L'Italo-Americano

L'Italo-Americano THURSDAY, MARCH 10, 2022 www.italoamericano.org 6 NEWS & FEATURES TOP STORIES PEOPLE EVENTS I n Christianity, Lent is the period of forty days that anticipates Easter and corre- sponds to the forty days spent by Jesus fasting and praying in the desert of Judea, as told by the Gospels. For Catholics, this is tradi- tionally a period of restrain- ing and meditation, often ac- companied by days of fasting – usually Fridays. While our grandparents' generation was likely more observant of the church's re- quirement to respect Lent, in- cluding the overall call to re- frain from meat throughout the forty days, we are more relaxed about it today, with most people being non-obser- vant or limiting the applica- tion of the ritual fasting to Fridays without meat. This doesn't mean that the period of Lent isn't celebrated - on the table and in village squares - in special ways, with recipes and events that are typical only of this time of the year. Let us start with food. Traditional Italian Lent food includes anything that is con- sidered "poor," that is, that was once accessible to all, so bread, vegetables (easily available from family or- chards) polenta in the North, soups and fish, both fresh and preserved in salt. La Cucina Italiana mentions one fish in particular, herrings – the dried, salted version – which were cheap and tasty and could make a meal with just a piece of bread. A traditional dish of Veneto is, for instance, herrings and polenta, a cus- tom that, legends say, started at the end of the 15th century when Treviso fought back an attack from the Ottomans. It is not surprising to see that fish appears on Lent ta- bles across the country. Take baccalà and stoc- cafisso: they are a staple pretty much everywhere. First of all, the difference: baccalà is salted cod, while stoccafisso is air-dried cod. While we are talking of two different preparations, in some regions the names are interchangeable, like in Veneto, where we talk of bac- calà alla Vicentina and bac- calà mantecato but the fish used is actually stoccafisso. The same happens in Cam- pania or Calabria, where bac- calà is often used to name both preparations. Cappon Magro is what you eat in Liguria during Lent. It's a delicious and very filling dish, which is served cold, made of layers of cod or other types of fish, potatoes, vegetables, and parsley salsa verde (which is made with olive oil, anchovies, garlic, and pinenuts) and a bottom layer of toasted bread or gal- letta del marinaio, a tradi- tional Ligurian dry biscuit sailors used to bring with them at sea. As you can see by the ingredients, we are talking about a very rich, very complex dish: it may have no meat, but it's far from being an example of cucina povera! In nearby Piemonte, Lent means lasagne gran magro, pasta layered with a sauce made with butter, an- chovies, parmesan, and pep- per. Neapolitans likes scam- maro for Lent, a sauce made with olives, pine nuts, capers and sultanas, which they use to top pasta or to add flavor to omelets – this last dish is called, as you may imagine, frittata di scam- maro. Naples is also a fan of baccalà, which is traditionally battered and fried. And what about dessert? Can we have dessert during a time of fasting and re- straint? Well, while many of us in Italy like to give up sweets and cakes for Lent, in what we traditionally call "fioretto," there are several sweet preparations typical of this period. Genoa is known for its quaresimali, cookies made without fats (no butter, no oil, no egg yolks), the main ingredients of which are pasta di mandorle, sugar, fennel seeds, egg whites, and orange blossoms water. They are then decorated with fla- vored icing. In Rome, Quaresima means mari- tozzo, but not the creamy ones we're used to eating dur- ing the rest of the year, but a simpler version, made with honey, pine nuts, and candied fruit. But Lent doesn't show its influence on Italian heritage only in the kitchen. In some areas of the country, there are rituals and customs associ- ated with this time of the year that date back centuries. For instance, in Irsina, in the Matera province of Basilicata, seven black-dressed dolls are placed in public, with one dis- appearing every Sunday. In Salento (Campania), we find the Caremma, a puppet that holds a thread of yarn in a hand and an orange pierced with seven feathers in the other: each Sunday, a feather is removed, symbolically cleansing humanity from sin. If you like Italian cinema, and especially if you are a fan of Federico Fellini, then you may remember the opening scene of his Amarcord, where an old-woman-shaped pup- pet is cut in a half during a celebration and its content – candies, dried flowers, and cookies – is then collected by those present: that's the tra- ditional mid-Lent ritual of the segavecia, or "cut-the- old-lady," a propitiatory rite that wants to symbolize the end of the cold season and the beginning of Spring. The same ritual, albeit in slightly different forms that may in- volve the burning or "drown- ing" of the puppet, takes place a bit everywhere in the center and North-East of Italy. As it is typical of our coun- try, though, every little vil- lage, every family even, has special habits for this time of the year, small rituals that may be tied to old family memories or people we loved, but are no longer with us: a treasure of knowledge, his- tory, love, something to share with joy and pass on to the next generation. FRANCESCA BEZZONE A puppet shaped like an old lady, the "segavecia" (Photo: Antonio Gravante/Shutterstock) Lent in Italy, from North to South

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