He says: «The extreme dress will be made of wood, wild pine, scented with truffles. Three bottles of Barolo Mascarello, no barrique no Berlusconi will accompany me ». Cesare Giaccone, 75 years old on November 22, stokes, remembering his last wishes, the fire in the fireplace. Himself a flickering spark between reality and unreality, a creature conceived in who knows what fabulous night, the masche in flight, a magical dew lurking, a cat on guard who has escaped from Wonderland.
It is an elf, Cesare, crouched in Albaretto Torre, in the Alta Langa. You reach his refuge in the woods by passing in front of the tavern where the kid sublimely cooked over the seasons. Attracting anonymous palates and, it goes without saying, of great fame. Here and there: «Giorgio Bocca. Once he lectured throughout the meal with a parish priest as rough as his faith. Finally shaking his hand, recognizing him of his dough. Giovanni Arpino: he was close to the farewell step, I remember him between a bite and the other inseparable from the cigarette, the last, never the last, which will allow him to confess “I have what I smoked”. Gino Paoli: so stubborn to force the sky into a room… ».
Cesare offers tome, anchovies, polenta, a bottle of indigenous sparkling wine, from Viognier grapes. Gradually setting a table that crumbles the Malora already redeemed by Beppe Fenoglio turning it into a masterpiece: «At noon as at dinner, polenta almost always passed, to be flavored by rubbing it in turn against an anchovy that hung by a thread from the rafter; the anchovy no longer had any anchovy figure and we went on rubbing a few more days, and whoever rubbed more than honest, if it were Ginotta who was to get married soon, Tobia was beating him across the table … ».
Caesar is a non-graduate cook, and therefore has a vocation for climbing royal ladders, barred from others. Perhaps it is not natural to twin it with the Proustian Françoise who “went to the Markets herself to be given the finest quarters of loin, ox shank, calf leg, like Michelangelo who spent eight months in the mountains of Carrara choosing the blocks more perfect marble for the monument to Julius II “?
A pride ignites Cesare. His recipes (some of them) in the seasons invented and re-invented, finally accepted – and thus consecrated – in the Tallone typographic cathedral, to each its own character, its excellent paper, Magnani, Amalfi, Japanese. Sublime scampi and dog rose petals, tripe salad with chicory and blueberries, vivacity of borlotti beans …
The crib of Caesar is a bazaar. Where everything is. Even a bicycle hanging on the wall. Which was Coppi’s. Who would dismount if you wanted to mistake it for a work of contemporary art. “He used to go up there to train. I exchanged it for about ten lunches ». No less golden than a Campionissimo trophy. “A German customer came to see me who keeps like a relic an account from the day before yesterday, when there was the lira: for four diners, 740 thousand lire, of which 180 thousand for a Barolo of ’67 and 320 thousand for truffles ».
October, November, the months of the Tuber which inspired Guareschi a story by Peppone and Don Camillo. «In my village – remembers Cesare, a free soul to the point of genius – everyone voted for DC. Only one the Communist Party. A truffle hunter. One day, after selling me one, I served the joke: “I made you big. I found it in your vineyard! ”». He is a chef-painter, Cesare, a Ligabue of the kitchen. The dishcloths like canvases, the donkeys in flight, cared for to the extreme braying, portrayed with a naive hand. Here the other Cesare di Langa, Pavese, would be heard, who, if he had married, would have received as a gift – a lady from Turin promised – the donkey with a saddlebag, a Macchiaiolo oil, by Fattori.
Caesar’s zoo, fantastic and not. He complains that the red grouse, with the arrival of the pheasants, have disappeared. He would gladly talk about it with Mario Rigoni Stern, like him in November, dedicating him a menu among a thousand: Venetian sardines, milk polenta, fried cockerel with artichokes, melon sorbet, Langa rotunda …
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