FROM "GOURMET - The Magazine of Good Living" (september 1997 - by Irwin Glusker - Photographs by Melanie Acevedo)
The square-jawed Italian waited as the young American rolled Out her drawings. The designs spread flat before him, he hunched over to study them. The American hung back. Silence. Finally, he looked up at her over his half glasses and said, slowly, "Fan-tas-ti-co!" The American was Jacqueiyn Rice, now head of the ceramics department at the Rhode Island School of Design. Then, in 1982, she was on a Mellon grant to study the ceramics indigenous to Italy. The Italian was Ubaldo Grazia, scion of a family that since the fifteenth century has been making majolica pottery in Deruta, a town on the Tiber eighteen kilometers south of Perugia.(...)
One of the lovely secrets shared with me by American designers was ANTICA FATTORIA DEL COLLE, the farm-boarding-house at which most of them lodge while at Deruta. In Italy the proliferation of this type of ruralpensione is the result of a program dubbed "agriturismo" aimed, in short, at trying to keep 'em down on the farm. Just a few kilometers south of Deruta, on the prow of their name-giving hill, lie the carefully restored farm buildings of Antica Fattoria del Colle together with a swimming pool nestled into a south-sloping orchard. Alessandro Coluccelli runs the farm, which has wheat, sunflowers, and a vegetable garden; forty olive trees along with apple, prune, pear, and nut trees; one cow and a whole barnyard of chickens, rabbits, ducks, geese, and pigs. His wife, Anna, a rosy-cheeked angel whose appreciation of her own wonderful cooking is manifest, rules in the kitchen. The vineyards have long been the special province of Alessandro, that make the white and red wine.
At the fattoria, the evening meal is served outdoors most nights at long tables and begins promptly at eight (translation: nine). It gets going with a dizzying handing-round of bread baskets and pourings of home-grown wine from carafes. Then, taking my first dinner as a fair example, issue forth primi: fabulous made-on-the-premises prosciutto, along with salame, carciofini (baby artichokes), anchovy-spiked paté di fegatini, and giardiniera put up by Anna's mother. An interval of amiable and bilingual banter precedes steaming platters of tortellini tartufo, pasta squares filled with pork, veal, and Parmigiano and dressed with a blend of olive oil, truffles, and mushrooms. Unlike the fabled beaten boxer who had the sense to say "No more," I stayed in the ring for yet another round, polpette di tonno e ricotta (tuna balls with ricotta) accompanied by platters of sautéed chicory and fagiolini. Then carne Anna's own lightly sugared prune crostata served with a macédoine of fresh fruit. Yes. Basta. Grazie.
The last vestiges of dinner are cleared away by eleven, but grappa, for those who so choose, stretches the proceedings to midnight. Topic of conversation: the dinner just eaten. It was here that I came upon the disconcerting habit of the Italians (or, in any case, these Italians) of giving their farm animals American nicknames. When a guest went on and on, exclaiming over the merits of the prosciutto, Alessandro modestly agreed, saying, "Certo, that Timmy was one hell of a pig." On Saturday, dinner ran to more than twenty people, with two tables and a three-quarter moon. The American designers were seated at random among new guests, many of whom were weekenders from Rome. Anna prepared an extra pasta for the augmented guest list, so that we had fettuccine al pomodoro e basilico and/or fusilli alle zucchine. With the camaraderie that comes of sharing good food, the Italian speakers found some English and we English-speaking Americans did our best to reciprocate with Italian. If the builders of the Tower of Babel had been fed this well, they too would have come to an understanding.
At the end of dinner, sensible people excused themselves, with "Buona notte" all around. The stay-behinds closed ranks at the kitchen end of the table: if dinner was over, could grappa be far behind? These diehards included four Romans, Alessandro and a tired but beaming Anna. I'm proud to report that a small, brave band of Americans also stayed to show the flag.
Anna appeared with yet another dessert, a rum-flavored ricotta timpano with chocolate specks, carrying it to the tab le as if it were her entrance ticket to the festivities.
I left the fattoria before lunch the next day. After settling with Alessandro and taking a kiss-kiss, hug-hug leave of Anna, I started down the pebbled path to my car. I thanked them as well as I could in my arthritic Italian and said how much I had enjoyed the wine. We shook hands, and, upon saying "Buon viaggio," they gripped my arms and brushed a bristly cheek first to the right and then to the left side of my face. I picked up my one piece of luggage and the large jar of antipasti that Anna had insisted I take "per la sua famiglia." I don't know if they were very happy with the world at that moment. I do know that I was.
