It is Christmas Eve
in the early decades of the twentieth century. Italian immigrants throughout
southwestern Pennsylvania are gathering their families for Vigilia, the
Christmas Eve meal.
In the rough and tumble
coal patch of Oliver deep in the Klondike region of Fayette County, Giovanni
and Caterina Mele and their eleven children sit down to a seven-course
fish dinner celebrating the Campania and their Neapolitan heritage.
In the booming steel
town of Monessen, tucked into a bend in the Monongahela River on the fringes
of Westmoreland County, Nazzareno and Carolina Parigi and their daughter
Elizabeth are joined by their cousins Geno and Sandrina Pelini and their
children Arnold, Bobby, and Vivian, from New Castle, Lawrence County. They
will enjoy a Tuscan-style Christmas Eve.
Along the swarming
flat land on the eastern shore of the Allegheny River before it joins the
Monongahela in downtown Pittsburgh, Guiseppe and Giovanna Balestreire Camarda
and their five children celebrate not only their hometown of Santa Elia,
but the family occupation as fishermen along the western Sicilian coast.
They will cook and eat an orgy of Sicilian inspired fish dishes.
The Christmas Eve
meals the Mele, Parigi, and Camarda families are enjoying offer telling
clues to each family’s distinct heritage and dispels the myth that all
Italian food is the same. While the holiday celebrates their religion,
the food choices and preparations celebrate their regionalism. Combined,
the two points herald a very simple but overlooked truth: Italian-American
food does not stem from a single foodway.
Regionalism
Italy was not Italy
until 1861. The independent regions that Garabaldi eventually united had
a history and culture uniquely independent of each other. They also had
a different geography. These elements had a tremendous impact on the food
supply. In the Mezzogiorno, the semi-arid, mountainous region south of
Rome, olives, olive oil, lemons, fish, and goats were the major products
of the land. Garnished by oregano, the meats were grilled in Arab and Greek
fashion or baked as the Norman invaders liked to do.
Further north olive
oil was combined with or replaced by butter and the cooking methods reflected
a different mix of invaders and traders. Tuscany had an Etruscan influence.
Both it (Tuscany) and Emilia-Romagna had lush farmland which produced beef,
veal, and pork that were garnished with local herbs such as sage, rosemary,
and thyme.
In the far north the
food variety did not change much from central Italy, but the influences
certainly did. In Piedmont, Veneto, Lombard, Trentino-Alto Adige, and Friuli-Venezia
Giulia, traditional recipes were influenced by the Austro-Hungarian Empire
to which they once belonged. In Lombard, heavily influenced by France,
pasta was rarely seen on the menu. Friuli-Venezia Giulia had a Slavic influence.
In the Alto Adige the influence was predominantly Austrian, so the foods
reflect strudels, pork, and rich desserts like kastanientorte, a puree
of chestnuts mixed with butter, flour, sugar, and eggs.
Beginning in about
1870, and continuing until the mid-1920s, some 4 million people, from nearly
all of Italy’s provinces, immigrated to America. In one instance in 1901,
the Mayor of Moliterno in southern Italy greeted the Prime Minister of
Italy by saying, "I greet you in the name of eight thousand fellow citizens,
three thousand of whom are in America, and the other five thousand preparing
to follow them."
Most of these immigrants
were already in America before the concept of a united Italy had time to
develop. Immigrants brought their distinct regional differences and food
traditions to America. That uniqueness not only separated them from other
nationalities, it keep them apart from other Italians too. Few regarded
themselves as Italian. They were Abruzzese, Piemontese, Siciliani, Toscani
. . . As they worked and lived in the coal patches and steel towns of southwestern
Pennsylvania most could only nod to other "Italians" because they could
not understand each other. The dialects were actually separate Romance
languages, as many as 6,000 of them by some estimates. A Romagnoli calls
a fish stew brodetto. To a Tuscan brodetto means a soup with bread, eggs,
and lemon. In Tuscany, soprassata means headcheese, but in Calabria it
is a salami.
The Christmas Eve
feast keeps the ancient traditions intact. It reflects the regionalism
of the ancient land and the strong desire of a group of people to keep
their identity intact in a new culture. Italy marched in one direction,
unifying the country. Italian-Americans marched in the opposite direction,
maintaining the regionalism that made them unique. If a person does not
understand these basic concepts about Italian-Americans, he or she will
never understand what constitutes Italian-American foods and traditions
in the United States. It is not pasta. It is not pizza. It can never be
that simple.
Catholicism
It was not Italian-ism
that bound Italy, it was Catholicism. The Catholic Church had unified the
people long before Giuseppe Garibaldi united the regions. The Catholic
Church decreed the eve before a holiday as a mangiare di magro, a time
of "eating lean," and in the most Catholic of countries, surrounded on
three sides by seas, fish is what lean eating was all about. So, fish is
the food of ritual for Christmas Eve. The tradition is Catholic, but the
ingredients that dance with the fish in the cooking pots are regional.
