by Alberta Piroci Branciaroli
The Headmaster Cristina Giuntini thus presents "Le Ricette Della Nonna Accanto ... Al Focolare"; the work that the pupils of class III of the Primary School of San Piero in Frassino (Municipality of Ortignano Raggiolo, province of Arezzo) carried out during the year school 2018/19 . The work have been created following the recipes in the of Emma Perodi’s book “Grand mother’s novel” . The recipe book at the time of Emma Perodi was born from an idea of a group of teachers from the San Piero complex to bring primary school children closer to the rural world that frames the "Grandmother's novels".
Through interviews, especially with experts who have treasured the customs and traditions of peasant society over the years, under the guidance of the teacher Pastorini Iduina, they collected the recipes of the typical dishes featured in the stories. Simple dishes made with products of the earth that every family, even the poorest, could have available to feed themselves. The recipes are scanned throughout the four seasons. The book is handmade, with the use of various materials, so that it can be explored with multisensory paths. Some recipes were reproduced in the classroom and tasted by the students. As evidence of the didactic activity, a film have been produced by the director Francesco Faralli. The creation of a narrative box made with the pupils by the scenographer Socci Roberta, where in the faces of a removable wooden cube, small models of objects and tools related to seasonal food have made a masterful synthesis of Casentino cuisine.
A significant journey aimed at grasping the value of the intangible heritage of the territory, which is handed down over time through customs and traditions, evoking memories and emotions over the generations. In the introduction, the students described their working method: “After reading Grandma's novels“, we divided the recipes described in Emma Perodi's book into four different menus, one for each season. For each recipe we have created drawings that represent the ingredients and the time of year in which they are usually consumed. We have not reported the quantities and cooking times since all the recipes in question are still well known as typical dishes of the Casentino. We have tried to go deeper in our culinary tradition through historical-cultural comparisons, curiosities and anecdotes.
The book we created, driven by curiosity and lightened by fun is accompanied by a series of brightly colored drawings, made with mixed techniques. The book begin with a view of some children sitting on a rustic bench in front of a huge fireplace, just like the one described by Perodi in the frame of the first novel'sIn a house of Farneta, a small village on the Via di Camaldoli, the family of the peasant Marcucci was all gathered under the large hood of the low fireplace that protruded almost halfway into the room. The fireplace in which a beautiful beech log crackled was really big, otherwise it couldn't have held so many people, because the Marcuccis were a subisso!"
The pupils' work presents four distinct menus, each for each season starting from winter, the time in which the Tuscan writer begins her narration "All the bells of Poppi and the valley rang in celebration that night calling the faithful Christmas Mass and it seemed that would respond to that invitation the bells of Soci, Bibbiena, Moggiona and all villages and castles built in the barren mountains that rise up to the hermitage of Camaldoli or to the Picco della Verna, was so the bell that could be heard from all sides ”.
In winter menu are proposed recipes related to a typical product of the valley, chestnuts also known as the Casentino confetti. The chestnuts are enjoyed, after being boiled in water in the pot hanging on the fireplace chain, adding a pinch of salt and fennel wild. Even pattona, which in Casentino is generally called sweet polenta, finds its place in the diet of the Marcucci family. While the macaroni pie, which Emma Perodi refers to in the novel The devil who became a friar, is not a traditional Casentino dish.
In the spring menu food returns as a great protagonist in the great Easter lunch: a soup with broth, boiled eggs, Casentino ham, stewed capon with a side dish are included. taglierini, fried and a roasted capon as well as roasted on a spit is the kid.
The summer menu features various courses: lasagna with chicken sauce, roast pigeons and a dessert with the romantic name of Bocca di dama.
The autumn menu consists of a bean soup of which innumerable regional versions are known.
In Casentino can be cooked with zolfino, a native variety of Pratomagno that has the particularity of a very thin skin, a globular shape. For the conservation of zolfino a specific Association has been created.
The omelette with sausage is a simple but very tasty dish. The sausages, prepared with gray pork from Casentino, which is a cross between pink pig and blackberry romagnola or cinta senese, have an unmistakable flavor.
