Rebranding News!
I recently read that people liked newsletters with a recognisable title. Lunch in the Sun, my newsletter’s new name, is taken from the Futurist movement’s doomed attempt to give Italian names to foreign food-related words.
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti includes a dictionary in his 1932 Futurist Cookbook, which dictates that:
a bar should be called a “quisibeve” (a here-one-drinks);
a dessert should be called a “peralzarsi” (a pick-me-up);
a cocktail should be called a “polibibita” (a multi-drink); and
a picnic should be called a “pranzoalsole” (a lunch-in-the-sun).
Taking time for lunch — proper time — is one of the things I live for. And I cannot deny that everything tastes better in the sun, or, given my Celtic complexion, under the dapple of a branchy tree. I have anglicised Marinetti’s neologism, which never caught on, and stolen it for the new title of my newsletter.
I made the logo only way I know, i.e. with Microsoft Paint. It looks like the cover of a children’s book, but I am loath to learn how to use new software, so it will probably stay that way. Today’s newsletter is about the Sicilian city of Messina, the gateway to the Italian mainland. It is also about loquats, a recent addition to my list of favourite fruits, and a little bit about reading in another language.
Arriving in Messina
The moment I saw Messina’s golden Madonna from the ferry, welcoming travellers into port, I knew I would have to come back to take a proper look around. Messina seemed like my kind of town: it has a busy working port, and I already knew about its reputation for focaccia and granita. By taking a slightly convoluted route home from Palermo, I found an excuse to spend the evening here. I would carry on my northward journey by train the next morning.
The train from Sicily to Calabria still makes its final island stop here, before getting on a ferry and sailing across to the mainland. Some who may once have broken up their journey here, however, are now enticed elsewhere by cheap domestic flights. Among the many things they miss out on is a long meal at Trattoria Morello, a quarter of an hour from the central train station.
I arrived in town just in time for lunch, and although I had not booked, there was a long, thin table waiting for me, set for one. The tables here remind me of the wooden ‘lovers’ seats,’ you sometimes find in pub gardens, which face in opposite directions, so your eyes meet at an angle. These tables are too narrow for two people to sit on opposite sides, but are plenty long enough for pairs to converse at a 45 degree angle instead. I was not dining with my lover, but with a large basket of nespole where my companion’s plate would otherwise have been. The landlady offered to take the fruit basket away, but I was glad of the company.
I ordered a glass of house white and a plate of deep-fried squid, thinking that I will see how I get on before making my next move. Before I even lifted my glass, I could smell the apricot from afar, which in these parts can only mean one thing: zibibbo grapes (from زبيب, that is, zbib, meaning raisin in Arabic). I felt very lucky to be in Sicily, where such an extraordinary and precious flavour can be in such an ordinary thing as a house wine.
After the squid, which was soft inside and crispy at the edges, Signora Morello asked about my thoughts on pasta. Unusually, I was cautious to avoid the kind of meal that might cut short my afternoon walk. This was a rare day in which a nap would have been unwelcome.
I asked her if she could make up a selection of the vegetable sides instead, and she looked delighted — yes, of course, come with me, she said, and handed me a plate. All the side dishes were set out on a long table at the edge of the dining room, most of them in the pans they were cooked in. She invited me to treat it as a buffet. Just show me your plate when it’s full, and I’ll come up with a price.
There was nothing on this long table that did not appeal to me. Green beans in tomato sauce; little flat fritters packed with wild fennel; anchovies; aubergines; slices of pepper covered in breadcrumbs; chunks of pecorino cheese. I showed her my plate but she pointed out that I had not spotted the ‘overflow’ table, two dishes balanced on what I have always called a ‘Welsh dresser.’ My plate looked elegant until I added a sliver of wild asparagus frittata from the overflow table, and a kebab that I will make at my next barbecue: tuma cheese and chunks of bread, alternated on a skewer, and marinated in chilli flakes and olive oil. On the way back to my seat, she slipped me a fava bean pod: “for the cheese,” she explained.
In Rome, fava beans are rarely seen on menus without pecorino, and until a while ago I thought this combination was particular to the Lazio region. But from my recent trip to Abruzzo, and now from my springtime in Sicily, I now know that wherever there are fava beans, there will be cheese. And happily, fava beans are in high season, a source of genuine excitement in these parts.
I told Signora Morello that I was having great fun trying all the vegetable sides. We got chatting about the aubergines, melanzane in agrodolce, made to her simple recipe — fry the onions first, peel the aubergines, chop them into small chunks, then add them to the pan. Then come sugar and white wine vinegar, and crucially, raisins. Just a hint of basil, don’t go overboard. Some use pine nuts, some use mint, neither are compulsory. I am going to play around at home to see if I can recreate Morello’s heavenly version; I do not think it will be easy to get the balance just right.
I had eaten too many good things already for any of the creamy desserts on the menu, and besides, I had just spent the month in Palermo, where sweet ricotta reigns. I eyed up the basket of nespole next to me, and asked if they were ripe yet. Of course! I’ll bring a little plate.
What are nespole?
For a long time, I knew only that nespole were some kind of fruit. The family in Giuseppe Verga’s Sicilian masterpiece, I Malavoglia, lives in La Casa del Nespolo. When I first studied this book a decade ago, it seemed sufficient to know that nespole are some kind of fruit. It is a peculiar feature of reading literature in a language one half-understands, that in order not to interrupt the flow of the text, one sometimes adopts an approximate approach. In this case, I had prioritised the gist, and skipped over some of the finer details.
It was only years later, when I visited the food markets of Sicilian towns, that I began to look back and refine the image I had painted in my mind of the Casa del Nespolo. Nespolo, I learnt, can mean one of two fruits. One of these is the common medlar, which must be ‘bletted’ before it can be eaten raw (that is, left to ripen further after it has been picked). The other is the loquat, which is another type of fruit entirely, also commonly referred to in English as the Japanese medlar. It looks like a pear-shaped apricot and tastes like, well, a loquat, but also vaguely like a peach, except perhaps more fragrant.
In Messina, I was dealing with loquats; common medlars look quite different, and have a leafy ‘crown’ at the bottom. I peeled my loquats with my knife, cut them in half and removed their shiny, mahogany-coloured seeds. I ate them slowly, and enjoyed taking time over a fruit I had not thought about much until now.
Loquats and common medlars both grow throughout the Mediterranean. But unlike common medlars, which have been grown in Europe since Roman times, loquats are native to China, and there is a possibility that they were introduced to Europe by Jesuit missionaries to China in the sixteenth century. I have no idea whether Verga was referring to loquats or common medlars when he wrote I Malavoglia, and perhaps I will have to return to the fishing villages around Catania to find out. But I like the idea that, by paying a new attention to this fruit, I am adding new details to a novel I first read a decade ago.
If I find out that there are have never been loquats in Aci Trezza, and that only common medlars grew there in the nineteenth century, I do not think I will ‘correct’ my mental picture of the novel again. The point is not to have an image that is completely faithful to the text, but to have one that is three-dimensional and rich. The story of I Malavoglia was once black-and-white in my head, like the 1948 Visconti film, La Terra Trema, which was based on Verga’s novel. Now it is one step closer to Technicolor.