As the 1970′s gave way to the 1980′s, Italian-American dishes began to flaunt their dark side. Allow us to explain: Having enjoyed great success with “lighter” dishes like Chicken with Ziti and Broccoli, Pasta Primavera, and Chicken Florentine, during the early 80′s, chefs and ambitious home cooks were drawn to dishes that were, quite literally, dark… Very dark.

Copyright © 2011, Skip Lombardi

It is probably no coincidence that it all began in New Orleans, where black magic is part of the cultural fabric. Chef Paul Prudhomme burst onto the culinary scene with Blackened Redfish. Suddenly, everything from a swordfish steak to a slice of toast was photographed with grill-marks. And in Italian-American restaurants, charcoal-colored fettuccine colored by squid ink and black risotto with porcini competed with red-sauce dishes. Red wine vinegar—a staple in salad dressings everywhere—was supplanted by the mysteriously dark and viscous aceto balsamico, balsamic vinegar. It wasn’t long before “balsamic” became a salad-bar choice along with ranch and honey-mustard. And then, the vinegar with antecedents in Italy’s medieval pharmacopoeia found its way into mainstream American dishes.

One of the earliest American references to balsamic vinegar appears in the original Silver Palate Cookbook (1979) by take-out titans and caterers, Sheila Lukens and Julee Rosso, who urged us to anoint our salads with a balsamic vinaigrette. At that time, most of the balsamic vinegar available to their readers was nothing more than pasteurized red wine vinegar sweetened and fortified with caramel. Nevertheless, a trend was born, a trend that has persisted. However, the use of balsamic tends to be more nuanced as it has been joined by artisanal red wine vinegars, both domestic and imported.

The New York Times first mentioned balsamic vinegar in 1981, when the ever-practical Marion Burros wrote her article Specialty Food Explosion: Where Will It End? about exotic condiments crowding the shelves at tony gourmet shops. Paying scant attention to balsamico, Ms. Burros devoted more ink to Dessaux red wine vinegar, which Julia Child considered sine qua non for a proper French vinaigrette.

La vera aceto balsamico tradizionale is the real stuff, whose production and name are limited to the towns of Modena and Reggio Emilia in the Italian province of Emilia-Romagna. The real balsamico requires some ten to twelve years of aging in successively smaller casks until is pronounced fit to drizzle sparingly over strawberries. When the acetaio, or vinegar-maker, has determined that his vinegar is ready for market, he must still submit a sample to a rigorous examination—much the way a new law school graduate must take the bar exam. If his product passes, the Consortium of Producers of Traditional Balsamic Vinegar of Modena conveys the coveted DOP, Denominazione d’Origine Protetta, certification that will enable American importers to sell his nectar at approximately $50.00 per ounce.

Copyright © 2011, Skip Lombardi

At that price, the real stuff has never had much market share in the U.S. But once the name “balsamic” had been bandied about amongst Silver Palate fans, the floodgates were open. Restaurants in Little Italys everywhere began serving anything from filet mignon and salmon with orange to chicken drumettes “in a rich balsamic glaze.” Some chefs went so far as to concoct Pasta with Meatballs in Balsamic Tomato Sauce. Dark days indeed.

As with so many American adaptations of Italian ingredients, the adaptations themselves have gone back to Italy. Eventually, chefs with surer senses, among them celebrities like Lidia and Mario, brought balsamico under control. Rest assured, no sane chef worth his whites is using the 12 year-old vinegar to deglaze a frying pan.

Our Chicken Balsamico, with its deeply flavored sauce, is our tribute to that zany period of American’s fascination with anything “blackened.”

Ingredients:

3 – 4 whole garlic cloves, peeled
1 Medium onion, peeled and quartered
1 Stalk of celery, coarsely chopped
1 Medium carrot, peeled and coarsely chopped
2 oz. Pancetta, coarsely chopped
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped
Olive oil
4-6 Chicken thighs, skin left on (about 1 1/2 lbs)
2 Tbs. Fresh rosemary leaves, coarsely chopped
1/2 Cup dry white wine
2 Tbs. Balsamic vinegar (an ordinary supermarket brand is fine)
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped for garnish

Preparation:

Place the garlic, onion, celery, carrot, pancetta, and parsley into the bowl of a food processor. Pulse approximately 10 times at 1 second for each pulse. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as necessary. This mixture is known as a batutto.

Heat a large sauté pan over medium-high heat, then add enough olive oil to lightly cover the bottom of the pan. Add the batutto, lower the heat to medium-low, and cook—stirring occasionally—for approximately 10 minutes.

Season the chicken thighs on both sides with salt and pepper and add them to the pan, skin-side down. Cook over medium or medium-low heat for approximately 12-15 minutes, until they have become golden brown.

Turn over the thighs and sprinkle with the rosemary. With the heat at medium-low, add the wine, pouring slowly so it does not spatter. Cover the pan and simmer for 8-10 minutes, until the thighs are done.

Remove the lid and raise the heat. Boil for a minute or two in order to reduce the liquid. Lower the heat to medium-low and add the balsamic vinegar. Season with salt and pepper as necessary, and gently shake and stir the pan occasionally for approximately 5 minutes to allow the flavors to blend. Test one thigh with the tip of a knife. (the bone should feel loose).

Serve with boiled new potatoes. Spoon a little sauce over the chicken and potatoes. Finish each plate with chopped parsley.

Serves four.

This meatless main course has many of the characteristics that define an Almost Italian dish. Although made from virtually the same ingredients as Melanzane alla Parmigiana (eggplant, tomato sauce, and cheese), Eggplant Rollatini is a New World invention that mimics the refinements of Old World Italian preparations of pounded veal cutlets rolled and stuffed with cheeses, prosciutto, salume, mushrooms, and other delicacies. However, in the Italian-American universe, where veal has always been an expensive meat, both restaurant and home cooks have been eager to dress up cheaper chicken and the ever-versatile eggplant as a stand-in for veal. (Eggplant was especially favored back when Catholic observance of meatless Fridays was far more prevalent than it is today.)

Eggplant Rollatini
Photo Copyright © 2010, Skip Lombardi

Eggplant Rollatini demonstrates that even humble ingredients can make an elegant presentazione. No matter how similar the flavors, no one would dispute that the rolls, cloaked in marinara, look prettier on the plate than a sloppily delicious helping of “eggplant parm.” And then there’s the multi-syllabic name, rollatini—indisputably exotic, but easy to say. But there’s a catch: rollo and what would seem to be its diminutive, rollatini, are not italiano; nor are they siciliano, calabrese, or pugliese… The Italian for “roll” is rotolo. Here in America, among immigrants speaking scores of regional Italianate languages while they struggled to learn English, many new words like rollatini were born.

