Specialities of the Corsica table.

Culinary memories

Text extracted from “Ricordi” of Julie AVIGNON-PASTINELLI (Balogna).

With the autumn, in each hearth one made dry figs and white bunches of grapes. The figs, dried on sieves, covered screens of a muslin, were the best and best preserved, but often the housewives did not take such an amount of sorrow, they pricked figs on dry branches of thorny broom and suspended these branches furnished with the windows. Alas! the wasps, attracted by sugar, perforated and dug sometimes the fruits.

At the time of the grape harvest, one suspended on the beams of the kitchen of beautiful white bunches of grapes and, when the grains were wrinkled, one plunged them for the conservation, in a detergent of ashes scented with bay-tree and other aromatics, then were suspended they again to complete the desiccation.

The apples, which one preserved at the attic, the dry figs and grapes that one preserved in iron boxes, from time to time constituted the dessert during the winter months. At the end of the summer, one manufactured the tomato preserve which was a concentrate. The tomatos, cut into two and salted, were versed in a small barrel, which one had capped with a lid out of wooden on which one had put a large stone.

The plug of the barrel, left opened, let escape the liquid in excess. The wood lid was inserted every day a little more, as the tomatos lost their water. When nothing any more ran plug, one poured this tomato pulp on a fine sieve which retained the pips and the skins. The mashed potatoes thus obtained, were spread out over great plates which one furnished with a sheet of bay-tree, the whole covered with a little olive oil and exposed to the sun during several days. If the heat of the sun did not thicken sufficiently this concentrate which had taken a beautiful red color dark, one slipped the plates into the communal furnace, still tepid the shortly after the cooking of the bread. This tomato preserve was finally packed in a bottle out of glass, or a pot of likings, and one made use a spoonful of this concentrate for a ragout or a dish of meat, which gave savour and color to the preparation.

Mid-October in mid-November, the gathering of sweet chestnuts beat full sound. Spread out over the trays, the sweet chestnuts were desiccated at the end of a few weeks. If one tightened them between the inch and the index, their envelope broke like an egg shell. One then put them in a bag in coarse linen, length and round, resembling a thwart and, by striking with great blows this bag a wood block, one removed them from their two dry skins, outside and the interior. One sorted the dry and white sweet chestnuts, which one still desiccated in the baker's oven, to then carry them to the mill, and one put side the “molloni”, a little soft sweet chestnuts imperfectly dried, especially intended for the pig that one was going to cut down in Christmas.

Receipt containing sweet chestnut flour “the pulenda”:

The flour of sweet chestnuts, slightly tinted and soft, was packed, for its conservation, in a large box of wood, “U cascione”, provided with a lid. It was employed for all kinds of preparations. Each Saturday, the housewives made cook a “torta” thus prepared: sweet chestnut flour watered in a little water, added with a little salt and decorated pieces of brocciu salted, or crushed nuts, the whole poured in a pie-chart mould, sprinkled of a little olive oil, and carried with the furnace.

In addition to these torte (torta) “, one made, with sweet chestnut flour, fritters, with or without brocciu, the fritelles ones, but especially one prepared of it a pulp “the granasgioli” or “Brilluli”, which one poured in soup plates and which one ate still hot sprinkled with cold milk. But, the dish of resistance containing sweet chestnut flour was the “pulenda”.

In a copper cauldron, one poured a few liters of water, a little deicing salt and, when boiling was reached, one added of only one blow the flour, then with a length and strong stick of wood polished, called “pulindaghju” one did not stir up the flour but one made in his medium a hole, a chimney. By this chimney, ebullient water assembled, sprinkled and soaked the mass with flour. After a certain time, the withdrawn cauldron of fire and the recovered surplus water, one carried out the mixing of the pulenda. With obtaining a homogeneous and thick paste, one collected using a scraper, the paste swell about it in the middle of the cauldron. This one was given one moment on fire, to allow the ball paste to be detached from the bottom, finally one reversed the pulenda on a enfariné cloth.

As soon as the paste did not burn any more the fingers, with a large cotton yarn one made sections which one deposited on a cloth flour. These sections of pulenda, which replaced the bread, accompanied by the fresh brocciu, of the roasted “figatelli”, the CABRI out of sauce or simply of eggs to the frying pan, it was a delight! …

One made also a kind of bread with sweet chestnut flour, but as it is not very panissable one added to him, to make it raise, a certain quantity of flour of corn. One made thus round bread rolls, half-balls, the “pisticcine” that one cooked on dry sweet chestnut sheets whose women made a full provision with the autumn and preserved at the attic in a box. At last time and even at the beginning of this century, the pulenda and the pisticcine constituted the base of Corsica food in the poor families which always did not have enough money to buy a ball of flour of corn and to eat white bread.

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