Saying goodbye to the eternal city of Rome was somewhat depressing but as soon as I arrived at the Termini train station my mind switched to what I had been waiting for my entire trip – the opportunity to cook and learn about authentic Italian food from an Italian grandmother. It was my dream come true. Long story short, through a Travel & Leisure magazine (thanks Susy!), I made contact with Barbara Goldfield and Federico Studer, a couple who run a travel planning business in the Campania region. I asked if she could put together a 3 day cooking class with an Italian grandmother. Within weeks I received an itinerary of when and where we would shop, when and where we would cook, as well as where I would sleep. Needless to say I was excited!
Rolling through Italy’s Campania region and into the Sannio was incredibly beautiful. The Sannio is located in the Southern Apennine mountain range inland from the infamous Mt. Vesuvius, Pompeii and the Amalfi coast. Caserta, a city about 30 miles outside of Napoli, was the closest stop to my final destination, Sant’Agata de Goti. As soon as Federico picked me up, we stopped at a local market to purchase ingredients. Anticipating this moment, I asked if there was a menu. Federico calmly pulled out a small piece of paper from his jacket and handed it to me with a look saying you better be ready to cook! The menu read “Ragu Napolitano, Cassata di ricotta, Melanzane imbottite, Cavatielli, Pastiera and Strufoli”. I will translate and discuss some of the recipes below with explanations and anecdotes about the entire cooking experience.
Before moving on to the cooking, I want to share the unforgettable meal I had at Terre di Conca, a bed and breakfast for food lovers in Piantoli, Italy. About an hour and a half drive from Caserta, chef-owner Berardino Lombardo and his wife Antonietta run a four-room property using ingredients sourced from the hotel’s 100-acre farm. The fields are filled with wild chicory, heirloom apples, and the black Casertano pigs with which Berardino makes his famous invention known as la stringata (a tied and pressed combination of pork loin, lard, and bacon). The meal started with antipasti of home-cured prosciutto, roasted eggplant, and a beautiful combination of slowly sautéed zucchini and potatoes, using home-made extra-virgin olive oil. The wine that accompanied the dinner was just as good. Federico made a memorable comment to me, explaining that Italians (as most wine-producing European countries) don’t export their best wine. Instead they keep it for themselves to enjoy as we were about to do. The next dish was a mouth-watering piece of oven-roasted pork. Then came a large piece of oval, home-made cheese – imagine a combination of creamy Fontina and sharp Parmigiano-Reggiano. This was followed by small, extremely good, butter cookies topped with homemade cherry and apricot jams. The best though was when Berardino brought out a huge wicket basket full of just-picked cherries from his orchard. I ate cherries, sipped wine and enjoyed a beautiful night in southern Italy with my good friends Barbara and Federico – what more could one ask for?
Now, let’s move on to cooking with my Italian grandmother, Maria Affinita. Maria is the mother of three children, two of whom still live at home (this is pretty customary in some European countries). She has been cooking for her immediate and extended families for almost 45 years. Experienced she is, yet one would never know by looking at her kitchen. There were no Cuisinart’s, standing Kitchen Aides, Le Creuset pots or any of the other gadgets we associate with a ‘serious’ chef here in the US. In fact, Maria only used one knife, a small 6-inch serrated knife with a white plastic handle. However, Maria does use, like most Italian chefs, high quality ingredients. We used eggs from her chickens, meat from her butcher, local liquors, and one especially important and unique ingredient purchased at the local Viola Pharmacy – Essenza per Colomba – a scented essence that has the aroma of citrus and flower. This was used to flavor the Pastiera cake we made.
The first day of cooking was just wonderful. As a chef you always notice how other chefs organize their kitchens. Maria had two kitchens, one connected and one disconnected from the house. The frying of meats and vegetables was done in the disconnected kitchen so that the frying odors would not permeate the house. In between these two kitchens was the most beautiful patio with flowers, plants, fruits, and herb trees all looking out to a mountain range in the foreground with Mount Vesuvius in the background. Scratching my head, I asked myself, how did I get here? Immediately I broke from that thought as Maria started barking orders at me in Italian. We needed to start cooking so the meal would be ready for lunchtime as her husband, children and nephews would all be in attendance. Our first dish was a hearty meat and sausage tomato ragù made the old school way, where you cook the sausage in oil first, so as to pull the flavor out of the sausage and into the sauce. We then fried beaten eggs into little omelets which were stuffed into pounded-out filets of meat rolled up like an involtino or jelly roll. The tomato sauce was then added. However, this was no regular tomato sauce. It came from her canned jars with the tomatoes she picked at the peak of the season. The jars were stored away high above on the wall near the stove. Taking advantage of my height, Maria kindly asked me to reach for them and to my amazement I saw there were about 30 of these jars. Once again, I realized, for these people cooking is not merely a hobby but a way of life. We proceeded with the dishes, testing and tasting along the way. I began to notice that the meat along with the sausage deepened the flavor of the tomato sauce in a way you could never reach with simple beef stock. This sauce, by the way, was being made not just for that day’s lunch or even dinner, but for the next day! The elapsed time allows all the flavors to intermingle and come together exuding a depth of flavor that cannot be described.
