One of the greatest pleasures is reading Sicilian folktales midday while drunk on a dense-full-bodied beer (16.2 percent) produced locally in Boulder. Like the beer, the stories are rowdy, naughty, mythic, and full of gullible and wise fools who make donkeys appear to shit gold, drive menial men to do self-destructive things and conspire to make foolish heroes into better men as they chase after fantastic brides. Is there any better Sunday to spend than drunk researching the new novel?
9 thoughts on “Plank’d and Research”
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Hi Midori,
Sorry to “comment-bomb” your blog (is that a word? I just made it up, I suppose). I just read your book set in Renaissance Italy. In the book you mention something called a “lasagna di Ferrara”, which uses a cream sauce and golden raisins. I was immediately intrigued. My mother’s family is Italian, of mixed provincial heritage, but since my grandmother was of Calabrese ancestry, our culinary influences are more strictly southern-Italian, like most Italian-Americans. For instance, southern Italians were the early adopters of tomato sauces- which, as late as the nineteenth century, many north-Italians never tasted except on the rare occasion they ventured south, and most of them did not care to, as they considered the south a barbarous country inhabited by uncultured peasants. My Tuscan-American grandfather was fond of telling us that he never ate pizza or tomato sauce before he met my grandma in the 1950s!
Anyway, all that as much to say, Ferrara is in the North of Italy, and my grandmother would have never put cream and golden raisins into anything besides a dessert- which, of course, triggered my immediate intrigue about the recipe for Lasagna di Ferrara, and a desire to replicate it. Ha ha. The zest of the forbidden, perhaps, on my part…Most contemporary recipes for Lasagna Ferrarese are still a tomato-based lasagna, though they do use a bechamel base. Are you referencing a Renaissance recipe for this lasagna? After much searching I did find a Renaissance lasagna recipe which had cream, golden raisins, and nutmeg, but didn’t mention it as a Ferrara specialty.
Were you referencing a specific recipe when you mentioned Lasagna di Ferrara? If so, could you pitch me a citation or a link to it?
Thanks.
Sincerely,
Mark
Hi Mark: I got this description from the cookbook “The Splendid Table” by Lynn Rossetto Kasper, page 168. She offers a recipe for Lasagne Duchi di Ferrara — and here is how she describes it:
“Inspired by a 16th century banquet dish, sheets of sheer pasta are layered with a ragu of chicken and sprinklings of nuts, raisins, spices, cheese, and a touch of cream…”
Now…I seem to remember hunting down alternate versions of these sumptuous recipe — and which at the time must have be exotic and expensive to make with all those spices. I’ll see if I can more on it.
And P.S. Friendly comment bombing is always welcomed!
Thanks, Midori! I think the Renaissance lasagna recipe I did find was indeed the Splendid Table by Kasper- both online before you gave me that citation, and indeed the very same once I checked it. It sort of inspired a mini-research quest about the history of lasagna, for me. Southern Italian communities, particularly Southern-Italian Americans, prefer lasagna to be a very heavy, hearty dish- lots of meat, lots of olive oil, lots of tomato sauce, copious amounts of cheese (ricotta, mozzarella, Parmesan), and sometimes even with Italian sausage or hard-boiled eggs in it! My grandmother’s version always contained hard-boiled eggs. While I enjoy the dish, it can sometimes be too heavy, so it’s nice to explore the historical roots of lasagna as a much lighter dish, and to experience that.
I discussed this with my mom. We both agreed that our traditional lasagna is sometimes too heavy, and both agreed that a cream sauce or bechamel was lovely, especially with a lighter, vegetarian version that has things like mushrooms and spinach. We both agreed that, to us, the strangest ingredients in the Renaissance Ferrara one were golden raisins and cinnamon.
But I recall that raisins and pine nuts, as a combination, are also a staple of Sephardic-Jewish dishes both sweet and savory. It’s always interesting to reflect on how much of European cuisine was Middle-Eastern-inspired, especially after the Crusades and during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, when wealthy areas traded for spices. My grandmother’s ravioli filling always had some nutmeg in it to enhance the flavor of the meat.
In a few months or so, when I’m back in my own kitchen, I’ll try making the lasagna di Ferrara and let you know how it turned out, how it looks and tastes!
