Risi e Bisi
Daniel A. Rabuzzi
Alessandro, a tertiary in Venice's Order of Discalced Wizards, was between the fork and the plate. At the osteria one evening, Alessandro in his cups had sworn by Ghiottone (patron demon of banquets) that he could prepare a better dish for the Doge than the potentate's own chefs. His companions smirked, knowing that Alessandro could barely make the daily dish of the common people – risi e bisi – let alone something fit for the ruler of the Most Serene Republic. The wagers on the wizard's failure began that evening, and news of his boast elicited widespread merriment and anticipation.
Word reached the Doge, who ordered the impertinent wizard to present himself at the Feast of the Madonna del'Orto with a meal to astound the court. The Doge's chefs, amused, would be the judges. The courtiers turned their jaded attention to the promise of a poseur humiliated. The poetasters composed rhymes of culinary mockery, and others (more forthright) gathered rotten fruit for the inevitable pelting of the interloper.
All of which denigration came to pass. Alessandro tried to dress up risi e bisi – in truth, the only dish he could make other than favas and polenta, which was even less dignified – with pancetta and mushrooms. The purists scoffed. Worse, being too poor to afford Vialone rice, he tried to make do with a lesser variety from Tuscany. His peas were starchy, his stock not simmered down enough to form the creamy texture Venetians demanded. In short, Alessandro failed completely.
His fellow tipplers at the osteria that evening took pity on him, especially the many who had made a few soldi from betting against him. Alessandro, still picking scraps of rotten food out of his hair, was grateful for small favors, anything to forget the baroquely inventive insults he'd endured at court. Ironic, he thought, that tonight I am being offered free wine to ease my battered pride when I wish I had never touched the stuff, given the nonsense I spewed under its influence.
Feeling a little less humiliated, Alessandro made his way home and was easing himself into bed when someone knocked on his door. He had a mind to ignore whoever it was, most likely some drunk lost in the alleys of Venice, but the knocking continued. Ready to lash the troublemaker with a spell to produce hives, Alessandro opened the door to a tall, lean man dressed in pearl-grey velvet with a waistcoat of pale-green and ivory stripes. The visitor doffed a tricorn, its enormous black feather flouncing against the lintel.
“I heard you,” said the man. “Down in my shadowy kitchen, drifting on the smoke of a thousand ovens, your oath floated to my ears.”
Ghiottone! The wizard had forgotten...had he really been so foolhardy as to swear by the demon? Damn that wine and all his encouraging colleagues! Panic blossomed behind his knees and raced up his spine, though to his credit he did not collapse right then and there. Alessandro, knowing he had little choice but determined to spare what little dignity he had left, invited the demon in.
“Allora,” said Ghiottone. “You know the rules. You swore by me, and then failed to achieve your goal, so now I may claim an equivalent prize from you.”
Alessandro would have wet himself if he had not just emptied his bladder.
“I am making a new dish, one I name The Pie of Remorse,” said the demon. “Lacking a certain savor yet, it needs a pair of human feet alongside the pig's knuckle and chicken claws. All recipes must be precise: two feet of yours are called for. All recipes succeed or fall based on how precise the ingredients are enumerated, measured – and they must be very specific to time and place. Generalities, such as the unfortunate mess you served to the Doge today, have no place in the world of the proper recipe, the world of the banquet.”
Although the demon's didactic competency impressed him, Alessandro quailed at the recipe's missing ingredient. The wizard valued his feet all the more because he belonged to a discalced order.
“Wait,” said Alessandro. “I agree with you, Sir Demon, Ghiottone the Punctilious, mighty lord of fine and impeccable dining, of banquets elaborate and ducal. Perhaps, to help me avoid similar errors in future, you could illuminate the daintier points of the proper recipe for rice and peas?”
Ghiottone liked the appeal to his expertise, even if he recognized a stalling tactic. With growing pleasure, he answered the wizard's questions about whether shallots belonged in the stock and which cheese was the best for grating on top (Ghiottone favored Asiago, but would accept Gran Padano).
“Just one more question, before you, um...,” said Alessandro.
“Of course,” said Ghiottone, taking a long serrated knife from within his voluminous sleeve.
“How many grains of rice does risi e bisi require?”
The demon paused. He brushed away a wisp of doubt and applied his meticulous mind to the query.
“5,401 grains.”
“Un momento per favore...is that for Vialone rice? Arborio? Carnaroli? For how many people? At the main meal around noon, or for our late afternoon merenda? What about portions for the ragazzi or the bambini? Allora, I spoke in the grandest of generalities. 'Risi e bisi' … in the abstract.”
The demon's inflexible adherence to specificity stopped him from protesting. In accordance with the rules, those made at the first dawn in the original garden, Ghiottone was obligated to calculate how many grains would suffice for all the risi e bisi in the world.
“You can skip the past,” said Alessandro. “But I will insist on knowing the universal needs of the future.”
Waves of convection heat rolled off Ghiottone's bare head, and a hint of smoke seeped out of his left nostril. The demon grimaced and vanished.
“That was hungry-making work,” Alessandro said, as he headed to the wharves where food stalls served the fishermen at night. “Some risi e bisi sounds perfect.”
Daniel A. Rabuzzi
Daniel A. Rabuzzi has been published in, among others, Crab Creek Review, Asimov's, Strange Horizons, Shimmer, and Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet. He lives in New York City with his artistic partner & spouse, the woodcarver Deborah A. Mills.