Italian Voices: Making Minnesota Our Home

Chapter 8. Italy at Table

· 8 · Italy at Table A tavola, non si invecchia mai. One never gets old at table. Italian proverb As is true for many immigrant groups, food played an important role in maintaining the Italian Americans’ heritage. Food figures in every chapter of this book because of its cultural significance to Italians . Food was important not only on special occasions, but in everyday life as well. Italians in Minnesota were very particular about food items; Amalia Scipioni of Hibbing was not the only immigrant who insisted, “Tonno Genova [Genoese tuna] packed in olive oil—it’s the best!” Even in the poorest immigrant households, Italian women served their families substantial meals of tasty traditional foods. Housewives kept the range or coal stove fired up day and night, for there was always something simmering on the back burner. Garden vegetables in season, olive oil, and garlic were the ruling trio of every kitchen. Chicken provided many meals, but never a dead chicken purchased from a grocery store. Santina Gambucci of Eveleth helped many families who lacked certain manual skills or harbored squeamish reservations: “Everybody came to me to help them out: ‘Santina, kill my chicken!’ And I did. Fatto cosi! [That’s how it’s done].” Her twisting hand movements and facial tic, pantomiming the act of killing the bird, added meaning to the words.1 The typical walk-in pantry of an Italian immigrant family sheltered strings of garlic, garlands of red peppers, and dried oregano 219 and basil; boxes of confetti (candy-covered almonds); crusts of parmigiana cheese and dried pasta wrapped in a linen towel; jars of canned plum tomatoes; bottles of black peppercorns to be ground fresh as needed; jars of marjoram, rosemary flowers, and bay leaves; crocks of brined black olives; dried fava beans; a can of dried ceci (chickpeas, lately becoming better known under their Spanish name, garbanzos ); jars of whole noci moscate (nutmeg); cheeses like pecorino and caciocavallo hanging from hooks; and flour. If the ever-simmering pot on the stove maintained a welcoming atmosphere in Italian immigrants ’ kitchens, the pantry provided a constant source of creative inspiration to the cook. For many years, a number of Italian ingredients and holiday foods were not available in Minnesota at local stores, especially in smaller towns. Attempting to maintain traditions to the letter could present both a hardship and a challenge to the cook. Families tried to overcome American stores’ poor selection by gardening, foraging, hunting and trapping, and forming impromptu collectives to import the foods they could not otherwise obtain. Living Off the Land Although most Italian immigrants had been contadini (peasant farmers ) at home, in the United States they settled where the jobs were, with no money to buy land. One day I asked my father, as he rested on his hoe, why he worked so hard gardening after putting in a tenhour workday. “Gardens are a poor man’s farm,” he replied, adding that homegrown produce added real wealth to an immigrant family ’s larder. His answer hardly surprised me. In the Old Country, part of what kept the contadini in a socially and economically inferior position was their lack of land; in the United States, the cost of food in remote locations threatened to create an inescapable cycle of economic dependence. Gardens were therefore not a hobby, but a response to the economic realities of the United States, as well as a reaction against the socioeconomic rigidity of the Old Country. Italian immigrants favored dishes with fresh vegetables, like antipasto , hot and cold hors de’oeuvres. Because traditional Italian Italy at Table 220 cooking is firmly rooted in the land, gardens played a part in maintaining traditions. Housewives grew tomatoes in order to make their own conserva, the balls of tomato paste that are the backbone of many Italian sauces. Upper Levee housewives in 9 dried their paste on porches and shed roofs, then stored the balls in crocks; in later years, they sealed it in quart jars, adding a basil leaf and a teaspoon of salt to each jar. Immigrants like Rocco Carozza in Kitzville (near Hibbing) and Eugene DeCenzo at Lake Vermilion (near Tower) laboriously tilled their gardens by hand each spring in the early twentieth century, a practice they continued into their nineties, trying to use all of the very short growing season of northern Minnesota. Families might depend for an entire year on whatever they could...