Almost Italian

Here is a dish whose whole vastly exceeds the sum of its parts. Unassuming in its simplicity, cudduruni appeases the appetite until the serving of a more substantial meal. It’s a favorite at Christmas and Easter. But in our opinion, it’s too delicious—and too easy—to save for only those occasions.

Slices of Cudduruni
Copyright © 2009, Skip Lombardi

So as you plan your Superbowl menu, take a page from the Almost Italian playbook. Excerpted from our new book Almost Italian: A Cookbook & History of Italian Food in America, this recipe for cudduruni should give you the courage to say “NO” to game-day interruptions by franchise pizza chain delivery boys. Although it’s hard to resist eating this treat hot out of the oven, most Sicilians prefer cudduruni at room temperature.

Èccolo! Here’s the perfect football food. Sometimes known as “pizza strips*,” cudduruni, shares some of the characteristics of deep-dish pizza and focaccia. Nonetheless, it really is distinct from anything else in Sicilian-American cooking.

With its Sicilian pedigree, we think a sheet pan of cudduruni could well be the most diplomatic way to feed Superbowl XLVII fans and honor the contending teams. Hailing from San Francisco and Baltimore, two cities with large populations of southern Italian descent, The 49ers and The Ravens will be playing in the Big Easy, whose French Quarter was once so solidly Sicilian that it was known as Little Palermo!

Cudduruni, fresh from the oven
Copyright © 2009, Skip Lombardi

Among the qualities that distinguish cudduruni are:

• Cudduruni is always baked in a pan, even if it goes into a wood-fired oven.
• The cheese topping, if any, is parmesan or romano. Never mozzarella. (If cheese were ever incorporated in the Old World Sicilian version, it would have been the sheep’s milk pecorino of the Italian South.)
• The “sauce” is no more than canned, crushed tomatoes in a heavy purée. (Some families did use strattu, the sun-dried tomato conserve many southern Italian-Americans made at home.)

Nearly every Little Italy bakery in New England once produced some version of cudduruni. Traditionally available only on Saturday morning, the treat was typically just a slab of dough spread with the requisite olive oil, tomato purée, and parmesan. (The Palmieri Bakery in Providence, Rhode Island, still offers their brilliantly simple, cheeseless version.) A few establishments added sliced garlic or dried oregano to the topping, while a handful went all out in their expression of abbondanza by tossing on ground beef, sausage, or anchovies before the pan went into the oven.

Skip recalls-

Our recipe here is a little more conservative with the oil. By using parchment paper, we have an easier clean-up and still get that delicious, baked-with-olive-oil flavor.

Cudduruni

Ingredients:

1 Lb. Pizza dough at room temperature
2 – 3 Tbs. Olive oil
1 1/2 Cups crushed tomatoes in heavy purée
1 tsp. Crushed red pepper flakes (peperoncini)
1/2 Cup freshly grated parmesan or romano cheese

Preparation:

Use a baking dish or heavy sheet pan at least 9 x 14 inches. Cut a sheet of parchment paper large enough cover the bottom and sides of the pan. (It’s okay if the paper sticks up a little above the sides.) Fit the paper into the pan and set it aside.
Preheat the oven to 375 F.

If you’re using parchment paper, lightly flour the dough, then stretch and roll it out to approximately the size of your pan. Place the rolled-out dough into the pan and stretch it to meet the sides.

If you’re not using parchment, lightly coat the bottom of a sheet pan with olive oil. Place the dough in the center of the sheet pan, then press and stretch to flatten the dough to fill the pan.

Coat the top of the dough with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Then, using a large spoon or ladle, spread the crushed tomatoes over the oiled dough.

Sprinkle the red pepper flakes and grated cheese evenly over the tomatoes.

Bake for approximately 40 minutes in the middle of the preheated oven.

Serves a sofa-full of fans.

