Easter Time, 2010

Chocolate eggs, pastiera and the Jewish Passover.

Easter school holidays are very short in Italy, a week and sometimes only five days. The weather is usually awful and changes to glorious spring or even summer after Easter, when everybody is back to work.

So what is Easter about?  Meeting family and friends and having big dinners together of course!

In my childhood we used to meet our large family at my grandmother’s, my mum’s mum.  She made gnocchi or ravioli with spinach and ricotta for thirty people.  For second course we had Abbacchio, roasted lamb, and for dessert Colomba, an Easter cake with almonds with the shape of a dove.  For children there were chocolate eggs with little gifts inside.  I did not like chocolate so much at the time and I was always disappointed by the gift.  Luckily I had the chance to swap it with my cousins, which was the most exciting part of the day.  Sometimes I was so clever that I ended the day with a bright plastic bracelet or a fake ring instead of footballer cards or silly badges.

In my childhood my parents did not care about religious celebrations.  The only person who went to Mass in the family was my grandmother, my dad’s mum, who lived with us.  My parents considered her religious attendance obsessive and her practice of keeping pictures of saints in her bedroom near a little lamp superstitious. So I did not know what Easter really meant till my adulthood when I chose to see what was all this fuss about Jesus Christ dying on a cross and rising on the third day.

What my grandmother left me of Easter time was the ritual of preparing Pastiera, a delicious and not so easy Easter cake typical of Naples area.  There are different types of Pastiera and the recipes vary, but there are two main ingredients which should always be there: wheat grains cooked in milk and ricotta.  It is shaped like a pie, pastry on the bottom, then the filling, with crossed strips of pastry on the top. The secret is in the filling.

We used to make it a week before Easter.  My grandmother supervised the work and prepared the dough while I and my sister mixed the different ingredients of the filling. She had a secret recipe for it and she always said that that was the real Pastiera.  Other ways of making it were tainted by modern views.

Preparing the filling just right was the climax of the preparation.  It had to have a special taste: mellow, but with a touch of cinnamon and the balanced flavour of ricotta and wheat grains. My grandmother tasted it dipping her fingertip in the mixture and savouring it for a few seconds. Then she bid us to add this or that ingredient with her usual commander-in-chief tone. I still have the taste in my mouth each time I prepare it so I can adjust the ingredients making it near to my grandma’s recipe. Unfortunately my children don’t like Pastiera so it is not as much fun to make it now.

Easter Night Mass is the most evocative liturgical event of the year. The fire outside the church, the priest entering the church with the big Paschal candle and all the people lighting their own candles from it give me a shiver each time.  It may be the chilly wind that regularly blows at Easter night both in Italy and in England.   Or it may be ancestral emotions triggered by the strong symbolic meaning of the fire lighting up darkness.

Once I went to a Jewish Passover dinner organized by a catholic priest.  The idea was to celebrate the Passover as Exodus 12 says: ‘You shall have your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand, and you must eat in urgent haste.’

We were five people plus the priest.  There was a tiny roasted lamb leg in the middle of the table, some salad, unleavened bread and a sort of jam made with honey and nuts.  Each one of us had also a crystal goblet.

Five bottles of wine appeared on the table.   With twinkling eyes the priest explained us that the dinner had a strict procedure. Four times we had to stand up, he made a speech and we answered.   Each toast entailed drinking the content of the goblet filled to the brim with sparkling red wine.

There wasn’t much to eat and the wine was strong.  Towards the middle of the celebration we were all giggling and chatting at random about keeping your feet fastened and the belt in your hands.  We weren’t in much haste.  We staggered out of the room at about midnight and had a good night's sleep, but weren't feeling so good in the morning.

About ten years ago I celebrated Easter in Sweden.  My husband was working in Stockholm so we had moved there.  I used to attend some pre-school sessions with different groups of mothers and children during the week, taking my third son who was two at the time and did not attend school yet.  One of the sessions was in the community centre of a Lutheran church where we had some arts and crafts sessions, storytelling and sharing food.  Before Easter we decorated bare twigs and branches with coloured feathers and little plastic eggs.  It was still winter weather in Stockholm.  The trees had no buds and there were no flowers around.

