An American writer living in Sicily sympathetically captures a
Sicilian woman's recollections of her childhood in an orphanage,
complete with recipes. After a few pages describing Sicily's
impoverished west coast, tracing the history of its pastries, and
explaining how she met her subject, Simeti (Travels with a Medieval
Queen, 2001, etc.) draws on taped interviews to let Maria
Grammatico speak for herself, with an occasional interpolation.
When Maria's father died suddenly from a heart attack in 1952, her
mother, pregnant with a sixth child, was unable to support the
family on their small farm near Erice. So 11-year-old Maria and her
younger sister were sent to a local orphanage, the San Carlo, run
by nuns who earned money making and selling regional delicacies.
With a mixture of pride and pain, Grammatico describes the orphans'
involvement in every step of production, from shelling kilos of
almonds to making molds for the famous Martorana fruits, painted
marzipan candy. She learned how to paint them and how to make
pastries and preserves, skills that later helped her earn her way
in the world, but she remains angry about the conditions she and
the other children endured. They lived mainly on meatless pasta and
worked long hours in the laundry, the kitchen, and the hospital.
They had no playtime, no books to read, and were punished harshly.
Girls with developing breasts had to bind them painfully tight
because brassieres were thought sinful. Maria missed her family,
but stayed on at the orphanage until, thinking she wanted to be a
nun, she entered a cloistered order in Catania. A nervous collapse
brought her home, and in her early 20s she began making and selling
confections and pastries; she now owns two shops. The recipes are
clear and easy to follow, but the most memorable portions here
contain Grammatico's vivid recollections of a vanished culture and
way of life. Eloquent celebration of food and a woman who learned
the hard way how to prepare it. (Kirkus Reviews)
Bitter Almonds is a remarkable memoir, a tribute to Sicilian food and culture, and the record of an historic and vanishing craft. At the heart of the book are forty-six recipes of unique Sicilian specialities, written down for the first time.
In the early 1950s, Maria Grammatico and her sister were sent by their impoverished mother to the San Carlo, a cloistered orphanage in Erice, an ancient hill town on the western coast of Sicily. It was a Dickensian existence – beating sugar mixtures for six hours at a time, rising before dawn to prime the ovens, and surviving on an unrelenting diet of vegetable gruel. But it was here that Maria learned to make the beautifully handcrafted pastries that were sold to customers from behind a grille in the convent wall.
At 22, Maria left the orphanage with no personal possessions, minimal schooling and no skills other than what she carried in her head and her hands – the knowledge acquired during a childhood spent preparing delicacies for other people’s celebrations.
Today, she is the successful owner of her own pasticceria in Erice, a mecca for travellers the world over. Her counters are piled high with home-made biscotti, tarts, cakes, and jams – Torta Divina, Cassata Siciliana, Cotognata. A frequent customer, Mary Taylor Simeti became first friend and then chronicler of Maria’s moving story.
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