Simón A. Crespo Pérez
August 4th, 2019
Final Project: Noodle Narrative
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmZrZFGEjIw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmZrZFGEjIw
In Guayaquil, Ecuador, there is a tight Italian community where everyone knows each other. When I was asking around who can I interview regarding Italian culture and cuisine as immigrants, the name of Rosa Perasso-Miraglia was repeatedly mentioned. She is the great-granddaughter of Giovanni Perasso and husband to Mario Miraglia, both Italian immigrants. She received me in the apartment she shares with her husband, we talked for a little while, and then I proceed with the interview. It was a blast!
Mrs. Perasso-Miraglia, who is now 58 years old and a real estate agent, is an excellent cook that learned the art of cooking Italian food when in college at Syracuse University she went abroad for a full year to Florence, Italy in the early 1980’s. She described how her father Carlos Perasso encouraged her to take that opportunity because they were feeling that the Italian traditions that Giovanni Perasso brought from Italy were being forgotten. She strongly believes that the reason the traditions were lost was because her great-grandfather married an Ecuadorian, not an Italian. Consequently, through the years, the Hispanic side had more force. During her time in Florence, she not only learned to master the language of her ancestors, but also all the secrets and techniques of Italian cuisine, particularly of antipasto, pasta, and dolce, from a professional cook.
In 1988, she married the love of her life Mario Miraglia. They call each other l’amore della mia vita. When she married her husband, she also married his family. Especially, her mother-in-law and the nonna of her children, Teresa Orabona, widow of Vittorio Miraglia. Teresa was her second school in Italian cuisine and a more important one since she not only taught her the secrets and techniques of it, but also the personal side of it that were the traditions around the food. The two more important traditions she recalls are the family recipes of the Miraglia-Orabona ancestors and the tavola.
Until this day, Rosa keeps the hand-written recipes in a locked drawer. Her favorite recipe is how to make the fresh pasta of gnocchi that Teresa taught her. It is special because her father-in-law, Vittorio, was allergic to potato, and gnocchi is made of potato, flour, egg, and water; consequently, Teresa had to find a way to alter the recipe without losing the flavor. So, Rosa makes gnocchi without potato, which is a family secret that she has the responsibility to protect. The next tradition was the importance of the tavola, which is the table where everything revolves around. She misses when her children were kids and the nonna would yell: “bambini a la tavola!”. In that table, they ate, laughed, argued, and even cried. Everything that families do together.
Rosa and Mario cook pasta, specifically noodles, in their own household at least once a week. They obtain the noodles from an Italian brand they buy in the grocery store, but the sauce is always made by Rosa. Her favorite sauce is pesto, which is from the Italian city of Genoa where Giovanni Perasso was born. She doesn’t associate different kinds of noodles with different socioeconomic levels, but she remarks that stuffed pasta can be more expensive than non-stuffed pasta due to ingredients, like ricotta and spinach. But, still very accessible.
Noodles, and food in general, have influenced Rosa culturally in a very particular way. Food was the means and the end in feeling like home for her. Pasta was a medium to arrive home, but also the final destination. Pasta, which includes noodles, was a mean because it was a tool to connect back with her origins. Rosa’s family was losing their touch with their Italian origins since decades had passed since Giovanni Perasso migrated, so Rosa used cooking, both in Florence and with her mother-in-law, to connect back with her origins. Through food she learned the customs of this social group that she wanted to reincorporate. In addition, food acted as an end in feeling like home. Once she learned the culture through food, she used it constantly to feel a part of it. She doesn’t have to go to Genoa to eat pesto, now she can make it to by her own. Food is a home that you can take everywhere. She says, “the noodle is a pillar of our culture”.
According to Rosa, the changes in Italian society are reflected in the noodle dishes and diets. For her, the major factor of change reflected in food creation and consumption is communication. The logic of this is that thanks to communication more and more people can be a part of something. In ancient history, each region of Italy was associated with a particular food. In the present, you can eat it anywhere. For example, the Genoa pesto sauce that she loves, can be found in Napoli too. Similarly, the brand of pasta she likes, can be found in Ecuador, Italy, and the United States. Another example of modern communication is social media, like Instagram and YouTube. Via her phone, she can be aware of new recipes and trends. In modern times, she probably would not have traveled to Italy for cooking lessons since she could do it from the comfort of her own home. She says that the Mediterranean diet can be found everywhere now. Communication is highly important in letting culture evolve and attract more people.
Rosa strongly believes that American culture has manifested itself in the noodle’s cultural DNA because for her just like China and Italy have their own versions of noodles, the United States has it too. She gives the examples of macaroni and cheese, spaghetti and meatballs, and fast food pizza. Just like China started the noodle (most likely), then Italy embraced them and give noodles their own identity, now it is the turn of the United States. She believes that the American noodle identity is heavily influenced by its capitalistic culture of living fast and not wasting time cooking.
Interviewing Mrs. Rosa Perasso-Miraglia was truly an enriching experience. This is the story of an Italian immigrant that fought to preserve her culture, and the most wonderful aspect is how food was a pillar of it. After the interview, she proceeded to cook for me the most delicious spaghetti with pesto sauce I have ever tried. To sum up, if we take time to ask questions and listen, we can find wonderful food narratives in everyone, in this case a noddle narrative of an Italian immigrant.