My new kitchen: the project
Plus, Greek yogurt cake with caramelized fig and a strange group of flatmates
Do you know another place like the kitchen that can produce food and memories equally? I do not. But beyond the family epic, there is more. For example, the historical evolution of a space that, if you think about it, began as an outdoor fire.
Reading tip
Bill Bryson, author of travel books, has written an itinerary based on exploring his Victorian cottage. It's unbelievable how far this quest takes:
B. Bryson, At Home: A Short History of Private Life
Brief history of the kitchen
I will be concise. I know you're waiting for the design of my new kitchen. However, before that, I wrote a short historical excursus about the most beloved room, keeping in mind at the beginning, it was an out-of-cave fire.
First, you will have figured out by now that if the fact does not originate in the Neolithic, I don't consider it.
I'm joking!
However, the Neolithic period was highly significant in human history. Just a moment before the first agricultural revolution, from which bread and pasta were born, two other relevant things happened. Man discovered fire (and how to handle it) and built the first earthenware pots. Without bothering philosopher and anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, although I recommend reading The raw and the cooked, fire and pots trigger the change that underlies the action of cooking.
And how far can you go with open-air cooking? Of course, it must be long before that brazier rises from the ground and becomes a fireplace, initially placed in the center of the room then leaning against a wall, but we know it will happen. We find the first rooms for preparing food in the homes of wealthy Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, and their pattern has remained unchanged for centuries.
Long afterward, nobles and bourgeoisie owned large kitchens in side wings or basement floors of castles and palaces, where servants prepared meals without disturbing family life with annoying smells or the passage of goods, servants, and errand boys. For everyone else, the kitchen remained an outdoor hearth or fireplace that dominated the only room in the house where men and animals lived together.
Reading tip
In the novel Miss Eliza's English Kitchen by Annabel Abbs, you find a detailed description of such a kitchen.
Kitchens were austere above or below ground for centuries, usually with a large fireplace, a huge table, and a few cupboards. With the Renaissance, the arrival of dishes, cutlery, and new cooking techniques required more pots and pans. From that moment, gradually, the kitchen's equipment and furnishings improved.
Between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the first wood, later coal, stoves were the only possible appliances. Finally, during the twentieth century, electrical technology gave a decisive boost to transforming the kitchen as we know it.
In Italy, between the 1950s and 1960s, the spread of refrigerators and stoves integrated with the oven transformed the kitchen into a space for storing and cooking. Finally, the push toward urbanization will sweep away the kitchenette, turning the kitchen into an airy and bigger room for preparing family meals and suitable for studying, receiving guests, and even relaxing while watching TV.
The kitchen is no longer a place to conceal but to show, and it becomes part of the living room.
Do you remember the arrival of the first refrigerator or perhaps some particular appliance? I, for example, remember very well the arrival of the chest freezer at home in the late 1970s.
The first kitchen never forgets
The first one I remember was a narrow kitchenette facing the rooftops on one side and open to the dining room on the other. And even though I was only three years old, I wouldn't say I liked it.
Then, my family left the Imola's downtown for a newly built neighborhood, more countryside than suburbia. And honestly, over the decades, things haven't changed since, on summer evenings, you can still chase fireflies and hear the clanking of night trains (personal note: I was born and raised in a small city close to Bologna).
The kitchen in the new home was habitable, and my family started to eat there. The space had a function connected with food, but it also developed a soul that turned it into the heart room as never before. We had a dining room for the guests, but the solemnly closed door emphasized the kitchen's nature as an intimate and private space (that was before the kitchen became part of the living room).
The decision: renovate
Until a few years ago, my day started early and ended late. I was often busy with my job also during the weekend. Let me tell you that my previous dog, Emma, thought I was a guest and not a family member. Was it life? If it was, it wasn't for me anymore.
I changed many things the year before the coronavirus outbreak. Some I have said (here, for example), but much remains to be said, not today.
Returning to the topic of this newsletter, during the lockdown, having time to observe the house, I noticed the consequences of carelessness and the passage of time. My husband and I agreed that the sum of the interventions amounted to a renovation. So here I am, waiting for the end of the renovation while experiencing something undoubtedly original.
Have you ever lived in a law firm?
Villino Eleonora is a beautiful country house closed to Bologna. City expansion towards the countryside has transformed the context around the home, which is now almost country, as I am reminded on the one hand by the noise of the cars and on the other by the shutters ajar to fend off the onslaught of the heat or the silence of the evening quiet broken only by the wind and the song of night birds.
My husband and I turned the home into Casa Nora, a Room and Breakfast. We ran it for 6 years. Then, Covid changed everything again, and the building now is a law firm.
It is a home like yours in the evenings and on weekends, but I share the space with lawyers and clients during the week. There has been no embarrassment from anyone, as strange as that sounds and is. I've found that these lawyers eat a lot and happily, and it happens that someone leaves with half a ciambella under the arm as if it were a baguette. And then exchange calls exchange, and lo and behold, for a piace of cake comes a basket of fresh Paduan eggs.
