Pastina: Food for the Soul, By Joe Ortiz

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Pastina: Food for the Soul

By Joe Ortiz

The night Freddie da Bookie showed up with the gun, my father had his head stuck through the wrought iron security bars of our kitchen window. It was circa 1952 in the Queensborough Projects when I was 7 years old.

“Help me,” he clowned in his Puerto Rican patois. “Joey, help me. I can’t get out! My head’s stuck inna bars.”

“Let me try, Daddy,” I said. “Let me try.” For better or worse, my father was my hero and I wanted to do whatever he did.

Mama, who was cutting up a chicken to make broth for pastina, had no time for these games. “Just like ya fatha,” she said disgustedly. “Betta ya should imitate me makin’ pastina. At least pastina’s good for ya.” She put the cut-up chicken in eight cups of boiling water along with a carrot, a stalk of celery, and a roughly chopped onion.

Meanwhile, Daddy, his head still stuck out the bars, saw Freddie coming up the path to our apartment so he ducked into the back bedroom to hide.

“Herman in?” Freddie snapped at Ma.

“No, he just left,” my mother covered. So, Freddie pulled a pistol out of his waist and laid it on the stove next to the boiling broth.

“He home now?”

“Ahhhhhh, Herman! He’s got a gun!”

When he heard my mother scream, Dad came running, pulling up his pants and rubbing his eyes as if he’d been resting up just for Freddie’s visit.

In the panic Mama let the broth boil over and that turned out to be a slice of good fortune. See, just like everyone in our neighborhood, Freddie knew a little something about pastina himself.

“You shouldn’t ova boil the stock. It’ll bruise the broth,” Freddie said, sticking the gun back in his waist.

After you give a man advice about his pastina, it just doesn’t seem right to fill him full of holes. Believe me, in our neighborhood a man’s life often hinged on smaller matters than good soup.

Besides, Freddie was right. The boiling down of the broth is essential to the flavor. Cooked down too little, the flavor is weak; too much, the flavor is too intense, the broth too thick.

Later, after the broth cooled, Mom put it on a potholder in the refrigerator and we went to bed. The next day, the whole neighborhood Joe Ortiz was gabbing about Freddie and my father’s gambling and the pistol and the whole mess. My mother just went right on making her pastina. She took the chicken broth out of the fridge, skimmed off the cold, white fat from the top of the pot, then took the meat off the bone to use with some leftover tomato sauce (we called in “gravy.”) for chicken cacciatore. Mom strained the chicken broth with cheesecloth and put in back on the stove to cook down a little more. After that my mother took off her apron, sat me down on the edge of the table and yelled out to my father in the living room, “Herman, watch Joey and make sure the chicken broth doesn’t boil ova. I’ll be right back. I gotta get some parsley from Aunt Rose downstairs.” As soon as she was gone, I went to the window and squeezed my head through the bars. Below me I could see Aunt Rose’s hand coming out her window to pick a few springs of parsley from her window planter box. That’s when I realized my head really was stuck. Just then I heard my father opening the front door and saying something about a quart of beer. “If the chicken broth starts ta boil, just turn it off,” he said. “I’ll be right back.” “But Daddy,” I squealed, “my head’s stuck . . . “