Schart’llat

Schart'llat
I would love for you to go to the Smithsonian Magazine blog called Inviting Writing to read the story I wrote for them about schart'llat.  But here it is in a nutshell, if you insist.  The invite to write was a call for stories about Christmas cookies that mean a lot to your family.  We have many family recipes, and schart'llat is so unusual in many ways.  First of all the spelling is likely found only in Faeto, Italy.  The pronunciation and description of the pastry is similar to other southern Italian regions where they call it scallidde. But I don't have anywhere to reference this recipe, other than my dad, Pasquale.  He remembers them from his childhood, and I remember them from mine.  With the advent of the internet I was sure one day to find them.  But it wasn't until I was back in Faeto and asked my new friend Peppino and he know what they were and provided the spelling, but no secret family recipe.  Here is the way I made them, and there is room for changes for sure.  If I am ever lucky enough to go to pastry school I would know what to do, but for now, they get very puffy.  I suspect it is the large quantity of baking powder.

schart'llat a.k.a. Pasquale's Italian Wonders

Pasquale's Italian Wonders

7 eggs, beat well
add 2T sugar while beating
add 1 teaspoon salt, 2 heaping teaspoons baking powder and
4 1/2 cups flour
Knead in 7 Tablespoons melted Crisco until dough is smooth.

Rest the dough covered for 5 minutes, and cut in half.  Roll out as thin as possible and cut into long strips with a fluted pastry wheel.  The strips should be no wider than 1/2".  Roll it into a spiral, pinching as you go, because when it hits the hot oil it will puff and unwind.

Fry in hot oil (about 338 degrees) until browned and flip them over to cook evenly.

Drain on paper and you can store them covered.  When ready to serve make topping.

1 cup honey
1/2 sugar (I don't usually add this)
1 T water
1T lemon juice
Stir on stove until thick and slightly amber colored.  Drizzle over schart'llat and sprinkle with chopped nuts.  Traditionally they are stacked in a pyramid shape before the topping.  I like them in a smaller group on a plate.

These take me back to another time, another house and my dad standing over the hot oil trying to make them look like his mom's.  And here I am, all these years later, a different house, trying to make them look like his.  Full circle.  Merry Christmas.  Pull out an old family recipe and get in there and bake!

The Internet Shrinks the World:Family Reunion

The Great Road Trip Continues

So I blog about a lot of stuff. I get a little feed back from Blogger that tells me what people are hitting with their searches. Apparently Faeto, Italy has brought me a few searchers, and here they found the food I love. And Faeto, Italy again, where they would learn about my trips there and the charm of Faeto and Celle. I am very proud of my Italian hometown. My Grandfather and Great Grandfather as well as my Grandmother all came from this charming mountain village. Another Faeto, Italy post is here with some of those details and a tribute to my dad and his ancestry. Periodically I get a comment from someone who has ancestors from Faeto. The names are familiar from the streets, the cemetery and sometimes the same as mine. Petitti.

So one day not so long ago, I got a comment from a Bob Petitte. He thought his family name had changed from Petitti. He told me about his grandfather coming over, and his dad going to his cousin Patsy's farm in Dundee. Hmm. I was curious. My dad and Grandfather are both Patsy, also known as Pasquale. And, they lived on a farm in Dundee. He left his email so I contacted him and gave him some info and asked him what else he knew. He sent a picture that made me, my dad and my Uncle Mike all drop our mouths. It was of his grandfather and his great uncles. And there in that photo is my Great Grandfather. The exact photo found on his tombstone in Mt. Carmel. We were related.

The tallest gentleman is my Great Grandpa Vito Petitti

When we began planning the summer adventure, I emailed Bob and he agreed to have dinner with our entourage. So we found a pizza place, casual, loud and perfect for our large 20+ group. Bob is just a little older than I, but his grandfather was the last of something like 11 children, so his family tree is essentially a generation behind mine. It also means that most of Bob's family tree has passed. How wonderful that we could introduce him to all these new relatives.
I have started a new blog called Faeto in hopes that people will google and get there. I would love to have a meeting place and find family, friends, distant relatives. We hope one day to have a Faeto reunion. Now that would be quite a story!

