Events | Venice: I am not making this up

The Befana: Panevin tonight

January 5, 2010 3 Comments

The Befana, that bountiful old beldam, has more work to do than just to bring goodies to the kids and carry away the holidays.

On January 5 (the eve of the feast of the Epiphany — the eve being the day on which the profane elements of a festival are usually celebrated) several ancient rituals are observed in Italy going under various names. In the Veneto these customs are knotted together under the generic term panevin (pan-eh-VEEN). And the focal activity isn’t bread and wine — though there are naturally comestibles — but to brusar la vecia (broo-ZAR ya VEH-cha). Burn the old woman.

If you were to be in Venice on the night of January 5 and smelled smoke, you might want to check with someone before calling the firemen. Tonight, in fact, if the wind is from the east, I will be able to step outside and smell the smoke coming from bonfires along the lagoon’s farming coastline.

Technically speaking, this sort of agricultural festival would more appropriately be observed toward March, closer to the beginning of the annual cycle of cultivation, and not during what is still pretty much the dead of winter. In a few communities they do wait till the exact mid-point of Lent to “burn the old woman.” I suspect it’s because by then they’re desperate for some kind of festivity.

The central element of panevin is a bonfire composed of pieces of dead wood (from grapevines, olive trees, or anything else you have pruned or otherwise dismembered to encourage its growth), and atop this bonfire, tied to the stake which holds the mass of leftover wood together, is the effigy of an old woman, the Befana. Yes, she too is intended to go up in flames.

This photograph, not taken by me, shows the size of the bonfire in Novoli as well as the beginning of the blaze, which is set from within this mountain of wood. The burning figure is of St. Anthony Abbot.

Then again, in some towns, such as Novoli, the people burn their bonfire, a phenomenal ziggurat 36 meters [118 feet] high of dead vine branches, on January 17 in honor of St. Anthony Abbot, a major agricultural deity — sorry, I mean saint. I have my own memories of being there in 2003 researching “Italy Before the Romans” (National Geographic, January 2005). They let me climb to the top, the first woman — and an American, no less — ever to be permitted to do this. The next night the fire fizzled almost completely and I got out of town early, to avoid any recriminations of having brought bad luck. But back to the vecia.

Naturally any custom that strikes roots down to this level of antiquity contains several aspects, some contradictory, and not easy to confirm. But the general consensus is that bonfires played a central role in the ancient rituals of the Celts, who left other marks on the Veneto; the fire evoked, if not incited, the return of the sun from the solstice and the gradual lengthening and warming of the days. In the Christian religion, Epiphany was the day on the Julian calendar which coincided with December 25 on the Gregorian. (I know that December 25 is not the winter solstice, but I didn’t invent these customs.) And then the idea was planted/grafted/germinated spontaneously to hold the bonfire on Epiphany in order to light the way to Bethlehem for the Three Kings, who had traversed a bit too afar and gotten lost.

So we have to have fire, partly to represent/propitiate the sun, and partly because we’ve got loads of dead wood and other useless stuff that has to be incinerated anyway. Lino remembers when people would improvise their own bonfires right here in the city, in the neighborhood campos. As you can imagine, the firemen eventually put a stop to that.

Somebody or something has to serve as the sacrificial figure — deities require sacrifice — and an old human easily represents the old year, the old sins, the old crud and detritus and misfortune of the year just past. Some theories posit that the figure represents winter. Throw it all on there; all this stuff needs to be destroyed and fire in itself, besides being impressively effective in the destruction department, contains large amounts of symbolic meaning focused on purification.

Why does the figure have to be a woman? I’m still seeking the reason(s) for that one. One of the few I’ve found so far says that the female figure represents the Celtic priestess. There is also the point that Strenia (or Strenua), a Sabine goddess of strength and endurance adopted by the Romans, was venerated at the beginning of the year (one custom was the exchange of gifts; a Christmas gift is still called a strenna). Hence a woman. Let’s move on.

So we’ve got a fire, therefore naturally we’ve got smoke. And sparks. There will be a breeze. Now we come to the core of the ceremony, which is to study the direction the sparks are blown in order to predict how this year’s crops will fare.