Anche un po di vino va bene
Copyright © 2009, Skip Lombardi

Trust us: cudduruni really IS delicious at room temperature, and in our opinion, that makes it ideal football fare.**

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Our most popular AlmostItalian.com post, with thousands of page-views year ’round (but especially just before Christmas), Scungilli put us on the map. Earlier in 2012, when we published Almost Italian: A Cookbook & History of Italian Food in America, we removed the scungilli post from the blog, and it became an entire chapter of the book, which we refer to as Volume I…

Scungilli, fresh off the boat
Copyright © 2011, Holly Chase

We’re continuing our explorations of Italian ingredients and techniques outside Italy, writing posts that we hope will eventually comprise Volume II of Almost Italian.

It was only a matter of time before scungilli would grab more column space. So when The New York Times gave some recent ink to the rediscovery of whelks by that city’s chefs, we thought we should serve our readers a little holiday treat from our new book. Thus, we’ve brought back our four-year-old post with step-by-step instructions for cleaning and cooking scungilli. Like making our own cavatelli, marinara, and Easter Pie, we think cleaning fresh scungilli is worth the trouble, and that’s why we included those recipes and many others like them in our book.

Most tinned scungilli are also labeled “conch.” The latter are warm-water species.
Copyright © 2012, Skip Lombardi

Whether you use the related, but less flavorful species that are sold in tins, or buy your own channeled whelks, live, in their shells, you can enjoy both the marinated salad and pasta with red sauce recipes below.

Whether you invite scungilli to the Feast of the Seven Fishes or simply enjoy them with pasta, they make a celebratory meal to share with those you love.

Buon Appetito e Buon Natale !

Photo # 1—Close-up of fresh scungilli

Scungilli, very large marine snails, are firmly fixed in Italian-American cuisine—whether served chilled in an insalata di mare or hot in a marinara sauce.  The cold-water species, Busycotypus canaliculatus, channeled whelk, is the one most commonly gathered in New England by those who still bother to fuss with the snails’ labor-intensive preparation. Their meat is dense, chewy, and quite sweet. Larger Italian grocery stores may stock frozen scungilli and most carry tins of “conch”—though the latter are usually different species, from warmer waters in the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean, and South Asia.

Although they are not as popular today as calamari, or even octopus and eel, scungilli would be one of the dishes a skilled nonna might prepare for a holiday spread, especially for the Feast of the Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve.

While cooking scungilli is molto semplice, their cleaning has been described as penitential. That’s why a 29-oz can of prepared scungilli costs as much as $26. Nonetheless, the ease of digital photography has inspired us to pick up where Nonna left off. In this post we will document the cleaning of scungilli for current and future ‘Almost Italians.’ So, if someone brings you a 50-lb bag of live whelks, gather all hands and follow these directions. Then, you can freeze your prepped scungilli meat to use on short notice throughout the year.

Photo # 2—Scungilli ready for steaming

Try to get some seaweed with your live whelks. Rinse the shells and seaweed in clean water. (Scungilli shells may be encrusted with barnacles. Don’t bother trying to remove them.)

Place an inch of water (preferably sea-water) and some seaweed in a large pot. Bring the pot to a boil, reduce to a simmer, cover, and steam the whelks for 10 minutes.

Photo # 3—Removing the Scungilli from their Shells

Remove the pot from the burner and uncover. Lift the shells  from the pot with tongs. Place them on a cutting board or large plate until they are cool enough to handle. With a short paring knife or narrow metal spatula, lift open each snail’s operculum, a hard, horn-like oval window protecting the opening of the shell. It may stick to the snail meat or it may come right off. (See photo # 5; the operculum is in the foreground.)

Gently wedge the blade into the shell and let it help you pull out the coiled snail flesh and “attachments” in one piece.

Photo # 4—Scungilli, out of their Shells

The snail parts you want to keep stop at the dark part of the coil, the snail’s digestive tract. Cut that off and discard.