Dinner in the Style of Celle di San Vito

Dinner in Italy. Sounds romantic, luxurious, decadent and delicious. While traveling in October with my parents and sister, we went to this little town, Celle di San Vito for lunch. I am sorry I don't know the name of the restaurant, but I doubt there is more than one or two there, and I believe it is really famous for its pizza. Pepino, our friend from Faeto really wanted us to go to dinner there, but Lori, my sister and driver was pretty adamant about going to this village in daylight. As navigator, I was a little surprised at her lack of adventure, I mean she was a trained stuntwoman, how hard is it to drive around Italy? We were in Faeto, sitting on one side of a small mountain, and Celle was across the valley on another mountain.

It turned out to be a wise decision for a number of reasons. First of all it was cold and rainy so, not a lot to do in Faeto. Second, the road was full of hairpin curves and one portion was down to a single lane where it had washed away, (gulp, that's me swallowing the crow), and last, based on the amount of food we consumed, we could have never gone to bed within hours of eating. I declared it the best meal of the trip. Nothing fancy, nothing exotic, nothing new to my palate. It was so delicious, the table next to a fire, it was perfect. This weekend I duplicated this simple meal for a few appreciative friends. The photos are from the Italian dinner, with the exception of the table setting, the cannoli and the pizzelle.


I rearranged my house last year and turned my keeping room into the eating area and the table is next to the fireplace. We started with Antipasti. A platter of prosciutto and salami, bruschetta which was grilled bread with fresh chopped tomatoes and extra virgin olive oil, and finally assorted olives, marinated mozzarella and peppers. The olives and mozzarella were the only additions, otherwise it was the same as in Celle. Sadly, I didn't have Anna Sabatino's bread to make my bruschetta. We sipped red wine and savored the smell from the oven.

For Primo we had baked pasta. The pasta in Celle was apparently hand rolled, like a gemelli, but I found Torchetti, imported from Italy and made on 150 year old bronze molds. I made a marinara with Pomi tomatoes and added some mild Italian sausage. The sauce cooked all afternoon, and at the end I added a Tablespoon of homemade pesto for a little brightness. I tossed the sauce with cooked (al dente) pasta, added a few chunks of mozzarella and baked it for about 25 minutes in a very shallow dish. In Celle, I am certain it was baked in a wood fired oven, it was crusty on the top and the sauce was sweet and burnt in places. In Celle it was served in individual terra cotta type vessels that were shallow and held in the heat on that chilly day. Mine was equally as delicious.

For Secondi, we had grilled pork chops that had been marinated in extra virgin olive oil, lemon zest and bay leaves. And for Contorni we had roasted potatoes and salad. The potatoes were not as crispy as they were in Celle, and I opted to not make them with the sausage, but I tossed the wedges with olive oil, garlic and onions and baked it in a hot oven. I think the potatoes cooked with the sausage would make a fine winter meal on its own. The salad was simple, mixed greens with white wine vinegar and olive oil. The salad is last, that is the way we always eat it at my house, and in Celle too.





We then brewed some coffee (no espresso here) and poured a little Sambuca. In Celle we had fresh roasted chustnuts (cue the music, Chestnuts roasting on an open fire.... but as wonderful as they smell, they are too mushy for me. We opted for Dolci and had handmade cannoli and pizzelle, and more Sambuca. Many of our guests had never had Sambuca con la mosca which translates to Sambuca with ants. Really, it is 3 coffee beans which represent health, happiness and prosperity.
It was a great dinner. Fun to relive it and tell about my great Italian roadtrip. Everything I made will be standards in my recipe repetoire, but not all at once! Buon Apetito!

Where I Come From: Part 2

This insert is dated Aug. 2011, I encourage anyone with Faeto roots to head over to Faeto.blogspot.com.
So I have blogged about my Croatian/Bosnian adventure and the maternal side of the family history, now for my paternal heritage. The last part of the great European adventure was spent in Faeto, Italy. Faeto is a small town in the Puglia region about an hour from Foggia, unless of course I am navigating the terribly marked roads, then it could take closer to 2 hours. Faeto clings to a rocky hillside, probably looking very much as it did when my grandfather left there at the age of 14. This was my second trip there, and it was as moving as the first. But the first must be revisited to bring perspective.

