Before she moved, Ginia lived in a fifth-floor flat in a 1920s block near Piazza Vittorio. And before she gave up cooking, she used to make a bollito every other Sunday. Once upon a time, that meant an almost full bollito misto alla Piemontese, as her father taught her to make it: beef (muscle, tail and tongue), also a whole chicken and cotechino sausage boiled separately, then served together, sliced and steaming hot, with a selection of sauces. But as the years went on and the house emptied – of children, also of her husband (she threw him out) – her bollito streamlined.
By the time I met Ginia, the bollito was half a chicken, or maybe a boneless beef rib known as scaramella. Not that there was any talk of food when we first met in the international bookshop near Termini station. Browsing side by side, she asked me what I thought of Iris Murdoch, looked appalled when I said I hadn’t read her, then walked over to the desk and ordered me a copy of The Sea, The Sea. Two weeks later she sent me a message in capital letters – “LIBRO ARRIVES, BOOKSHOP WED 10” – and, after picking it up, we went for coffee, the first of many. She also seemed appalled when I told her I wrote about food. “Of all the subjects”. But then later we did talk about food – if the story involved something sinister or salacious, or a pub. Which is how we arrived at the bollito, and her ex-husband’s insistence that for it to be true bollito, the raw meat must be put into boiling water, but how she used to start from cold and he never noticed the difference. And somehow we arrived at Fergus Henderson’s way of poaching a chicken, which she was quite delighted by, and in return she gave me suggestions for the sauces for boiled meat, whether for a bollito or a single poached bird, which is one of my favourite meals. Ginia suggested two or three condiments, plus mustard, with a poached bird, the sauces, and all ideally served in a compartmentalised dish. Leftover sauces are a gift for future meals and the saviour of leftovers. Ginia now lives in Berlin near her daughter, reads avidly and never cooks.
