Maria Pellicci’s Christmas Ravioli
Elide Pellicci looks down upon Maria & Nevio Pellicci
If you should spot a light, gleaming after hours in the back kitchen at E. Pellicci in the Bethnal Green Rd at this time of year, it will be Maria Pellicci making the Christmas ravioli for her family as she has done each year since 1962.
Maria originates from the same tiny village of Casciana near Lucca in Tuscany as her late husband Nevio Pellicci (senior). And, to her surprise, when Maria first arrived in London she discovered his mother Elide Pellicci, who came over in 1899, was already making ravioli to the same recipe that she knew from home in Italy.
Elide is the E. Pellicci celebrated in chrome letters upon the primrose yellow art deco facade of London’s best-loved family-run cafe, the woman who took over the running of the cafe in the thirties after the death of her husband Priamo who worked there from 1900 – which means we may be assured that the Christmas ravioli have been made here by the Pelliccis in this same spot for over a century.
Thus it was a great honour that Contributing Photographer Patricia Niven & I were the very first outsiders to be invited to witness and record this time-hallowed ritual in Bethnal Green. But I regret to inform you that this particular ravioli is only ever made for the family, which means the only way you can get to taste it is if you marry into the Pelliccis.
“It’s a Tuscan Christmas tradition – Ravioli in Brodo – we only do it once a year and every family has their own recipe,” Maria admitted to me as she turned the handle of the machine and her son Nevio Pellici (junior) reached out to manage the rapidly emerging yellow ribbon of pasta. “My mother and my grandmother used to make it, and I’ve been doing it all my life.”
In recent years, Maria has been quietly tutoring Nevio in this distinctive culinary art that is integral to the Pellicci family. “I was going with the boys to see Naples play against Arsenal tonight, but that’s down the drain,” he declared with good grace – revealing he had only discovered earlier in the day that his mother had decided the time was right for making the special ravioli, ready for the whole family to eat in chicken broth on Christmas Day.
“He’s a good boy,” Maria declared with a tender smile, acknowledging his sacrifice, “years ago I used to stay here on my own making the ravioli until eleven o’clock at night.”
“She’s trying to hand it over to me,” Nevio confirmed proudly.
“Nevio’s good and he’s got the patience,” Maria added encouragingly, as Nevio lowered the pasta carefully onto the ravioli mould.
“I’ve got the rubbish job, I have to fill the ravioli,” he complained in mock self-pity, grinning with pleasure as the two of them set to work with nimble fingers to fill the ravioli. Although the precise ingredients are a fiercely guarded secret, Maria confided to me that the filling comprises beef and pork with Parmigiano and Percorino, along with other undisclosed seasonings. “Everyone does it differently,” she confessed modestly, making light of the lifetime of refining that lies behind her personal recipe.
Already Maria had cooked the mixture slowly for a hour and added a couple of eggs to bind it, and – now it had cooled – she and Nevio were transferring it into the ravioli mould. “We used to do this by hand,” she informed me, turning contemplative as she watched Nevio expertly produce another ribbon of yellow pasta to sit on top of the mould. “We rolled the pasta out on the table before we had the machine. Sometimes, large families used to fill the whole table rolling out enough pasta to feed everyone on Christmas Day. When my mother was small, they were poor and lived in a hut but they had their own flour and eggs, so they could always make pasta.”
It was Nevio’s task to turn the mould over and press it down hard onto the table, binding the layers of pasta together. Then, with intense concentration as Maria waited expectantly, he peeled the ravioli away from the mould, revealing a sheet that looked like a page of neatly upholstered postage stamps. Making swift work of it, Maria wielded her little metal wheel by its wooden handle, separating the individual ravioli and transferring them to a metal tray.
In the kitchen of the empty restaurant, mother and son surveyed their fine handiwork with satisfaction. Each mould produced forty ravioli and, in the course of the evening, they made eight batches of ravioli, thus producing three hundred and sixty ravioli to delight the gathered Pelliccis on Christmas Day – and thereby continuing a family tradition that extends over a century. Yet for Maria, Ravioli in Brodo is more than a memento of her origin in Tuscany, making it here in the East End over all this time incarnates this place as her home.
