LIFE: A Little Something for My Family

SARONNO, Italy - This week’s blog is a little different than others I’ve written. I decided that I wanted to give my family an Easter present, a small trip to Italy, and post a special video for each one of them that I hope all of them enjoy.

Video No. 1 is for my Aunt Florence, I could do no better than to offer this short video on one of the most beautiful cities in Italy, her namesake, Florence.  I hope she likes it as Florence is one of the ‘beautiest’ of all Italian cities, just like she’s the ‘beautiest ‘ of the family. 

 

 Florence Italy for Aunt Florence

For my Aunt Adele, a short trip to Venice, a city she has always wanted to see and hopefully will in the not too distant future. The long boats you see pulling up the dock are actually the local buses that go from dock to dock (bus stop to bus stop)  just like all buses everywhere. 

For my Uncle Ray, who loves flying and has his own plane and his own airport, the video I found is a pilot training to fly an amphibian plane on Lake Como. The only flight school for amphibian planes in Europe is on Lake Como, which is the best lake for planes because it is so long and narrow. A more perfect landing field for an amphibian plane would be hard to find.

For my Uncle Frank, just a small taste of what his homeland looks like, too bad they don’t have videos that can bring you the sounds and the smells from this corner of Italy where pizza was born. It's a fantastic place, full of life and energy and really deserves more than the three minutes on this video.

For my Cousin Ray who is saving his pennies to buy a Ferrari, here’s a road trip along the Amalfi coast and a few tips on how to “drive Italian.” After you pick up your Ferrari you can head south and check this out. I'd done this drive and it is just as hairy and scary as it looks.

And for my Cousin Jo Ann,  a video of the Dolomite Mountains in northern Italy, just in case she’s thinking about taking a ski vacation on this side of the world.

I hope everyone enjoys these videos and that everyone has a very Happy Easter.

AUNTIE PASTA: Hello My Little Lamb (Chop)

SARONNO, Italy- This Italian life that I live started long before I moved to Italy, it started back in upstate New York when I was really young. We lived in an apartment next to my Italian grandparents, in a big house that had a large basement. My grandfather used to make wine in one section of that basement and I remember going down there with him as he checked on the barrels of fermenting grape juice, to make sure they were doing what they were supposed to be doing, becoming wine. 

 Sheep grazing in a field outside of Rome

Every now and again there would be something else in the basement, a baby lamb. It would be tied up in the same area as the wine barrels, and when I would go down to check on the wine with my grandfather, I would play with the lamb while my grandfather did whatever he had to do. 

And then the lamb would be gone. I didn’t think too much of it, in fact it never occurred to me that the only thing that had happened between the last time I played with the lamb, to the next time when the lamb was gone, was Easter.  

Roast lamb with potatoes

So ever since I’ve been in Italy, I’ve been looking for a leg of lamb that looks and tastes like the one my grandmother used to put on the table on Easter Sundays, brown and juicy, studded with slivers of garlic and rosemary, but I’ve never found it. The lamb they sell in Italy is baby lamb, but so baby that there isn’t any meat on it. To me, the lamb they sell here looks like a pile of bones. It is a pile of bones.

Once, about six months ago, I saw what looked like a real leg of lamb (my idea of a real leg of lamb). It was at Carrefour, a French grocery chain that is very popular here in Italy. I bought the lamb immediately and cooked it, but it had a different taste than the one I expected. The store offered the larger legs of lamb only that once, I’ve never seen them since. So at this point I’ve about given up. On the outside chance that you can find some meaty lamb where you live, here's an Italian recipe from the Corriere della Sera, Italy's leading newspaper, for lamb alla Romana.  

Macellaio (Butcher) @ Eataly, Torino, Italia

After the recipe was published one viewer wrote in saying: "i filetti di acciuga nell'abbacchio alla romana? ma chi inventa queste ricette? Translation: Anchovy filets in abbacchio alla romana? Who invents these recipe?" Which leads me to doubt the authenticity of the recipe, but maybe it’s like everything else here, everyone thinks their version of things is the one and only true version. As for me, I just hope my grandmother isn’t reading this.

Abbacchio alla Romana

Ingredients for 4 People

2 lbs of leg and shoulder of lamb – cut into pieces

3 cloves of garlic

3 filets of anchovy (preserved under salt)

1 spring of rosemary

3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

½ cup of vinegar

Flour

Salt and pepper

Crush the peeled garlic along with the anchovy filets (that have been well rinsed). When the garlic and anchovy become a smooth paste, dilute it with the vinegar.