Once, the leader of the group, a chubby, unusually dark haired lady with pale blue eyes, invited us to a short meeting about Jesus' Passion. We went in the church and she showed us scenes of the different moments of the Passion displayed on a table.   Like an Italian Christmas Crib there were little figurines representing the Last Supper, the Flagellation, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection.  She also showed and explained us the items of the Passion like bread and wine, the crown of thorns and the oils.  It was engrossing.  I tried to create the different scenes when I was in Italy using plasticine but I had little success.

Beside eating Pastiera, another must for our family in Easter time is watching Jesus Christ Superstar for the twenty-third time.  It refreshes our memory and for the children it is less boring than reading the Gospel.

Well, after Easter everything is new and we should feel more energetic, ready for the summer rush.

The Princess, the Frog and the Coal Mining Museum

My half term week, ironing, films and an exhibition of photographs.

I had a busy half term week with St Valentine’s Day, my daughter Valentina’s tenth birthday and my husband’s forty-something birthday as well. We had to eat cakes and chocolate on Ash Wednesday. No doubt God will forgive us.

All the children were at home having a rest, with too much free time. As usual I had a lot of cooking, washing and ironing and also planning what we could all do together: something which would not sound dull and outdated to the children.

Avatar 3D was a must. I could not be with them but they all agreed it was a highly entertaining and thought-provoking film.

I saw the Princess and the Frog with Valentina instead, a moving, romantic story according to the best tradition of Walt Disney animated films. I enjoyed the colours, the music and the New Orleans accent. Valentina seemed under a spell: she did not miss a jot of it sipping her pint of sprite. There was a fair balance of dream, commitment, hard work and love in the story and a couple of cracking ideas like Mama Odie’s contagious passion for life and the fact that not all   princesses are white.

Then my special day arrived: a visit to the National Coal Mining Museum of England. I had seen the advertisement for an exhibition of photos, Northern Soul, in the magazine Northern Life and was looking forward to seeing it.

We took Valentina to her children's club and prepared the sandwiches. The three older children mumbled they did not care about photographs but followed us all the same.

During the drive we faced sleet, snow, rain, traffic and road works. After an hour and forty-five we finally reached Huddersfield and the NCM museum near Overton. Unfortunately we were too late for the Underground Tour. It must have been fully booked since we had left Lancaster. But we had time to see the Galleries and the special photo exhibition.

Pit canaries, lamps, tools and machines: the Oaks kibble, the rescue bucket for the last survivor of the Oaks Colliery disaster in 1866, in which 360 men and boys were killed, showed how dangerous and hard it was working in a mines. A community was built around a pit and the pit ruled the community.

Big disasters were not so common but men were usually killed in ones and twos in everyday work. What impressed me was the team spirit of these communities, how they worked together and helped each other to improve their lives. They were proud of being miners and handed down their skills from father to son like craftsmen.

The photo exhibition was as impressive as I expected: Northern Soul, images by John Bulmer, Life & Times in the 1960s. Metallic pictures in black and white and a few coloured, tints on a bare background. They showed so much: catching a smile, a blackened face, women polishing the doorsteps, an old lady in clogs cleaning the gate post. Every photograph told a story, from drab street scenes and chimneys smoking to Victorian terraces and pit ponies. The catalogue and signed prints were also on sale and I thought they would be a never ending source of inspiration and teaching, like Monet’s water lilies.

We hadn’t enough time to see the ponies and it was too wet to discover the Nature Trail. We had to go back to Lancaster by four when Valentina finished her Club. But we are going to go back there, in spring, hopefully with better weather to complete our visit of the NCM museum.

To know more there is a website: www.ncm.org.uk

What else? Yes, I also took part to the event Living Books at Lancaster Library on Tuesday 16^th February. Living with Valentina was the title of my story. And I had a go at the Open Mic Slam at Spotlight in Lancaster on Friday 19^th.

Of course we couldn’t miss our ritual shopping, in Manchester this time. My eldest son had to buy a St Valentine’s present and my daughters needed new outfits for springtime…or summertime. Whenever the weather decides to have mercy on us.

We ended the day in our favourite Italian restaurant, La Rustica in Deansgate, where palline di pane, cannelloni alla romana and lasagne are our favourites.