That means we have fish with pasta, fish in soup, fish in stew, fish boiled,
fish fried, fish baked, and fish grilled. We combine it with onions or
leeks, with olives or with pine nuts and raisins. We simmer it in rich,
red tomatoes, or in pure white milk. And each ingredient carries the history
of an entire region. It has a story to tell.
Catholicism also gave
us a system of mystical numbers for Christmas. Three is the number of the
Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. It is also the number
of the wisemen. So, either could be honored whenever a family served three
fishes on Christmas Eve. In the Italian region of Abruzzi, the sacred number
for Christmas Eve is seven for the seven virtues or the seven sacraments.
Seven can also mean the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, or the seven champions
of Christendom. There are also the seven winds of Italy, the seven hills
of Rome, the seven days of creation, and even the seven wonders of the
world or the seven veils of Salome.
Some Abruzzi families
prepare nine dishes on Christmas Eve: the nine months that Mary carried
Jesus, or the Trinity, Father-Son-Holy Ghost, times three. In the Marches
the number is nine, in an all vegetable Christmas Day meal including cabbage,
turnips, asparagus, anise, and stuffed artichokes. An Apulian family may
prepare thirteen dishes symbolizing Jesus Christ and his twelve disciples.
In Calabria, the number is nine or thirteen or even twenty-four or twenty-five,
the latter for the days of the Christmas season.
If you ask Tuscan-Americans
how many dishes they prepare, they may look at you strangely. They do not
fix a set number of dishes. Most northern Italian-Americans have never
followed the custom. In fact, most have never heard of it. The custom is
stronger among southern Italian-American families and many of them do not
know why or what the numbers represent. They continue the tradition because
the family has always done it. It is one of the mysteries of the Christmas
season. The number of dishes, the type of dishes, the meaning behind each
preparation is lost in the medieval past of the family history.
The Feast
The Mele family hails
from Sala di Serino, Province of Avellino, in the hills of the Campania
countryside high above Naples. Christmas Eve dominates their holiday celebration.
Rita Mele maintains seven was always their number. But if you count the
dishes on the holiday table today, they number far above seven.
The Mele’s serve their
Christmas Eve meal as a buffet. They fill the table with good food and
allow it to remain after everyone has eaten. This is tradition, too. In
Parma in Emilia-Romagna leftovers are for the souls of the dead, and in
Calabria food remains on the table awaiting a visit from the Madonna. The
Mele’s keep their table through Christmas Day, and replenish it as new
guests arrived. Rita Mele remembers, "During Christmas week the dining
room table always had a large bowl of fresh fruit and a bottle of wine
on it so that visitors could be offered something immediately when they
came to visit." It still does.
David Ruggerio, a
Neapolitan-American chef and restaurant owner, who grew up in Little Italy
in New York City and wrote the celebrated Little Italy Cookbook, agrees
with the Mele’s hospitality. "Every Italian family makes twice what they
can eat because it’s the day everybody goes visiting. Usually, the older
people stay home to receive guests while the younger generations go visiting.
If you’re on the visiting team, you end up going to ten different houses
and eating ten different meals. You better be prepared to eat! If you’re
on the home team, you have to have an all-day feast ready from mid-morning
until night because you never know who’s going to show up at what time."
Valia Dalfonso Ray
whose parents Efaiano and Nazzerena Mappozi D’Alfonso came from Prata Dannfione,
Province of Aquila, in Abruzzi and Monessen, Pennsylvania remembers,
"All my Slavish girlfriends from Friedland’s Dress Shop loved to come to
my house for Christmas Eve. They could not believe the amount of food on
the table, and how good it all tasted."
Antipasti
Whether in Naples or
in Oliver, in Florence or in Aliquippa, in Palermo or in Pittsburgh, the
typical Italian inspired holiday meal begins with an antipasto, an appetizer.
Rose Marie Boniello,
the editor of the charming cookbook Preserving our Italian Heritage published
by the Sons of Italy Florida Foundation (many western Pennsylvania transplants)
serves the traditional deep-fried Sicilian zeppole on Christmas Eve, but
breaks up her gigantic meal into two meals today. Anchovy-filled zeppole
begin a noontime meal that includes a zuppa di baccala (escarole, cauliflower,
pignoli [pine nuts], figs, and raisins). On the buffet in the evening the
zeppole appear again, only this time they become a dessert covered with
honey and filled with raisins and pignoli.
Pasta
Next comes the pasta.
