la nostra famiglia italiana

“Okay, who’s good at eyeing measurements?” Adam says, holding up a box of muffin mix.

“I’ll do it,” I spoke up, having baked a fair share of confectionaries over the years.

“We need 100 milligrams of water.”

“Milligrams? I can do pints… or cups, or—”

He had already moved on to assist some others with the bruschetta. I look around the kitchen for full bottles of liquids. After sifting through the shelves, I settle on a bottle containing 250 milliliters of olive oil. A few squints of the eye and sips of water later, I think I have the right amount.

“Here,” I say, watching as Adam was trying to eye 70 milligrams of butter from a stick containing 2 grams.

Visitors in London try to fit as many people into phone booths as they can. Visitors in Rome, it seems, try to fit as many people into a kitchen. There are 4 of us near the stove—two making pasta sauce, one heating butter, one boiling pasta—3 near a table assembling bruschetta and slipping pans into the oven, 2 cutting vegetables and making the salad, 2 drinking wine and offering to help when needed, and a few doing homework one room over.

“Hot butter, coming through!” Adam says, weaving around the stations of preparation through this 4 by 11 foot kitchen, and pours it into the pot I was sifting the mix into.

We bake the muffin in a giant cake pan while we eat, la nostra famiglia italiana, and 20 minutes later, it looks disgusting. It’s burnt around the edges, raw in the middle, and bubbling in places.

No matter.

We all grab spoons and devour the dough in the middle, the cakey ring once the dough runs out, then the burnt edges once there’s nothing else left.

La nostra famiglia italiana would, like the muffin-cake, appear to be a hot mess if someone was inspecting it from afar. But once you have a taste, you realize that you wouldn't want it any other way.