History | Venice: I am not making this up

Carnival, the first stage

February 9, 2010 2 Comments

I’m not a big fan of Carnival in Venice. The only bigness I can evince where this annual demolition derby is concerned is a jumbo-size package of the old Aristotelian pity and terror.

Last year there was a sort of dancing metal raptor to give the crowd at the Piazza San Marco some sensation of movement.

That’s not completely true: I don’t feel pity.

But this year I decided to take a different approach. When Carnival erupted last Sunday (after several premonitory tremors) I thought I’d imagine it was something that could be fun, amusing, diverting, worth the trip. Not for me — I’ve figured out how to make it fun for me but it doesn’t involve costumes or the Piazza San Marco — but just going with the idea that it could be entertaining for the thousands upon thousands of people who come to Venice expecting to enjoy themselves, at least, if not enjoy everybody else.

By which I mean, enjoy being squashed like a grape in a winepress by your fellow humans.

So far, it’s working. I had a fine time on Sunday afternoon. But that’s because I made a point of not going to the Piazza San Marco. The Gazzettino reported that some 90,000 people were there. They certainly didn’t need me, even if there had been room.

The first years I was here I did go, at least a few times, to the Piazza San Marco, the gravitational center of the festivities. It was all so new and strange, and memory reports that there weren’t quite so many thousands. Memory may be lying but it was fine anyway. Perhaps the novelty of the situation carried me over the crush, as it may well do to people today.

I dress up, I walk around, I pose, therefore I am. It doesn't exactly cry out "whirl of gaiety."

Then there was a hiatus, partly because I didn’t enjoy the winepress experience and also because what was going on there seemed strangely unfestive: Loads of people in costume (95 percent of which seemed to be identical), walking around just looking at each other, striking attitudes, or taking pictures of each other with or without tourists posing next to them. The nadir is occupied by the people in costume who charge money for allowing themselves to be photographed with your cousin or your kid. And they can make a bundle.

The details are sometimes lovelier than the whole costume.

Dressing up as an ancient monument deserves a tip of the hat, or whatever she's got on her head.

Then we came to Castello and I discovered something of the way Carnival was, decades ago, before the event was trampled by the tourism behemoth. Kids and families and dogs, and relatively few tourists. And did I mention the kids?

A princess, a fairy with gauzy green wings, and an animal I still haven't identified. This is more like it.

Put an aristocrat behind the wheel and just get out of the way.

Perhaps I’m going senile, or perhaps it’s because the confetti-throwing and occasional Silly String-spraying and strolling around have no evident commercial focus, but I think the downtown version of Carnival beats San Marco in straight sets. Here, if you see somebody taking a picture of a person in costume, it’s almost certainly a besotted relative.

Still trying to get the hang of how to make it spray.

Dressing your kid as a skunk (probably Bambi's friend Flower) doesn't seem like a compliment, but when he's this cute it probably doesn't matter what you put him in.

Just a little bit of face paint, artfully applied by one of the many artful appliers in and around San Marco. But it's enough.

I

If you start to look around, you begin to notice how little it really takes to dress up and play Carnival. There were people who were looking great with only a hat, or a wig, or a moustache or whiskers scribbled on with a black marker– even the simplest mask imaginable just barely covering the eyes. No plumes, no sequins, no layers of painted papier-mache. It really works.

Or just a mask, and never mind the fancy garb. This is a version of the classic mask of a Zanni, the clever and/or foolish servant in comedies of the Commedia dell'Arte.

The first Sunday of Carnival (February 7 this year) was Opening Day, one of the maximum moments, as you can imagine. The others are Fat Thursday (Giovedi’ Grasso), and Fat Tuesday (Martedi’ Grasso). And the weekend between them. If the weather is beautiful — as it was on Sunday — it can feel like a party even if you don’t do anything special. If it’s really cold, overcast, windy or rainy, obviously the merriment becomes shredded and forced. This isn’t Rio.

Next chapter: I’ll be tossing out a few festive fistfuls of history, gathered from a large bag of brightly-colored bits of trivia.