It can be prepared aglio e olio with garlic and oil or mixed into a red
sauce. But it must have fish: most commonly anchovy, sardines, clams, or
squid (calamari), but also snails, perhaps lobster, and maybe an occasional
sea urchin. The Mele family have two types of pasta for their traditional
Christmas Eve: vermicelli in red sauce with calamari, and angel hair pasta
in aglio e olio with the expected anchovies.
The dressing of aglio
e olio is regionally inspired. Created by poor families in the crowded
alleys of Rome, the Christmas Eve version there is simply called spaghetti
alle alici, spaghetti with anchovies. Jana Siciliano, a columnist for the
New York Daily News, calls her family’s Sicilian Christmas Eve pasta olio
and combines the typical aglio e olio with walnuts, anchovies, and black
olives. Rizzi DeFabo of Crabtree, Westmoreland County, still honors his
great grandparents Giuseppi and Rosina Massari DeFloria who came to the
United States from Cerce Maggiore in Molise by serving their traditional
aglio e olio for Christmas: spaghetti with garlic, oil, bread crumbs, walnuts,
and raisins. Leonard and Lillian Carl (Carlona or Carlone) Plaitano enhance
their aglio e olio with stuffed calamari. They came to the glassmaking
center of Jeannette in Westmoreland County from Salerno in the Campania.
In Palermo, one of
the main cities of Sicily, the Christmas Eve dish is pasta con le sarde,
pasta with sardines. This dish is "like a history of Sicily writ small:
part Greek [sardines and fennel], part Saracen [raisins and pine nuts],
part Norman [baked in the oven]." (Anna Del Conte) Sardines in Liguria
are baked in a dish called tortino di sarde with layers of beet leaves,
cooked in olive oil and combined with eggs and Parmesan alternating with
sardines. In Puglia, cozze, mussels, are cultivated, so eating mussels
at Christmas is not a surprise, especially with potatoes, zucchini, and
tomatoes. In Apulia orecchiette is the traditional pasta.
The Parigi and Pelini
tables have pasta too, but not pasta asciutta, pasta that has been drained.
Following their Tuscan heritage, they make zuppa di ceci. This is a chickpea
soup with chickpea beans, rosemary, garlic, celery, carrots, tomatoes,
and parsley cooked and pureed before adding homemade pasta. There are no
onions in this dish because Tuscan tradition never combines onions and
garlic. Nazzareno and Carolina Parigi’s grandchildren call the soup, Christmas
soup, for as delicious as it is and as much as the family enjoys it, it
is only served on Christmas Eve.
Maybe you know someone
who makes a lasagna for Christmas Eve? In the Piedmont, the Christmas Eve
pasta dish is a special lasagne della Vigilia. The noodles are much wider
than the traditional lasagna, as they signify the swaddling clothes of
the baby Jesus. Lasagne della Vigilia is flavored with typical Vigilia
fare: butter, anchovies, garlic, Parmesan, and black pepper. In the Veneto,
another Christmas Eve pasta is lasagne da fornel, deliciously premoistened
with melted butter and covered with crushed walnuts, poppy seeds, raisins,
grated apple, bits of fig, and a sprinkling of sugar. Sounds delicious,
and very Balkan!
How about polenta?
The family of Norma Marcolini Ryan of Brownsville, Fayette County, continues
to keep the Christmas traditions of her mother and father Attilio and Giovanna
Persello Marcolini of Dignano al Tatliamento in the Province of Udine in
Friuli. The Friulani are polentoni, polenta eaters, and the Marcolini Christmas
Eve pasta course is exactly that: polenta topped by baccala cooked with
leeks in tomato sauce.
Eel
Eel is unappetizing
to many people, but it is a Christmas Eve must in the majority of Italian-American
homes. And there is a reason. Anguilla if female and capitone if male,
eel symbolizes happiness in the year to come. Because it loses its skin,
the eel is considered to renew itself, to "leave the world of the profane,
and, in its vulnerability, enter the world of the sacred."
There are as many
ways to prepare eel as there are people who eat it. Some families roast
eel, others combine it in a stew, others fry it, and some, like the ancient
Romans, marinate it. In the Little Italy Cookbook, the Ruggerio Neapolitans
serve their eel in a stew of anchovy, garlic, mushrooms, and peas with
a tablespoon of tomato sauce and good soup stock. The DeFabo family from
Molise fry their eel as part of a large fritto misto, mixed fry, of baccala,
smelts, and cauliflower. Today, they have added calamari and shrimp to
their fry (and for the younger generation, not so hot for fish, they have
added cheese ravioli, fettuccine Alfredo, and spaghetti with butter to
their table).
Although it is a Neapolitan
tradition, no eel was served on the Mele table for Christmas Eve. Why?
