Palladian Days
Page 26
And Villa Cornaro? Is it fated to change, to modernize and homogenize? I want to avoid being a Polly anna; the ability of an ancient structure to survive in the modern world cannot be assumed. One thing I have learned: Villa Cornaro is a part of its community. Villa Cornaro will prosper as long as it retains the respect, love, and protection of its people. The modern world needs Villa Cornaro as a token of a civilized past and as a vibrant part of the present; posterity can take the preservation of it in our time as a token of our own civilization.
Coda
We are in Piombino Dese on September 11, 2001. Italian television starts following the horrific events in New York and Washington, D.C., within minutes of their onset, so we are apprised of developments as they unfold. Sympathetic phone calls from local friends begin immediately, offering condolences and solidarietä. Francesca arrives at the gate to give me a hug; Bianca embraces me when I enter the supermercato. Silvana weeps when she arrives in the evening to close the balcone, expressing her bewilderment at the madmen of the world. One friend appears at the front gate the next day with a plate of food, as though we have had a death in the family and need something to comfort us.
Hurrying along Via Roma the following week, I am hailed from behind by the elderly local pharmacist. His daughter usually staffs the counter in his shop, and he and I have never shared more than a buon giorno. He expresses in traditional terms his sorrow at the recent tragedy, but asks me to wait until he shows me something.
“Un attimo, un attimo, signora. One moment,” he says as he pulls out his wallet and searches through it. He finds the item he is seeking and holds it out for me to take: a recent newspaper clipping. I unfold it to discover an Italian translation of “God Bless America.” He waits for me to read the verses, then retrieves the clipping, refolds it, and returns it to his wallet.
I stand and watch as he walks away and disappears among my neighbors.
Appendix 1
Si Mangia Bene in Italia
Living in Italy inspires even the most creativity-deficient gene to mutate. Long ago I accepted that I must be an energetic admirer of creative endeavor because of the absence of any personal aptitude for it.
But Italy! Italy has taught me to reconsider. Italy celebrates daily every cook's good food, every woman's flower display every woman's bold scarf arrangement. Every community promotes art shows for local artists, exhibitions for workers in decorative iron. To encourage its lamp industry, Piombino Dese sponsors a local competition in lamp design. Italy expects artistic enterprise from everyone.
So I join in where I can, drawn to experimentation in the kitchen, artful presentation of food in the dining room. But first, I copy: my Italian diaries are laced with local recipes and notes on Venetan food and the way the Venetans serve it. The recipes are simple, the dishes are presented with great fantasy, and the food is delicious.
I tease Francesca and Wilma, telling them I want to prepare a cookbook of their recipes and will follow them around for a week, Naomi-like, to jot down the recipe for every dish they prepare. They laugh and say such a book will never sell; their food is too simple. I think the simplicity is what makes it special.
Here are two simple vegetable recipes from Wilma.
WILMA'S EASY PEPERONI
2 sweet red peppers
2 yellow peppers
2 tablespoons olive oil
l clove garlic, crushed
Salt and pepper
Cut up the red peppers and yellow peppers into large squares, being sure to remove any membrane. Place in a frying pan with the olive oil. Cover and cook over high heat until the peppers are sizzling, then reduce the heat and simmer, covered, for 20 to 25 minutes until they are softened but still firm. Turn off the heat and let sit for 20 minutes.
Transfer the peppers and oil to a small bowl. Add the crushed garlic, and salt and pepper to taste. Cover with plastic wrap. Let sit several hours before serving.
A variation is to include several anchovy fillets with the peppers.
WILMA'S PLUM TOMATOES
8 to 12 fresh plum tomatoes
1/2 cup dry white wine
Bread crumbs
Salt and pepper
Fresh basil, chopped
Olive oil
Preheat the oven to 375°F. Cut the plum tomatoes in half lengthwise. Arrange the halves in a baking pan, cut side up. Pour the white wine around them. Lightly cover each tomato half with bread crumbs; then drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and chopped fresh basil. Bake for 25 minutes. (This can be prepared early in the day; just reheat under a low-heat broiler for 5 to 8 minutes before serving.)