We went back to work for a rest!

An Italian in Lancaster

When we moved to Lancaster in July 2007 everything was charming and new.  The ochre stone buildings, the cobbled lanes, bright flowers in pots and gardens.   And the weather was not so bad, no fog, and even sunny from time to time!

I came from Rome; I was born there.  Rome is a city with both positive and negative sides.  The overall impression it had left me is of a shabby, ancient place, sometimes attractive, sometimes stressful and disappointing.

Six of us moved here: myself, my husband, who was attending a PGCE course at the University of Cumbria to be a Maths teacher, two teenage children, who were going to attend a boarding school in Keswick, and two more children, one in a Primary, the other in a Special school.

I knew I had to orchestrate the whole lot, without their being aware of it.  What about my own job or activities?

In Italy I was an English teacher, which would not work here. To be honest I had hardly had the energy to work in the rough secondary schools of the suburbs of Rome since we had adopted my youngest child, Valentina. When she arrived in Rome from Ukraine in June 2002 she was a tiny, two-year-old blond child. At first we thought that her strange, challenging behaviour was a matter of a few months of adaptation, but it lasted years.  All we knew on leaving Italy was that she had severe deafness and she hadn’t learned to speak Italian in five years of speech therapy.

In England they suggested a school for hearing-impaired children with special needs, and I was very glad of it.  I knew my other children could manage by themselves with a little help but Valentina had been so demanding I felt exhausted.  I needed extra help.  After a few assessments we found out she was autistic as well and we could get respite care.

My job became a marginal problem.  I wished to enjoy England, though, especially the North West of England.  I realized it was not like London, Devon or Cornwall, where we had spent holidays once, let alone Wales or Scotland, which we had also visited for a few weeks.  This was the North West, our family divided between Cumbria and Lancashire, and we had to cope with it.

I must say I coped very well.  I started to take some art classes - painting and drawing being my passion since I was a child - at Lancaster Uni, and creative writing classes at the Adult College.  I met friends with whom I am still in contact.  I learned new techniques in painting using not only brushes - as I had always done in Italy - but also sticks, cards, feathers and sponges.   I learned to  mix different media.  I had come from a casual country with classical background and all this was new, stimulating and extraordinary for me.  Creative courses everywhere: I could take my pick.

The following year, 2008, everything became tighter because of the credit crunch.  Less funding, less courses.  I started to teach Italian in an Adult College in Cumbria once a week and went there for my art classes as well.  I discovered a wonderful opportunity, absent in Italy: the open mic.  I grabbed the chance in a flash.  I was deadly scared to face an audience at first but I learned confidence when I realized people liked my pieces.  Now I often read at Spotlight in Lancaster and at the Brewery in Kendal.

Food has never been a problem for me as I am not used to eating a lot and can adapt easily to all kinds of food, except raw fish and raw meat. Being the one in charge of supermarket shopping I realized soon there were plenty of Italian products everywhere, and also Indian, Mexican and Arabic.  Always a wide choice: and of course there was English food too.

I mixed a bit of Italian, a bit of English and some Mexican.  My children would not let me try Indian; they said it was too spicy.  A typical dinner could be pasta alla carbonara and Cumberland sausages, chicken and roasted potatoes plus apple pie with cream, risotto with fish and chips, or fajitas and pasta e fagioli (bean soup).  It was not easy at first, especially for my husband, so used to his Mum’s home-made food and whose palate and stomach are so sensitive to any little change.  The children complained a bit about the  abundance of ‘healthy food’ they had at the boarding school: vegetables even in pasta! they said.  I love spaghetti with courgettes and penne with aubergines but they don’t care a fig so I don’t make them.  They love fish and chips, sausages, egg and bacon, toast and delicious English cream with trifle.  I drown in tea, strong and hot, two sugars, to keep my mind working.

In the centre of Lancaster we saw a lot of Italian restaurants.  They were  highly recognizable not only because of the names on the signs but also because of the colours of the Italian flag.  We are not used to seeing this in Italy!  We tried some of them.  The food was good, sometimes excellent.  It followed the rules of traditional Italian cooking.  Unlike one time in France, when they had served us spaghetti alla carbonara full of chopped onions, with an uncooked egg in the middle.

