Food | Venice: I am not making this up

Day of the Dead

October 31, 2009 4 Comments

November 1st and 2nd pack a one-two punch here, though the first is a holiday and the second isn’t (every year I struggle to remember that because it seems wrong to me). (I think they should both be holidays.)

My most recently discovered saint: St. John of Nepomuk, here adorning the prow of the 14-oar gondola of the club Voga Veneta Mestre. He is a national saint of the Czech Republic, and protector of gondoliers and anyone in danger of drowning. He was martyred on March 20, 1393 by being thrown into the Vltava River in Prague.

November 1 is All Saints Day — shortened here to “i santi” (“the saints”). There is no special way of observing this feast, other than going to church which for some people is asking too much. I know men who will proudly tell you that they haven’t been to church (or put on a tie) since their wedding day. Strangulation seems to be the theme.

The cemetery island, San Michele in Isola, is in the upper right corner, just on the way to Murano.

November 2 is All Souls Day — shortened here to “i morti” (“the dead”). This is a day (even if it isn’t a holiday) which Venetians observe with more attention. The vaporetto to the island of San Michele, the cemetery island, is free. In the not-so-old days, within Lino’s memory, a bridge on boats was constructed for the day from the Fondamente Nove to the island (a distance visibly shorter than the Giudecca Canal, whose bridge for the feast of the Redentore was also on boats). Many people make a point, at least once a year, of visiting their relatives’ graves, tombs, loculi, and if you’re ever going to go, this is the day. The florists on the Fondamente Nove make some real money.

The "bateon" for the dead was in use till the Seventies. It was black, of course, decorated with gold. In fact, there were several of them, kept in a canal by the church of the Madonna dell'Orto. If you have to die, this is a superb way to make your exit. A new initiative is being launched to build a new one and put it back into service. Public contributions will be welcome. — The "bateon" for the dead was in use till the Seventies. It was black, of course, decorated with gold. In fact, there were several of them, kept in a canal by the church of the Madonna dell'Orto. If one must die, this is a superb way to make your exit. A new initiative is being launched to build a new one and put it back into service. Public contributions will be welcome.

I’ll write more about death in Venice some other time — it’s an interesting subject about which there is plenty to say, partly because of the age of the population. Funeral homes are probably one of the few businesses here that are immune to the global economic situation.

The traditions still associated with this feast-day naturally have mostly to do with food. For about a week before November 2, the pastry-shops and cafes put on sale little bags of what appear to be roundish colored styrofoam blobs, like lumpy cherries, colored white, pink, or brown. These are called “fave” (FAH-veh) and come in either the small (Trieste) form or the larger (Venice) form. It’s inexplicable to me but the Triestine are everywhere. Seeking a sack of Venetian fave will cost you some time and effort.

There are differing recipes, but the one I picked had only three ingredients: powdered pinoli nuts, sugar, and egg white, baked for an hour at low temperature. For the record, I tried making them yesterday and while the simplicity of the recipe was part of its appeal, I can confirm that if you halve the recipe, you’d better make an effort to halve the egg white. They were a spectacular failure.

However, from one of my favorite Venetian cookbooks, A Tola co i Nostri Veci by Mariu’ Salvatori de Zuliani, comes a recipe that makes more sense.

First of all, he makes the point quite firmly that coloring the fave is a newfangled fad; the classic Venetian version is always plain white. Remember that if you want to be a purist.

Venetian Fave for All Souls Day (November 2)

These are typical small bags of fave, of the Trieste style. They are priced by the "etto," or 100 grams. Here the merchant has covered offered two sizes of bag: One etto for 3 euros, and a two-etto bag for 6 euros. It's like trying to understand a pun in a foreign language -- I just don't get it. — These are typical small bags of fave, of the Trieste style. They are priced by the "etto," or 100 grams. Here the merchant has cleverly offered two sizes of bag: One etto for 3 euros, and a two-etto bag for 6 euros. It's like trying to understand a pun in a foreign language -- I just don't get it.

