Cooking with Fernet Branca - James Hamilton-Paterson

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Ah, at last, Cooking With Fernet Branca! When Marta invites Gerald for dinner he agrees to come (good manners!) but only to discourage her from intruding on his secluded life again, he thinks of a prezzie which surely won't make her want to see him again: Garlic and Fernet Branca Ice Cream. Ingredients: 15 large cloves of garlic, 150g granulated sugar, 4 tablespoons cold double cream, ¼ pint Fernet Branca; he abstains from adding a dash of ...
...other ingredients, 'Such excesses will be held in abeyance for use only when the situation has degenerated considerably.' Does he succeed? You'd like to know, would you?

Gerald is a gifted cook and spends lot of time on his hobby although he cooks mainly only for himself; he's invented a new way of preparing food called 'sampering' (his surname is Samper), he's also very inventive when it comes to choosing and mixing exotic ingredients. ... more

The title did it! When I came across it I knew I had to have the book. The synopsis on amazon made it clear that it wasn't a cook book, it said that the main character was a foodie using Fernet Branca for cooking; if I didn't know the vile stuff, I may not have been hooked.
It was in 1845 that the Italian Bernardino Branca, a self taught apothecary, brewed a herbal elixir that was reputed to cure many ills, it was even tried on cholera patients (without success, though), the director of a hospital approved of it and so its success story began and hasn't ended yet. Nowadays it's sold as a digestive, made with over 40 different herbs and spices from four continents and aged in oak casks for over a year, it has 42% alcohol; when I drink it, my eyes bulge, I gasp, I splutter.
Do you have to know all this in a book review? Yes, you have because otherwise you can't understand how outrageous many situations are!

Gerald, an English expat, a ghost writer of second league sportsmen's biographies, has bought a house in Tuscany to be able to live and work quietly there, the Italian real estate agent told him the neighbouring house whose roof can be seen through the trees had also been bought by a foreigner who stayed there only for a month or so a year and who was mouse-quiet. The neighbour, Marta, got the same story the other way round, she's a composer from Voynovia, a former Eastern bloc country who's come to Italy on the invitation of an Italian film director to write the soundtrack for his next film. When these two meet, it's clear at once that no love is lost between them, they get on each others' nerve in every conceivable way. The action develops from their different characters, life styles, acquaintances and family. As Michael Dibdin put it in his review in the Guardian, "The plot is highly ingenious, completely wacky, and largely irrelevant."

An example, an incident that moves the plot forward: the lead singer of a British Boy Group has come to Gerald because he wants him to write his biography. Sitting on the veranda they're chit-chatting about this and that when out of the blue the singer confesses that he believes in UFOs and the next instant a huge, black, unmarked helicopter lands on Marta's plot emitting a behelmeted figure dressed in shiny material. He doesn't stay long enough to learn that this is Marta's brother who - thanks to his connections with the Voynovian and Italian underworld - has access to an unmarked helicopter.

This is not your thing? Well, then, forget about it, as you've just read, the plot doesn't matter anyway, the characters do.

The story is told in the first person perspective by Gerald and Marta alternatingly, sometimes we move with them in case they do or experience something that takes them away from their houses, sometimes we stay put when they both describe the same event but in a completely different way, two people couldn't be more opposed in their views of the world and judgement of people than those two.

Gerald is painting the ceiling when Marta comes in, uninvited, to introduce herself as the new neighbour "Excuse, please. I am Marta. Is open your door, see, and I am come", in order to break the ice she's brought a bottle of Fernet Branca. What/who does Gerald notice when looking down from his ladder miffed because of the interruption? A 'stocky, frizzy-haired frump' with a 'sebaceous face', in one word, 'ghastly Marta'.

Gerald considers himself an 'over-mannerly British gent' and although he knows about a 'lack of Adonis-like qualities' he sees in himself 'a certain refinement of manner and mind'. Marta, however, used to hunky Voynovian machos, sees 'an Englishman with a little paunch & one of those strange empty trouser-seats that always suggest an amputated bottom. . . . Late thirties, at a guess, but there's something elderly about him so I could believe ten years older. Almost certainly *dudi*." This is the Voynovian expression for 'camp'. Which Gerald is not, or is he? He does think of writing a personal memoir with the title, 'Under a Tuscan's Son'! (a witty aside by Hamilton-Paterson ridiculing the flourishing literature by and on ex-pats living in so-called Chiantishire). So who knows?

Both are convinced that the other is an alcoholic hooked on Fernet Branca, both would swear that they themselves only drink in company but are not really into serious boozing; truth is that for Marta serious boozing means guzzling 'galasiya', a Voyvodian schnapps which has 92% (!) alcohol, Gerald drinks wine and uses Fernet Branca mainly for cooking.

Ah, at last, Cooking With Fernet Branca! When Marta invites Gerald for dinner he agrees to come (good manners!) but only to discourage her from intruding on his secluded life again, he thinks of a prezzie which surely won't make her want to see him again: Garlic and Fernet Branca Ice Cream. Ingredients: 15 large cloves of garlic, 150g granulated sugar, 4 tablespoons cold double cream, ¼ pint Fernet Branca; he abstains from adding a dash of sperm although he thinks it would mix nicely with the other ingredients, 'Such excesses will be held in abeyance for use only when the situation has degenerated considerably.' Does he succeed? You'd like to know, would you?

Gerald is a gifted cook and spends lot of time on his hobby although he cooks mainly only for himself; he's invented a new way of preparing food called 'sampering' (his surname is Samper), he's also very inventive when it comes to choosing and mixing exotic ingredients. How about 'Mussels in Chocolate'? 'Otter with Lobster sauce'? 'Rabbit in Cep Custard'? Always with at least a dash of Fernet Branca, of course (Dibdin describes it as 'a mixture of aromatherapy essences and dilute Marmite'). His culinary climax is, however, the invention of 'Alien Pie' for which among many other things '1 kg smoked cat, off the bone' and '1 single drop household paraffin' are needed.

Hamilton-Paterson confesses in an interview of having no interest whatsoever in cooking, but he insists on the edibility of cats and dogs; having lived in the Philippines for several years he's learnt to consider eating these animals as normal. His book has become a great success in our part of the world, I doubt, though, that this is due to the culinary aspect involved. I'm still waiting to read about hobby cooks preparing Gerald Samper's recipes, heehee!

Do I recommend this book? Oh, yes, very much so, if Hamilton-Pateson's humour appeals to you, it's the ideal holiday reading matter, the author in his own voice, "It is a ludicrous book, a beach book which you then toss up on the top of your wardrobe in your Torremolinos apartment before heading back to the airport." Of course, you don't have to go to Torremolinos to enjoy the book, you can also enjoy it at home and you don't have to toss it anywhere. I've got three colleagues queuing who want to read it, I only hope it'll find the way back on my bookshelves.

Faber
2004
296 pages
cover price 7.99 GBP
 

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