The video above was made in Vittorio Veneto, a town about 80 km [50 miles] from Venice, toward the mountains. One hint are the men with the single black feather in their wool hats who are distributing the refreshments; these are members (or ex-members) of the Alpini, the mountain regiment of the Army. I’m sorry about the fruity TV music — it isn’t anything you would hear played at this event.

There are versions of the prognostication formula in scores of regional dialects, but the one I hear around Venice goes like this: “Se le falive (fa-EE-veh) va a marina/tol su saco e va a farina/se le falive va a montagne/tol su saco e va a castagne.” “If the sparks go toward the sea (east), take your sack and go to make flour (wheat); if the sparks go toward the mountains (west), take your sack and go gather chestnuts.”

Thus: Eastward-blowing sparks mean a good year is coming. If they head west, you’re going to be reduced to making your flour (bread, sustenance) from chestnuts, which is pretty much your last resort before starving. The fact that some not-bad dishes can be made with chestnut flour doesn’t change the fact that wheat is much, much better.

Let me note that the formula of divination in some areas, while being essentially the same, carries the opposite meaning: East is bad, west is good. So don’t blame me if your sparks don’t turn out to have told the truth.

Naturally all this burning and auguring is an excuse for a party (very few things here are not). We went one year to a small town on the mainland to celebrate the panevin, and after we had studied the sparks and coughed a while from the smoke, we went to the makeshift tables where vin brule’ (hot spiced wine) and pinza were being offered.

Wine needs no justification, and drinking it hot in sub-zero darkness is a great thing. If you haven’t got alcohol you haven’t got a party, and you can find easily find vin brule’ all winter.

But this is the only time of year you’ll get pinza. It is essentially the traditional winter-Veneto-panevin fruitcake, the only difference being that people actually eat pinza. This was the classic Christmas sweet before panettone horned in; it involves cornmeal, wheat flour, dried figs, anise seeds and bits of candied fruit. My trusty cookbook of old Venetian recipes includes raisins, sugar, pine nuts, and two eggs. Other recipes invoke walnuts, fennel seeds, and grappa. (Traditional offerings to Strenia were figs, dates and honey). However it’s made you won’t want a big wedge, it’s got a specific gravity rivaled only by mercury.

I hope you have a superb 2010, no matter where your sparks blew.

Events, History, Venetian-ness

Make way for the Befana

January 5, 2010 1 Comment

For most of us, New Year’s Day represents the end of the holiday season. Not here. We still have the Epiphany to celebrate (January 6), and it comes swooping through, not so much in the person of the Re Magi (Three Kings) whom we recall brought gold, frankincense and myrrh to the infant Jesus, but instead in the person of a broom-borne hag called the “Befana,” a name that got squeezed out of Epifania (Eh-pee-FAH-neeyah).

In Venice she is also sometimes referred to as the marantega barola (ma-RAHN-teh-ga ba-RO-la), or wizened old crone. In ordinary life you might hear a particularly obnoxious busybody referred to as a marantega, regardless of her age, though the implication of decrepitude would add an extra fillip of insult to a younger person.

But despite the unpleasant connotations of hagdom, the Befana is all smiles, a benevolent old biddy who flies by night and comes down the chimney (or through the keyhole) to fill with candy and little toys the stockings the children have left attached to the hearth mantelpiece or some other convenient place. (Bad children, at least in theory, will get pieces of coal, but bad children seem to have become only a holiday myth.)

Her imminent arrival explains all the Halloween-like witches you will have seen cluttering pastry-shops, bakeries, bars and cafes, supermarkets, and anywhere else someone with small people might be likely to pass. Sometimes, but not always, she will be tied or stapled to a stocking already stuffed with assorted chocolates, chewing gum, hard candies, and any other little item that could send you into sugar shock.

This stocking — once a genuine article of clothing, now usually acquired prepackaged — is called a calza caena (KAL-za ka-EYN-ah). “Calza” means stocking, and “caena” is Venetian for catena, a word usually used to mean a chain, but which is also used in knitting.

