Read Online The Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Mark Kurlansky
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still managed to get work from the Vermont Writers’ Project interviewing quarry workers in the granite industry in Barre, Vermont, for an FWP project titled Men Against Granite.
In 1940 her first novel, Deep Grow the Roots, the story of young Italian lovers destroyed by Mussolini, was published. In 1949 she published a more successful novel, Like Lesser Gods, about Italian stonecutters in the quarries of Barre. She continued to live in Burlington and write until her untimely death from illness in 1965. Like Lesser Gods was republished in 1988 and again in 1998, and it enjoys standing as a New England Italian-American classic.
It is striking that she lived in an America where Italian food was rare enough for her to feel the need to explain what ravioli is.
H ow about an Italian feed tonight?” Government official, professional, clerk, or truck driver—daily someone within a 70-mile radius of Barre makes this suggestion in gustatory anticipation. These dinners are strictly of economic origin. Since the ’80’s, Barre, the largest granite center in the world, has attracted hundreds of skilled carvers from the granite and marble centers of northern Italy. Many, succumbing to occupational sickness, left young wives and growing families. A few widows turned for support to the art they knew best, cooking. They cooked at first for a neighbor, then for a neighbor’s friend. Gratified palates publicized the food. Today some fifty homes in Barre make a business of providing Italian feeds.
The word feed no doubt calls to mind fodder, or provender for cattle; but that gourmet, the unrecorded Vermont Yankee who titled these dinners Italian feeds , must have been musing upon its pure derivation from the Anglo Saxon fedan , meaning feast. For certainly Barre’s Italian feeds are feasts.
A fragrant, piquant scent excites the nostrils as you enter Maria Stefani’s neat, unpretentious little house. The dining room with its piano, or perhaps a Victrola, is yours for the evening. Maria’s daughter of high school age, or maybe the oldest daughter, Elena, who is a stenographer at the State Capitol six miles away, assists at the table.
Baskets of bread are the sole table adornments; long golden Italian loaves, sliced, and revealing generous centers of spongy white for those who like their bread soft; crisp rolls; and small crunchy buns shaped like starfishes, and which are best described as knobs of tender crust. These last for those who like to hear their bread crackle between their teeth.
The array of appetizers leaves the novitiate agape. Paper thin slices of prosciutto , a ham processed in pepper and spices. Large, red wafers of tasty salami . Pickled veal. Celery. Ripe olives, the dark, succulent meats falling away easily from their pits. Then there is the favorite antipasto , a savory achievement incorporating mushrooms, pearl onions, tuna, anchovies, broccoli—all permeated and tinctured with a tangy red sauce.
Maria Stefani beamingly assures you that you may have spaghetti or ravioli , or both. The platter is weighted with a mountain of white spaghetti, quivering under a dusky tomato sauce, and capped with grated Parmesan cheese. Maria scoffs at the packaged cheese already grated. “It’s dry,” she declares. “Its spirit is gone!” She grates her own cheese, and sprinkles it fresh, moist, and full bodied on the spaghetti. Ravioli , most popular of Italian dishes, are diminutive derbies of pastry, the crowns stuffed with a well-seasoned meat paste. Like the spaghetti, these are boiled, drained, and served under rich sauce and Parmesan cheese.
The food looks good; it tastes better. Geniality expands. Stomachs gorge in leisurely contentment. Belts loosen. Maria’s daughter, in horror lest glutted appetites fail to appreciate the joys yet to come, hints subtly to novices, “Will you have the salad with your meat? And will you have fried chicken, or chicken alla cacciatore ?”
Maria Stefani is not licensed to sell
In 1940 her first novel, Deep Grow the Roots, the story of young Italian lovers destroyed by Mussolini, was published. In 1949 she published a more successful novel, Like Lesser Gods, about Italian stonecutters in the quarries of Barre. She continued to live in Burlington and write until her untimely death from illness in 1965. Like Lesser Gods was republished in 1988 and again in 1998, and it enjoys standing as a New England Italian-American classic.
It is striking that she lived in an America where Italian food was rare enough for her to feel the need to explain what ravioli is.
H ow about an Italian feed tonight?” Government official, professional, clerk, or truck driver—daily someone within a 70-mile radius of Barre makes this suggestion in gustatory anticipation. These dinners are strictly of economic origin. Since the ’80’s, Barre, the largest granite center in the world, has attracted hundreds of skilled carvers from the granite and marble centers of northern Italy. Many, succumbing to occupational sickness, left young wives and growing families. A few widows turned for support to the art they knew best, cooking. They cooked at first for a neighbor, then for a neighbor’s friend. Gratified palates publicized the food. Today some fifty homes in Barre make a business of providing Italian feeds.
The word feed no doubt calls to mind fodder, or provender for cattle; but that gourmet, the unrecorded Vermont Yankee who titled these dinners Italian feeds , must have been musing upon its pure derivation from the Anglo Saxon fedan , meaning feast. For certainly Barre’s Italian feeds are feasts.
A fragrant, piquant scent excites the nostrils as you enter Maria Stefani’s neat, unpretentious little house. The dining room with its piano, or perhaps a Victrola, is yours for the evening. Maria’s daughter of high school age, or maybe the oldest daughter, Elena, who is a stenographer at the State Capitol six miles away, assists at the table.
Baskets of bread are the sole table adornments; long golden Italian loaves, sliced, and revealing generous centers of spongy white for those who like their bread soft; crisp rolls; and small crunchy buns shaped like starfishes, and which are best described as knobs of tender crust. These last for those who like to hear their bread crackle between their teeth.
The array of appetizers leaves the novitiate agape. Paper thin slices of prosciutto , a ham processed in pepper and spices. Large, red wafers of tasty salami . Pickled veal. Celery. Ripe olives, the dark, succulent meats falling away easily from their pits. Then there is the favorite antipasto , a savory achievement incorporating mushrooms, pearl onions, tuna, anchovies, broccoli—all permeated and tinctured with a tangy red sauce.
Maria Stefani beamingly assures you that you may have spaghetti or ravioli , or both. The platter is weighted with a mountain of white spaghetti, quivering under a dusky tomato sauce, and capped with grated Parmesan cheese. Maria scoffs at the packaged cheese already grated. “It’s dry,” she declares. “Its spirit is gone!” She grates her own cheese, and sprinkles it fresh, moist, and full bodied on the spaghetti. Ravioli , most popular of Italian dishes, are diminutive derbies of pastry, the crowns stuffed with a well-seasoned meat paste. Like the spaghetti, these are boiled, drained, and served under rich sauce and Parmesan cheese.
The food looks good; it tastes better. Geniality expands. Stomachs gorge in leisurely contentment. Belts loosen. Maria’s daughter, in horror lest glutted appetites fail to appreciate the joys yet to come, hints subtly to novices, “Will you have the salad with your meat? And will you have fried chicken, or chicken alla cacciatore ?”
Maria Stefani is not licensed to sell
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