Showing posts with label Mary Taylor Simeti. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mary Taylor Simeti. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 08, 2017

MIMOSA AND MOTIVATION

Mimosa blossom is very much the order of the day for the festa della donna [International Women's Day] so it was nice to be presented with a sprig of it with my Sicilian orange juice in the bar this morning and lovely to receive the gift on the left from a friend:


I thought it would be appropriate, on this day, to tell you about ten Italian women who have inspired me - well, more than ten, really, as there are whole convents of nuns involved - but it started at ten!

Teresa Mattei
Firstly, if you are wondering why the mimosa is the symbol of International Women's Day in Italy, it was the idea of one Teresa Mattei , activist, partisan and one of the "mothers of the Italian Constitution".  

The other great ladies on my list come in no particular order and I make no apologies for the fact that several of them are writers. I'm just made that way.

Oriana Fallaci has fascinated me since my student days and I learnt only recently that the woman once known as "Italy's most aggessive journalist" could be just like the rest of us when she fell in love!

Elsa Morante was another writer whose work I started reading as a student and in my opinion her greatest novel remains La Storia or History. Of that other literary lady who is so popular both here and in Britain, namely signora Ferrante, I have read only one volume, so I am reserving judgement for now.  If I get hooked you'll be the first to know!

The works of Natalia Ginzburg were a comfort to me in my student days and they are a comfort to me now.

Rita Levi Montalcini, who left us almost five years ago, was a scientist and Nobel laureate who, even at the age of 100, had a special empathy with the young, whom her achievements and words continue to excite. The world is poorer without her.

Rita Levi Montalcini depicted in flower petals at the Noto Infiorata, 2011
Franca Viola

No woman living in Sicily can forget Franca Viola, whose determination not to submit to bullying changed Italian law.  She lives happily today in Alcamo.

Maria Grammatico, Ericean pastry cook who told her story to Mary Taylor Simeti in Bitter Almonds, was brought up in a convent, where she learnt to make pastries. I have yet to achieve my ambition of visiting her pastry shop in Erice.

There are still convents in Sicily where the nuns make and sell pastries to raise funds for maintenance or good causes and I'll never forget the day I bought these, through a grille, from a convent in Agrigento. You have my admiration, dear sisters:



The story of Daniela Spada is one I read recently and who could not be inspired by this lady's courage and the determination with which she fought her way back from devastating illness? I learnt so much from this book.

Artemesia Gentileschi is a woman I've admired since the first film about her came out in the 1990s. More talented than her father and brothers, if ever a woman literally suffered for her art, it was she. Artemesia continued painting, against all the odds, and was the first woman to become a member of the Florentine Accademia di Arte del Disegno.

Finally, the word pazienza is not in my vocabulary and I've often said it should be banned in Italy as it is too often used to excuse inefficiency by the very victims of that inefficiency. However, when pazienza is employed to create great or small works of art, I wish I had it so, as we are coming up to Easter, I would like to express once again my admiration for The Palm Lady.

I hope you've all had a wonderful festa della donna!



Wednesday, April 18, 2012

AN AMBITION ACHIEVED

After our morning in San Biagio Platini on Sunday, it was onwards to Agrigento for a guided walk around the old town, culminating in a visit to the Church of Santo Spirito.  This church is not normally open to the public, as its convent is home to a semi-closed order of Cistercian nuns, but our guide had arranged for it to be opened for us.



The Church was built in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries but those lucky enough to enter are surprised by a Baroque interior with sparkling white figures in stucco on three sides.  These are probably the work of the Palermitano sculptor Giacomo Serpotta [1656 - 1732].

Now to the cloister:






And my ambition? Ever since I first visited Sicily I'd wanted to be able to buy dolci made by nuns and exchange my money for them through a grille. On Sunday I finally did this at Santo Spirito.  Well, it wasn't really a grille - more of a hatch - and a lay assistant was taking the money.  It was nice, however, to catch a fleeting glimpse of a face peeping from a wimple as the tray of almond biscuits was pushed towards me. I assure you they are delicious:



Nowhere is the tale of how Sicily's nuns traditionally made dolci better told than by Maria Grammatico to Mary Taylor Simeti in the book,  Bitter Almonds.

Many thanks to the person who uploaded this onto youtube:

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

TWO BOOKS ON SICILIAN PASTRY COOKERY

It was clear from the comments on Friday’s “lemon made from almond paste” post that many of you were interested in the frutta di Martorana so I thought I’d talk some more about them and take the opportunity to tell you about two books on the sweet produce of Sicily as well.

