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Eating Too Much in Salerno
Let me first thank all of you who are so supportive of my work. I got so much mail of sympathy when I last wrote about the woman who complained about my cake recipe. I have to report that in the end the woman who bought "Jewish Home Cooking" but didn't know me from a hole in the wall, wrote me a very kind and conciliatory note, and she promised to always look in on her cake ahead of time from now on.
Talking about cake seems so silly with all the very serious things that are going on in the U.S. and the rest of the world. On the other hand, as I just read in a travel industry newsletter, people take consolation in such things as food and drink (and travel) when times are bad. Remember, during the Great Depression, Hollywood movies became total fluff. It was the heyday of the musical and the screwball comedy.
So, moving on to delightful things, I am still well-ensconced in Cecilia's big house in Battipaglia, which has been divided into three apartments. Cecilia is on the first floor, her son Massimino and his wife Barbara are on the second floor, and her son Ettore and his family are on the third floor. By day, I have been very cozy in Barbara and Massimino's apartment, writing at the kitchen table (yes, still the Italian book), having lunch with Barbara, who cooks like a dream and cooks healthy (mostly vegetables), but having some nice social time in the evening, away from the house.
For instance, last Saturday night I went to a big party at the home of a friend who lives on a hill overlooking the Gulf of Salerno near Palinuro, which is almost the southernmost part of Campania. It was night, so the only view was of the lights in the towns below, but I could imagine what it looks like by day. Gigino (Luigi) invited me back sometime when I can the vista mare, the sea view. Being up high, and with a big but brief storm hitting just an hour before the party, he'd unfortunately lost his electricity just moments before the guests arrived. But when everything was back to normal, we were treated to a huge antipasto buffet, the highlights of which were bread-cheese-and-egg stuffed fried eggplant slices in tomato sauce, a specialty of the Cilento, the name of the area this house is located, and the sweetest tasting wild chicory, which is usually quite bitter, although I like bitter. It was cooked with onion and potatoes and just a little hot red pepper.
At any party around here they always have buffalo mozzarella, and Gigino served some that's made by Cecilia's cousin, Gaetano Jemma. Antonio Vanullo, whose mozzarella dairy gets a lot of press in the U.S., was among the 25 guests. I was tempted to ask him what he thought of the cheese, but I chickened out. Probably rude, I thought. He asked me where I liked to eat in Naples. I mentioned Europeo di Mattozzi, which is, by me, the best and most reliable traditional restaurant in the city (even for pizza). But I said I basically prefer to eat at home, at the homes of my Neapolitan friends. He loved that answer. I think. I'm not sure because he kidded me about it for the rest of the evening. Then again, when I turned the question back on him, he said he didn't like eating in any restaurant in Naples. Listen, I always think home is the best place to eat unless you go out for something you'd never make at home, like Indian food, or Chinese food, or sushi. Well, I'd never make these.
The buffet also had roasted peppers with capers and mollica, meaning the interior of bread; zucchini scapece, which means fried then marinated; paricularly good grilled zucchini and grilled eggplant, young caciocavallo cheese, capacolla, a pizza rustica filled with ricotta and bits of prosciutto and salami, a mixed vegetable frittata, and, well, several other mainly vegetable items. It was a party. I didn't take notes and my memory fails me. But I should add that the quality of the vegetables was superior, as the vegetable always taste better here than in the U.S, and, besides, Gigino is in the wholesale vegetable business.
We ate outside on the tiled terrace, right off the living room/dining room/kitchen - yes, they love those open spaces here, too, as we do at home, and the house is only four years old -- protected from the wind by clear plastic curtains. But it was so unseasonably chilly, and the buffet was so sumptuous that after we'd eaten enough - too much - we got up from the table and went inside the house. No one I was standing with realized that there was a parade of meats to come, grilled outdoors and at the back of the house where we couldn't see them or smell them. First came chicken so good I had to eat two thigh-drumstick joints. I have to say, Gigino's waiter insisted that I take the second one. Big men get feed well around here. No one tells you to go on a diet. But, putting the swecond piece on my plate, he didn't drop a hint that 15 minutes later he'd also be bringing out grilled lamb, sausage and little veal steaks. I had to pass. Okay, I had a tiny piece of the lamb.
There were five desserts: Two baba au rum, one with pastry cream and one without, which is sort of typical; a linzer torte filled with homemade sour cherry preserves, made by my dear friend Franco, the master furniture restorer. Who knew he could bake, too? And there was a chocolate chestnut cake with a runny interior that was unbelievable. The subject of much discussion was a migliaccio, a semolina pudding cake. This is a very old-fashioned sweet, one rarely made anymore, and some of the guests who were not originally from Southern Italy, but grew up somewhere north of Rome, had no idea what it was. I have to pat myself on the back. They were impressed that the American not only knew the desert, but how to make it.
After the food, came the singing. In Southern Italy that's often what happens. Gigino had a small electric piano and it was played by one of the guests. Meanwhile, another guest, (by the way, the uncle of the brothers Bruno, who own the wonderful albeit expensive San Pietro restaurant in midtown Manhattan), sang his operatic heart out. At one point, his rendition of Reginella so moved me that I called Bob Harned on my cell phone so he could listen in Brooklyn. It's his favorite Neapolitan song.