Perhaps the Mele’s could not afford eel. The Oliver coal patch was not
Millionaire Row in the early 20th century. Perhaps they could not find
eel. Shopping for the Italian palate was no easy matter in turn of the
century southwestern Pennsylvania. The reason is more personal. Caterina
did not like eel! That may not have been enough to banish it from the Christmas
Eve table entirely, but Giovanni did not like eel either! So, eel was out!
The age old tradition stopped with them. "Don’t like it," is one of the
biggest reasons traditions change.
This leads us to another
way that Italian-American customs changed through the years. Sometimes
regional specialties become holiday fare all year long. The special Arab-inspired
arancini, orange-colored rice balls filled with savory, are served in Sicily
for Santa Lucia’s Day, on December 13, but have become holiday fare all
year long on Sicilian-American tables for Christmas, Easter, birthdays,
and other rites of passage. This makes arancini a true Sicilian-American
holiday tradition.
Sometimes giving up
a tradition is painful. It takes great skill to solve the problem of integrating
the family into different customs. Marcella Fiore of Maryton, Pennsylvania,
who has Abruzzese and Calabrese parents has created her own unique Easter
bread which combines the ingredients of both family recipes.
Smelts, Baccala, and Calamari
One could say smelts
are universal to Christmas Eve. They are universally fried, too! There
are two types of smelts: the tiny, tiny, one, shorter and thinner than
a French fry, floured, fried, and popped into the mouth, or the larger
smelt that is slit, beheaded, gutted, floured, and fried.
But if there is one
dish that epitomizes Christmas Eve, it is baccala, cured cod. Baccala and
stoccafisso, stockfish, are the same fish. Baccala is salted and dried.
Stoccafisso is unsalted and air-cured. Ironically, it is not a fish from
the Italian waters, but found in colder climates and harvested mainly by
Norwegian fishermen.
The Mele’s make a
Neapolitan baccala stew filled with potatoes, celery, onions, garlic, and
chunks of baccala swimming in a tomato broth. David Ruggerio, the author
of Little Italy Cookbook serves a fish stew of squid, cod, halibut, shrimp,
and sea scallops. No baccala at all. His baccala is prepared by his Aunt
Mary in Brooklyn who cooks it a number of ways, including his favorite
with potatoes and green olives. Rizzi DeFabo‘s Molise family have a baccala
stew, too. Their stew includes celery, peppers, garlic, cauliflower, mushrooms,
baccala, tomatoes, basil, and parsley. A family from the Marches may prepare
a rich stew of eight to ten different kinds of fish. They call this stew
brodetto. In Liguria it is called ciuppin.
If your family’s Italian
heritage has gotten lost through the generations, but you make baccala
for Christmas in the form of a fritter that includes cabbage, your family
may have an Italian Riveria connection, for this recipe is typical of Liguria
cooks from La Spezia. Perhaps you boil your baccala or stoccafisso, combine
it with garlic and parsley, and then pound it into a paste until it looks
like mashed potatoes. Or you make it with onion, parsley, garlic, anchovies,
cinnamon, and Parmesan, simmered in milk and slow cooked and served with
polenta. The first dish is baccala mantecato and the second is baccala
alla vicentina or veneziana, both from the Veneto. Pittsburgh’s Lucy Simeoni
remembers that her Friulani father and mother, Luigi and Emilia Meneghini
Simeoni of Dignano al Tatliamento in the Province of Udine in the far north
of Italy, poached baccala with garlic and currants in a bath of milk and
served it with bread or polenta. This is very similar to the Veneto specialty.
In Venice, legend maintains, there are thirty different ways to cook baccala.
Christmas baccala
in Rome means fried in a delicate batter, while in Basilicata, the region
that sits in the arch of the boot, baccala con le patate al forno bakes
baccala in olive oil with potatoes, oregano, garlic, and chili peppers.
In Abruzzi, Christmas baccala is cooked with celery, pine nuts, golden
raisins, black olives, and tomatoes, a dish screaming of Arab influence.
That is how Mary Antonucci Moncini makes her baccala for Christmas Eve.
Mary’s father and mother, Giovanni Battista and Maria Onesta Antonucci
come from Fossa in Abruzzi and a small coal patch near Brownsville in Fayette
County. They once made their own raisins for this meal, but never used
the black olives or the hot peppers.
Around Arezzo baccala
is the centerpiece of the traditional Christmas Eve, too! In the Parigi
and Pelini homes it is prepared three different ways: boiled and combined
with olive oil and chickpeas, or dredged in flour and fried. The former
is a baccala salad, the latter can be simmered in tomato sauce with either
onions, or garlic and sage. It can also be combined with a sweet and sour
sauce as their friend Sophia Poletini made it. There are only two fish
on these tables, the baccala and fried smelts.