Before I visited my lovely island for the first time, I had read about Martorana fruit but nothing prepared me for the shiny beauty of these replicas of fruit, nor for their delicate taste: they are made from pasta reale [almond paste] but “marzipan” is a very inadequate translation which does not do justice to the work involved in its making. Legend has it that the first ever batch of Martorana fruit was made on the orders of a certain mother superior, who wanted to impress her Bishop during his visit. So the nuns prepared the “fruit” and hung it from the cloister trees; so “real” did it look that the Bishop declared that a miracle had happened, as all the fruits had appeared in the same season! Oh, I hope with all my heart that this story is true!

True or not, it is recounted in both the books that I am going to tell you about tonight and the first is Sweet Sicily by Victoria Granof. In this beautifully illustrated tome Granof, inspired by the idea that in Palermo granita [ flavoured, crushed ice] is presented inside a brioche for breakfast [and indeed it is, in summer] tours the island and interviews many pastry chefs. Unusually in an English-language book about Sicilian cookery, my adopted town of Modica gets a chapter all to itself, so of course the volume has pride of place on my kitchen bookshelves! Recipes are given, their origins are discussed and there is a helpful historical timeline of Sicily which helps the reader place the recipes in their historical context. I dip into this book whenever I feel low and it reminds me how lucky I am to be here.

Some of you may recall that my favourite non-fiction author on Sicily is Mary Taylor Simeti and I have said before that no volume on culinary Sicily in general compares in scholarship with her Sicilian Food. In Bitter Almonds Simeti interviews the famous Ericean pastry chef Maria Grammatico and watches her at work. The book tells the fascinating tale of Maria’s early life and I reread it in one sitting last night, as preparation for this post. I appreciated the book very much when I first read it in 2003 but I am glad that I have read it again here, for I can relate to so much more of its detail now. Poverty forced Maria’s mother to send her and her sister to the San Carlo convent in Erice in the 1950s. There the girls lived under a severe and harsh regime but they learnt a skill which has remained with Maria all her life – that of making frutta di Martorana and other Sicilian pastries. Maria now runs a famous pastry shop in her beloved Erice and the tourists flock there.

The book contains some of Maria’s recipes, Simeti’s observations, an insight into Sicilian frugality [for nothing was wasted in the convent kitchen, and this is a trend I have observed myself here]. We also learn a little of Maria’s philosophy and I leave you with this, for I cannot paraphrase this wonderful lady:

What we value has to be inside of us. This sort of work, making the Christmas hearts, embroidering them with marzipan, it’s an art that’s disappearing….. Young people today don’t want to learn these things. For me, sitting here and and making these things is really relaxing. They’re so beautiful! And I like it because I’m creating something with my own hands, it’s not like machine work…… You can’t think about the money… [because] then you can’t put in all the love that it takes.” [My bolds.]

That is very Sicilian – so wonderfully Sicilian that it moves me to tears, reader – and very wise indeed.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

GIVE US THIS DAY...


I like these "whirly breads" or girelle, which can be bought, freshly made, at any bakery, salumeria or supermarket. Cut into pieces, one will go a long way. This one is flavoured with cheese, but other fillings such as sausage are possible.


A table without bread is unthinkable in Italy, and it will often be placed simply on the cloth, for you to break off the portions that you want. Or it will be served on a board, in which case, even today, it is usually the head of the household who cuts it.


The shaping of bread into decorative patterns is an ancient tradition and the Sicilians are masters at this. According to Mary Taylor Simeti, until quite recently, women kneading bread at home used to pause between each step to utter special prayers. During the 17th and 18th centuries, though, it was actually forbidden to bake bread at home here; this was because in times of famine governments wanted to ensure fair distribution. Therefore ovens in the home were regarded, until the end of WW2, as luxury items, and families used to take their prepared dough to neighbourhood bakeries, having "carved" their initials into it. I wonder if this explains the fact that so many shapes and varieties of bread are still made here by professional bakers ?


In Sicily, which is so fertile but which has also known so much poverty, bread was and is so venerated that within living memory, people believed that if they let any breadcrumbs fall from the table, they would be condemned forever, in hell, to sweeping them up with their eyelashes.


So when I cut into my "cheese whirly" at lunch time, I remember all this history and I am truly grateful to have been able to obtain it so easily.


