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Castelfranco, Emilia (Modena), Italy: Villa Gaidello
October 2005
By Lynne Rossetto Kasper © 2002. All rights reserved
There is so much more to say about Paola Bini and Villa Gaidello than could included in our special Italy show of October 14, 2005, that I thought you might enjoy this. It was written as the introduction to the Villa Gaidello book commemorating its 30-year anniversary.
PAOLA BINI AND VILLA GAIDELLO
A CELEBRATION OF 30 YEARS
Some first times in life you never forget. Meeting Paola Bini is one of them. If my writings on Emilia-Romagna have any validity, much of it is because of Paola Bini and her Villa Gaidello Club.
It was spring in the early 80's. The rain was practically washing us off the autostrada. My friend Cara De Silva and I were researching the food and culture of Emilia-Romagna. We had to get to Gaidello for dinner, fellow food writers said we must eat there and stay there. No flood was going to stop us. Wet and dazed, we arrived.
There was Paola -- warm, serene, politely curious about us, and wearing an unusual pin on her blouse. It was distinctive; she was distinctive. That night we started to learn Paola wasn't like anyone we'd met before. That night the learning and the fun began.
We ate in the converted barn peaceful, warm and quiet. The food was extraordinary. This wasn't a question of silly adjectives for a restaurant review. It was that we could feel the civilization of the food... its foundations. (We didn't know then that local farmwomen were cooking and how they and Paola had come to work together.)
The tortellini in brodo brought us to tears. Exaggerated? Silly? No! That bowl of soup touched every cord of remembrance ... our grandmothers, our homes, that sense of being part of what had come before. It didn't matter that Cara is Jewish and my family is Tuscan and Venetian. Paola, the gifted cook, Giovanna, the pasta of Iris, and the spirit of Gaidello gave us the sense of touching the heart of where we were, the bedrock of this place. For all the years I've written about Paola and Gaidello, I still do not find the right words to explain this.
In that first visit we first laughed with Paola and made her laugh at us, and we first learned from her. We first realized everywhere our eyes fell, there was the work of hands, the work of local people -- from the windows' ironwork to the pasta in our plates. If you hope to have a glimmer of understanding a place, you have to begin with these things.
We learned that Paola was a pioneer in the guest farm movement; we learned how she revived local food traditions and how she worked her land to nourish it, not denigrate it. We learned none of these were easy, all of them were practical solutions she devised to keep Gaidello alive. In America we say if life gives you lemons, you make lemonade, you sweeten the bitter. Paola is this kind of realist.
Paola is a visionary who works with life forces, not against them. Paola is a steward of the land, of ideas, of people, of the work of hands. She is steward of much of what makes us civilized beings. For these and many other reasons, Paola and Gaidello became touchstones for me in my work. Paola became my friend.
So many times Paola and I have sat together as I've brought my frustrations and problems to her... and so many times she has refocused me, and soothed the troubles. There was the visit during a particularly tumultuous time when I stepped out of my favorite stallina and there under the trees was a table, a chair and a basket of cherries. Peace. There is no antidepressant pill to equal what Paola does.
Of course, we laugh a lot. Like on the eve of San Giovanni (St. John's Day, June 24) when Paola led all of us, the women and me, roaming into the meadow to slather the midnight dew over our arms and faces. It took ten years off my life!
One a larger scale, Paola and Gaidello ride the delicate balance of keeping alive what is being wiped away by an industrial world and yet making the blend of the past and present work today. So much damage has been done to the planet. Paola is one of the people who puts these things right simply by working day to day.
Paola, may this celebration of thirty years begin a new era for you, one of reaping the harvest of all you have given. Thank for you creating a place that restores us, thank you for being who and what you are, and thank you for being my friend.
Lynne Rossetto Kasper
Author "The Splendid Table: Recipes from Emilia-Romagna, the Heartland of Northern Italian Food".
St. Paul, Minnesota
December 2002
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