Serve as a first course with burrata mozzarella and thinly sliced firm bread.
Every woman in the Veneto prides herself on her culinary skills. Carl and I regularly begin our sojourns in Piombino Dese with several small dinner parties, inviting six or eight friends each evening. Our object is to greet friends, learn local gossip, and awaken our hibernating Italian tongues. The evenings also produce something much more valuable than mere news. They spur a food contest to rival The Iron Chef. Each wife invites us to dinner in the ensuing three or four weeks, plotting her meal as she would a military campaign.
Last night, for example, Silvana—who opens Caffe Palladio every morning at five and spends her Monday “day off” cleaning the premises— reciprocated our dinner of three weeks ago with a banquet for twelve. Her first sortie consisted of prosecco with antipasti: small soft balls of white mozzarella, sweet chunks of orange cantaloupe, tangy strips of red-brown sun-dried tomatoes, smooth black Sicilian olives. This course was served on their patio; Giacomo's forty rosebushes and thirty caged songbirds provided the backdrop. On Silvana's request, we moved inside to their long, narrow table for the primo piatto, served in two handsome tureens:
SILVANA'S PEA SOUP
2 pounds fresh peas
l quart chicken broth
1 small yellow onion, chopped
Parsley
2 cups bechamel
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Shell the peas. Simmer them for l hour with 1/2 cup of the broth, the chopped onion, and several sprigs of parsley. Puree, then add to the rest of the broth. Heat to a simmer.
Prepare separately a bechamel made with 4 tablespoons butter, 3 tablespoons flour, 2 cups milk. Blend it into the broth, along with the grated Parmesan, stirring constantly. When the soup is blended and hot, serve with a good crusty bread.
Next at Silvana's party came whisper-thin slices of roast beef accompanied by a colorful palette of fresh vegetables, simmered en brodo, and a salad with as many colors as Joseph's coat.
A truncheon of cheeses—Parmesan, mezzano, Montasio—followed, then large bowls of chilled, almost black cherries and plump green grapes. Then fruit tortes, followed by fior di latte (a flavor similar to vanilla) gelato crowned with fresh sweet strawberries that had been soaked in limoncello liqueur. Giacomo was the wine sergeant throughout, refilling glasses and then consummating the campaign with liqueurs of dizzying variety. Conversation flowed as rapidly and amiably as the wine.
Nazzareno Mason greets our arrival one spring with a large bunch of white asparagus. One stalk is as thick as the handle of our hammer, but Nazzareno assures me this will be the tenderest of all. The asparagus was pulled from his cousin's garden just thirty minutes earlier. He tells me how to cook it:
NAZZARENO'S WHITE ASPARAGUS
First, buy only asparagus with a credible claim to being very fresh. Peel each stalk, not with a knife (which would remove too much pulp) but with a vegetable peeler. Tie the bundle securely with string and place it upright in a narrow but deep pot, with water covering only the bottom two inches of the stalks. (Best: buy an asparagus steamer, which holds the stalks upright off the pan bottom.) Steam for 20 to 40 minutes, depending on the size of the stalks and their age. Test the stalks with a knife. When they are tender but not mushy, pull them from the water.
Memi Scquizzato taught us how to eat white a
sparagus our first spring in Piombino Dese. You place several tender stalks on your plate beside two halves of hard-boiled egg. Dress with a drizzle of deep green olive oil, a drop or two of balsamic vinegar, and lots of salt and pepper. Mash the eggs finely with a fork, then munch with bites of asparagus.
Surely the Olympian gods dined on this vegetable regularly!
