Villa Malaparte
Guide Of Capri
May 31, 2023
February, last month of the winter: during this month the Island, still asleep, embrace its inhabitants and its few visitors with the suggestion of other times.
February is the perfect moment to let yourself be transported to an old Capri, thanks to a wild weather and the flavors of its ancient, warming, food: a poor cuisine, where people had to make do with the island resources of food to bring restoring and tasty dishes to the table. The biting wind and the turbulent sea prevented any connection with the mainland, and so the supply of ingredients others than those present on the island itself was not permitted.
During the winter time you can discover the other side of an island that has host the whole world but also had to deal with loneliness and nothingness.
An emblematic dish of this art of getting by in the kitchen is the Minestra Maritata. In its preparation, garden crops and wild herbs come together: bitter, nutritious and resistant, capable of growing without too much care on the calcareous rock of Capri. Broccoli (torzelle), chard, cardoons, borage, escarole, cabbage and chicory. The most rigorous island tradition wants there to be at least seven, to be collected in strategic points of the island. Some along the Pizzolungo path, others on Monte Solaro, others still for the Migliara and the Faro road. Of course, beyond the canon, in every house they used the ones that were available at that time.
The Minestra Maritata was not born on the island, it was imported into the coastal countries of the Mediterranean by Spanish sailors at the end of the 1500s. However, it has found such fertile ground in Capri that it can be fully considered an ancient local preparation. The Olla Potrida, as it was called in the original language, spread in fact in those places whose inhabitants had to deal with the scarcity of food. As Claudio Novelli recounts in his “Giallaranci mussels mad with light” (a collection of recipes and literary evidence on Capri cuisine), it once took about eight hours to travel to reach Capri, provided the weather conditions were favourable. And on the mountainous and calcareous island, barren and devoid of springs, every resource had to be used with care and parsimony.
Nothing was thrown away in Capri, and all was cooked and eaten of the rare animals that were slaughtered: whether they were old and useless for producing milk or eggs or had grown up for that purpose. And so the less noble pieces of the beasts ended up ennobling, together with the very precious oil and some cheese rinds, all the vegetables that could be found. In the large pot in the center of the fireplace, such as the women who warm themselves preparing the soup, all the herbs that were foraged joined the “piece of meat”, not a noble one, precisely, but bones, tongue or whatever it was brought home. And so the “marriage” could be celebrated in a long simmering cooking. Those orphan bones of the pieces of meat sold to the rich, gave the soup the scent, the pleasant scent of the meat. And the idea as well as the smell of a special dish hovered throughout the house, to be enjoyed all together in a moment of family joy.
Capri, 19 marzo 1930
Cara, dolce, amata Konstantiskaja Orsolinska, tre giorni fa sono entrato nel bagno a pianterreno della Villa Pierina non solo con l’animo straziato e dilaniato per la notizia della brutta accoglienza che il pubblico di Mosca aveva riservato alla mia Cimice e che la critica aveva cercato in tutti i modi di schiacciare sotto i piedi, ma soprattutto con atroci dolori causatimi dalla minestra con la quale mi avevi accolto di ritorno dalla gita al Monte Solaro. Miserabile destino è quello dell’uomo, quando corpo e anima soffrono insieme. Incastrato tra la vasca e il lavabo, la mia disperata solitudine riflessa nello specchio, le torzelle e le verze giocavano a rimpiattino con i miei sentimenti più accesi, le cimette di rapa e i broccoletti deridevano il mio mormorante strazio per la subitanea e repentina dipartita da te. Da te, dalla quale ero stato costretto a fuggire, e dalle tue mani lievi, che con gesto greve avevano profuso locine e cotiche, salsicce e tracchiolelle, in un afrore appassionato di aglio e peperoncino. Avevo ancora nelle narici gli effluvii che questa tua druidica amorosa pozione aveva sparso per il tuo boudoir impregnando tulle, trine e lenzuola nel suo lungo sobbollire. Così, soffrendo e gemendo, non potendomi allontanare anche perché nella concitazione del momento avevo dimenticato da te i miei pantaloni di flanella grigia, su un lungo nastro di serica cellulosa, tra una crisi e l’altra, riassaporando le astute scorze di parmigiano e provolone, persa ormai la nozione del tempo, disperando del futuro, ho composto così, per ingannare il mio lo martoriato, il mio ultimo sforzo, e per un senso di doverosa correttezza nei tuoi confronti e di verità storica, l’ho intitolato appunto “Il Bagno”. Non mi resta che esserti grato, come al solito, ma ti prego dolce micetto, la prossima volta andiamo a cena fuori. Depero mi ha detto che alla locanda delle Grottelle si mangia benissimo e soprattutto “leggio, lieggio” come usano dire qui.
Il tuo cucciolo fedele, Vladimir.
Lettera di Vladimir Majakovskij tratta da “Giallaranci mitili impazziti di luce” di Claudio
Novelli, Edizioni La Conchiglia.
Articolo a cura di Mariapia Ricci
Foto a cura di Mariapia Ricci e Alfonso Catuogno
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