“I am happy here and I know everyone in Bethnal Green,” she admitted to me, “It’s my village and it’s my family.”
Maria & Nevio rolling out the pasta
Maria sprinkles semolina in the mould to stop the pasta sticking
Maria & Nevio placing the meat filling in the ravioli
Nevio presses down on the ravioli mould
The ravioli are turned out from the mould
Maria cuts out the individual ravioli
Over three hundred ravioli ready for Christmas Day
Elide & Priamo, the Pellicci ancestors look down in approval upon the observance of making Christmas ravioli for more than a century in Bethnal Green
Photographs copyright © Patricia Niven
E.Pellicci, 332 Bethnal Green Rd, E2 0AG
You may like to read my other Pellicci stories
Maria Pellicci, The Meatball Queen of Bethnal Green
Colin O’Brien’s Pellicci Portraits ( Part One)
Colin O’Brien’s Pellicci Portraits (Part Two)
News From Norton Folgate
British Land’s original proposed demolition of Norton Folgate
British Land’s revised proposed demolition of Norton Folgate
Can you spot the difference between the two pictures above? One is the level of demolition proposed in British Land’s previous scheme for Norton Folgate and one is their recently revised version.
Back in March, I reported on British Land’s proposal to demolish the attractive old warehouses in Blossom St, preserving only piers of bricks on the facade and recycling an unspecified amount of the fabric in their new building, an approach which Historic England dignified with the phrase ‘sensitive restoration.’
When Spitalfields Trust challenged this destruction of the warehouses, British Land claimed they were preserving them – which makes it paradoxical that now British Land have announced they are ‘retaining’ the warehouses as a concession to those who objected to their scheme.
Boris Johnson, Mayor of London has ‘called in’ the British Land Norton Folgate scheme which was rejected unanimously by Tower Hamlets Strategic Development Committee in July. On 18th January, the Mayor will stage a public hearing at City Hall at which he will determine the decision upon the application himself. This will be the thirteenth such ‘call in’ and the previous twelve have all been determined in favour of the developer.
Meanwhile, the Spitalfields Trust have launched a Judicial Review into the legitimacy of the ‘call in’ and billionaire Troels Povlson has offered to buy the site so that the Trust may implement their alternative scheme by Burrell Foley Fisher, which is based upon the principal of minimal architectural intervention, utilising Norton Folgate to serve the needs of local people by providing genuinely affordable workspaces and housing.
British Land’s amended proposal for Norton Folgate is still an overblown development that will destroy an historic neighbourhood to replace it with a hideous corporate plaza. We need you to help us stop this, by writing letters of objection to point out that it remains unacceptable. You will find a simple guide to how to object below.
You can read Alec Forshaw’s full assessment of British Land’s revised scheme on Save Norton Folgate facebook page
Norton Folgate as it is today
Massing of the British Land development
The Spitalfields Trust scheme by John Burrell of Burrell Foley Fisher
Spitalfields Trust scheme looking from Norton Folgate – drawn by Lucinda Rogers
Spitalfields Trust Scheme, looking along Fleur de Lis St – drawn by Lucinda Rogers
Spitalfields Trust Scheme, looking down Elder St from Commercial St – drawn by Lucinda Rogers
This is a simple guide to how to write to the Greater London Authority objecting to British Land’s amended scheme for Norton Folgate.
You can write by email to james.keogh@london.gov.uk (please also provide your postal address in the email) or by post to James Keogh, Greater London Authority, City Hall, The Queen’s Walk, London, SE1 2AA. Please copy your email to Tower Hamlets Council beth.eite@towerhamlets.gov.uk
Your email or letter needs to arrive before 14th December.
It is important that you use your own words but here are a few relevant points to consider when objecting:
1. Tower Hamlets Council refused the application unanimously on three grounds – harm to the character and appearance of the Conservation Area, the low level of housing and the low level of Affordable Housing. These objections still stand.
