p is for panettone

Panettone is THE holiday cake in northern Italy. It's a soft and light egg bread studded with candied citron and raisins that originated in Milan, and Christmas is definitely not Christmas without a panettone in the house.

In December, Milan sidewalks are host to packs of pedestrians toting panettone boxes by their sturdy ribbon handles. The box itself is a tell-tale shape reminiscent of a large squared-off gumdrop. Supermarkets and high-end gastronomias alike feature floor-to-ceiling pyramids of ready-made panettone by any number of major brands. Trust me, you couldn't pass Christmas in Milan without a panettone if you tried.

And you shouldn't.

We placed our panettone order with our favorite baker, Robert, more than a week in advance. We learned our lesson last year when we landed one of Robert's excellent panettone by sheer luck - someone else had cancelled their order at the last minute. We considered it a Christmas miracle.

This year our one-kilo panettone was ready to come home with us on Christmas Eve and we could hardly wait to eat it. Panettone, especially those made by Robert, are amazingly light and soft. Sweet chunks of candied orange peel and raisin fleck the yellow bread. And thick slices of this tall bread have come to mean Christmas to us too.

Just the smell of a panettone is enough to raise spirits to an appropriately Christmas level - and the heady profumo of a good panettone, once floating in a room, cannot be rushed to leave. It just hangs there smelling so very, very wonderfully sweet.

We had panettone for Christmas breakfast with hot cocoa. Stefano made the hot cocoa using his secret weapon, the milk frother. A good milk frother can elevate even the most simple Swiss Miss into the stratosphere. Not to mention what a pair of fluffy marshmallows on top will do. A drink worthy of the historic panettone!

And what does one do with their panettone after Christmas?



Make french toast, of course.

There has never been a more delicate and delicious french toast, a more perfect bread to soak up egg and vanilla, cinnamon and milk. Hunks of panettone french toast make the day after Christmas almost as enjoyable as Christmas itself.



In northern Italy, panettone is Christmas and Christmas is panettone. And the day after Christmas... Well, that's just icing on the cake.

P is for panettone.

the natale recital

"Buon natale... tutti voi!" I will never be able to describe the energetic cacaphony that accompanied these lyrics. Belted-out by a teeming mass of seven-year-olds during their school Christmas recital, it was as if we were all engulfed in a swirling jumble of sugar & spice and... caffeine. And all other stimulants known to man. At one point the singing became screaming - pure and simple - and I don't know if they ever went back.

What's truly amazing about this experience is the universality of "The Christmas Recital." Our Italian friends took us to their Italian son's recital in an Italian school in Italy and it was still held in an auditorium that doubled as a gymnasium. Fathers still stood in every available space pointing their cameras at the stage. And the directors of the production - in this case a group of energetic nuns and one very harried lay person - still seemed far more concerned about the specifics of the performance than the children. We might as well have been in middle America.

As for the children... the distracted and/or slow-footed among them missed their cues and ran onstage several beats behind, and the invisible wall between the stage and the audience gave way as kids vigorously waved to family members in the crowd. And the singing itself was deliciously, if not always, off-key.

While the biggest difference was the language, the excellent thing about the kids' off-key holiday warbling is that we understood everything they said. Italian children, in general, are much easier to understand than their adult brethren. Maybe it's the high voices that annunciate each and every syllable. Or it could be the outrageously simple sentence construction. No matter - when children are talking (or singing) we feel like masters of the Italian language.

There were a few cultural differences including several characters that don't usually show up in American holiday recitals. One was Beffana, the witch who brings good children presents on January 6. And another was the giant dancing panettone - the traditional Milan Christmas cake - portrayed by a kid wearing a large painted cardboard box and tights.

Not surprisingly, after the show everyone headed downstairs to a giant open space overrun by screaming kids. Adults stood around eating giant slabs of panettone and pan d'oro while children gulped down platefuls of potato chips and giant glasses of Coca Cola. The nuns flitted around the room, calmly greeting children who by now were absolutely overrun by sugar and caffeine.

Each child, though, did pause at some point to give their family a large golden angel made of spray-painted pasta. We were ecstatic to see that in the country that has elevated pasta to an art form, the beloved shells, tubes and wheels are still used by elementary school kids to make stuff for their moms.

As we left the school that evening the hallways were quiet. Ballerina costumes hung outside empty classrooms, their tutus deflated and limp. A large and lonely panettone box sat on the floor, its child actor long gone. And the nuns busied themselves with sweeping up.

But now we know. A Christmas recital is a Christmas recital the world over. There will always be a basketball net visible from the stage. And a child waving when she should be singing. And a bunch of pasta glued together and spray-painted gold.

Even in Milan.

Buon natale e buone feste.