Baked exaltations Winnipeg entrepreneur's crunchy treats are not mere biscuits; her mother's biscotti saved an Italian village after the Second World War By: David Sanderson Posted: 3:00 AM CDT Saturday, Sep. 25, 2021

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/09/2021 (1824 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

National Biscotti Day falls annually on Sept. 29 and we couldn’t think of a better way to mark the holiday-of-sorts than by sharing the best yarn about the oblong-shaped, Italian treat we’ve ever heard.

Silvia Aiello is the founder of Ms. Biscotti, a home-based venture offering biscotti based on recipes originally developed by her late mother, Pasqualina DeLuca. DeLuca (nee Sparanese) was born in Cicciano, Italy. She was still in her teens when she began working at a commercial bakery close to where she lived, shortly after the Second World War ended. A quick study, she was promoted to foreperson before her 18th birthday and that’s where today’s story truly begins.

In 1949, a few years before moving to Winnipeg at age 22 with her husband Pasquale, DeLuca heard through the grapevine that management was planning to replace a large number of employees with machinery they believed would produce biscotti, their top seller, more efficiently. That came as troublesome news; Cicciano was tiny and many of its residents, Aiello’s mother included, relied on the business for their primary income.

Aware of her co-workers’ fears, DeLuca made a proposal to her bosses: pit her against whatever apparatus they were intending to introduce, and if she was faster at producing and packaging biscotti than the machinery, everybody would hold on to their jobs.

“From what I understand, it wasn’t much of a contest, Mom won in a landslide,” Aiello says, seated in the backyard of the Fort Garry home she shares with her husband Mario and their two daughters. “Years ago my sister and I visited (Cicciano) and the minute word got out that Pasqualina’s girls were in town, you would have thought royalty had arrived. More than 50 years had passed but everybody still remembered how Mom and her biscotti saved the village.”

 

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Aiello laughs heartily when asked if there was ever a box of Kraft Dinner or package of Oreos in the pantry of the three-storey Riverview home she and her three siblings grew up in, one her parents made available time and time again to fellow Italians who initially had no place to stay after immigrating to Canada from Europe.

“Are you kidding? My mother prepared every single meal from scratch. Hers was the best food I’ve ever eaten, hands down,” she says, noting she still hears from people who have fond memories of restaurants her sister Anna ran with their mother in the 1980s and ‘90s, namely Roma Café on Corydon Avenue, Napoli on Portage Avenue and What’s Up in Osborne Village. (Aiello chuckles again, recalling how former Free Press restaurant critic Marion Warhaft used to knock on What’s Up’s back door to ask her mom, who died in 2003, whether she had any extra loaves of bread kicking around.)

It was 25 or so years ago, not long after she became a mother herself, that Aiello began trying her hand at biscotti, too. She was initially discouraged, often calling her mother to ask why hers had the consistency of a “bowling ball.” It’s like they say, though: practice makes perfect. Or at least close to it, she adds with a wink.

“My mother never measured a thing in her life, it was all about feel, and there’s something to be said for cooking that way,” she continues. “You put on some nice music, maybe pour yourself a glass of wine for inspiration… But you mustn’t forget the most important ingredient of all: love. So long as you put your heart into what you’re doing, you can’t go wrong.”

Before too long, Aiello wasn’t just turning out biscotti for Mario and the girls, she was also filling orders for family members celebrating a baptism or engagement and for friends who were hosting a barbecue or birthday party. She always waved them off when they tried to reimburse her for her time and effort. The fact they enjoyed her baking was payment enough, she’d tell them.

But as people continued to say her biscotti was too good to give away and that if she ever started her own biz, they would be her first customer, she thought, hmm, that might not be such a bad idea. On the advice of her youngest daughter Jessika, whom she refers to as her manager, Aiello signed up with the online shopping platform Good Local in January 2020, initially offering three choices, coconut, chocolate and “lemon Linas,” the latter named for her mother. She remembers how excited she became the first time her phone went off, indicating somebody had placed an order.

“I was jumping all over the place, screaming at the top of my lungs before telling myself, ‘Oh yeah, I guess I’d better get to work,’” she says, explaining every last piece is made fresh, there’s no inventory sitting around growing stale.

Aiello has since added two more varieties to the mix, one called “Blondies” containing white chocolate, almonds and slivers of dried fruit, as well as a vegan biscotti she developed recently after being hired to cater a wedding reception for a couple hoping to include a vegan dessert option on the menu.

“I’m always thinking of new recipes but that’s the nice thing about biscotti, you can use whatever’s available almost. For special occasions, I’ve even made it with (anise-flavoured liqueur) anisette, which I let dry a bit longer so when it’s dipped in a glass of red wine it still has a nice crunch,” she says, though in her mind, nothing goes better with biscotti than a strong cuppa joe.

About that; one of Aiello’s long-term goals is to open a small coffee shop, just 10 or 15 seats, the sort of spot “where everybody knows your name,” she says in a sing-song voice. There she would serve up her biscotti and butter tarts (did we mention you can order those, too, through Good Local?) with an espresso or cappuccino, taking time to chat with everybody who comes through the door.

“Mom’s been gone for 20 years almost but she’s still the inspiration for everything I do,” she says casting a glance skyward. “I was just talking to her before you arrived, in fact. I was in the kitchen baking and asked what she thought of a new recipe I was trying out.”

And did she get her answer?

“Oh, of course. Any time I feel some positive energy while I’m cooking I know it’s her watching over me from another dimension, or whatever you want to call it. I’ll hear a little voice saying not to add too much of this or that and I’ll be like, ‘OK, Mom, you’re the expert.’”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca