In the sixties, my father built our cottage next to his brothers’ and sister’s on a large tract of land in Muskoka, outside of Huntsville; their propinquity ensured a practical and cultural ‘comfort zone’ not only within our extended family, but to the Italian community of Huntsville as well.
Mention Muskoka, and what leaps to mind is ruinously expensive lake front properties, and glossy features in Canadian House and Home of fabulous cottages artfully staged, framing their well-heeled, urban owners. But, there is another face to Muskoka. Italian immigration of the last century extended beyond Ontario’s urban centres as the men followed the railway north, many ending-up working in Huntsville’s tannery and playing in its ironically named Anglo-Canadian Leather Company Band. Eventually, some opened their own enterprises such as a macaroni factory, catering mainly to the needs of this community. Their cultural presence is all but invisible in Huntsville now, surviving in the few remaining lyrical patronymics such as Pesando, Strano and Terziano.
These were our family’s compares and comares, treated with the deference one shows to aunts and uncles. Each cottage season they came bearing trays of fluffy gnocchi, rabbits, and steaks of venison and moose, which were exchanged in our informal economy of hospitality with bags of panini, olive oil, salume and cheeses all brought from the city, and of course, my father’s wine. They would stay to catch-up on town gossip, play cut-throat games of bocce, then sit around the over-sized picnic table my father made to eat peppery capicollo, sweet wood-roasted peppers, tart pickled eggplant and salty black infornata olives washed down with fiery grappa. My father produced this deceptively innocent-looking liquor from the must left by the grape pressings, which were then distilled in a homemade contraption involving a kettle, fine copper pipe and endless patience.
The centre of our social and culinary lives was the outdoor brick barbeque built by one of my father’s friends, Rino, a convivial bricklayer of boundless energy and goodwill. It was the focus of our family’s meals and gatherings and stood for twenty-five years on our tract of the Gatto family’s campo before needing repair.
Our cottage summers were spent grilling all manner of beasts and vegetables ‘sulla legna’, that is over the glowing coals of a hardwood fire. The tannins and sugars in the wood imparted a smoky-sweet aroma and flavour; the slow cooking produced an incredible succulence over which formed a delicious amber crust which needed no condiment. My favourite was rabbit bathed in white wine, olive oil, a bit of garlic and a brush of rosemary. The autumn roasting of bushels of sweet red peppers, to be preserved later in olive oil, garlic and basil, was the bitter-sweet dénouement to yet another cottage-closing season.
This is where, every summer, as children, my three sisters and I and our numerous cousins safely ran amok from cottage to cottage begging treats and slugging back Freshie, building forts and chasing jack rabbits into the musty, insect-infested hinterland that was the woods between and around our cottages. Except when we weren’t crashing into the rollers on Kinsmen’s beach, cannon-balling from the floating docks, or scavenging for pop bottles to redeem for penny candy at Mrs. May’s snack bar.
In the evening, after dinner, which quelled the queasiness brought-on by too much sun, sweets and excitement, we were bathed from a basin, the scorch of our sunburns soothed by applications of Noxzema, generous dollops scooped with the first and second fingers from a beautifully heavy, intensely lapis-blue jar I loved to hold; our oozing mosquito-bites doused with my father’s wine vinegar, administered from an old wicker-clad Chianti bottle, reserved for the purpose. This stinging balm did the trick but left us reeking of Carignano, still the uva of choice for legions of wizened, southern Italian winemakers.
Sometimes my uncle Graddy would pile us and one aged female Boxer, named Sam, into his wood-panelled station-wagon for a trip to the Tastee Freeze which purveyed soft ice cream the texture of molten latex: we loved it. Then, on to the town’s dump to contemplate the sad, nocturnal foraging of its resident black bears. Afterwards, snuggled in soft flannel ‘jammies’ we’d roast gooey marshmallows over the crackling flames of the barbeque, listen in the distance for the faint howl of wolves and stare into the flames as if soothsayers, conjuring imaginary beasts and ghostly spirits, frightening each other as much as ourselves.
As the flames turned to glowing embers, our high spirits finally mollified, we were distributed amongst our respective parents and delivered to the treacherous kingdom of slumber which was the thick-black shadow-land of our crowded cottage bedrooms where black bears lurked in the wardrobe, hungry wolves smacked their lips in the darkened corners and giant rabbits leered from beneath our beds.
Of all the things I looked forward to when my family and I travelled to Italy a few years ago, nothing excited me as much as the chance to learn authentic Italian cooking from an authentic Italian cook. In fact, when I looked for lodging in Tuscany, I considered only places that offered cooking classes. It meant that we had to stay in the Italian version of Podunk (or, as we say in Yiddish, Yechupetsville), miles from the highway and at the top of a winding road that was so narrow I could stand in the middle and touch the trees on either side. But I figured the culinary payoff would be worth the inconvenience.
Except that there was no culinary payoff. After we checked in and I went to the office to set up a lesson schedule, I was informed that the owner wasn’t offering classes that week. I never did find out why but, as a result, my Italian cooking experience consisted of boiling dried pasta from the local grocery store, and watching my husband and a friend grill a frozen pizza on the barbecue in our backyard.
The most important cooking lesson I learned: always make sure that your kitchen has an oven before you buy a frozen pizza at the grocery store.
I also learned an important lesson in culinary humility: you don’t necessarily have to travel thousands of kilometres to the source to learn the secrets of ethnic cooking. As it turned out, the best Italian cook I know was a 10-minute ride from my house in Edmonton.
Antoinette was born and raised in Toronto by parents who emigrated from Italy in 1960. They named her Antonietta, but because only they could pronounce it properly, she eventually opted for Antoinette. In 2000, she moved to Edmonton, where her husband became the assistant general manager of the Edmonton Oilers hockey team. I met her through a mutual friend in Toronto, who rightly figured that the two of us would hit it off.
During the seven years that Antoinette lived in Edmonton, her mother came to visit once, during tomato canning season. I never saw Antoinette during that time: it seemed that canning was some sort of secret Italian ritual passed down from mother to daughter. I could only imagine the two of them, holed up in the kitchen crushing bushels of tomatoes, cooking them, putting them into jars with just the right amount of basil, and storing them in the basement so that Antoinette could make spaghetti sauce all winter long.
That sauce is the best I’ve ever tasted. Because it’s not cluttered with unnecessary extras — not so much as an onion or a mushroom — all you taste is the deeply satisfying richness of slow-cooked tomatoes with just the right amount of salt and pepper to bring out their best. It’s not quite runny, but neither is it like that inert store-bought stuff that doesn’t so much pour as plop out of a jar. I swear it has medicinal properties, but Antoinette insists it’s the veal bone she puts in for flavour. Whatever the secret, after I tasted that sauce, nothing else compared.
It never occurred to me to ask her to teach me to make it. I assumed