“A la fìn te ghe de méter an pistadí de ai e perdesel”.
”Le sigule le va mai sufrite, ma morbid, te le fé mörer”.
From Mantuan dialect: “At the end you have to put some crushed garlic and parsley” “Onions should never be fried, but slowly softened” "Aunt Rina's tips, in her strong Brescian dialect, still echo in my mind while I'm preparing a mirepoix or chopped onions: little things that make the difference and can change your dish.” Pierangelo comes from a long family tradition of people devoted to cooking: "There was a touch in my aunt Rina's cuisine as well as in my grandfather Angilín's (Angelo) that everyone recognised". He grew up in a small restaurant, at “4Venti” in Curtatone, where he worked for a long time as a cook before taking a completely independent path: "Than, there was a real and small family army in the kitchen” he reminds. Grandparents, uncles, cousins, a passion shared by one branch of the family, the maternal one. The other branch was engaged in agriculture, and I think I have well summarized these two attitudes” jokes the farmer cook. "Everyone in our family has always cooked, men, women, children... I have scents and flavours forever imprinted in my brain. I remember when in September we used to prepare pickled green peppers, I remember the colours of the giardiniera (mixed pickled) and the vinegar of the puntarelle which numbed my lips.” The agnolini are still an open challenge to the ones my grandmother used to make. I have it all in my head, and every time I am a heartbeat away from achieving that result, but every time it eludes me. Who knows, maybe one day my grandchildren will be able to say the same. The same happens when I prepare the pesto (minced meat) for the risotto col puntel. I always think about Angilin, who was also a masalin (a pork butcher). He was a sharecropper at Mainolda. Before being a cook at 4Venti, he went from court to court killing pigs and making salami. The taste for good salami is part of our DNA and the scent of spices from the tanning is my personal yardstick for judging good pesto.”There are many guiding spirits in the Mainolda kitchen; Pierangelo keeps them all in communication: grandmother Rina's quince mostarda, kept in large glass jars placed in a cupboard in the attic, continues to be the same. That rotisseur's knowledge of which Angilin was a master, turning and turning the great rump of veal by wetting it with its juices during cooking in the oven, is still in circulation. Or the art of charcoal-broiling learned from his uncle Giuanin who spent hours brushing the meat with goose feathers. A taste heritage that, in intentions and gestures, is still there. Past and present at Corte Mainolda chase each other.
