The Draft Under the Kitchen Door and the List I Rewrote Backwards

The fog came in overnight and never really left — the whole lane soft at the edges, the far roofs gone, the streetlight still on at nine in the morning doing its small useless best. I noticed it first at the ankle. There’s a thin cold draft that comes under the kitchen door, the first one of the year, and you only ever feel it once summer has genuinely let go. I stood at the counter with my coffee with one foot on the mat and one foot off, like a woman testing bathwater, and decided the day was going to be about small things.

It turned out to be mostly a list. I went down for the shopping with the paper in my pocket, and it wasn’t until I was at the vegetable stall with the bag already open that I realised the one thing I actually came out for — the bread — was in my head and not on the paper, and my head is where things go to be forgotten. So I stood at the corner and rewrote the whole thing, and while I was rewriting it I finally saw the problem I’ve had for years: I write the list in the order things occur to me, which is nothing like the order I walk. Bread first, then greens, then the shop with the coffee. So now the list is written in the order of the walk. It sounds like nothing. It has already saved me twice this week.

Supper was a bowl of pasta and chickpeas, because I had a jar of them cooked from Sunday and half a head of tired greens, and it’s the sort of thing that asks nothing of you. Soffritto first, properly, until the onion goes sweet and quiet; then a spoon of tomato, the chickpeas with their liquid, a little rosemary, and let it sit and think while the pasta cooks. You cook the pasta in the same water and finish it in the pan, so the starch thickens everything and there’s no cream and no flour anywhere near it. Salt late, oil raw over the top, pepper until it’s almost too much. I ate it with the heel of the loaf and there’s a bowl left for tomorrow, which is half the reason to make it.

I’d also meant to go up to the piazza after lunch to look at a noticeboard about something or other, and I changed my mind on the step, turned around, and came back in. I’m glad I did. The fog stayed outside and the kitchen stayed warm and I read for an hour with my feet up, which was the better plan and I only found it by abandoning the other one.

Recipe: Pasta e Ceci

Ingredients

200 g dried chickpeas, soaked overnight (or 2 tins, drained, with their liquid)
1 small onion, 1 carrot, 1 celery stalk, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
3 tablespoons olive oil, plus more to finish
1 tablespoon tomato paste, or 150 g chopped tomatoes
1 sprig rosemary, needles chopped
200 g short pasta (ditalini, tubetti, or broken spaghetti)
a pinch of dried peperoncino
salt and black pepper

Preparation

If using dried chickpeas, simmer them in plenty of unsalted water until completely tender, 45–60 minutes, and keep the cooking water.
Warm the olive oil in a heavy pot and soften the onion, carrot, and celery over low heat for 10 minutes. Add the garlic, rosemary, and peperoncino, cook 1 minute, then stir in the tomato paste and cook 2 minutes more.
Add the chickpeas with about a litre of their cooking water (or the tinned liquid plus water). Bring to a simmer and cook 10 minutes. Mash a ladleful of chickpeas against the side of the pot to thicken the broth, leaving the rest whole.
Add the pasta and cook in the pot until al dente, stirring often — add a splash more hot water if it gets too thick.
Taste and salt, rest 5 minutes off the heat, and serve with a thread of raw olive oil and plenty of black pepper. Better the next day, thinned with a little water.