Driving on the outskirts of Gela in Sicily last summer, we passed a truck, its open back full of pea-green, electric-purple and white cauliflowers. Such trucks are a familiar but always striking sight in Italy. Especially this one, with its particularly high wall of tricolour heads, a few of which had toppled off and rolled into the road, where they had met with a messy end. We stopped for petrol and lemonade at a garage on the opposite side of the road. I think I tried to take a picture, but it was someone else in the car who summed up the scene: “Joker truck,” they said. I didn’t understand what they meant immediately, but when I did, all previous descriptions – cumulus clouds, cream-coloured curds – disappeared, and all I could see were green shirts, purple suits and white faces: a pile of Jokers from Batman.
Months later, and it is still the first thing that comes to mind when I pick up a cauliflower. Even a freshly cut one with cream curds and sculpted leaves from my friend Carla Tomasi’s garden is a vegetable of great beauty, with something of Jack Nicholson about it.
