Agretti and Longing

Does it happen that eating certain foods creates a fully three-dimensional feeling inside of you ?  The feeling I have when I eat agretti is longing.  Salsola soda, more commonly known in English as opposite-leaved saltwort, have for more than 35 years been a central part of my Roman springtime.  This grassy, chive-like green, typical of Rome (I have not seen it anywhere else) is a market, restaurant and kitchen staple for weeks that span from late February into April.

I like agretti steamed, al dente, with new season olive oil and a good squirt of lemon.  I also like them just-a-bit- above room temperature which is the way they are often served in restaurants. They go beautifully with mint-imbued, stewed artichokes or thin slices of boiled potatoes. Agretti have a real, green punch to them, that fills your mouth with a burst of chlorophyll and slightly acid pleasure. And a texture that is unlike anything else that I know.

Agretti fill me with longing.

Agretti come out when the days are lengthening.  And every time I eat them, at just past 50, I remember again the acute feeling of adolescent longing the springtime would always draw out in me. Was it the wistful cry of the just-returned swallows that filled the sky, and that tickled my young emotions ?  Was it the feeling of warm air and the promise of a summer ?  The promise of windows open and breezes to tease teenage thoughts ? Was it the flirty sensation of the short sleeved shirt and the sleeveless dress after months of long sleeves and wooly sweaters ?  What was it ?  Whatever it was, it all happened just as the agretti arrived.  And the agretti were there every day, appealing and curly on the plate, full of the promise of spring, and just as the season of longing began.  And I forked them into my mouth – and longed.

Even today, as I trim off their earthy roots, rinse and pop them into the same pan that my mother used always to cook the agretti… I long. It is a wonder and a comfort to feel an emotion so familiar, a friend that has accompanied me, in certain seasons, for so much of my life.  That feeling is just the same, though I am no longer 13 or 15 or 17.  My lolling-tongued dog roams underfoot, and my two children noisily, cheerfully, help me take out the platter on which to put the agretti. They don’t like agretti at all — but then they are not yet at the age of youthful longing.

We will see what happens when that time comes.

And when it first comes, if it begins as the agretti make their spring time arrival at the Roman table.