Love among the lemon trees
Anna Del Conte enjoys an armchair journey through Italy’s perfumed citrus groves
“Now it’s our turn, us poor ones, to have a share of riches / and it’s the scent of lemons.”
ON reading these lines by the poet Eugenio Montale, quoted by Helena Attlee in the opening pages of her evocative travelogue through the citrus groves of Italy, I was immediately captivated.
From the lemon trees of Lombardy, Attlee takes us via Liguria, with its scented gardens and its chinotti, to the toe of the peninsula, where the treasured bergamots and ancient citrons grow, and on to Sicily, the paradise of citrus fruit.
Lemons and oranges were first brought to Italy by the Arabs, who built gardens with a special system of irrigation still in use today. In the 18th century, citrus fruits became a lucrative business thanks partly to the arrival of a new crop, the mandarin, which was exported to northern Europe and later to America.
While the best oranges and mandarins grow in Sicily, I prefer the lemons of Lake Garda in all their mouth-puckering sharpness.
“Nothing can prepare you for the surprise of seeing a Garda lemon garden for the first time,” writes Attlee.
“The size strikes you at once: a cathedral with an open roof, a high-rise block without floors.” In Amalfi, where the sfusato amalfitano grows, she enjoys a dish of pasta totally new to me, calamarata. The oddly-shaped pasta — which looks like “a giant’s wedding ring”, according to Attlee — is dressed with a julienne of local lemons, garlic, parsley and clams sautéed in olive oil.
The other northern region where citrus trees flourish is Liguria, blessed by a subtropical climate. There Attlee goes in search of the chinotto, the juice of which is used in Campari as well as in a popular non-alcoholic fizzy drink, simply called Chinotto.
She travels south to Calabria to walk in the groves of berg- amots and citrons, two trees which grow only there. The bergamot, a natural cross-pollination between a lemon and a bitter orange, is the source of an oil essential as a fixing agent in scent, responsible for, as Attlee puts it, “bringing all its other elements into harmony”.
Most of the bergamot harvest goes into the making of this oil, although some fruits are used to make the most delicious marmalade on earth, and it is used to flavour tea, as in Earl Grey.
The citron is the oldest Italian inhabitant among the citrus trees; its fruit is larger than a lemon, with thick, knobbly skin. It was brought to Italy from Assam at the beginning of the second century AD. Its main use is in its peel, which is candied, but jams and paste are also made from it.
One chapter is dedicated to an extraordinary festa festa that started in the 19th century in the Piedmontese town of Ivrea.
Oranges do not grow in Ivrea and yet the last weekend of the town’s carnival is centred on the fruit, which arrives by a special train from the south. People from different districts throw tons of oranges from floats at their rivals on the ground. The streets become a slush of smashed oranges. Visitors, Attlee says, are given special red berets to wear so they can be spared the bombardment. The festa festa begins with a street supper of a soup of beans and “the fattiest parts of a pig”, boiled overnight in cauldrons so big that the chefs have to climb ladders to stir them.
Attlee takes the reader through the country’s scented gardens with her sharp descriptions, pertinent stories and quotes, and intriguing recipes. I was there with her. — © The The
Sunday Sunday Telegraph Telegraph
ý ý The The Land Land Where Where Lemons Lemons Grow Grow by by Helena Helena Attlee, Attlee, published published by by Particular Particular Books, Books, is is available available from from kalahari.com kalahari.com for for R382.28. R382.28.