The Swedish sailor who invented a favourite Italian food

[Fairportfan]

Once upon a time, there was a young Swedish fellow who got really tired of the farm.

So, when his old mother finally passed away after a long illness, he sold the farm and decided to see the world.

He had learnt to cook fairly well for himself and the farmhands, so, exaggerating only a little bit, he got a job as a ship's cook. The sailors being used to normal Viking ship cuisine, didn't know any better, and over a couple of raiding seasons, he actually got pretty good.

But he got bored again.

He jumped ship in Denmark, while the captain was ashore dealing with a fence ... errr ... merchant, and headed South, because he'd also gotten tired of cold weather.

After a year or two of wandering, stopping occasionally to earn money and/or supplies by cooking for various nobles and bandits (it sometimes being a bit hard to tell the difference in those days), he finally arrived in Naples. He had already learnt enough various language bits and pieces to get along, so he decided to settle there.

Since he hadn't been able to afford to buy much new clothing in his wanderings, his few suits of clothes were a tad tattered, but he didn't really care about how they looked, and, being a sailor, he was handy enough with a needle to mend them well enough.

He met a fellow who had a cart from which he sold hot food in the markets, and got a job. In the marketplace, his beat-up clothes became a sort of trademark, and people looked for him and the cart, because the food was so good, and not too expensive.

Over the next year or so, he became a partner with the original guy, and they managed to hire more people and buy more carts, and expand to more marketplaces.

Eventually, they were even able to start their own small trattoria ... which did well, expanded, and spawned several more restaurants.

His partner, who was rather older than he was, had a beautiful daughter, and they fell in love and married.

And when his partner died, he and his wife inherited the whole business.

They had kept the original little trattoria on a side street in a not-entirely-salubrious part of town going, exactly as it was when it started, and whenever he could, he would spend part of every day there, supervising the kitchen, greeting customers and so on.

By this time, he could afford to wear good clothes, and did, except when he was at the little trattoria, most of whose customers had been customers for years; when he was there, he had several suits of clothing made up of the best quality materials and tailoring, but that duplicated his old, patched and mended clothes.

People loved his several big, fancy (expensive) restaurants in the Good Parts Of Town, but the real gourmets knew about the little hole-in-the-wall, and the signature dishes he'd created and served only there.

And people would say "Let's head over to Ravelly Ole's and get some pasta."

[Mark N]

Head table repeat.

[Jabberwonky]

I don't think there's enough everything to appease the pun jar...


Well played, good sir.

[Fairportfan]

Occasionally one escapes...

[illiad]

Vot!! no meatballs??????

[Fairportfan]

Vot!! no meatballs??????

No, that was another Swede by the same name.

[Dave]

That's not beef in the ravioli.

It's shaggy-dog meat... well done, at that!

[Fairportfan]

You know (well, actually, you don't, because i haven't told you yet) - this thing gre out of a silly joke i made to myself when i was seven or eight - i started referring mentally to ravioli as "ravelled olie".

Fifty-odd (some very odd, indeed) years later, i suddenly had a vision of a Swedish sailor in ragged clothes cooking pasta, and...