Ham, glorious ham! One of our favorite treats in Italy is prosciutto— preferably the San Daniele variety. I learned several years ago from an Acquarello tape that there are three kinds of prosciutto, each from a different area of northern Italy and each with a somewhat different curing process. Parma prosciutto is known for its tangy bite, its piquancy; San Daniele prosciutto is sweeter—and is my favorite accompaniment for chilled melon slices or luscious split figs. The third type, Veneto prosciutto, combines the intense savoriness of Parma and the sweetness of San Daniele, but much less of it is produced. In the production process, the raw hams are packed in sea salt for a week, then exposed to mountain air for a twelve-to-twenty-month curing period. No wonder prosciutto is so expensive!
In May the Veneto imports from Sicily pale green melons the size of large softballs. The melons have luscious red-orange flesh and we devour one every day until Battiston's supply runs out. We often combine them with bright slices of San Daniele prosciutto. Cristiano, a regular behind the Battistons’ meat counter, always prepares a perfect bed of slices, lean but with fat enough for flavor, thin but not torn.
In September we eat the prosciutto with our own fat purple figs from the two trees on either side of our south portico. I like the figs peeled and halved, set atop the bed of prosciutto like “Sweet Nothings” miniature roses. Fresh, thinly sliced white pears are another good accompaniment for prosciutto and can be assembled into a flower design for the prosciutto platter.
I have not passed a single day in Italy without learning of a new type of food, a new way of cooking food, or a new way to enjoy food. Last week, at a dinner at the Zambons’—they live across the street and have unquestionably the finest view of the villa from their balcony—Lucianna placed on the table a large wheel of a platter bearing a brilliant garden of baked stuffed vegetables. Her mother's recipe, she said. It was both beautiful and delicious.
LUCIANNA'S STUFFED VEGETABLES
5 sweet peppers (medium-size, not huge)
4 ripe round tomatoes
4 long eggplants
4 zucchini
l pound lean beef and 1 pound lean pork, ground together twice
Parsley, chopped fine
1 clove garlic, chopped fine
2 eggs, beaten
¾ cup grated Parmesan cheese
11/2 cups milk
3 slices American-type commercial bread, cut in cubes, then soaked in the milk (above)
Salt and pepper
Ground nutmeg
Vegetable oil (not olive oil)
Bouillon powder
Preheat the oven to 300°F.
Wash and core the peppers and tomatoes, leaving the bottoms unpierced. Cut the eggplants and the zucchini in half; remove the pulp from each piece with a teaspoon. Set aside.
To make the stuffing, combine the ground meat, parsley, garlic, eggs, Parmesan, milk-soaked bread cubes, salt and pepper, and a pinch of nutmeg. Mix well.
Stuff the vegetables loosely with the meat mixture. Drizzle them with oil and dust lightly with bouillon powder.
Bake for 11/2 to 2 hours, turning regularly. The vegetables are done when the shells are soft but not mushy. Halve or quarter the vegetables, then arrange them attractively on a large platter.
When I prepared this recipe for the first time, I discussed with Stefano, the butcher, what I was making and the need for him to grind the meats together. A woman waiting at the door shot up to the counter and said, “Oh yes, this is one of my own recipes! You must grind the meat together twice and then be sure that you don't pack the vegetables too firmly.”
That afternoon this same woman was bicycling south on Via Roma in front of the villa and pulled to a stop when she saw me standing on the curb to cross the street.
“Ah, signora,” she said. “You will make delicious vegetables if you just follow my advice. I am known throughout the town as an excellent cook!” And she sped off.
My favorite of all Venetan meats is veal served with a tuna sauce. It may sound difficult, but it's not. The recipe, however, has one challenge: the veal must be sliced very, very thin so that it absorbs the tuna flavor; this requires slicing it when it is cold, preferably using a commercial meat slicer, which most of my Italian friends count among their kitchen appliances.
The butcher at the Battistons’ supermercato provides me with a lean four-pound veal roast, more than enough for our party for twelve tomorrow. He's tied it securely, and I've bought a special oblong cooking pot that the roast barely fits into so that it won't swim in liquid. Now I'm ready to try Gabriella's recipe.