In this case, the accidental reversal of consonants came into play. Americans call these “spoonerisms,” what your dotty aunt could say after a shot of grappa—a butterfly would be a flutterby, a bottle of Scotch became a scottle of botch.)

At some point, immigrants (who may have been illiterate in their own languages) said rol-la-tini, scrambling what would have been the ro-tol-li-ni of standard Italian. Linguists call this metathesis, but all you need to know is that everyone from Giada to your nonna in St. Louis now calls them “rollatini.”

In fact, both the spelling and the dish are good enough to have traveled back to Italy, where they now appear in many cookbooks and online recipe collections. (Just don’t tell your cousins in Palermo that the dish is probably bruklinese.)

For busy American restaurants, standardization of portion size has encouraged the mass-production of ricotta-filled eggplant rolls. Wholesalers supply many of today’s red-sauce joints with cases of frozen rollatini. The products aren’t bad, but if you take the time to make your own, the rewards will far outweigh the convenience of any frozen product.

Ingredients:

2 large eggplants (each about 16-20 oz.)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 Lb. whole milk ricotta
2 Large eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella (preferably whole milk)
1 Cup freshly grated Parmesan or Romano
1/3 Cup flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped
2 Cloves garlic, peeled and very finely chopped
Olive oil, for the baking pan
2 – 3 Cups My Grandmother’s Marinara Sauce

Additional shredded mozzarella (at least 1/2 cup)
Additional freshly grated Parmesan (1/2 cup)
2 – 3 Tbs. fruity olive oil
A little more parsley as a garnish

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 375 F.

Trim the ends from the eggplants. With a large, well-honed knife, cut lengthwise slices, each about 3/8 in. wide. Layer the slices in a microwavable dish with about 1/4 cup water. Cover the dish with plastic wrap and microwave on high for 2 minutes. Carefully undo plastic to let steam escape. Rearrange the slices and steam again. You may have to repeat this procedure 3 or 4 times, but it is faster, neater, and less tedious than frying the slices!

When all the slices are thoroughly limp, set them in a colander to cool and drain.

In a 3-quart bowl, beat the eggs with a fork and gently stir in the ricotta. Fold in the mozzarella, Parmesan or Romano, chopped parsley and garlic. Do not overmix; stir just enough to combine.

Lightly oil a 13 by 9-inch glass or non-stick baking dish. (Dish should be at least 2 inches deep.) Lay the eggplant slices on a cutting board and lightly season each slice with salt and pepper.

To prepare each roll: With the wider end of a slice nearer to you, spoon approximately 2-3 Tbs. of the cheese filling onto that end and carefully roll away from you, gently stuffing any the filling into the roll as you go.

Place each rollatino—seam side down—into the oiled dish. Continue to fill the remaining eggplant slices and place each one snugly beside the others so they stay rolled.

Top the rollatini with 2-3 cups of the tomato sauce. Cover the dish with foil and bake for 30-40 minutes until the eggplant is thoroughly cooked (test with a fork). When the eggplant is tender, remove the foil, spoon any pooling sauce over the rollatini and sprinkle them with the additional mozzarella and Parmesan. evenly drizzle a little olive oil over the top of the cheese. Return the uncovered dish to the oven for an additional 5-10 minutes to melt the cheese and release the fragrance of the oil. You can let the cheese brown a little, but watch that it does not burn.

To Serve:

Spoon 2 – 3 Tbs. of the tomato sauce into 4 shallow pasta bowls. With a spatula or large serving spoon, gently place two or three rollatini into each bowl. Garnish with additional parsley and serve at once as main course, accompanied by good bread.

Serves four, with enough for second helpings.

Are thoughts of full-body scans and aggressive pat-downs in the name of homeland security making you wonder if “over the river and through the woods to Nonna’s house” might not be in the cards this year?

Red-Sauce Thanksgiving: Turkey Braciole
Copyright © 2010 Skip Lombardi

Whether you are part of the stay-home protest or just want to simplify Thanksgiving dinner without sacrificing the flavors of the day, here’s our suggestion for a festive Almost Italian dish that will satisfy both Italian and American holiday traditions. Because you (and your oven) have to go through a lot to produce both the customary lasagne and the roast turkey, you might like the idea of a red-sauce meal with turkey that all comes together on the stove-top. Think of it as Sunday Gravy for a special Thursday. Make it and we promise you—the house will indeed smell like Nonna’s on Thanksgiving.

Of course, you could start off with some mixed olives in Stimperata; a Salad of Fennel, Mushrooms, and Parmesan; Cherry Pepper Shooters; and other antipasti… But really—for this Thanksgiving spread—you don’t need anything more than good bread, vino rosso, and maybe Arance alla Siciliana or a green salad with pears and nuts for dessert.

So stay home and be thankful you’re not in line to board a plane to Columbus or Boston. Pray along with us that TSA and our Congress come to their senses before the Feast of the Seven Fishes, because we’re known to pack some pretty “assertive” carry-ons like baccalà, octopus, and eels…

Felice Ringraziamento!

Turkey Braciole with Ziti
Copyright © 2010 Skip Lombardi

Ingredients:

For the braciole:

2 Turkey thighs (each 12-16 oz. before boning) See notes.*
½ Cup flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped
2 Tbs. fresh basil, snipped with scissors
2 Cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
6 – 8 Slices Genoa salami
4 Slices Provolone
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
Olive oil

You will also need a few yards of linen or cotton kitchen twine, scissors, and kitchen tongs.

Preparation:

Cut 8 – 10 lengths of kitchen twine, each about 12 inches long.

Place the parsley, basil, and garlic in a small bowl. Season with at least 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper. Stir to combine and reserve.

Lay a 12 inch-wide piece of plastic wrap atop a cutting board. Place one of the thighs, skin-side down, on the plastic and cover the thigh with another sheet of plastic wrap. Using a meat mallet or rolling pin, gently pound the meat to achieve a uniform thickness of about 1/2 inch. Reserve the flattened thigh on a plate. Repeat with the second thigh.

Lay out the turkey thighs lengthwise—skin side down—on a cutting board covered with plastic wrap and season with more salt and pepper.

Arrange 3 – 4 slices of Genoa salami on each thigh, at the ends nearest you. Follow with two slices of Provolone, then spoon half of the herb-garlic mixture on each thigh.

Starting with the end nearest you, begin to roll one of the thighs away from you, pressing lightly so that the filling is tightly enclosed within the turkey wrapping. When finished, leave the roll seam-side down on the plastic wrap and repeat with the other thigh.

Slide 4 or 5 lengths of twine under each roll, approximately 2 inches apart. Slightly depressing the bundle to keep it compact, tie each length of twine firmly with at least a double knot. Set the bundles aside.