The kitchen I use is the same as when R&B was in business (see the opening photo and those below), where I cooked hundreds of breakfasts and meals on demand. It is not habitable but incredibly functional. When I projected it with the Ikea designer, I had clear ideas: shelves on top to give the impression of a larger space, cabinets with a door at the bottom, an island in the middle, an open pantry leaning against the red brick wall, double oven in a column.
To recap: for the current project, I am looking for the atmosphere of the kitchen where I grew up and inspiration here.
A new kitchen for a new me
Before the renovation began, I sought a kitchen with dark wood cabinets and countertops.
Then I started going around looking for materials, and I can't tell you the surprise when I realized that my choices were moving in a different direction than I had savored for months.
It will be a bright, white, open, and welcoming kitchen. This kitchen takes shape from a design only in my head; there is no rendering but I made it on the floor using wall tape.
I'm going to describe the project.
The room is large, with two windows and white walls. Since it used to be a bedroom, I left one part of the wall closet to turn it into a (large) pantry (90 cm deep). Upon completion of the renovation, I will choose the color of the cupboard doors.
The kitchen will have a big table and island. Since I wanted everything visible and handy to access, I chose shelves and cabinets without doors. The furniture, including the dining table, will be handcrafted by Petru (in the video with me) from silver fir to my design. The quartz countertop I chose for the island gives me shivers of joy since its name (Polar White).
The dark wood and colors I had in mind gave way to a kitchen with an almost Scandinavian flavor: basic, bright, colorless.
I thought I was a walnut tree and found out I am silver fir.
Now that I am almost at the end of this renovation, I understand it is not just an aesthetic issue. When a certain thought set in, I felt my legs shaking. Here is the idea: I will be the color of my kitchen. I'm living a Copernican revolution; above all, if you consider that I spent the first part of my life, I'm in my early Fifty, busy holding back my authentic Voice and Colors.
Now I know it, this kitchen is also a new beginning.
In this space of light and slowness, I'm waiting for you to cook together, live or online. In case you visit Bologna, write to me if you are interested. Instead, keep reading this newsletter for updates on my epiphany developments.
Next week, look for me in your inbox. Ciao!
Now, I leave you with a recipe. I wouldn't tell you if it is in season. For me, it is, and I'll explain in what sense.
The Recipe.
Greek yogurt cake with caramelized figs
The memory is precise.
Marking the passage of the seasons were the boxes of fruits and vegetables placed first in jars and then in the cellar.
Work was hectic, especially from June to October. Jams, marmalades, syrups, juices, giardiniera (Italian pickled vegetables), fruit in syrup, and more crammed the shelves of the home cellar. In June, Grandma would rush to use the previous year's stock, especially caramelized figs and peaches in syrup, to make space for the new production. That's how I came up with this recipe. I was standing in line at Simoni's, a well-known delicatessen in the Quadrilatero, right in the Bologna downtown, when my gaze landed on the tub of caramelized figs next to the soft cheeses.
I bought Greek yogurt and caramelized figs, thinking back to the old cellar at home and Grandma, who was as active as a little furious bee. Once home, I made the cake by mixing the yogurt into the batter and pouring the fruit inside. You can also decide to add it later (when the cake is cooked, cut horizontally and stuff. It's always nice to know you have more options, don't you think?)
Ada Merini, an Italian poetess, wrote the poem
A little furious bee. / Lives forever who gives time to others.
Ps: I think Grandma knew that.
Mold 20 cm diameter
6 servings
Ingredients
200 g of spelt flour, or 00 flour
100 g brown sugar or caster sugar
1 sachet of baking powder, 16 g
1 pinch of salt
grated zest of ½ lemon
300 g Greek yogurt
200 g caramelized figs
brown sugar for the surface or powdered sugar
Procedure
Preheat the oven to 180C degrees (356F).
Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl with a spoon.
Add lemon scent and yogurt.
Mix the ingredients with an electric whisk.
Line the mold with a baking paper sheet.
Pour ¾ of the mixture into the mold, arrange the caramelized figs in the center, and cover with what remains of the batter. Use a spatula to close the fruit inside (because it is heavy, it tends to go down into the cake; look at the photo).
Dust the surface with brown sugar for a burnt effect. Or dust with powdered sugar after baking and allowing the cake to cool.
Bake for about 40 minutes or until the edges are golden brown.
Store the cake even out of the refrigerator, for several days.
Store the cake in the refrigerator when the summer knocks on your door.
Let's keep the conversation going! Please write to me at tortellinico@gmail or follow me on Instagram.
If you enjoyed this newsletter, please click on the little ❤️ below ⬇️ and
Monica,
Great article. It brought me back to the days of planning my new kitchen (2020). I know you will create a beautiful space. I hope to visit your kitchen one day.
Best wishes,
Barbara
IG: Food.of.love