Fantastic! I love the conversations with your mother, as there is nothing better than passionately talking over food and recipes! My father was French and food examples abounded in his everyday conversations — even in his translations of French-speaking African poetry and Swedish poetry. Food references were carefully calculated, so that the physical sense of the food image could translate from one country to another. An “over-ripe Camembert” with it’s nuance of an off smell and too soft and squishy, became in English “a rotten tomato.” The “halibut” (an affectionate term for a loved one) became something more familiar — a lover, I think. I can’t seem to find the poem in my papers!
I would also recommend a small, but gorgeous book on food and art in the Renaissance: “Tastes and Temptations” by John Varriano. I’ve posted on him before in the blog — but cream, raisins, and spices seem extravagant, you should read the descriptions of whole peacock, stuffed and cooked and reassembled to look as if it were about to fly off the plate!
That’s awesome! I agree- nothing better than a food and recipe debate, or food poems. Why does a “halibut” refer to a loved one in French? I’ve noticed that the French have some unusual food-based endearments, like “mon petit chou”. Hehe. I am a Francophile, and have studied the French language, although rather haphazardly, and spent a significant amount of time wishing I were French. But Italians and French are not so different- we love to talk about food. I date that Italian tendency back to at least Dante, if not before him. Good Tuscan that he is, he complains about eating “salty bread” in his exile, since Tuscan bread was always unsalted, of course. I think there was some melodramatic, poetic implication to that, as well- the tears of his exile salting his bread for him, or something.
Thanks for the book recommendation about Renaissance food! I also definitely want to read the Italian folktales you recommended on this blog, too.
Sincerely,
Mark
Hi Mark, to call someone in Sweden a “halibut” is an endearment I think because halibut traditionally is an important and favorite food among Swedes. It could be dried and salted and kept through the winter (long winters!) The French call a loved one a little cabbage. The Germans have quite a few as well, based on sausages and plum cakes. I think all cultures have versions of turning food items into expressions of “consuming” love.
And Italians and food! yes, yes — especially good food! How many different kinds of pasta there are! When I was researching “The Innamorati” I was living in Italy for a year. I had read for fun an Italianate novel written by two English women. Half way through the novel I realized that not one character in 100 pages had stopped to eat anything. I mentioned this to my Italian friend and she looked at me horrified, and said “not even pasta???”
Hi Midori,
Yes, my mother and grandmother know many different kinds of pasta, and if they found a new kind, they could immediately slot it into a mental map for a category of pastas they already knew- “Oh, that’s farfalle! Oh, that’s orriechiete.” It’s not a knowledge I really have.
And how funny that your friend said, “Not even pasta?” It may be stereotypical, but pasta is one of the first foods I remember having eaten, and it was always our first recourse when ill. Because I had an upset stomach yesterday, I skipped breakfast this morning and for lunch I had- what else- a big bowl of pasta with a little butter and salt. Haha.
It also reminds me of a scene in the book “Everything is Illuminated”, by Jonathan Safran Foer, when the main character, also named Jonathan, goes to Ukraine to search for traces of his grandfather’s village, a Jewish shtetl destroyed by the Nazis. The Ukrainians are astounded that the American Jonathan is a vegetarian. Jonathan orders potatoes in a restaurant, and the surly Ukrainian waitress tells him, “Potatoes come only with the meat.” The Ukrainians apologize to the waitress and say, “Please bring a potato with no meat, our American friend is deranged.” The waitress sullenly and quite theatrically brings him a single boiled potato on a tiny plate and slams it in front of him!
Hahaha — that’s hilarious! It is such a remarkable union of food and culture and what food is intended to say about not only the individual, but the culture from which those signature dishes and comfort foods arise. What flavors do you love? How does what you grow and eat reflect the place, the world in which you live? How does what you eat also describe your relationship with those familial ancestors, the way you care for yourself, the way, as Proust so famously did, remember the family and the past. And now, I think I need to make some madeleines…seriously, I’ve made myself hungry for French soul food. (And funnily enough, my husband made a little pasta with olive-oil and butter to calm his stomach just yesterday! When in digestive doubt, return to the basics!