“La Befana vien de note,” goes the local version of her classic little doggerel, “co le scarpe tute rote/vestita a la romana/viva viva la Befana.” (The Befana comes at night, with her shoes all falling apart, dressed like a Roman woman, long live the Befana.) The shoes are in tatters because she’s obviously poor, and she’s dressed like a ciociara, a woman not literally from the Eternal City but from an area of the Roman hinterland called the Ciociaria, where the farmers’ wives wore crude leather sandals, big skirts and a scarf tied around their head. (No pointed hats, thanks anyway.) Why characterize a universal character as coming from the fields of Lazio? I’ll have to get back to you on that. She just is.

The fact that Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas, and assorted other gift-givers have already come through town hasn’t made a dent in this old custom, and so Venetian children today can, at least theoretically, scorch the holiday earth from December 6 to January 6. The term “enough,” let alone “too many,” has never been known to apply to presents.

It bears repeating: All this bounty is a fairly recent phenomenon. Children of Lino’s vintage would get nuts in their stocking, and an orange was always stuffed down into the toe. He says some children really did get bits of coal. Homely simple items, mainly things that were good for you.

But the children were hospitable — they left out refreshments for the flyby Befana: A plate of pasta e fasioi (pasta and beans) and a glass of red wine, just the thing to warm an old lady stuck out in the cold all night. The plate and glass were empty the next morning, thereby confirming her existence, but eventually any child began to make some calculations. If this Befana eats beans at every house, then (A) how does she avoid death by explosion and (B) how the hell does she get manage to get airborne?

I don’t know — though I sort of doubt — that kids leave out the beans and wine anymore. Maybe the Befana is watching her cholesterol by now. But as for the coal, never fear: Some shops sell a confection that looks like coal but is basically sugar darkened with something innocuous. Mustn’t upset the kids.

So fill up that calza caena, brace yourself for the last little holiday rampage, then you can finally put away the decorations, throw out that desiccated tree, and intone the appropriate incantation: L’Epifania/tute le feste porta via (Epiphany carries away all the holidays.)

Events, Food, History, Venetian-ness

Holidays, the end is in sight

December 31, 2009 1 Comment

Technically speaking, the holidays aren’t over yet; the long trajectory of festivities ends here on January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany, which I will tell you about in another post. But the end is in sight.

Here we hopscotch through December from saint to saint: St. Nicholas (Dec. 6), St. Lucy (Dec. 13), Christmas, St. Stephen (Dec. 26, known as Boxing Day in the Anglo world) and now today, St. Sylvester, or New Year’s Eve. Though the first two only get noticed by people who bear those names (or in the case of Lucy, have eye problems), the last three get more attention. At first it seems odd to refer to New Year’s Eve as “San Silvestro,” but you get used to it.

New Year’s Eve and/or Day are referred to as Capodanno, or “head” — or perhaps “boss” — “of the year.”

Christmas as we observe it is a fairly recent invention, developed (if not created outright) by people who want to sell things for the benefit of people who have extra money. Christmas cards and/or trees, Tiny Tim, Rudolph, even Santa would be undecipherable to our forebears, at least if they’re Venetian.

Like many events here, Christmas and New Year are the offspring of prosperity, and people of Lino’s vintage notice the difference. Not that they were more pious, though perhaps they were, but because for a long time the vicissitudes of life (such as two world wars) limited the common perception of what the holiday could entail. They stuck to the basics, and these did not include presents.

The simple "focaccia" isn't your best option if you want to save money, as they're hand-made in small numbers by local pastry wizards. Eighteen euros a kilo works out to $12 a pound.

“What presents?” Lino snorted. “Who had presents?” Christmas Eve? An ordinary night like any other. Christmas Day? You went to the special mass at 9:00 AM, then the entire family — and in those days that easily reached double digits — squeezed around the table and feasted on food that was at least slightly out of the ordinary. Tortellini (handmade by his mother and sisters) in slow-simmered meat broth was often the star. In the evening, roast veal and polenta, traditions we continue except for the “handmade” part. Lots of family racket, but pretty low on novelties, frivolities, or anything that required batteries or assembly.

Panettone? “It didn’t exist,” Lino stated. “It’s an invention that came after the war,” like so many things. His sisters might have made a “fugassa,” or focaccia — a simple raised cake full of butter and eggs. He doesn’t remember.

