Italy in winter - PART SEVEN
I woke on Tuesday morning with a text message on my phone from my friend Giorgio, the journalist. The article he had written in the Parma newspaper was out.
I drove up the road to the cafe, bought myself a cappuccino and pastry, and waited until I could look at a newspaper on one of the empty tables. It was a surreal feeling to see my face at the top of the front page.
According to my research, the Gazzetta di Parma was founded in 1735 as a weekly newspaper and with a circulation of approximately 43,000, stands as the oldest newspaper in Italy.
I had just arrived in this place four days ago, knowing not a single person. From the moment I exited the autostrada and entered the winding roads of these mountains, I had felt a generous welcome. Now I was sitting in a cafe, reading a story about myself in the Parma newspaper. Was this really happening??
The story was titled, “Sarah, from Colorado, on the path of her ancestors” subtitled - “The entrepreneur, who runs an organic farm, is in Alta Valtaro to discover her roots. She succeeded in sifting through the municipal archives to look for her great-grandparents”. The amazing thing was, between the time the photos had been taken and the story came out - I had already found my family!
I drove down the road to the supermarket and purchased a couple of copies and headed back to my apartment. There had been so much to take in over the past few days. I wanted to be sure I had things written down in my journal, as well as update my ancestry family tree with the new information I had gathered from meeting my family on the road.
I sat in my cozy apartment, typing away, when the buzzer rang. Unsure as to who might be calling on me - I slipped on my shoes, and found my sweet friend Angela (who owned the store below me) walking up the apartment stairs with a plate of food for me. The memory of this moment brings tears to my eyes as I type, and I can still smell the aroma of that lovely plate of Torta di Riso - (a traditional food of the Alta Valtaro region) as she handed it to me with smiling eyes. Angela didn’t speak any English, but I understood what she was saying … I thought you might be hungry - it’s nothing!
Well, it was much more than nothing. This gesture meant everything to me.
How could she know that for so long I had sat in my home kitchen, looking at the photos of my Italian family, wishing I knew the type of food they had once cooked? This was one of the main reasons I had come. I wanted to connect with the land, look for relatives - and my deepest desire was to learn how to cook some of the local food. Without asking, I was given a taste of some simple home cooking.
Torta di Riso is a baked dish made of Arborio rice. There was a layer of breadcrumbs on the bottom of the dish, and it tasted like she had sauteed onion, added some zucchini and the rice was mixed with ricotta and parmesan. The result was aromatic, comforting and delicious. Crispy on the bottom, chewy and moist in the middle.
Eating Angela’s cooking reminded me of years earlier, studying the regions of Italy with my girls - and how my heart had swelled with love and longing, discovering the BBC Series Two Greedy Italians. Watching chefs Antonio Carluccio and Gennaro Contaldo traveling to different regions of Italy, cooking the traditional food, I had felt the ache of not having been given any traditional recipes from my own Italian relatives. My mother had taught me how her grandmother had made Chicken soup, and my mom had certainly cooked many wonderful dishes, which I knew how to replicate. But there were no recipes from my Mom’s father’s side (Southern Italy and Sicily) or her mother’s side (Nothern Italy) that had been shared. It seemed that once my family had immigrated to America - they assimilated and after two generations, the old food traditions had been lost.
I fell so in love watching Two Greedy Italians, that one evening I looked up the chef Gennaro’s website and sent him an email. I’ll admit I may have had a bit too much wine that evening. I gushed my longing into an email telling him how he reminded me of my Italian family, shared my blog and how much I appreciated the show. (oh dear!)
Sometimes allowing your passion to lead you straight into a gut instinct isn’t all that bad… Gennaro actually replied to my email! I have become online friends with his wife and enjoy communicating with his daughters online as well. Following passion and a gut instinct is also what had landed me on this incredibly journey.
My heart and stomach were filled to the brim after enjoying Angela’s lunch prepared for me with love. But why was I sitting in my apartment alone? I had found family - and with only three days left of my trip, now was not the time to be shy. I wrapped up a couple of gifts and a copy of the newspaper. I hopped into my car and decided to drop in and visit Ubaldo and Maria.
