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"Carmelina! Carmelina! Perché non stai traducendo tutto quello che sto? Puta!"
"Oh... I can't translate everything he's saying because he swears too much," Carmelina mutters to us.
We're a half mile down a dusty mountain road just outside Sant'ambrogio, a quaint village off the coast of Sicily. If you glanced at the blue sea waters on your right, you'd surely miss the turn off to this working class town of 250. Our guide for the day, Carmelina Ricciardello of Sicilian Experience is standing in the quasi outdoor kitchen of cheesemaker Giulio Candgiolosi who insists she tell us everything he's saying about his cheese making.
Carmelina and Gulio fight like siblings separated at birth, or worse a married couple who decided arguing is really an expression of affection. He teases her in Italian: "Puta, perché ti sprecare il mio tempo?"
She jokes about the contradictions in his Sicilian machoness. "You'd never guess that for all his male chest pounding, he lives with his mother and sleeps on a cot in her kitchen. His little bed has the sweetest, prettiest little blanket in the house," she jokes.
We're in Giulio's world for the day to learn how Sicilians make cheese out of goat's milk. When we booked the tour we never imagined our adventure would take us down a mountain road to a campsite adjacent to a herd of goats. The dirt-floor encampment redefines the term "rustic."
Giulio is a man's man who's a cross between Sonny Corleone (hair), Seinfeld's Kramer (quirks) and the Soup Nazi (intensity and bravado). He shouts everything in rapid staccato and doesn't speak a lick of English. In between tasks, he berates Carmelina and they argue. "I'm so glad I never slept with him," she confides. "We're better off as friends. Besides any woman he's with has to put him on a pedestal and can't have her own thoughts."
A native soul who returned home after years in Australia, Carmelina is an ambassador of goodwill for Sant'ambrogio. She is singlehandedly trying to save the shrinking village from poverty and an aging population by helping locals organize resources and attract tourists and new residents. The town is a little acropolis on the top of the hill, an unseen gem to outsiders.
While she pretends to be disgusted by Giulio, she secretly thinks he's an artisan and one of the ways she can draw adventurers like us to an area that is lost in the shadows of the quaint and charming town of Taormina. Giulio has been written up in the New York Times for his cheesemaking which has drawn interest from outsiders including Michael Jackson's one-time personal chef who wants to come visit him.
"È morto!" shouts Giulio as he makes a feminine gesture when he refers to Jackson. Clearly he has a Tourette's like humor that knows no boundaries.
Giulio is a one-man show. He milks the goats and makes cheese in this primitive outdoor campsite without the benefit of running water or electricity. He cleans his pots, pans and utensils with boiled water and hangs them on various hooks on trees and posts in his makeshift work area. There is order to his disorder.
On a hot 86 degree day, we watch in amazement as he boils a huge pot of goat's milk over a wood-stoked campfire, skims the curd and makes Ricotta cheese. All the while he chatters away in Sicilian, explaining the steps. Most of us in our travel group of friends can't understand a word he's saying. And yet we get everything he wants us to know. He is passionate about his craft and proud of his products.
This is as real as it gets. We stay longer than we should because it's just that entertaining. By the time we hike back up the hill to our van, we have sampled Giulio's cheese, ate his mother's homemade bread and sipped homemade wine.
Next stop: Sant'ambrogio to visit the kitchen of Maria, a sweet 5-foot Nonna who is eager to show us how she makes bread. Her kitchen is a tiny space on the ground floor of a humble block home. In the corner of the room is a a twin bed. Maria urges us forward and then gently pulls back the blanket on her bed to reveal the loaves of bread that are rising. We are simply delighted by the surprise. Maria beams with pride.
Carmelina takes us a few steps further up the cobblestone path to where our host Memo is anxiously waiting. A former chef, Memo is now a winemaker who welcomes us into the tiny confines of his personal cellar where he and his son Francesco press the grapes by hand and make wine. We sample his varietals of red and white local wines while he serves us a rustic Sicilian lunch of olives, Giulio's cheese, Bruschetta, Salami, stuffed pasta shells with fresh porcini and tomato sauce, shrimp salad and granita. It's humble and rich and sweet and Memo is thrilled to have an audience.
We miss the grand finale of Nonna Maria's bread making. She got a late start due to the funeral of a friend that morning. In this close knit community, she wouldn't dream of missing his sendoff. His funeral put her behind schedule on the bread-making process. The bread was still rising as we left town.
The characters, sights, sounds, smells and tastes of the day will be fondly preserved as cherished memories of Sicily. This was more than a tourist experience. We were unexpectedly endeared by the hospitality, generosity and spirit of the people of Sant'ambrogio who welcomed us into their homes and their world. Their affection, connection and support of one another is both heart warming and familiar. Ironically, their sense of family with each other is like the bond that draws us together as friends time after time, across the miles and the decades. Community is everything. This is what these memories are all about.
- comments
Nancy Very warm and funny!!
alix You write so that we can enjoy the experience from afar. Thank you.
ilsie So happy you're finding time to share your lovely adventures with us! Wish I was there! Big Love!
Frances Sounds wonderful. Are planning on making cheese when you get home?:)
Mary About to come to S Ambrogio. Very authentic!