to Paolo’s trattoria for a plate of pasta with boar sauce. This weather stays beastly. Should we begin to nail together an ark?
This year my birthday falls on Easter and we are invited to the Cardinali family pranzo . I can’t think of a place I’d rather be. Placido grills a whole lamb in the fireplace. We are twenty at table. Some of the family is missing the feast. In the fall, Umberto, a nephew, crashed his small plane. His parents and sisters and brothers are still too devastated to appear. My grandson and daughter call during the antipasti and sing “Happy Birthday.” Not one to cry, I find this makes two teary bouts for me today. Missing them, and then during the prayer, when everyone stands together and the nephew Umberto is dead and everyone feels his impossible absence … and Plari, with his awful accident, now smiling, having roasted meat for all as usual. And another year gathered for me.
Outside, the valley is obscured by rain and nebbia , so much more expressive than “fog.” Inside we are cozy and familial. Simone’s father, who lost his wife last winter, sitting without a word but eating everything in sight. Anna’s daughters all smoking at the end of the table. Little Claudia, growing into a beauty, her laugh like a bicycle bell. Fiorella bringing out the ravioli, the mushroom crêpes, everything delicious. Claudio, our head of the carabinieri , handsome as a Byzantine icon, telling us that today someone turned over flowerpots in Camucia. Big crime scene! Placido carving. All the women getting up from time to time to clear, reappearing with bowls of clementini , the small Sicilian tangerines, and Aurora’s chocolate tart. Tuscan cigars lighted, cards snapped on the table. The grappa poured. At the end, other neighbors, friends, cousins begin to drop in, each bringing a huge chocolate egg with a prize inside. The warmth circulating around the table feels like that leap that lets you grow wings.
Those long tables … those endless meals. The spit turning in the fireplace and the hens or birds or roasting meats filling the room with savory old-world aromas. I have sat with my back to the hearth a hundred, two hundred times. And the room, as known as my childhood home. Photographs propped all around, an upright piano. At the end, a bookcase, with white sofa and chairs and a round table in the middle stacked with books. But it is the dining table—a long table for twenty, or twenty-five squeezed—that dominates. This, it states, is what’s important, a copious arrangement for family and friends, with the fire blazing. The sofa becomes merely a place where coats are piled, sometimes with tired children sprawled on top, dreaming, no doubt, until they are awakened by their parents and stagger out into crisp nights with skies encrusted with stars.
Easter. Is he risen? Has a house flown? Spring is coming. We walk back to Bramasole arm in arm with another fine memory for the future. Our house looms above the road, casting light in golden panels onto the bare garden. How mysterious, a house on its own. We will enter and the rooms will become ours. Right now, Bramasole belongs to itself. I start to sing. You are lost and gone forever, oh my darlin’ Clementine … The rain falls lightly, as though a hand held a gigantic watering can above us, gently dousing us for growth in the coming sunny days.
Z UPPA DI C AVOLO N ERO , C ANNELLINI, E S ALSICCE
Kale, White Bean, and Sausage Soup
Kale goes by another name, one much more dashing, especially in Italian. Cavolo Nero , black cabbage, may not evoke superhero status, but it’s close. Kale does seem invincible and it’s known to make the eater more so, too. It’s also called dinosaur kale (also called lacinato ), maybe because its leaves look like the back of a lizard. Those thin knobby leaves squeak. Do not confuse cavolo , accent on the first syllable, with cavallo , accent on the second, or you’ll be ordering black horse, and in certain parts of
This year my birthday falls on Easter and we are invited to the Cardinali family pranzo . I can’t think of a place I’d rather be. Placido grills a whole lamb in the fireplace. We are twenty at table. Some of the family is missing the feast. In the fall, Umberto, a nephew, crashed his small plane. His parents and sisters and brothers are still too devastated to appear. My grandson and daughter call during the antipasti and sing “Happy Birthday.” Not one to cry, I find this makes two teary bouts for me today. Missing them, and then during the prayer, when everyone stands together and the nephew Umberto is dead and everyone feels his impossible absence … and Plari, with his awful accident, now smiling, having roasted meat for all as usual. And another year gathered for me.
Outside, the valley is obscured by rain and nebbia , so much more expressive than “fog.” Inside we are cozy and familial. Simone’s father, who lost his wife last winter, sitting without a word but eating everything in sight. Anna’s daughters all smoking at the end of the table. Little Claudia, growing into a beauty, her laugh like a bicycle bell. Fiorella bringing out the ravioli, the mushroom crêpes, everything delicious. Claudio, our head of the carabinieri , handsome as a Byzantine icon, telling us that today someone turned over flowerpots in Camucia. Big crime scene! Placido carving. All the women getting up from time to time to clear, reappearing with bowls of clementini , the small Sicilian tangerines, and Aurora’s chocolate tart. Tuscan cigars lighted, cards snapped on the table. The grappa poured. At the end, other neighbors, friends, cousins begin to drop in, each bringing a huge chocolate egg with a prize inside. The warmth circulating around the table feels like that leap that lets you grow wings.
Those long tables … those endless meals. The spit turning in the fireplace and the hens or birds or roasting meats filling the room with savory old-world aromas. I have sat with my back to the hearth a hundred, two hundred times. And the room, as known as my childhood home. Photographs propped all around, an upright piano. At the end, a bookcase, with white sofa and chairs and a round table in the middle stacked with books. But it is the dining table—a long table for twenty, or twenty-five squeezed—that dominates. This, it states, is what’s important, a copious arrangement for family and friends, with the fire blazing. The sofa becomes merely a place where coats are piled, sometimes with tired children sprawled on top, dreaming, no doubt, until they are awakened by their parents and stagger out into crisp nights with skies encrusted with stars.
Easter. Is he risen? Has a house flown? Spring is coming. We walk back to Bramasole arm in arm with another fine memory for the future. Our house looms above the road, casting light in golden panels onto the bare garden. How mysterious, a house on its own. We will enter and the rooms will become ours. Right now, Bramasole belongs to itself. I start to sing. You are lost and gone forever, oh my darlin’ Clementine … The rain falls lightly, as though a hand held a gigantic watering can above us, gently dousing us for growth in the coming sunny days.
Z UPPA DI C AVOLO N ERO , C ANNELLINI, E S ALSICCE
Kale, White Bean, and Sausage Soup
Kale goes by another name, one much more dashing, especially in Italian. Cavolo Nero , black cabbage, may not evoke superhero status, but it’s close. Kale does seem invincible and it’s known to make the eater more so, too. It’s also called dinosaur kale (also called lacinato ), maybe because its leaves look like the back of a lizard. Those thin knobby leaves squeak. Do not confuse cavolo , accent on the first syllable, with cavallo , accent on the second, or you’ll be ordering black horse, and in certain parts of
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