Friday, June 01, 2007

SOME BOOKS ABOUT SICILY

I am taking a leaf out of jmb's book [doing book reviews] and have swallowed some Gracchi pills!


This evening I thought I would share with you some of my favourite reading about Sicily – not travel guides, and certainly not tomes of the“how I rebuilt a castle then lorded it like an Englishman and never learnt the local lingo” genre, but well-written, informative works by people who have made their homes here and committed themselves to Sicily; people whose love for the island shines through in every word they write.

The first book is A House in Sicily by Daphne Phelps. In 1947 Phelps inherited, then surprised herself by deciding to remain in Sicily and maintain, the beautiful Casa Cuseni in Taormina. She had to struggle to hold on to the house in the early days and I can identify with her brushes with Italian bureaucracy at that time. Phelps tells us of the ups and downs of running the property, the characters who work for her, the townsfolk she meets and regales us with tales of some of the people she entertained at Casa Cuseni, among them Bertrand Russell, Caitlin Thomas and Roald Dahl. And all the time you can sense her falling in love with Sicily. There is also an hilarious chapter detailing her encounters with the head of the local Mafia! Daphne Phelps died in 2005 at the age of 94.

Regular readers will know that I regard Mary Taylor Simeti’s Sicilian Food as the most authoritative work available on the subject but she is also the author of another favourite of mine: it is On Persephone’s Island, a journal which takes us through the seasons in Sicily. Simeti brings to life the harvesting of crops, fauna, festivals and the island’s history and, like me, she is fascinated by the myth of Persephone and feels the latter’s presence in her everyday life:
Perhaps it was my growing interest in calendars: the story of Persephone’s descent into the Underworld each winter and her return four months later was perhaps the earliest attempt to divide the year into seasons and to explain its rhythms.”
Simeti explains the Italian – and especially Sicilian – love of the festa thus:
The Italian words [for eating plentifully] have behind them centuries of hunger interrupted only by famine. To eat all one wants and more, in one glorious and wasteful feed, is to consecrate the feast day by distinguishing it from the careful measuring out of the daily bread.”
I am now reading this book for the third time, so that is an indication of how much I value it.

Finally, I have just read another Simeti: In 1185 Constance d’Hauteville, daughter of Roger 11 of Sicily and heiress to the Sicilian throne in her own right, set out, with her entourage and the greatest dowry ever seen in Europe, for Germany where she was to be married to Henry, son of Frederick Barbarossa. Travels with a Medieval Queen is the story of Simeti’s attempt to retrace Constance’s year-long last journey home to Sicily in 1195. Aged 40 at the time and childless, Constance discovered, en route, that she was pregnant and gave birth to the future Frederick 11 in Jesi [Ancona]. Now, much of the book is conjecture, as Simeti freely admits, for very little was documented about this journey; sometimes, in my reading, I felt I was being bumped along slowly in a litter, like Constance. Yet here and there Simeti gives us fascinating glimpses of the medieval world and, having recently read Italy – The Enduring Culture by Jonathan White , I am convinced that the Renaissance was no historical “accident”: its foundations were already laid in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries. In this book Simeti is well aware of the dangers of interpreting a medieval character through modern eyes and among fascinating questions which she raises are: Was there any concept of “self”, as post-Renaissance man understands it? How attached were mothers to their children? Were they afraid to love them because the infant mortality rate was so high? How was colour perceived? It was, Simeti says, an “urban phenomenon” and mostly available only to the rich, as dyes were expensive. Ordinary folk saw bright colours only in church. How did Constance feel in the muted light of Germany after being brought up in the magnificence of Palermo? How did she feel as the landscape changed as she reached the south once more? Here, too, I found echoes of my own cultural ambivalences, and began to ask myself whether a northern person is ever truly at home in a hot land and conversely whether, having lived in the Mediterranean, one can ever settle happily in the north again? And I was interested in the way that Constance's status changed once the precious heir was born. For childless women are still often made to feel , if not inferior, “different”, even in western cultures. I came to rather like Constance and am glad that Dante puts her in Paradise:


Quest'è la luce de la gran Costanza


che del secondo vento di Soave


generò 'l terzo e l'ultima possanza.




This is the splendour of the great Constance


who from the Swabians' second gust engendered


the one who was their third and final power.


