You are all invited to an Italian wedding feast. Dust off your gladrags and let Angela Petch tingle your taste buds with an extract from the final chapter of ‘Tuscan Roots’.
Extract
The railings on the steps to Il Casalone have been festooned with laurel branches, garlands of white roses and long strands of variegated ivy and Teresa and her friends from the village have been busy for days in the kitchen, banning Anna from the food preparations. The wedding meal and sharing of food is every bit as important a ritual as the nuptial mass. Tables are piled with a feast of colourful, appetising food, spread on freshly laundered Busatti linen. A warm, balmy October has followed a wet summer and so a separate round table is arranged outside on the terrace to hold a whole Parmesan cheese, cut into squares and served with sparkling Prosecco to each guest as they arrive. Teresa and her team have been busy with starters of roast peppers, courgettes and aubergines, pastries with asparagus and artichokes and melting soft cheeses, home-made cappelletti, small hat-shaped ravioli stuffed with chicken breast, lean beef, lemon zest and nutmeg – and tagliatelle, with Anna’s favourite fresh tomato and basil sauce.
And for the main course, Teresa carries in a platter of whole roast suckling pig served with tiny potatoes kept from the ‘orto’, roasted in olive oil and pungent rosemary, a salad of flowers: nasturtiums, borage and marigold petals with young dandelion leaves, wild sorrel and rocket picked by Teresa and her girlfriends from the meadows around the village. And all this is to be washed down with glasses of full-bodied local Sangiovese and Chianti Classico.
End***
The food prepared by the locals, in the Italian Apennines, transcends time and bridges the gap between the generations. I enjoyed ‘the stuffed zucchini flowers, little squares of crostini topped with spicy tomatoes, liver pate and a creamy relish made from dandelion flowers, roasted bay leaves topped with ovals of melted cheese.’ Food is prepared: to celebrate feasts, to welcome people into the home, to celebrate family occasions and to woo.
Read Tuscan Roots, and you will not want to leave the romantic beauty of ‘indigo blue mountains’, or the ruins of Il Mulino (The Mill). You will be impressed with the bravery of the Italian community during the war, and you will not want to leave the blossoming romance. I highly recommend this book! Please read my whole review.
Angela has also published ‘Now and Then in Tuscany’: the sequel to Tuscan Roots.
She has published several stories in People’s Friend and is currently writing her third novel.
About Tuscan Roots
If you like Italy, you will enjoy this novel. A story of two women living in two different times. In 1943,in occupied Italy, Ines Santini’s sheltered existence is turned upside down when she meets Norman, an escaped British POW. Years later, Anna Swillland, their daughter, starts to unravel romantic and historical accounts from assorted documents left to her after her mother’s death. She travels to the beautiful Tuscan Apennines, where the story unfolds. In researching her parents’ past, she will discover secrets about the war, her parents and herself, which will change her life forever.
Angela’s Love Affair with Italy
I live in the beautiful Italian Apennines for several months each year. Such an inspiring location.
My love affair with Italy was born at the age of seven when I moved with my family to Rome where we lived for six years. My father worked for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and he made sure we learned Italian and visited many places during that time.
Later on I studied Italian at the University of Kent at Canterbury and afterwards worked in Sicily, where I met my husband. His Italian mother and British father met in Urbino in 1944 and married after a war-time romance.
Contact Angela
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AngelaJaneClarePetch/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Angela_Petch
Website: https://angelapetchsblogsite.wordpress.com/
Please see all my extracts at Book Extracts and my website and blog at JessieCahalin.com.
Sounds absolutely mouth-watering. I love Italian food and dream of a holiday in Tuscany.
Tuscany is breathtaking and the food is wonderful. You should plan a holiday. Did you know Angela has planned a writers’ retreat, at her Tuscan home, in September?
Reading this has made my mouth water. I love Italian food.
Thanks so much for posting this. We are due back in ten days and I always find it hard to say goodbye to UK (I know…I’m a spoilt brat) – but seeing the sunny photos of the produce this morning reminds me of one of the many reasons why we live over in Tuscany each summer. I bottle a lot of this produce to bring back to England for the winter but nothing beats picking the sun-kissed fruit and vegetables fresh from the vegetable garden.
I love your articles – they are so detailed and vivid. Thanks
The wedding feast is magical, and I was there helping to prepare the feast.
Returning home must be bitter sweet for you. However, I can completely see the attraction of summer in your glorious Italian home. It must be wonderful to immerse yourselves in the food, culture and language – such an inspiration. Do you think in Italian, when in Italy? It is also wonderful that your children and grandchildren get an insight into your husband’s heritage.
After I’ve been back for a while in Tuscany, I do start thinking in Italian and come out with some peculiar Italian expressions translated into English. For example: butto la pasta – means (iterally) I’m throwing the pasta. Italians say this when they’re about to put pasta into boiling water to cook. So, when I tell my husband “I’m throwing the pasta now”, he laughs.
Mouth watering!
Italy on a plate.
Reading this, I felt like a guest arriving for the wedding feast. Everything is made from simple, local ingredients which makes all the dishes delicious and even more appetising. And a feast for the eyes as well.
Wow, I felt as if I was there too. Perhaps, we were sitting beside each other.