2. The amendments, although welcome, are very small in comparison with the overall scale of the development.
3. The level of destruction within this important Conservation Area is still huge.
4. The historic layout of courtyards and lanes, the fine grain of the area, will still be destroyed.
5. Our original objection to the scheme criticised the treatment of a dozen buildings, of which this amendment addresses only one. For instance, the two eighteenth-century buildings still standing on Norton Folgate itself are being removed – number 14 in its entirety and all of number 15 except its front elevation. Numbers 16-19 Norton Folgate will still have the ground floor hollowed out to provide a passage entrance way to the new development.
6. Just as originally proposed, the scheme remains an overblown megastructure with large office floor plates, still rising to as many as fourteen storeys. All within a Conservation Area, where the prevailing height is four storeys, and where heritage should be protected.
7. Norton Folgate is worth fighting for. It is a fine example of the lesser-known areas of historic London which make our capital city the wonderful place it is, but which will destroyed forever if this development goes ahead.
8. Please be sure to include your postal address otherwise your objection will be invalid. Over seven hundred people wrote to Tower Hamlets Council to object to the previous scheme but two hundred letters were discounted through lack of address.
Follow the Campaign at facebook/savenortonfolgate
Follow Spitalfields Trust on twitter @SpitalfieldsT
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An New Scheme For Norton Folgate
Joining Hands to Save Norton Folgate
Dan Cruickshank in Norton Folgate
Taking Liberties in Norton Folgate
At Fieldgate St Great Synagogue
There is an overwhelming melancholy at Fieldgate St Great Synagogue. A place of reverence for over a century, it is no longer required now the congregation has departed. It closed for regular services in 2007.
When the synagogue was founded in 1899, Whitechapel was defined by the Jewish community that filled the surrounding streets, yet they dwindled away through the second half of the last century, moving to better housing and better lives in the newly-built suburbs.
After bomb damage in World War II, Fieldgate St Synagogue was rebuilt and reopened in 1959, retaining significant features from the earlier building. There is a lonely grandeur to the place today, worn and dusty now but still with evidence of the attention exercised in its care. Fine gilt texts upon panels around the balcony record benefactors and commemorate loved ones, never to be forgotten. A cotton roller towel still hangs by the sink in the hallway, stale matzos sit in a cupboard upstairs and tablecloths grace abandoned tables, awaiting those who will not return.
Sold last summer to the East London Mosque, which has extended itself upon three sides of the building in recent years, the empty structure sits in limbo awaiting an uncertain future yet, for the meantime, Fieldgate St Great Synagogue harbours the lingering presence of all the worshippers who passed through.
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Announcement Of Rodney Archer’s Funeral
Rodney Archer‘s funeral will take place at Christ Church, Spitalfields at noon on Wednesday 16th December, preceded by a procession from 31 Fournier St. All are welcome to attend. No flowers please but instead donations can be made to Spitalfields Crypt Trust or Suited & Booted.
https://vimeo.com/33156078
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Happy Birthday Broadway Bookshop!
Broadway Bookshop in Hackney celebrates ten years trading this week and continues to thrive, in contradiction of the commonly-held belief that the imminent death of all bookshops is at hand. As author and publisher, I have come to cherish independent bookshops such as this one and so I went along to meet proprietor Jane Howe in the hope of learning the secret of success in bookselling.
Although it has a modest frontage, Broadway Bookshop is like a warren inside, opening out as you pass through the narrow passage past the cash desk and descend the staircase into the huge burrow lined with books. The clamour of Broadway Market recedes and you find yourself as if in a private library where an atmosphere of literary calm prevails. Yet beyond this chamber lies another secret space, where only initiates are admitted. A tiny cavern beneath the street, stacked with boxes of books concealed behind a discreet green curtain, where Jane sits at her desk.
I was fascinated to learn of the women booksellers in West London who had inspired Jane and I realised that she is one of a trio of remarkable women booksellers who run bookshops in East London today – Denise Jones at Brick Lane Books, Vivian Archer at Newham Books & Jane Howe at Broadway Bookshop.
