From his elegant home in Moncalieri, Raimonda lets us experience the sensations and emotions of a period of his life, of his happy childhood. Beautiful woman, elegant, strong like Sicilian women, sophisticated and sober as the elegant land of the north where she has lived for years now. It reminds us of the atmospheres, flavors, warm and enveloping summers of its Sicily. Those sensations that will always be present in his heart. We also know Raimonda through her two books, written together with her daughter Ottavia Casagrande, and which make us relive the glories of a splendid Palermo: “I will have to dance”, and “When the night went out”. These tell the story of a father, never known, Raimondo Lanza di Trabia, but who always lives in her not only in the name but also in her soul, in her thoughts. Thanks Raimonda, for this thought of yours that you wanted to dedicate to us; thanks as Sicilians who bring in the heart and mind the most beautiful period of our land; thank you for giving your precious contribution to this academy; thank you for mentioning the Tomasello brand that will always be in your heart.

The coronavirus has closed us in our homes, turned away from our affections, has frightened us and discovered us more fragile, has given us an ancient silence, the immobile cities where beauty prevails, the animals have regained their rights, in the garden they run a wild duck with disciplined little ones, two Bambi, a white heron a red squirrel who hadn’t visited us for a long time ….

We are all afraid to shake a hand, to touch an object that is less than familiar, afraid to no longer smell and smell, terror of not being able to breathe, yet I am closed with my family at home, lucky to have a garden all for us. A weight of fatality that dominates us and the conviction that when everything has passed we will remember this terrible period with nostalgia for the ancient flavors that we have rediscovered, those of the long times of endless summers in the countryside with cheerful and enthusiastic grandchildren.

In this long period of relative and very elective solitude my mind has flown to my happy childhood at the Castle of Trabia, the long summer months, the hot wind and the sun, this sun, ravaged as the cure-all that will defeat the virus.

In the sea in front of the castle I used to catch white shrimps and octopuses with my hands, I remember seeing a seahorse in the sea among the rocks that I never saw again so much that I always thought I had dreamed it, I lived barefoot all over the summer and the skin was always salty, we lived as now without engine noises and returning to the city after that long paradise was a torture like putting on a pair of shoes, that freedom of my childhood I never found in adulthood ….

Among the joys of my childhood: the hours spent in the kitchen with dear old Maria, the joy in frying the aubergines, the joy in preparing the tomato preserve, a rhythmic ritual that ranged from preparing bottles to cutting tomatoes, to spreading the concentrate in the sun on wooden boards where it had to be mixed with care and ancient and safe gestures, all to extend the sense of that summer to winter, and so it was for me until the years shared at the Castle with my girls, also they dark in the face when the fateful moment of returning to Milan arrived (with the bottles of sauce, of course).

I was hoarding stocks of ANELLETTI unavailable in the north.

The purchase of pasta in Sicily has a different meaning: for centuries it has been the main food, revered as a Grail with an unknown sacredness in the north (in Sicily rice was eaten only on the day of Saint Lucia on December 13th).

I remember parcels lined up with the writing, a choice that seemed to me a tombola between spaghetti bucatini penne and farfalle, and small pasta like the fingering which was eaten dry with tomato ….

Cooking was a true ritual which Maria would not have given up for anything in the world, the abundant water in the pot, salted with gray salt, the windows at the time of “Cala pasta” had to be strictly closed … and the pasta drained almost raw …. how many times have I thought back with nostalgia to those cheerful hours in the kitchen … sitting in front of the melancholic Milanese risotto that the Lombard evenings served all the same, in a sad and foggy city.

Raimonda Lanza di Trabia