Photo # 5—Deconstructed Whelk
Seaweed, entire snail with innards attached, empty shell, & operculum

Photo # 6—Cooked scungilli, partially trimmed

Cut each of the snails cross-wise in half, to expose the internal digestive tract. Rinse each piece well, leaving an empty channel (Photo # 7)

Photo # 7—Two cleaned scungilli (each has been halved)

With a very sharp knife, carefully pare away the tougher dark bits on the outside of the scungilli pieces.  This is for aesthetic reasons; reserve these dark trimmings to use in a tomato-based sauce (recipe below).

Set aside the pale, waxy and (relatively) more attractive pieces of scungilli for salads or non-tomato sauces.

Photo # 8—Trimmed scungilli ready to slice for salad

At this stage, the trimmed scungilli are still rather tough, but they will be further tenderized by the additional steps and preparations below. Freezing will also tenderize cleaned scungilli. If you slice the scungilli 3/8″ thick before freezing, it will only have to be thawed before marinating. The acids of the marinade will complete the tenderization.

If you’ve been curious (or nostalgic) enough to read this far, buon appetito! But if you don’t think that cleaning wild gastropods is how you want to spend your Saturday afternoon, you can look for a deal on another species…

You may find inexpensive tins of conch.
Their texture is softer, their flavor less briny.

Insalata di Scungilli

Ingredients:

8-10 oz. Fresh scungilli  (cooked, cleaned, and sliced as above)
I /8 tsp Finely chopped fresh garlic
1/2 Medium Bermuda onion sliced in very thin rings
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes (peperoncini)
Rind of one lemon, grated
Juice of one lemon
1/2 tsp fresh oregano, finely snipped
1-2 Tbs red wine vinegar
2 Tbs Extra virgin olive oil

1 Large, vine-ripened tomato, coarsely chopped (about 8 oz.)
1/4 Cup finely sliced celery
1/4 Cup coarsely chopped Italian flat-leaf  parsley
1 Tbs Fresh basil, finely snipped
Leaves from one heart of Romaine lettuce

Preparation:

In a 1-quart mixing bowl or other non-reactive container, combine the first 11 ingredients; stir to combine. Cover and set aside in a cool place for at least 30 minutes before serving.  You may combine and chill these ingredients up to 12 hours ahead of serving.

Just before serving, add the remaining ingredients and taste for salt and acidity, adding a little more vinegar or oil, to taste.

To Serve:

Serve in small bowls. You may tear the lettuce into large pieces and toss with the scungilli or keep the leaves whole, adding them as crisp garnishes to each serving.

Serves 4-6 as an antipasto or salad.

Scungilli alla Marinara

Ingredients:

8-10 oz. Prepared scungilli, finely diced (1/4 inch pieces)
3/4 cup clam broth or any liquid left from tinned or thawed scungilli (optional)
2 Cups of My Grandmother’s Marinara Sauce
1/4 Cup Italian flat-leaf parsley, coarsely chopped
2 Tbs. Snipped fresh basil
Additional sprigs of parsley for garnish
1 lb cooked gemelli or other short pasta

Preparation:

In a large, non-reactive saute pan, simmer the marinara sauce, scungilli, and any additional broth or liquid for 20-30 minutes.

Cook the pasta according to directions, but drain it when it is slightly underdone.

Add the drained pasta to the marinara and allow it to cook in the sauce till it has reached the al dente state. Stir in the herbs and serve the pasta and sauce in shallow bowls. Garnish with parsley sprigs.

Serves 4

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Like most food bloggers, we have parallel occupations. One of us has three different business cards; the other has six (honest). And we share two others…

Since we were both born under Gemini, the sign of the celestial twins, some would say that we are a team of four, rather than a duo. But even the existence of our multiple personalities doesn’t explain how we manage our lives and passions for culinary history, good writing, and hands-on cooking. All we can say is that multi-tasking is in our DNA.