‘I first started to become a bookseller at Dillons, High St Kensington after I left University College London. You had to wear a plastic apron and a badge and you weren’t allowed to look at the books, only dust them – you didn’t open them. I had also been doing proof reading for publishers but I can’t spell so it was ridiculous.
Then I went to work for Mary Mackintosh at Elgin Books in Portobello. She was an American woman in her sixties and her shop was nicely furnished with lovely carpets and furniture and fresh flowers. She was my inspiration. She had this welcoming manner which all the customers loved. She used to let me do the window display which changed every week and she gave me free rein and I loved it. There was always a theme but I didn’t tell her what it was, she had to guess it – sometimes it was that all the books were the same subject and sometimes it was simply that the covers were all the same colour. As Notting Hill changed, the annual rent went from seventeen thousand to thirty-seven thousand and Mary tried to find alternative cheaper premises but she became ill and died.
From there I went to work for Sarah Anderson at the Travel Bookshop, a redoubtable woman who had started the shop twenty years before. It was also in Portobello and, alongside Elgin Books, was the other bookshop that inspired the film Notting Hill. We sold travel books alongside travel literature.
By then I was fifty, but I had a windfall which gave me an opportunity, and I thought, ‘I’ve got to do something for myself, I can’t just be a part-time bookseller for the rest of my life.’ Friends encouraged me to do it. They said, ‘You know enough.’ So I was looking for premises and my eldest daughter Bridget was studying at the Royal London Hospital. I heard there was an empty shop in Broadway Market and it was very cheap. I thought, ‘It’s a long way from the tube,’ but there was a market starting up and I was used to Portobello and I thought, ‘There’ll be loads of people.’ I went into the cafe next door and it was full of young people in their late twenties and early thirties and I thought, ‘These could be my customers.’
It was a perfect High St, it had a butcher, a baker and a fishmonger, and I thought, ‘Every High St needs a bookshop,’ and ten years later that has been proved right. It has become a community meeting place. You hear people saying, ‘I’ll meet you in the bookshop,’ or they call on their phones and say, ‘I’m in the bookshop.’ Sometimes they leave their children in the book corner at the back of the shop, I set it up there so little children can’t sneak out the door without passing the counter.
Recently, we’ve been under pressure to sell kindles and other things than books, and to open a coffee shop, but we haven’t done any of that – instead we’ve focussed our efforts on offering the very best, most-knowledgeable customer service we can give. We weathered the Recession and the Olympics, when nobody came because they had been told there was nowhere to park, and we’re still here.’
Jane Howe, Bookseller
Photographs copyright © Colin O’Brien
The Broadway Bookshop, 6 Broadway Market, Hackney, E8 4QJ
All are welcome to a party at Broadway Bookshop tonight with drinks & food from 6:30pm and 10% discount on all sales including the CRIES OF LONDON
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The Players Of St Peter
Jenny Williamson as the Virgin Mary
Ever since my stint as the Innkeeper, turning the Holy Family away when they knocked without reading the ‘No Vacancies’ sign, I have been in thrall to the curious literal magic of the ancient Mystery Plays. So you can imagine my delight to discover the Players of St Peter performing at St George-in-the-East, Wapping this week, still carrying the torch for fifteenth century English drama after seventy years.
The Players were originally founded in 1946 in St Peter’s Cornhill in the first week of Advent, as a celebration of the return of Peace at the end of the Second World War, before moving to Holy Trinity, Sloane St in 1988 and then arriving at St-George-in-the-East in 2012. Jock Longstaff supervised most performances during the first twenty-five years, suceeded by Olive Stubbs, a member of the acting company who became director and has overseen every production for the last thirty years.
When Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie & I slipped into the back of the darkened church to watch the dress rehearsal, we were astonished by the glowing Biblical visions that arose before our eyes and even more amazed when a shining Angel drifted up the aisle to deliver us cups of tea and homemade spice cake, from a recipe adopted by the Players years ago and baked annually ever since.