200 gr almonds, 300 gr sugar, 125 gr flour, pinch of ground cinnamon, 20 gr butter, 2 whole eggs, lemon zest.

Leave the “peel” on the almonds and pound them in a mortar with the sugar, then sift. Add the flour, a pinch of cinnamon, butter, eggs, and the lemon zest and mix well with your hands.

Divide the mixture into blobs the size of walnuts, arranging them in lines on a baking sheet that’s been buttered and floured. Press each one lightly with your finger to flatten it slightly — the purpose is to make them resemble as much as possible the normal amaretto cookie.

Bake at “moderate heat” he says; I’ll take that to mean 150. He doesn’t say how long, either (I love the old-fashioned way of writing recipes).

Of course you have already been thinking, “But a fava is a kind of bean.” This is true. So why call these “beans” and why this particular composition, and why on the Day of the Dead?

The rituals associated with death are so ancient there’s a point where explanations fail, but offering food to the gods on certain occasions, especially death, goes back to when people were cooking on stones. In the Mediterranean a great deal of attention was paid to the cult of the Parche (as they were called in Rome), or Fates, who were the goddesses of destiny. (The Greeks also had them under the name of Moirai.) Nona spun the thread of an individual’s life, Decima measured its length, and Morta was the one who cut the thread. Hence they were revered as, among other things, the goddesses of death.

It became known (I always wonder exactly how) that the Parche especially like fava beans. There are undoubtedly reasons for this — I’m guessing spring and fertility, that seems to be what motivates many divinities. So since real fava beans are impossible to get this time of year, or have been — I suppose nowadays you could fly them in from Zanskar — these little nubbins were invented to symbolize them. Sweetness, I seem to recall, was also an important element of some funerary offerings; often honey was used, which also embodied a raft of symbolic meanings.

These fave don’t really have a flavor, unless you count sheer, unadulterated, industrial-strength sweetness as flavor. They’re pleasant enough in the mouth, but as they go down they sort of close up your throat behind them. After two and a half you won’t want any more till next year, and you’ll be vaguely sorry you ate that extra half.

Next year I’m going to try Zuliani’s version, and I hope the Fates will be kinder to me in the kitchen, if nowhere else.

Another treat that shows up in late autumn (not associated with life, death, or whatever is in between) is "cotognata." It is essentially quince jelly, hardened in a mold. Zuliani says that it once was common in houses all over the Veneto, where it was a popular snack for children. He also mentions that some Venetians would turbo-charge the recipe by boiling the quinces in wine instead of water, then adding a touch of vanilla. He says this recipe has fallen into disuse. I'd be willing to try to bring it back.

Food

The market today

October 21, 2009 1 Comment

By which I don’t mean the financial market, and “today” is generally intended to mean more-or-less now. I’m referring to what new edibles are on sale in the market these days.

As I may have mentioned elsewhere, one of the many ways in which I notice the seasons changing is by what arrives and departs from the fruit and vegetable stands. (Fish also. Meat pretty much stays the same.)

I should note that in the past few years the rot of nonlocal-feedlot-hothouse-raised-out-of-season comestibles has begun to set in. I used to love the fact that you really could stick with the seasonal offerings here — in fact, you hardly had a choice.

Now there are strawberries in January and cherries in September and artichokes virtually all the time. It’s grotesque, and not only because of the prices. That there is a market for them is what’s distressing. Happily, a few items such as fresh peas and cardoons and loquats and parsnips have eluded the commercial drift-net so far, that mechanism that sweeps products indiscriminately off the calendar and dumps them all onto the shelves and into the bins together.

This price comes out to $5.16 per pound. That sounds expensive to me, no matter how good they are for you.

So what makes my heart leap up when I see plants take their cues and slip onto the autumnal culinary stage here? Walnuts — Italian, as well as from California.

Chestnuts waiting to be roasted, or glacee'd, or even ground into flour, though who has time for that.

