Summer in the Islands: An Italian Odyssey
Page 21
To be honest, I’ve never given much thought to capers before. They have minor, if key, parts in the food with which I grew up – caper sauce with mutton or chicken, or adding dash to brown butter with skate. And then, when I began eating the food of the Mediterranean, there was no getting away from them. That husky, musky, sharp, fruity, pervasive flavour turned up in salads and sauces, on pizzas and bruschettas, with pasta, with fish, tucked away here and there. How odd that something so insignificant in appearance, should be so ubiquitous and so potent in fact. And of all the capers, the capers of Salina are the capers of capers. They have world-heritage status, or should have. Slow Food certainly think so. Caper-lovers seek them out. Caper connoisseurs swear by them. The capers of Pantelleria, Lipari, Spain and other places have their supporters, but the capers of Salina reign supreme in the kitchen of most discerning chefs and cooks.
Roberto Rosello peers at the caper bushes growing outside his small, spotless, gleaming laboratorio-processing unit in the middle of Pollara, with great affection. They’re over a hundred years old, he says, and were planted by his great-grandmother. He’s known these caper plants all his life.
Roberto is a tall, thin, sunburnt young man. His face is shaded by a few days’ dark stubble. He’s wearing a ‘Sex on the Beach’ T-shirt and he’s proprietor of I Sapori Eoliani, whose principal products are capers in various forms. He points to a wooden stump that’s almost invisible against the dusty volcanic earth from which it just projects.
‘That’s the secret,’ he says. ‘Each year the new shoots grow out of that stump. The older the trunk, the more productive and better quality the capers.’ He talks as if they are slightly capricious, elderly relatives who need a certain amount of tolerant looking after.
‘That’s what makes them superior to capers from Lipari or Pantelleria.’ He smiles and then looks serious.
‘In what way?’
‘The flavour; it’s fuller, fruitier and more rounded. And our capers keep their texture. They’re piu croccanti.’
‘Crunchier,’ I say.
There are over 120 varieties of caper, he continues, and the ones that grow on Salina are particular to Salina. Their character is due in part to the remarkable fertility of the volcanic humus in which they grow, and in part to the light baptism of salt they receive with evaporation from the sea around. These elements conspire to produce capers of particular quality.
The picking season begins at the end of March and finishes in August, when the heat becomes too great and invasive insects too many. Picking is a delicate business, and has to be done by hand. The secret is to remove just the bud, because that is what a caper is, the bud of the caper flower. And you have to be careful how many buds you pick at any one time, and of which size, because you want each long shoot to go on producing over the picking season. Not all the caper buds are picked. Some are left to flower, and if you look closely at the stamens of a caper flower, explains Roberto, you’ll see that one has a tiny green blob at the end of it, like the head of a match. That will grow into cucunci, the fruit or seed-carrying berry, he says.
There are three grades or sizes of caper: tiny ones that are sold to chefs and gourmets, and are largely for decoration, according to Roberto; medium-sized ones, that are mostly used by the Salinesi for cooking purposes; and the largest, fattest ones used to make caponata or insalata di capperi, and which, if you peel back the green, outer sepals, contain within a tiny, perfect flower.
I try a freshly picked bud out of curiosity and spit it out. It’s inedibly bitter. So, once picked, the long, slow, silent process of turning the buds into edible capers begins, by covering them in medium coarse salt.
‘Sea salt from Trapani,’ says Roberto. He points to sacks of the stuff piled against the white-tiled wall. ‘That’s the best. They stay in that for two months, fermenting. We turn them by hand two or three times a day. They produce a lot of liquid at this stage, and the gas they give off makes you cry as if you’re chopping onions.
‘The fermentation stops after two months, and we drain off the liquid and transfer the capers to another container where they’re covered with finer salt and left for at least six months to develop their flavour. We can leave them for up to eighteen months.’
‘And how long should I soak them for before using them?’
‘About twelve hours, changing the water two or three times,’ he says. ‘You can use them right away after that or dry them and cover them with olive oil.’
