On the Kitchen Porch

“Non si gradisce un dessert, signora?” the waiter asked. “Wouldn’t you like dessert?”

We were concluding a very pleasant meal in a small restaurant on the island of Torcello in the northern reaches of the Venetian lagoon. It was called Al Ponte del Diavolo, after the arching footbridge nearby, and it had been a chance discovery, one of those places that one is so happy to stumble on. “Oh, look at this menu, the place looks nice, let’s try it.” And we did.

My companions were a famous photographer and his girlfriend, later wife; she had grown up in Rome and spoke the purest, clearest Italian I’ve ever heard from an American.

We had gone out to Torcello on a fine May morning when the cherries were in blossom to see the recently restored mosaics in the basilica of Santa Maria Assunta. Probably the oldest church in the whole Venetian territory, one of the oldest churches in all of Italy, it dates back to the seventh century although the narthex, the entrance portal at the western end of the church, was a good 200 years later—ninth or tenth century, art historians agree. That’s still pretty old, even by Italian standards.

The basilica’s appeal is only partly historical-it’s what remains of the once thriving port of Torcello, the first settlement on the lagoon, the place Ruskin called “the mother of Venice.” It was the abandonment of Torcello, in the 14th century, that led to the glorious Venice we know today.

But the overwhelming lure of the church is not so much historic as it is aesthetic. That’s because of the stunning eleventh-century mosaics that cover the end walls, dazzling spectacles made up of tiny glittering tesserae, colored-glass tiles no more than a centimeter square, the likely work of Byzantine craftsmen.

The first you see on entering is the Madonna over the altar, an impossibly long, upright, solitary figure with the Christ child in her arms, truly a goddess, enclosed in an immense half dome of glittering gold tiles. In her solemnity, in her dignity, in her mystery, she recalls the Cycladic figures in glowing Parian marble carved by Aegean craftsmen millennia earlier. The row of saints below here seems indifferent to her overwhelming majesty.

But then, you turn and look the other way and the doomsday spectacle of the Last Judgment dominates the entire western wall, the counter façade, covered with six registers of figures from the stark simplicity of the crucified Christ at the top, down through complex rows and rows, intricate figures of angels, saints, apostles, animals and devils and mythical beasts, figures of Old Testament prophets, down, down to the final, lowest register where souls are divided between the terrors of hell and the glories of Paradise.

This is the Divine Comedy, laid out in spectacular detail, the mosaic tiles creating a memento mori for a people, most of whom could not read but who could look and see and take away the lessons on the wall.

We staggered from the cool, dark church out into the fresh, salty air off the lagoon, the spring sunshine, the grassy lawn of the cathedral close scattered with flowers, and made our way back to the Osteria al Ponte del Diavolo, the devil’s bridge, a name given throughout Italy to these impossibly high-arched bridges that date back to earlier times.

At the eponymous restaurant, we had risotto, because one always has risotto in Venice, this time with castraùre, the famous small, sweet, meaty artichokes from Sant’Erasmo, another lagoon island, and then some fish that I don’t remember except it was of course simply prepared and delicious. It was a fine sunny day and, after being blown away in the depths of the church, we were happy to recover with a bottle of nicely chilled soave.

“I signori non si gradisce un dessert?”

Well, no, actually, having adopted Italian attitudes, we usually didn’t take dessert unless it was a little fruit, perhaps some strawberries although it was still early in the season for strawberries.

“Not even the famous tiramisù from the island of Burano?” the waiter suggested.

Well, then, actually, why not? Any time something is mentioned that’s local, special, traditional, only to be found here in this place, my food writerly palate calls itself to attention. I had never heard of tiramisù, although the name was enticing—pick me up, it means literally, tira mi sù. So yes, we would try it but only one portion. And three spoons.

And we licked the platter clean.