Claiming descent from families that included artists, antiquarians, and pack-rats, one of us became a dealer in vintage textiles and furnishings. You’ve seen more than a few of those—the old linens, Deco dishes, and artfully tarnished silverware—in our food photographs on this blog and in our recently published book, Almost Italian: A Cookbook and History of Italian Food in America.

Vintage Cocktail Forks

Because we never know what we may need, we are always on the prowl for what we call our “props,” to use the terminology of a theatrical stage manager. (One of us worked on Broadway, and both of us think of the kitchen counter as a stage.)

In our quest, we go to garage sales, thrift shops, salvage yards, and art galleries. We give more than a cursory glance at our neighbors’ curbside giveaways and throwaways. We never know where we’ll find the perfect piece of weathered cypress board or THE cobalt-glazed bowl to set off the wilted greens and pasta.

Those things tend to linger in our batterie de cuisine or the “prop closet” and may be used in multiple photos. But there comes a time to clear some space and deaccession a few of the appealing objects we’ve acquired along the way, many of which have nothing whatsoever to do with the kitchen. Need a 1970′s tartan? A gypsy scarf? A deck of poker cards from Uruguay? What about an original airbrush painting of a Hawaiian cockatoo? We do have a 1962 cookbook with attitude (pure Madmen) as well as a set of twelve miniature orange cocktail forks in their original box. June Cleaver would love them.

To paraphrase Frenchman Brillat-Savarin: tell us what you collect and we’ll tell you who you are.

How to Appeal to a Man’s Appetites
1962 First Edition Cookbook by Toby Stein

And speaking of cookbooks, we’re delighted that so many of you have already bought an electronic copy of Almost Italian.Thank you! However, we’ve come to realize that many of our readers are not everyday cooks and want only certain recipes, most notably those associated with the Italian-American celebration of the Christmas Eve Feast of the Seven Fishes.

In response, we’ve put together AN ALMOST ITALIAN HOLIDAY SAMPLER, a mini eBook with just eight fish and seafood recipes, great photos, plus some background on the grandest meal in the Italian calendar. To top it off, we’ve included an Italian food spoof of the Twelve Days of Christmas as well as nostalgic recollections of our own holidays. Use the link below, at the bottom of this post, to go to our page on ETSY.com, where you’ll find a more extensive description and excerpts from AN ALMOST ITALIAN HOLIDAY SAMPLER.

Our HOLIDAY SAMPLER is a small eBook and priced accordingly, low enough for you to send out multiple copies, maybe even INSTEAD of greeting cards. So, how do you get? We email it to you as a PDF file, which can then be read on any computer, smartphone, tablet, or eReader.

If you don’t want to risk splashing marinara on your iPad, you’ll be happy to know that the PDF file is easy to print. You’ll be able print paper copies (including the color photos)for your non-techie relatives and, thus, share the prep work for your own family’s Feast of the Seven Fishes.

We invite you to the weirdly wonderful, virtual world of ETSY.com, where we have our online shop, PROPZ. You’ll see AN ALMOST ITALIAN HOLIDAY SAMPLER among all the other curiosities in our shop.

But wait—there’s more….

Through January 6, 2013 you can apply the discount coupon code below to anything in the online shop, which includes many of our own kitchen props.

www.etsy.com/shop/PROPZ

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Jewish communities have existed in the Italian peninsula for more than 2,000 years. Long before the Christian era and the time of the Ceasars, Rome was home to many Jews. Later, in the decades after 1492 when Jews and Muslims were expelled from Spain and Portugal, thousands settled in the Italian city-states. Today, most Italian Jews refer to themselves as Sephardi and trace their heritage back to that Iberian exodus. Their cucina ebraica, as Jewish-Italian cooking is called, includes many dishes still served throughout Iberia and, indeed, around the Mediterranean.