I Sapori Eoliani produces about forty quintali (forty tonnes) a year, and there are five other producers on the island who adhere to the strict criteria set by Slow Food. The problem isn’t selling their capers, it’s producing enough to meet demand. Roberto speaks darkly of capers that are labelled as coming from Salina, but don’t.
He apologises but he has to dash off to a meeting of his fellow caper producers.
‘We have to work out how to deal with the caper producers on Lipari and Pantelleria,’ he says.
Kiki, a friend from England, joins me. She’s in need, so she says, of a light basting of sun, sea and shellfish.
‘What you need,’ I say, ‘is a course of Dynamic Inertia.’
‘Dynamic Inertia?’
‘You need to embrace the idea that doing nothing frequently is better than doing something.’
She goggles at me.
‘You should always ask if what you’re thinking of doing, or are about to do, is actually useful, beneficial or even necessary. All too often the answer would be “No” if we stopped to think about it. But we don’t; we’re already committed to the action. We need to cultivate inactivity as a positive force in life. George MacDonald said that “Work is not always required. There is such a thing as sacred idleness.”’
‘Who’s George MacDonald?’
‘A Scottish Christian minister. He wrote At the Back of the North Wind, The Princess and the Goblin and Lilith. You were probably read one of them when you were a child.’
‘Never heard of him.’
Nevertheless, Dynamic Inertia is going splendidly. Each day hangs like a ripe fruit, full of sweetness. And then we bump into Giuseppe Mascoli, captain, cook, wine maker, philosopher, founder and president of Franco Manca, the chain of pizza restaurants in London.
Why not, Giuseppe suggests over dinner one evening, spend the day on his yacht, Heather, drifting down the coast. A bit of a swim. A touch of lunch. A bottle or two. With him and his friend Kristin. How does that sound? We think that sounds pretty fine.
Heather is a thirty-five-foot Bermuda sloop, built of teak and mahogany in Lymington, an exquisite example of English craftsmanship, a trim, elegant and purposeful synthesis of form and function, that Giuseppe keeps in the tiny harbour at Malfa.
We – Giuseppe, Kristin, Kiki and I – skim off down the coast, swimming here and there. It’s the kind of day every day in a summer in the islands should be: sunny, hot, clear, easy-paced, indulgent, with that frisson of the unexpected that gives an edge to pleasure and that I always get when sailing. Giuseppe is captain and crew, cook and controversialist. We stop for lunch, pasta all’arrabbiata da Giuseppe, that Giuseppe produces with unostentatious ease. There’s much jollity and laughter and serious conversation about the nature of democracy. Giuseppe expresses some heretical views to an increasingly sceptical and then somnolent audience. Kristin has to get back to Malfa, and Kiki decides to keep her company, so Giuseppe summons a cutter on his phone to take the ladies back to Malfa.
I fall asleep on the deck before flopping over the side for a final swim. As I clamber up the hinged mahogany ladder back onto the boat, the brass hinges snap, and the lower section of the steps fall away into the sea, me with them. The remaining steps end, tantalisingly, about a metre or so above the waterline. I’m torn between clinging to the section of the steps that has broken off, and trying to haul myself up onto the remaining section of the steps on the boat. Which I cannot do, no matter how hard I try. I lie in the sea looking up at the side of the boat cur
ving above me. I might as well be contemplating how to scale the side of a skyscraper. I feel completely helpless.
Giuseppe, meanwhile, is pootling around in the water with his mask and snorkel, unaware of the drama unfolding. Eventually I attract his attention. He swims over. I apprise him of the situation, and wait for the recriminations. Instead of upbraiding me, he raises his thigh up and tells me to use it as a kind of platform. I stand on it, and with the help of some shoving from him, manage to grab high enough up the section of ladder still hanging down the side of the boat to haul myself on board. A few seconds later Giuseppe shins up the anchor chain and clambers on board himself. What a man! My panic subsides, but it was a nasty moment.
Giuseppe never says a word of complaint about my breaking the ladder. He just comments that it’s as well to know about the design weakness now. We sail back to Malfa without incident and go to dinner.
