As a kid growing up a in middle class family in Griffin Georgia, my mother instilled in me a nascent love of cooking. She was a very good southern cook who made us breakfast, lunch and supper everyday while alos working at our family business. She would make huge Sunday lunches almost every week. In the summer she would take us all out to the dirt road next to Mr. Yancy’s farm where we picked berries from the ditch. We would come back home with pails of luscious black berries where upon she would spend days transforming them into black berry jelly. This was but one marvelous tradition of what came to be known as “puttin’ up” from the bounties of summer. She would make pickled peaches only using the so-called Elberta Peach a now-rare variety of cling peach. She said these make the best pickles. Deep down, I remember the steam rising from those big kettles used to process those glass jars full of memories from days of summer’s long ago.
It was in the middle to late sixties that a new phenomenon appeared on TV. The French Chef in glorious black and white on a weird new channel called PBS. My mother, and consequently I, fell in love with Julia Child and the idea of cooking from that exotic land of France, Europe. We watch with intense interest as Julia would spin her magic, drinking wine and using all parts of animals and plants to create wonderful dishes to enjoy. As I look back on these and other things that my mother introduced me to, I realize now that she was an open and progressive mother. Later she would give me Julia’s “The French Chef” cookbook which chronicled those first seasons that we had so enjoyed.
Over time, I turned my sights on “growing-up” and those special moments with my mother and the memories faded. I graduated from High School and headed toward adulthood. I “needed” to get serious and leave my childhood behind.
In 1971, as a Junior studying Architecture at Georgia Institute of Technology, I had the great fortune to be selected for the first Art and Architecture Studies Abroad Program in Cortona Italy sponsored by The University System of Georgia. That summer was full of wonderful revelations, friendships and discoveries. It was there that I met lifelong friends who to this day we keep in touch and share in the joys of our lives and our creativities. It was also that summer that I discovered how to draw. You see, I had been an "artistic" child growing up, but during that summer drawing became a natural. I recall sitting with my friend Phyllis Brown on the hillside at the Medici Fortezza sketching one day and "aha!" I was able to actually, and effortlessly, draw in 2-dimensions in my Fabriano sketch book what I was looking at right before me. That drawing is now with my friend Phyllis whom I attributed to opening my creative eyes.
It was also that summer that I discovered that my heart belongs to, and in, Italy. I became entranced by the place where life was seemingly so simple and so direct; where the love of food, the love of cooking, the love of people and the love of art were inseparable. Here I felt reborn and alive! Here those childhood memories of simpler times were reawaken, poised to influence my life in the future.
Cortona was a simple and poor place in 1971; the local government had a decidedly communist leaning. The Mayor, Giuseppe Favilli, was a small statured and very friendly man who was always smiling. There was a farmer’s market each Saturday morning in the main piazza and gatherings on the deck overlooking the Val di Chiana at Tonino’s to have an afternoon bierra or aperitivo. It was in this valley that the great white Chiana breed of beef necessary for the famous Florentine T-bone steak, the bistecca alla Fiorentina is bred. During that summer the Cortonese celebrated with their annual Festa della Bistecca which we were not allowed to attend for fear of our conversion to communism, I suspect. The steaks were grilled on a long grill fired by juniper wood and served with the Chianti wine of the region. There were also gastronomic stands where typical products of Cortona and Tuscany were displayed and sold. This was a great festival not to be missed. In my memory, I still see the smoky air and smell the searing meat.
There were few tourist who had discovered this magical place; not one of the Cortonese anticipated the tidal wave of interest and tourism that Frances Mayes would bestow on Cortona some 20+ years later. The most the Cortonese had seen were the 70 or so University students who descended on the town each summer with sketch pads, pencils and paints. Little did they realize their lives would change as Cortona changed the lives of each of us.
And so it was that that summer came to an end and I returned to Atlanta and to Georgia Tech to continue my course of study in Architecture. The next summer of 1972 was spent as an intern; sharing an apartment with my friend Bob Fournie. We shared a love of life and together entertained in that would-be college-sophistication way serving chips and dip with scotch and soda to our many friends and family. We played Carole King’s “Tapestry” which had become an integral part of our lives the previous summer. Our lives too were at a turning point and we would soon find ourselves as young professionals. Bob graduated, I returned for my fifth and final year of Architecture and graduated the following year, 1973.
It was my friend Bob who upon my graduation gave me one of my first cookbooks “Classic Italian Cooking” by Marcella Hazan. That cookbook along with “Mastering the Art of French Cooking-Volume I”, “The French Chef” and all my memories of times in the kitchen with my mother, lay the foundation for my love and knowledge of cooking. I read those cookbooks from cover to cover and tried every recipe. Each New Year’s Day, I would spend all day cooking Julia’s Beef Bourguignon in all its infinite detail. Friends would sit down to enjoy this deeply rich dish with noodles, green peas and glasses of Gallo Hearty Burgundy poured from a gallon jug. Bon , what a treat! We were truly sophisticates.
Julia was a great inspiration, but so was Marcella. My love of Italian foods equaled if not surpassed my love of French foods. And so I cooked from Marcella’s tome. There is that famous and so, so simple marinara sauce which uses canned tomatoes, one onion and a stick of butter. Add some salt and there you have it. The moulded risotto with chicken liver sauce was also a big winner which I reserved for very special occasions served on my mother’s elegant, but but frilly, china. The sure way to grill fish is Marcella’s Adriatic-Style fish, simple and tasty.
And so in the mid-1980 when I learned that a new restaurant, Vini Vidi Vici, was being planned in Atlanta with Marcella Hazan as the creator of the menu, I was ecstatic. My friends and I knew she was in town working away creating something special and we hoped to catch a glimpse of her and perhaps have the opportunity to meet her, speak with her and bask in her glory. Alas, I never had that opportunity, but one of my friends however did. He was eating at Abruzzi, a very traditional Italian restaurant, one evening and spotted Marcella at a nearby table. He leapt to his feet and went over to her table to extend a welcome and express his gratitude for all she had done to change our lives. Upon returning to his table, he secretly informed the waiter that Marcella Hazan was at the restaurant. Well, as he describes the scene it was remarkable. The whole staff went into a frenzy of excitement and attention to her every need. Marcella is a real star and her power extends to every person who knows her. Like what Julia Child did for French cuisine, Marcella changed the attitudes of everyday people by making Italian food accessible in every U.S. kitchen. She has been an inspiration to me and continues to be.
And so it came to be that I found that Julia Child after her death had a Facebook page for lovers of her and what she did for them and the inspiration she gave to millions. I started following that page. I also searched for my other great inspiration, Marcella Hazan, and there she was. I sent a Friend Request knowing that someone was the administrator of her page and I would received sometimes updates about her and her recipes.
One day I received a message from “Marcella Hazan”, and naturally assumed that it was from some secretary or administrator. Little did I know in that moment that it was truly a message from Marcella. That started a long-distance friendship through the “ether” with my beloved Marcella. We corresponded over the years, I sent her some of my pickles and we spoke of her times in Atlanta and how the food scene had changed so dramatically. I invited her to return and visit, but alas, she had given up traveling. I hoped for an invitation to visit her on Longboat Cay but I never pressed the issue.
I include those messages below for you to follow some of the conversations we shared:
So when I learned that my dear Marcella had died, a part of me died; and a part of me was born to carry on her love of Italian foods and the passing along of the traditions that I had learned from my native south and my wonderful mother, Edna Brooks Bunn. She instilled in me a love of food and of cooking and of coming around the table as a family. These days that family is my family of choice as many of my relatives are gone.
No comments:
Post a Comment