They welcomed me inside, and I quickly saw that they already had a copy of the paper spread out on the table. Ubaldo went to the phone, and called to his brother Ivo’s house next door. In a few minutes, I met Chiara, his sister in law. She was a school teacher and spoke some English, which was such a gift! I shared photos of my family with them, opened my laptop to show some photos of my life at home. I asked her some more questions about food from the region, which prompted Ubaldo to show me his stash of Porcini mushrooms. We spoke about the mushrooms he and Maria had sent to my mother long ago. They both remembered exactly how they had packaged and sent them to her. That had been thirty years ago - and yet they remembered. I paused and recalled the word that had entered my mind on the drive into the Alta Valtaro mountains that first day - before I knew what it had meant: ricordiamo - we remember.
Ubaldo located a bag, and gave me a generous portion of the mushrooms, saying that they could never eat all of them. Oh, my heart.
Chiara walked me across the street to her home and gave me a tour. There was more family history to learn. Ivo and Chiara lived in the old stone house that Aunt Clotilde had built by hand. (Clotilde was one of my great grandfather’s sisters). Chiara’s husband Ivo was a home builder, and had done a beautiful remodel on the old home. Chiara told me the history of the house, gave me a tour, and we had coffee. She was dealing with some uncertainty with family that week, so we weren’t sure whether she would be free to meet up again before I left, although she told me she wanted me to meet her son and husband. I was thrilled to have met her, and told her I would wait to hear more.
I felt immediately at home with Chiara. Her warm smile and kind demeanor were so welcoming. I walked back to Ubaldo and Maria’s house and he offered to take me on a drive. I understood that he wanted to take me to see the house of my great grandfather, Luigi Scarpenti. I snapped a selfie with him before we got in his car. It was fun coaxing some warm smiles out of him.
We drove about ten minutes up a road, into the forest. What a beautiful place! He was very talkative, and just kept on speaking to me in Italian, as if I understood it all. I tried to keep up, and did understand some of what he was saying. I took video so that I could translate it later.
We arrived at a point where the road ended. There was some construction fencing up to keep people out of some old stone homes which had caved in. Ubaldo led me up the road a bit further, and I gasped to see some beautiful old stone homes tucked into the edge of the forest. The first one, he told me was Aunt Carmela’s. Another sister of my great grandfather who had never married. Then, he pointed ahead to a gorgeous little house covered in ivy.
This was the home my great-grandfather had lived before he left for America. It was the one that Antonio Scarpenti had built after returning from work on a ranch in San Jose.
There was another small home next to it - where Aunt Carmela lived. The picture below is her with Ivo, as a boy. I enjoyed seeing how tiny she was, just like my grandmother - who was 4’11’’.
Ubaldo explained that these homes were getting so old, they were in danger of collapsing. Many years ago, they were sold. (This must have been just after Maria, his mother had written letters to my Aunt in San Jose). The home where Luigi had grown up was now owned by a music teacher, who lived there in the summer, and who had done some improvements - like putting on a new roof.
Ubaldo pointed to the trees, Castagne he said, which meant chestnut - a word I wouldn’t forget. He picked up a chestnut hull from the ground, careful not to poke himself, and said a few more words about them which I tried to follow. I realized that this had been an important food source for the family. Something growing all around them.
When we returned to Ubaldo’s house, he wanted to show me la casa vecchia. The old house where his mother had grown up. Before we did that, he had to go put away his chickens. Solo le due galline - he only had two chickens left. All the others had been eaten by predators. (I could relate. The same had happened to my hens this winter. We were down to just four at home.) The way his face lit up when he saw his hens was the absolute highlight of my day. Ubaldo is sort of a sober man. But when he bent down to pet his chicken, his face spread into a broad, joyful grin. He collected two eggs, and then walked me in to the place where his mother had once lived.
He pointed to a place above the wood stove. There was metal mesh in between the ceiling rafters. He explained that they would place their chestnuts above the fire to dry. Once dry, they would grind them into flour.
