For Christmas’ sake, don’t call it fruitcake.
Two fingers fat and sooty with cocoa powder,
panforte is anything but lighthearted,
the name even proclaiming
in a powerful Puccinian baritone
its gastronomic brawn.
First concocted by kitchen wenches
in thirteenth century Siena,
this strong bread
was tucked into the pockets of marauding Crusaders
fortifying a wrath
undertaken yet again
in the name of god.
Once deemed so valuable,
its dense slices used as
catholic wampum
for payment of February taxes
to the insatiable nuns of Montecelso,
selling entry into heaven
for a sweet tithe.
While medieval Sienese painters
created Byzantine art
the city’s spice sellers,
the original pharmacists,
produced piles of panforte
with precisely seventeen ingredients,
corresponding to the number of districts
within the city walls of Siena,
each named for an animal or symbol,
but none for bread.
Nicknamed il Panpepato
pepper bread
from sneeze-inducing quantities
of black and cayenne peppers
mixed into the dough;
the spicy baked blocks
touted as a curative with healing powers,
gobbled by aristocrats and clergy and well-to-do
on high holy days and
under-the-weather days.
Hours, weeks, months
spent gathering ingredients,
scouring far-flung towns and specialty food markets
with a stained, scribbled recipe
subtly refined each December.
The cakes glint and glimmer with jewels
from my pantry:
hazelnuts from Piedmont,
white-as-sand Sicilian almonds,
baked figs from Calabria,
exotic citrus peels
Meyer lemon, yuzu, blood orange
laboriously candied by a Berkeley artist
with an English accent,
and chopped persimmons from the backyard
made holey by nature.
Spice its hallmark,
nutmeg and cloves are grated,
Tellicherry peppercorns, coarse salt and
cayenne peppers,
filched off drying stalks
hanging from kitchen cupboards
are pestled to rough powder,
like dregs from an expensive binge.
With just enough flour
to bind the baubles,
the batter is smothered
in a hotter-than-Hades, sweet sludge;
a melting pot of Vermont butter, cane sugar
and cups and of cups of honey
the hue of horse chestnuts
harvested from a neighbor’s humming hive,
traded for but one thick, chewy slice
of panforte. (at At Home in Napa)
Heritage Culinary Artifacts