Kisses from Perugia
Perugia, a medieval walled hill town in the heart of Umbria, is the home of Baci Perugina - those scrumptious hazel-nut filled chocolates, wrapped in silver foil with a love motto inside. When I was a student aged 16 at l‘Universita per gli Stranieri the family that owned the Perugina factory was the biggest employer in the town. Every bar had a huge bowl of Baci to tempt you while you drank your espresso. Every house had a stash of them. You gave them as a gift when you went to visit. Children were bribed with them.You could, I recall, smell chocolate wafting in the air.
Now the business is owned by Buitoni, the pasta people, and somehow, the Baci seem drier, not quite as luscious, nor as tasty, and I am sure they are smaller too - however they are still very more-ish to someone addicted to chocolate like me.
Today Perugia is just as magical as when I was there in the 60s - and there is even an annual Chocolate Festival in October for me to get my fix. The Palazzo dei Priori whose façade overlooks Pisano’s Fontana Maggiore in the main square, is still breath-takingly beautiful. To wander around the city streets and spend time in the Galleria seeing magnificent paintings by Perugino, Piero, Duccio and the rest - how lucky can one be?
For my first term at Uni I lived with the Peccini family. Signora Peccini was Austrian
and had married a Perugino bank manager. She was an excellent cook, with a sweet tooth, bringing together the Italian simplicity and freshness of antipasti and pasta, with the expertise of Austrian patisseries. She was always busy in the kitchen and taught me how to make fresh pasta. She gave me her recipes for Chocolate & Almond Torta and Pear & Frangipane Tart and I use them to this day.
In my second year I moved into a tiny room in the loggia at the very top of the Arco Etrusco. The arch, built in 300BC, was one of seven gateways into the city and by far the most impressive. The loggia had been a brothel the previous year but business was bad so the Padrona rented out some of the rooms to students. At night there was still quite a bit of ‘activity’ and a fair amount of noise but the rooms were clean and it was very cheap. The Peccini’s lived only five minutes walk up the hill so I was able to eat dinner with them each evening; freshwater
fish from Lago Trasimeno, delicious mushroom based dishes, imaginatively prepared seasonal vegetables and comforting soups made from local pulses. We drank Rosso di Montefalco.
Every two months, Signora Peccini would go to the hairdressers for her ‘perm’. As this took most of the afternoon she had no time to cook one of her wonderful tarts, so for dinner we had a simple pasta carbonara followed by two Baci Perugina. What could be more perfect?
Theo Hodges
Theo Hodges was born in Kent. After a degree in Graphic Design she joined J. Walter Thompson Advertising Agency as an Art Director working on accounts such as Rowntrees, Kraft and The Butter Council. While she was at University in Perugia, Italy she started collecting recipes from friends and family. In 1980 she set up her own design agency: Theo Hodges Design Consultants. For many years when they were young Theo, her sister and six cousins used to spend vacations at her Grandmother’s Victorian vicarage in Kent. ‘The thing about remembering childhood’ she says, is ‘there’s a whole lot of oblivion, and then out of it something floats up, quite sharp and clear. Many of the meals I can still see vividly and various recipes of mine were originally from Granny’s kitchen. ‘The kitchen garden was stuffed with raspberries, huge red dessert gooseberries, strawberries, runner beans, peas and much more with the hens in a shed at the back. But Granny only ate chicken breast and runner beans, followed by raspberries and Jersey cream - and therefore so did we. When raspberries were out of season, and in those days the season was much shorter, Granny made Victoria sponge cakes sandwiched with cream and home-made raspberry jam. On this limited but delicious diet we all thrived’. Theo’s mother was an excellent cook as well, and had been taught by the house- keeper at their house in Mougins, South of France. And once rationing was withdrawn in England in 1952 and good, fresh ingredients became available again, she amassed an enormous number of recipes which has formed the basis for Theo’s collection of family desserts.