On May 27, 2019, the students Leonardo, Niccolò, Rebecca, Matilde, Aurora, Anita, Edoardo, Tommaso, Brando, Rebecca, Giulia, Christian, Alessandro, Jacopo, Matteo concluded their work. This Project certainly had the merit of bringing students closer to local traditions and children's literature through the short stories of Emma Perodi. But the main educational goal achieved was that to make young students appreciate zero-kilometer products and more aware consumers. Maria Salemi, who has dealt with food culture for a long time, in a speech given during the 1993
Conference in Poppi expressed herself as follows: "The search for a food code within the Novelle della Nonna della Perodi, is a to be estimated of some importance in order to a disenchanted reading of the Perodian imaginary universe…. Perodi'ss food is not an element of the land of guts of traditional folkloric fiction ... there are no appreciable signs of wild bread, as Piero Camporesi called it, nor, to use another metaphor of hers, of the land of hunger. In the short story The devil who became friar, the devil offers the two elderly spouses Sbrigoli the menu of the enchanted cutting board to induce them to sin. In one of the days of the Quattro Tempora (groups of days of the rite of the Catholic Church, originally linked to sanctification of the time of the four seasons and intended to thank Providence for the fruits of the Earth and for the work of man in which there was the obligation of fasting) we find listed these courses: macaroni pie, noodle soup in capon broth , roasted pork ham, roast thrushes, hare bread (a traditional French delicacy from Arezzo that appears on the tables of noble families as early as the nineteenth century), fried brain.
The Easter menu, as already mentioned, presents among other courses, the stewed capon with a side of taglierini (a recipe that has disappeared from the traditional culinary tradition) explicit testimony of German gastronomic uses, in consideration of the fact that Tuscany was linked to Austria for over a century through the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty. The whipped cream that concludes the Easter lunch as a dessert seems to recall the dulcis in fundo of the French Grande Cuisine that made it mandatory for trendy tables and is therefore to be considered an intrusion of Florentine gastronomic uses.
It is in the frame that precedes the short story The cap of wisdom that Perodi testifies to having a high model of reference for the courses of the lunch on August 15, the feast of the Assumption. The Marcucci family prepares for the distinguished guests, Professor Luigi and his wife, a lunch with a rich menu. For the occasion so special Regina too had wanted to use her hands and had started to do a certain Bocca di Dama whose recipe the nuns of Pratovecchio had taught her half a century earlier and that the children remembered having eaten it only on special occasions ... the beautiful bocca di dama made by Regina was placed in the oven specially heated. Of this dessert, la Bocca di Dama, there are six recipes, preserved in an eighteenth-century manuscript as it is obtained from the text by Mario Da Monte, A Tavola in Casentino, published in 1995 by Fruska. The nuns of the monastery of San Giovanni Evangelista in Pratovecchio, on July 12, 1838, offered this cake to the Bishop of Arezzo. The recipe was as follows: "Take five ounces of fine flour, a pound of sugar powder, two ounces of sweet almonds with two bitter, n.9 eggs, lemon zest smell. Toast the almonds and chop them very finely, then mixing them with the flour. Whip the egg yolks and combine the flour with the almonds and sugar. Whip the egg whites and gently add them to the rest. Pour the mixture into a greased pan, sprinkle with powdered sugar and cook.” In the variants they can be substituted for almonds, pistachios, walnuts, hazelnuts but also “if you want to make them with chocolate you can put in 1 pounds of den almonds. 3 of chocolate and remove den. 3 of sugar and add a little vanilla if you want. Wanting drugs you can put yourself den. ½ between cinnamon, carnations and nutmeg and you can put den one of chocolate to give them the smell and color";
It should not be surprising that in some recipes dating back to the 18th century, chocolate is present: we know that cocoa arrived in Casentino thanks to the Camaldolese monks who imported it from Venice where their monastery of San Michele in Isola was located. The presence of chocolate among the Camaldolese monks who used it as a drink is evidenced by a memory written by Bandini in Odeporico of 1787, kept at the Marucelliana Library in Florence. It will be precisely on the occasion of the lunch for the illustrious guests that Cecco's young wife will take care of decorating the table: “Vezzosa had gone into the garden to pick peaches and figs, arranging these fruits in a kind of rough dark earthenware bowl, arranging them on the ferns and decorating them with carnations and tufts of geraniums. - My good wife! - Cecco said, returning home - you know how to make everything you touch beautiful. At that compliment the beautiful bride blushed and placed that joyful triumph of fruit and flowers in the middle of the table ”.
In conclusion, we can say that Perodi's cuisine is ambiguous because the food is not treated with the characteristic symbolization of folktale, nor is certain information provided about the realistic presentation of the gastronomic uses linked to the geographical area of Casentino.
C/O Società Dante Alighieri 