Choose a deep pan or Dutch oven large enough to hold the bundles in one layer without touching. Heat the pan over medium heat, then add enough olive oil to thinly coat the bottom. Add the thighs and lower the heat if necessary as you gently sauté the bundles for 8 – 10 minutes, until the skin is evenly browned. When the thighs have a golden tone, remove them with tongs to rest on a clean plate while you begin the sauce. Do not wipe out the pan as you will use it and the residual oil for the sauce.

For the tomato sauce (Enough sauce for 4 braciole)

2 – 4 Cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
1/2 tsp. Peperoncini (crushed red pepper flakes)
1 28 oz. can crushed plum tomatoes (preferably San Marzano)
1 Cup dry red wine
4 Tbs. flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped
2 Tbs. fresh basil, snipped with scissors
Salt & freshly ground black pepper

Additional chopped parsley and basil for garnish.

Using the same pan in which you’ve browned the turkey, sauté the chopped garlic and peperoncini for 1 – 2 minutes, until the garlic is fragrant.

Remove the pan from the heat (to avoid splattering) and add the crushed tomatoes with all their liquid. Return the pan to the burner and raise the heat to high as you add the wine. Allow the wine to boil for a minute or two to evaporate the alcohol.

Lower the heat to medium-low, add the parsley and basil, and adjust the heat so the sauce barely bubbles.

Slide the turkey bundles into the sauce—which should come at least half way up their sides. Spoon some of the sauce over the thighs and simmer, partially covered, for approximately 1 hour.

(TIP: A long wooden spoon stuck into the pot is just right for keeping the lid slightly open so that the sauce reduces slowly.)

About 15 minutes before you plan to serve the braciole, cook 12 to 16 ounces of short pasta (penne, mostaccioli, rigatoni, ziti, etc.) to the al dente state.

A few minutes before the pasta will be done, lift from the sauce as many braciole as you plan to serve; each bundle will serve two. Carefully snip off and discard the strings (scissors work best). With a sharp knife, slice the bundle into 1/2 -inch rounds.

To Serve:

Divide the cooked pasta equally among 4 dishes. Pour a ladle or two of the sauce over each portion of pasta and serve with 3 or 4 slices of the braciole. Garnish with a sprinkling of parsley and basil.

Serves four.

If you’d care to surround your Thanksgivingb braciole with some of the items we’ve mentioned above, here are links to our other recipes:

Stimparata
Salad of Fennel, Mushrooms, and Parmesan
Cherry Pepper Shooters
Arance alla Siciliana

And if you still insist on making the lasagne, roasting a bird, and making a pie, here are a few other other recipes that will get you through the rest of this week:

Marinara
Pasta perfect?
Lasagne
Marilyn Monroe: Almost Italian?
Torta di Ricotta

Again and again, during our years of research into the evolution of Italian food, we have encountered preparations born of necessity.

Take some of the laboriously fashioned pastas made from leftover bread dough, bran, or barley. Or the condimenti of little more than breadcrumbs, herbs, and a splash of oil. Truly, these began as the food of poverty, yet many such ‘recipes’ have been kept alive long after the floods, earthquakes, plagues, or political upheavals that forced their creation.

Linguine con Tenerumi Copyright © 2010, Skip Lombardi

The simple explanation is that, despite their abject origins, many of these old dishes are delicious. Nonetheless, we suspect that habit and nostalgia, rather than delectability, should be credited with perpetuating la cucina dei poveri.

Here, in Part II of The Cucuzza Chronicles, we continue to explore just how deeply cherished and persistent the old ways can be…

Throughout the world, cooks appreciate the newest growth of various vines, not just those of curcurbits (the squash family). Chinese and Southeast Asians love the delicate flavor of pea-vine tendrils. Kitchens in the Mediterranean, Balkans, and Mideast use the tenderest grape-leaves, fresh or pickled, as wrappers for myriad fillings. In both these examples, the greens are a secondary product, the eventual harvest of peas and grapes being the cultivator’s primary goal.

This, too, has surely been the case with Lagenaria siceraria, the cucuzza squash and its tendrils known as tenerumi. As we’ve noted in Part I of the Chronicles, if you are reading this page, you probably already know some form of the word “cucuzza.” However, even if you are of Sicilian heritage, you may be unfamiliar with “tenerumi.” Indeed, if you look up tenerumi (or tinnirumi, tinniruma, etc.) in your Italian dictionaries—even in Italian-Sicilian dictionaries—you probably won’t even find the word—except as a reference to meat. An Italian will know that tenerumi are tendons and understand that the classic dishes of lamb and veal, Tenerumi d’agnello or di vitello, sautéed in butter, are not for vegans.

Fresh Tenerumi Copyright © 2010, Skip Lombardi

It make sense that tenerumi, which hold together the joints of an animal, would also be the word for the strong, curling parts of a vine that allow it to cling and climb.

But for southern Italians who depended upon greens like tenerumi di cucuzza, those other tenerumi, in fact, any meat at all, would have been a rare or unknown luxury.

The association of vegetal tenerumi with hunger, and thus, with those who were the most wretched and hungriest, is unambiguous. The Sicilian expression mangiare pasta chi tinnirùma, “to eat pasta with tenerumi” implies that one has no choice but “to eat something made out of nothing.”

Linguine con Tenerumi Copyright © 2010, Skip Lombardi

So while many Italian immigrants, sharecroppers and victims of earthquakes, were indeed destitute, others left behind middle-class lives. While anyone from the Mezzogiorno would have been likely to plant and eat cucuzze, not all would harvest tenerumi. And here we have an early glimpse of the social divisions among Italian immigrants themselves.

In Sicily today, summer markets continue to sell various zucchine lunghe and, separately, fat bunches of their tendrils. Cucuzza and tenerumi have acquired a sort of New Age gloss as being refreshing, digestible, and good for whatever ails one. They are no longer considered the food of the poor, but are now esteemed as “local” foods that exemplify the superior folkloric culinary wisdom of the past.

And here in America, on the other side of the Golden Door, the food of the poor has a new life. Farmers at fancy urban greenmarkets bring “exotic” cucuzze as well as tenerumi to shoppers accustomed to buying prewashed radicchio and arugula year ’round. In season, specialty growers can FedEx the fragile vine-tips overnight to chefs and anyone else with a taste for the past.

What do tenerumi taste like? We leave that description to the discerning palates of you, our readers. We do know that nostalgia is as strong a seasoning as peperoncino, so we’ve kept our treatment simple. Nonetheless, we feel that just a little bit of pancetta complements tenerumi. We think most nonne—yours and ours—would approve.

