Along the Tiber, the Tevere

The river, weeds on the menu, and making a feast

Apr 25

Hello! My name is Rebecca May Johnson, I am a writer and cook and this is my Substack. This is the third newsletter written from Rome and this week I present an account of the river path, the weeds I have seen and eaten, and the making of an Easter feast.

This is a bonus free letter in April as April is my birthday month!

I send out the newsletter with text and images to paid subscribers every Monday and the audio version on Wednesdays; paid subs also have access to the archive. Free subscribers receive one newsletter per month and the audio version every Wednesday. Substack have also created a free trial option.

Along the Tiber, the Tevere

The river path begins in Marconi, the neighbourhood where we are staying. Five minutes walk from the apartment there is a slope downwards from the street, the entrance marked by a wall of prickly pear cactus. Where we are is quite densely populated and throughout Rome there are a lot of cars but when I get down to the river path all I can hear are birds and the movement of water. Plants along the riverbank, on the walls and slopes down from the street level, and on the flat verges of the path have been left to grow however they will. The path has recently been formalised into two lanes for cyclists to share with walkers, one going in each direction. It continues far into the city and to visit friends or see sights I walk along the river and pop up variously at Ponte Testaccio, Ponte Sublicio in Trastevere, or towards the centre of town at the Ponte Cestio and Ponte Garibaldi. I have a mini bout of fatigue during the second week in Rome, and after several days mostly lying down, I find that walking along the river tires me out significantly less than the road.

Some of the plants growing ‘like weeds’ along the river path

Prickly pear cactus, a wall of it eight foot tall at the slope down to the path, like a modernist sculpture

Bamboo down the bank from the road is very tall and very dense and pushing against the fences and some collapsed and fallen over; where it is growing, other plants do not

Fat hen, which has partly taken on the form of other plants around it and so looks slightly different to the version on the allotment

Barley

Brambles tumbling down a long section of sloped wall, with cats nestling in it

Jack of the hedge, which I consider picking to make a garlicky pesto

Mallow

Cicoria

Deadly nightshade

Lemon balm

Vetch from the pea family, with small purple flowers that I recognise from the green manure mix I grew on the allotment

Red clover

White clover

Yellow suckling clover

Buttercups

Geraniums

Daisy-like pink tinted Mexican fleabane sprout from the joins in brickwork in the tall, vertical sections of wall

Ranunculus with yellow flowers grow in clumps

Oat straw with seeds that dangle like earrings

Mustard greens

Rapeseed in clouds of bright yellow flowers

Fennel, a little bulb forming halfway down a dried-out stem from last year’s plant

Elderflower

Nettles

Goose grass

Olive tree

Fig trees everywhere, and one huge tree, branches cascading down the stone wall from the road

Sycamore

Doc leaves

Speedwells

Poppy

Also along the river

Two women walking over the rough grass next on a flat plain to the entrance in Marconi, talking and carrying plastic bags filled with foraged leaves.

Someone shouting like they are lost at sea or in the fog from across the river amongst dense trees and greenery, I cannot see them.

A large group of very young school or nursery age children wearing high vis vests play and dig in the grey beige sand in the gloom under a bridge next to the river path. They play next to nettles and graffiti on the walls of the bridge, attended to by two teachers.

Improvised shelters where people live along the river bank built on ledges a few meters above the path and below street level.

A small tray with dry cat biscuits next to the path

People carrying olive branches

A man with a mini umbrella in his combat trouser pocket halfway down his leg

A teenage girl and her younger brother doing lunges along the path and an improvised exercise routine.

