A little research and I became sure that the winepress belonged to an Italian family.  Not too surprising.

Italian laborers immigrated to this town more than a hundred years ago, hired to dig the original water and sewer lines and lay railroad track.  They were housed in tents and barracks in open lots, and some local church documents describe them making huge bonfires at night and singing in their camps.  Most wanted to make money and go back home to Italy.  But eventually many stayed and saved enough money to buy houses.  The winepress probably comes from the time period--somewhere between 1900 and World War II.  But of course, winemaking itself goes back in the Mediterranean to the dawn of recorded history there.

And so that winepress got me to thinking about migrations—perhaps the most fascinating aspect of all human history for me.  What we take with us and what we leave behind.  And how the migrations never end.

Four million Italians came to American between 1880 and 1920.  (The entire population of Italy was only around 15 million).  Then seven million African Americans came up from the American South to the North, as part of the Great Migration—between 1910 to 1970.  And before this, the huge forced migration from Africa that began in the early 1600s.

Many Italians fled their neighborhoods when African Americans moved in.  They did so out of racism and out of fear.  The irony is, however, that once Italians left their immigrant neighborhoods and moved to the suburbs, they dispersed into the vast American culture and usually began to lose their ethnic identity, having children who would not grow up in the neighborhood enclaves hearing dialect, listening to the old people tell stories, and making wine in the basement.

And now the African American neighborhoods too are changing--becoming less connected--as children grow and move away and newcomers move in. Lina tells me it is mostly young professionals now interested in this house, which is located close to the train to New York.

Do I sound nostalgic?  Not really.  Life constantly moves forward.  But that winepress got to me—a big immovable hunk of concrete shaped into the very foundation of a home.
Too big to move.  It had to be left behind. 

Oh yes.  One last thing.  Those looking for a house in Montclair with a quick commute and wine-making facilities in the basement should contact Lina Panza.

Sign up to receive a recipe from history in your email each month »

“The second reason is that they’re extremely funny.  Whenever you’re in a bad mood, just come out here and watch them. They’re very silly--and not very smart.  Our family has lots of chicken jokes.’

The third reason is my passion for sustainable living.  They eat all my vegetable scraps--they eat pasta and bread and salad--everything.  I make hardly any garbage.  Their manure gets aged for compost and makes beautiful flowers and vegetables.  We can all live peaceably in the world.  You don’t need fourteen chickens to do it.  We can all find a way to slow down and be mindful.  The chickens do this for me.”

Grace makes it look so easy and wonderful that before I know it, I’m asking her about where I can get a chicken coop and some Blue Araucanas of my own.  Oh those fresh eggs are so appealing.  But wait...what about the gross parts?  I had a lot of questions for Grace. Here’s my Q& A--gathered while sons number 1 and 2 (ages 7 and 12) stared enraptured at the clucking girls and begged for a flock of their own.

LS:  “Do you get rats?”
GG: “Yes, of course.  Rats have been on the earth longer than we have.  When I have to, I use poison.  That’s one nonorganic thing I do.  But we also have hawks come by and help. 

LS:  Did you grow up doing this? 
GG:  It’s familiar to me.  I began my life in Malaysian where lots of people have chickens. 

LS:  Is this legal?  Do your neighbors mind?
GG:  In our town, we’re allowed to keep up to 25.  I’m well under the limit.  As to the neighbors, we asked them first.

LS How did you get started? 
GG:  There was a guy I knew who had chickens and I admired them, so I started with three.  Then I made a big leap and ordered 15 through the mail. 

LS:  How much does it cost to feed them?
GG:  Probably about $50 bucks of chicken feed a month.

LS:  Do you have predators?
GG:  Racoons are my number-one predator.  I’ve got a pesky one right now who’s determined to reduce my flock.  At night, I get the girls into the coop and lock them in where they’re safe.  But sometimes, when they’re still out, a raccoon will get a bird. You come out and find some feathers and maybe a few bones.”

LS:  Is it gross to clean out the chicken coop?
GG:  ....

LS:  Are other families doing this in our town?
GG:  I’d guess about ten. 

LS:  What does your husband think of this?
GG:  He kind of lets me be.  He grew up on a farm, so he sees this all differently.  They’re not pets. 

By the way, Grace’s commitment to sustainable living is bigger than chickens.  You can often find her at her shop Terra Tea Salon and Fair Trade Eco Market “>Terra Tea Salon and Fair Trade Eco Market on Church Street in Montclair, NJ.

I miss the smell of her cake in the oven, especially now that strawberries are abundant and stacked impossibly high in their supermarket plastic container towers. Back then, we got our strawberries from a “grocer” that Mom nicknamed “Gaw-jus” because he bragged about his picture-perfect produce in a heavy Bronx accent.