Ingredients:

8 oz. linguine

3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp peperoncini (more to taste)
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/3 Cup (about 2 oz) pancetta, Smithfield ham, or tasso*, cut in thin shards
2 Tbsp olive oil
12 Tenerumi * (tender tips, leaves & tendrils of cucuzza vines, each about 10” long)
1/2 lb ripe tomatoes, cored and chopped into half-inch pieces
1/4 cup chopped Italian parsley
Salt to taste
Fruity olive oil to finish
2-4 Tbsp Freshly grated pecorino, Romano, or other Italian grating cheese (Aged caciocavallo might be a Sicilian choice.)

Preparation:

Rinse the tenerumi & pat dry. Chop the stems and leaves into 1/2-inch pieces.

Cook the pasta until al dente.

In a large pan at least 2 inches deep, sauté the garlic, peperoncini, and black pepper in olive oil.

Add the shards of cured meat and sauté on medium heat for 2-3 minutes, until it is fragrant.

Add the tenerumi and saute for 2-3 minutes, until they are wilted. Add the tomatoes and any collected juice. Simmer for 2 minutes. Turn off the burner. Gently combine the drained pasta and chopped parsley with the greens and tomatoes. Add a few spoonfuls of the hot pasta-cooking water if you’d like your dish a little more moist.

Taste for salt and add as necessary. Divide the pasta into two shallow bowls. Drizzle a tablespoon of flavorful olive oil over each serving and sprinkle on a little grated cheese (Don’t overdo the cheese—the flavor of tenerumi is very subtle.)

Serves 2 as a main course. (As a pasta course before a main dish, this will serve 4).

Chances are great that if you call Lagenaria siceraria “cucuzza” or “goo-gootz” (in the clipped speech of immigrants from Campania, Calabria, Sicily, and any other regions of southern Italy), you have intimate acquaintance with the food of Italian-Americans.

On the other hand, if you are third—or fourth—generation Italian-American, you might think these are merely other names for the zucchini we now buy year ’round in American supermarkets. Not so!

The Cordaro Cucuzza Plantation in Ruston, Louisana

Botanically speaking, members of the family Curcubitaceae—melons, cucumbers, pumpkins, gourds, winter and summer squash (including cucuzza)—are actually fruits. But that distinction matters little to those for whom this long, slender, jade-green summer squash packs as much nostalgic power as Mom’s Sunday Gravy or your nonna’s cavatelli. And so with the cucuzza harvest now at its peak, AlmostItalian.com begins the first of our posts devoted to exploring the special significance of cucuzza in the collective memory of Italian-Americans.

Most back-yard gardeners who take the trouble to plant Lagenaria siceraria have never read Marcel Proust. But even if they don’t know that hundreds of pages of 19th-century literature were induced by the flavor of a simple cake dipped in a cup of tea, these gardeners in the old Italian-American neighborhoods know the power of food to trigger memory.

No one would have understood this better than the first hungry immigrants from the Mezzogiorno. Arriving in the ports of New Orleans, New York, and Providence, many of them were illiterate. Nonetheless, they would have agreed with another French author, the gastronome Jean Anthèlme Brillat-Savarin, who said “Tell me what you eat, and I’ll tell you who you are.”

More than any other ethnic group during the great age of immigration, Italians used a wide range of food to define their national identity amidst groups of earlier arrivals from Europe and the British Isles. Though other Americans associated Italians primarily with pasta and tomato sauce, Italians grew and prepared a wide variety of produce. Being able to claim any space to cultivate for themselves—as little as a windowsill, fire-escape landing, or alley—allowed the immigrants to literally put down roots and express hopes for new lives. A pot of basil or tomatoes, a flimsy chicken-wire trellis or a porch railing supporting spring fava beans followed by a summer squash vine were proclamations of Italian regional origin, proprietorship, and stability.

And especially if those immigrants were Sicilians, the squash of choice were likely to be cucuzze,* any of the so-called snake-gourds– long, thin-skinned cultivars of Lagenaria.

There is a Sicilian proverb, to the effect that one cannot disguise the humble nature of something: “No matter how you cook it, it’s still a cucuzza.” And while it’s certainly true that this mild-tasting squash will never be mistaken for a leg of lamb, white truffles, or a wedge of Parmigiano, the Italian-American reverence of cucuzza is profound.

Cucuzze in suburban New Jersey
Photo courtesy of Christine Ferrante

Today, growing cucuzza, like creating the fanciful breads and feeding the poor during the festa of San Giuseppe, is one of those activities that says an Italian-American is serious about “carrying on the old ways,” even if his forebears had never owned a patch of earth or had been urban refugees from the horrific Messina earthquake that rocked Sicily and Calabria in 1908.

This 2010 obituary of a first-generation American and Florida retiree depicts just such a standard-bearer and upholder of Italian values:

Once in the United States, many Italians looked back through rose-colored glasses and fashioned a culinary culture that had been out of reach for most of them back in their homeland. Previous posts on AlmostItalian.com detail the immigrants’ enjoyment of American meat and dairy products, to say nothing of durum wheat pasta, all relatively cheap and abundant here, but rarely tasted by the poorest immigrants before they had reached America.

Despite the rich foods available, la cucina dei poveri, the cooking born of frugality and dire necessity back in the old country, was the source of some of the most delicious dishes fondly passed down in Italian-American families. Among them is a simple stew of cucuzza and tender tips of the squash vine.

Tenerumi are the edible tendrils of cucuzze
Copyright © 2010, Skip Lombardi

This classic Sicilian summer dish includes the newest delicate leaves and tendrils, tenerumi, of the cucuzza vine, which grows as much as two feet a day if provided with sufficient warmth and moisture. One can imagine that thrifty cooks delighted in a steady supply this free “by-product” of squash plants—fresh, leafy greens that could withstand summer heat.

It is striking that virtually all the Italian-American recipes for this dish include broken spaghetti or linguine (rather than simply suggesting a short pasta shape). Our research supports that this, too, is a nod to “carrying on the old ways,” a custom whose significance is all but forgotten. Back in southern Italy, dry pasta was sold in bulk. Inevitably, small broken bits of various shapes accumulated at the bottom of grocers’ bins and barrels. These were sold cheaply as pasta for soup and called munnezzaglia, which Italian culinary authority Faith Willinger translates from Neapolitan speech as “all garbage.”

Minestra di Cucuzza e Tenerumi

Far greater than the sum of its parts, this uncomplicated and refreshing dish comes together very quickly.

Minestra di Cucuzza e Tenerumi
Copyright © 2010, Skip Lombardi

Ingredients:

4 oz. pasta corta (tubettini, ditali, or other short, tubular pasta)

3 Cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp. peperoncini ( more to taste)
1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
2 Tbsp. olive oil

6 Tenerumi, each about 10” long (optional)
20 oz. Cucuzza, 1 small fruit or part of a larger one, peeled with a carrot peeler and cut into 3/4-inch cubes

1 Lb. ripe tomatoes, cored and chopped (or a 14-oz. can of chopped tomatoes, including juice)
8 oz. new red potatoes, previously boiled in their skins, then cut into 1/2-inch cubes

1/2 Cup chopped Italian parsley or 8-10 snipped fresh basil leaves
Salt to taste
Fruity olive oil to finish
4 Tbsp. Freshly grated pecorino, Romano, or other Italian grating cheese (Aged caciocavallo might be a Sicilian choice.)

