Category Archives: Carnevale

Feb 13 2024
2 Comments
Ash Wednesday, Carnevale, Lent, Shrove Tuesday, Valentine's Day

Pancakes, Heart & Soul

The Pancake Bakery

It’s a mid-week in mid-February and here come a couple of multi-faceted, multi-ceremonial days. It’s Tuesday today to begin with, and an extraordinary one at that: It is Mardi Gras in New Orleans and Mobile and Key West, and in Venezia, it is Martedi Grasso, and both the French and the Italian translate to Fat Tuesday. This is a movable celebration based on the timing of Lent, which is based on the timing of Easter, which is based on the timing of the full moon that comes with or after the Vernal Equinox. Tonight, the festivity of Carnival concludes. But for most of us, those of us who are far from the cities that celebrate Mardi Gras, tonight is simply a time to eat pancakes or crepes for supper, for the day is also known as Pancake Tuesday, and Shrove Tuesday.

Shrove Tuesday concludes Shrovetide, which is the time we’ve been in for several weeks now: the time after Christmas ends and before Lent begins, and there are many traditional foodways for Shrove Tuesday, even beyond the delectable pancake. Polish bakeries will have pączki today, a rich filled doughnut, and Germans will be making doughnuts, too, for this night they call Fasnacht: this night (nacht) before the fast. And in Sweden and Finland, you’ll find semlor on the table: buns scented with cardamom and filled with almond paste and cream. Our friends at Johan’s Joe, the Swedish coffeehouse in West Palm Beach where Seth and I have been known to buy a semla or two, tell us that originally semlor were made only for Fat Tuesday, or Fettisdagen, but nowadays Swedes bake semlor for all the Tuesdays of Lent. Traditions are living things; they do evolve.

How celebratory for a Tuesday to have pancakes for supper! But no matter if you are eating pancakes tonight, or doughnuts, or semlor, the idea behind all these things is the same. To clear the larder of the things that, traditionally, were not to be consumed during the Lenten fast, and in years past, this was a fairly extensive list (much more so than it is today): no eggs, no meat, no lard, no milk, no cheese, no sugar… no nothin’. And it was not just on Fridays; it was for the full forty days of Lent. When our ancestors fasted for Lent, they really meant it. Lent was forty days of beans and pulses and vegetables and fish and absolutely nothing fun. The Italians certainly understood this. Their traditional symbol for Carnival was a jolly plump fellow called il Carnevale Pazzo: Crazy Carnival. He’s usually seen dancing and playing a mandolin while a necklace of sausages dangles around his neck. But Lent brings la Quaresima Saggia: Wise Lent. She is thin and gaunt and somber. Head cast down, pensive, she is dressed in rags and carries a rope of garlic and dried cod.

It is il Carnevale Pazzo who tucks us into bed tonight on Shrove Tuesday, and in the morning, la Quaresima Saggia is the one who wakes us up, and when she does, we awaken to Ash Wednesday, the first day of our 40-day Lenten journey. Lent these days, it must be said, is no big sacrifice. Some folks give up sweets for Lent, or give up booze, or give up gossiping. All the Church asks is that we be more prayerful and more penitent and give up meat on Fridays. As a kid, for me this meant a season of fish sticks for supper on Fridays, or lentil soup without the sausage. Which was all fine with me. I was the sort of kid who ate anything that was put on my plate, no questions asked. Lucky for me, though, I was born in an age where fish sticks on Fridays met the obligatory sacrifice for Lent, and no one took away my eggs and cheeses and desserts. That would be a real sacrifice.

And then sometimes, like this year, St. Valentine runs headlong into la Quaresima Saggia, and therein lies a dilemma for young lovers who find themselves seated at fancy restaurants for an amorous Valentine’s Day dinner, debating whether they should have the fish or the lentil soup… or the Boeuf Bourguignon cooked to perfection. We may find ourselves sitting there, wondering WWJD (What Would Julia (Child) Do?).

