Families often maintain food traditions especially at Easter and Christmas. Recipes and rituals are handed down and have meaning for successive generations. Five years ago, Christine Rebellato nee Mattiazzo wrote a blog about her family tradition of sharing meals on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Christine has kindly agreed for her blog to be re-posted
in anticipation of preparing for this Easter. She will serve polenta and baccalà and bigoli in salsa at an Easter gathering for the extended Mattiazzo family.
I take this opportunity to wish you all a happy Easter and celebrations with your families. Buona pasqua!
The image above shows the meal of polenta and baccalà and other dishes on Easter Sunday, 2012, shared with the family
at the home of Christine and Peter Rebellato.
L-R: Alice, Peter, Oscar, Modesto Rossetto, Julian, Louisa.
I note the passing of Johnny Tormena who died today at the age of 97 years. Johnny recorded an interview for the Veneto market gardeners’ oral history project in 2012.
Madeleine Regan
6th April 2025
*******************
Polenta e Baccalà – More than a meal
Our mother and father, Virginia Santin and Oscar Mattiazzo migrated to Australia from the Veneto region in the mid 1930s as children, aged 8 and 11. As their children, we three sisters, Christine, Helen and Vicki, grew up knowing about baccalà, which for our family, conjures up memories of Easter.
We call the dehydrated un-salted stockfish, probably cod, found in continental shops, baccalà. The drying of food is the world’s oldest known preservation method, as dried fish has a storage life of several years. Stockfish is exported from Norway. Confusingly in the Veneto, stockfish (stoccafisso) tends to be called Baccalà. In most of Italy and in standard Italian, baccalà is the name given to salted cod.
Our family associated baccalà with Easter Sunday. On Good Friday it was tradition for us to eat sparingly and our traditional dish was bigoli in salsa which was thick spaghetti called bigoli or bigoi in dialect. The salsa is made by cooking down salt-cured anchovies, onion, parsley and pepper. Although simple, it was my dad, Oscar Mattiazzo’s favourite pasta dish.
Many Veneto families in Australia cook baccalà at other times of the year, some on Good Friday or Christmas Eve or Christmas Day or other special occasions.
As mentioned, our family only ate the traditional polenta e baccalà on Easter Sunday. There was one exception, Christmas 1990, a month before our mother, Virginia died.
For that particular Christmas it was mum’s wish to cook up a feast, all under her direction. Mum wanted to have many traditional dishes, including polenta e baccalà. Mum directed and dictated the recipes to dad, and we cooked. We still have that special little notebook.
“Nonna Virginia’s Baccalà” recipe has been slightly modified over the 30 years we have been cooking it, without mum since 1991 and with dad until 2017. Mum’s recipe seems to be loosely based on baccalà alla Vicentina.
The baccalà preparation and cooking is a ritual – buying, soaking to re-hydrate the fish, changing the water, gentle beating, de-boning, cooking and serving with polenta. Dad for many years, as when mum was alive, would soak and prep the baccalà. My husband, Peter Rebellato, who migrated with his family from the Veneto when he was 4, has taken over that role. Peter grew up watching his father, Rino, prep the baccalà which his mother Livia cooked and their family ate once a year as a special winter meal. The ritual serves to keep family memories, my parents and Peter’s parents, all who are no longer with us, alive in our minds and in our stories.
Over the years, Easter time has been a time for our family to be together, to enjoy each other’s company, a time to keep our traditions, a time to enjoy food with a focus on keeping our loved ones alive.
Many families have dishes which connect them to the past, to a place, to an experience. Polenta e baccalà is one of those dishes for us – the family of Virginia Santin and Oscar Mattiazzo.
______________________________________
Christine Rebellato nee Mattiazzo
5 April 2020
All photos supplied by Christine.