Seasons in Basilicata (52 page)

 

S
O, THERE YOU HAVE THEM
. All the secrets of a self-sufficient
contadino-
type of family, courtesy of Rosa Mingalone, who offered them openly to anyone willing to play with the wonderful possibilities of pork.

Rosa added her own postscript: “And what else do I do with my year? Well, I used to make cheeses—pecorino, ricotta, mascarpone—but I've got a friend who, I think, makes them better, so I use hers instead. I used to make butter, too—
manteca
or
burro
—but I'm gettin' too lazy in my old age. But I'm always makin' fresh pasta. I use the best
pura semolino di grano duro
—that really good flour made
from the heart of hard, durum wheat grains. They don't let me use packaged stuff much. They ask me for
orecchiette, strascinati, ferricelle, cavatelli,
and their favorite, those little, long strands you roll around a piece of wire,
truchetti.
I usually serve my pasta with a kind of ragu sauce, using very small pieces of chopped, not minced, meat. Oh, then I make at least two hundred liters of my own tomato sauce from our own tomatoes, although last year we got some kind of virus all around here, which killed them all off overnight. Lovely, big, juicy tomatoes all went black. So, I had to buy tomatoes. And I don't use no basil or garlic. Just salt. You can add other flavors later when you cook. And I do all kinds of things with olives, too—bake 'em, pickle 'em. You know. Everybody does. And jams and bottled fruit. I do all that. And we dry those big red peppers,
peperoni rossi
—not the hot ones—and toast them a little bit in a frying pan until they're dark red and as crisp as a cracker. Beautiful. It's all so beautiful, really.”

M
INGALONE
CANTINA

Nothing needs to be added. Rosa, as usual, said it all.

More Serendipity with Sebastiano

Experiences like this (despite Giuliano's little trick) made Anne and me appreciate even more the gracious hospitality and gustatory talents of our friends, particularly Sebastiano and Rocchina, whose generosity knew no bounds. And once again we had been invited over to their Stigliano home for “a little Sunday lunch,” which of course is an utter oxymoron in the Villani household. But on this particular Sunday there were even more surprises in store for us…

 

“Y
OU TWO
—you're just like a couple of little boys together!”

I'd forgotten who'd actually said that. It might have been Rocchina, but I think it was his postpubescent, nineteen-year-old daughter, Antonella (I do like the way Italians often create male and female versions of the same Christian name), who gave one of her cute, sultry half-smiles and, between frantic bouts of gum-chewing, often made quite revelatory and perceptive statements. As teenagers everywhere are apt to do, I guess.

I certainly remember watching Sebastiano's face when the remark was first made. It scrolled through a range of possible responses, each reflecting a different persona and each of declining severity. First was the stern Italian father, head of the household, wondering if such levity of a personal nature was appropriate in his family. Particularly with guests present. Then came the director of education/headmaster disciplinarian always seeking to balance “appropriate behavior” with what he insisted he wanted most of all for his students—“Freedom to learn, think, and express themselves.” And then came the man himself, almost thirty years older than his daughter, wondering if some kind of watershed in understanding and communication were being crossed and whether he might have to start treating Antonella as a young woman rather than just a girl with sometimes erratic and beguilingly bizarre outbursts of rhetoric and behavior.

And then came his smile. Then the wide grin. And then the belly
laugh, which made his brown eyes shine brightly and his thick moustache wobble in that endearing Groucho Marx manner.

“Yes, yes. I suppose it's true! What do you think, David?”

I was laughing too, along with Anne, who nodded in enthusiastic agreement with Antonella's remark. And it was definitely true that whenever Sebastiano and I got together, often for the most serious of purposes, zany things would just seem to happen serendipitously. Things we never expected and never sought to instigate or control. And we just kind of plunged in and watched to see what would occur next. Which was fine with me, because I'd spent a large part of my adult life giving myself precisely that kind of liberty. Indeed, seeking it on every possible occasion as a way, not only to spice up my existence (ever true to Jack London's belief that “the function of man is to live, not to exist”) but also to provide grist for my writing and my way of learning about the wonderfully kaleidoscopic world in which we all live.

But on occasion I was a little concerned for Sebastiano. After all, he was a pillar—and a very highly respected pillar—of Stigliano society and the community of villages all around, and I hesitated to be a catalyst of anything that might jeopardize such a respected position and hard-earned reputation. He, on the other hand, didn't seem in the least concerned. “It is best that people see who you really are,” he told me after a couple of rather riotous bouts of free-wheeling behavior. “They always find out anyhow, so why pretend? After all, you yourself, David, have said many times that we all have many sides, many selves to our personalities and that we should allow them—how you say—that we should ‘let them out to play, eh'?”

I obviously had to agree because that's what I think and, doubtless, I'd expressed such musings on more than one occasion. “Yes,” I said. “Definitely.” And having affirmed the fact that we were, and intended to remain, rather like “little boys together,” I asked about our agenda for the rest of the day.

“Well, first we let lunch settle a little,” Sebastiano replied with a sigh of gustatory relief as the two-and-a-half-hour-long Sunday
midday meal slowly rolled to a climax in the form of an enormous cake, layered and iced with chocolate, stuffed with hazelnuts, and rich in sweet liqueur-flavored intensity.

The lunch, once again, was supposed to have been “a snack.” At least that's how Sebastiano had presented it when he called earlier in the week to ask us if we could join his family and a couple of friends that weekend.

“We're not much good with large lunches, Sebastiano,” I had replied hesitantly, remembering past occasions when we'd been overwhelmed by Rocchina's prowess in the kitchen. “They usually wipe us out for the rest of the day.”

