Out of the Mouths of Babes

I was born in late 1960s Italy, when the economy was booming and people had forgotten the ravages of war and their rural past.

My parents — like many other young, hopeful couples — were the symbol of this progressive, optimistic era, having acquired a taste for assorted appliances and conveniences that promised a more leisurely life.

But despite her veneer of progress, my mother insisted on meticulously preparing my meals from scratch, remaining indifferent to the marketing ploys of baby food manufacturers. As far as my food was concerned, her only concession to modernity was the addition of a wedge of processed cheese to my chicken soup, which she would have boiled with a handful of tiny star-shaped pasta, called stelline.

That gelatinous, sapid cheese managed to turn a perfectly delectable bowl of chicken soup into a gloopy mess. But somehow, advertising executives had convinced millions of otherwise sensible mothers that processed cheese with soup provided the calcium and vitamins toddlers in prosperous Italy were obviously lacking.

One evening I was sitting in my high chair, blanketed in a starched bib and ready for supper when my mother appeared in our white-and-pastel-green kitchen. She pushed toward me a bowl of steamy, fragrant chicken soup, where millions of tiny stars were orbiting around a triangular sun of processed cheese, already looking slimy as it melted into the stock.

She spooned up the golden liquid, blew gently to cool it and proceeded to spoon-feed me, praising the virtues of chicken soup, which was soooo goooood for me, buonissima!

I must have been impressed with my mother’s histrionics, because she convinced me to swallow several spoonfuls of that gloop, before I suddenly stopped: I just sat there, staring at my mother, with my mouth full of soup, my cheeks rounded and my lips pursed, savoring the taste.

“Eat up!” my mother coaxed me enthusiastically, thanking her lucky stars her baby wasn’t a fussy eater. Seconds later, her fussy-eater baby sprayed her face with a jet of warm soup, peppering her neatly backcombed hairdo and empress dress with shiny stars and molten-cheese pearls.

After the initial surprise, we both started laughing — my mother rather hysterically — before she found the strength to begin collecting the little pasta shapes. She told me later that for weeks she kept finding stray stars that had managed to wedge themselves into the most unlikely corners of the kitchen.

As I grew up, I graduated to more grownup pasta shapes, like sedani or angel hair, in my soup, while my mother became savvy enough to forgo the evil processed cheese.

Yet, chicken soup with stelline is something I turn to as my security blanket on wintry evenings when I am on my own, feeling chilly, or coming down with the sniffles.

Despite the decades that have passed since that tragicomic evening, and the physical distance from my mother’s kitchen now that I live in England, a steaming bowlful of soup brings me back to safety. It brings me home.

Of course, I hold the cheese. And, yes, in case you are wondering, my table manners have improved since.

Photo: Elena Berton

Elena Berton is a journalist who lives in London, England. When she’s not chasing the latest news, she spends her time in her tiny kitchen recreating the northern Italian food of her childhood. She also keeps a food blog, www.intrepidgourmet.com.