Fava beans, pecorino, salt and wine.

I used to hide in my mum’s, my aunts’ and their friends’ skirts. I’d hide there from my cousins whilst playing hide-and-seek. I don’t care about Oedipus, I’ve already sorted that out and I adore my mother, but I will always associate the vineyard holidays with those moments, innocent or not. “Leave your Grandfather alone”, baked pasta, roast lamb and puntarelle…he doesn’t even care for these things nowadays: Fava! fava! fava beans!, dipped in salt or eaten with pecorino cheese, dripping like the women he boasts to have abandoned. Nowadays he’ll only eat those. I’m not exaggerating either! They are real words, carved into our memories, words that me and my brothers identify each other with. Grandma, annoyed and proud of the old, alluring, geezer. A great group of relatives, ready to throw into each other’s faces their so called qualities, yet a real, true and solid affection.

In this, the fava bean holds an important role. Sweet and insatiable, an example of how people have a common, simple identity, yet still it is an irreplaceable one.

Our wines, that flowed and went down throats to compensate for joys and pains. The salt of a Frascati Superiore and a fine sea-salt covering that water-green delight (which I challenge any painter to match on his palette!) that was the Roman Fava bean.

Then the sweet breeze, May-day with its Red Flag, and us, on our way home. Me hidden under mum’s skirt, that little man who was his father’s great expectation. "Go on! Forza! where are you all! Get a move on!" Now we have another year to wait, but Ferragosto will soon arrive, with the water melon cooling in the well, our summer treat.

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