“Oh, no, no, no,” he'd insisted. “Just a few things to nibble while we plan some other activities. Oh, and a surprise—I have a little surprise for both of you.”

Surprises always piqued our interest. So, we agreed and presented ourselves at one o'clock in the afternoon on a blustery Sunday at his apartment building, perched on top of one of Stigliano's arduously high hills. Chilly mists, brought in by a north wind—“from Russia,” insisted Sebastiano—whorled around the streets and blocked out all the usually fabulous views of the mountains and valleys to the south. Seven flights of stairs later we arrived at his door, breathless and thirsty. And, I regret to say, hungry, too.

“Ah, David, Anne!” Sebastiano said as he greeted us with one of his “from the heart” smiles. “Welcome, welcome, come in, come in.”

We were introduced to his two friends, both sociologists and advisors on human affairs to local companies and organizations. And yet again, I had one of those increasingly frequent flashes of face recognition. It must be a symptom of the aging process because, more and more, I seem to keep meeting people who immediately remind me of other people. In this case the lady was definitely Erica Jong, or maybe Carole King, I couldn't quite decide. And he, with his portly bulk and wide, toothy grin, was Topol, or maybe Zero Mostel. (I always get the two of them mixed up.) But there was certainly an aura of
Fiddler on the Roof
in the man's hearty, booming presence as
he looked up from a frantic game of
foosball
with Sebastiano's son Gianluca, and then quickly resumed his flailing of the rods dotted with plastic players, filling the living room with great bearlike roars every time he scored.

 

R
OCCHINA'S “SNACK
” began with the usual antipasto delights of sliced salami, prosciutto, mozzarella, garden-ripe tomatoes, and chunks of golden-dough bread with that hard, bronze crust. These were followed by what we hoped would be the second and final course: huge bowls of
ferricelle,
pasta doused in a rich pork and beef ragu sauce and sprinkled with just-grated parmigiano reggiano and—here's a new one, at least for me—fresh-grated horse-radish. A truly pungent kick start to the dish. But we should have known better. These were merely tidbit preludes to a huge casserole of baked turkey and pork, an unusual but succulent combination in a rich
peperoncini
sauce served with olive oil–rich heapings of oven-roasted potatoes laced with minced garlic and caramelized onions.

I gave Sebastiano one of those “I thought you said this was going to be a light lunch” looks, and he shrugged with a kind of helpless “Sorry, but you know what Rocchina's like when she's let loose in the kitchen” gestures.

We plowed through the casserole and then into a huge platter of Rocchina's homemade sausages, rich in anise-flavored fennel seeds and grilled to succulent, scarlet gold sweetness and thwacked with sprinklings of those startlingly fiery Basilicatan red peppers.

And then salad. Of course. And then some kind of cheesy-mousse dessert with slices of
scamorza
cheese. And fruit: gloriously juicy blood oranges from Topol's (I'll call him that because I've forgotten his real name) orchard near his home in Pisticci, a fascinating warrenlike hill town twenty miles to the southeast of Stigliano.

Finally came that splendid chocolate cake, served with Rocchina's own five-year-old homemade walnut liqueur made from “green walnuts with bay leaves and lemon” (aggressively strong but aromatically beguiling), followed by decadently rich and enormous
Perugia chocolates, cappuccino, and
biscotti.
Oh, and the wine, of course. Six adults managed to consume four bottles even though none of us ever seemed to have more than half a glass in hand at any one time.

“So, enough, I hope?” said Sebastiano with a sly smile.

I tried to frown at being duped into devouring such an extravaganza of delights but I guess it came out as a wide grin followed by a distinct growl from an overloaded digestive tract. “Superb!” I think I may have murmured, before slipping into a near stupor. Anne just smiled a very broad and wine-happy smile of appreciation.

 

“N
OW
,” S
EBASTIANO SAID
, after Antonella had given us a brief but charming postlunch serenade on her
organetto
(a sort of miniature, gypsy-style accordion) and I had completed a series of circumnavigations of the living room, trying to restore some life and sense of movement in myself. “My surprise for you two.”

“Ah, yes,” I said, wondering what else he could possibly have in mind after such a cornucopia.

“I have a friend in town, Rocco, who has this little museum, and he would like you, all of us, to go and see it.”

“How nice,” I said, not too enthusiastically. “Is it a long drive?”

“Oh, no, no,” Sebastiano insisted. “Not a long drive at all. Because we will all walk there.”

I started to remind him that it was cold, very cold, outside, that the town was smothered in fog, and that we'd just completed an extremely long and debilitating meal. But when Sebastiano gets an idea in his head, it's very hard to talk him out of it. I guess that's why he is who he is, a director of education, who always seems to know what he wants and usually gets it too.

So, that's how we all came to be half-skidding down the steep hills of the town, then wandering up sinewy alleys of steps, endless steps, and then down again, past the remnants of Stigliano's eleventh-century castle, across huge cloud-swept piazzas where the only signs of life were those little black-clad widows, always scurrying about in what looked like life-or-death missions of utterly focused urgency.

“Are we lost?” I seem to remember croaking out at one point after a particularly laborious stepped ascent, when Sebastiano paused at the corner of one particularly spacious hilltop piazza.

“No, no. I just wanted to show you. This is our marketplace. Very good market here. Every Tuesday. Full of people.”

“Really?” was all I could think to say. The place looked so deserted that even the normally ever-present pigeons seemed to avoid it.

“And here it is,” he said after a tortuous, half-skidding climb down one of the steepest alleys of the town. Those marble paving stones are lethal if you're wearing smooth, rubber-soled shoes—as I was. “Rocco de Rosa's little museum.”