Mark D’Ambrosi talks about his roots in San Valentino Torio and the website that he created for families from the town.
www.sanvalentinotoriofamilies.com
Podcast
Video
Researching San Valentino Torio Campania
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Three years ago during the Covid Crisis I was very disturbed by how many Italian elders were dying. Maybe I took this to heart since I lived on the French Italian border for a few years and I shopped each week and bought from the elders of the community or maybe is was having my first Pilgrimage into Assisi back in 1996. Yet what ever the reason I was deeply effected.
I thought to myself in the kitchen one day that each time someone died were all their recipes written down? How much tradition was lost with the passing of an elder? I looked around in my community and decided to bake bread for the homeless on St Joseph Day March 19th. There is a long and rich tradition in Sicily of making bread altars and feeding the hungry on St. Joseph feast day. Since then I have made bread to celebrate The last three years I have been baking bread and giving it away on this feast day. This year I found a Rosemary Easter Bread from Florence and Prato that I will be making. I begin my bread altar a few days before the baking of bread. Yet in Southern Italy they start their altars a month before. I also bring out my sour-dough starter that’s culture came from an island off of Naples that traces its origins over 1000 years. When I was writing my Novena book during this time, I was adding very traditional recipes dating back to Medieval Europe. I would research and then create the food of the regions and for some reason I just couldn’t leave Sicily and Naples in my research. It became my favorite place to find recipes, music, and even prayers that have been said to Bless food supplies for centuries. Yet this year with Matt and my researching my lineage I have discovered that my Bloodline actually goes into several Kings of Italy. So I want to honor these ancestors that seemed to whisper to me long before I knew their names. The Countess of Arundel Alizona de Sauzzon, Thomas I Marquis of Saluzzo in Piedmont and his wife Aloisia di Slauzoon Lusisa di Saluzoon, King Manfred of Sicily, Queen Beatriz de Saboya and Queen Helena Angelina Doukaina, King Charles I and Charles the second King of Sicily and Naples then there was Count Pepin of Vermandois, Count Herbert I of Vermandois, King Bernard of Italy, and today King Adalbert II was the king of Italy, Willa of Tuscany, King Berengar II of Lombard, Italy, Holy Roman Emperor Berengar I . Margrave of Tuscany who lived on the border line protecting the borders last and not least Lothair I Emperor of the Romans and King of Italy. Thus I have the lineage that matches my sourdough starter this year. This bread uses some unusual ingredients: it soaks raisins with olive oil and rosemary. This is just the beginning of my bread making weekend. More posts to come..