I don’t want to say it was a revelation, certainly not on a par with the mosaics in the basilica, but it was nothing any of us, experienced travelers that we were, had ever had before. And it was quite extravagantly delicious. Served in a glass bowl so you could see the layers, it recalled a similarly layered Florentine dessert (not actually a favorite of mine) called zuppa inglese, English soup, which itself recalls English trifle (definitely not a favorite of mine). Take the sticky jam, the whipped cream, the sweetened vanilla custard of a typical trifle, then pare the ingredients back and intensify the flavors, adding the bitterness of strong espresso and dark chocolate, the velvety texture and slight acidity of mascarpone, the contrasting softness and crispiness of sugar-coated savoiardi biscuits, and that’s something worth consuming at the end of a meal. A dessert, a concluding sweet, should never be cloying, never make you ask why you had that second bite. Instead it should have a sharp bitterness that wakes your mouth up again after the fullness of the meal.

At least, that’s what I think and I also think most Italians would agree with me. A chocolate layer cake thick with chocolate icing might be welcome at tea time when there’s no competition, but not, please, at the end of a good meal. A well-made tiramisù, on the other hand, is just the right touch.

How curious to think there was a time within living memory when tiramisù was quite simply unknown. Not just unknown to North Americans, actually unknown throughout Italy. And yet there we were, in a country and a region and a place that still stands out for its adherence to tradition, to the authentic, local, time-honored way of cooking and presenting and eating food—and we were tasting something not one of us had ever experienced before.

Within days it seemed, or certainly within months, of that encounter with tiramisù in 1983 in an obscure restaurant on an obscure island in the Venetian lagoon, tiramisù was suddenly everywhere. Nowadays, it’s on so many restaurant menus, from grand establishments to cheap diners, that it’s fallen to the bottom of the dessert menu, and featured in so many newspaper and magazine articles that it’s become an embarrassing cliché. The claim is even made that it’s an ancient tradition of northern Italy and yet it cannot be found in any cookery books, Italian or otherwise, before the early 1980s.

How and why these food fads happen, what pushes tiramisù from a restaurant kitchen somewhere in northeastern Italy (origin points are in great dispute) to the world stage, is one of those puzzles that tease food historians. (Here’s another one, totally unrelated to the first: who could have predicted back in 1975, when it seems to have started up, that eating raw fish would become a phenomenon that would sweep across North America into every small town, even in the heartland, and end up with sushi in your local supermarket and even at interstate highway stops?)

But in 1983, I didn’t know that was going to happen. All I knew was that I had to find out how to put together this extraordinarily rich and satisfying yet somehow light and insubstantial dessert, how it was composed. Composed is the operative word here because tiramisù was clearly not really cooked but rather put together as an assemblage of ingredients. Two of those ingredients are of critical importance and, in my opinion, give some sense of how and why the sweet zoomed in popularity shortly after I discovered it. (Mind you, I make no claim for bringing tiramisù to the fore, just for being an early advocate.) Savoiardi biscuits are fairly ubiquitous on shop shelves throughout Italy. I don’t know when they were invented (some say in the 14th century) but they’ve been around for a very long time as favorite little sweets for dipping in coffee or a glass of sweet wine or vinsanto. To English speakers, they’re more familiar as ladies’ fingers. But ladies’ fingers are often flaccid and spongy, while savoiardi are crisp with a satisfying crunch.

A more important and more significant ingredient, however, is mascarpone, the smooth, spreadable dairy product that’s produced by coagulating rich milk or cream with an acid (citric or tartaric acid or lemon juice) and heat-treating it. It’s a mistake to call this cheese since there’s no rennet, no bacterial culture, and no fermentation involved. It’s a traditional and much-loved product of the region around Milano in Lombardy where dairy herds are prominent, but it was unknown in the rest of Italy until large-scale production began in the 1970’s coupled with improved refrigerated transport that got the product out to shops and markets all over the country to become the ubiquitous product that it is today. With it you make tiramisù. Without it, the authentic dessert doesn’t exist.