GABRIELLA'S VITELLO TONNATO
1 carrot
1 celery stalk
1 onion
1 vegetable bouillon cube
1 lean veal roast (3 to 4 pounds)
10 anchovy fillets
⅓ cup fresh lemon juice
⅓ cup small capers
26-ounce cans tuna (preferably Italian) in oil
11/2 cups olive oil
2 cups Hellmann's mayonnaise
Bring to a boil in a large, heavy pot about 1% quarts of water with the carrot, celery stalk, onion, and boullion cube. Add the roast, taking care that the water comes up to the top of the roast (if not, add boiling water). Bring back to a boil and simmer gently for several hours, until the veal is tender to the prick of a knife. (I simmered my 4-pound roast for 2% hours.)
Take the pot off the heat and let cool for at least four hours before removing the roast from the liquid. Then chill the roast for several hours or overnight, for easier slicing.
The tuna sauce is quick and easy. Blend well in the food processor: the anchovy fillets, lemon juice, capers, tuna fish, and olive oil. When the mixture is smooth, add the mayonnaise (Gabriella makes her own mayonnaise, but I carry Hellmann's from Atlanta) and blend in well.
Slice the veal as thin as possible without shredding the meat. (I use my bread-slicing knife.) Spread some tuna sauce on the bottom of a long, deep dish or platter, then arrange slices of veal on top; repeat until the veal and sauce are all layered, ending with a sauce layer. Cover tightly with plastic wrap (after placing toothpicks at even intervals across the meat in order to keep the plastic away from the surface) and refrigerate at least overnight.
Serve within the next week.
I love this dish, so I always hope there are leftovers from a party!
Carl's favorite vegetables are those I roast in the oven, following a recipe given me years ago by an Italian-American friend of our daughter Ashley. Molto semplice!
CHRISTINA'S ROAST VEGETABLES
3 potatoes
3 zucchini
2 large sweet peppers, red or yellow
3 onions
1 fennel bulb
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper
Preheat the oven to 400°F. Wash and peel the potatoes and cut them crosswise into 1/2-inch slices. Scrub the zucchini and slice them
lengthwise in quarters, then halve these. Cut the peppers into l-inch strips, then halve the strips. Quarter the onions. Remove the top and base from the fennel bulb, then cut the bulb vertically to make slices about 1/2 inch thick. Place all the vegetables on a towel for five to ten minutes to remove excess water.
Place the vegetables in a large bowl and dribble with the olive oil, mixing thoroughly to coat. Spread the vegetables evenly on a single large, shallow baking pan or two smaller ones; don't let your pieces overlap. Season with salt and pepper.
Pop the pan into the oven and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, turning every 8 to 10 minutes. If the vegetables brown too quickly, turn down the heat.
Supper at Wilma and Paolo's ap
artment is, as always, a feast for the eyes as well as for the stomach, as the pastor's wife said to Anne in one of my favorite passages from Anne of Green Gables. White plates on a pale blue cloth. Yellow chrysanthemums on pale blue paper napkins. Medium-blue glasses to hold our Gavi wine. The first course is so simple the recipe might seem hardly worth jotting down. But several times it has saved me when we have unexpected guests on a Wednesday afternoon and all the stores including the Battistons’ are chiusi—closed.
WILMA'S SIMPLE TOMATO SAUCE
1 yellow onion, chopped
Olive oil
4 or 5 fresh tomatoes (or 1 can good plum tomatoes), chopped
Salt and pepper
Pasta
Smoked cheese, such as ricotta affumicata
Saute the chopped onion in olive oil until soft. Add the chopped fresh tomatoes and simmer for 20 minutes. (If using canned tomatoes, drain them and chop them, then simmer for 10 minutes.) Blend lightly in a food processor. Season with salt and pepper to taste.