"We'll fling them out and let the mad dogs eat them."
"But if you, instead of heating the shovel and tongs, had roasted a young pullet and served it with one of those famous sauces ..."
"Chicken in the Roman style with potato puffs ..."
"Just look at Stolz. He's licking his greased whiskers as if the potatoes were cooking under his nose."
"Look at Franz gaping."
"They have a dog's hunger, and in order to make them sing ..."
"You want me to cook a little supper such as I can cook if I set myself to it, stick it under their noses, and ... Youngster, that's a magnificent idea! When I write my Manual of War Cookery I'll put you on the frontispiece as the first of kitchen strategians. Leave things to me and in half an hour I'll hand you out a couple of stews that would raise up the dead better even than Garibaldi's Hymn!"
Pinocchio heaved a sigh. He had won such a battle that, if he had been a German, would have caused the people to hammer I don't know how many nails into his statue. While Ciampanella was bustling about on all sides, plucking two young fowls, peeling potatoes, frying lard and onions, melting butter in a saucepan, preparing a stew in another, Pinocchio was striding up and down the kitchen, long and narrow as a corridor, eying stealthily the two prisoners, who were beginning to show signs of a growing restlessness. They had been fasting for more than twenty-four hours and their last food had been such a mess that it might have been requisitioned from the poultry-yard and the stable.
Ciampanella seemed eager to surpass himself. He hovered over his pots without paying any attention to Pinocchio, but talking in a loud voice as if he wished to impart a lesson in cookery to half the world.
"Listen, youngster, when you want to eat two savory young fowls you must cook them in the Roman fashion according to Ciampanella's recipe, which, when it is written down, will not have its equal in Urbis et Orbis. I call it the Roman fashion, but it might also truly be called the Ostrogothic fashion ... but that's the way. Take two young fowls and cut them into pieces, put a good-sized lump of butter into a saucepan and a little onion and fry it a little; dredge the fowls with flour, and put them to simmer in the butter; when they are browned put in some tomato paste, salt and pepper, and let them cook down, later a grain of nutmeg, cover it and let it cook.... Do you smell that odor, youngster? And just think how it will taste! You'll lick your napkin like that dirty Croat who ... Ho! ho! look at his tongue hanging out.... Ho! ho! ho!"