Never Trust a Thin Cook and Other Lessons from Italy’s Culinary Capital

Sunny Italy

137 Sunny Italy The A1 autostrada is known as the Highway of the Sun because it leads to the balmy climate of southern Italy. Today, on Christmas Eve, it’s an enormous parking lot as far as the eye can see. Katy and I are scrunched into the backseat of Sonia’s dad’s car, and we’ve been completely stopped for about half an hour now. Many of the cars have turned off their engines, and a man has even gotten out of his car to walk his dog next to the road. A few other people are in the grass, having a picnic of prosciutto and wine, while waiting for the cars to start moving. When the traffic begins crawling again, people scramble into their cars. Suddenly, the road opens up, and cars speed up to 150 kilometers per hour and then screech to a sudden stop when they see another line of halted cars, probably due to another accident. Sonia and her dad declare that it’s time for another break. Our friend Sonia has invited us to spend Christmas at her grandmother’s house in the hills of southern Italy above the Greek ruins at Paestum. Each one of these hill towns has its own dialect and would be completely isolated if it weren’t for salt. During the Middle Ages, these villages were selfsufficient except for the need to trade their goods for salt. When Italy was united, the government controlled the salt industry to stop battles fought for salt and to impose a stiff tax. The old “T” signs at the tabacchi list their two products as tobacco and salt. Salt was once such a precious commodity that spilling the shaker at the table was a grave error. To be forgiven, toss a pinch over your shoulder or else your soul will haunt the house forever! These remote villages are notoriously superstitious. I spent a month in a hill town in the province of Lazio where the townsfolk were convinced a rich werewolf roamed the alleyways. A small boy told me the story with fear in his eyes about the licantropo (lycanthrope) who lived in a big house at the edge of town. Every full moon, he would stalk the town in search of water. Everyone would lock the doors and bolt the shutters as this man howled through the streets with a pack of stray dogs nervously following him but keeping their distance. The werewolf would go from one fountain to the next but could never quench his thirst. Some people would leave bottles of water out for him, which would be empty in the morning. The story ended anticlimactically, however, when the boy told me, “To solve his problem, the rich werewolf installed a pool in his backyard. Now when the full moon comes, he just takes a swim.” I asked the little boy if fear of werewolves was the reason that old ladies dumped buckets of water on my friends and me when we were on the streets late at night. He looked at me like I was crazy and replied, “No, that’s because you were loud.” A friend’s grandmother at another remote hill town remembered when her village was ruled by an evil Albanian baron. He refused to let his town join the rest of the united Italy, and the government had better things to do than lay siege to the tiny fortified hill town. The grandmother remembered that people working in the fields would bow in the dirt when he passed on his horse and never dare look at him. If he wasn’t satisfied with their work, he’d haul them 138 Sunny Italy into his castle and fling them out into the fields with a catapult . One day he died on his porcelain toilet—the only one in town—but everyone, including his servants, were so afraid of him they wouldn’t go into the bathroom. He was there for a week. Getting to these little towns is not easy. To get to Piaggiane , the town where Sonia’s grandmother lives, her dad drives us eight hours from Modena, crammed into a tiny car in a traffic jam along with every southern Italian who works in the north and vacations in the south. We have pizza in Salerno south of Naples, but then hop in the car again for another two hours of...