Pizza Hut was a surprise: family atmosphere and tasty pizzas.  In Rome we are used to thin pizzas, which sometimes can be mistaken for a sheet of crisp pastry, with tomato sauce and mozzarella.  It is a different story in Naples where making pizza is a talent.  Once we chanced on a special Italian pizzeria in London, where we had spent a week last Easter.  They served us real pizza Napoletana and it was outstanding.

Shopping was a new experience.  My teenage daughter came back from the boarding school at weekends and her favourite hobby was going shopping with mum.  We became familiar with all the clothes and accessories shops in the centre of Lancaster, Fisher Gate in Preston and from time to time we went further afield, to Manchester shopping centres and Liverpool 1.  Every now and then I also found something I needed for special occasions.  My daughter always found what she was looking for, a new hat, top or jumper she could match with what she already had and make a new look.

I usually take care that my shoes and bag don’t jar too much with my clothes. Now I have realized how much accessories matter: belts, bracelets, hair slides and hair bands, rings and necklaces, scarves, shawls and purses, let alone handbags.  Also, they should team with each other in some unique, indefinable way.  I have learned a lot.

My daughter has taken on an utterly English style, plain with hints of extravagance.  She has forgotten all the good teaching of Italian classical style,  which my mum had taught me without success, where you have to match the colours exactly, wear wool in winter and cotton in summer.  Wildly boring!

As I have already said, I attend poetry readings but also other literary and musical events like the Litfest week in October, music in pubs and performances at the Dukes Theatre.  Sometimes I write reviews of the events I attend for Lancaster4u and the Lunecy Review websites.  I am having a great time.  I was not used to going out in Rome, because there were no opportunities and because we usually met only relatives or close friends.  What a change.

During our first year in Lancaster we were so busy settling down that we had no time to see any tourist site, monument or museum.  My children were very happy about it.  They said they had been on a monument spree in the past, in Italy, and they had had enough.

As soon as I got my breath back, I scheduled some unmissable sightseeing in the area and persuaded the children to attend, promising a game, cinema tickets or extra pocket money.

We managed to see Lancaster Castle and the Priory, the Roman Bath House, Ashton Memorial, the City Museum, Morecambe Bay and its traditional villages. We saw something of Manchester and Liverpool as well. That’s all. We should do more but the children have other pastimes at the moment, especially the two teenagers.  It's understandable; I was the same at their age.

Despite the children, I was at Dove Cottage and at the Tate in Liverpool on my own, both fulfilling experiences.  Never mind, there is time for everything and we can savour Cumbrian amenities and Lancashire treasures a drop at a time.   We are going to stay here now that we have bought a house.

All in all, it has been a positive move from Rome to Lancaster.  We have found a pleasant town with interesting Georgian buildings, Italian food, good music and an old-fashioned English atmosphere, which is no bad thing at all.

www.thelunecyreview.wordpress.com

www.lancaster4u.co.uk

Shopping with my daughter, December 2009

Christmas also means shopping:- before, during and afterwards. I was in Rome with my family during the Christmas holidays. My teenage daughter had received about two hundred euros for presents from relatives. She was looking forward to spending them on a few things. Clothes, shoes and accessories were her favourites at the time.

She had a day out with her friends at a huge shopping centre in the northern part of the capital where she bought her outfit for the New Year’s Eve party. I checked it at home: very short sequinned black shorts and sleeveless black and white top. She promised to wear thick black tights under the shorts and a black jacket she had brought from England.

What about shoes? She had only high heeled shoes and I thought flat black ones would be better with such a stunning outfit. We arranged to buy some cheap ones the following day when I had to take her to meet her friends in the centre of Rome. I hoped to keep the expenses low (following the TV suggestion that everybody could have a trendy New Year’s Eve outfit for less than fifty euros) and buy a pair of shoes she could use at school as well.

But the following day it was pouring. We had already set off when  her friends sent her a text,  dumping her. We made up our minds to go shopping all the same, took the bus and had forty minutes' underground ride to the centre.

I was impressed by the new underground trains, comfortable and spotless. A captivating male voice informed us about the next station and which side of the train to leave from. Voiceless videos advertised eco-friendly messages about using a bicycle, giving some of your stationary to poor African children and writing your name on paper cups at parties. Amazing. Was I in Rome, Italy? Travelling from a shabby suburb to the ancient and equally shabby centre of the eternal city?