Chestnuts from various parts of northern Italy, the most prized being from Piedmont, around the town of Cuneo. “Zucca barucca,” a pumpkin which if you didn’t know it was so good you’d think was a sort of mutated Hobbit. Cachi (KA-kee), or persimmons. The leafless branches of trees in gardens here are festooned with these golden spheres far into the fall, little grace-notes of sun in a season which becomes progressively grayer. If I were a canning-and-preserving person, I’d be working around the clock.

The first cachi (persimmons) I saw this year. They're only within waving distance of ripe, which might explain the startlingly low price.

Best of all, the giuggiole (JOO-joe-leh). It’s better in Venetian: zizoe (ZEE-zo-eh). In English: jujubes. You may think of jujubes only as that gummy candy you’d buy at the movies when you went for the Saturday-morning double feature. But they are a real fruit, perhaps a bit handicapped by the fact that they look like olives wishing they could be dates.

They have no juice — their main appeal is the crunch, and their unassuming flavor. And engaging as their Venetian name is (I buy some every year just so I can say “zizoe”) their scientific name is even better: Ziziphus zizyphus. Name of a man with a heavy head cold doomed to push a boulder uphill forever.

Modest though they may be, they have their own place in Italian culture. For example, there is an expression — “andare in brodo di giuggiole” (literally, “I went into jujube broth”) — which you would say when you wanted to convey extreme happiness or satisfaction. The “broth” is a sort of infusion/decoction which evidently is more delectable than you can imagine. Only now have I discovered a recipe for this beverage, or I’d have tried to make it before the zizoe disappeared and given a full report.

Around here the zizoe come mainly from the area of the Euganean Hills, beyond Padova, especially the environs of the hamlet of Arqua’ Petrarca, where Petrarch settled to live out his last days. The Arquites (or whatever the inhabitants are called — Arquatensi, actually) dedicate not one, but two Sundays in October to celebrating their yummy little drupe.

The Romans brought them from Syria; Herodotus noted that the wine you could make from jujubes would get you drunk in no time. (I’m freely translating.) There are recipes from the Egyptians and even Phoenicians.

Apart from its alcoholic potential, and the fact that it has more Vitamin C than the orange, it was especially valued by our forebears as being one of a group of so-called “chesty” fruits (such as figs, dates and grapes) which produced a liquid which, when condensed, could combat chest colds and respiratory inflammation, of which there is no shortage in this climate.

Here’s a recipe, which I’m already poised to try. All I have to do is wait till the end of next September.

BRODO DI GIUGGIOLE

1 kilo (2.2 pounds) jujubes
1 kilo sugar
two bunches of Zibibbo or Muscat grapes
2 glasses (no size specified…) of white wine
2 quinces
grated lemon peel
sufficient water

Wash the jujubes and put them in a pot. Cover with water.
Add the grapes and the sugar.
Simmer over low flame for 1 hour, stirring frequently with a wooden spoon.
Peel and thinly slice the quinces.
Add sliced quinces and wine to the pot.
Raise the flame to more rapidly evaporate the alcohol. Turn off heat. Cool.
When it is cooler, stir in the grated lemon peel.
Pass the mixture through a sieve, pour the liquid into jars and completely cool.
Leave in a cool place for at least a month before using.

I’ll see you next year with this one. It will be the Great Zizoe Broth-off.

Food, Nature

Summerthoughts

September 2, 2009 No Comments

Summer ended last Saturday night. It’s always like this: One minute you’re sweltering in the hellish heat of summer, the air over the city pressing down on you like a hot sponge full of mildew, sweat trickling down your spine, then suddenly, overnight, it’s fall.

We had the long- and desperately-awaited break in the weather toward midnight on Saturday, announced by a long period of rumbling and groaning from the sky. When we get the storms which always hit toward the end of June, Venetians say that the thunder is the sound of St. Peter cleaning the barrels (St. Peter’s feast day is June 29, as you know.)