The square-jawed Italian waited as the young American rolled Out her drawings. The designs spread flat before him, he hunched over to study them. The American hung back. Silence. Finally, he looked up at her over his half glasses and said, slowly, "Fan-tas-ti-co!" The American was Jacqueiyn Rice, now head of the ceramics department at the Rhode Island School of Design. Then, in 1982, she was on a Mellon grant to study the ceramics indigenous to Italy. The Italian was Ubaldo Grazia, scion of a family that since the fifteenth century has been making majolica pottery in Deruta, a town on the Tiber eighteen kilometers south of Perugia.(...)
One of the lovely secrets shared with me by American designers was ANTICA FATTORIA DEL COLLE, the farm-boarding-house at which most of them lodge while at Deruta. In Italy the proliferation of this type of ruralpensione is the result of a program dubbed "agriturismo" aimed, in short, at trying to keep 'em down on the farm. Just a few kilometers south of Deruta, on the prow of their name-giving hill, lie the carefully restored farm buildings of Antica Fattoria del Colle together with a swimming pool nestled into a south-sloping orchard. Alessandro Coluccelli runs the farm, which has wheat, sunflowers, and a vegetable garden; forty olive trees along with apple, prune, pear, and nut trees; one cow and a whole barnyard of chickens, rabbits, ducks, geese, and pigs. His wife, Anna, a rosy-cheeked angel whose appreciation of her own wonderful cooking is manifest, rules in the kitchen. The vineyards have long been the special province of Alessandro, that make the white and red wine.
At the fattoria, the evening meal is served outdoors most nights at long tables and begins promptly at eight (translation: nine). It gets going with a dizzying handing-round of bread baskets and pourings of home-grown wine from carafes. Then, taking my first dinner as a fair example, issue forth primi: fabulous made-on-the-premises prosciutto, along with salame, carciofini (baby artichokes), anchovy-spiked paté di fegatini, and giardiniera put up by Anna's mother. An interval of amiable and bilingual banter precedes steaming platters of tortellini tartufo, pasta squares filled with pork, veal, and Parmigiano and dressed with a blend of olive oil, truffles, and mushrooms. Unlike the fabled beaten boxer who had the sense to say "No more," I stayed in the ring for yet another round, polpette di tonno e ricotta (tuna balls with ricotta) accompanied by platters of sautéed chicory and fagiolini. Then carne Anna's own lightly sugared prune crostata served with a macédoine of fresh fruit. Yes. Basta. Grazie.
The last vestiges of dinner are cleared away by eleven, but grappa, for those who so choose, stretches the proceedings to midnight. Topic of conversation: the dinner just eaten. It was here that I came upon the disconcerting habit of the Italians (or, in any case, these Italians) of giving their farm animals American nicknames. When a guest went on and on, exclaiming over the merits of the prosciutto, Alessandro modestly agreed, saying, "Certo, that Timmy was one hell of a pig." On Saturday, dinner ran to more than twenty people, with two tables and a three-quarter moon. The American designers were seated at random among new guests, many of whom were weekenders from Rome. Anna prepared an extra pasta for the augmented guest list, so that we had fettuccine al pomodoro e basilico and/or fusilli alle zucchine. With the camaraderie that comes of sharing good food, the Italian speakers found some English and we English-speaking Americans did our best to reciprocate with Italian. If the builders of the Tower of Babel had been fed this well, they too would have come to an understanding. At the end of dinner, sensible people excused themselves, with "Buona notte" all around. The stay-behinds closed ranks at the kitchen end of the table: if dinner was over, could grappa be far behind? These diehards included four Romans, Alessandro and a tired but beaming Anna. I'm proud to report that a small, brave band of Americans also stayed to show the flag.
Anna appeared with yet another dessert, a rum-flavored ricotta timpano with chocolate specks, carrying it to the tab le as if it were her entrance ticket to the festivities.
I left the fattoria before lunch the next day. After settling with Alessandro and taking a kiss-kiss, hug-hug leave of Anna, I started down the pebbled path to my car. I thanked them as well as I could in my arthritic Italian and said how much I had enjoyed the wine. We shook hands, and, upon saying "Buon viaggio," they gripped my arms and brushed a bristly cheek first to the right and then to the left side of my face. I picked up my one piece of luggage and the large jar of antipasti that Anna had insisted I take "per la sua famiglia." I don't know if they were very happy with the world at that moment. I do know that I was.