I wave goodbye to Kiki and go to meet Federica Tesoriero of the Aeolian Islands Preservation Fund that has been recently set up to ‘preserve the exceptional beauty and natural value of the archipelago, to encourage a more sustainable, and responsible tourism, promoting the unique experiences that the local habitat and natural phenomena offer’.
Federica is a chic, smart young woman with a serious passion for the islands. She explains that, beneath the exquisite surface, Salina and the other Aeolian islands face common problems. There’s a tension between the economic benefit of tourism and the pressure that it puts on the fragile ecology and social systems of the islands. On the back of their popularity come corruption and criminality that influence such mundane matters as development, rubbish collection and providing fresh water. There are deficiencies in medical services, and problems with pollution, poaching, loss of habitat, loss of biodiversity, loss of identity.
What Federica tells me confirms some things that I suspected, but also points to other issues of which I wasn’t aware. She makes me understand just how threatened these islands are. In some ways, it’s a miracle they’ve survived in the condition they presently enjoy, but without awareness and action, many of the reasons why I’ve found a return to Salina so delightful will be lost.
I spend one last evening on the upper terrace of the Hotel Belvedere, swathed in the aural treacle of country & western muzak, looking across the blue, enamelled sea to the misty silhouettes of Filicudi, my next destination, and to Alicudi beyond. I drift back to other, earlier, dusty, sweet-scented evenings, when my brothers and I spent hours trying to catch humming-bird hawk-moths, as they hovered at the trumpets of creamy oleander flowers, their long tongues uncurling to sip the nectar at the heart of each bloom.
I’m happy that I’ve come back to Salina, not simply to revisit the past. Certain things have changed. There are new hotels and restaurants, and houses have been repaired, enlarged and painted for holiday lets. The old order of rustic self-sufficiency, of subsistence farming bordering on poverty, has gone, replaced by relative prosperity based on holiday tourism and more commercial agriculture.
But the island is recognisably the same place that I first discovered forty or so years ago. Its inherent characteristics, its confidence and character remain fundamentally unchanged, even in the face of the forces of contemporary travel and tourism. I never feel the need to be on my guard against sharp practice, exploitation or fear of being fleeced. Salina isn’t going to be another Stromboli or Capri. There are no mega-boats anchored offshore, no sleek cruisers cluttering up its modest harbours, no squadrons of holiday yachts waiting to crowd on sail. Salina’s quietness and purpose and its easy pace are familiar. I’ve changed more than it has.
Filicudi
There are eight hairpin bends on the road down to Pecorini a Mare on Filicudi. They end where the road narrows sharply and turns into the tiny seaside village.
As I travel through the islands, I have the feeling that I’m running before a flood of tourism that crashes over each island as I leave. The further west I travel, the weaker the flood seems to become. I wonder if the full force will ever reach Filicudi or Pecorini a Mare, where I’ve rented a flat for a few days. There’s something detached about the island. Even more than Salina, it feels removed from the mundane hurly-burly of holiday-making. Those visitors who find their way there soon slip into Pecorini a Mare’s agreeable doziness.
There’s a smattering of shops and a colony of sun loungers on a headland, and not much else. Nothing much stirs in the village before 9.30 a.m. After that, life progresses in easy stages through the hours, eating sleeping, swimming, reading, watching the comings and goings around the tiny port, staring into space. Each evening, cruise yachts congregate in the shallow bay, like gulls coming in to roost, drawn by the excellence of the one restaurant, La Sirena, and a pop-up bar with the explicit name, Saloon.
There’re small, tender moments, too. One morning I meet an elderly fisherman carrying a tin coming up over the stony beach as I’m heading for my morning swim. I ask him what he’s caught. He tilts the tin towards me. In it are a few tiny fish and a clutch of elegant pink prawns, each carrying a cushion of familiar blue eggs.
‘Ah, gamberetti di nassa,’ I say. He looks surprised and pleased.
‘Take one,’ he says. I look doubtful. There aren’t many.
‘Go on,’ he says, waggling the tin at me. So I take one.
‘Molto gentile,’ I say. He smiles and trudges off up the shingle. I eat the prawn, relishing the delicacy of the shell crunching between my teeth, and the mild, sweet marine sweetness and the springy jelly of the flesh inside.
