Love British Food Ambassador, Al Crisci, who is leading the revolution of food in our prisons, talks about where his passion for food comes from.
My first memories of food were sitting on my Godfathers, yes Godfathers, lap! Being fed large chunks of fried steak that he would cut up for me. I would swallow each piece whole to huge applause from my admiring parents. The adulation I received for eating as much possible, as quickly as I could, resulted in 3-year-old me looking like Humpty Dumpty. In the eyes of my Campanian family and friends, this was a good thing, a chubby 3-year-old boy happily stuffing his face with food.
Every two years I remember exciting 2-day car journeys to San Biagio, the small village in Italy my mother was from. Where we would have a month’s holiday in August. The reason it wasn’t yearly was my mum and dad had to save money for the trunks and cases of presents they had to bring with them, piled up on the roof rack, my Italian family thought that as my mother and father worked in England they were rich! My mother would bring all the food we needed for the journey. Rolls filled with breaded minute steaks, chicken breasts and pepperonata, slices of fried battered courgettes and aubergines. I remember my dad being passed cups of strong black coffee from a flask, to keep him awake while driving through the night. I would wake up to a cup of milky coffee that was tainted with flavours of plastic from the old flask. I loved it, it was holiday coffee to me.
When we arrived, I would steel myself for the torture to follow. Crowds of hairy chinned women that smelt of pigs and cows and dressed in black, grabbing and kissing me, paying particular attention to my chubby cheeks which they would grab hard and squeeze, leaving my face looking red raw.
The next day was about waiting for the news that I had arrived from England, spreading to my village friends. “American boy” they would say, even though I was from Epsom in Surrey. All I knew was that for some reason, when I was in the village all rules went out of the window, as far as my mum and dad were concerned I could do what I wanted, go where I wanted and EAT what I wanted. There was a whole village to look after me and nobody wanted to be on the receiving end of the wrath of my crazy uncle if something happened to me.
During the day, apart from playing football on the dusty village church football pitch, which incidentally, we needed permission from the priest to use if you wanted to avoid a whack, we would go foraging and exploring in the countryside on the outskirts of San Biagio. The excitement from my friends was contagious, I would happily follow them for hours through country farms and small holdings, wondering what amazing thing we were going to see, until finally we would stop and stare at a peach tree or a row of grape vines, “is that it” I would think, we have just walked for two hours for a peach or a few grapes! Now I don’t know if it was because we were so hot, thirsty and hungry after our trek but that fruit was the best I had ever tasted. No sooner had we finished eating though, my friends were charging down the road with me and a farmer in hot pursuit! It wasn’t foraging apparently, it was scrumping. We always got away, I think they were too afraid of my crazy uncle to catch us!
The bright, warm, sunny evenings would largely be spent with members of our large family sitting around a long table in the Cortile, eating food and talking about, yes, more food. Who made the best wine, cheese, flour for bread making, who reared the best meat and grew the best vegetables, fruit and nuts. Buffalo Mozzarella was a local speciality, revered all over Italy, so in the early hours of the morning, when it was still dark, my Zia Naninna would come and wake me from my slumber and we would walk to the local dairy, returning a few hours later with still steaming bags of fresh mozzarella, which we would eat for lunch. Not sliced delicately and eaten with a knife and fork but held whole and eaten like an apple with alternate bites of fresh warm casereccio bread.
My Zia Nannina was a very good, self-taught cook. She was inspired by the recipes handed down through the generations, by the matriarchs of San Biagio. She would make fresh pasta on the back of her wash board and cakes with fresh local ricotta and candied peel. My strangest memory was watching her make limoncello in her barn, straining it through an old pair of tights. I used to think “that’s what makes it so yellow”! I am laughing out loud as I write this but is all true, I did really think that.
In short, those heady lazy days were my inspiration for loving food so much and especially locally produced food. When my soon to be born granddaughter, is born this month I want to help her to experience what I experienced, I want to inspire her to make food an important part of her life but without making her into a Humpty Dumpty!
Al Crisci, MBE FCGI
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