I had time to look at the passengers. A few tourists from Germany and from southern Italy, some Chinese people, South Americans and a lady with a plastic bag printed with Cyrillic letters. Two Romany children with an accordion got on and played a nostalgic gypsy song. I dropped a euro in the paper cornet the little girl held. She wished me a Happy New Year.

We got off at Lepanto station, near via Cola di Rienzo, our destination. My daughter knew about an American fashion shop called Brandy (probably everybody else knows about it but I did not). It seemed she couldn’t care less about Italian fashion this time. She did not remember where the shop was exactly and we walked up and down the street in the rain for a while. Finally I caught a signpost with “Brandy” printed pale grey on white.

A narrow entrance led us to a basement crammed with clothes. I closed and left our soaking telescopic umbrellas in a corner and  went down. It was just my daughter's style: tight vests and wide jumpers, mini skirts and “cool” pictures and messages printed on the front of thin T-shirts. We wandered about, squeezing between tables with chequered shirts, pastel jumpers and gauze skirts and baskets full of scarves and hats left there as if by chance. Mannequin torsos were on the floor and on shelves, dressed with several layers of  stuff, e.g. a vest, a jumper and a loose bib and brace.

A few other girls with their mothers were also crowding the little cellar rooms. After half an hour of fruitless searching my daughter found the very pieces she was looking for: a grey vest, ideal for winter time, and two jumpers, a white one with Marilyn Monroe’s photos and a grey one with Beverly Hills School printed on the front. Not too expensive either. No shoes, only boots at Brandy’s this season.

While she was trying her things I waited outside the fitting rooms with the other mothers. I noticed they carried, with nonchalance, Gherardini and Gucci bags and I heard them speak with a posh accent to their daughters, their language full of bellino and carino. Where had my daughter brought me? The Snooty Girls' Den? At her age I wore only second hand clothes which I used to buy at Porta Portese Sunday market.

I realized they were glancing at us, puzzled by our strange manners and outfits, though we spoke perfect Italian. We were acceptable but they couldn’t grasp where our clothes, shoes and bags came from. My daughter’s slightly military double-breasted orange jacket, a low-slung little black bag, weird hair cut and above all a sort of self-confident, easy manner, different from her Italian peers.

And my bag was impossible to identify. They couldn’t spot my social status and political tendencies from it. I squeezed it under my arm, aware I was under observation. I had bought it in Lancaster two months before and was so proud of it because it matched with every colour.

Time to pay. While I was fumbling with my English debit card, hoping the Italian machine would accept it, my husband called. Were we going back for lunch? It was half past twelve. Yes we were. My daughter did not want to miss any of her grandmother’s cooking. How long would we take to come back home? I had to enter the pin number of my card so I passed the phone to my daughter, muttering, “About half an hour by Underground.” 

We weren’t even at the station yet. She said half an hour.

Going out I found our umbrellas in a basket with a dozen similar ones. I grabbed two dark ones and we went back into the rain.

Now the cheap flat black shoes. Hard to find in via Cola di Rienzo where the lowest price was a hundred and fifty euros. No way! She could stay in stockinged feet:- the party was at one of her friends’ houses, and all girls.

To find the cheapest shoes I had the brilliant idea of stopping at a station along the underground line near via Tuscolana. Looking at my umbrella I realized I had swapped my previous dark blue one for a black one. They looked the same in the sombre entrance of Brandy’s (mind, when you can’t find your umbrella among a hundred ones in a basket and think somebody stole it, take it easy: choose another one). I thought it wasn’t a big deal as they were both the two-for-three-pounds kind.

After a long search for the model and size (size eight, forty in Italy, is not so common) we spotted H&M, dashed into the shop and found the exact pair of shoes we were looking for, in two slightly different models (with a tiny buckle or a lace), black, size eight, fourteen euros  ninety-five. Great, we did it.

We went out full of bags and umbrellas. I called my husband. He could pick us up easily there in fifteen minutes. It was a quarter to two.

An annoyed voice answered on the other side. He hadn’t had lunch, he said, as they were all waiting for us to come back. We had said half an hour.