It’s a mark of the serenity of these days when the most exciting thing is spotting an octopus resting on a rock on one of my daily snorkel patrols. Normally, octopi are shy creatures, given to lurking around in holes or under rocks, and don’t often venture out into the open in daylight like this.
I look at it. It looks at me. It flexes its tentacles. They unfurl and curl over the surface of the rock, twitchily fluid. It’s weird and beautiful and sinister. Suddenly it resolves into a compact, streamlined whole, and jets off a few feet to another rock. I follow quietly. We eye each other again. Its tentacles do the octopus equivalent of drumming its fingers on a tabletop. Suddenly it becomes fed up with the game, and, collecting itself once more, shoots off into the blue yonder. I feel absurdly pleased by the encounter. For once I think I might like to have one of those underwater GoPro devices that were ubiquitous on Sardinia. There’s always one more bit of bloody electronic equipment I don’t have.
Lisa comes out of the night like a Viking warrior princess, standing in the bow of the boat, profile piercing the dark blonde hair streaming behind her. Any resemblance to a bloodthirsty Norse invader is dispelled by the two vast aluminium suitcases that follow her up onto the jetty. Lisa doesn’t believe in travelling light.
I install her in the flat below mine, and we go to dinner at La Sirena and over antipasto misto, spaghetti alle mandorle and gamberoni alla griglia, continue the energetic dialogue we’ve been having since we met, about colonialism, the origins of pasta alle mandorle, foraging, the state of relationships of various friends, sex, beauty, the preservation of it, the use of pestle and mortars, literary festivals, Angevin history, bringing up children, what we are going to do the next day, and sundry other topics. Lisa brings an energy and sense of purpose to proceedings and I have no option but to acquiesce. It’s all rather at odds with the dreamy, ‘divine idleness’ of the last few days.
We head off for Filicudi Porto in a boat piloted by the wrinkled, whiskery, piratical Bartolo with a fez-type, Garibaldian pillbox hat perched atop his head. No one seems to know the origins of Garibaldi’s idiosyncratic headgear. Some say it was modelled on one worn by an Italian peasant; others suggest its origins lie in South America where Garibaldi fought in the wars of liberation; and there’s a school of thought that holds that it was inspired by the hats worn in Montenegro. Whatever the truth, it became the model for female fashion of the period, although Bartolo wears his with masculine brio.
We swim again, through the Punta del Perciato, an arch formed of rocks shaped like organ pipes, and nose our way into the Grotto del Bue, in which, Bartolo assures us, barracuda come to sleep at night. We return to Pecorini a Mare in the pearly light of early evening. Suddenly there are seven cruise yachts anchored in the bay, plus a big Turkish-style caique. The air’s filled with the shrieks of children as they jump off the jetty into the sea, the put-put of outboard motors ferrying sailors to dinner at La Sirena and the odd shouted conversation. Perhaps I’m not quite so far ahead of the tsunami of tourism as I’d imagined.
Alicudi
Still further west is Alicudi, an inverted pudding basin of an island, a haven of peace and a model of unchanging ways by comparison with Filicudi. Lisa and I go there for the day and, on arrival, find it difficult to tell if there’s life on the island at all. There are a few neat, brightly painted houses just above the waterline. A horse dozes at the side of the one and only street, which runs for a kilometre at most, but of people there isn’t a sign outdoors.
We walk back and forth for perhaps twenty minutes, swim, and find refuge in the Bar Airone, where most of the population of Alicudi seem to be congregated. They gape at Lisa, as they might at some visitor from another planet. The modest nature of the Bar Airone belies the excellence of its food – a most unusual caponata, which is more like a delicate vegetable stew than the usual heavy-gravity mulch, with potato in place of the more usual melanzane (potatoes have always been grown extensively throughout the Aeolian Islands to provide dietary ballast during the weeks when bad weather cuts off the islands from the outside world); and a light, refined variation on parmegiana made with zucchini grown in the garden of our waiter’s parents, instead of melanzane.