It was not only my grandfather’s family that was persecuted by the Fascists in Italy. Carlo and Valentine had managed to escape to America with their children, but other members of the Sforza family did not fare so well. Carlo’s brothers, Cesare and Alessandro, stayed behind in the little village of Montignoso in the Apuan Alps, where both of them suffered terribly under German occupation. News of their plight occasionally filtered through, but there was little Carlo or the rest of his family could do except hope and pray that one day it would all be over.
Among the many family documents that I have been left, I found Alessandro’s journal. I find it very hard to read; and almost impossible not to. In it, Carlo’s brother describes vividly the terrible atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust that surrounded his family during the Fascist years. His family home was under surveillance or attack constantly, the walls peppered with bullet holes – mostly around his bedroom window. The entire Sforza family had become a target of the Fascists: Carlo’s house was torched by the Blackshirts; Cesare was arrested; and their other brother Ascanio was heavily involved in the fight against fascism.
Day after day, they were met with harassment from the locals. Their enemies’ main objective seemed to be a relentless, systematic besmirching of the Sforza name. In this, their own ancestral land, vicious gossip about the family spread like wild fire, mainly put about by the women of La Spezia. These wives and girlfriends of absent sailors and artillerymen, who ran the tightest black-market businesses, had moved up into the mountains, away from the worst of the bombing. They told the Germans – and anybody else who cared to listen – that a radio was often heard transmitting in English from inside the Sforza house and that the family were traitors and renegades.
Food was scarce, especially during the winter months, and there were many mouths to feed. The cook did her best to keep food on the table, even if it was only a thick bean and vegetable soup, the bowl lined with thick slices of stale bread to make the soup even more filling. Chestnut flour, which had for centuries been a valuable source of starch in these mountains, now became invaluable, and was used to make a kind of thin gruel. Sometimes it was all there was to eat for several days at a time, but the cook occasionally managed to make it more palatable with the addition of a handful of mushrooms, a sausage or cheese rind. With wheat flour impossible to get hold of, chestnut flour was used to make bread. Everything the family and servants could forage they did, and they managed to find some passable substitutes for everyday foods. They gathered wild, blue-flowered chicory, roasting and grinding its roots to make coffee. There was precious little food stored away for long hard times such as these.
One spring day, sick of being confined to his house by the German guards who had watched over his every move throughout the winter, Alessandro bravely took his wife and children for a walk through his fields and olive groves in the warm sunshine. On the way back, as they came round a bend in the lane, he was surprised to see a car parked in the road with its door open. A very pretty, well-dressed Italian woman leaned out and called out to him, “Oh hello! We’ve heard so much about you and your lovely house. What a beautiful place! We want to help you. Please, get in the car – it will be quicker that way. We need to give you a very important envelope!”
A little warily, Alessandro got into the car, leaving his wife and children standing in the lane. There were three passengers inside, all of whom were charming – chatting innocuously and paying him compliments. I do not know if Alessandro sensed something was not quite right, but he soon realized he was in trouble: at the crossroads, instead of turning right, towards the house, the car turned left and accelerated away, very fast, towards Viareggio. When Alessandro remarked that they had turned the wrong way, the woman snarled at him, “The SS is arresting you.”
Alessandro was taken to the Murate prison in Florence where he was beaten, starved and denied any small comfort or medical assistance. It took his wife, Maria, two days to reach the prison on foot but they were only allowed nine precious minutes together before she was told to leave. She had brought him food and warm clothes but he was not allowed to keep them. Things got worse for Alessandro when, in the dead of night, he was moved to the prison of the Torre di San Leonardo in Verona, where he remained until the following April. His damp, dark, suffocating cave of a cell – number 40 – measured just four metres by four, and housed eight inmates. The atrocities he witnessed during his incarceration were horrendous, but he was freed eventually, after which he escaped with his family over the border, north of Turin. The last line of my great-uncle’s journal reads: “Free Switzerland welcomes us, and saves us.”
