Stories from the back streets of Naples ……. and a Neapolitan cookbook

There are many different categories of poverty, from not having the means to heat the home, provide food for the family or secure a decent education for your children.

Down a Neapolitan street, 2018

And up there with them is the absence of running water, which at the very least can mean a tedious frequent trip up and down stairs to the neighbourhood tap and at worst a long walk to a communal pump. 

With buildings that reach to the sky, 2019

Today, we take fresh and clean running water for granted.  It is one of those key steps forward in the provision of public health during the late 19th and early 20th century.

In my own family I would have to go back to my great grandmother and the 1870s and 80s, to be able to record stories of the communal water tap in the shared courtyard, and to my grandparents in the 1920s who shared an outside lavatory.  

But progress was in the air and by the time I regularly visited them three decades later, the lavatory had become their personal one, even if it was still located outside at the bottom of their yard.

And then in a casual conversation with Rosa who was born in Naples in 1940 I was reminded that drawing water from a tap in her home was as alien to her as it had been for great grandmother.

We had just had pasta for dinner, and as I went to start washing up, Rosa pointed to the huge saucepan of “pasta water” and suggested I use it to wash the pots and plates.

It struck me as odd, but it was still warm, and more to the point had I been back in Naples in 1940, I wouldn’t have entertained wasting water ….. not if it meant going down and coming back 4 flights of stairs with a fresh supply.

A Napoli Si Mangia cosi

From there the talk drifted to one of the cook books which has sat in our house for over 20 years.  It was published in 1986 and is entitled A Napoli Si Mangia cosi', which means In Naples you eat like this.

It was one of the things Rosa gave Tina when she left home to come to Britain a full 35 years ago.

Fritto alla napoletana

It is much used, held together in part by sellotape and a book I occasionally flip through.

Now, I can’t speak or read Italian, despite many embarrassing attempts, and so having looked at the pictures I would put the book back.

What I didn’t know was that it is not written in Italian, but in Neapolitan which for some Italians can be as incomprehensible as any foreign language.

And even now she will often say to me this is the Italian for something, but in Naples we would say …….

All of which leaves me to decide if I should give up on Italian and go straight for Neapolitan.

We shall see.

But I now know that Fritto alla napoletana is a selection of vegetables and zucchini flowers dipped in batter and fried.

Pictures; from A Napoli Si Mangia cosi' and Naples Street, 2018-19, from the collection of Saul Simpson and Balzano