Here’s a sample. “Confetti” here refers to the sugared almonds which are given to wedding guests. What speakers of English (and French, German, Spanish, Swedish and Dutch) call confetti — brightly-colored bits of paper — here are called coriandoli (ko-ree-AN-dolee). Why?

Because back in the Olden Days, Carnival revelers would toss all sorts of things around or at or on each other — eggs full of rosewater was one hugely amusing toy to everybody except the women who were on the receiving end. People would also toss various tiny edibles, particularly coriander seeds, which were used in pastries. Then they became bits of sugar pretending to be coriander seeds. Only much later — in 1875 — did flakes of paper begin to be used instead, which is an entirely different story. People who had always called the flying fragments of food “coriandoli” merely transferred to term to the newer-fangled form.

Events, History, Nature, Venetian-ness

Groundhog-mas

February 1, 2010 2 Comments

While Americans are watching Punxsutawney Phil, February 2 here in Venice is still known as the feast of the Madonna Candelora (can-del-ORA). Or Candlemas, according to its very old English name, or the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the medium-old locution, or the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple today.

"The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple," by Ambrogio Lorenzetti (1342).

You’ll be startled to hear that it does not involve special food, songs, costumes, or any other acts or even thoughts, although down here at the waterline there may be some fragments of litany or dogma I haven’t come across. This general silence may be because Carnival has overwhelmed it, a festival famous for its lack of litany and dogma.

However, this baby step toward spring is still recognized in an old saying you hear around, which goes like this:

Ala Madona Candelora/de l’inverno semo fora/Se xe piove o xe vento/de l’inverno semo dentro.

“At the Madonna Candelora/ we’re out of winter/ But if it’s rainy or windy / we’re still inside it.”

No mention of how long the extended winter might be (one of Phil’s more helpful services, the six-more-weeks footnote). The canny Venetians may not have wanted to commit themselves. Or the Blessed Virgin.

I have discovered by other means, though, that the feast was mentioned in a document dated 380, and celebrated on February 14. Later modifications by popes and emperors brought it to February 2; Pope/Saint Gelasius (492-496) finally suppressed the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia (also involving purification), and connected it to respect the calculation governing the Jewish ritual of a woman’s purification 40 days after giving birth (hence in the Christian calendar in the West it falls 40 days after Christmas).

This extraordinary relief is so thoroughly imprisoned for protection that it's impossible to photograph all of its beauty. It is clearly a depiction of the presentation of Jesus; the two birds prescribed as an offering (Luke 2: 22-24) are hidden by the bars. — This extraordinary relief by the Ponte Tetta is so thoroughly imprisoned for protection that it's impossible to photograph all of its beauty. It is clearly a depiction of the presentation of Jesus; the two birds prescribed as an offering (Luke 2: 22-24) are hidden by the bars.

Some (not all) scholars also assert that the feast was instituted to replace, smother, or otherwise push off the road the rites honoring the ancient Italic goddess Cerere (borrowed from the Greeks’ Demeter), goddess of growing things, particularly grain.

Speaking of Cerere, a few years ago I was researching an article on the myriad peoples, lumped together under the rubric “Italic,” which were doing just fine in Italy prior to the Roman domination (“Italy Before the Romans,” National Geographic, January, 2005). One of these peoples, the Samnites, occupied the territories in and around Campobasso, in Molise.

This is one of only a few depictions of Mary I've ever seen that show how young she was when she became a mother.

I came upon a fountain surmounted by a statue of Cerere in the square of Baranello, a small town of 2,745 souls six miles from Campobasso. It was clearly not ancient; in fact, it was created in 1896. Perhaps the harvest was a disaster that year — I’m just guessing. Then again, maybe they’d had a bumper crop and didn’t want to appear to take it for granted. I suspect that farmers tend to be belt-and-suspenders people.

