Pasta, Popes, and Passion

By Vilma Sozio Gallo

Pasta, Popes and Passion is a travel through time, treasures, and tastes of more than 50

years offering a glimpse into Italian life seen through the eyes of an American woman. This

Itinerary was meant to be brief and yet lasted over 50 years. She was always able to discover

some new treasure or live a new experience to press her always more to her adopted country

and discover her heritage. She offers her readers the chance to share in her lifelong joys and

loves through first hand, unusual experiences or anecdotes that the usual tourist and lover of

Italy rarely experience. Cooking, food, tastes are mere stops en route; recipes convey culture,

color, and meaning to Vilma's extended stay in her magical, adopted country. Does she

succeed in sharing her hidden, Italian treasures? Is this a memoir of an expatriate or a

cookbook of authentic ,sometimes unknown dishes that have yet to travel the ocean? You

decide.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 22, 2015
• ISBN: 9781681395548

Book preview

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A Trip Through Time, Tastes, and Treasures

Pasta, Popes,

and

Passion

Vilma Sozio Gallo

Copyright © 2015 Vilma Sozio Gallo

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2015

ISBN 978-1-68139-553-1 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-68139-554-8 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

Chapter I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

Conclusion

Index

nonna’s quick dishes

LA NONNA’S CUCINA

REGIONAL DISHES

Vilma’s Kitchen

About the Author

Acknowledgments

This book is dedicated to my brother and my best friend, Skip, who was always there for me through my years in Italy, supporting my dreams and those of my daughter.

I wish he were here now.

I would also like to thank my mother, who made it all possible, and my father, whose inordinate pride in both my brother and me was overwhelming.

And to my daughter, Dina, who grew in beauty and kept her wandering mother in tow while spurring her on.

My special thanks goes to brothers Bennett and Richard (B and J) Molinari, who guided me through the prosaic steps to publication with their knowledgeable and invaluable advice, suggestions and skillful editing.

And of course to my many Italian friends of fifty years who contributed with their friendship and presence in my small world—with special mention of Clotilde, Rosemarie, Sylvia, Silvana, and Alessandro, my particular barman. Without them, none of this would have evolved.

Grazie infinite.

Vilma

INTRODUCTION

I am often asked: Why did you stay so long in Italy? What is it that kept you there?

Sometimes I have a plausible answer, sometimes I say, "I don’t know. Just look around you. Can you see the vitality in the air? Do you see the myriad of colors at the open food markets? Can you hear the animation in the voices of the people that pass you on the streets? And can you taste the genuine flavors of its food in the simplest of trattorias that have existed for fifty/sixty years, run by simple people who greet you with warmth each time you return, like Giulio at Da Lucia (Lucia was his mother)?"

I will say, "Buon giorno, Giulio, come sta? He will always reply, Bene, Signora."

No first-name basis here—but warmth and cordiality peppered with the utmost respect!

This is my love affair with Italy—the culture; the beauty and diversity of each region, city, countryside; the majesty of its history; the love for its foods; and the desire to be a part of it. I wanted my daughter raised in its culture as a foundation of her life while retaining her American roots—to have the best of both.

TIME—

THE ITINERARY

Chapter I

The Journey

My first contact with Italy was when my mother took me and my twelve-year-old brother on vacation in 1950. My brother, Skip, was artistically inclined and spent so much time sketching everything he saw. Italy was the perfect place for him.

We traveled over on the Italian cruise liner, Vulcania—a trip that took ten days. Mom always liked the best, but sometimes could not afford luxury. We were in second-class cabins, and she was unhappy, so she paid extra on board to be part of all the first-class amenities and services.

It was just after the war and Italy was in its postwar recovery period. We left the ship in Genoa and traveled by bus facilitated by Compagnia Italiana di Turismo, known as CIT, to all the important cities of Italy, and stayed at all the luxury Excelsior hotels along the way. We were due to re-board the Vulcania for our return home after six/seven weeks. I had to return to college in September for my junior year. But as it happened, the Italian shipping line went on strike (so what else is new in Italy?), and we were stranded in Naples for almost three months. Every morning for about a week, Mom would leave us in the hotel as she visited the offices of the Italian line hoping to hear that they would be sailing out soon. The only replies were typical, "Non sappiamo, speriamo presto!" (We know nothing, but we are hoping soon!) Italian logic!

After a week of this, Mom decided to wait it out on the Island of Capri. Our stay on Capri was magical for me because I met a group of young Italians who spent their summers on the island, and I developed romantic feelings for one of them. I think it was then that I began to think about living and moving to Italy—and thus life took a decisive turn—triggering my search for something more and the future direction of my life.