The next dish was the Cassata di ricotta, a two layer cake infused with Strega, a local liqueur from the Campania region that has the flavors of saffron, fennel, and mint. At 80 proof, a little goes a long way. The cake was filled with a mixture of ricotta, candied citrus peel and pieces of Italian Perugina chocolate. The beauty of the dish is all in the technique; after making a sponge cake, the pieces are sliced and reassembled almost like a puzzle. The slices of cake need to cover the entire bowl in a staggered brick-like formation with some coming up the edges of the bowl so they can be folded over and cover the filling. The filling was then added. Again the slices of sponge cake were assembled in the same staggered brick-like formation. Once assembled, the bowl was covered with another bowl that fit within the diameter of the dish. This bowl was then weighed down by another bowl full of water. The two bowls were moved around every 30 minutes to ensure every surface of the dish was even. At this point it could be refrigerated until serving time which is when the magic happened, because when it was turned out onto a plate the brick-like pattern of sponge cake was revealed, filled with the luxurious mixture of ricotta, sugar, candied oranges, and chocolate.
The dishes we needed to make for lunch included two types of eggplant recipes. The first was simple in terms of ingredients, but complex in execution. The eggplant first needed to be cut in half, the pulp removed and the skins boiled in salted water. The meat of the eggplant was then sautéed in a pan with good extra-virgin Italian olive oil and added to a mixture of bread crumbs, eggs, Parmigiano-Reggiano and Provola cheeses. This mixture was then used to fill the eggplant boats, topped with more Parmigiano-Reggiano and some of the tomato ragù. The second dish was ½ inch slices of eggplant sautéed and layered in a casserole with alternating layers of Parmigiano-Reggiano and Provola cheeses and the tomato ragù. The entire dish was covered with a beaten mixture of eggs and baked in the oven.
Cavatielli are the traditional form of pasta in S. Agata de Goti and are made with flour and eggs, but the technique is what’s noteworthy. The dough is folded onto itself several times and then cut into long strips about a ½ inch wide. They are then cut into smaller strips about 2 inches long and 1 inch wide. These strips are then rolled into the cavatielli shape. Taking the point of your index finger, you roll back the piece of dough onto itself and create a hollow core. The reason behind the core is so that the sauce better adheres to the pasta! Don’t you just love Italians – they have created a way to get more sauce into your mouth by studying the shape of the pasta! My first few attempts were very clumsy indeed, probably making Maria wonder if I truly was a chef. But with her patience, experienced hands, and gentle nature she showed me how to smoothly roll the pasta so that it would work with you and not against you. This lesson was undoubtedly the most profound of my European cooking experiences. Learning to make pasta from an Italian grandmother who has been cooking for 45 years does not come around too often.
Maria was such a wonderful woman who opened up her HOME to me (a stranger). Not only did she share her cooking secrets but she also refused to accept any payment for all her work. Simply put, she was so honored that someone had traveled thousands of miles just to come and learn from her. None of her children (with exception of the eldest daughter) had much interest in the culinary arts and as a result, I think she felt a mother’s joy in seeing how happy, excited and curious I was to learn from her. The last meal we cooked together ended up being served at her daughter’s house with cousins, nephews, grandparents, uncles and aunts, who each brought their own special types of dishes that included anchovies in olive oil, home-made mozzarella, roasted turkey and more cavatielli pasta cooked with beans and simply-dressed with good olive oil and Parmigiano Reggiano. This dinner was not just my last cooking lesson but also the end of my time spent with Maria. Upon saying our goodbyes I was caught off guard by the emotion of the whole experience. In the end, I made a new friend in Maria as well with the entire family. This friendship is one I will always carry with me and one for which I have to personally thank my hosts, Federico and Barbara.
Federico and Barbara are the most gracious, knowledgeable and easy-going hosts imaginable. They acted as chauffeurs, translators, historians, travel agents, and most importantly sincere friends. If you are looking to get away from the big-city tourist traps and instead experience an authentic Italian vacation, contact Barbara and Federico by going to their website www.savourthesannio.com. You can arrange a wide variety of cultural or culinary activities such as cooking classes, visits to vineyards, olive-oil estates, ceramic and embroidery artisans, or simply relaxing at natural volcanic spas. And if you’re lucky like me, they might even personalize your excursion to your specific preferences. Barbara commented that “requesting to cook with an Italian grandmother was a first for her.” And as for that grandmother Maria, you might be asking yourself if I ever paid her. Let’s just say that Maria now has a whole new set of knives compliments of a grateful chef.
