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08/21/2007 Archived Entry: "One More Calabrian Restaurant"

Let me tell you about just one more restaurant in Sila, the forested mountains of Calabria, because it was such a delightful experience. Naturally, it was a recommendation of Mirella and Barone Maurizio Barracco. It is part of their Old Calabria route, named after a 1915 book by the English writer Norman Douglas, who made a trip through the region in the early 20th century (including mule rides):

La Casella is, as it sounds, in a little house. It is not its smallness, however, that makes it hard to find. It is, as its owner, Giuseppe Guarascio, says, in an area that looks like bombed out Iraq. He said this on the cell phone while trying to give us directions to the restaurant. In a zillion years you would not have traveled down this stone-littered dirt road unless someone told you there was a pot of gold at the end – well, at least a good pot of pasta. It turns out not to be a war zone, just road and building construction that gives it that air of danger. When the new street is finished, and the modern houses along it are complete, inhabited and landscaped, La Casella will look even more like what it is – an anachronism.

The old house is where Giuseppe grew up. I believe he said his parents and grandparents grew up in it, too. It looks like they were poor, although behind it, safely away from the dust being kicked up by the back-hoes and tractors out front, is a pretty garden, off of which is the kitchen door, the domain of his wife, Maria Talerico (in Italy, women retain their so-called maiden names), the mother of his 12 children. I am pretty sure he didn’t raise them in this house. I do know he worked for a time in Arizona and Nevada while Maria stayed behind. I also found out that he was in the Vietnam war and had been badly shot up. He became an American citizen by enlisting in the Marines. That’s as much of his/their personal story as I got, although we were all quite curious and he was totally open, as southern Italians usually are.

There are lots of geraniums and petunias and other flowers in the garden. Inside, there are several dining rooms, all quite rustic with stone floors, beautifully crude wooden tables, old country things and farm implements. It is a very atmospheric place. An old Enrico Caruso recording was playing when we walked in. The slightly scratchy sound really made us feel we were going back in time. There were only two parties eating this afternoon. At the next table were two very well-dressed couples, one of whom lived in Crotone, the nearest big town, on the sea, in this case the Ionian (may I suggest that you look at a map). Their friends were visiting from way up north, Brescia. Our table – for me, Bob Harned, Cecilia (La Baronessa), Iris Carulli and Laura Evans -- was already set with an array of antipasti. Of course, since he had stayed on the phone to get us there, he knew the moment we were going to pull into his driveway, so a few dishes were still hot out of the fryer. There is no menu at La Casella. You eat what Maria is making that day.
Maurizio told us that before we arrived, and prepared us for the supposed simplicity of her food, which wasn’t that simple after all.

There was a plate of sautéed red and green sweet peppers, strangely, I thought, still with their seeds, but no worse for that – and good roughage I figured. There were small toasts – crostini – smeared with rosamarino, which is new-born anchovies, so tiny you can barely make them out, preserved in hot red pepper paste. A small colorful bowl held boconcini di fior di latte, in other words (English ones) small balls of cow’s milk mozzarella. Another bowl had black oil-cured olives flecked with hot pepper flakes. You can’t escape hot pepper in Calabria unless you give up a dish or two or three. Batter-fried zucchini flowers were filled with tomato and anchovy. As we started to dig in, Giuseppe brought us large slices of fried potato – Sila is famous for its potatoes -- sandwiching melted cheese. We couldn’t figure out what the cheese was and we were shocked to find out it was Kraft single slices, the white ones. Maria has tried many different cheeses, Giuseppe said, but only Kraft melts as well as this. Cecilia and I were skeptical. We’ll try it with cacciocavallo, we said to each other. But the potatoes were very, very good.

A big treat was preserved pork neck, a thick slab, like bacon, fried and put on bruschetta, a thick slice of wonderfully dense bread toasted over a charcoal fire. For the sake of the diet, I trimmed the fat off the meat, and took only a tasting bite of the bread, something I never would have done before.

The pasta was scialatielli, or what everyone these days is saying is scialatielli. The real scialatielli (see my book, Naples at Table: Cooking in Campania) are from Amalfi and the dough itself is made with milk and cheese and either basil or parsley. Maria’s long strands of thick spaghetti-like pasta were fresh and tender, not like the dried and often overly tough pasta that goes by the name, too, and they were dressed with a golden puree of zucchini flowers. I detected a hint of saffron. And, in fact, this was the second time I’d eaten zucchini flowers in Calabria with saffron. It ends up, Calabria has a small production of this most precious spice, actually the stigmas of a fall-blooming crocus. I’d seen the crocus growing last October in Maratea, in nearby Basilicata, but they were decorative flowers in the entry garden of a restaurant. I had no idea that there was actually a commercial production of saffron in Calabria and Basilicata. It is not a big enough production to be world-famous or anything, but there’s enough around to add this exotic flavor to some some local dishes. Let me tell you, nearly tasteless squash flowers can you use some added flavor.

Our main course was both loin of suckling pig and meat cakes – polpette in Italian, but not actually meat balls, for which that word is also used. These were flattened cakes of mixed veal and pork, with pecorino, garlic, and parsley for flavor, plus some soaked bread to make them light. And they were dredged in breadcrumbs, as I must say we now do in my classes, to give them a crunchy crust. Inside, they were meltingly succulent and light. It is Maria’s expert hand, no recipe, that makes them this good.

There were several desserts, all very antique recipes for dry things. In this case I didn’t feel at all deprived. True to form and her -- let’s say contrary taste, Iris loved the stone-hard mostaccioli, a pastry that does not deserve the name dessert, although it is unquestionably a genuine article of Calabria’s impoverished past. To me, it is one of those things you’d have to have as part of your heritage to appreciate. The dough is made with nothing but flour and honey. No eggs. No leavening. No fat – oil or butter. Inside was some chocolate and almonds. It is for her love of desserts like this that Iris keeps her gorgeous teeth in top condition – I am sure.

Cecilia, Iris and Laura left Bob and me behind in Torre Camigliati -- to rest a little, and to putter around a bit. The property is heaven. Our room was heaven. The Barracco family is heaven. We were in heaven. We wanted to savor it.