If you want panettone, you've got almost too much choice -- if such a concept exists anymore. Filled with candied fruit, or chocolate, or Grand Marnier, or Limoncello -- one local ice-cream vendor was even offering to stuff your panettone with ice cream. — If you want panettone, you've got almost too much choice -- if such a concept exists anymore. Filled with candied fruit, or chocolate, or Grand Marnier, or Limoncello -- one local ice-cream vendor was offering to stuff your panettone with ice cream.

He does remember one particular Christmas Eve, somewhere in the late Sixties or early Seventies. (Obviously his childhood was long gone.) He was sitting at dinner that evening at home when they began to hear ships’ whistles blowing. A lot. Finally he said, “Let’s go out and see what’s going on.”

They walked out to the Zattere and there, in the Giudecca Canal, was a tugboat shining its spotlight on the mast of another tug which was almost completely underwater. The light was to aid in the rescue attempt (fruitless) and also to warn other boats to keep clear.

There are two theories about the accident. Either the tug was towing a ship and the tension on the towline slackened somehow, causing the ship to run into the tug, or somehow the tension wasn’t kept steady and a sudden jerk of the line caused the tug to capsize. In any case, by Christmas morning the two victims still hadn’t been recovered.

As for New Year’s, Eve and Day, they passed virtually unremarked by anyone. At a certain point in history the midnight moment began to be marked by all the ships in the port of Venice blowing their horns (that must have sounded totally great). Fireworks? Special dinners out? Champagne? They got here tomorrow, as the saying goes. People had plain old dinner and went to bed. Me, I’d be just as glad to return to that approach; I hate having to pretend to celebrate, especially when I have no clue as to what, exactly, we’re supposed to be celebrating.

Or you can just take home several hundred of the classic sort.

For those who might want to imagine a festive New Year’s Eve dinner in Venice, too bad you’re missing out on what Arrigo Cipriani is laying on at Harry’s Bar. The newspaper was reporting on the general markdowns being offered by restaurants around the city even on this special meal, and made a point of noting that even Harry’s was giving a discount. This year the repast is costing a mere 500 euros [$716.66} per mouth, as opposed to last year’s 1000. Very high into the yikes zone even if the economy hadn’t burned up on re-entry.

For that little fistful of euros, diners will engulf champagne, caviar, truffle ravioli, tournedos, and the “dessert of the house,” which at that price ought to be garnished with whipped flakes of gold. I assume it won’t be Floating Island.

Despite my stated aversion to compulsory celebration, I have to say that I spent the most unforgettable New Year’s Eve of my life here in Venice. (You may say “Well sure — most beautiful city in the world,” etc. etc. That is a comment which does not take into account how repellent mass events can be in a city this small, especially when the mass is mainly composed of atrociously drunk people who think they’re having fun. Smashing glass bottles is almost as entertaining as setting off firecrackers. It would appear.)

It was the fateful passage between millennia, the last night of 1999 and first morning of 2000. We had dinner at home with two friends, Sarah from Washington and Caroline from London, then we bundled up and climbed into Lino’s little wooden topetta.

They sat in the center, while we rowed to the Bacino of San Marco. There was a surprising number of boats out (it wasn’t especially cold), but I guess it was that millennium aspect that drew them. As it drew us, because it’s the only time we’ve ever done this.

The fireworks began their aerial onslaught; I thought it was great to be right under them till I discovered that falling bits of blazing incendiary material are essentially little bombs. Moving down-range, we counted down to midnight, then we popped the bubbly — a large bottle of Veuve Clicquot, which Lino kept referring to as “French spumante,” no matter how many times I tried to straighten him out. I wish I could remember what kind soul had given it to us.

But this far I could have anticipated much of this. Being on the water at night is always special, ditto fireworks and friends. But I hadn’t anticipated what came next.

We were done with the toasting and the pyrotechnics. Time to go home. But we didn’t take the shortest route — Lino headed us toward the Piazza San Marco where the mobs were in full cry. Lights! Action! Barf and pee! Scream and hurl hard breakable things! Fling firecrackers and see if you can really damage something!

