It’s a gorgeous sunny morning. The Fourth of July is not one of my favorite holidays. I’ve spent the past several years working and it’s never been a hardship for me, but this year we are off. I’ve spent a somewhat restless morning, somewhat hungry and dissatisfied, but unable to focus on a solution. I spent half an hour cleaning dust and cobwebs off the deck only to be attacked by microscopic bugs the instant I settled down in the sun. I flipped through the stack of books waiting to be read, just managing a just few pages here and there. Magazines were no better, once the stack reaches a certain height it dies. It becomes too large to even contemplate so I tucked them away to avoid the guilt. I rummaged through the cupboards searching for inspiration with no luck. Nothing was working for me this morning. I was cranky and starving and—there was a head of garlic and some rolls on the counter. The perfect solution finally reared it’s head.
It’s called a fettunta. We served it with, I believe, the lamb dish several summers ago. It was our first season on the Vineyard together and we were working at a Tuscan restaurant in Edgartown. Ostensibly we were Chef and Pastry Chef but as in most of our joint endeavors, titles were somewhat irrelevant. The new restaurant was owned by an up and coming Chef from NYC. He was about to open a new place in Manhattan as the Chef de Cuisine for a very well known Chef. There was no question that the new endeavor would succeed and become the launching pad for his own place in the City. Although he had owned the place on the Vineyard for a few years his presence that summer was meant to be minimal as his place in the city was supposed to open at the beginning of the summer. It should come as a surprise to no one that he was very much around for the entire season. Although it was a great learning experience, it was not exactly one we had been anticipating. But those are stories for another day.
The fettunta was on the prep list of the grill station. Every day the local bakery delivered large round loaves of country bread sliced thin. This bread was brushed with olive oil and grilled. While the bread was still warm it was rubbed with cut cloves of garlic and sprinkled with salt. It was incredibly pungent and earthy, greasy, crisp, chewy and utterly delicious. I made my dinner from the leftovers at the end of service each evening. I seemed to be the only cook with a taste for it. I would rub a cut tomato over the garlicky bread and sprinkle it with Parmigiano-Reggiano. At this point the bread was cold and more chewy than crisp. The sweetness and softness of the tomato were the perfect foil to the sharpness of the garlic and the saltiness of the cheese. I would sit on the back step with a cold beer and savor each bite. It was always a nice finish to a long, hard day.
This morning I didn’t have any tomatoes but I did have relatively fresh rolls, garlic and amazing olive oil. I split a roll and put it in a pan over high heat to toast. We lost the toaster to the mice when we were away on vacation. While it toasted I peeled a clove of garlic, split it and removed the sprouting center. When the bread was toasted I rubbed it with garlic, brushed it with the dark green oil and sprinkled it with salt. I sank my teeth into the slick crust, inhaling its earthy aromas, as grains of sea salt melted on my tongue. The world stopped as I closed my eyes and was magically transported to sun and water and ocean breezes against my cheek, pots and pans clanging in the background. It was an illuminating moment. Perhaps this feeling of wrongness dogging my steps lately isn’t me, perhaps it’s just where I reside at the moment. If so, at least I can find the flavors to take me back where I belong, in spirit if not in the flesh.
*Memory can be a shaky thing. Since posting I've remembered a few salient details. In the interests of accuracy I'm noting them here. We used to serve the bread with Caciucco, a Tuscan fish stew, not lamb. I learned the term fettunta after the Vineyard from different Italians. Marco actually used a different term for the bread but I'm slightly embarassed to admit that I don't remember what his term was. If there were any leftovers, I would use up the tomato concasse from another station on my dinner. If there weren't any leftovers I would rub my bread with a fresh tomato. The end result was the same but the pathways were a little different than the ones recounted above.