Top, Uncle Cesare with family members. Right, the grape harvest at Montignoso with Fiammetta and Sforzino.
The faded, yellow pages of my great-uncle’s journal are painful to read, and what you have here is only a very short, potted version of the whole story. Although I never met Alessandro or Cesare, I know most of the people involved, and their children – my cousins. I know that Carlo found his family’s plight extremely hard to bear; forced into exile he had to leave them all behind, to be persecuted ruthlessly for standing against the Fascist regime. I often think of Alessandro’s struggling family in Montignoso, surviving on what they could forage, when I cook one of the classic Italian la cucina povera dishes. Here are some of the wartime recipes that somehow managed to nourish them through those terrible, dark times.
Pictured from left, Uncle Cesare, Fiammetta, Nonno Carlo and other Sforza family members in the Apuan Alps.
Beppino could never make this dish without telling me about his wartime hardships, some of which were truly unimaginable. Dried beans, soaked overnight and then cooked (see page 96), can be used instead of tinned, if you like, and you can add a handful of grated Parmesan cheese to the polenta to make it even more filling and flavoursome.
Serves 6
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: about 1 hour
2 tbsp vegetable oil
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 celery stick, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
2 tsp chopped parsley leaves
12 Italian sausages
1 tbsp tomato purée
400g/14oz tinned borlotti beans, drained and rinsed
350ml/12fl oz/scant 1½ cups vegetable stock
280g/10oz/heaped 1¾ cups fine, medium or coarse polenta
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Heat the oil in a large, heavy-based saucepan over a medium heat. Add the garlic, onion, celery, carrot and parsley and fry for 5–10 minutes until the vegetables are soft. Add the sausages and fry for a few minutes until lightly browned all over.
Mix together the tomato purée and 4 tablespoons water, then add to the pan. Stir well, then add the beans and vegetable stock, season with salt and pepper and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat to low, then cover the pan and simmer for 45 minutes, adding more water if necessary, until the sauce has thickened and the sausages are cooked through.
Meanwhile, cook the polenta. Pour 1.75l/60fl oz/6
cups water into a wide, heavy-based, preferably copper pan and bring to the boil over a high heat. Trickle the polenta into the boiling water in a fine stream, whisking continuously. When all the polenta has been added, reduce the heat to medium-low and continue to stir with a strong, long-handled wooden spoon until the polenta comes away from the sides of the pan. This takes about 50 minutes and requires a strong elbow.
Turn the polenta out onto a wooden board and smooth it into a mound with a spatula. Leave it to stand for 5 minutes, covered with a clean tea towel. Cut the polenta into wedges and serve hot with the sausage and bean sauce spooned over the top.
My mother told me that this was one of those wartime recipes where breadcrumbs, when available, were liberally added to give the dish more bulk. Ask your fishmonger to fillet the mackerel for you – you need large, neat, flat fillets that you can sandwich the filling between.
Serves 4
Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 15 minutes
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
8 mackerel fillets, about 500g/1lb 2oz total weight, cleaned and trimmed
2 tbsp dry white wine or water
green salad, to serve (optional)
Filling:
4 tbsp fresh white breadcrumbs
1 heaped tbsp salted capers, rinsed, drained and chopped
3 large salted anchovy fillets, rinsed, drained and chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 tbsp chopped parsley leaves
1 tbsp pine nuts, chopped
2 tbsp freshly grated Parmesan or Pecorino cheese
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Preheat the oven to 190°C/375°F/Gas 5 and grease an ovenproof dish, large enough for the mackerel “sandwiches” to sit snugly, with half the oil.
Put all the filling ingredients in a bowl and mix together well, then season with pepper. You are unlikely to need salt as the anchovies are salty.
Lay half the fish fillets, skin side down, on a chopping board and spoon about 1 heaped tablespoon of the filling over each one. Top with the remaining fillets, flesh side down, pressing down quite firmly to secure.