Because it’s Hanukkah, we would love to claim that our recipe below is both Italian AND Jewish, one with a long Sephardic tradition. But the truth is that it’s our own invention, inspired by a singular Italian pasta shape. You could say it’s almost Jewish… and maybe, just maybe, aspirationally Italian. Allow us to explain:

Stelle, Star-shaped Pasta
Copyright © 2012, Skip Lombardi

Ordinarily, Italian cooks use, stelle, extremely tiny pasta stars, to embellish clear broth in just the same way that they use other miniscule forms like alphabeti, seme di melone, and acini di pepe. We are not aware of any other traditional use for stelle in the Italian kitchen.

However, we do know that a very nice orzata can be made using the rice-shaped pasta, orzo. (Orzata is made the same way as risotto, except that the cook uses pasta rather than grains of rice.) So we thought about using the stelle rather than orzo. Unfortunately, unlike the orzo, the flat stars tend to stick to each other. But then we remembered the classic eastern European combination of pasta and buckwheat—the Ashkenazi Jewish deli staple known as kasha varnishkes, which is simply a buckwheat pilaf enlivened with carmelized onions and pasta, most often with the bow-ties Italians call farfalle (butterflies).

Kasha with Stars or Grano Saraceno con Stelle
Copyright © 2012, Skip Lombardi

Why not an Italian take on that? One of us has Sephardic ancestors, so the six-pointed stelle made the challenge irresistible. Besides, we rationalized, cooks in both northern and southern Italy do include buckwheat in many recipes for polenta and pasta. Grano saraceno (Saracen grain, the centuries-old, and politically incorrect Italian name referring to the swarthy color of buckwheat) grows best in cool, damp regions less favorable to the cultivation of winter and summer wheat.

Delicious as a vegetarian main dish or pilaf contorno for your brisket or roast chicken—Kasha with Stars, Kasha mit Sternen—our Almost Italo-ebraico Grano Saraceno con Stelle will light up your table. Leftovers are delicious cold or gently microwaved.

Ingredients:

1 1/4 Cups buckwheat groats
1 large egg

Olive oil
3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 large onion, sliced into 1/8-inch half-moon slivers
1 bay leaf
1 stalk celery, cut into 1/4-inch dice
1/2 teaspoon peperoncino (dry red pepper flakes, optional)

2-3 Cups warm water or broth

1 Cup stelle, tiny pasta stars– or other tiny shape
A few teaspoons of extra virgin olive oil, to finish

3/4 cup chopped flat-leaf Italian parsley
3/4 cup toasted walnut pieces, coarsely chopped
3/4 cup crumbled ricotta salata or feta cheese*

*Optional, but nice if you are serving this as a main dish

Preparation:

In a small bowl, beat the egg lightly with a fork. Stir all the buckwheat into the beaten egg and continue to stir until the egg has evenly coated all the grains. Don’t worry if there is a little extra egg or if the mixture is very stiff.

Heat a dry 12″ sauté pan over medium heat. Do NOT add any oil at this time.

Add all the egg-coated buckwheat to the pan and spread it out. The grain will become fragrant as it begins to toast. Stir it with a fork or wooden spoon to break up any lumps and when all the grains are separate, reduce the heat to medium-low. Keep stirring and toasting for 5-7 minutes. Some grains will begin to darken. Remove the toasted buckwheat to a bowl and set aside.

NOTE: These steps are essential to keep the buckwheat grains separate.

To the same toasting pan, add the olive oil, seasonings, garlic, onion, and celery. Sauté over medium heat for 7-10 minutes or until the onion is lightly caramelized.

Meanwhile, in a separate, 1-quart saucepan with a lid, bring 3 cups of water to a boil for the pasta stars.

When it comes to a boil, add 1 teaspoon of salt and stir in 1 cup of stars. Turn off the heat under the pot and cover it. Set the timer for 2 minutes.

After 2 minutes gently stir the pasta with a fork or chopstick. Cover and set the timer for 2 more minutes. Next, test the pasta; it should be slightly less than al dente. Drain the pasta and slide it into a small bowl. Drizzle the cooked stars with a teaspoon of extra virgin oil and gently stir it into the pasta to keep the shapes from sticking together. Set the bowl aside.