Preparation:

Boil the pasta in salted water for 3-4 minutes; it will be less than al dente.
Drain the pasta and set it aside. Reserve 2-3 cups of the starchy pasta water.

In a large pan at least 2 inches deep, sauté the garlic, peperoncini, and black pepper in olive oil. Add the cubes of cucuzza and sauté on medium heat for 7-10 minutes, or until crisp-tender.

Meanwhile, if you are using them, wash and chop the tenerumi stems and leaves into 1/2 inch pieces. Add the tenerumi and the red-skin potato cubes to the cucuzza. Sauté for 2 minutes or until the greens are wilted. Add the tomatoes and any collected juice. Simmer for 3 minutes and add the undercooked pasta and a few ladlefuls of the pasta cooking-water, depending on how “soupy” you would like your dish.

Gently stir to combine and simmer for a minute or two, then turn off the burner. The pasta will continue to cook in the residual heat. Taste for salt.

Stir in the chopped herbs and ladle the minestra into shallow bowls. Drizzle a bit of olive oil over each serving and sprinkle on just a little grated cheese (Don’t overdo the cheese—the subtle, sweet flavor of the cucuzza should predominate.)

Enjoy hot or lukewarm, accompanied by good bread.

Serves four.

Stay tuned for another recipe, one that showcases both cucuzza and tenerumi, two Italian-American garden gems from the same plant.

If you haven’t grown your own and don’t have Italian grandparents living next door, you can buy both cucuzza and tenerumi online. Order your own supply—wholesale or retail— from www.cucuzzasquash.com.

Chris Cordaro’s cucuzze ready for market

Until autumn frosts hit their vines, Christopher & Violet Cordaro ship (and deliver) their Louisiana cucuzza production coast to coast. With luck, you’ve got till sometime in November, time enough to read the second half of our post and try another recipe. Our story continues with Cucuzza Chronicles, Part II: Tenerumi.

*Cucuzze is the proper Italian plural.

ight up there with Spaghetti with Meatballs, Chicken alla Cacciatora is another red-sauce classic that, while quintessentially American-Italian, also has traceable antecedents in the culinary traditions of Italy. In the centuries-old hunter’s treatment of game-birds, hare, and venison, Italians would both mitigate the gaminess and tenderize the flesh of wild quarry by slow-braising their meats in wine,vinegar, or citrus juice.

Copyright © 2009, Skip Lombardi

Mrs. Maria Gentile’s The Italian Cookbook*, (Italian Book Co; 1919), provides a recipe for Chicken alla Cacciatora and recommends, “This is an excellent way to cook tough young chicken.”

Certainly, for most new immigrants and their first-generation American children, who had had little domestic poultry in their own culinary experience, this was also a logical way to cook a sinewy barnyard chicken. Remember, this was prior to World War II, before the concerted efforts of selective breeding for mass-market poultry production had given us the tender supermarket broilers Americans now take for granted.

Since Italian-American restaurateurs would always have abundant tomato sauce on hand, it was no leap of imagination for them to offer chicken braised in tomato sauce and served with the ubiquitous “pasta on the side.” Serving two courses simultaneously—pasta (a primo) and meat (a secondo) on the same plate—was a sure tip-off that a restaurant was catering to a primarily non-Italian clientele.

European Italian cooks favored celery and carrots in their versions of chicken braised with tomatoes, while Italian-Americans introduced green peppers and mushrooms. Indeed, other writers have supposed that it was the inclusion of mushrooms that suggested the woodsy name for the dish (“in the style of the Hunter’s Wife”). However, mushrooms only became common in American red-sauce restaurant cooking after commercial button-mushroom farming had taken hold in and around Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.

In any case, you won’t have to hunt for any of the ingredients for this simple preparation; all are readily available. Though the dish can be quickly assembled and left to stew on its own just a couple of hours before supper, it’s even better if you make it a day ahead.

Here is what my grandmother would have done….

Chicken alla Cacciatora

Ingredients:

Olive oil
3 Lb. Chicken cut into 8 pieces (or 8-10 chicken thighs)**
3/4 Cup flour seasoned with salt and freshly-ground black pepper
4 Cloves garlic, peeled and diced
1 Medium yellow onion, peeled and diced
2 Green bell peppers, seeded and cut into 1-inch pieces
1 Lb. large white mushrooms, sliced
1 Cup dry red wine
1 28 oz. Can plum tomatoes, preferably San Marzano
2 tsp. dried oregano
2 tsp. dried basil
Salt & freshly-ground black pepper
6 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley

Preparation:

Dredge the chicken pieces in the flour, shaking off any excess. Heat a large sauté pan over medium-high heat, then add enough olive oil to coat the bottom.

Add the chicken pieces to the hot pan, lower the heat to medium, and slowly brown chicken on all sides. Do not crowd the pan; if necessary, do this step in two batches.

When all the pieces have been browned, remove and reserve on a plate.

Drain and reserve any excess oil and accumulated chicken fat, leaving just a film on the bottom of the sauté pan.

Add the onions and garlic and sauté, stirring often, until the onions have become wilted and translucent. Add the chopped peppers, and sauté until they’ve wilted. Pour the cooked vegetables into a large casserole.

Return the sauté pan to the heat, add enough of the reserved fat and oil to cover the bottom and sauté the mushrooms just until they have begun to give up their liquid.

Add the mushrooms to the vegetables in the casserole and move the casserole over the heat. Raise the heat to high, then add the wine. Allow the wine to boil for a minute or two to evaporate the alcohol. Add the tomatoes and stir to incorporate the wine and vegetables. Stir in the oregano and basil.

Add the chicken pieces, adjusting them as they go in, so each is completely covered with the liquid.

Adjust the heat so the sauce barely simmers. Cover the pot, but leave the lid slightly ajar, so steam will escape. Simmer for approximately 90 minutes. You’ll know the chicken is done when the meat begins to recede from the bones. Taste sauce for salt and pepper.

To Serve:

Add two pieces of chicken to each of four plates, ladle a few tablespoons of sauce over the chicken, and garnish with the parsley. Serve with good crusty bread and a green salad.

If you like, serve pasta as a first course before the chicken or as a side dish. Ladle 1/2 cup of sauce over each small portion of cooked pasta, roughly about 2 cups of sauce to serve over enough pasta for your guests.