Calamari is another
Christmas Eve fish. The Mele’s stuff calamari with a bread, onion, celery,
and walnut stuffing, or they cut it into rings, bread it, roll it in eggs,
cornmeal, and Romano cheese, and then fried it. Another Neapolitan way
of cooking calamari, is to stew it with tomato, currants, pine nuts, and
olives. The Camarda and Balestreiri families make their calamari that way,
but without the olives. They don’t fry the stuffed squid, they bake it.
And more fish
So how about snails?
In Lombard and Venice snails must be eaten on Christmas Eve. The Venetians
enjoy snails with olive oil, garlic, and parsley. Snails also appeared
on the Christmas Eve table of the Plaitano family of Jeannette. Joan Daigle,
their granddaughter, remembers eating snails along with fried smelts and
fried baccala. The family also enjoyed crab claws in tomato sauce and each
Christmas recalls the time that one of the uncles broke the legs with such
gusto that when he was done eating spaghetti sauce dotted the ceiling.
But the variety of
fish prepared on Christmas Eve may never be as abundant as it was in the
Camarda home. Fishermen in Sicily and hucksters of fruits and vegetables
in Pittsburgh’s Strip, they cooked up a Christmas Eve meal of every fish
they could find. They saved their pasta con le sardi for Saint Joseph’s
Day and on Christmas Eve they made the fish into salads, into stews, baked
them, fried them, and boiled them. They enjoyed crab, cuttlefish, steamed
or boiled octopus or sea urchins, and fried or stuffed calamari. Guiseppe’s
grandson, Tom Camarda, tells us that if they wanted sea urchins they had
to buy fifty pounds at a time. That’s a lot of sea urchin.
Caponata and other Vegetables
Carol Field in her
remarkable book Celebrating Italy exclaims caponata di pesce, fish salad,
should be eaten daily from Christmas to Epiphany in Campania homes. It
is called a rinforzo, for it is reinforced each day with fresh ingredients
as its quantity diminishes. The Mele’s of Oliver agree. Their caponata
di pesce is filled with smoked oysters, smoked mussels, smoked clams, shrimp,
black and green olives, artichoke hearts, baby ears of corn, hot pepper
flakes, and garlic. Rita Mele believes that the oysters, mussels, and clams
were probably fresh at one time, but affordability or availability turned
the fresh fish to smoked fish.
The traditional Sicilian
caponata, also a must at Christmas, is really a pickled vegetable dish
with a variety of ingredients. The most traditional includes eggplant,
onions, tomatoes, celery, anchovies, pine nuts, olives, capers, sugar,
vinegar, and oil, but zucchini, cauliflower, and any other vegetable can
be added.
The winter vegetables
of radicchio, cauliflower, broccoli, and Savoy cabbage complete the Christmas
Eve meal. The Mele Christmas Eve feast was rounded off with Fennel in aglio
e olio, fried cauliflower, lupini beans, and fresh and dried fruit. In
the home of Francesco and Louise Mash (Mascio) Del Bene of Jeannette, Christmas
was not Christmas for their family of 12 unless they fried an Abruzzi-style
Savoy cabbage with anchovies, garlic, and potatoes.
Fennel, cooked or
raw, is a universal Christmas Eve vegetable. The long celery-looking plant
with the bulbous bottom that tastes like licorice once ended the meal all
over Italy, but this tradition has practically disappeared. Not in America.
Sometimes it is merely placed in a dish along with celery and olives. But
more often fennel is part of a special dish. In Apulia, a region abutting
the Campania on the east, it is combined not only with garlic, but also
with anchovies. In Sicily, it is cooked with pasta and octopus in an aglio
e olio, or mixed in a salad with oranges (which bring good luck if eaten
at Christmas), chicory, and black olives. And in the North, it is part
of a fresh vegetable platter that is accompanied by a dip called Pinzimonio,
a bath like the similar 16th century dip from the Piedmont called Bagna
Calda (Hot Bath). Pinzimonio is a mixture of oil, salt, and pepper which
is placed in a small salt cellar to the right of the plate at each place
setting. The Parigi and Pelini families will tell you no anchovies are
in Pinzimonio. The Romans, where some scholars maintain this dish originated,
add lemon juice. The Meles add vinegar.
So if you are not
Italian and are invited to an Italian-American home for Christmas Eve and
expect to eat a mythical number of dishes, you may be disappointed. If
you expect pasta, you may get soup. If you are anxious to taste eel, it
may not be there. You may have a sit down dinner, but you could also have
a buffet. What you can expect is an appetizer, a pasta or two, a fish dish
or two (or seven or thirteen), lots of vegetables, and good bread. And
unless you know something about Italian-American food and the family you
are visiting, the question will not only be what is prepared, but how it
is prepared. There is no more telling clue to your hosts heritage.
