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Overview
When Rosa was a teenager, her own cooking became the stuff of legend in this small community that takes pride in the bounty of its landscape and the eccentricity of its inhabitants. Rosa's infatuation with culinary arts was rivaled only by her passion for a young man, Bartolomeo, who, unfortunately, belonged to another. After their love affair ended in tragedy, Rosa retreated first into her kitchen and then into solitude, as a librarian in Palermo. There she stayed for decades, growing corpulent on her succulent dishes, resigned to a loveless life.
Then, one day, she meets the mysterious chef, known only is I'Inglese, whose research on the heritage of Sicilian cuisine leads him to Rosa's library, and into her heart. They share one sublime summer of discovery, during which I'lnglese awakens the power of Rosa's sensuality, and together they reach new heights of culinary passion. When I'Inglese suddenly vanishes, Rosa returns home to the farm to grieve for the loss of her second love. In the comfort of familiar surroundings, among her, growing family, she discovers the truth about her loved ones and finds her life transformed once more by the magic of her cherished Cucina.
Exuberant and touching, La Cucina is a magical evocation of lifes mysterious seasons and the treasures found in each one. It celebrates family, food, passion, and the eternal rapture of romance.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780060953690 |
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Publisher: | HarperCollins |
Publication date: | 09/18/2001 |
Pages: | 288 |
Sales rank: | 798,739 |
Product dimensions: | 5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.65(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
Tip the flour in a heap on the table. The old oak table, legacy of Nonna Calzino, smoothed to a brilliant luster by all the years of daily use.
Not too much flour. Not too little. Just the right amount. Fine flour milled from durum wheat by Papa Grazzi at Mascali. Sprinkle in some sea salt, a good measure. Add some fresh eggs and some extra egg yolks, sufficient for the amount of flour, and also some good olive oil and a very little cold water.
Using your fingers, mix the liquids into the flour, combining your ingredients until a smooth paste is formed. The eggs may feel slimy to the touch but this is natural. Knead well, using the heels of the hands in a forward, downward movement.
Knead just until the arms begin to ache and the small bead of sweat starts to trace its way down the spine from somewhere between the shoulder blades to the cleft between the buttocks. This, of course, in winter; in summer the sweat pours down the face and neck, dampening the clothes and making droplets on the table and the flagstone floor.
When the dough is smooth and elastic, brush it with a little oil, cover it with a damp cloth, and leave it to rest, for it too is fatigued. While you are waiting for your dough to relax you can leaf through the pages of a magazine, observing this season's latest fashions, or gaze from the window at young Maria flirting with the postman on the street corner below. Look at Fredo riding by on his bicycle, or at the pack of stray dogs escaping from the dog catcher, and at life in general passing you by.
Then you may begin the rolling. Dust the table lightly with flour and divide your dough into eight equalpieces. Taking one piece, begin rolling by moving the rolling pin in a motion away from you, pressing evenly to create a rectangular shape. Continue thus until your sheet of pasta is long and thin and about the thickness of the blade of a knife. The knife that slit Bartolomeo's throat. Slicing through his beautiful young flesh like a coltello through lard.
Cut the sheet in half horizontally and hang it over a pole to dry for five minutes. Repeat with the remaining pieces of dough to make sixteen sheets. Slice carefully the length of each sheet forming the thinnest strips you can. Again let these dry on the pole for another five minutes. Here you have your spaghetti, which, with a delicious sauce of ripe tomatoes, basil, sleek eggplant, and ricotta you will eat for lunch, when office workers, acrobats, and slaughtermen return home for the siesta and for a few brief hours the restless city sleeps.
Following the murder of Bartolomeo, I made pasta night and day. I retreated into the kitchen in the same way that some women retreat into convents, as Pasquala Tredici did after her sweetheart, Roberto, was gored to death by a bull.
I had always loved my food: in those dark days it was all that could give me comfort. I did not emerge from my self-imposed exile in la cucina for a long time. I assuaged my grief by cooking, and cooking, and cooking some more.
At that time I was still living with my family on the farm in the Alcantara valley beneath the citadel of Castiglione, on the far eastern side of the island of Sicily, near the slopes of the great volcano.
The valley of the Alcantara is an area famous for its fruitfulness. Its olives are more succulent, its oranges juicier, its pigs porkier than any other region. The abundance of our land is reflected in our people, who, as a general rule, are wholesome, hearty, and strong.
The virility of our men and the fecundity of our women have also been noted; families tend to be large here, and the urge to mate is strong among both humans and animals.
By a strange phenomenon multiple births are as common among Alcantara women as they are among sows; we give birth to many twins, triplets, even quadruplets, and identical little faces rill the classrooms in the local school. We are so accustomed to seeing duplicates and triplicates of farmhands, housewives, and goatherds that they fail even to draw notice, except among strangers. But few strangers come here.
In our lush valley, they say the fire in the loins of the inhabitants draws flame from the smoldering mountain that dominates our skyline. It casts its spell over the lives brewing in its shadow, where for millions of years it has ejaculated its own life force, clothing its slopes in rich black lava.
La Cucina. Copyright © by Lily Prior. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.Reading Group Guide
Introduction
"La cucina is the heart of the fattoria, and has formed the backdrop to the lives of our family, the Fiores, as far back as, and further than, anyone can remember. This kitchen has witnessed our joys, griefs, births, deaths, nuptials, and fornications for hundreds of years. Even now the ghosts of our forebears gather in the kitchen, sitting around like old friends, participating in discussions and passing judgment on the activities of the living. La cucina bears the scents of its past, and every moment in its history is recorded with an olfactory memorandum. Here vanilla, coffee, nutmeg, and confidences; there the milky-sweet smell of babies, old leather, sheep's cheese, and violets. In the corner by the larder hangs the stale tobacco smell of old age and death, while the salty scent of lust and satiation clings to the air by the cellar steps along with the aroma of soap, garlic, beeswax, lavender, jealousy, and disappointment."For Rosa Fiore, the kitchen in her family's farmhouse in the Alcantara valley on the island of Sicily has been a haven since childhood. It was in the cucina that she found solace, cooked and captured bittersweet memories of her overpowering mother, hapless father, six older brothers, and younger Siamese twin siblings. When her first lover, Bartolomeo, was murdered, Rosa retreated into her cucina, and later to the city of Palermo. She remained there for twenty-five years, working as a librarian at the Biblioteca Nationale by day and cooking sumptuous meals alone in her small apartment at night. But her solitude ended when a mysterious Englishman,known only as L'Inglese, arrived at the Biblioteca claiming to be a scholar researching the history of Sicilian cuisine. L'Inglese beseeches Rosa to instruct him in the ways of Sicilian cooking, and they embark on a journey of exquisite sensual and sexual awakening in the heat of a glorious summer. Their passion for the culinary arts is rivaled only by their hunger for each other, and l'Inglese brings out the essence of Rosa's beauty in a way she never imagined. "We had both learned our lessons." Rosa says, "l'Inglese had become skilled in the arts of the Sicilian kitchen, and I, the librarian, had learned what it is to love and be loved by a man. What a banquet of the senses it had been." When l'Inglese suddenly disappears, Rosa returns to Castiglione to mend her broken heart in the cocoon of her beloved cucina. There she makes new discoveries about her loved ones and herself. Lily Prior spins a bewitching tale about the mysteries of love and the joy and sorrow of family. A tribute to culinary delights and the countryside of Italy, La Cucina celebrates romance and passion in an unexpected and unforgettable way. Questions for Discussion