Serves four

Just as the mufuletta sandwiches of New Orleans and lamb spiedies of Broom County, N.Y., are considered to have been conceived and refined in particular regions, the seafood stew known as cioppino is associated with San Francisco. Mention any of these Italian-American dishes to a native—or a tourist who had the good fortune to enjoy the definitive version in the restaurants deemed to produce the real thing—and nostalgia will flow as freely as the wine once poured from raffia-covered bottles of cheap Chianti.

Copyright © 2009 Skip Lombardi

Genoese were among the earliest Italian immigrants to San Francisco. In many ways their transition to America was easier than that of other Italians who struggled not only with a new language in a new land, but also found themselves having to learn new industrial trades. For the Genoese, fishing in the cold Pacific was not so different from casting their nets in the Gulf of Genoa. Just as they had back home, fisherman concocted stews based on unsold leftovers from each day’s catch, including whatever unmarketable creatures they found in their nets.

Essentially a fish soup, any given cioppino might also have included shellfish and crustaceans as well as octopus and squid. Both name and components can be traced back to the seafood stews, or zuppe de pesce of Liguria. And in Genoese dialect, ciupin was simply the truncation of the Italian zuppina, or “little soup.” As culinary sleuths, we must constantly remind ourselves that the dialectical names of dishes developed by Italian immigrants to America do not necessarily match any names back in the old country.

Cuipin, also known as passato di pesce, is a Ligurian dish that relies on some very tasty, if bony, fish. Among the favorites are various sharp-spined scorpion-fish (members of the Scorpaena family) and gunards (of the Triglidae family)—native to the Mediterranean. Traditionally, these are added—bones and all—to a stockpot, to be poached with water, white wine, and herbs. The cooked flesh is removed by hand and reserved; the fish bones and any remaining meat are then pressed in a sieve to extract every last bit of flavor and nourishment; that extraction is added back to the stockpot, along with tomatoes, onions, and various herbs.

But thanks to the waters of San Francisco Bay, with their great diversity of shellfish—particularly the Dungeness Crab—ciupin developed a far more complex character. And once the next wave of Italian immigrants, the Sicilians, had settled in San Francisco, the dish was embellished with both sweet green and hot red peppers. The white wines of Liguria gave way to more robust California reds, whose color and flavors gave the stew more depth.

It was not long before the aristocracy of San Francisco caught a whiff of what was cooking down on Fisherman’s Wharf. Eventually, the recipe was codified, though the name of the first recording cookery writer is lost in the legendary fogs of the city. Once cioppino began showing up on the menus at tony dinner parties on Nob Hill and Pacific Heights, its place as an iconic San Franciscan dish was assured.

Savvy cioppino-makers use the recipe only as a starting point and let the market determine the ingredients. The result is that cioppino rarely tastes the same way twice, and in that, the best versions are true to the stew’s Old World Italian origins. Exciting as this variability may be, it makes cioppino an elusive item on restaurant menus. Chefs, and more importantly, their patrons, seek consistency. Thus, if suddenly one restaurant’s famous cioppiono should have to be made without one or more marine elements, one night’s stew might disappoint the “regulars.” So whether you seek the essence of cioppino in the city by the bay or in your own kitchen, know in advance that like a marine weather forecast, there will always be a delicious element of unpredictability.

Ingredients:

1/4 Cup Olive Oil
4 Cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1 Large yellow onion, roughly chopped
1 Green bell pepper, cored, seeded, and chopped in 1/2 inch dice
2 Tbs. Tomato paste
1 Cup dry red wine
1 28 oz. Can Italian plum tomatoes (whole or diced; preferably San Marzano)
1/2 tsp. Crushed red pepper flakes (or more, to taste)
2 Whole bay leaves
4 Tbs. Fresh basil, torn or cut into shreds
1/4 Cup flat-leaf Italian parsley, coarsely chopped
12 Live Cherrystone or Littleneck clams, thoroughly scrubbed
1 Lb. Live mussels, thoroughly scrubbed and debearded
1/2 Lb. Squid, cleaned, cut into 1/2 inch rings, tentacles chopped
1 Lb. Shrimp (36– 40 count), peeled and deveined
1 Lb. Boneless fish cut in 2-inch chunks (cod, halibut, monkfish, haddock)
Salt & freshly-ground black pepper

At serving:

6 Thick slices of good bread, toasted
2-3 Tbs. olive oil
1/4 Cup flat-leaf Italian parsley, coarsely chopped
Lemon wedges (optional)

Preparation:

Heat a large heavy-bottomed soup pot (6 quarts or larger) over medium heat. Add the olive oil and garlic and sauté for about 1 minute.

Add the chopped onion and red pepper flakes. Season with salt and black pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onion is translucent.

Add the green pepper and saute until it has softened, 3 – 4 minutes.

Raise the heat to medium-high. Stir the tomato paste into the oil and onion-pepper mixture.

Add the wine, and stir to incorporate with the tomato paste. Boil for 1 – 2 minutes to evaporate the alcohol. Add the plum tomatoes. If you are using whole tomatoes, break them up with a wooden spoon or with the back of a fork as they go in.

Add the bay leaf, basil, and parsley. Reduce the heat to medium-low, and simmer, partially covered, for approximately 20 minutes.

Raise the heat to medium, and add the clams and mussels. Simmer, covered, for 5 – 6 minutes, or until the shellfish have opened. Discard any that have not opened after 10 minutes. Using tongs or a slotted spoon, remove the clams and mussels as soon as they have opened. Reserve them in their shells in a bowl to catch their liquid.

Add the fish chunks, shrimp, and squid to the pot. Simmer, covered, for approximately 5 minutes, until just cooked through. Taste for seasoning and salt to taste. Resist the urge to stir the pot at this point. If you do, the fish may disintegrate.

Return the shellfish in their shells to the pot, along with any juices that have accumulated at the bottom of the bowl. You simply want to bring the shellfish to the same temperature as the rest of the stew.

To Serve:

Place a slice of toast in the bottom of each deep bowl and drizzle each with a little olive oil. Ladle some of the stew liquid over each. With tongs or slotted spoon, carefully divide the fish and shellfish equally among the bowls. Finally, ladle as much hot liquid into the bowls as you’d like. Garnish with additional parsley and lemon wedges and serve immediately.

Accompany with a warm, crusty loaf (or two!).This stew cries out for additional bread.

Serves six.

Even if you lack a plaster statue of Venus or a mural of Vesuvio over the Gulf of Naples, Pork Chops with Vinegar Peppers will quickly infuse your home with the scent so beloved by devotees of Boston’s North End Red-Sauce shrines. Put Ole Blue Eyes on the turntable and recreate that wise-guy ambiance right at home.

This preparation, quickly assembled from just a few ingredients, became popular during the late 1970′s.