The inscriptions on the statue’s pedestal (translated by me) state:

(Front) I dedicate this fountain in honor of the farmers of Baranello who with work and sobriety contributed to its well-being

(left) Almo Sun, who with your shining chariot makes the day rise and disappear and returns to be born, different but the same, may you contemplate something larger than this town. May the earth, fertile with fruit and flocks, give to Cerere a crown of wheat-ears and may the salubrious waters and the nimbus of Jove nourish the people

(Right) O Gods, grant honest customs to docile youth, to old age placidity, and to the Samnite people give wealth, progeny, and every glory

Lest you think that this effusion represents the apex of Victorian nostalgia — the anonymous donor clearly beat Mussolini to the public declaration of worship of their Latin forebears — let me note that a statue of Cerere also stands atop the Chicago Board of Trade, as well as appearing on the Great Seal of the State of New Jersey, holding a cornucopia. These notions die hard. Or not at all.

Back to our — with all due respect — meteorological Madonna. The forecast for February 2 is for brilliant sun all day. I’m ready.

Enough with winter already. Even the statues are waiting for spring, including Nino Bixio, who's got Garibaldi's back. — Enough with the winter already -- it was snowing on January 26. Even the statues are waiting for spring, including the faithful Nino Bixio, who's got Garibaldi's back.

Events, Food, History

Getting ready to party

January 21, 2010 2 Comments

You can have your first robin of spring — yesterday I detected the very first signs of Carnival .

The official Carnival celebrations this year will be running from February 6 to 16. Does ten days sound like not very many? Unless you’re a hotel owner, or a street cleaner in need of overtime, they’re more than enough, because each day will be filled with many, many tourists. In the sense that the Serengeti migration involves many, many wildebeest.

But in our little corner of the city, the signs are more appealing:

The first sprinkles of colored paper, thrown at random by small-to-smallish children. They haven’t even put on their costumes yet; for them, it’s enough to have a bag of confetti and an adult who is looking somewhere else.

IMG_7775 Carnevale comp — The dog is looking somewhere else because evidently confetti has no discernible odor.

And pastry!! Specifically, frittelle (free-TELL-eh) or, in Venetian, fritole (FREE-to-eh), and galani (gah-LAH-nee).

IMG_5693 Carnevale comp — Crunchy, full of fat, loaded with sugar -- what's not to like?

Our neighborhood pastry-shop (above) makes what I used to think were the best galani in the universe (if you will disregard their lavish use of powdered sugar, which is wrong). That was until I tried making them myself.

For the cost of a few fundamental ingredients and a couple of hours, you have a high probability, as a scientist would say, of producing something like this:

The day I made these, they were so good (the entire batch heaped six plates like this one) that we sat down and just started eating. That turned out to have been dinner. — The day I made these, they were so good (the entire batch heaped six plates like this one) that we sat down and just started eating. We didn't eat them all, but that turned out to have been dinner.

Fritole are another matter. As something to eat, they are less thrilling than galani (they trade the crunch factor for the dense-and-spongy factor), and as something to make, they’re even more work, though real Venetian housewives will deny it. I make no comment, I only observe that these women have had decades of a head start on me.

Not only does this bakery/pastry shop offer classic Venetian fritole in abundance, they drive home the point by writing "normal frittelle" on the price card. They assume you know what "normal" means.

Fritole involve yeast, and substantial quantities of hot oil, neither of which appeals to me — speaking as the maker, I mean, not the consumer.

Classic Venetian fritole contain bits of raisins and/or candied fruit, are covered in normal (again, not powdered) sugar, and are both crunchy and soft, in just the right proportions. I can’t tell you what those are — you’ll know them when you taste them.

Venetian fritole are becoming so rare that shops will put up a sign announcing they have them. Evidently the same impulse (culinary, commercial, cultural) which has turned the simple Christmas fugassa into a panettone that’s become a cross between a pinata and a myocardial infarction has also struck this classic Carnival treat.

Here you see the entire line-up of fritole, filled with cream, or zabaione (as they spell it), and now even chocolate.

Now you get fritole filled with thick cream or zabaglione, and covered with powdered sugar. These are, as the Good Book puts it, an abomination and a hissing. But they sell, and I’m not sure what the Good Book has to say about that.