Transfer to the greased dish, sprinkling any remaining filling over the fish. Drizzle the remaining oil over and sprinkle lightly with the wine. Bake on the top shelf of the oven for 15 minutes, or until cooked through, then leave to rest for 3 minutes. Serve the baked mackerel with a green salad, if liked.
In times of hardship, my family has always been good at using their imagination (and any available ingredients) to make a meal full of flavour and nourishing to eat. In our house, this soup was revered as one of those dishes that kept morale buoyant in one of the hardest moments of my family’s history.
Serves 4
Preparation time: 30 minutes, plus cooling
Cooking time: about 3 hours
125ml/4fl oz/½ cup olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1.25kg/2lb 12oz very ripe, soft tomatoes, roughly chopped
400g/14oz stale bread, crusts removed and thinly sliced
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1 handful of basil leaves, chopped, plus extra torn leaves, to serve
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Vegetable broth:
3 carrots, scraped and quartered
2 onions, halved
3 celery sticks, quartered
3 tomatoes, halved (optional)
2 courgettes, cut into large chunks
3 cabbage leaves, quartered
1 small leek, rinsed, trimmed and halved
12 lettuce leaves, halved
3 pinches of salt
First, make the broth. Put all the vegetables in a large saucepan or stockpot, add the salt and pour in 2l/70fl oz/8 cups water. Bring to the boil gently over a low heat, then cover and simmer for 1½ hours. Remove from the heat and leave to cool completely. Strain through a fine sieve into a bowl or large jug and discard the vegetables. If not using immediately, chill the broth, covered, for up to 3 days or freeze for up to 3 months.
To make the soup, pour 1.5l/52fl oz/6 cups of the strained broth into a large saucepan and heat gently until hot.
Meanwhile, heat half the oil in a saucepan over a low heat. Add the onion and tomatoes and fry for 10 minutes, stirring regularly, until soft. Push the mixture through a food mill or sieve, then add it to the hot broth.
Add the bread, garlic and basil, then season with salt and pepper. Cover and simmer gently for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally, until thick and creamy. Stir in the remaining oil and add a little more salt and pepper, if you like. Serve the soup sprinkled with torn basil leaves.
During wartime, the chestnuts harvested for centuries on the Apuan Alps saved many of the local population, including my own family members, from outright starvation. The chestnuts were dried and ground and then used to make wheat flour go further in bread, pasta and many other dishes. There is no rising agent in this cake; it is supposed to be quite dense and slightly elastic, and the texture varies according to whether it is baked in a deep cake tin or a wide, shallow baking tray.
Serves 6
Preparation time: 30 minutes, plus 30 minutes standing
Cooking time: 35–45 minutes
6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
450g/1lb/scant 3 cups chestnut flour, sifted
75g/2½oz/scant 
cup caster sugar
a pinch of salt
85g/3oz/ cup sultanas
2 tbsp rosemary leaves or fennel seeds
grated zest of 1 orange
50g/1¾oz/ cup pine nuts
Grease a deep 20cm/8in cake tin or shallow baking tray (see above) with 3 tablespoons of the oil and leave to one side. Mix together the chestnut flour, sugar and salt in a large bowl, then whisk in as much of the remaining oil as you like – the more you add, the oilier the final consistency of the cake. Gradually add 1l/35fl oz/4 cups water, whisking continuously to make a thick, lump-free batter. Leave to stand for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 190°C/375°F/Gas 5. Soak the sultanas in warm water for 10 minutes, then drain and pat dry with kitchen paper.
Mix the batter again, then pour it into the prepared tin or tray and level the surface with a spatula. Sprinkle with the rosemary or fennel seeds, orange zest, soaked sultanas and pine nuts. Bake for 35–45 minutes, depending on how dry or moist you like your cake. The tip of a knife inserted into the cake should come out clean. Serve warm or at room temperature, cut into slices or wedges.
My mother, Fiammetta, and Nonna Valentine.