I am not “old” but I am older, and Seth and I have more sense than to dine out on Valentine’s Day. One of our favorite Valentine’s Day celebrations was take out Thai noodles, picnic-style on a blanket on the floor, while we watched A Room with a View on DVD. This year, our niece is coming to dinner and she doesn’t eat meat, anyway. She won’t even realize it’s a ceremonial night of sacrifice when I put a bowl of Pasta Fagioli in front of her. It is an experiment, mind you: She’s not terribly adventurous when it comes to food, and this will be her first encounter ever, I am told, with the mild yet delectable cannellini bean. My hope is she will love cannellini beans and my version of Pasta Fagioli––cavatappi with those creamy white beans, infused with garlic and drizzled with fresh olive oil, seasoned just right with freshly-ground salt and pepper. Where love takes root, we say, let it grow. Especially on Valentine’s Day (and especially one combined with Ash Wednesday).

 

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Image: “The Pancake Bakery” by Peter Aertsen. Oil on Panel, 1560. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons.

Jan 29 2024
2 Comments
Carnevale, Lent

Chiacciere for Carnevale

Carnevale, the pre-Lenten season of extravagance, began this past weekend in Venice.  There are some places in Italy where the Carnival season begins as soon as Epiphany has passed, but Venice to me always seems like the gold standard of Carnival celebrations. I love its High Baroque style: the elaborate costumes, the masks, the harlequin. It is another of the many celebrations we don’t pay much attention to here in the States, except perhaps in the cities that were settled by the French: New Orleans and Mobile come to mind, and Key West, too (and that is probably not so much a French influence but more a simple fact that the Conchs in our state’s southern-most city love a good party).

Carnevale––these days preceding Lent––is extreme in its extravagance purposefully, for the forty days of Lent that follow are extreme in the opposite direction: a season of fasting and penitence. Those forty somber days, a sort of cleansing and putting things in order, are instituted by the Church, but even without the religious aspect, some semblance of this would be necessary. Food, one must remember, was not as easy to come by in years past as it is now. Even I––and I am not that old––can remember winter, when I was a kid, being a time of canned and frozen fruits and vegetables. Imagine things a century or two ago: By this time, as winter drags on in its approach to spring, food stores would be running low and some fasting, whether penitential or not, would certainly be necessary.

But that is Lent and this is not. Before the fast comes, we are granted time to be extravagant and to celebrate and to make good use of all the things that will soon be forbidden. Carnival is a time of parades and street festivals while inside, it is a time for clearing out the larder. All the sausages, all the roasts, all the eggs, all the milk and cheese… it all had to go now.

Traditional festive foods for Carnevale vary throughout Italy, but many, especially the sweets, are fried. It is even thought that the ever popular Cannoli, the Italian dessert known around the world, originated as a Carnevale treat from Sicily. A simpler Carnevale recipe to try, and a favorite throughout Italy at this time of year, is for a delicately fried sweet called Chiacciere. They take their name from the Italian for chatter, or gossip, but we’re talking here not about gossip but about strips of lemon-scented dough, twisted and fried crisp and dusted with confectioners’ sugar. Here’s a typical recipe for Chiacciere. You’ve got some time to ponder making these treats. My sister will probably be making some before Lent begins; we’ll be enjoying them, and if you try them, too, let us know!

And so Carnevale has just begun and it will continue this year through the 13th of February, which is Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday, and it is Ash Wednesday that marks the beginning of Lent. Shrove Tuesday is a day to eat pancakes for supper. That is a particularly British custom, and here in this land settled first by English Puritans, this is what most Americans know about the season of Carnival. And while it is no comparison to Carnevale in Venice, still, pancakes for supper is not such a bad thing. In Italian, that day is Martedi Grosso; in French, it is Mardi Gras, and those are words we all know and associate especially with New Orleans and Mobile.

Nowadays the restrictions of Lent are pretty easy: the only hard and fast rule is no meat on Fridays. In times past, though, Lent was indeed a time of serious fasting: no meat, no eggs, no fun, no nothing. But again: these things are days and days away. For now, all we need to know is it’s time to enjoy a bit of extravagance.

