Rosemary and Bitter Oranges: Growing Up in a Tuscan Kitchen Review

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(More customer reviews)Always on the lookout for eloquent voices on Italian food and life, I noticed a new release entitled "Rosemary and Bitter Oranges" by Patrizia Chen. Subtitled "Growing Up in a Tuscan Kitchen," the book piqued my interest on several levels. Rosemary and bitter oranges are strong ingredients, impossible for a cook to ignore. On the cover, a sepia snapshot of a pigtailed girl in a proper '50s cotton dress and sensible shoes smiled sweetly in a sun-dappled garden. The name Patrizia is certainly Italian, I thought, but "Chen" sounds Chinese. I was curious.
Patrizia was born just a few years after the end of WWII and grew up in a stately peach-colored home on Via Roma in the heart of Livorno, Tuscany's major port. Only a few years earlier, the large home had, of necessity, been abandoned by her family and had endured the abuse of occupying German soldiers.
Patrizia lived with her parents, grandparents, brother, two sisters, and the family cook Emilia.
The tension that existed between the culinary dictums of the patriarch Nonno GianPaolo and the talents of the cook Emilia play a central theme of the story and mirror Patrizia's personal journey from a well-bred Italian convent schoolgirl to an international journalist married to a Chinese American living in Manhattan.
Of her grandfather's table, Patrizia recalls, "The food was invariably white'uniformly white'and bland. Many souffleés, lots of sformati (timbales), paste al gratin, and beautiful fish'maybe a merluzzo (a small Mediterranean cod), steamed to perfection, with a whisper of extra-virgin olive oil. Food was judged by the same standard as fashion: spiciness was as vulgar as a skintight dress."
Of Emilia's kitchen, she recalls, "One day as I passed through the kitchen after playing in the garden, my senses were suddenly awakened, stirred by a vivid aroma that I had never experienced at the table with my family. Emilia was eating the meal she had prepared for herself. It was an explosion of colors: vermillion tomatoes, green basilico and parsley, and contrasting black pepper dots. And the smell! Pungent, strong, and exotic enough to stop me, and my seven-year-old nose, in my tracks."
After Emilia shares a sample with Patrizia, both lives are changed. Emilia teaches Patrizia to cook, and a special bond develops. "Now I knew that life'real life'happened behind the kitchen doors and not in the subdued, elegant atmosphere of my grandparents' dining room."
Seasoning the story are recollections of chickpea pancakes, sugar-coated doughnuts, chocolate ricotta and other comforting childhood snacks. Recipes for the signature Livorno dish cacciucco (seafood soup), minestrone, semolina gnocchi, chicken stew, coffee zabione and more are woven into the text. And black-and-white family photographs take us immediately back to postwar Italy.
Strong support characters are important to any good narrative and Patrizia supplies them. Her Mamma's bitter orange marmelade production becomes worthy of a minor opera. Her Nonna Valentina's whimsical creation of canary gelato, prepared from freshly fallen snow, evokes images worthy of Fellini.
Grazie, Patrizia for sharing.

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