Copyright © 2009, Skip Lombardi

Hailing from the same zip codes as Chicken Scarpariello, Pork Chops with Vinegar Peppers derive most of their distinctive and assertive flavor from the peppers and their pickling brine. While the peppers themselves (hot, not so hot, or simply sweet) are the subject of ongoing debate, their vinegar is sine qua non, which is old Roman dialect for “If you don’t have the peppers’ packing liquid—fuggheddabboudit.”

It turns out that many commercial producers use acetic acid rather than pure vinegar for their brine, so be sure to read the ingredients listed on your grocer’s offerings. Vinegar made from apples, other fruits, or grains has a much mellower taste than the harsher acetic acid.

The peppers most commonly used are sliced, pickled cherry peppers. It’s up to the cook to choose those with the desired amount of heat. While many a nonna makes her own pickled peppers—and may even use sweet, bell peppers—nearly all Italian-American restaurants use a commercial product with some degree of zest.

Over the past several years, some restaurants have switched to serving large, center-cut chops, an inch or more in thickness; others use brine-cured pork chops. But the original dish was made with thin chops, pounded even thinner. This was very likely to stretch the dish and to make the portions appear larger. Thinner chops not only absorb the flavors more rapidly and evenly, but require far less fuel to cook through.

A perusal of Italian-American restaurant menus from across the country suggests that Pork Chops and Vinegar Peppers are endemic to the restaurants of the Northeast, particularly Boston. In New Jersey, Tony Soprano has given this dish his okay and Carmela included it in The Sopranos’ Cookbook.

Ingredients:

Olive Oil
3 – 4 Cloves garlic, peeled and finely diced
4 Pork chops approximately 3/8 in. thick
1/2 Cup pickling brine, from the peppers
Freshly ground black pepper
1/2 Cup sliced vinegar peppers
Salt, to taste
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped

Preparation:

Heat a large sauté pan over medium-high heat. Add enough olive oil to glaze the bottom of the pan and add the chopped garlic. Sauté for a minute or two, until it is aromatic.

Lower the heat to medium and add the pork chops to the pan. Brown lightly on both sides, cooking for a total of approximately 10 minutes. Season with pepper.

Add the pickling brine and lower the heat so the juices barely simmer. Cook for approximately 5 minutes longer and remove from heat.

Taste for salt. Depending on the saltiness of the liquid, you may not need any.

To serve:

Place one chop on each of four dinner plates and spoon any pan juices over the meat. Garnish with some of the sliced peppers and the parsley.

Traditionally accompanied by potatoes pan-fried in olive oil, the chops also pair well with boiled new potatoes.

Like all the European peoples of the Mediterranean, Italians have myriad recipes for dried and salted codfish. But among Americans of Italian descent, baccalà holds a special place. Often the cornerstone of their Christmas Feast of the Seven Fishes, baccalà was a common Lenten or Friday meal when observant Catholics avoided meat.

Baccalà with Polenta
Copyright © 2009, Skip Lombardi

The very name baccalà permeates Italian-American speech: despite the mayhem with which he was associated on The Sopranos, the mere mention of Bobby Baccala guarantees a laugh. Author Jimmy Breslin chose the name Baccala for his fictional Don in The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight. A slab of dried baccalà is hard and unyielding…the epithet is used to describe a stubborn dolt, in short, “a blockhead.”

But back to gastronomy…

The irony is that a commodity that become nearly iconic in traditional Italian culture and cuisine was neither caught nor prepared in Italy—nor anywhere else in the Mediterranean. Subjects for a much longer discussion, salt-cod and stockfish (both cod, but distinguished by their salting methods) were caught in icy North Atlantic waters as distant as those of Newfoundland’s Georges Bank. Eviscerated, dried, and salted aboard fishing vessels or ashore in northern Europe, cod became vital to northern trade with the Mediterranean. In ports like Marseilles, Genoa, Livorno, and Trapani, dried fruits, wine, spices, and other Oriental luxuries, as well as SALT (essential to curing the cod back in the Nordic countries) would be loaded onto ships that had just off-loaded dried cod.

Such was the power of trade and the introduction of a product with shelf-life, that in Italy—where no part of the peninsula is more than 75 miles from the sea—people have been enjoying dried salt-cod for centuries. So, like the pomodoro and the peperoncino, here is another gift from La Terra Nuova that needed a few transatlantic passages to realize its gastronomic potential.

One of my earliest childhood memories is my walking into Public Market on Main Street in Middletown, Connecticut, and becoming immediately enveloped by the distinctive, slightly ammoniated aroma of baccalà. Slabs of the stiff, pale fillets were always displayed on a counter in a wooden packing case.

My memory was later rekindled while I studied music in Boston; I became reacquainted with baccalà in open bins in front of Joe Pace’s Grocery, then a culinary mecca on Salem Street in the North End.

Since my non-Catholic family thought of the Seven Fishes, Lent, and meatless fast-days as outside their own tradition, we had the luxury of eating baccalà—holiday or not—simply because it was delicious. Here is my grandparents’ version.

Ingredients:

1 Lb. Dried salt-cod (Look for a package labeled “BONELESS”)
4 Tbs. Olive oil
4 Cloves garlic, peeled, and sliced thinly
2 Medium onions, peeled, and thinly sliced lengthwise
1 28 oz. Can of plum tomatoes (preferably San Marzano)
1/2 Cup raisins (My grandparents preferred seedless, blond “sultanas”)
2 Tbs. Capers, rinsed and drained
4 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped

Preparation:

In a cool place 50° F. or colder, soak the baccalà for 2 – 3 days, changing the soaking water 2 or 3 times per day. When ready to cook, drain and cut the fish into 4-inch chunks.

Heat the olive oil in a large sauté pan set over medium heat, then add the sliced garlic. Sauté briefly, being careful not to let the garlic burn, then add the sliced onions. Sauté over medium heat until the onions wilt.

Remove the pan from the heat as you pour in the tomatoes, crushing them with the back of a fork so that you have large chunks. Simmer the sauce for 20 – 30 minutes, or until it has thickened.

Add the raisins and capers, then add the baccalà. Simmer, partially covered, for approximately 15 minutes, or until the baccalà flakes easily. Divide among four bowls, sprinkle with the parsley, and serve with bread or polenta.

Serves four.

Occasionally, we encounter a dish that seems to be purely local. In this post, we’ll examine one that is simply and cheaply made from widely available ingredients. It would appear to be the perfect mother recipe for dozens of casalinga variations. And yet, the dish is virtually unknown outside the Calabrese community of Westerly, Rhode Island.

A small coastal town along the Connecticut border, Westerly is home to one of the largest Calabrese communities outside Italy. Beginning in the late 19th century, as the barons of American commerce erected mansions in their summer playground of Newport, Rhode Island became a magnet for southern Italian stoneworkers.