We rowed slowly past the Piazza and up the rio de la Canonica, past the Doge’s Palace, slipping apprehensively under the Ponte de la Paglia which was jammed with people who might have thought it would be fun to throw something (bottles, garbage, themselves) down into our boat.

As the sound of rioting faded behind us, we threaded our way along the network of dark, empty canals; the canals became darker and quieter as we moved deeper into the city. We glided between looming, slumbering palaces, and the only sound was the delicate Plff. Plff. of our oars and the barely perceptible melody of the water slipping under the boat. The silence seemed like something alive, like whatever remains inside a huge bell that’s still vibrating even when the tone has disappeared.

Venice seemed like an entirely different place, a shadow city hidden within the blare and clang of day. It was as if the city was lifting a veil as we passed, letting us discern, however faintly, the power and the grandeur that are concealed in a place that when the sun comes up is reduced to postcard cutouts. It was an elegant, seductive sort of gesture — if an entity so magnificent could evince anything so intimate. I could feel the veils being lowered, one by one, behind us. Nobody spoke.

Sometimes I'm not sure that it's not us that are the shadows here.

We came out into the Grand Canal, back to lights and noise and now. Much as I may hate the touristic mayhem, even on ordinary days, I’m not quite as upset by it as I once was, because I know that Venice has managed to elude our grasp. I won’t say that she’s waiting to come out again — we probably make that impossible.

It’s enough for me to know she’s still in there.

Events, Food, History, Venetian-ness

La Madonna della Salute

November 23, 2009 5 Comments

If I were to tell you (which I am) that another important holiday has just been upon us, you would be correct in asking me — before the history, the rituals, the weather — what we’re eating. As I write the house is full of an extraordinary aroma, which is only to be found during one or two days each year. If I were to try to describe it, you’d never want to eat it.

The feast-day (specifically November 21) is in honor of La Madonna della Salute, or Our Lady of Health. The nutriment is called castradina (kah-stra-DEE-nah) and it’s not for the faint of palate. Unlike frittelle at Carnival and bigoli in salsa at Redentore, this is not a dish that one finds made at home very much anymore — an American woman in the butcher shop who overheard me ordering the main ingredient told me that she wouldn’t have the “courage” to try making it. (Courage? It’s not like you have to club it to death. Besides, with something this strange, how would anybody know if it had gone wrong?)

Cabbage belongs with cured meat -- it's just one of those mystic marriages.

Most important, it’s a dish that would be impossible to make at any other time of year because the principal component appears at the meatmongers only in mid-November and disappears even before the bridge is taken down at midnight and it will not be obtainable anywhere for another year “not even for ready money,” as the butler put it to Lady Bracknell. So even if you hate it, there is something appealing about its rarity, like one of those small creatures that are born, live, and die in the course of a single day. I happen to love it, but you know me.

Castradina is leg of mutton which has been dried, salted, smoked, and smeared with every spice which is black and odoriferous, and left to fester for only God knows how long. Hanging in the butcher shops they look like small prosciuttos which have just dragged themselves out of some basement apartment in Haight-Ashbury.

Under the Venetian Republic this product came from the flocks grazing the rocky heights of Dalmatia; today, much of it comes from the area of Sauris, in northeastern Italy next-door to Slovenia. Traditionally this meat — which obviously was treated in this intense way to withstand everything from ocean voyages to long-range bombardment — needs long, slow cooking. More than skill (or even courage), it requires time. And cabbage. I forgot to mention the verze sofogae, the suffocated cabbage.

I will give the recipe below, but I feel the need to move on to describe the feast-day itself. I find it very comforting because as there is Thanksgiving in November (with meat) in America, here there is thanksgiving in November (also with meat). So I don’t feel I’m missing any important element of the late autumn in all its dank, grey glory.

To understand why a church of the magnitude of Baldassare Longhena’s baroque basilica was built, we need to grasp, even slightly, the magnitude of the disaster it commemorates.

In 1630, Venice was hit with one of the worst plagues in her plague-ridden history. A mere 50 years earlier (1575-76) the city had managed to survive the scourge which inspired the church of the Redentore and its yearly festival of gratitude. Now, before the city had really recovered, the plague was back and it was even worse than before.

