Aunt Lucia

by: Simona Carini

My aunt Lucia never married and loved her five nieces like daughters. I was the favorite. My aunt's main role in my childhood and adolescence was to answer Yes to my requests to compensate, at least in part, for the immutable No I would suffer from my mother. My aunt would knit, sew and cook for me pretty much whatever I fancied.

My aunt Lucia lived all her life in Poggio Catino, a small village in Central Italy, in the house where she and all her siblings, among them my father, were born and grew up. My family lived in Perugia, about 80 miles away, so part of the magic around what my aunt did for me was due to the fact that it did not occur every day.

My father suffered from nostalgia for his native village most of his life and the palliative treatment for his condition consisted of trips to visit it as often as he could during the year, and then of a 3-week long stay in August. I enjoyed the short visits, especially if it was just me and my father staying with my aunt, because then I had her undivided attention and more than usual freedom of movement. The longest stay was more difficult to manage: after the first couple of days, the excitement occasioned by the novelty of the surroundings faded, and since I did not have any friends in Poggio Catino, keeping me occupied was a major concern. By acceding to my requests, my aunt contributed to lighten up the otherwise unbroken boredom of the long and hot summer days.

One thing I liked to do to entertain myself was collecting and shelling pine nuts. Only Mediterranean pines produce pine nuts that are good to eat and I knew where I could find the big umbrella-shaped resinous trees. The shells were covered with a sooty layer that would immediately make my hands dirty, followed closely behind by my clothes. The shelling, carried out by stone-crashing, required a scientific approach: if I dropped the stone too heavily the nut would be squashed and splinters of the shell would end up mixed with the edible part; on the other hand, if I dropped the stone too lightly, the shell would only crack slightly and refuse to give up its tasty content.

When I had what I considered enough pine nuts, I would run back home, show my small treasure to my aunt and propose that we make "croccante." She would caramelize some sugar in a small pan and I would watch fascinated, as the white grains turned into a gold molten mass. When my aunt signaled me, I would toss the pine nuts into the pan, she would give a final quick stir and then pour the mixture onto the marble kitchen counter. The sugar would set immediately and she would cut the croccante in small pieces with a heavy knife. Within minutes I rewarded myself with a piece of the treat I had contributed to create.

When I requested "crema" for my afternoon snack a more advanced planning was necessary, starting the evening before. My aunt would tell me to go to Ottavio and ask him for an egg. Ottavio was my official egg provider. In the late afternoon I would wait for his return from feeding his hens to get one of the fresh eggs he would be carrying in a big old can, fitted with a handle, the bottom padded with straw. He would see me and offer the can to my greedy eyes, so I could pick the egg that I liked best. The egg was still warm and I would run home holding it with both hands, careful not to trip on the stone stairs leading to our house.

Then it was another run with the empty milk bottle to Angela, who had cows. The filled bottle was warm as well, its content freshly milked. The morning after I would get up all excited. We would wait for my mother to go out for her daily shopping to have freedom of movement in the kitchen and then we would make crema. My aunt would direct me and I would follow her instructions, my brows knit in deep concentration. I would beat the whole egg with the sugar until it was white and bubbly, then add the flour and mix thoroughly, then add a long strip of lemon peel, cut really thin. Finally, I would add the milk at room temperature and set the pan on the stove to low heat. I would stir until the surface froth burned off and the crema felt thick. At that point I would turn off the heat and relax in the warmth of my aunt's smile: I had avoided the dreaded curdling.

I would immediately fish out the lemon peel, then pour the still hot crema in my special bowl and carry it to the "dispensa," a walk-in pantry located in the coolest part of the house. The dispensa was a special cabinet of curiosities, the smell inside it a tangled mixture of sweet and sour threads that I liked to follow, Theseus-like, back to their respective origin. My aunt made different kinds of jams, fruit in syrup, and "giardiniera," pickled vegetable medley. She used ancient-looking glass jars to preserve fresh sausages in olive oil. She let grapes dry into raisins and hung tresses of garlic from nails hammered on the edge of the top shelf.

When mid-afternoon came along I would ask my aunt for my bowl of crema. She would scatter on the pale yellow surface some of her deep purple "amarene sotto spirito" (sour cherries preserved in alcohol) and I would eat my creation while sitting on the front steps of the house, surrounded by pots of hydrangeas, basil and fuchsias, as happy as I could imagine to be. I know that my aunt's happiness in life was seeing me so completely happy.

My father's fixation on escaping to Poggio Catino as often as he could created an unbridgeable rift between him and my mother and she reacted by faulting my aunt: the friction escalated into a family feud. While trying to be a loving daughter as well as an affectionate niece, I was accused of being uncaring and ungrateful by all sides. At age 21 I moved to Milan and the distance between my aunt and me increased four fold. My relationship with food, which had become difficult in the late teen age years, precipitated into bulimia, so when I finally had my own place and could have conducted cooking experiments, I was mostly intent on starving myself. The combination of all these factors prevented me from absorbing my aunt's culinary expertise, which I could have done only by spending untroubled time with her, since, naturally, her recipes were written only in her mind and in her hands.

What I am left with are memories. Her eclairs were legendary, big and perfectly empty inside, ready to be filled with crema. Her pizza filled with chard was to die for, the secret being the addition of a small quantity of lard to make the crust melt in the mouth. She knew how to pick wild herbs, plants with lilting names of strictly local currency: lightly sauteed in olive oil, they were the tastiest greens I have ever eaten in my life. In the week or two before Christmas she would make the traditional "amaretti" (using walnuts and hazelnuts instead of almonds) "torzetti" (almond cookies sweetened with honey) and "pan pepato" (a medley of nuts, raisins, candied fruit and chocolate) and divide up her production into equal-size packages to be delivered to her nieces and surviving brothers. She would bake the traditional cake for Easter breakfast (called "pizza di Pasqua") and make a smaller one especially for me, covered with a light egg white icing and colored sprinkles. I would eat it with the fresh ricotta my aunt would get for me, knowing that it was my favorite cheese in the world.

My aunt liked to cook and the fact that most of the time she did it only for herself did not deter her at all. "People tell me: why do you bother? And I say, why not? I cook what I like and then I sit down to the table properly set. I always use a tablecloth and matching napkins." And that is what they found, when they forced open the door after failing to see her around during the day. She had come home late the previous evening and was cooking dinner when my father reached her by phone, worried because of the late hour. At 88, she had spent the day running errands and visiting people. After she finished talking with her brother she sat down to her dinner. She finished it in heaven.