On the stove, add the oil to a large frying pan and add the sprig of rosemary. When the oil begins to smoke, remove the rosemary and add the pieces of lamb that have been lightly floured.

Brown the meat well on both sides, then remove it from the frying pan and set aside. Season with salt and pepper.

Reduce the cooking juices by two thirds. Put the lamb back into the frying pan with the cooking juices and cook for another 10 minutes. Remove from heat and serve immediately.

Preparation time: 25 minutes.

Cooking time: 30 minutes

LIFE: Miracle at Sant’Anna

SARONNO, Italy - It takes Andrea about 10 minutes to drive from his family’s summer home in the posh Tuscan resort of Forte dei Marmi up a hilly road to Sant’Anna di Stazzema. Not that he has family in Sant'Anna any more, they have all moved on, far beyond the boundaries of the tiny hill town. But on those languid days of summer when the temperatures soar, the family gathers together here in the large villa built by Andrea’s great-grandfather. 

 Sant'Anna di Stazzem

There is no one left in his family who remembers the old man. He died a long time ago. He was one of the victims of the World War II Sant’ Anna massacre, shot to death by the Nazis for no other reason than he was there.   

The story of that terrible event became the subject of a novel by James McBride, and then a film by Spike Lee. The film tells the fictionalized story of what happened in Sant’ Anna in the weeks before the Allies liberated Italy. 

In the film the heroes are the ‘Buffalo Soldiers’, the 92^nd Division of African-Americans who served on the Italian front during the Second World War. But in reality the Buffalo Soldiers were never anywhere near Sant’ Anna. Maybe if they had been the story would have had a happier ending.

In a soft voice, Andrea starts to tell me what really happened in Sant’Anna that day. It gave me goose bumps just listening to him.

“The massacre of Sant’Anna di Stazzema was one of the most brutal war crimes committed by German soldiers and SS troops during the Nazi occupation of Italy,” he tells me.  “Over the course of a few hours, 560 men, women and children were murdered by the 16^th tank division Reichsführer SS.”  

Buffalo Soldiers from film

Official military records show that the German army had ordered the evacuation of the city of Sant’ Anna a week before the SS troops arrived, but only part of the town’s population left. And then, shortly after the initial evacuation, many women and children returned home. They had nowhere else to go. The war was all around them. There were severe shortages of food and clean water, Italy was crumbling before their eyes and the danger of being caught in an Allied bombing raid was omnipresent. 

What they didn’t know was that the German Army and SS troops were moving in four columns towards Sant’Anna, massacring people along the way. German military historian Gerhard Schreiber describes what happened: “In Sant’ Anna, Himmler’s tank grenadiers forced the residents and refugees into a walled-in area in front of the church. The people found themselves in a trap, since there was only a single exit. 

 German tank

The executioners began their work, and soon there was a mountain of corpses - the remains of 132 men, women and children.  In order to eradicate the victim’s identities, flame-throwers were used to cremate the entire site. In nearby Vaccareccia, the troops had trapped 70 captured people in a stable, decimated them with hand grenades and machine guns, and finished them up with flame-throwers too. They then repeated their performance in the villages of Franchi and Pero. Whoever crossed their path was butchered. When the SS unit finally moved on into the valley beyond, they left 560 victims behind. 

Andrea tells the story as if it happened to someone elses family, and in a way it did. But on those sultry August nights, when the breezes come across from the mountains to cool those sleeping peacefully in Sant’Anna, the memories of what happened on that night remain.

 Enrico Pieri

 And the miracle? The miracle of Sant’Anna was that one little boy did survive. His name is Enrico Pieri. He’s an old man now, but he still remembers every minute of that terrible day. 

“We knew the Germans were coming,” he says, “but no one thought they would harm women and children. But when they arrived they rounded some of us up and began burning down our houses. Then they made us go into the house of a neighbor. As we entered the kitchen they began shooting.  I was only saved because the owner of the house dragged me under the stairs in the basement and protected me with her body.”

For Signor Pieri and the families of all of the victims, April 25 had another meaning this year besides being Easter Sunday. It is the day the Allies liberated Italy from the Germans.

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