As a bonus, I mention the unheralded but modestly good castagnole (kas-tan-YOLE-eh), which are essentially doughnut holes. They’re much easier to fix than fritole, if the recipes I found can be believed, and they are also approved (by me) for Carnival authenticity.

Here are the essential recipes, taken from my own culinary good book, my trusty “Cento Antiche Ricette di Cucina Veneziana” (One Hundred Ancient Recipes of Venetian Cooking):

GALANI

Ingredients: 1/2 kilo (1 pound) flour, 2 eggs, 30 grams (1 oz) butter, 10 grams (1/3 oz) “vanilla’d sugar” (zucchero vanigliato) or a few drops of vanilla extract, a pinch of salt, and a small glass of rum or other liqueur. Oil for frying (peanut is good; I use sunflower. They say you can also use lard. I’ll stand back.)

Mix all ingredients (your hands are the only effective option), divide the dough into portions about the size of a baseball (or bocce ball, if you wish).

Roll out on a floured surface with a rolling pin till the dough is about as thick as a sheet of paper. I’m serious about this. I know it’s a lot of work — the dough becomes more elastic and resistant to being rolled the more you keep at it — but if you fudge on this part you’ll never get the result you want. The first time I made these I stopped rolling when the dough was the thickness of carton, and they were a spectacular disaster. So just make up your mind to it.

Cut the PAPER-THIN sheet of dough into strips that are somewhere between a square and a rectangle, no longer than the span of your hand. (“One Hundred Recipes” says to tie each into a knot, but I’ve never seen them like this.) I say cut them into whatever shape you want as long as it’s not too big.

Lay them, a few strips at a time, in the extremely-hot-but-not-boiling oil. Watch them turn brown. (No need to turn them.) Remove quickly — they are born with an innate desire to burn and turn black — and put on paper towels.

Sprinkle with sugar. If you want to use powdered sugar, go ahead. You’re the one who’ll be eating them, and I won’t be there to check up on you.

Unfortunately, as fabulous as these are when they’re just made, they stay almost as good for days. So don’t feel you must consume them all at one go. Then again, it’s Carnival, so the rules have been disabled. Live it up.

FRITOLE

Ingredients: yeast, flour, raisins, pine nuts, candied lemon, one or two small glasses of some liqueur. Cooking oil (or lard).

I’m sorry I can’t be more precise; “One Hundred Recipes” sometimes falls back on the old-fashioned “you’ll know it when you see it” approach to quantities.

Dissolve the yeast in a little warm water with a little flour in a wooden bowl and place it near a source of warmth.

When it begins to rise, add the raisins, pine nuts, and liqueur. Mix “forcefully,” they say.

Add more flour, but make sure the mixture remains semi-liquid.

Cover the bowl with a cloth and put it back in the warm spot till the yeast has completely risen. (“You’ll know it when you see it.”)

Take soup-spoon-sized portions of the dough and drop in the hot oil. They say boiling oil — you’re on your own here.

Cook till done (ditto). Sprinkle with sugar.

CASTAGNOLE

Ingredients: 300 grams (10 oz) flour, 60 grams (2 oz) sugar, 50 grams (1 1/2 oz) butter, 2 eggs, 1 envelope of yeast (no quantity of contents given, hm…), two soup-spoons of rum or grappa, a pinch of salt, grated rind of one lemon or orange, Alchermes, powdered sugar, oil for frying.

Mix all the ingredients except the powdered sugar, oil, and Alchermes.

Let the dough “rest” for half an hour.

Make little balls (size of golf balls) of the dough and fry in the oil for about 15 minutes.

Take out and place on paper towels. While they’re still hot, pour a few drops of the Alchermes on each and sprinkle with the powdered sugar.

ALCHERMES

This is a bonus for all of you who want to go the distance, and to have something unusual (and probably delectable — I haven’t tried this. Yet.) in the house. It sounds good enough to rate being included in almost every recipe I can think of: pot roast, lasagne, creamed chipped beef on toast, Waldorf salad…

I am making a moderately educated guess that it’s pronounced Al-ker-MESS.