Dazzled by God’s radiance and raptured by the sight of the Virgin Mary, we were puzzled by the presumed invisibility of Mary Magdalene in scenes where the Players appeared to address a presence composed only of thin air – until the friendly Angel bearing tea and cake helpfully explained that, ‘Mary Magdalene can’t be here this evening, she’s doing shift work.’
Robert Hayward as the Holy Lamb of God from the Coventry Shearmen & Taylors’ play
Mike Harding as King Herod and his lackeys from the Coventry Weavers’ play
Steve Brett as Jesus in the York Carpenters’ play
Stephen Wright, Anthony Sullivan & Robert Hayward as the three soldiers at the Crucifixion
Brian David as Almighty God and his Angels, Anthea Wormington & Jackie Withnail
Gill Taylor as Lucifer, the Prince of Darkness from the Chester Tanners’ Play
Olive Stubbs, Director of the Players of St Peter for thirty years in the role of Delight
Herod’s Lackey
Vicky Bettelheim, Judith Elbourne & Deborah Pollard as the three Marys
Pharisee
God in Splendour
The Players of St Peter
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
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The Boar’s Head Parade
Today sees the annual Boar’s Head Parade in the City of London – leaving Butcher’s Hall in Bartholomew Close, Smithfield at 3pm – to mark the beginning of the Christmas Season
Drawing by Paul Bommer
Contributing Photographer Colin O’Brien & I were greeted by Neil Hunt, Beadle of The Worshipful Company of Butchers, when we arrived at their Hall in St Bartholomew’s Close, Smithfield, to join a small crowd eagerly awaiting the annual appearance of the celebrated Boar’s Head in the first week of Advent, marking the beginning on the Christmas season in London.
This arcane tradition has its origin in 1343 when the Lord Mayor, John Hamond, granted the Butchers of the City of London use of a piece of land by the Fleet River, where they could slaughter and clean their beasts, for the token yearly payment of a Boar’s Head at Christmas.
To pass the time in the drizzle, the Beadle showed us his magnificent staff of office dating from 1716, upon which may be discerned a Boar’s Head. “Years ago, they had a robbery and this was the only thing that wasn’t stolen,” he confided to me helpfully, ” – it had a cover and the thieves mistook it for a mop.”
Before another word was spoken, a posse of members of the Butcher’s Company emerged triumphant from the Hall in blue robes and velvet hats, with a livid red Boar’s Head carried aloft at shoulder height, to the delighted applause of those waiting in the street. Behind us, drummers of the Royal Logistics Corps in red uniforms gathered and City of London Police motorcyclists in fluorescent garb lined up to receive instructions from Ian Kelly, the Master of the Company.
Everyone assembled to pose for official photographs with the perky red ears of the Boar sticking up above the crowd, providing the opportunity for a closer examination of this gloss-painted paper mache creation, sitting upon a base of Covent Garden grass and surrounded by plastic fruit. As recently as 1968, a real Boar’s Head was paraded but these days Health & Safety concerns about hygiene require the use of this colourful replica for ceremonial purposes.
The drummers set a brisk pace and before we knew it, the parade was off down Little Britain, preceded by the police motorcyclists halting the traffic. For a couple of minutes, the City stopped – astonished passengers leaned out of buses and taxis, and office workers reached for their phones to capture the moment. It made a fine spectacle advancing down Cheapside, past St Mary Le Bow, with the sound of drums echoing and reverberating off the tall buildings.
The rhythmic clamour accompanying the procession of men in their dark robes, with the Boar’s Head bobbing above, evoked the ancient drama of the City of London and, as they paraded through the gathering dusk towards the Mansion House looming in the east on that occluded December afternoon, I could not resist the feeling that they were marching through time as well as space.
Neil Hunt, Beadle of The Worshipful Company of Butchers
The Beadle’s staff dates from 1716
Leaving St Bartholomew’s Close
Advancing through Little Britain
Passing St Paul’s
Entering Cheapside
Passing St Mary Le Bow
In Cheapside
Approaching the Mansion House
The Boar’s Head arrives at the Mansion House
Photographs copyright © Colin O’Brien
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