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Mother, Skip, and Me in Naples

It was then that I knew I had to live in this fantastic world of beauty and culture. I began my journey rather unconsciously—as I am prone to do in all my decisions. As I said, we waited almost three months in Capri. I met and became enamored with a certain Carmine and spent all the time my mother would allow me to be with him and his friends. I spoke or rather understood Italian because of my grandparents who spoke no English. It was a magical time, and when Mom finally decided to fly home from Rome, I was devastated, but naturally, I was forced to follow her wishes. We returned to the Hotel Excelsior in Rome. On the morning of our departure, Carmine, who lived in Rome and returned for my departure, came to the hotel holding a small silver basket filled with white lilies of the valley and a tiger tooth. The tiger tooth was for luck. We promised to write each other, and I promised to return. I had wanted to spend my junior year of college in Italy and said I would find a way—but never did.

We wrote for almost two years while I finished college. Carmine addressed his letters to me to my college because I knew my parents were adamant about my not returning to Italy. The parents dictated life in those years for young adults, especially of Italian origin, and being a very obedient daughter, I followed the wishes of my family. Carmine faded from life. I still have the tiger tooth.

Graduation, work, teaching in a Boston school, marriage, motherhood—life followed the usual routine, but through it all, in the back of my mind, I always wanted to return to Italy to live, to give my daughter the best of its culture, and the chance to live in the land of our ancestry. Fate helped out, and we were given the opportunity by the government to move to Italy. My daughter, Dina, was five then when we were sent to Naples with the Navy to stay for two years. Those two years stretched to five, then ten, then fifteen. And there I remained for almost fifty years, only returning home to the United States for holidays until recently.

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Dina and Me in Naples

I enrolled Dina in a private Catholic school, Istituto Sacro Cuore, and of course, she was surrounded by young Italian children. I think the first month for her was traumatic since she spoke and understood no Italian. She would obediently go off to school in the school bus, her book bag on her back, with tears in her eyes. Each day when I went to pick her up, the nun would bring her out to me with the same words, She cried the whole time. When I asked Dina, Why the tears? She would answer, I can’t speak to anyone. My plan was to give her a month’s time, and if after that time she was still so unhappy, I would transfer her to an American school. As luck would have it, her teacher saw fit to acquaint her with a fourth grader of French origin who spoke English. This young girl became her savior and mine.

Day after day, I would wait for the nun’s comment, Well, she cried a little less today. Until one day—one day short of a month later—the nun came out to me with a huge smile on her face and said she didn’t cry at all!

And so she continued and thrived in this school and became a part of Neapolitan life through the language, her friends, her activities—and I lived it with her.

My idea was to have her educated in the Italian school system, then go to a university in the United States. She would get the best of both worlds—the culture of both worlds.

We flourished during our wonderful years in Naples. Naples for me was very familiar because my grandparents were from this region. I even understood the dialect. The food, the vitality, the culture—had all been instilled in me since we lived together with Nonna and Nonnu, and I felt at home in so many ways. Life developed into summers in Italy with Mom and Dad visiting at different times and during Christmas holidays in Boston. The separation from family was never more than a few months which passed very quickly and pleasantly and rather painlessly.

I began teaching English in the evenings at an American institute and came to love the Neapolitans. They were so full of life and love for anything American, and they became wonderful friends teaching me so much of life.

I became a part of Italian life, and in those years, Naples was simple and seductive and offered wonderful emotions.

Much has changed, but a lot more has remained the same. Much has traveled across the ocean and become a part of American living—cappuccino, ciao, bruschetta (here the ch is pronounced K)—but more has remained in Italy that can only be savored there.

Have you ever been in a coffee bar in the morning where there are two rows of customers pressed up against the counter calling out their orders to a barista working the espresso machine who must have a computerized brain? Cappuccino con la barba (with a beard) or senza barba (without foam), cappuccino al bicchiere (in a glass), caffè macchiato freddo (with a spot of cold milk) or macchiato caldo (warm milk), caffè lungo (watered down)—and so many more shouted requests. He doesn’t miss a beat, and they all come out right to the right customer.

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Alessandro

Not far from my front door in Rome where I eventually came to live, maybe twenty meters, is a coffee bar named Bar Settimiano where all my neighbors and I stop for our morning coffee and first chat. We did this through all the years of my living in Rome, and we continue to do it when I visit, and it became, for all of us, OUR BAR at Via della Lungara, where I lived for over thirty-five years. It is home for all of us and the best way to start off the day. Alessandro, the barman, and Ferruccio, the owner, are all good friends and each time I return to Rome for lengthy visits, it is as if I had never left. They always ask, Where have you been? or How long will you remain? or Be sure to say goodbye when you go off.

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Our bar, one of the things I miss most.

This is not a cookbook or a guidebook, as so many already on the market, or a history of Italian cuisine and treasures but an attempt to keep authentic recipes alive so that future generations can continue to make and enjoy them. My recipes reflect a time-honored approach to Italian cuisine that I learned from my grandparents and my life in Italy.

You will find famous dishes already known to Americans and also those unknown dishes that only travelers might discover if they are fortunate enough to dine in an Italian home. These are dishes that have been discovered by someone who has had the good fortune to live and work in the country for fifty years, someone who traveled back in time