horse-riding buddies, most of whom are usually broke. At the time, I was among those.

Anyway, she and I and her mother and her two sons went out for lunch to Rocco's Capriccio, a well-thought-of Italian restaurant in Baltimore's Little Italy. Rocco was a friend of her husband, who had helped him get started in business.

It was a great lunch. We three ladies sat at one table and the two boys at another one where they happily talked about whatever it is a 13- and 15-year-old talk about over pizza. We adults, naturally, had some more complex dishes and wine. Of course.

I'd like to tell you about Rocco's menu, but I can't. It turns out that it closed in 2013, after a time, apparently, of sliding downward on the culinary “must visit” list, having been, for a long time, the recipient of five stars on the social media opinion pages.

As we left, Rocco greeted us, and gave my friend, her mother and me each a box containing a small panettone.

I didn't open the box right away. I was fairly broke at the time and thought it would be a nice thing with coffee as I banged the keys after Christmas to sell enough writing to keep from starving in the spring. But then I did.

What a treat! It was a lovely yeast bread, sprinkled with lemon and orange peel and vanilla. I ate as much of it as I could before it went stale. When it did, I made it into French toast, buttered and sprinkled with icing sugar and fresh lemon juice.

I've always loved Rocco for that gift, not that I knew him well as my friend did. But he gave me something just as precious on an evening a year or two later. By that time, I was dating the man who is now my husband. He worked in Frederick, MD, lived near Westminster, MD, and drove the hour+ to see me a few nights each week. One Friday in the fall, we decided to go to Rocco's. I dressed as I usually did for that sort of romantic but laid-back evening: black silky dress trousers, a white semi-sheer shirt, and dangly earrings. I had had my hair styled that day, though, and it looked quite extravagant. So I applied some red lipstick to complement the hair. And then I flung a dark red pashmina around my shoulders in case of a chill later.

Simon was dressed as always for work: khaki trousers, white dress shirt and dark blue double-breasted blazer.

When we walked in the door to Rocco's, Rocco himself was standing at the end of the bar. He greeted me warmly, remembering me from visits with my friend over the previous year or so, and said, “You look like a movie star.”

Well, that was good for my ego.

Then he looked at Simon, who is 6'2” and not scrawny, and said, “And you...you look like a bouncer.”

A masterful verbal assessment, fully accurate, but not one most people would blurt out.

And Rocco wasn't even a New Yorker!

*This year's panettone is genuine Italian, ordered via an Italian imported foods company in the UK.

 Copyright 2019, Laura Harrison McBride Please feel free to quote up to 25 words without asking; beyond that, please email me for permission via this site. Thank you.

Bread and jam today

What a year. I meant to finish a third children's book about Bijou, the British dog who moved to France. I meant to get the 90% complete book of poetry through the editing process and up for sale. I meant to finish the second Shelf Barker humorous mystery novel and publish it.  I've got two watercolours unfinished on the drafting table where they've been since mid-November, before we went to Ireland the second time. I meant to get rid of the intense sacroiliac pain. (Might be underway at last; fingers crossed.)

 

I cannot tick a box for any of the above except--I hope and pray--the last. 

 

I did go to Ireland twice and meet more than half a dozen of my second cousins for the first time. Went to Leo's Tavern in Donegal for the first time, home of Enya, Clannad and Moya Brennan because Leo is their father. We replaced the ratty carpet in our entry and living room with hardwood. I renewed a connection with a friend. I had a really not very exciting art exhibit. (I will NEVER ever invite people into my studio again; I mean, do actors invite theatregoers to visit them in their dressing rooms? Argh. What was I thinking?)

 

However, I planned to post some words and art from upcoming books/sales as holiday gifts, and so I shall. But they are not new, mainly; they have a bit of age on them. But they come with love...as long as you don't insist on seeing the mess in my studio/office!

 

 

Bread and jam today

by Laura Harrison McBride

Winter is late. Freezing. Cold draughts limbo under the front door,

roll up the stairs and hopscotch around the banisters to

attack me in my studio. No, no

I will not buy fingerless gloves. I will turn 

on a space heater. I will

because I am not Degas, this is not Paris, and

I have a meal ticket. A man who

supports my engaging the arts to do battle with

whatever demons make us--

all of us arty folk--

engage ourselves in repetitive futility.

NYC tenement in earlier times; reminds me of Degas' Paris studio.

The best do not repeat. The wealthy

do. The wealthy artists find

a gimmick, a gimcrack, and crack their

muse on its sharp, metallic edges

all the way to the bank. Schnabel pottery on canvas--

oh dear, and other

New York talentless...well, I had better not go there. But,

No frozen, northern-lighted studio for them; they can afford 

heat. Models.

Holiday trips to exotic lands. I can

turn on the heat, thanks to my meal

ticket (dear man, he's my soul's bread and butter.)

I can labour at one-offs until I tire, and then

go downstairs, toss costly grounds

into the French press, stick a piece

of my favourite once for-rich-folks-only

white bread into the toaster. Slather butter, spread

strawberry Bon Maman to my heart's content.

Brown bread I used to bake, before the meal ticket, and drench

in butter and honey still warm. In the old days, the days when

I couldn't turn up the heat. I had no meal ticket. But I wouldn't...no,

never...I wouldn't use a gimmick to attract buyers. I ate brown bread, honey, not much else. But no gimmicks.

No.

Thank god for my beautiful tall handsome meal ticket; I owe him my art.

Copyright Laura Harrison McBride