A week before Christmas, we asked the chef of the Italian Palate, Filippo Sinisgalli, to let us share the traditions of the table that are most dear to him, starting with the Christmas Eve dinner.
Chef, you are a man from the south and it is therefore inevitable to start with Christmas Eve dinner, a moment felt more in the southern regions than in the north.
Southern man yes and – let me tell you – proudly Lucan. Mine is a land of simple traditions, especially if I think of the lifestyle of a few decades ago and the mountain village where my family lived for generations. For the dinner on Christmas Eve, today considered "lean" only due to the abstinence from meat, we actually ate a light meal without meat and very often without fish, but not for this not rich in symbols and values. Today it happens that the opulence of a fish-based table for Christmas Eve surpasses that of a Christmas lunch. My memory, on the other hand, takes me back to a dinner which included – all right – at least thirteen courses, to remember the twelve apostles and Jesus, but all based on different vegetables with the addition of a caciocavallo cheese prepared around May and kept for occasion. Avoiding meat had religious and respectful reasons, but it brought with it the advantage of not arriving heavy at lunch on the 25th which was truly a test for expert gastronomy cross-country skiers.
I know that your curiosity for cooking was born very early in you, so do you remember when - in your family - preparations for lunch began?
If I have to tell you when the preparations for Christmas really began, the thing I think about is not the few days before the 25th, when we worked on the specific courses, but the previous three weeks, the ones that started from the day of the Immaculate Conception. Christmas began there: it was the moment in which the markets were teeming with delicacies of all kinds and which people tried to hoard. Meat abounded with freshly slaughtered pigs or sausages of various ages, kids, lambs and a whole world of products. We went to markets rather than shops. It is no coincidence that one of my favorite paintings is Guttuso's Vucciria. It's an image that makes me plunge right back into my most intimate Christmas, made up of traditions and customs that repeated themselves every year in the same way but that I always looked forward to with great desire. A visit to the markets actually represented much more than a moment of purchase: negotiations often took place there, we talked about work, in fact - at least when I was a child - "the men of the house" went to the market and I... there I followed step by step. We went out very early in the morning. The grandfather, the uncle, the father left to immerse themselves, shortly thereafter, in feverish negotiations and little Filippo was invariably with them. I admit that more than once I have wondered why we really had to leave the house at six in the morning…because in winter and in the mountains I assure you it seemed like a bad time, but after the first burst of shivering it's a question I've always forgotten : too careful to try to understand what "the grown ups" said to each other.
And what business did they transact?
Consider that at the time everyone worked the land or raised livestock so they had, for example, the need to make the natural rotation of the fields; if you had used your land for wheat, the following year you could decide to sow alfalfa and you offered it for the animals of those who raised kids in exchange perhaps for meat that was not that of farmyard animals which – for better or worse – we all had . For others it could be useful to plant the seeds to then arrive around February, March at the time of transplanting. So the men, while they went about their business, returned home with "non-ordinary" provisions because the women always took care of the daily purchases and above all the preparations, at least in my house.
You said about Christmas Eve dinner, what are the other flavors that mean "Christmas lunch" to you?
To answer you let me open a parenthesis on the flavors of today's Christmas. Compared to the past, I now have the opportunity to buy particular products or raw materials and prepare some special dishes for my family. Let's even suppose that it suits me well, indeed, today I will be generous, let's imagine that I do very well: it will give us a good taste, a beautiful taste experience but deep down, on Christmas day, I - Filippo - risk feeling like a dish with little history. On the Christmas table that I carry with me, the one full of memories, different dishes arrived and many preserves that had been prepared months and months before. My grandmother's gardeners were a blaze of joy and colour, wild asparagus, preserved aubergines and courgettes, bran peppers ready for frying.
That stock of lids that released the vacuum in the jars was a noise that would give you the scents and flavors of vegetables kept there from long ago summer days. My mother didn't want her to open the jars in advance so, to keep me quiet, she told me that the preserves weren't ready yet. Today I know it wasn't true but I'm glad he told me: thus our Christmas table, in addition to giving us many good flavours, materialized before our eyes the many months of work carried out by the whole family, first working the land and then engaging in the kitchen. Around that table and on every plate was our family, the first and most important community and, on Christmas Day, it was also there to celebrate itself.
A perspective that certainly makes us reflect on the "value" that is attributed to a dish. At the beginning, however, we also talked about the performance of cross-country skiers: who won the marathon?
Over time we have certainly passed the scepter in turn, also because if we started with a sober boiled hen and bitter escarole then we continued with homemade pasta where the seasoning certainly did not skimp. A Christmas day classic was that morning awakening to the scent of meat sauce... because you had to carry on! The meats abounded as well as the fries up to desserts of all kinds. And then – who knows why, I haven't figured it out yet – came the final battle of dried fruit. In any case, the real winner wasn't the best placed in the Christmas marathon... that was - yes - very important but only one of the battles.
It's obvious! We certainly don't want to forget Santo Stefano.
No, no, those who register for the competition only do so if they are already sure of arriving in shape on Boxing Day. The medal goes to those who know how to honor even the worthy lunches and dinners of "leftovers" which, among other things, for those who do my job, are a moment of pure alchemy and fun.
Chef, how do you stay so fit?
Because fortunately – in a year – 360 days remain free. Many heartfelt wishes!
Consult the website of The Italian Palate.