In 2003, my entire family, 23 of us went to Italy. We were celebrating my parent's 50th Anniversary and saw Italy in our own bus. We hit the highlights, David, the Leaning Tower, Ponte Vecchio, the Coliseum, the Vatican and Amalfi. But hands down the highlight was the culmination of the treacherous drive on the narrow roads to Faeto. The last few miles are canopied by trees that were in blazing color. The bus parked at the edge of town, and our new internet friends met us for the day, we had 3 guides to help us with the language. Faeto has a heavy French dialect and the Italian there is different than any other region.
We began at the small farmer's market where this cute old man walked up to me and and said "Who are you?" And I said, "We are Petittis." He smiled and said "So am I". And that's how it was. We were quite a sight as our mob walked the small cobblestone streets my grandparents walked. We made offerings in the church where they were baptized and walked Vico Valentino, the oldest street, dating to the 15th century and named for the women of my family, sisters or cousins Rose and Maria Valentino who married the Petitti men.

Six years later we took the same walk on a similar fall day. The air was heavy with the smell of fires in the small homes, and the cemetery was filled with Petittis, certainly we all share the same blood. The cemeteries are peculiar here, perhaps because of the rocky terrain or the wet winters, but they do not bury the dead. They have large walls like a mausoleum and a headstone, wired with electricity so they have a light on all the time. The addition of a photo is also very common, and a little eerie for sure, but a rarity in the U.S., although my great-grandfathers grave in Chicago bears his photo. Sitting alone in the cemetery on a small rock wall, was an old lady, wearing black and saying her rosary. The whole town has been burying their dead in this small cemetery, it is a moving place.
We have very little information on the lineage of the family. My great grandfather came here as a young man and was murdered in Cleveland, OH. My grandfather was just 14 when he made the trip from Naples, just a year after his father died. They were so willing to walk into the great unknown for a better life. My own dad says that there was very little information about Faeto from his parents. Like many immigrants, you were careful to only speak English and absorb the new culture. No one wanted to be labeled an immigrant, they wanted to be Americans. My grandfather served in WWI to become a citizen. The history of the Italian heritage was literally lost over the years. But there is something oddly familiar and comforting in Faeto. Maybe because it is so small and after two trips I know the town like the back of my hand. Maybe it is because although my grandfather came to America, he left many family members in Faeto, and the names in the cemetary and the faces in the windows are my cousins, many years removed.

On this trip my parents, my sister Lori and I arrived in Faeto at dusk and found our hotel in the small park in the woods outside of Faeto. The lights were aglow and we entered the modern building and found no one there. We laugh to think that this could never happen in the U.S. There on the counter was a note (in Italian of course) and 2 room keys, skeleton keys, no less. We brought in our luggage and hunted for the bar for a little wine to take the chill off. Our host arrived shortly thereafter and spoke NO English. Our old friend from the last trip, Pepino, came to have dinner with us at the hotel in the woods and we celebrated my dad's 80th birthday that night. Imagine, celebrating your birthday in the town where your own father lived 100 years ago? It was a poignant evening. The food was rustic and home made and delicious. I love a 3 hour meal, what a wonderful way to live!

We spent a few days exploring the area, eating the wonderful comfort food of Italy, and meeting the locals. One afternoon we walked into the bakery. We had been eating this wonderful bread everywhere in the area, and the small bakery where they bake it was warm and inviting. We sampled the day's offerings, my favorite being the bread stuffed with sweet cipollini onions. The funny thing was Anna the bakery owner was sitting with her laptop surfing facebook! I gave her my card and she friend requested Lori and I. Too bad my Italian is pitiful and we can't really chat, I am very dependent on Google translator. She especially loved the photos I posted of her, her family the bakery and some of the colorful locals. It was a short visit to Faeto, but we have accepted the fact that indeed, this is where we come from. Many of the little details are faded and lost, and that's okay. We embrace what is left, we hope the grand children and their children will someday drive under those canopied trees and walk Vico Valentino, pray for the Petittis buried in the quaint cemetery and feel the same connection to generations of family.