Joggers, electric scooter riders, cyclists on electric, mountain and road bikes

Occasional police cars of different sizes including small hatchback cars to 4X4s drive along the river path, taking up all of it, forcing walkers, runners and cyclists off the path and onto the verges

Cats cats cats cats – healthy-looking, sleeping, walking, watching us and once, several cats hanging out with a man who was talking to them

Weeds and Arses in the Vatican

An exhausting labyrinth to get in and walk round, signage promising we will arrive at the Sistine Chapel for a kilometre of narrow crowded passages stuffed with amazing sights, that gradually become less amazing as I am too tired to look. Different sets of toes set in stone on plinths. A twisted muscly headless torso that makes me think of Rilke’s poem ‘Archaic Torso of Apollo’. I sit down in a chair intended for a security guard in an alcove near a Francis Bacon painting with a lot of green in it. Tapestries and weeds! Rocket, dandelions, and ribwort plantain. Mallow, small red flowers almost like primroses, poppies, thistles, common violets. Hands reaching to the earth for support amidst a depiction of conflict and revelation. The chapel itself is a big glorious fuckfest at the end of walking – the retrospectively painted on loincloths do nothing to conceal this fact. Arses and arses and arses going upwards to meet God.

Afterwards walk to Forno di Fiori in the rain, let in just before closing to have zucchine pizza and zucchine flower and anchovy pizza with cokes. We eat standing up under a flower seller’s tent.

Piatto Romano

We squeeze in on the last table without a reservation with our friend who is also called Rebecca.

On the antipasti menu at Piatto Romano restaurant are the weeds I have seen around the city. I am so excited! In the first few days here, I talked to Rachel about ancient Romans eating mallow, now it is on a menu. No longer a weed, now a dish. Distinctions eroding. I wonder if the mallow or ‘malva’ in England is tender enough to cook in this way, wilted in a pan with olive oil. This is the plant that, apart from fat hen, grows most rampantly uninvited on the allotment since I took it on in summer 2019. It grows taller than me, up to six foot and develops thick roots that go several feet deep into the ground. In the first summer on the allotment, I broke a new spade trying to dig out a mallow root from the ground. It can regrow from a fragment of root and can become dense, leaves at its base spreading out and blocking other plants from growing. It has purple flowers. Constrained by asphalt in the city in Rome, mallow is a more modest size.

We also eat:

Borage buds battered and deep fried, their blue flowers once out also an almost endless source of food for bees, nearly the first and last out in the year. These were Sam’s favourite.

Fennel tops and all manner of small wild plants with sumac and anchovy dressing is misticanza selvatica da campo (mixed wild things from the field), which I resolve to try and make from the allotment.

Then,

I have rigatoni with pajata in tomato sauce, pajata are mild tasting lamb’s intestines in tomato sauce – a traditional Roman dish.

Sam and Rebecca T both eat rabbit cacciatore and we share cicoria ripassata on the side which is twice cooked cicoria, first boiled for quite a long time rather than a blanching, then drained, liquid squeezed out and fried in oil, garlic and chillies.

Finally,

Tiramisu which is wonderfully custardy, chocolate mousse, and ciamballino biscuits with fennel seeds, dipped in what remains of our red wine.

There is a table of slightly awkward looking men in suits on the table next to us. They do not share their dishes and the restaurant owner is serving their wine himself. We speculate about what they are and one of them, we find out later, is the minister for the interior.

Making an Easter Meal (and ‘On Making Mayonnaise’)

On Saturday afternoon I buy a pasteira, a Neapolitan Easter tart with pastry made using lard filled with ricotta, and milk-soaked whole wheat grains and candied peel. I read somewhere that it should be made by easter Friday at the latest for the flavour to mature by Sunday. I ask the woman at the Pasticceria whether I should refrigerate it and she replies emphatically, no. When I pick it up in its box it feels heavy for its size: a tart of substance.

