A 200 YEAR OLD RECIPE

It was a spicy gift, there steaming on my dinner plate, from almost 200 years ago. From the small Italian city of Turino, where my grandmother's grandmother's grandmother had first learned to make Risotto all these storied generations ago. Now their very same gustatory delicacy sat before me for my birthday dinner; here in Chicago, six generations and 6,000 miles away.

A member of my family had made it, because she knew it would be a grander gift than some token or trifle. And she was right. But to tell the truth, spooning into this traditional North-Italian rice dish was so much more than a meal. It was a memory. A memory of memories, carried and carried out by generations of my Mother's family.

Here's what I say...

I say, you can't simply spoon into a culinary masterpiece like this without reflecting a little on the master hands and hearts that first created it. Then carried it on, all these years and all these miles. You see, what's going on here is a kind of sovereign continuity that defies cooks and clocks and even celebrity.

This traditional plate of North-Italian Risotto is a tiny reminder of a great truth. That we really don't merely live, eat, then die. There is something lasting, even immortal, about us. Otherwise, why this exacting replication of a family recipe that not only pleases the stomach, but empowers the soul.

Some transcendent part of me is in quiet communion with hundreds of family members who once cooked, served and shared this very same experience. There are fiercely more than genes and brain circuits to explain this unbroken continuity. Simply put, for me this is la famiglia at work! Linking them to me and me to them in ways that shout: I am not a cosmic accident!

Can I prove this to you...? Maybe not at first. But maybe by the time the Gelato is served.....