Venetian Halloween

We have been bashed over the head all semester about how traditions halt human development.  Art serves to perpetuate the status quo.  Holidays cause us to celebrate the past rather than advance.  Human development has greatly accelerated as education spread so that individuals can more readily see the flaws in tradition.  As students, we should be dismissing such outdated institutions as Halloween, All Saint’s Day Eve.  How ridiculous it is that spirits will rise up and haunt the living.  How warped it is that we hoard candy and brutalize innocent gourds.  But goshdarnit, we wanted Halloween.

 

Italian pumpkins are green, squat and big, although the supermarket also had “zucce halloween” for carving.  Early Friday morning, I sliced our pumpkin through the middle and put a half into the oven.  I beat together my last two eggs, dumped them into the flour and kneaded a batch of pasta dough.  I finished the dough and pulled the pumpkin from the oven right before leaving for Professor Carroll’s class in the Academia Gallery. 

 

After several hours of absorbing Venetian painting, I returned to the kitchen to (eat lunch and) continue preparing supper.  I borrowed eggs for the second batch of pasta dough and I mashed the pumpkin, sautéed a minced shallot, and mixed in ricotta for the stuffing.  As dinnertime approached, I enlisted Caroline and Howard to help stuff and fork the ravioli while Hiep and Preston labored over the apple strudel.

 

When the girls from the other apartment arrived, Liz joined the ravioli assembly line while Alayna, Kathyrne and Melissa brainstormed ideas for the jack-o-lantern.  When the cloth we had failed to roll the strudel, we abandoned the form and instead lined a baking dish with dough and loaded in the apples, topped it with another layer of dough and set it aside to wait for dessert.  Howard dropped the first round of finished ravioli into the water just as I tended to the leaks and butter for the sauce.  I added the mascarpone when the burner was a bit too hot, so the sauce took on an oily look, but the cooked ravioli were starting to stick, so it was time to eat.  We served the pumpkin ravioli slightly after the planned 7:30 seating, and even with a sub-par sauce, the meal was very tasty. 

 

After the ravioli, Preston and the girls carved the pumpkin and set aside the seeds for baking.  The apple confection disappeared quickly when it came out of the oven, and distracted us enough for the pumpkin seeds to overcook.  Nonetheless, the evening was a successful attempt at the season.

 

A piu tardi!

 

Ciao.

 

Andy