I love dessert. And I always fight for the crunchy corners.
During a recent study trip to Isola del Giglio, close to the Tuscan coast, I learned that the gastronomic culture of the island is full of sweets. My colleagues and I had the opportunity to have a workshop on the schiaccia di patate, where I experienced the wonderfully crunchy corners of one of Giglio’s traditional desserts.
The schiaccia di patate – in English it could be mashed potatoe cake – is made with golden raisins (sultanas), pine nuts, sugar, olive oil, flour, salt and, of course, potatoes. I can’t remember if I ever ate something like this before. We tasted it the first time when we had dinner with some members of Slow Food Giglio in a tiny cellar where they used to produce wine. The town’s priest was with us too, and he almost finished all the wine by pretending he was at the Mass. We ate Giglio’s typical dishes: sausage, fish, tuna and, finally, the schiaccia. When they told us the main ingredients, I was a bit skeptical about turning potatoes into a sweet dish! But after the first bite, I was completely captured by the flavor and balance of the ingredients. The intense flavor of the potatoes matched with the olive oil and the uncountable quantity of sugar, and the pine nuts gave just the right crunchiness. The raisins, which I normally don’t like very much, were smartly hidden throughout the dough. There is no pastry in it, only the six, well-combined ingredients. The flavor of the potatoes, the yellow color of the dough - darker on top where the sugar and the pine nuts caramelized, and the little burnt sweetly crunchy corner were the ideal mix for the end of that dinner.
The baker of the dish was an old woman, ninety years old. When I listened for the first time to the story of this dessert, I could imagine her in front of the table with all the ingredients on top, and the attention she took in kneading with the only tool that all the advanced technologies in the world can’t substitute: the hands.
We should have had the workshop with her the next day, but she wasn’t able to come. For this reason Marisa, one of her nieces (who is really proud of her aunt’s schiaccia), came and showed us how to prepare it. She explained all the steps and gave us an ingredient list with no precise quantities. We continued to ask: “How many raisins? How much sugar? And how many pine nuts?”. With her smiling wrinkled eyes and her fingers literally in the pie, she would answer, : “A bunch, a little, when it’s enough”. Okay, but “how much is a bunch?”, “You have to feel every ingredient in your hand,” she said.
Unfortunately, the schiaccia wasn’t as pleasurable as the one of her aunt. I’m not saying it was bad, but we discovered that it was the first time she had ever cooked it. Only the day before she went to her auntie and tried to learn every single secret of her traditional recipe. “Yeah, I know it’s the first time, but don’t tell them,” she said to our trip leader. “Everyone always eats my aunt’s schiaccia, and mine wouldn’t be considered”. I snickered as I heard this, knowing that none of my English-speaking friends understood what she had admitted.
I suddenly felt very close to Marisa as I watched her olive-oil stained hands because they reminded me of watching my mom’s hands while baking.
When I was a child, my mom used to prepare lemon cream for me every afternoon: before studying, gym, or dance school. I’m still so enchanted by her hands that move the ladle in the pan, putting almost entirely the lemon peel to give more flavor in the cream, or on the dough with the right strength, and the beating of her ring on the sides of the baking tray. The candor while she chooses the ingredients for crostate, chocolate cream, or our typical southern dishes that my siblings and I often request, and that my dad always finishes. The ease and calmness she uses for every single dough is incredible:
“Could you pass me the flour, please?”
“Ok, mom. How much?”
“I don’t know. I’ll tell you when it’ll be enough. Let me feel it. And, could you warm the water?”
“Ok, is it enough?”
“I don’t know, I’ll see.”
Without any scale, she just gives quick look to the recipes, and even if they are new she always prepares the best.
My mom is part of the “old school knowledge” – nonna’s school – which is being appreciated nowadays as a fundamental part of the traditional cuisine. The old school way can be recapped in two words: ad occhio, translating roughly to “by the look of it”. The old school style that for some hours I found in the tiny place called Isola del Giglio thanks to Marisa, her aunt and the knowledge they held in their hands..
I wish I had known the ninety-year-old woman, but the flavor and the smell of her schiaccia and her niece’s words were so intense that I felt directly connected with her.
Photos by: Maya Wakita
Esther graduated with a degree in Language and Foreign Literature from the University of Bologna - in English, Spanish, and Hungarian. A queen of the Italian kitchen, she lives by the motto "when in doubt, fry" and is fascinated by the world of craft beers.