In that year plague had already been roaming around northern Italy, brought by German and and French soldiers fighting the Thirty Years’ War. They infected some of the Venetian troops, who took it to Mantova, where soon the disease had eliminated almost the entire city.

A hearse -- at the moment without any casket -- passes Lazzaretto Vecchio, one of several plague quarantine islands.

Venice was understandably cautious about contagion and was a pioneer in the business of quarantine, sequestering arriving ships, their crews and even their cargo for 40 days. The islands of Lazzaretto Vecchio and Lazzaretto Nuovo were dedicated to dealing with these cases, as well as some islands which have disappeared. For those unable to resist the romanticism of the idea of Venice sinking, I offer for pure, unadulterated melancholy the vision of an island (actually two: San Marco in Boccalama and San Lorenzo in Ammiana) which sank beneath the lagoon waves still containing the skeletons of the hundreds of poor bastards who were sent there to die. If Thomas Mann had known — or cared — about this, his famous novel with the irresistible title would not have had anything to do with a doomed infatuation at an expensive hotel but something much harsher in every way.

The situation in Venice was under control until an ambassador arrived from Carlo Gonzaga-Nevers, duke of Mantova. As everybody knew Mantova was already hugely infected with plague, the ambassador and his family were promptly quarantined on the island of San Clemente (now the site of the San Clemente Palace Hotel). All would have been well except that somebody thought it would be a good idea to send a carpenter over to see about some renovations that needed to be made to the ambassador’s quarters. Nothing wrong with that, but they let him go home. He brought the plague to San Vio, his neighborhood, and thence to the entire city.

By the time the epidemic was finally over 18 months later, 46,490 deaths had been recorded (some estimates go as high as 80,000) in a population of 140,000. The catastrophe was made even worse by the disproportionate number of pregnant women who died, and the fact that an epidemic of smallpox was also raging. So many people were dying each day that it was impossible to remove them all quickly; dead bodies simply lay about the streets, spreading contagion and panic.

This magnificent composition by Belgian sculptor Giusto Le Court (1627-1679) tells the story: (Left) the city of Venice, as a beautiful noblewoman, begs the Virgin Mary for deliverance. (Center) The Virgin accepts her plea. (Right) The plague, as a hideous hag, is driven out. — This magnificent composition by Flemish sculptor Giusto Le Court (1627-1679) tells the story: (Left) the city of Venice, as a beautiful noblewoman, begs the Virgin Mary for deliverance. (Center) The Virgin accepts her plea. (Right) The plague, as a hideous hag, is driven out.

Desperate, the Doge and Senate, the Patriarch of San Marco and the people of Venice gathered in San Marco to pray for deliverance; they performed a solemn procession throughout the entire city for 15 successive Saturdays, carrying the miraculous icon of the Madonna Nicopeia which the Byzantine Emperor used to carry into battle at the head of his army. And the Senate made a vow to build a church to the Virgin, swearing that the people would go there every year to give thanks till forever, if she would intercede to save the city.

In November, 1631 the plague was declared officially ended, and they kept their promise, though it took 50 years to fulfill. In November, 1687, Longhena’s masterpiece was complete.

So every November 21 since 1631, Venetians have honored the Senate’s vow to give thanks and have gone to offer their thanks to the Madonna della Salute, Our Lady of Health, and to ask for her protection or intercession. A friend of mine makes a point of telling his doctor that the two euros he spends on a votive candle that day is the best money he spends on his health all year. I think he’s joking but I’m not sure.

A temporary bridge is installed over the Grand Canal between S. Maria del Giglio and San Gregorio — roughly the path of the normal gondola traghetto. In the beginning it was set up on boats, big cargo-hauling peatas, which Lino remembers. Eventually, though, the demands of traffic outranked piety and now the bridge is a suitably high section of the one used in July for the feast of the Redentore.

Temporary stalls are set up around the area in front of the church’s steps where vendors sell candles from delicate to dangerous. You buy your candle, take it into the church, and wait amid the throng until you’ve inched close enough to the candle-offering stations to give your candle to the harried, wax-spattered boys who are lighting new candles and blowing out old ones at a pretty steady clip. Not many candles stay lit for very long, but try not to let that matter to you. It’s the thought that counts.