350 grams (12 oz) grain alcohol, 350 grams (12 oz) sugar, 500 grams (17 oz) water, 5 grams (1/10 oz) stick cinnamon, 1 gram (a pinch, I’d say) each of cloves,cardamom, and vanilla, 60 grams(2 oz) rosewater (the cooking, not the cosmetic, variety) and 4 grams (a few drops) carmine, otherwise known as Red Dye E 120.

My source gives no procedure at this point, so I’m going to suppose that you mix it all together, pour it into a container which closes tightly, put it somewhere dark, and don’t take it out for a while. Perhaps a long while.

Interesting historical note: You will already have assumed that this potion has Arabic roots because of the first syllable “al.” It’s a concoction once popular in Southern Italy and Sicily (where there was a notable Arab influence). It was customarily given to children to calm them whenever they were stricken with fear, profoundly shocked, moderately upset, slightly annoyed… Actually, I believe it was mainly administered in extreme situations, which in a region subject to earthquakes and eruptions aren’t completely theoretical.

If I were a southern Italian child, though, I’d make a point of evincing drastic distress every once in a while just to be able to taste this elixir. I imagine that life as a southern Italian child could be rife with possibilities to evince distress even without extreme natural events. Sunday lunch with the relatives comes to mind.

Motondoso: Suck it up

January 18, 2010 No Comments

The dynamics of waves aren’t so hard to understand — anybody who’s ever gone to the beach remembers the thump of the wave that has just arrived. (Am I the only person who’s ever noticed how much that sound resembles the slamming of the car doors as your family arrives for a visit?).

We don’t really notice what the thump does to the sand because an infinite series of them has already created the sand. It’s not a bad idea, though, to recall that the sand was once a hefty piece of mountain.

What isn’t so obvious, and maybe is even less obviously disturbing, is the hissing sound the wave makes as it departs. It is caused by a force called “risucchio,” (ree-SOOK-yo) which literally means “re-sucking,” though I suppose “undertow” is close enough for Anglophones. And it’s the force that tears asunder what was once clearly put together by God, man, or whatever’s in between.

This is the ferryboat which carries wheeled vehicles to and from the Lido. When it approaches the landing stage, the captain throws the engines into reverse to slow and stop the boat, then keeps the engines grinding in reverse in order to maintain tension on the lines. This is considered necessary for safety. The result is an impressive vortex of spinning water..

Cruise ships create the same effect when they are maneuvering out of their berth. Here, the TK Princess is on its way. In high season there can be as many as seven cruise ships in the Maritime Zone; although they don't create waves, the force of their engines here has gouged a crater TK feet deep. — Cruise ships create the same effect when they are maneuvering out of their berth. Here, the "Ruby Princess" is on its way out. In high season there can be as many as seven cruise ships in the Maritime Zone.

Even natural waves caused by the wind, aided and abetted by the retreating tide, will do some of this work of demolition. But then there are the big public boats — and I’m thinking specifically of waterbuses. They come in several versions here, but the highest number are the vaporettos.

The vaporetto is a specific type of boat, and the public-transport company, which goes by its acronym ACTV, operates 52 of them. Sometimes called “battello,” the vaporetto has a regularly scheduled cousin correctly called a “motoscafo,” though it gets called “vaporetto” too for convenience. It sits lower in the water and carries fewer people, though you might not believe it if you try to get on one at rush hour.

At this moment, the ACTV website informs us that the company operates “about 152” waterborne vehicles. (“About”? You mean you don’t know?) They break it down thus: 52 vaporettos, 55 motoscafos, 10 “single agent motoscafos,” which I can’t interpret for you just now, 16 bigger vaporettos that travel the lagoon (“vaporetti foranei”), 9 motonavi, and 8 ferryboats.

Naturally all of these vehicles cause waves, but what compounds the effect is the undertow they create when they stop at one of the 100 or so bus stops (city and lagoon) to drop and pick up passengers.

