An Easter Tale

 My mom was a great cook, but she couldn’t bake. Why would she with Cioffi’s just a few blocks past the Gowanus up on Union Street? Cioffi’s was not just a great Neapolitan/Sicilian bakery; it was “the pastry store where Sinatra (“Frank” to us) ordered his cannoli and sfogliatella whenever he was in New York.”
On Sunday mornings, if you were willing to stand "on line" halfway to Columbia Street, you could get a dozen Napoleons, Sfinge, Pasta Ciotte, “With the Cross,” Baba au Rhum, and other delicious pastries for $3.60, and still have change leftover for a small bag of pignoli cookies. As a teen, I had this down to a science. I’d arrive at Cioffi’s on the half-hour when everyone else was in church, happily risk damnation for a crunchy ricotta cream cannoli speckled with cintron.
On March 19th, St Joseph’s Day, Cioffi’s turned out fabulous Zeppole di San Giuseppe. My father was a Joe and our scattered relatives were obligated to gift him boxes of zeppoles (fried dough topped with custard. a sour cherry and powdered sugar) from pastry stores all over Brooklyn I'd devour them washed down with glass after glass of cold milk.
However, I couldn’t get Pizza di Grano aka Pastiera di Grano, the traditional peasant pie made with sweet ricotta (think Italian cheese cake only denser) flecked with grain, lemon peel and candied citron baked by a handful of neighborhood Italian ladies only at Eastertime. On Sunday morning, one of them—I don’t recall whom—Baby-Doll Stuto, Angie Pepe, Maggie Christiano—would show up after mass and bring mother a tiny pizza grano wrapped in crinkly aluminum foil as an Easter gift. I don’t know if it was the rarity, the scarcity, or that the pie just tasted so good, but I became obsessed with pizza di grano, a problem because Gloria loved sweets and Joey, Tommy and Greg, my brothers were gluttons.
Cioffi’s fell down. Their pizza grano looked all right but tasted “commercial,” as if it had been baked and shoved out on the counter without love or respect. Easters came and went; I hunted pizza grano in Bensonhurst, on Court Street, in Little Italy; nothing compared with the old ladies creation. (By the way, what was grano? Where do you get it and what do you do with it? ) The nonne kept it in brown paper bags, but they weren’t talking.
There was always leftover struffoli, little bbs of fried dough dipped in honey and covered with sprinkles. I hated them.
Life moved on. By some miracle, I was hired as a Newsweek reporter and worked briefly in London, Boston, New York and ultimately, Atlanta, where there was plenty of grain--they fed it to cows--but no Italians. Easters, I’d fly home to Brooklyn with my kids, Gaby and Thomas. Gloria saved me a sliver of her tiny pizza grano.
“Mom, just get the recipe.” I’d say grumbling and picking at the crumbs.
At the time. I had juice. We had a Rome bureau, a research library, no doubt access to Julia Child, the best chefs....
“They won’t give it to me.”
“What?”
“I asked them. They won’t give it to me.”
“Who?”
“Never mind.”
“Mom!"
There was always leftover struffoli, little bbs of fried dough dipped in honey and covered with sprinkles. I hated them.
Life went on. In the 1980s, Thomas died of AIDS. My father died of emphysema. My surviving brothers descended into the hell of drugs and gambling. The Gowanus was taking its toll of us, as it did every neighborhood family. I was not spared, but the worst, by far the worst, was Gloria’s illness and its aftermath which you can read about on my blog below
At Gloria’s funeral, I sat there in front of her open casket trying to figure out how things had gone so wrong, so fast. I was still in my 30s and saw no way forward. At one point, an old woman hobbled up to me. I kissed her dry cheek, smelled the old lady perfume. She pressed an envelope into my hand.
“Il Posto (The Mail),” I thought. The traditional offering of money to help defray funeral expenses, a holdover from our immigrant days. I stuffed the envelope into my jacket pocket. I found it a few days later after the funeral.
It was written in Italian, in tiny script. It was the recipe for pizza grano. I read the first few lines, It began: “Under a full moon, soak the grain....”
I’ve never tried to make my own.


https://salernocapitale.wordpress.com/…/pastiera-nacque-pr…/


http://gowanuscrossing.blogspot.com/2012/05/losing-mom.html