I can’t say what this noise might have been. St. Peter moving great-grandfather’s mahogany tallboy?

Whatever was going on, we got some drops of rain, then the wind shifted, and there went summer. The next morning a strapping bora was blowing, raising some whitecaps out in the lagoon, and a light jacket felt very good.

Of course the days are still hot. This will continue till October, probably. But the heat lacks conviction. It seems to be fading from underneath. The light becomes paler, as if the sun were worn out from nearly four months of blazing and hasn’t got the strength to make it all the way to the ground. I love cuspy moments like this.

Curiously, the thunder wasn’t associated with any lightning that I could see from my prone position through barely open eyes. All summer long the lightning (“lampe“) tells you all you need to know about the upcoming weather, at least for the next six hours until the tide turns. Here’s the lore:

“Lampe da ponente, no lampe par gnente” (Lightning in the west, it’s not happening for nothing — that is, there will be rain).

“Lampe da tramontana, tuta caldana” (Lightning in the mountains, it’s all just heat. The tramontana is also the north wind which comes from those mountains).

“Lampe da levante, dorme, dorme tartagnante” (Lightning in the east, sleep peacefully, tartagnante — nothing’s going to happen). The tartagnante (tar-tan-YAN-tey) was a person who fished aboard a boat called a tartana. The boat is extinct, therefore so too is its fisherman. He would have rowed his boat, or even sailed it, slowly along the deeper lagoon channels keeping to the edge — called the “gingiva,” or “gum” (as in what anchors your teeth) — of the canal, dragging his net (also called a tartana) behind him. When he was finished, he would have one of those wonderful lagoon hauls, a bit of everything.

I see in my Venetian dictionary that in days of yore, “tartana” was also an expression for “love handles” (a comparison to the net floating out behind the boat, I’m guessing). It gives a nice image of extra fullness, though I can imagine it being used with a slightly less than complimentary tone of voice or expression. Nobody uses the term anymore; I don’t know that anybody would even understand what it meant.

Back to the lightning: I notice that there isn’t any apothegm to describe the significance of lightning in the south. Maybe it never happens.

Speaking of cusps, the market at the Rialto is currently a little sonata to the change of seasons. There are still peaches and melons (though they too are becoming insincere, being either dry and flavorless or mushy and flavorless); the apricots have long since disappeared, though some deranged vendors are still offering small quantities of cherries at prices which would mean that if you bought a few you’d obviously be planning to cover them with gold leaf.

What’s been coming in are the purple things: eggplant and plums and grapes, fruit shading from purple-blue to purple-black. And lots and lots of mushrooms —chiodini and finferli and porcini.

There are also pomegranates, which if I had won the lottery last week as I had intended I would buy by the metric ton and squeeze into juice. As it is, I just admire them and move on.

I see that the first apples and pears are showing up, which is heathen. It may well be true that the harvest is on in the sub-Alpine plantations of the Val di Non and Val Venosta, but we’re going to be restricted to apples and pears for the entire winter, six eternal months of pears and apples. I don’t start on them till there’s absolutely no alternative.

Food, History

Street Names: Refreshing

August 11, 2009 2 Comments

There are four places in Venice which share a mystic link, which is discernible only to the initiated. The initiation will now proceed:

The "'Passage Under a House' of the Waters"

The “waters” in this street name are not those of the adjoining canal, you may be glad to know.

They were the delightful iced drinks which were sold in shops often called botteghe da acque, or “shops of the waters.” Such a shop was doing great business here in 1566, run by a pair of brothers, Alvise and Girolamo Giusto.

In 1724, a guidebook stated that “The best chocolate, coffee, refreshing frozen waters, and other such drinks are made and sold in the Calle delle Acque, near the Ponte dei Baratteri.” Right here, in other words.