Christmas Eve Recipes
Sicilian Arancini
Arancini are Sicilian.
There are as many ways of making them as there are hill towns and harbors
in Sicily. They were brought to Italy by the Arabs who still make their
ancestor, khobeiba. Khobeiba has a filling of meat, onions, pine nuts,
and raisins, while its outer shell is made of cracked wheat. As you can
see, the Sicilians substitute peas for the pine nuts and rice for the cracked
wheat. Sicilians served arancini on December 13, in honor of Santa Lucia.
In America, Sicilian
families served them throughout the year, especially on holidays and other
special celebrations. Christmas is a favorite, so is Easter when some families
use them to break their long Lenten fast. That makes arancini an authentic
Sicilian-American tradition.
Stuffing:
2 T olive oil
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1/2 pound lean ground beef
1 pound mushrooms, diced
1 cup crushed tomatoes
1 teaspoon allspice
1/4 cup white wine
1 cup cooked peas (1/2 cup
pine nuts and 1/2 cup raisins)
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
Place
a medium-sized skillet over medium heat. Heat to hot. Add olive oil. Allow
to warm. Add chopped garlic and onion. Brown, add meat, salt, and pepper.
Break up meat and continue to brown. Add chopped mushrooms. Mix well.
Add tomatoes, allspice,
and wine. Lower heat and simmer for 25 minutes. Add peas or pine nuts.
Mix well. Raise heat and allow to dry. Remove from stove. Add grated cheese
and mix well.
Preparation:
5 cups water
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups rice
pinch of saffron
1/4 cup water
3 eggs
3/4 cup Parmesan cheese
1/4 pound butter
Dash of salt
Dash of white pepper
1 cup flour
2 eggs, beaten
Pinch of salt
2 cups bread crumbs
Oil for frying
Bring
water to a boil. Add salt. Add rice, stir well, cover, bring to a boil,
lower heat and simmer for 15 minutes, or until al dente. Soft rice is not
good for this recipe.
While rice is boiling,
combine saffron and boiling water and allow to brew for 20 minutes. Strain
the saffron tea. Drain rice very, very well. Add saffron tea and mix well.
The saffron will tint the rice orangish. Add eggs, cheese, butter, salt,
and pepper. Mix well and set aside to cool for at least an hour.
Rice should be golden
orange and firm. If too moist it will be difficult to handle. Place 2-3
tablespoons of cold rice mixture in the palm of your hand. Press firmly,
to make a dent. Fill the dent with slightly less than a tablespoon of the
meat mixture. Cover the filling with an additional rice mixture. Press
firmly together so no filling is showing. Form into a ball to resemble
small oranges and refrigerate an hour to firm.
Roll the ball in flour.
Then dip in beaten egg to which salt has been added. Roll in bread crumbs.
Place a 4-6 quart
pot over medium heat. Add enough oil to cover the arancini. Heat. Drop
arancini into the hot oil. Do not allow to touch. Fry golden brown,
remove, drain on a paper towel. Serve hot.
Yield: 2-3 dozen
Mele’s Neapolitan Caponata
de Pesce
1/2 pound each: Italian black,
green and mixed deli olives
1 undrained can each smoked
mussels, baby shrimp, smoked clams, smoked oysters
1 small jar drained and
cut artichoke hearts
I drained small can baby
ears of corn
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon hot pepper flakes
Olive oil
Gently mix all ingredients
except the shrimp together. Add garlic and pepper flakes. Mix again. Drizzle
olive oil over mixture. Add shrimp and mix gently. Allow to marinate one
day before serving.
Serves 8
Mele’s Neapolitan Aglio
e Olio with Anchovies
1 pound angel hair pasta
1 medium onion
3-4 teaspoons diced garlic
1-2 T olive oil
2 cans anchovies
3/4 cup olive oil
2 cups hot water
Romano cheese
Peel and dice onion.
Sauté onion and garlic in a little olive oil until onions are translucent.
Add anchovies, including their oil. Sauté for 3-4 minutes, mashing
the anchovies into a paste. Add remaining olive oil and 2 cups of hot water.
Bring to a boil and simmer for five minutes.
Cook pasta as per package
directions to the al dente stage. Drain. Mix pasta with one cup of anchovy
sauce to moisten. Serve in individual bowls with a ladle of anchovy sauce
over each portion. Sprinkle with Romano cheese.
Jana Siciliano’s Olio
(as published in the New
York Daily)
1/2 cup extra virgin olive
oil
4 garlic cloves, sliced
1-1/2 pounds of linguine
10-12 anchovy fillets
1 cup shelled walnuts
1 cup diced black olives
Freshly grated parmesan
cheese
Place oil in skillet. Add
garlic and anchovy fillets. Sauté over low or medium heat until
anchovies dissolve. Add walnuts and olives. Sauté for 20 minutes.
