In recent months I have seen a lot of my fellow expats writing about their own language adventures and it has always reminded me of something that happened to me my first year in Italy.
I have been promising this story for a long time and I made the dish and took the pictures several weeks ago, but life is funny, just when you think you have things under control … SURPRISE something or other throws a wrench in the works and you find yourself even more incasinato than before.
So, to borrow a catch phrase from Sofia Petrillo: “Picture it, Sicily 1993…” I was spending time in Sicily with my paternal grandmother and had been introduced to two brothers – childhood friends of my father’s. They each had daughters that were more or less my age and we hit it off immediately spending our days on the beach or shopping and our evenings going from club to club.
My last night in Sicily, the two families invited me to a home cooked dinner at their grandmother’s home. Have you heard of groaning tables? There was so much food on the table that for a moment I was afraid. Oh the glory of it all, seafood, fish and aubergines everywhere! All the classics of Sicilian cuisine laid out before me.
The dish I remember most (and you’ll soon learn why) was the fried calamari. The batter was so light and crisp and the calamari itself was amazingly fresh. I had never had anything like it and I said so, repeatedly.
My obvious delight and appreciation inspired my hostess to ask if I had never had these dishes before, “Don’t you eat these in Canada” she asked.
How could I explain the difference to her? Me, who had always lived thousands of kilometres from the sea – to her, who bought seafood a mere hours after it had been fished?
What I wanted to say was that living so far from the sea, we mostly found them frozen and full of preservatives.
What I actually said was: “Si, ma da noi non c’è il mare. I calamari non sono freschi come questi, si trovano solo con gelato e pieno di preservativi.”
(Translation: Yes, but we don’t have the sea. Calamari aren’t fresh like these, we can only find them with ice cream and full of condoms).
Oddly enough at the time I didn’t pay much attention to the sudden silence that descended. I did notice grandma’s perplexed look and I heard her whisper gelato?
I do also seem to remember someone else whispering: Non parla bene Italiano (She doesn’t speak Italian well).
It wasn’t until months later that I clued into what it was that I had said.
Now it is one of those stories that I pull out at dinner parties and that I used to tell to my students when I taught English to Italian businessmen.
For the record, if you ever need to talk about preservatives in Italy, the correct term is conservanti.
If, on the other hand it’s condoms you’re after – then the word is preservativi.
Here is an easy recipe for fried calamari rings – ice cream and condoms omitted.
500 gr sliced, rinsed and dried calamri rings
200 gr flour
200 ml beer
2 egg whites
salt to taste
300 ml of the frying oil of your choice
In a large bowl combine the flour and beer until well blended (no lumps!) and refridgerate.
In another bowl whip the egg whites until they form stiff peaks. Add the egg whites to the beer/flour combination and mix well.
Heat the oil in a large pan.
Dip the calamari in the batter and drop into the hot oil. Fry until golden. Sprinkle with salt and serve hot.
In an unrelated note, isn’t my basil growing beautifully? Thank you dear friend for sending the seeds to me. I think of you every time I water it, or smell it, or use it.
