Vincent Schiavelli - Many Beautiful Things: Stories and Recipes from Polizzi Generosa

Also by Vincent Schiavelli

BRUCULINU, AMERICA: REMEMBRANCES OF SICILIAN-AMERICAN BROOKLYN, TOLD IN STORIES AND RECIPES

PAPA ANDREAS SICILIAN TABLE: RECIPES FROM A SICILIAN CHEF AS REMEMBERED BY HIS GRANDSON

THE CHEFS OF CUCINA AMORE: CELEBRATING THE VERY BEST IN ITALIAN COOKING (EDITOR)

Vincent Schiavelli

ILLUSTRATIONS BY SANTO LIPANI

SIMON & SCHUSTER

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the authors imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright 2002 by Vincent Schiavelli

Illustrations copyright 2002 by Santo Lipani

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Designed by Karolina Harris

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Schiavelli, Vincent.

Many beautiful things : stories and recipes from Polizzi Generosa / [Vincent Schiavelli ; illustrations by Santo Lipani].

p. cm.

Includes index.

1. Cookery, Italian. 2. CookeryPolizzi Generosa (Italy) 3. Polizzi Generosa (Italy)Social life and customs. I. Title.

TX723 .S364 2002

641.59458dc21 2002075512

ISBN 0-7432-1528-1

ISBN:-13: 9-7807-432-1528-2

eISBN:-13: 9-7807-432-1691-3

For Carol, my angel

As we grow, there is a point in childhood when our vision of the world widens. We begin to understand, in a very rudimentary way, that we are part of something larger than the boundaries of home and family. For example, learning our last names, addresses, and telephone numbers helps place us in this big new world.

Among my earlier recollections of learning these detailsSchiavelli, 1264 Myrtle Avenue, Glenmore 2-2543, Brooklyn, Americathere is another place-name as deep and as old in my memory: Polizzi Generosa.

My grandparents Carolina (Vilardi) and Andrea Coco had separately emigrated from this small city in the Madonie Mountains of Sicily at the turn of the twentieth century. She had been a schoolteacher and he a master chef, a monz. I grew up in their household, learning Sicilian as a close second language to English.

After school, I would sit at one end of the kitchen table and do my homework as my grandfather stood at the other end preparing dinner. The monz chose to share all his culinary secrets with me, secrets guarded over a lifetime. While Papa Andrea worked, both he and my grandmother told me endless, wondrous stories about Polizzi Generosa; stories about a magical land where prickly pears and figs abounded, watermelons were round, and artichokes could be eaten whole.

They told me about their own childhoods and of their grandparents. Sometimes the stories had lessons, but always they were a look at a world far different from mine, although people there lived by the same rules as they did in our urban Sicilian-American neighborhood.

I listened to these stories over and over, always hearing them as if for the first time, even though the words and phrasing never varied. As I grew older, I understood them as part of my heritage.

My grandmother died in 1960. In 1968, when I was twenty, my grandfather died at ninety-six, but their stories of nineteenth-century Polizzi Generosa are still vivid in my mind and heart. And the great gift of food Papa Andrea gave me is still alive at my table.

As years passed, Polizzi Generosa became to me more mythic than real. I could never find it on any map. College, relationships, working as an actor in Los Angeles, and all the other joys and responsibilities of life served to postpone a Sicilian quest. It wasnt until I was nearly forty that I made my first trip to Polizzi. What I found there in 1988, and what I continue to discover on each return, is far more extraordinary than I ever could have imagined: the once upon a time of my childhood.

The beautiful city of Polizzi Generosa is perched three thousand feet above sea level, nestled at the edge of a pristine mountain national park. Untouched by fire, flood, or war for centuries, Polizzi looks virtually the same as it did in the eighteenth century, and more recently in my grandparents day. Carolinas and Andreas descriptions of churches, convents, palazzi, even specific streets and balconies are accurate even today.

Although the population of Polizzi sadly dwindles each year, the people diligently maintain their culture and traditions, like an eternal flame to an ancient goddess. Their integrity, pride, intelligence, grace, and generosity have been nurtured by a unique history.

In the seventh century B.C.E., the ancient Greeks invaded and colonized Trinacria, the Mediterranean island known today as Sicily. The Greeks introduced the olive tree to this fertile land, and Sicily soon became their major source of olive oil. Although the specific origins of Polizzi remain in archeological debate, all agree that the colony was established during this period. Most scholars believe a Grecian cult devoted to the Egyptian goddess Isis came to Sicily, seeking freedom from religious persecution. Its members established an outpost in the mountains of northwestern Sicily, far from the major Greek settlements of the eastern and southern regions. They named it Polis Isis, the City of Isis. At its center they built a temple to their goddess.

The Romans, during their later occupation, built roads, aqueducts, fortifications, and country villas in and around Polizzi. The mountain forests were clear-cut to provide timber for Roman warships. Agriculture was intensified, and all of Sicily became known as the granary of Rome.

The oldest surviving written record of Polizzi is dated 880, from the Byzantine period; a fortress built a century earlier is referenced in this document. The ruins of this fortress still grace the cityscape.

In 882, Polizzi was conquered by the Saracens. People still live in the low, connected, stucco-covered houses remaining from that time. The streets of this section of town twist and turn like an ancient casbah. At its center, a minaret reaches toward heaven, reconsecrated almost a millennium ago as the bell tower of a Roman Catholic church.

North African rule, although lasting for only two centuries more than a thousand years ago, has made an indelible mark on Polizzani culture and cuisine. Incomparable hospitality, the traditional code of propriety between men and women, even the rigid concepts of respect and vendettaall of these embody a worldview that is more Levantine than European.