“Next time we’ll stay out,” I said to my daughter. Learn from experience.

Carnival time and Carnival recipes, February 2010

Carnival Time

In Italy Shrove Tuesday (Martedì Grasso, literally ‘Fat Tuesday’) is the apex and the end of a long festival called Carnival. The Carnival has two important days: the last Thursday (Giovedì Grasso, Fat Thursday) and Shrove Tuesday, the last day of Carnival before Ash Wednesday when Lent begins.

It starts in January, a fortnight after the Christmas holidays, and is great fun for children.  We usually celebrate it by having fancy-dress parties, playing jokes and eating special cakes.

At school, children learn the legend of Arlecchino, Harlequin, whose poor mother sewed him a fancy-dress costume for Carnival with scraps of materials of different colours because she couldn’t afford a proper costume.  Probably the real origin of Harlequin’s costume isn't so far from the legend.  A good example of the Italian ability to get by.

When I was a child at Primary School my mother thought that I shouldn’t have worn the common girlish fancy-dress costumes.  Most girls of my class dressed up as Pinocchio’s Fairy Godmother, Fata Turchina, with long, deep blue, ruffled dresses, a wig of deep blue hair and a magic wand with a silver star I desperately wanted.  My best friend used to wear a long, cream coloured  dress hemmed with purple velvet and a wide brimmed straw hat with a pink ribbon and flowers.  She looked like a princess.

Instead, my fancy-dress costume was a lighter version of the uniforms of the Horse Guards on Whitehall, except for the boots.  I wore a red tunic with long sleeves and golden stripes on the front, thick white stockings and a short white tutu.  The worst part was the hat, heavy and tall with crest and visor.  And I had to hold a stick as well.  My mother had decorated it with coloured sellotape. People often asked me what the name of the costume was.  “Mace-bearer,” my mum used to reply proudly.

As soon as I collected enough money, supplied by my grandmother, I asked for a new Carnival costume.  Entering the shop I discovered the costume of my dreams, on a model of my size.  It was a long dress of pale brown organza overprinted  with red and blue flower patterns, and a straw hat.  The shop assistant told us the dress was inspired by Rossella O’Hara’s character.  I didn’t know who she was but I craved it.  I wore it for many years till I stopped dressing up for Carnival when I started secondary school.

Later in life I had great fun in preparing my children for Carnival with the practical help of my mother in law, who is a skilful tailor. The children showed her the picture of the costume of their dreams in a magazine and she made exactly the same model.  My contribution would be the accessories, a paper hat, a helmet or a mask. Great times.

We do not have pancake races on Shrove Tuesday but we have parades of floats. The most famous one is in Viareggio, a posh place on the Tuscany coast. Details are on www.viareggio.ilcarnevale.com/lingue_eng.php

In 2006 I was there with my family.  Apart from the risk of being trodden on by the crowd, or run over by the floats, it was impressive.  The floats were around sixty feet tall with moving platforms and gigantic papier-maché figures waving and rotating.  Some figures on the floats were inspired by the social and political climate, showing the sharp-witted point of view typical of Tuscany people.  I remember a float with a greedy man wearing a top hat with stars and stripes keeping a basket full of food and bags of money all for himself.  Another one  had José Luis Rodrìguez Zapatero riding a raging bull and holding a wedding cake with two male figurines on it. Cardinals were attacking the bull with spears.  Huge, scary, hooded figures strode around. Their cloaks were made of banknotes and they held the strings of puppets representing politicians.

Loud music, coriandoli (tiny pieces of paper we throw to each other), stelle filanti (strips of coloured paper) and rubber spaghetti kept our spirits high and made us forget all the wrongs of the world.  And this is exactly the spirit of Carnival, a carefree time just before Lent begins.

 Carnival recipes

It is always good time for eating in Italy when there is a festival.  And there is always a lot to celebrate.

Two typical treats of Carnival time are frappe and castagnole.  Frappe are thin sheets of pastry fried and sprinkled with icing sugar.  Castagnole are balls of pastry a bit smaller than Swedish meatballs, fried and covered with granulated sugar or honey.

For Frappe you need 200g of flour, 1 egg, 50g of sugar, 4 tbsp of white wine.

