In recent weeks, I’ve had some unexpected serious health news with a bit of a cancer scare. It’s all happened quite swiftly and following numerous tests, I’ve had abdominal surgery, been in hospital and am now back at home in what I’m told will be a six-week recovery. I’m extremely relieved and grateful to say that it was caught in time, I am in the clear and recovering well so far.
It’s been a week now since I’ve been home and I got a strong feeling that some of Granny Maddalena’s, brodo di gallina or minestrone was needed – those magical, healing soups of many nonnas! I’m not yet able to cook as I’m still shuffling about and can’t lift anything very heavy so Roger was up to the task. He even went to the shop with the list of ingredients I gave him that included things like… ‘the best, freshest-looking greens in season that you find’ (which happened to be some lovely, tender cavolo nero – perfect).
What started as a brodo di gallina became a pot of minestrone with about a dozen ingredients. Roger was a very good kitchenhand 😘 and chopped them all up but then I couldn’t help myself and oversaw the cooking. It was the first time I’ve been back near the stove in quite a while and it felt so wonderful to have a quick stir of the pot again 😉 (and eating minestrone did feel very restorative too)!
While it’s been a bit of a frightening and tricky time of late, I’m feeling so thankful it wasn’t worse and that I had such a wonderful surgeon and oncologist. By chance, her mother is from a mountain village in Lazio that just happens to border with Abruzzo. Must’ve been a good omen! 💛 Zoë xx
Polpette and peas in gravy, such an ‘Australitaliano’ combination – meatballs and peas in tomato sauce. Comfort food at its best. Nanna Francesca cooked this a lot (and when I was a kid, I found it a bit confusing that, being southern Italian, she called the tomato passata or sugo – ‘gravy’ considering my Australian Mum called gravy a deep-brown liquid accompanying a roast). Nanna Francesca would’ve been 95 today so it seems fitting to cook her polpette e piselli in gravy. We always celebrated her birthday on the 12th, the day she was born though the official date on her birth certificate was the 19th (lodged late as her parents argued who to name her after). Tradition won, as did her father, and being the first-born, Francesca was named after her paternal grandmother.
Zoë Boccabella 