- Paradiso, Canto 111, 119-120

She is buried in this tomb in Palermo Cathedral. Next time I am there I will do what Simeti has vowed to do: I will take the Empress some flowers.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

AN EASTER LUNCH













Easter was going well until, on Sunday afternoon, the internet socket decided to fall out of the wall! [Why do these things always have to happen on a holiday?] I resisted the temptation to jam it back into the hole and carry on blogging [for what use is an electrocuted blogger?] but only by sitting on my hands! So that is why I couldn't write anything yesterday, visit any of you or put the comments on till now, the electrician having just left. I'll catch up with everyone during tonight and tomorrow.
Anyway, at last I can continue the account of my Paschal adventures. At midday on Sunday it was off to Linda's for a wonderful lunch of:
antipasti of freshly marinated olives
Linda's lasagne [photo 1]
chicken cotolette [photo 2]
crown roast of lamb
various salads
fresh fruit
various Colomba cakes [photo 3]
Sicilian Easter cassate [photo 4] made by Chiara and about which I must say something:

According to Simeti, the word cassata is from Arabic qas'ah, denoting the steep-sided mould used to make the original version of this cake. There is frozen cassata [a dish much imitated, often badly, by the British]; there is a very ornate, baked version which uses both pastry and sponge cake and which probably dates back to the Arabic dish; and there is the plainer, still delicious, baked kind made by the Sicilians at Easter today. I'm sure other friends here will forgive me when I say that Chiara is the best cassata maker I know, and she's quite ferocious with a long, thin, Italian rolling pin! [I would not like to start an argument with her whilst she is wielding one!] The pasta frolla [Sicilian sweet pastry] is filled with a ricotta and honey mixture, and when the cassate are cooked they are sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar.
Linda and family also had some German guests and one thing I love about living on mainland Europe is that most people are multi-lingual and can switch easily from one language to another. I used to so miss this in the UK.










Saturday, March 17, 2007

CAPONATA













A friend gave me these home-grown and salted capers, so I just had to make caponata! Besides, a commenter has asked for the recipe. And a third reason for making it is that there is something unmistakeably Mediterranean about the perfume that results from having a dish made with aubergines and peppers bubbling away on the hob.
In Sicilian Food, Mary Taylor Simeti tells us that the dish was probably seagoing food because the vinegar in it means that it keeps well. In the recipe she gives, she includes some chopped, toasted almonds and the optional addition of some cocoa powder. I add neither of these, but almonds do marry well with peppers, so you may like to try it. Some recipes say use tomato sauce [which is what I do - I make my own using Keith Floyd's recipe in Floyd on Italy] whilst others tell you to sieve a can of tomatoes. I should think you could get away with using passata, but I would then thicken it with some tomato paste and maybe use the almonds. [I add a bit of 'strattu anyway, though it's not an authentic ingredient for this dish.] I do stone the olives [and you can use green ones instead of black or a mixture if you prefer] but as the elongated peppers available here don't have much membrane, I don't bother cutting it out. Here is the recipe:,
1 aubergine
c. 5 fl. oz olive oil
1 onion, sliced
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 stick celery, sliced
2 red peppers, sliced [or 1 red and 1 orange pepper]
c. 1 pint good tomato sauce
goodly dollop of tomato paste
2 tblsp red wine vinegar
1 tblsp brown sugar
handful stoned black olives
c. 1 tblsp salted capers, rinsed and drained
Halve the aubergine, score the flesh and sprinkle with coarse seasalt. Put in a colander, jam a plate on top and leave for c. 30 mins. Rinse well and dry with kitchen paper. Cube the aubergine.
Heat the oil in a deep pan and add the onion, garlic, peppers and celery. Cook, stirring, for c. 5 minutes, then add the aubergine cubes.
Add the tomato sauce and paste, vinegar and sugar and cook for a few more minutes.
Add the capers and olives. Season.
Cover and simmer for about 25 minutes or until it is all squashy and looks and smells Mediterranean!
This dish is most often served here as an antipasto and in summer it is served chilled. You can serve it hot if you want to, but I prefer to serve it at room temperature. The dish freezes well and will serve 4 generously. In my opinion it needs no acompaniment other than some good, Sicilian pane arabo.
I had read about but never seen the rounder, paler type of aubergine in the last picture until I came to Sicily. Simeti tells us that this is the "Tunisian" variety but they are charmingly sold as violette here.
Still on a vegetable theme, today I found celeriac on sale for the first time since I've been in Sicily. I have missed céleri rémoulade and shall now be making up for it!

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