“I went to Gaw-jus,” she’d say, presenting me with the bags full of perfumed berries to wash and slice. “One for the cake, one for me,” I’d say as I cut them and we would giggle together over this weakness we shared, our inability to resist sneaking a little piece before the guests arrived. In my mind’s eye, I see her unguarded, pretty face nearly free of makeup. She prefers simple things. Her wedding ring is often the only piece of jewelry she wears. I remember her fingernails shining with a thin stroke of clear polish on the edge of her spatula as she stirred the egg whites into the cake batter.

“It needed trimming,” she’d say, giving me thin slices off the bottom of the warm sponge cake straight out of the pan that we ate with our fingers, taking them carefully from the knife edge.

It is always 1975 in these memories of my mother baking with me in a New Jersey kitchen wallpapered with outdated yellow and brown pop-art flowers. After all, it’s where the woman who bore me is baking — not just then, but always and forever somewhere in my center, that essential place lost to me so much of the time. And everything she tried to teach me — devotion, patience, the importance of ritual, humility — is there in that simple act of making cake from scratch.

Our sponge cake recipe is an old family recipe from Helen, my Uncle Richy’s mother. A matriarch. In our family, that means strong, compassionate, capable. And so much more. The cake is also much more than its label — usually sponge cake elicits groans in the same way that fruit cake does. None of them are considered any good. This one always gets the raves. I made it for a party recently and it was, as always, a revelation.

Grandma Helen’s Sponge Cake

9 extra large eggs, separated
1 and 1/4 cup sugar (scant cup)
grated rind and juice of medium to large lemon
scant cup all purpose unbleached white flour (Passover cake meal may be substituted)

1. Preheat oven to 340 degrees (convection) or 350 degrees for still oven.

2. Beat egg yolks on an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment for 10 minutes adding the sugar 1/4 cup at a time after 5 minutes. Add the rind and juice of the lemon and beat until well blended.

3.. Beat egg whites until stiff but not dry. Sift 1/3 of the cake meal or flour onto the yolk mixture.  Do not mix it in. Add 1/2 the whites.  Now, fold gently to just incorporated. Then add 1/3 more of the flour followed by almost the entire remaining 1/2 of the whites, leaving just a tad for the last fold. Fold gently. Add the rest of the flour and the tad more whites and fold very very gently to just incorporated. Do this quick as a bunny.  A rubber spatula works best.

4. Place batter in an ungreased tube pan with a removable bottom and tube section or in a spring form. Bake for 1 hour. Check cake after 40 minutes as baking times and oven temperatures vary. Remove from oven and invert pan to let cake cool. Using a sharp thin bladed knife release cake from the sides of the pan before removing and placing on serving plate.

5. With a whisk by hand, or on an electric mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, whip heavy cream to soft peak, adding vanilla extract and confectioner’s sugar to taste after the cream has thickened slightly. Do not overbeat. Slice strawberries thinly and sprinkle them with sugar to taste, then let them sit in the refrigerator until they form their own syrup. Slice cake and serve each slice with a generous helping of strawberries in syrup and freshly whipped cream.

Now that we're here a while in this new place, we are thinking about the garden and land around us. The backyard is quite shady but the front yard gets full sun. My dear neighbor and friend suggested we dig up the front lawn and plant a vegetable garden. We're ready. Maybe even offend the rest of the block with raggedy tomato plants right in full display a few feet from the sidewalk.

I pledge, today, on the first day of spring, to do this. And I'm thinking about the gardens I saw all over Liguria where fruit, vegetables, herbs and flowers all mingled quite beautifully in the front yard.  I will plant borage for my ravioli, and true tender Genoese basil for pesto.  To give myself inspiration, I watched this video about edible estates, an organization that says it's attacking the American front lawn.  Count me in.

--Laura

http:/www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7JgenD4fdw

--LS

Over time, Marialuisa and I developed a correspondence based on old foods and memory.  I was writing a book on my search for my great grandmother's Genoese ravioli recipe, and it turned out Marialuisa's mom was a famous ravioli maker in a mountain village north of Genoa.  Before long Marialuisa was inviting me to come and visit. "My mother awaits you.  She will make ravioli when you come."

Six months later, I was driving up into the hills of Liguria with Marialuisa at the wheel.  She was taking me to her mother's town--full of Schenones--higher and higher into the mountains, filled with chestnut trees.   She took me to the graveyard there, filled with dead people who shared my last name.  And finally to her mom's small cottage, where we entered to find ninety-year-old Giuseppina bent over her pasta board, kneading dough. 

That day, Giuseppina, taught me to roll pasta in a big thin circle, just as my great grandmother used to, using a long stick--a skill that has been largely cast aside in favor of machines.

In the search for old family recipes--I had many similar amazing encounters in Italy, and so many were based on a similar initial thread of email.   In other words--I found my rustic, pre-commercial, handmade ravioli recipe--and traced it back to the 13th century, largely through this modern technology.  What a paradox.   

Now if only I could figure out my new cell phone.   Damned technology.