Infermità Mentale a Napoli

Once, whilst in Naples, I completely lost my mind.

I wasn’t alone. My then-fiancée was there, encouraging, nay, partaking in my madness.

It all started so well: stumbling out of our pensione early morning to discover that our side-street doorway which, less than twelve hours before, had appeared so dodgy, now opened onto a lively local fresh fruit and fish market. Somehow, with our terrifyingly limited Italian we managed to purchase a still-warm loaf of ciabatta and somehow receive a free bunch of san marzano tomatoes (more on these, the greatest tomatoes know to gods and men, later). I’m still not entirely sure that we didn’t steal them.

Regardless, armed with lunch, we were off to Pompeii.

Pompeii, as you know, is an entire city of ruins. What I didn’t (and you may not) understand is that it is an entire city of ruins. Ten thousand and a bit people lived there when Vesuvius erupted. The whole city hasn’t been excavated, but there is a something like three square shitloads to see, all of it on foot, walking on two-thousand-year-old cobbles.

It wasn’t all rough.

Sitting in the fourth or fifth row of the empty Pompeii coliseum, sharing perfumy tomatoes smeared onto torn chunks of wood-fire oven bread, moments after the strangely tear-chokingly beautiful experience of examining the empty interiors of once-buried brick ovens identical to the modern ones from which our pizzas were fetched the previous evening, and, presumably, our lunch loaf that morning, I suspected then, and know now, that I was, at that instant, living. I was also, however, about to plunge into a gut-driven insane hell fuled by a lust for elusive bivalves.

We walked the streets of the most famous ghost town for the rest of the day, ducking out only just before the gates were closed at sunset. A short train ride deposited us at Napoli Centrale exhausted and hungry in the dark, besieged by single-bulb North African take-away shops. That’s when she started talking about Mussels.

On her previous visit she and a friend had sat in a plaza eating a mixture of mussels, clams, cockles, snails and unidentified mollusks which were steamed open in a broth of white wine, tomatoes, garlic, and a touch of chili. All of this was served on trenches of toasted Italian sourdough. “Zuppa Di Cozzi” or mussel soup. We fast became obsessed with the idea.

Charged with a mission, our peasant’s lunch now eight or nine hours behind us, we set out on what became a three-hour foot tour of the dock-side suburbs of working-class Naples. One hour walking systematically up and down major streets. Not a single restaurant. Another hour spent, studying our tiny map, meandering from square to piazza to plaza on the incorrect assumption that major intersections must mean food. Finally weaving through narrow alleys, leaping out of the path of overloaded Vespas, we began to wonder, mumblingly, grumblingly, where in the hell do the locals eat out? Are there no restaurants in Napoli?

Then, mercifully, on an unlit corner, a restaurant. We approached, tentatively, desperately, rushing in our hesitation, as a desert wanderer to an oasis, not believing that finally we might eat. That’s when madness set in.

After over fourteen hours of walking, a meager lunch, mild dehydration, acute exhaustion, outright desperation, and extreme hunger, my wife and I eagerly read the English version of the menu posted outside what may be, as far as we knew, the only operating restaurant in all of Naples. And, in what can only be described as a microcosm of mass hysteria, we looked at each other and said “No.” No mussels on offer.

What followed was a delirious somnambulant nightmare, framed by exhaustion, anger, surrender, and hunger, until finally we found, hidden, unmarked, behind a massive government building, underneath a blacked-out sign, a menu with mussels.




Zuppa Di Cozzi

1 k mixed bivalves, bearded, purged, and otherwise cleaned
2 large tomatoes, rough dice
1 small chili, fine mince
3 cloves garlic, fine mince
½ tbsp butter
1 cup white wine
1 small loaf ciabatta, sliced thickly and grilled
½ lemon
parsley

Heat a heavy-based pot over high heat. Add a tablespoon of olive oil and sauté garlic and chili for 5 seconds. Add butter and then quickly add bivalves. Top with tomatoes, add wine, and quickly cover with tight-fitting lid. When mussels et al steam open – 3-5 min – reduce heat and add juice of half a lemon and a handful of chopped parsley. Season with cracked pepper (the shellfish should have provided enough salt themselves). Pour into warmed serving dish with toasted bread to dunk in.