Mix all the ingredients, knead the dough and let it rest for half an hour.  Roll it out and spread melted butter on the sheet of dough and fold it.  Do it again and again, three times in all using about 30 g of butter.  Finally roll out a thin sheet (you can use a pasta machine) and cut it in strips about four inches long and from one to two inches wide using a pastry wheel cutter.  Fry them in a pan with abundant hot oil.  Let them dry a bit on kitchen roll paper then sprinkle with icing sugar.

For Castagnole you need 150g flour, 1 egg, 50g of sugar, 4 tbsp of milk, ½ tsp of baking powder.

Mix all the ingredients, knead the dough and make the balls.  Fry them in a small pot half full of hot oil.  When they come up and start to turn brown they are ready.  Toss in sugar or pour honey over them.

Have a nice Carnival party!

Christmas in Italy, December 2009

My Christmas holidays in Italy with family and relatives, December 2009.

We landed in Rome, Ciampino airport, safe and sound at 10:30 GMT on a sunny Wednesday, the 23rd December. Myself, my husband, my two teenage children, my  twelve year old son and Valentina, my autistic daughter.

It was so warm we took off our heavy coats and scarves and realized a T-shirt was all we needed. We had caught the flight from Liverpool at the last minute, delayed because the red and golden candles I had bought for the great-grandmothers had a ‘strange shape’ under the scanner. (Mind you never travel with candles in busy times).

Dark green maritime pine trees against a pale blue sky welcomed us outside the airport while we were waiting for my father-in-law to pick us up. A mild breeze ruffled my short dark hair. What season was it? I felt confused. A silver Fiat Punto was parked near us. The windows were down, the radio at full blast, the driver was singing along at the top of his voice, “I wanna beat you”. He got out, turned his back on us and looked towards the exit of the airport, waiting for someone. He wore violet sunglasses and an emerald long sleeve polo-shirt. With a swift motion he pulled his jeans down and his underpants up. I had a sudden thought: he must have had a cheerful chubby mum waiting for him at home with steaming plates of spaghetti with tomato sauce sprinkled with parmigiano ready on the kitchen table. For him, and for his friends of course.

Just like my mother-in-law waiting for us at home. For lunch: homemade fettuccine with ragù, beefsteak and chips, salad, seasonal fruit and a delicious crostata (a sort of jam tart) for dessert. We hadn’t had time for breakfast so we didn't leave a single crumb, though the news on TV was full of warnings about Christmas foods. Marron glacé with cockroaches, torrone and panettone made in factories and sold as home-produced at thirty euros per kilo, and  doughnuts fried in liquid paraffin. I have always thought that sealed supermarket food with the expiry date clearly printed on the label is the safest.

Living in England we had got out of the habit of watching Silvio Berlusconi on TV every day, even more than once a day. Especially after a dramatic event that happened  before Christmas. Some crazy bloke threw him an iron miniature of the cathedral of Milan and hit him on the face, breaking two teeth. The Italian Prime Minister had forgiven him with a heart-breaking speech.

A joke was going around Facebook:- Dear God, this year you took away my favourite singer: Michael Jackson. You also took away my favourite actor: Patrick Swayze and my favourite actress: Farrah Fawcett. Also my favourite TV presenter: Mike Bongiorno and my favourite poet: Alda Merini. I just wanted to tell you that my favourite politician is Silvio Berlusconi and the year is not over yet.

Pope Benedictus XVI was often on the news as well. On Christmas Eve, at Midnight Mass in St Peter’s while he was walking along the aisle, an over-zealous woman in a red coat jumped over the fence to hug him. It was very enthusiastic of her but quite alarming for the Security. The bodyguards grabbed her and they all fell on the floor like puppets. They showed the scene again and again on the news:- red coat jumping and hugging; the Pope down. Luckily His Holiness was fine. Only a cardinal got hurt in the fall, breaking his thigh-bone, the cardinal Etchegaray, one of my favourite, God bless him.

We had our little accident at home as well. Valentina gave a shove to my frail little mum, who will be eighty in May. No broken bones but she banged her head against a door.  A bit of rest and a bag of ice saved the day. Phew.

