Ciao!
My first page of my first blog...mmmmhhh...I have an idea!
My life is beautifully full and exciting: I'm able to work in Real Estate around the world, with an amazing partner, Mike Spindle, and I have the fortune to fulfill my personal life with my family and with a special passion: reading!
Having the honor to be friend with Erri De Luca, one of the most brilliant and intense Italian writers of our time, the idea for a "perfect" beginning is: let's inaugurate my first post with a "unique" Italian recipe narrated by my poet and translated by my dear friend Ilaria Tabusso Marcyan. I'm sure you will enjoy it!
And, I wait for new "Parmigiana" ideas....
Happy to share with you,
Paola
THREE FIRES
By Erri De Luca
Translated by Ilaria Tabusso Marcyan
“Writer” is a title that is put on a pedestal, in my case I willingly dissolve the formula into: someone who writes stories. The word writer sounds peremptory to my ears, omnipotent like a person who can write any story and not only the ones drawn from his own experience. The same way I avoid the title of writer, I am not a “Cook”, but someone who knows how to cook a few dishes. My favorite is eggplant parmigiana. The activities of writing and cooking are drawn together by coincidence, when the fires are out I often write in the kitchen. Some stories, some written pages become impregnated with it.
Twenty years ago I pieced together a table from some timber-cuttings; the top is pitch pine that I used for my shutters; the legs are chestnut wood leftovers from the roof beams; and the sides are oak wood, surplus from other works. The kitchen table is the navel of the house, never moved. Mine is heavy, to discourage any lifting. I've slept on it during winter nights, when the only heat of the house was from the kitchen's fireplace embers. I lean on its wood and I write, I fall asleep, I read pages of ancient books from which I reawaken, I cut eggplants. Eggplant must not be missing at any month, a month without it is a month in exile. Because this dish fixes me to the earth, it plants the South into the dish: the eggplant's shiny skin, shamelessly darkened by the absorbed sun, and the bright insides that has to be browned in the pan with oil. I cut the eggplant lengthwise on the wood that has visible grains; I place them in the same manner, for a sense of symmetry. Geometry is useful for those who cook, it keeps you company, it gives rhythm to your movements.
I use a Spanish blade, exaggerated if compared to the resistance of the eggplant. I need the exact cut, not too thin. I buy a kilo of eggplant. The sprawling expanse of slices has to be exposed to atmospheric pressure: to the sun, which is the most powerful force of nature and that is why Kohèlet, known as the Ecclesiaste repeats breathlessly with arid syllables that Adàm is under the sun, tàhat hashemèsh, under his weight, without shelter, or shade. So, I expose the sliced eggplant to their first cooking, which consists in loosening water and weight between a cloth, and the sky. During the summer one hour is sufficient, turning the slices after half an hour. During the winter, all the sun that is available is necessary, from the morning it is possible to understand if it is a good day for eggplant. If I am grabbed by the desire of the dish, with the lack of sun I rely on the compensation of the wind, another siege machine for the tough nerves of the good Kohèlet, who in the two hundred twenty two verses of his book mentions it twenty three times. Also the wind dries my laundry of eggplants laid in the open air.
I fry. In a black, crusted frying pan, I pour a lake of oil half a nail deep. It's not olive oil, a vegetable oil is fine, for a modest cooking feast. The oil has to lose its patience on the fire, it has to spit tiny bubbles, only then will it be ready for the first series: I place the slices to cover the surface, without letting them overlap. In my hands I hold a carving fork. Appizzo, meaning I spear the edge of each eggplant slice and I turn it when its submerged side is golden. Le riappizzo, I spear them again, one at a time leaving them hanging from the fork for two seconds to allow the oil to drip. They have absorbed little oil after being exposed to the atmospheric disturbance (sun and wind). I lay down the slices in a colander, where they will drain a second time. The plate underneath the colander slowly gathers the leftover oil: if there is very little, it means it has been a good fry. If I have finished in the evening, the eggplant slices will stay overnight to drain. The eggplant parmigiana is a rested dish, a wise one. Cooked and eaten at once? No. Eggplant parmigiana is not fried-eggs. It is eggplant, an introverted fruit that bursts out with indolence and a meditated pause. Who told me this, in little doses, with caution and recommendations, were two women, grandmother and aunt, masters of frying and other qualities.
They made me heir of this recipe for that dish that goes through three fires: the sun, the frying, and the oven.
No eggplant parmigiana is lacking of my devotion and gratitude toward these two women, Emma and Lillina, whose names and refinement belong to other times. Dishes are the heritage, passage of bites and cares. They save a place at the table for the absent.
Generations detach from each other through food, they eat something else because of the desire to be someone else. I attempt to eat the same for the taste, for affection.
One night has passed; I can assemble the layers of eggplant. I emptied the pan of the oil but I didn't clean it. The pan is still oily and there I put a half-kilo of peeled tomatoes, so they can absorb the remaining flavor. It is enough to heat them up in the pan, just to undo the consistency of the tomato. My two ancient cooks used, on the contrary, a double tomato concentrate of a highly refined local brand. I spread with my finger a touch of that tomato in the griddle and I arrange the first layer: the eggplant that I lifted from the colander, that has rested, relaxed after one night. I spread a spoon of sauce, halved basil leaves, some dry mozzarella cheese that has lost milk, a light snowing of Parmesan recently grated. This is the end of the first layer. I continue until the last dark slice, sprinkled with red, green, and white, because the eggplant parmigiana is a repository of four separate colors, which will make alliance in the oven. I entrust upon the last fire, 200 degrees is enough, it doesn't have to cook but melt the distance between the layers and it has to become a unified dish. In less than half an hour it becomes that. The colors are released; the aroma is earthy. Now the dish has to become warm, surrendered like it was before the oven, only then it's my eggplant parmigiana. Although I taste it during the day, I know it will be better the next day. I lean the griddle in the veins of the table and I use the knife to check its consistency. It resists like the wet sand of the shoreline shoveled by a child. Here in the plate I have the South, the past and the space where I come from, without arriving anywhere. This is not a recipe, but the least act that an heir can do.
The hunger that draws me to this nourishment is derived from a return of communion with old southern cooking, extended in small balconies overcrowded with dry tomatoes baskets and braids, with devoted and weathered women, burned hands, and few teeth in a quick smile. In their shadow I attempt the same, I reproduce in doses, entrusted customs.
In low light I relish the plate, put in between the punctuation of some wine sips, never novello. Now, I softly come out with a verse from Ernesto Murolo, father of the well-known singer. He was a unique poet because he was happy, amongst other companions of literate men, discouraged, enraged by love betrayed.
The woman in Neapolitan poetry is a killer of the heart. Instead, for Ernesto Murolo things go well and he leaves his written and sung verses that I dip like pieces of bread in my eggplant parmigiana:
E i canto: qui fu Napoli!
Nisciuno è meglio 'e me.
Dimane penzo 'e diebbete, Stasera so' nu rre!
And I sing: here was Naples!
Nobody is better than me.
Tomorrow I'll worry of the debts,
Today I am a king!
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