We drive up into the hills above the Ligurian Riviera, surprised at how sharply they rise into real mountains. I think of deer as scarce in Italy, but one with two curling, pointed horns leaps across the road with a don’t-hit-me look cast at Ed. Another, strolling along the verge, gazes at us, spooked. Tall spires rising out of the forest tell us there are towns but we pass few. “This looks like northern Europe,” Ed says. “Even the bell towers look as though we’re in Germany.”
“Could be anywhere. We could be in the Smokies.” But we’re not. We’re en route to Varese Ligure, chosen because it’s one of the Arancione Bandiere, the Orange Flag, sites. And because of a pasta tradition I’ve read about.
For a country experience on a farm, we’ve chosen a simple agriturismo about sixteen kilometers from Varese. The road is hard to find; we’re deep into the wilds. Finally, a woman with a big dog greets us warmly and I’m already thrilled to see sheep and horses. We get out in a muddy driveway. Sharp wind hits hard. She takes us into an outbuilding fitted with two guest rooms. Nice enough. Simple. But cold.
“We’ve just turned on the heat,” she explains. She points out the window where a man is gathering wood from a pile. “The furnace is wood-fed,” she says.
I put my hand on the radiator. Ice.
We still have a couple of hours before we drive out for dinner. Nothing to do but crawl into the refrigerated sheets under two layers of blankets.
Ed grabs a damp quilt out of the armadio. “It’s colder inside than it is out. She said we are the first guests. This building has been unheated all fall. It’s not going to warm up.” We try to read. My nose is dripping.
“Let’s drive into Varese and find a drink before dinner. It’ll be warmer when we get back.” He dives into his jeans.
THE NARROW ROAD dips and curves. Black dark. We are soon in Varese Ligure. Deserted. On a back street of the village, we find the Albergo Amici, whose restaurant is mentioned in our guidebook. We order an aperitivo in the high-ceilinged, empty dining room. A waiter sits by a stove reading a magazine. It’s warm. “Why didn’t we stay here?” Ed wonders.
“It looked dated on the website. I could take dated easily at this point.”
Ah, dinner. The redeeming hour! Who cares if no else is here? When Ed asks the waiter what she recommends, she says, “I croxetti.” The little crosses. And yes, this is what we came for.
I’ve read about this Ligurian pasta formed into flat disks and stamped with a floral or geometric design. Formerly noble families had their stemme, family crests, carved into the small wooden rounds. The first molds probably were crosses of the Knights Templar and the monastic orders who pressed crosses into the dough, just as they were slashed into bread about to be baked. “Now the forms are rare,” she tells us, “but you can visit one of the last makers in Liguria. Right near the church.”
The pasta is tossed with a light pine nut sauce. In a mortar, the nuts are crushed to a paste with garlic, herbs, olive oil (or a little butter). Some add a dash of milk to thin the consistency but here I don’t detect that. The taste is rich, though surely the recipe comes from the cucina povera, the poor kitchen.
WE MAKE OUR way back in the Stygian night. We’ve left a light on in our room. Otherwise the farm is dark and we must use the flashlights on our phones. “Uh-oh. No one stoking that wood furnace,” I surmise. And, yes, the room has not warmed a single degree. The bed feels damp and frosty. Ed speaks of winter in Minnesota, when he shared an unheated room with his brother. Heat was supposed to seep up through a vent to the upstairs. It didn’t. We burrow under all the blankets. “They know it’s freezing, otherwise they wouldn’t have left so many covers,” I reason.
WE LEAVE WITHOUT showering the next morning. As we load the trunk, the owner comes out in a light sweater. It must be warm in her house. She blithely hopes we enjoyed our stay and ever-polite Ed thanks her, but I say, “We were very cold.” The smell of manure is strong.
“Let’s go.” We speed out of there. I refrain from giving her the finger.
BACK IN SWEET Varese Ligure, it’s market day. We admire the circular plan of the streets lined with houses painted pistachio, coral, pink, ocher. The castle is also rounded; the humpback of the six-hundred-year-old bridge is a half-moon. And the form of the croxetti molds is round, too. We find Pietro Picetti at via Pieve, 15. He doesn’t seem to mind being interrupted. He shows us historic molds and ones he makes. They’re small, somewhere between a Ritz cracker and a hamburger bun. The carved stamp fits into a holder that you use to cut the disks. At the lathe, he demonstrates his carving skill. He allows us to buy a grape-cluster design carved into pear wood and finished in beeswax.
The appealing town is built along the gentle river Vara. The houses on either side must be snapped up the second one goes up for sale. The market spreads along the main street. Behind the stands, there’s a nice linen store and a fabulous bread and pastry shop where we buy focaccia with pesto and pastries with ham and cheese. The bar at the end of the street is teeming with locals who’ve paused for a hot drink while shopping. One of my favorite things about cold weather in Italy is a busy bar on market day. Everyone bundled, the smell of wool just out of storage, the banter among men, and the efficiency of women accomplishing their shopping. I love to linger, feeling a part of this ritual but also separate. “Americani,” we answer when asked if we are German or French. It’s moving to me, how often the Italians say they love America.
We watch people buying honey, sweaters, jeans, and glowing autumn squashes and pumpkins at the market. I know that each person has a wooden form for making croxetti at home.