Another by the way: If you go to You Tube, you can see and hear Bob Harned singing. It's a video of a number from one of his cabaret acts, done years ago. Just plug his name into the search engine.
On Sunday, I went to a restaurant with Franco, who gave himself a slightly belated 65th birthday celebration. Naturally, he took us to his favorite country restaurant, in a small town called Campagna near Eboli. I pass the exit for this town all the time on the Super Strada, but I'd somehow never been there. I didn't know what I was missing. It was nearly totally destroyed during the 1980 earthquake, but has been beautifully restored, a really lovely old town with stone streets, old but looking like nearly new houses, very old and big London plane trees (in NYC we call these Sycamore, the ones that are having leaf problems and conspicuously peeling bark), and a torrent running through it over a paved stone river bed that drops in stair-like stages. The beautiful Baroque era cathedral was all lit up. I was so impressed with the picturesque town as well as the little restaurant that I am taking my Cook at Seliano group there next week, after our day in Naples.
The restaurant, La Cantina 'a Bersagliera, serves very rustic, old-fashioned food, just what I love. We were nine and ate family style, starting with platters of pasta and beans. The pasta is a local peculiarity called matassa, which means "skein," as in a skein of yarn. It is a fresh flour-water pasta that is made by throwing and stretching the dough. The process will be described in more detail in my new book. It'll take too much space here. The beans were borlotti, what we call cranberry beans. It was super-simple, just the beans and oil and garlic, but the pasta was particularly delicate, the whole thing much greater than its basic parts. The same could be said for the next pasta, lagane and chickpeas. Lagane are wide, flat, flour-water noodles, the pasta usually served around here with chick peas.
Now the parade of meat and vegetables came out: Grilled slices of pancetta, grilled sausage, bits of boneless pork rib sautéed with potatoes and vinegar peppers, and finally fried baccala. The vegetables included cianfotta, a vegetable mix, green beans, roasted peppers, and vinegary zucchini. (I just heard a funny line: You can cook zucchini a thousand ways, but in the end it still tastes like zucchini.)
As the restaurant has only fruit for dessert, Franco brought, to his own birthday party, a magnum of sparkling wine and, again, one of his Linzer tarts with his sister's sour cherries. We took a walk afterwards, searching for coffee, which the restaurant doesn't serve either, but everything was closed at near midnight. The town itself, however, was still lit up like a movie set.
If you think I have been eating too much, too late, you'd be right. But there is one more feast to go.
On Monday night, I was invited to dinner by Lidia and Mario Fortunato, good friends of Cecilia. If you have been wondering why I haven't mentioned her at these parties it is because, until Tuesday, she was traveling up north with her sisters. You can see, however, that her friends take good care of me when she is gone.
Mario is a retired agronomist and right off, as soon as I walked through the gate of his garden, I was bowled over. He explained that it was really his grandmother's garden-although I know he has embellished it and cares for it with a professional eye and know-how, not to mention love and family pride - and that she only put in plants with fragrance. The smell of jasmine perfumed the air, but up close there were scented lillies and, well, I don't remember plant names but several other perfumed flowers. And it is now late in the season.
Lidia served a strange but delicious menu. After some cocktail-sized toasted cheese sandwiches and a truffle spread in the living area, her first course at the table was a risotto with pumpkin--actually a squash that is blue-green outside, orange inside, and round, so not Hubbard squash as I thought at first, but like Hubbard. The rice, a long grain that I haven't seen before (she is going to get me a package so I can see it raw) was flavored with rosemary and pancetta. I had two portions; you know, just to be polite.
Next came her famous pizza rustica, which is called La Tasca. I say famous because Cecilia now makes it and serves it at the agriturismo, and I make it, too. Everyone who eats it wants the recipe, so it will be in my next book. Tasca means "pocket" and it is a lightly sweetened, butter and egg-rich double-crust pie filled with an inordinate number of eggs, much cheese, and bits of prosciutto. Lidia and Cecilia bake it with young caciocavallo, although Lidia told me that it was originally made with young pecorino. The recipe is a relic of Padula (province of Salerno, too), a town in the mountains that is famous for its impressively opulent old monastery, the Certosa di San Lorenzo, which was for monks of very rich families. Lidia got the recipe from her sister-in-law, Paula Romanzi, who lives in Padula but doesn't like pecorino. She changed the recipe and makes it with caciocavallo. Because young caciocavallo is hard to obtain outside an American big city (well, I can find it in NYC, even in my Key Food on Flatbush Avenue, believe it or not), I decided one day at home to use Gruyere instead. With Gruyere, I think it is even better. In fact, I'd have to say that La Tasca is now one of my thousand favorite foods. Cecilia used to say something was among her hundred favorite foods, but we've recently had to increase the number.
Now, I have to go back to being a good boy. Vegetables and more vegetables! No pasta or meat. Just a little cheese for protein. Then tomorrow, Yom Kippur, is a fast day; enforced good behavior. Then the Cook at Seliano group gets here in time for lunch on Sunday. Cecilia, Ettore and I just planned the menu for when they arrive and I see I need to create some tummy space.
