New Kensington Festa Italiana is about much more than food
The New Kensington church basement is filled with the sounds of people talking and laughing and working.
There is flour on the floor. There’s more on the hands and aprons of those who have gathered in the heat of a summer July morning.
They are here baking homemade cookies for the Mount Saint Peter Parish’s 38th annual Festa Italiana. This three-day event is held Aug. 1-3 at the church.
In addition to forming the dough into sweet treats that most likely will sell out at the festival, they are also creating memories and long-lasting friendships.
“We are blessed to do God’s work,” says Gina Abdallah of New Kensington, who leads the festival’s pastry team. “This is a family. Making these cookies takes a lot of work, but it’s all worth it. We have such wonderful volunteers. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be able to keep this festival going.”
Frappe day
On this day, 25 volunteers were concentrating on making frappe — Italian bowtie cookies — that will be fried and dusted with powdered sugar. They were making eight batches which required the entire day to complete.
After the dough is made early in the morning, it is then divided into balls, weighed, and then flattened and fed through a pasta machine so that it can be cut and an opening created for it to be formed into a “bowtie.”
The cookies are then fried and left to cool before being bagged and placed in a box until the festival opens. They don’t need to be frozen.
“They are homemade, so no two are alike,” says Charlene Rosati of Arnold, who was stationed at one of the two fryers along with Georgene Pastura of New Kensington. “Each cookie has its own personality. They are really, really good.”
How frappe is made
It begins with fresh dough and the team consisting of Angeline Martino of West Deer and other volunteers. The recipe has been handed down through the years, Martino says. It has eggs, sugar, baking powder, oil, salt, vanilla, flour and whiskey. “Yes, whiskey.”
Martino knows when to add more flour just by feeling the dough. The heat and humidity make it a little more challenging to work with but Martino has the experience of being part of a family that makes a lot of homemade food.
“This dough is beautiful,” she says. “The whiskey gives it some flavor. These homemade cookies are popular at the festival. Everything we make here is good, because we don’t skimp on anything.”
Angela Wislie Misera of Creighton sat at a table with Joyce Bruncsak of Arnold. Misera took a piece of dough, fed it through a pasta machine to Bruncsak who placed it on a tray so that it would be ready to be measured with a template and cut with a pizza cutter before being shaped into a bow tie.
“All of the people here are wonderful,” says Misera. “They are kind to each other. The gospel talks about Mary and Margaret who both pray and work together, which is what we do here. ”
More food for thought
The frappe is only one of the myriad desserts the volunteers make. There will be three types of biscotti, pizzelles and cannoli, as well as other homemade pastries and fried dough. Sweet treats also include sno-cones, gelato, smoothies, fruit cups and parfaits.
Over the past few weeks they’ve made 3,300 meatballs and 60 trays of lasagna, which nets 28 pieces each. The sauce for the lasagna is also housemade and used for hot sausage sandwiches, meatball sandwiches, spaghetti and polenta. The food menu includes salads, chicken and vegetable wraps, pizza, French fries and chicken tenders.
It’s about the volunteers
The people who give of their time for this festival are the reason it works, says Gloria Schohn of Lower Burrell, who with Peg Moore of New Kensington and Don Petricca of New Kensington, co-chairs the festival.
“When the older people are gone it will be harder to do this because, for example, volunteers like Angeline know how much flour to add to the dough without measuring,” says Schohn.
“The volunteers don’t take vacation in July because there is a purpose for us here at the church.”
The festival began because of the leadership of parishioner Mary Calvanese and her family who started it, says Schohn. They devoted time and energy to making it an annual event, Schohn says, one the volunteers want to make sure continues.
“This festival has been a part of this parish for a long time,” says Petricca. “The volunteers make it happen. They are the key to the success of Festa Italiana.”
Martino says she will be part of this as long as she feels good to do it. She loves giving back to the church and knows how important the festival is to the parish.
“When we can’t physically do it anymore I feel this is going to be a lost art,” Martino says.
She and others hope to inspire a younger generation such as Elena Moret, a rising senior cyber school student from New Kensington, who was carrying trays of cookies from the kitchen to the frying area. She says her mother introduced her to Festa Italiana.
“It is summer, and I don’t want to sit in the house all day,” says Moret, who makes pizzelles for her family at home and measured her steps for the morning. “I’ve done 6,000 steps. It’s fun being here and learning about making cookies. It’s crafty.”
JoAnne Klimovich Harrop is a TribLive reporter covering the region's diverse culinary scene and unique homes. She writes features about interesting people. The Edward R. Murrow award-winning journalist began her career as a sports reporter. She has been with the Trib for 26 years and is the author of "A Daughter's Promise." She can be reached at jharrop@triblive.com.
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