Do not scorch. Boil the pasta to taste in salted water. Drain. Combine
with sauce. Serve with grated cheese.
Serves 8-10
Parigi’s Tuscan Chickpea
Soup with Egg Noodles
48 oz. canned chickpeas*
1-1/2 cups broth (or water)
1/4 cup fresh rosemary
2 large cloves garlic
2 T fresh parsley
1/2 cup celery ribs and
leaves
1 small carrot
Salt and pepper, to taste
1/4 cup corn oil
1/4 cup whole or crushed
fresh or canned tomatoes
2-1/2 cups wide pasta (optional)
Parmesan cheese or lemon
wedge
Place a 4-quart pot
over medium-high heat. Add chickpeas (including liquid), reserving 1 cup,
and 1-1/2 cups broth or water. Bring to a boil. Add rosemary, cover, lower
heat, and allow to simmer slowly for 30 minutes. While simmering chop garlic,
parsley, celery, and carrot in a meat grinder or food processor (the grinder
is better because it releases the juices). There are no onions in this
soup.
Place a medium-size
iron skillet over medium-high heat. Heat to hot. Add oil. Add garlic mixture,
salt, and pepper to oil. Sauté 20 minutes. The longer you cook this
mixture the better the soup will taste. Simmer until vegetables are dark
and begin to stick to the skillet (about 20 minutes). Add tomatoes, mash
them into small pieces. Simmer slowly an additional 10 minutes.
Add vegetable mixture
to simmering chickpeas. Continue to simmer for an additional 30 minutes.
Remove from stove and puree in blender at high speed. Return to pot and
simmer slowly for about 1 to 1-1/2 hours.
About 15 minutes before
serving add the remaining whole chickpeas. Some people prefer to eat ceci
soup without pasta. If so, serve and garnish with Parmesan cheese or wedge
of lemon.
To combine with pasta
add 1 cup wide pasta per quart of soup, cook 15 minutes or to taste, and
serve with freshly grated Parmesan cheese or wedge of lemon, not both.
Yield: 2 to 2-1/2
quarts.
Notes: This is a thick
soup and gets thicker as it sits. To thin, add additional broth. Can be
stored in refrigerator for up to a week, in freezer for a couple of months.
Do not add pasta to broth to be stored.
Mele’s Breaded Calamari
Rings
1 pound of calamari
4-6 beaten eggs
2 teaspoons parsley flakes
1/2 cup grated Romano cheese
Salt and pepper to taste
Flour
Corn meal
Cracker meal
Vegetable oil
Clean calamari. Pull
off any skin that has been left. Remove the translucent plastic-like bone.
Remove the ink sack. Discard everything you have removed. Cut off tentacles.
Reserve body and tentacles for use. Rinse in cold running water until clean
and drain well.
Cut calamari into
1/2 inch wide rings. Drain well. Beat eggs in a small bowl until
foamy. Add parsley cheese, pepper, and salt.
Place flour in a small
bowl. In a third bowl mix equal parts of cracker meal and corn meal.
Dredge each ring in
flour, dip in egg, coat with cracker/corn meal. Deep fry in vegetable oil
until golden brown and drain on paper towels. Serve warm either as an appetizer
or as part of the meal.
Rizzi De Fabo’s Molise-style
Baccala Stew
Rizzi is the owner of a restaurant
in Crabtree, Pennsylvania. He is committed to his family’s traditions.
Each year on Saint Joseph’s Day his restaurant provides a Saint Joseph’s
Day menu.
1 cup olive oil
1/2 stick butter or margarine
2 cups chopped celery with
leaves
2 medium sweet bell peppers,
diced
2 heaping tablespoons finely
chopped garlic
1-1/2 heads cauliflower,
blanched and cooled
4 cups sliced thick fresh
mushrooms
3 pounds baccala soaked
for two days to remove salt
3, 28 oz. cans stewed tomatoes
3, 28 oz. cans tomato sauce
2, 28 oz. cans tomato puree
Dried basil
Dried parsley
Add oil and butter
to a large stock pot. Combine the celery, peppers, and garlic. Sauté.
Place baccala into boiling water, bring back to boil, drain immediately.
Add to stock pot.
Once baccala has been
added to stock pot, add stewed tomatoes, tomato sauce and tomato puree.
Simmer for an hour.
Break the cooled cauliflower
into pieces. Place the mushrooms in a little olive oil, add pepper and
cook until soft. Add cauliflower, mushrooms, basil, and parsley to simmering
stew. Cook an additional 15 minutes. If too thick, add water.