These places were not unlike the cafes we know today; they were often small, crowded, loud, and attractive to gamblers. (There are still assorted joints around town where little old men sit all day playing cards and shouting at each other, but their drinks usually involve some kind of alcohol, and it’s not particularly frozen, either.) On November 10, 1756 a decree forbade gambling in this very locale, which leads me to suspect that things had gotten even further out of hand than was usual.

Frozen beverages require ice, which was made and sold in various places around the city. Older Venetians have no trouble remembering the boats loaded with large blocks of ice, which the men who rowed the boats would haul ashore wrapped in sheets of coarse hemp to whatever customer had ordered it. The block went into the refrigerator — in America it was simply called an icebox — where it kept the food cold (or cool, anyway) until it had melted away, dripping into the pan below.

In 1661, when this street was mentioned in a property document, the sale of ice was a semi-monopoly of the coffee business. This is not surprising, considering that the coffee-house was where the iced drinks were made.

While we’re discussing potables, you also had the option of something stronger, particularly grappa and its relatives, distilled liquids near which one should not play with matches.

The spelling of this street name is a bit eccentric; it ought to be acquavite, or “water of the vine,” as grappa and some of its relatives are made by distilling either wine or grape residue (vine, stems, seeds, skins, etc.), while aquavit is made from grain. But as the word has also been transmogrified into acqua vitae, or “water of life” (“life” being “vita“), we won’t quibble. I guess they know how to name their own streets.

And who had the concession to sell these shots of liquid fire? The coffee-house owners again. In 1711, in the street above, near the church of the Gesuiti, there was just such an establishment being run by a certain Elia Giannazzi. By 1773 there were 218 shops in Venice specializing in acquavite. Life was hard, winter was long, it kept you going.

A very Venetian product which Giannazzi and his confreres would also have sold was rosolio. Still made today in various forms, it is a liqueur made of rose petals which is often used as a base for other liqueurs. I’m not sure what would happen if you asked for rosolio in a cafe or bar today; you’d probably have better luck asking for one of its siblings, such as limoncello or maraschino.

A note on alcohol: You will frequently read that alcoholism is hardly known in Italy because wine is such an integral part of the culinary and social culture. Children start sipping wine at an early age, at meals, and so it is assumed that they are immune to excess. However, these cliches do not acknowledge the popularity and omnipresence of what are generally termed super-alcoolici, or hard liquor, especially with people living along Italy’s northern rim where mountain traditions often involve making and consuming highly inflammable liquids.

Young people today in Italy may or may not drink wine with their meals, but increasing numbers of them will almost certainly be binge-drinking hard liquor in discos and bars on the weekend and then attempting to drive home. In Venice, this often means using a motorboat, probably without any lights on, usually at high speed. More often than you’d wish, you read about some adolescent who never made it because he “painted himself on a piling,” as they say here. Or dying by alcohol poisoning. And in case you’re tempted to similarly romanticize the seemingly so-grown-up approach to alcohol in France , which like Italy shares the stereotpical image of the jovial family, children included, tranquilly drinking wine out in the garden with their baguettes and challenging cheeses and all, I merely note that France has the highest rate of alcoholism in the world. So, easy with the cliches, here as everywhere. Nothing is simple.

And so we come to the fountainhead of all these concoctions: The cafetier, who sold and prepared coffee to be consumed on the spot and who, as we have seen, had his finger in the ice and booze businesses as well.

Coffee has a long and glorious history in Venice; Venetian merchants first recorded its use in Turkey in 1585, and began to sell it in Venice in 1638, whence the enthusiasm for coffee-houses spread across Europe. The Caffe Florian in the Piazza San Marco opened on December 29, 1720, and makes a good case for being the oldest coffee house in continuous operation.

The “mystic link” I mentioned above is therefore revealed to be coffee. The coffee-house owners and/or operators managed a very large slice of the liquid refreshment business in Venice, and while Venetian coffee doesn’t enjoy the fame of its Neapolitan or Roman cousins, I’m willing to call it the water of life. Especially first thing in the morning.