We were flooded with food day by day: half-moon shaped ravioli filled with ricotta and spinach, smooth gnocchi, lasagne, mountains of fettuccine, different kinds of fried fish on Christmas Eve, tender lamb chops, crusty schnitzels, small meatballs with tomato sauce and mushrooms, fresh sweet cheese, overflowing bowls of salad, olives and salami, grissini and white warm pizza, juicy oranges and crisp apples. And all kinds of Christmas cakes: panettone, pandoro, torrone, delicious homemade regional small tarts made of marzipan or filled with dried fruit. For the toast: an unforgettable recioto.

Between meals we  played cards and Tombola together. My eldest son was obsessed with beating his dad and granddad at Scopone, Briscola and Gin Rummy. They let him win from time to time and he learned a lot of new tricks.

My teenage daughter had a fierce competition with her little brother at Tombola. Both wanted to win at any cost. I had to draw the numbers from a plastic bag while my daughter was shaking my arm in an attempt to make me choose the ‘right’ number. She said it worked. My son instead threw his dad’s scorecards to the other side of the room every time my husband was on the point of calling “Tombola!” to win the final prize. Needless to say we did nothing and they won most of the time.

But I also had some leisure time. Nightclubs? Frenetic shopping? Hard-core films? No. Art Expositions. Modern and contemporary art to be precise. I knew I couldn’t miss ‘Surrealism and Dada’ at Vittoriano in Piazza Venezia and ‘Caravaggio-Bacon’ at Galleria Borghese. After long hard negotiations with my husband and children I managed to arrange a visit to the Vittoriano exposition with the whole family and some friends as well. But only my parents would accompany me to Galleria Borghese.

‘Surrealism and Dada’ had an extraordinary display of drawings, sculptures (sort of) and paintings from great artists like Picasso, Mirò, Magritte and Hans Arp to less famous ones. Valentina was so impressed she started to scream and spin around. Luigi decided to avoid such masterpieces (admittedly he found them pointless) and went out with her before she could change the characteristics of a Mirò with a  chance blow. The security guards escorted them to a safe distance.

In Piazza Venezia the seventy-foot Christmas tree was outstanding, with droplets of blue lights falling from the branches and covered with golden sparkling tinsels from top to bottom.

Francis Bacon’s huge triptychs and disassembled portraits among XVIII century frescoes were face to face with Caravaggio’s masterpieces at Galleria Borghese. I was mesmerized once more. I had never realized before how much the two artists had in common in their quest for truth and reality, their superb drawing skills and their similar lives, from Caravaggio's powerful contrasts and vivid details to the last scream and  inner sigh of ripped agony from Bacon.

 A great experience. I had a well-deserved cup of hot and strong tea in a bar before going home.

Finally, the latest news about Italian families. Seventy per cent of Italian young people stay at home with mum and dad till they are nearly forty. No living with a partner, no marriage, no children, no commitment and no independence. Sometimes no job or low wages as well. In an interview on TV two of them said they were happy  to do so and got on very well with their parents. That’s why I saw only a few children around and no babies. I had a disturbing vision of the country shrinking. I could yet live to be one of the last few examples of Italiana Denominazione d'Origine Controllata  (Native Italian).

My summer holidays: the move

It has been an exhausting and glorious year. I’ve been commuting to Woking every week, had two jobs, the new one in Woking and the last bit of the other job in Cumbria, house chores at the weekend, preparing some food before leaving on a Monday, a new house in the south and all the commitments of the new job in an expanding, thriving international school.

It has been challenging, exciting, unexpected, a totally new perspective compared to the ones I was used to both in Italy and in the north of England. At the end of the adventure I felt exhausted but fulfilled. And now we are getting ready for the move in/to Surrey. A beautiful house is waiting for us in a nice quiet village in the countryside.

My husband and I are going to work full time, three of my children will be away at university, Valentina, my autistic daughter, will be with us. I feel that a new phase of my life is starting and I am ready to have it all.

During summer I’m not posting new pieces but I’ll upload my old blog pieces I had posted for four years in Lancashire Life website, now closed. I’ll organize them per topic, e.g. pasta recipes, desserts, holidays 2011, etc. I’ll post some new writing from September, carrying on with opinions, recipes, memories and book reviews.

Have a good summer.