Ep. 1908 Sicily, Recipes Rooted in Traditions by Melissa Muller| IWP Book Club With Richard Hough

The Italian Wine Podcast is the community driven platform for Italian wine geeks around the world. Support the show by donating at italianwinepodcast.com. Donate 5 or more euros, and we'll send you a copy of our latest book, My Italian Grape Geek Journal, absolutely free. To get your free copy of My Italian Grape Geek Journal, click support us at italianwinepodcast.com or wherever you get your pods. Welcome to the Italian Wine Podcast club. Each month, we select the great wine book to share. We chat to the author and get your opinions. Stay tuned as we read between the vines with the Italian wine podcast. Hello, and welcome to book club with The Italian Wine Podcast. This is the third episode of our new show focusing on the world of wine writing. Each month, we choose a book, chat to the author, listen to some extracts, and explore the story behind the book. We'd really like your ideas and suggestions too. So if there's a wine book or a wine writer that you'd like us to see here, please let us know. Today's book is Sicily, the cookbook by Melissa Muller, and I'm thrilled that Melissa is joining us today from Sicily. Hi, Melissa. How are you? Hello, Richard. I'm well. Thank you. Great. Thank you for having me. It's my pleasure, Melissa. Thank you for joining us. I know it's a particularly busy time for you at the moment with various Mhmm. Wine fairs and events and tastings, so your time is is greatly appreciated. Well, it's a pleasure to be with you, and, I'm happy to take some time out of my day to talk about Sicily and talk about my book and my story. Perfect. So Melissa studied anthropology at Columbia University in New York City, but she also obtained a master's degree in journalism. Your father, Melissa, was a Wall Street lawyer, and I I think I'm correct in saying that you're expected to follow in his footsteps. Exactly. Exactly. But, of course, you had other plans inspired by your maternal grandmother and summer trips to your ancestral home in Sicily. Mhmm. You developed a lifelong passion for the island and in particular, its cuisine. Exactly. You opened a Sicilian restaurant in New York City, and after several years of intense research, wrote the cookbook Sicily recipes rooted in traditions. Mhmm. Today, you live with your husband, Fabio Cireci Mhmm. On the family winery, Fiedo Montoni, where you play a key role in in winemaking and cellar activities, and you're particularly involved in the vineyard organic farm. Absolutely. Yes. You're currently working on your second book, a work of narrative nonfiction with recipes intertwined that will focus on the uncontaminated rural heart of Sicily. Yes. The introduction of your book, Melissa, is entitled Rooted in Sicily. Your grandmother migrated from Sicily to America in 1936 when she was just 13 years old. Could you tell us a bit about the circumstances behind her decision to leave Sicily and start a new life in America at that time? And, also, what kind of life awaited her in America? Well, first of all, the word decision, didn't play a role for my grandmother. She was 13 years old when she immigrated, and her father had already been thirteen years in America. He left when she was only six months old, because many of his relatives were there, and there were many opportunities. They were not a poor family. They they were landowners on my grandfather's side. But because of the opportunities, it was very common at the time to, to to emigrate and go to America. Many people only went for short periods and then came back, and that was his plan. But, he found, prosperity there. He found, a new life, and he sent over, in a sense, sent over for my grandmother and my, great grandmother. The thirteen years passed because in the thirties when she immigrated, the, mass wave of immigration had just completed, and the borders were pretty much closed. It wasn't so easy to enter anymore. So before her travel and for her, life move, from Sicily to New York, she had to obtain American citizenship, which, her my great grandfather did on her behalf. What an adventure. It's almost impossible to imagine what that must have been like for a a 13 year old to leave rural Sicily and and begin a new life in New York. Well, when my grandmother was alive, I spent so much time speaking to her, recording all her stories, which I still have. And I was always asking her, what was it like? What was the feeling of leaving? And the main thing was that America was viewed as, of course, the the famous line that the the the streets were lined with with gold. So for her, it was an adventure. It was something beautiful. She had an amazing aesthetic sense, so she was excited for the clothes, for the fashion, for this new, beautiful life as she imagined it. So for her, it wasn't something it wasn't a sad moment to leave. And on top of it, she would be meeting her father for the first time traveling there. Wow. Incredible. Incredible story. And it it's something probably we we could bend all day discussing, but you spoke about this wave of migrants, and your grandmother came at tail end of that wave. More than 4,000,000 Italians who immigrated to The United States between 1880 and 1924. Is it possible to quantify the the legacy of that mass movement of people from one continent to another, the impact it's had on on America, its cuisine, its culture? Of course, America is made up of of all these different cultures and all these different ethnic groups that travel there. The Italian American community is extremely strong and has been because of the because of the amounts of of Italians that left, especially from Southern Italy. Yeah. So you grew up then as a second, third generation migrant in America. You spent your summers in Sicily. Mhmm. And can you give us a flavor of of what that was like? Well, I on my father's side, so my paternal grandparents were German. Right. My maternal grandparents, Italian, specifically, as we just spoke about my Sicilian grandmother. So already within the household, there were two major different cultures, of course, at play. My father is as you mentioned, practiced international tax law, and he had various offices around the world where he would do his he would practice his work from, not only in New York. So as a at a young age, I started traveling. At six months old, he took me on his first, his first trip. Wow. At, two years old, it was my, first trip to Asia. He would take me often to I'm I'm an only child, so, he would take my mother and I, along with him to give me this exposure to the world. As I grew up, I also studied abroad a lot. I studied Japanese, so I studied in Japan, was there for six months, and and visited for, did smaller study abroad in within Europe as well in Northern Europe. With that said, my goal and my love and the passion were all about Sicily where I spent every childhood summer. I it was 1980, and I was two years old. And my mother had never been to my grandmother's village in Sicily. In fact, she she actually, wasn't so keen on visiting. She she assumed that Sicily would be a, a rural version of of the New York City Sicilian neighborhood that she grew up in. I was two years old. We took this first trip, and my mother was fascinated by what she found in Sicily. And the beauty that her mother and grandmother had described to her was nothing compared to what she actually found on the island, and she fell in love with the small village where grandma was from. As a child, for me, it was like a playground because this small village that is one of Sicily's smallest, it's, the name of the town is Santana, and it's a fraction of a larger town called Culta Bellota, which is in the province of Agrigento on the southern part of the island. My summers there, were moments where I felt that I had freedom, where I had true relationships with, with my friends and with my relatives in the towns, where I felt that, I could be myself and express myself on on all levels, but with simple, sincere rela