61 India St Portland 207-613-9744 heritageseaweed.com Food · Body Home · Gifts Books · Art Tea · Kids Workshops Maria’s Ristorante Open Wednesday-Saturday | www.mariasrestaurant.com 337 Cumberland Avenue, Portland • 772-9232 Give a Gift Certificate! Most romantic in the 1980s. Most romantic now. Six Course Italian Dinner for Two (Including a bottle of wine) $24.95 Per Person – Portland’s Traditional Italian Restaurant – D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 8 3 7 Hungry Eye sauce, and baccalà. Baccalà is very versatile because it absorbs a lot of flavors.” A nother huge favorite is “the cal- amari,” Marianne Reali says. Whether it’s served as a salad, fried, or stuffed, it seems every family has its take on cooking up some squid. “I have a special calamari salad recipe we make for this din- ner all the time.” The taste “brings me clos- er to my grandparents, especially my Ca- labrian grandmother. I tweak it with jala- peño peppers, chi-chi beans (roasted chick- peas), and roasted peppers.” “One dish that stands out in my mem- ory is called Linguini Alice,” Jay Scala of East Deering says. His grandmother hails from Naples. “It’s an anchovy sauce. When you cook it, it turns brown along with all the linguini. When we were kids, we called it dirty macaroni. We also had a baccalà salad, a shrimp sauce, and squid sauce, We loved them all, but all year we looked for- ward to dirty macaroni.” These tastes of Southern Italy are pres- ents to the New World, many stemming from the massive immigration of Italians to the United States at the turn of the last cen- tury. “A lot of these traditions started be- cause we used whatever we had,” says Fer- rante. “Call it peasant food if you like. If you go down to the roots, everything was very simple. Embellishing it with different flavors inspired the magic.” Shared times and love of family deep- en many a sauce. The rougher the situation, the more profound the inspiration. “When the big immigration surge came in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Italy was impoverished,” DiBiase says. “You can’t imagine how poor it was. One of the sto- ries from that time is that the southern Ital- ian peasants took plaster off the walls to mix with their bread dough to make their bread last. That’s what drove the immigration. And that’s what we all mean when we say peasant food.” Fortunately, adding plaster into bread dough didn’t stick in Italian traditions. But if you think turning a thrifty dish into a celebrated delicacy doesn’t resonate with Maine, think of lobster (once used as fer- tilizer!). The storied past of Italian immi- gration to Portland is celebrated every day in the Forest City. But especially so on the night of January 18. As DiBiase says, “It’s more than just food and the dish. It’s the thought and the tradition.” n Ticketsare$35forIHCmembersand$40for non-members.772-2500. courtesy jim dibiase/italian heritage center From left,Barbara Pileggi and Francesca DiBiase work on red peppers. Marie Pardi presents a calamari dish by Marianne Dalfonso Reali.