It’s pretty simple. Here is an illustration of what happens every time one of these craft comes and goes:

The vaporetto approaches the next stop. The captain may not have noticed whether is going with or against the tide; if he's going with it, he'll probably arrive faster than he meant to and have to hit the reverse really hard to break the momentum and get back into position to tie up. — The vaporetto approaches the next stop. The captain may not have noticed whether he is going with or against the tide; if he's going with it, he'll probably arrive faster than he meant to and have to hit the reverse really hard to break the momentum and get back into position to tie up.

He reverses the engines to stop the boat; the mariner throws a rope and ties the boat to the dock.

The captain revs the engine in order to bring the boat parallel to the dock. The water shows the effect of the earlier reverse and the momentary forward. — The captain revs the engine in order to bring the boat parallel to the dock. The water shows the effect of the earlier reverse and the subsequent forward.

To keep tension on the line while loading and unloading passengers, the captain keeps the engines at a very high rate of rpm's.

Everybody aboard; the mariner unties the boat and the captain begins to reverse again. This will give him the necessary momentum to get moving forward again. Sounds strange, but that's how it works. So: Back we go again. — Everybody's aboard; the mariner unties the boat and the captain begins to reverse again. This maneuver enables him to turn the boat slightly to starboard, which puts him the ideal position to throw the gears into "forward" and move on to the next stop. So: Back in reverse we go.

And wham! We're starting to move forward again.

And off we go. On to the next stop, where the same sequence of maneuvers will be repeated. If this looks even slightly disturbing out here in the open water, imagine it happening virtually constantly all along the Grand Canal. All day.

On September 15, 1881, the first vaporetto (“Regina Margherita”) began regular service in the Grand Canal. The imminent arrival of this creation caused tremendous distress and revolt among the gondoliers, who foresaw their doom. Their turmoil is the focus of a marvelous film, “Canal Grande” (1943), starring several then-well-known Venetian actors, such as Cesco Baseggio, plus a number of real gondoliers. Too bad it’s all in Italian.

The first vaporetto was soon followed by a fleet of eight, run by a French company, the “Compagnie des bateaux Omnibus.” Nothing against that noble nation, I merely note that Napoleon Bonaparte, who conquered and devastated Venice in 1797, was also French.

In 1890 the Societa’ Veneta Lagunare began service between Venice and assorted lagoon locations. And so it has gone.

Lino remembers when there were still very few vaporetto stops in the Grand Canal; they were at San Marco, Accademia, San Toma’, Rialto, the railway station, and probably Piazzale Roma, though he won’t swear to it. In what was still a flourishing local culture, the Venetians could find almost everything needed for daily life in their own little neighborhoods.

This is a bus stop, essentially a dock called a "pontile," to which the vaporetto is tied while exchanging passengers.

There are now 17 stops on the Grand Canal. They were not installed as something useful to the residents, as noted above, but for the transport of tourists. Shops have begun to close (I don’t lay this fact at the feet of the wave-and-sucking-causing public transport), so as the population has dropped, and the number of tourists has risen, the locals have had to range further afield to find forage, so to speak, and at the same time have had to use public transport which is usually overstuffed with tourists and their luggage. During Carnival, most Venetians do their utmost to stay the hell at home.

The city recognizes that there aren’t enough vaporettos most of the year; during the summer (and Carnival) extra routes and supplementary vehicles are laid on. But eventually some crisis point will be reached where the number of bodies requiring to be moved and the available space in which to do it will collide. To use a term which nobody in the navigation business wants to hear.

Zwingle’s Fifth Law states that “You can get used to anything.” You may quibble, but I can attest that you can definitely get used to this roiling and churning and sucking of many waters. This isn’t good, but neither can you travel all day in a constant state of rage and anguish.

You can give yourself an interlude of relief by going for a little stroll. Ignoring the roaring of motors and the shattering of waves, you can really relax in the city which is extolled for having no cars. I think people who say that must merely mean “no traffic.”

Before too much longer, the Grand Canal is going to resemble Runway 3 at O'Hare. At the moment, it's only like I-95 from Washington to Richmond.