A fairly modest stall compared to some of the others, but still doing a steady business in votive candles.

Masses are being said at intervals in the various side chapels, and also at the high altar. We manage to shuffle past the altar to the choir behind, and sit in some of the heavy carved wooden stalls for a while to watch the people leaving through the sacristy. As Lino says, if you stay there long enough you’ll see everybody go by. This is one day nobody wants to miss.

Especially the ladies in their fur coats. For many and various reasons, Venice in winter is one place where mink still reigns supreme. One night on the vaporetto I counted eleven (I did not make that up). Shearling and wool are fine, and down parkas abound. But women of a certain age and ilk are going to be in fur. If it can’t be mink, it’s going to be as damn close to it as they can manage.

November 21 appears to be the unofficial opening day of the mink-coat season. I think it’s because — as mentioned above — everybody is going to be at the basilica, hence it’s the ideal moment and place to present yourself in all your furry splendor. I have seen women in mink coats on the big day when the sun was shining and the temperature in the mid-50s. Sweat? Sure. Take it off? Never! I have a friend who refers to this as the feast of Our Lady of the Fur Coat.

Before we leave the subject of this brief but glorious holy day, I need to stress that all is not candles and sacred vows. Yes, children are brought by their relatives, and they go through the drill. But it’s going to be quite a few years before the Salute connotes sanctity to them and not cotton candy. Because behind and beside the church, along the rio tera’ dei Catechumeni, a series of stalls are set up which you can smell long before you see them. It’s fat-and-sugar Elysium: deep-fried frisbees of dough (think flat funnel cakes) slathered with Nutella, candied peanuts, big fat doughnuts, long ropes of that weird pinkish soft stuff that looks like a thread of marshmallow DNA, and cotton candy sticking to everything. Noise! Lights! Sugar shock! And lots of balloons of cartoon characters, close to — and sometimes just past — bursting with helium. All day long the town is scattered with kids trudging home with floating Spongebob Squarepants or Nemo and Marlin or Dalmatian dogs tied to their wrists.

I have no idea what little Venetian kids in 1690 might have been given after they trudged out of church with their parents, but I would bet (I would hope) that it was something with absolutely no nutritional value whatsoever.

CASTRADINA Prepare two days in advance.

Part One: “Suffocated cabbage” or Verze sofogae (VER-zeh so-fo-GAH-eh)

Buy a medium-sized cabbage, preferably the kind that has crinkly purple leaves. Why? Because it looks better. Otherwise, any cabbage.

Slice it into really thin strips, not too long. Put it in an anti-stick pot along with a modest amount of extra-virgin olive oil, a few knobs of garlic, a sprig or two of rosemary, a little salt. Mix to coat well. Put it on low heat and cover. Stir occasionally. Eventually the cabbage will reduce itself to one-third of its previous volume, and have become soft and almost velvety. Don’t try to help it along by adding water. Be patient.

Remove the garlic. Set aside till tomorrow (in the refrigerator, or even leave it on the stovetop if the kitchen isn’t too warm.)

Part Two: The castradina itself.

Buy a piece of castradina — half a leg is plenty for three people. A pound, more or less.

Put it in a large stockpot filled with cold water. Bring to a boil. Simmer for half an hour. (Considering what’s been done to it, it’s not like you have to actually cook it.)

Put the pot on the windowsill, or somewhere else that is reliably cool and leave it to cool down completely. It will probably be overnight.

The next morning: Skim off the congealed grease which has formed a soft layer on top of the liquid.

Add the cabbage. Bring to a boil and simmer for an hour or so.

To serve: You can either serve the soup first, then a piece of the meat, or you can put them all together in the bowl. I haven’t heard of any myth, etiquette, or rule governing this. Just make sure it’s steaming hot. That’s part of its gestalt.

The reason why it has to be hot is because back in the centuries when castradina was a normal thing to eat, before it became a semi-exotic semi-relic, people ate it all winter long for the simple reason that it was one great way to warm up. You might like cocoa, or even mulled wine, but for a typical Venetian winter day/night you used to need to bring out the heavy culinary guns. Blastingly hot castradina was born for this.

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