Toc’ in Braide

Women in the Camia mountains of Friuli used to make very firm polenta, which they cut with a string and then wrapped in their husbands’ colored cotton handkerchiefs as a meal for the men while they were cutting wood in the forest. They made the polenta in a big copper cauldron with a round bottom, called a paiolo, and stirred it with a round-handled flat stick as long as a rolling pin.

Although polenta in the Camia mountains is as firm as Venetian polenta is soft—especially w