Copyright © 2009, Skip Lombardi

Between 1911 and 1934, the Le Fabre steamship line brought Calabrians and Sicilians straight to Providence, where port improvements were made to ease the congestion of Ellis Island’s immigration halls. Westerly’s pink granite quarries, as well as horticulture and poultry production throughout the tiny state of Rhode Island, supported an expanding community of Calabrians.

Even though many Westerly residents are now fourth generation Americans, their Calabrian identification remains strong. A US-born nonna more comfortable speaking her dialect than broken English is not unusual. And while there is a large community of recent immigrants from Mexico and Central America, the bilingual signage in the excellent Westerly hospital is not in English and Spanish, but in English and Italian!

Unique to Westerly is Spezzi, chicken gizzards in a tomato ragù laced with pickled hot peppers. To the best of our knowledge, it survives in a couple of local bars and one restaurant, where it is served—not as a sauce over ziti or rigatoni—but on its own, in small bowls accompanied only by white bread.

Copyright © 2009, Skip Lombardi

Over the past couple of years, we’ve deconstructed both the history of spezzi and the dish itself.

We began with the etymology: Spezie are simply “spices,” maybe a reference to the cherry peppers? But then we also knew that spezzatino, a “stew,” is from the verb spezzare, to divide into pieces.

We’re not authorities on the nuanced variations of Calabrian speech, but we knew another Westerly word that gave us a clue. Over more than a century, three generations of Westerly’s Italian-Americans have truncated sopressata to the point that it is pronounced and spelled as ‘soupy!’ So, while dropping final syllables is not as predictable in Calabrese as in Neapolitan dialect (e.g., mozzarel, proshoot, brashol), the Calabrese have certainly abandoned their own share of syllables along the Northeast Corridor

So, we decided that spezzatino could have yielded spezzi…

But what about the origin of the dish? Who made it first? And when? A rudimentary knowledge of avian anatomy tells us that no one would have made spezzi with chicken parts prior to the age of commercial poultry production. One gizzard and one heart per chicken… Do the math: at least ten chickens are needed to provide approximately a pound of hearts and gizzards.

Conducting further interviews in Westerly bars, we learned about Chickadee Farms. And as so often happens in a bar, we began to see things from an expanded perspective.

In the mid-1940′s, Joe Russo founded Chickadee Farms in the town of Hopkinton, just east of Westerly. Within a decade, Chickadee Farms was supplying chickens and eggs to virtually every IGA (Independent Grocer’s Alliance) store in Rhode Island and southeastern Connecticut. The farm ultimately processed 60,000 birds per year. And in 1954, long before we’d heard of Frank Purdue, Mr. Russo was instrumental in his State Legislature’s declaration of the eponymous Rhode Island Red as the official state bird.

Chickadee Farms employed a lot of Westerly residents. We have a theory: one of the employee benefits might have been getting to take home the regaglie—the livers, hearts, and gizzards—from the processed chickens. Spurned by many Americans, regaglie have their fans, and there were plenty of Italians who knew delectable ways to prepare them.

Copyright © 2009, Skip Lombardi

Of course, as we’ve said before, recipes aren’t static; they evolve and eventually earn their places in a cuisine. We’re inclined to think that before the Westerly Calabrese encountered a surfeit of gizzards and hearts, they had used the distinctive trio of tomatoes, cherry peppers, and the peppers’ own pickling vinegar in other applications. Both a tenderizer and a neutralizer of especially pungent meats and fish, vinegar had a long history in southern Europe as an ingredient in game stews.

One Greek restaurateur (and first-class blues guitarist) in Westerly suggested that spezzi might have begun with venison. Knowing how many Subarus and light pickup trucks with Connecticut and Rhode Island plates bear significant dents after colliding with bucks caught in headlights, this seemed plausible. And as any southern New England gardener bemoaning beheaded tulips will tell you: deer are everywhere.

From their first days in Westerly, Calabrese could have had venison, legal or not. But la caccia in America was not necessarily an option for Italian immigrants, many of whom lacked both access to hunting grounds as well as funds to purchase guns. Nonetheless, New England hunters have a tradition of generosity. Perhaps those who did hunt were happy to share deer numbles (also known as lights, offal, or variety meats) with their omnivorous Italian neighbors, just as happy as the Chickadee Farms management had been to provide take-away gizzards.

If our hunch is correct, then we should note: venison would have been seasonal. So, later, when Italians had a supply of less-marketable, mass-produced chicken organs, spezzi could have been savored year ’round. The gamey qualities of poultry gizzards are a fair match for the taste and texture of venison.

As a plus, gizzards don’t require as much time or fuel to cook as the innards of a larger animal. Today, even if they are not free, gizzards remain very inexpensive to purchase and prepare. Spezzi is the Westerly way to assure every bit of a Rhode Island Red—or any chicken—is enjoyed.

Cucina dei Poveri, meet the official state bird!

Ingredients:

1 Lb. Chicken hearts and gizzards
Olive oil
4 Cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 Medium yellow onion, diced
1 28 oz. Can crushed tomatoes in heavy purée
4 – 6 Pickled hot peppers, finely chopped
1/2 to 3/4 Cup of the pepper marinating liquid
2 Tbs. Fresh oregano, chopped
2 Tbs. Fresh basil, chopped
6 Tbs. Flat-leaf Italian parsley, finely chopped
Salt & freshly ground black pepper

Preparation:

Place the gizzards and 1 Tbs. salt in a 2 — 3 quart saucepan. Add enough water to cover them and bring the pan to the boil. Reduce the heat to medium and boil for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and drain. When the hearts and gizzards are cool enough to handle, remove any connective tissue and chop the meat into half-inch pieces. Reserve.

Heat a large sauté pan over medium-high heat, then add enough oil to cover the bottom. Add the garlic and sauté for a minute or two, until it begins to smell delicious. Lower the heat to medium and add the onions.

Sauté the onions until they begin to wilt, approximately 3 — 5 minutes. Season the reserved hearts and gizzards with salt and pepper and stir them into the onions and garlic.

Add the tomatoes, the chopped peppers, and their marinating liquid. Add the oregano, basil, and 2 Tbs. of the parsley. Taste for seasoning, adding more salt and pepper if necessary.

Adjust the heat so the pot barely simmers. Partially cover and simmer for at least 30 minutes. Stir occasionally.

To serve:

In Westerly, Rhode Island, the local bars serve spezzi in a small bowl, with white bread on the side. We prefer to serve ours, garnished with additional parsley, over polenta. We also enjoy a robust spezzi over short or tubular pasta and find it reminiscent of the Roman classic, pasta con le regaglie.

Serves four.

Related Posts:

Cherry Pepper Shooters
Chicken Cacciatora