 

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Image: “Carnival in Venice” by Aleksandra Exter. Oil on canvas, circa 1930s, via Wikimedia Commons.

Feb 21 2023
Ash Wednesday, Carnevale, Lent, Shrove Tuesday

Carnevale Pazzo & Quaresima Saggia

 

We are firmly on the approach to spring. The Carnevale of Venice, with all its passion and opera and high baroque fashion and masks, began in earnest over two weeks ago. The celebrations come to a close tonight with Martedi Grasso: Fat Tuesday… Mardi Gras. Stateside, the celebrations culminate tonight in New Orleans and in Key West and in Mobile, Alabama, the places where Mardi Gras is an old friend. For most of us Americans, though, the day doesn’t get a second thought as to its specialness, although many of us will be celebrating by making pancakes for supper. Shrove Tuesday is the proper name for this final day before the start of Lent, and we eat pancakes tonight to use up the last of the eggs, the last of the milk, the last of the butter. In Germany, and for the same reasons, it is Faschnacht, or Fasnacht, a night for homemade doughnuts. And in Sweden and Finland, you’ll find semlor on the table: buns scented with cardamom and filled with almond paste and cream. Our friends at Johan’s Joe, the Swedish coffeehouse in West Palm Beach, tell us that originally semlor were made only for Fat Tuesday, or Fettisdagen, but nowadays Swedes bake semlor for all the Tuesdays of Lent. Traditions are living things; they do evolve.

Lent these days is no big sacrifice. Some folks give up sweets for Lent, or give up booze, or give up gossiping. All the Church asks is that we be more prayerful and more penitent and give up meat on Fridays. As a kid, for me this meant a season of fish sticks for supper on Fridays, or lentil soup without the sausage. As a kid who would eat anything put in front of him, I didn’t mind, and Lent never felt like a sacrifice. In ages past, though, this abstinence from meat was not just on Fridays but for all the forty days of Lent, and it was not just meat but also eggs, cheese, milk, and lard. Lent was forty days of beans and pulses and vegetables and fish.

It’s been said, though, that even without this fast enforced by the Church, Lent would have had to have been invented, out of necessity. It was not all that long ago that food was a much more locally produced commodity, and by late winter, food stores would be at their lowest supply. If the populace was going to make it through the winter to the first fresh foods of spring, some abstinence was going to be necessary –– whether by order of the Church or by the simple fact that by late winter, there’s only so much food to go around.

The contrast between the Carnival season and the Lenten season could not be more pronounced. The season of excess typically began with Christmas and its Twelve Days and resumed again with Carnevale (and in some places, where Carnevale would begin right after Epiphany, just continued on without a break). In Italy, the symbol for Carnevale is a plump and jovial fellow, dancing and having a grand old time, well dressed, plume in cap, and often wearing a ring of sausages around his neck. He is called il Carnevale Pazzo: Crazy Carnival. He rules the roost all through the Carnival season and through this culminating night of celebration on Fat Tuesday. Come Wednesday morning, though, there is a distinct shift and a new figure takes center stage: she is la Quaresima Saggia: Wise Lent. She is thin and gaunt and somber. Head cast down, pensive, she is dressed in rags and carries a rope of garlic and dried cod. Her reign begins on Ash Wednesday, and she treads barefoot upon the discarded masks of Carnevale. She is known, too, as la Vecchia: the old woman.

Seth and I, we will eat our pancakes tonight with festivity and in good spirit, and in the morning, if we have it in us, we will approach that altar to have ashes smeared on our foreheads with the spoken reminder: Remember man that thou are dust and to dust you shall return. We are made of the stuff of this earth and we shall return to it. But the stuff of this earth is made of the stuff of the stars, too, and that is something to ponder. If nothing else, these forty days that follow tonight’s pancake supper will hopefully remind us that life is short, and we would do well to live the time we have with compassion and kindness for our fellow human beings, and to love each day, and, as we like to say here, to live the ceremony of each day, too.

 

 

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