I was amazed and so happy to have spent some time with my cousin that day. He had not expected me to stop by, but was willing to show me all around. I could see that it brought him joy to show me the old buildings, the place where the cows had once been kept, and his chickens. I was thanking him, and getting ready to leave, when he pointed to the house and seemed to be asking me to stay. It was dinner time, and I didn’t want to impose, but he insisted.
When I walked inside, I saw that Maria had been boiling some potatoes, which were now cooling on the table. He walked to the cupboard and picked up his bag of farina di castagne. He wanted to cook something for me with the chestnut flour! I could hardly handle this. Not only was I about to share a meal with these two sober and quiet relatives of mine, but Ubaldo was going to cook for me. He carefully mixed hot water with the chestnut flour, mentioning that it was naturally sweet. Here, taste it! he said. Before I knew it, he was pushing a spoonful of the plain flour into my mouth, which immediately turned to paste. I couldn’t speak because my lips were stuck together, so I just nodded with a smile. He made a batter and dropped this simple mixure of flour and water into hot oil in a pan. I watched him mumble to himself as he cooked, and he pointed out the ones that had just the right amount of color. After the chestnut fritters were cooked, he asked if I wanted a fried egg or boiled. Those two eggs he had collected from the hens would be dinner. Since I didn’t know how to say - I’ll have whatever you’re having, I said boiled. We sat in silence as he looked to the clock, saying ancora un po di tempo - a little more time and the boiled eggs would be done.
Maria sat peeling her boiled potatoes. I reached over to help. She began mashing hers with a fork. Should I do the same? Or was that only because she hadn’t many teeth? They brought out two bottles of olive oil and began to drizzle the oil on their boiled potatoes. Maria pointed to the oil, suggesting I do the same. Ubaldo placed my cooked egg on the plate. They pointed to the fritters - and I took two of those as well.
My phone died just before Ubaldo began cooking the fritters, so I don’t have a photo of what we ate that evening.
Although this was probably one of the simplest meals I had ever eaten - with no salt or seasonings of any kind, I can not quite describe the way it tasted. It was satisfying on a level that went far beyond my taste buds. It had been cooked for me with the simplest of ingredients that my ancestors had surely eaten many times before. This had not been the kind of Italian food I had imagined learning how to cook, years earlier, the way I had watched my favorite professional chefs do on TV. On the BBC show, Gennaro and Antonio had served their authentic Italian food on antique china in an outdoor setting under a tree in the woods. My cousin Ubaldo served my egg, boiled potato and chestnut fritters to me on a plastic plate. His was a simple life of just him and his mother. No frills. Just simple food.
Though this meal had not been romantically presented or gourmet in style - the food I ate that evening had been prepared for me by my own relatives and was delicious. This was something I had dreamed of for so long. I had found my Italian family, and they had welcomed me into their home. What Ubaldo and Maria had made for me left me feeling deeply satisfied and humbled, too. The reason I was used to eating such diverse meals at home in America was because my great grandfather Luigi had taken the risk of traveling across an ocean to find greater opportunity. He had married Marina and they raised my grandmother amidst the abundance of American life. But was it really any richer? I wasn’t sure.
I had grown up with a mix of fresh as well as processed food. We ate roasted chicken with fresh pesto, but also Kraft American cheese singles and Frosted Mini Wheats. I raised my own family the same way, and was totally disconnected from where my food came from until my first daughter got sick. Learning how to grow my own food changed my life, our family’s health, and in many ways - brought me right back to the simple, Cucina Povera that my ancestors had always known.
Of course - I enjoy the diverse selection of food available to me in America - but there are many evenings where our dinner is a big plate of salad picked from the hoop house - or sauteed swiss chard from the garden - topped with soft boiled eggs. When we eat this way, we feel rich. Just like Ubaldo and Maria.
I went to bed that night in quiet appreciation. I had shared a meal with my family. I had learned about and tasted two types of regional foods common to the Alta Val Taro mountains.
I was beyond content.