Stir the toasted buckwheat into the caramelized onions and seasonings in the sauté pan. Raise the heat to medium and add 1 cup of warm water or broth to the pan. Stir the grain gently as the water will be quickly absorbed. Add another 1/2 cup of warm liquid and stir until it is nearly absorbed. Add one more 1/2 cup of liquid, reduce the heat to low, and cover the pan.

After 5 minutes, check to see that the grain is not sticking. Stir in a little more more water or broth if the grain is still too hard for your taste. The buckwheat should be light and slightly chewy. When you like the texture, turn off the burner and gently fold in the reserved pasta. Taste for salt and pepper. Drizzle a couple of teaspoons of extra virgin olive oil over the pilaf and fluff with a fork. Cover the pan to keep it warm.

To serve: Divide the buckwheat pilaf into portions. Sprinkle the chopped parsley, toasted walnuts and (optional) cheese over each serving.

Serves 4 as a main dish or 6-8 as a farinaceous side

Buon appetito e auguri per La Festa delle Luci!

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If the pollsters and retail analysts are correct, you, the sacred American retail shopper, savior of the global market economy, started waiting in lines outside the big box stores on Thanksgiving afternoon. Dauntless, you shopped till you dropped sometime late on Sunday. Throughout the weekend’s frenzy of consumption, you survived on good Turkey Day leftovers. But now it’s Cyber-Monday, and by this evening, you may have maxed out your credit cards and finished whatever was refrigerated in Tupperware.

The Condimento: Garlic, Olive Oil, and Hot Red Pepper Flakes
Copyright © 2012, Skip Lombardi

So what did Nonna serve when her cupboard was nearly bare? She and other immigrant families relied on a pasta dish that exemplifies la cucina dei poveri, the food of the poor.

Whether you’re feeling rich or poor, you’ll enjoy a zesty southern Italian preparation that is simplicity itself. Is Pasta con Aglio, Olio, e Peperoncino a balanced meal? No, but in your case, Thanksgiving excess took care of the calories and vitamins last week. You and your liver could use a break.

When Nonna’s larder lacked even a rind of cheese, this is what the immigrant family enjoyed. The key component is the bread crumb mixture, pane gratatto, which the ever-wry immigrants called “false cheese” or formaggio dei poveri. Sautéed with a little olive oil, the crumbs become a condimento that satisfies the palate’s craving for fat. It’s the perfect example of cholesterol-free fast food. Maybe Mayor Bloomberg could fast-track the licensing of a few food trucks to serve this around New York City?

Ingredients:

1 pound spaghetti or linguine

2 Tablespoons olive oil
3 large cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 Tablespoon peperoncino, crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 to 3/4 cup dry, unseasoned bread crumbs
Coarsely ground black pepper & salt, to taste

A little extra virgin olive oil, to finish

Preparation:

Begin to cook the pasta in boiling, salted water.
As the pasta cooks, prepare your condimento:

In a sauté pan, heat 2 Tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat and sauté the chopped garlic for one minute, or until is is fragrant. Add the peperoncino, a few grinds of black pepper, and bread crumbs to the pan and stir until the crumbs are lightly toasted, 3 to 4 minutes. If you are using the fresh parsley and/or citrus rind, add those now and stir to combine with the crumbs. Remove the pan from the heat.

As soon as the pasta is al dente, drain it well. Immediately, toss the hot pasta in a large bowl with one tablespoon of the extra virgin oil. With tongs, or two spoons, gently lift the pasta strands a few times so they are coated with the oil. Add all of the reserved crumb mixture and gently combine it with the hot pasta. Taste one strand and, if needed, add salt to taste.

Divide the pasta into 4 – 6 portions and, if you like, drizzle each with another spoonful of extra virgin oil.

Buon appetito!

Serves 4 – 6 as a light meal.

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