A Hundred Years of Corte Mainolda
The Prandi family of Corte Mainolda today consists of five members: Pier Angelo, his sister Raffaella, his wife—also Raffaella (yes, double Raffaella, stay focused), their two children Giulia and Giangiacomo…
and Renè (the dog), who wanders around the courtyard welcoming guests.
You’ll meet him.
Origins
It all started at Corte Mainolda exactly a hundred years ago, when Angelo Stuani, Pier Angelo’s maternal grandfather , and his seven siblings, were born.
During World War I, Angelo was sent to the front. He soon suffered injuries and was moved to a field hospital. There he made himself so useful in the kitchen that he basically spent the whole war cooking…
and survived thanks to his culinary skills.
Back at Mainolda, he worked as a pork butcher and farmer, together with his brothers, who were sharecroppers on the estate.
Families were big back then: over forty people lived in the country house, and in winter they all gathered in the barn, keeping warm with the cows and chatting in the evenings.
It was right there at Mainolda that Angelo and his brother Giuseppe married two sisters Teresa and Rina, respectevely.
Lots of people lived as a community and — back then — there was no Tinder.
Lina, Teresa and Angelo’s daughter, was born at Corte Mainolda too. She’s Pier Angelo and Raffaella’s mother.
Legend has it that when Angelo realized the baby wasn’t a boy, he kicked the milking bucket over and spilt all the milk.
Then the landowner, engineer Pellizza, who lived there, didn’t renew the sharecropping contract — maybe due to a quarrel with brother Giuseppe…
So on November 11 — the traditional end of the farming year — all eight brothers with their families had to “fare San Martino”, i.e. move out and find another place.
A popular proverb says: “On St. Martin’s Day every must becomes wine… wine fills the vat..and every farmer changes his fate.”
In the chaos that followed, the whole family ended up scattered.
The “osteria” in Curtatone
It was 1942. In Curtatone an elderly couple wanted to sell their small inn.
Angelo and Giuseppe, with their wives and children, started a new life.
Giuseppe sold bread, his wife kept everything spotless, Angelo and his sister-in-law were in the kitchen — They were so good that the place was full right from the start.
Years earlier, young Lina, who as a child had lived at Corte Mainolda, had attended the same school with Gregorio — smart but a bit lazy — probably the only case ever of a pupil being sent back from third to second grade… by the local teacher, his aunt Rosa Prandi.
Rosa (its going to get complicated) was engineer Pellizza’s wife — yes, the same one, the owner of Corte Mainolda who had ended the sharecropping contract with the two brothers years earlier.
At seventeen, Lina met Gregorio again at a village festival in Sarginesco… and felt for him
thanks to his gramophone — which she still owns.
Lina and Gregorio
They got married and Lina went back to live in Sarginesco, in a house near Corte Mainolda, where Gregorio’s family used to live.
There, Raffaella and Pier Angelo were born (there he is), and Gregorio used to work other people’s land.
However, Lina is not the stay-at-home type and, when her father called her back to help him at the inn, she doesn’t hesitate.
The children stayed in Sarginesco with their father Gregorio and with Aunt Rosa, who lived with them.
What happened before, was that Rosa had left Corte Mainolda and his housband. The Pellizza family, owners of Corte Mainolda, were she was living with her husband, had tried to control Rosa’s salary — and she, being proud and independent, went back to her own family.
At sixty, Rosa was basically “a mum” to great-niece and great-nephew, Raffaella and Pier Angelo.
Later, widowed and heir of engineer Pellizza, she was the one who handed over the property to them.
The Return and the Restauration
Back to our story.
Lina never “set foot” in the kitchen: her place was at the cash desk, which, over the years, she filled and emptied depending on good or bad times.
When her father died in 1964, she reacted to that huge loss in her own way: the very next day she organized her daughter’s birthday party as if nothing had happened.
Little Raffaella was ten and had spent years watching her grandfather move in the kitchen — she adored him and absorbed everything, so much so that she later became an excellent cook and, after university and moving to Rome, a respected food journalist.
Pier Angelo got that talent too — though, it took him longer to realize it.
As the only son and farmer, he was the one who could settle with the tenants still living at Mainolda.
So aunt Rosa, Pellizza’s widow, handed over him the whole estate.
When he inherited it, Mainolda was in bad shape: Pellizza’s wealth had been spent, and everything was falling apart.
So Pier Angelo rolled up his sleeves: he farmed to make a living, worked with his father Gregorio to build himself a house at Corte Mainolda, and started a family with Raffaella — the other Raffaella, a teacher too, and beautiful woman — whom he’d met at a very young age and never let go.
When Lina needed help at the inn, Pier Angelo stepped in: he improvised as assistant cook, watched and learned.
Unfortunately mother and son had different ideas about the business, and after many years he stepped back, choosing to keep running the farm and continue his father’s contract work.
Those were years of patience, perseverance and hard work for Pier Angelo and Raffaella.
They raised their kids, sent them to university and, year after year, kept Corte Mainolda alive.
The Dream Comes True
Then Pier Angelo’s idea started to take shape — helped by regional grants for farm-related activities.
He pictured a small restaurant of his own, a few rooms, a guesthouse.
The space was there, the skills were there… the kids, Giulia and Giangiacomo, were grown up and on board.
Giulia was studying architecture in Milan, Giangiacomo mechanical engineering in Modena and he’s a talented craft’s men.
Parents and children were still a team, like they’d been for three generations.
Today
Today, more than ten years after opening, this four-piece family band plays in sync:
each one follows their own talent to make a dinner or a stay at CorteMainolda unforgettable.
What guests don’t see is how much love, passion and hard work have flowed through these hundred years to reach this resault.
Well…
actually now they do.