We leave our flat in Marconi at 12.45pm and walk along the river path with the tart, two bottles of wine and an Avengers themed Kinder chocolate egg towards Testaccio where Rachel lives. We arrive and I give Luca his egg which contains a toy in the middle: an Avengers Thor figure with a moving hammer which he assembles then shows me his collection of Avengers Lego. Sam and I sit at the table and pod peas and broad beans as we did before, for R to make another vignarola (it’s the season!). Luca intermittently gets up and sneaks away handfuls of pea pods and sits at Rachel’s writing desk in the kitchen podding and eating peas in a frenzy and playing a game. I ask if he prefers chocolate or peas, and he says peas! After broad beans and peas, we move onto artichokes, tiny ones for frying whole as a starter and larger once to cut up and put into the vignarola.

Rachel asks me to whip double cream to cover her Zuccotto, which is in the freezer. I realise we don’t need the pasteira, and we decide to save it for a picnic the next day. I begin whisking and cream sprays everywhere, so Rachel puts her new bright red Tunnock’s teacake apron on me, and I keep whisking and despite my efforts, spray a mist of cream on the floor that Lola the dog licks as I go (Easter for dogs too). When the cream makes stiff but not rigid peaks, Rachel removes the Zuccotto from the freezer to unmould. It has a centre of ricotta, cream, candied peel, and nuts encased in a patchwork of sponge cake. The sponge is edged with red from dipping each piece into Alchermes liquor (Rachel wrote about it two weeks ago). Luca smacks the metal base of the mould and gives strongly worded encouragement to get it out, then spreads over cream and dusts with cocoa. To look at, it reminds me of a baked Alaska that my grandmother once made.

Rachel asks, ‘would you rather clean chairs or peel potatoes?’ I clean the chairs which have a layer of silt on them after winter outside on the large balcony where we will eat. Rachel peels potatoes.

I make a mayonnaise for the roast chickens, standing at the table with a bowl. I begin with two egg yolks, mustard, salt, and pepper, and pour in olive oil very slowly from the bottle, which has a pourer on top that means it comes out in a slow stream, ideal for this purpose. I say that, personally, I like to use a wooden spoon – I can better feel the changing thickness as there is more rough surface area to catch the liquid on, versus say, a metal spoon. I am standing at the table stirring the mayonnaise when our friends Rebecca and Matt arrive. Rebecca takes a photo of me making stirring and pouring. We discuss making it, people’s fear, my feeling that it is a kind of performance to make mayonnaise. It certainly feels that way as I stand in the middle of the room with everyone looking and talking about what I am doing. Rachel quotes Nigella, who wrote somewhere that she never found mayonnaise difficult or scary until she was in the middle of making it and someone said, ‘aren’t you scared of making mayonnaise?’ (or something along those lines) and then it immediately split. I try to remain relaxed and not to think of splitting thinking about how, like horses, mayonnaise has a sixth sense for anxiety. Mine does not split today but it is too salty at first. I took a pinch of Rachel’s salt which is much finer than the salt I use at home so there is more of it in a pinch. The solution is to keep making mayonnaise to improve the ratio of salt to sauce. I add another egg yolk and keep adding oil, hoping that I am not pushing my luck with it holding its form as it gets thicker and thicker. It holds, it is no longer too salty, and I sharpen it with lemon juice.

We stand round the table chatting while the vignarola cooks drinking wine and eating broad beans from the pods and pecorino and slices of salami. Then some fried baby artichokes which have been fried twice. Once, for longer on a lower heat, then taken out and left to cool. Then again on a high heat for a short amount of time to crisp up and then seasoned with salt. Rachel had been practising her technique.

Rachel is worried that the chickens, which are boilers instead of roasting birds as she got to the butcher late, will be tough or dry, but when we cut them up into sections using meat scissors and arrange them onto a plate, they are juicy. The potatoes are roasted in the chicken fat.

On the table:

Two roasted chickens

Roast potatoes

Vignarola

Mayonnaise (in fact, there is not too much!)

Easter cheese bread which looks comically like a giant mushroom or oversized rum baba.

Then

Zuccotto cut into thick slices with more cochineal red Alchermes poured over it, coffee, grappa, and home.

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