Baccala Potenza-style
2 lbs. baccala, soaked for
3 days in frequently changed water
2 onions
1 8 oz. can peeled Italian
tomatoes
1 can pitted black olives
3 oz capers
Bunch parsley
Extra virgin olive oil
Peel the skin from the fish,
remove the bones and cut the flesh into small pieces. Cut the onions into
thin slices and sauté them in oil over medium heat. Add the tomatoes,
cook for a few minutes and add the baccala. Add olives and capers. When
the baccala is almost cooked, sprinkle with chopped parsley.
Vicenza-style Stockfish
This is baccala alla vicentina
or veneziana, the traditional Christmas Eve dish in the Veneto. This recipe
has been approved by the "Venerable Confraternity for the Stockfish of
Vicenza." In Italy where food and wine have become important to the economy
of the country, guilds exist that authenticate recipes like Parmesan cheese,
Chianti wine, Parma prosciutto, and various recipes for salami and mortadella.
This Confraternity authenticates the stockfish recipe from Vicenza.
2 pounds stockfish (can use
baccala)
1 pound onions
4 cups olive oil
4 whole anchovies or 14-16
fillets
2 cups fresh milk
Flour
Grated cheese, grana cheese
preferred
Soak stockfish or baccala
for 2-3 days in cold water. Change the water each day to drain the salt.
Once the fish is soft to the touch, cut it in squares.
Peel the onions and
chop them into slivers. Rinse the anchovies. Place oil in a skillet, add
parsley, onions, and anchovies. Fry slowly.
Sprinkle the stockfish
with a little flour. Place stockfish in a large casserole. Pour the anchovy
and onion mixture over them. Add the milk and cheese, a little salt and
some pepper. Add enough oil to finish covering the fish.
Cook in the oven at
250 degrees for 4-5 hours. Do not stir, but shake the casserole every so
often so the fish does not stick to the bottom.
Serve hot. Traditionally
it is served over polenta.
Parigi’s Tuscan Cod in
Sauce with Onions
1 salted and soaked whole
cod fish
1/2 cup flour
1 tsp. pepper
1 cup corn oil
5-6 medium onions*
2 cups whole or crushed
canned tomatoes
1 cup broth or water
Soak and prepare cod
fish. Wash, drain, and pat dry. Mix flour with pepper and place on a board
(do not add salt).
Place a large-size
iron skillet on medium-high heat. Heat to hot and add oil. Press fish into
flour. Turn and press again. Coat well. When oil is hot, place fish in
skillet. Cook until a golden brown, turning once to brown both sides. Remove
from skillet and place on paper towel to drain.
If oil is dirty from
flour, discard, wipe the skillet, reheat, and add new oil.
Peel, wash, and slice
onions. Add to oil and sauté for 10 minutes, or until transparent.
Add tomatoes and
crush with a fork. Simmer 10 minutes. Rinse tomato can with 1/2 cup broth
or water and add to mixture. Do not add salt. Mix well.
Lower heat and simmer
uncovered for 15 to 20 minutes or until sauce begins to lose bright red
color. Add fish. Cover and simmer slowly for 30 minutes or until sauce
is a brown-red and oil begins to separate and float on surface (skim if
desired). Do not stir or turn. If sauce begins to dry, add remaining broth.
Serves: 6-8, depending
on size of fish.
Note: The amount of
onions is a matter of taste: 1 to 2 onions add flavor, 3 to 5 make the
onions, like potatoes, a component of the stew. We like lots of onions.
Pelini’s Tuscan Cod in
Sauce with Sage and Garlic
There is little difference
in the preparation of cod with onions or cod with sage. The flavor, of
course, is different. The choice is not an easy one and we always had to
have a family council to decide which to prepare, keeping in mind that
we would not taste the losing recipe for another year.
1 salted and soaked whole
cod fish
1/2 cup flour
2 tsp. pepper
1 cup corn oil
3-4 cloves garlic
6-7 sprigs sage
2 cups whole or crushed
canned tomatoes
1 cup broth or water
Soak and prepare cod
fish. Wash, drain and pat dry. Mix flour with pepper and place on a board.
Do not add salt.
Place a large-size
iron skillet on medium-high heat. Heat to hot and add oil. Press fish into
flour. Turn and press again. Coat well. When oil is hot, add fish. Brown
to a golden brown. Turn once and brown second side. Remove from skillet
and place on a paper towel to drain.
If oil is dirty from
flour, discard, wipe the skillet, reheat, and add new oil. Peel and cut
garlic into medium-size pieces. Wash sage and cut into pieces. Do not use
a lot of stems.
Add garlic to hot
oil. When garlic is brown crush with fork until mashed. Add sage and simmer
a few minutes. Add tomatoes and crush with a fork. Simmer 10 minutes. Rinse
tomato can with 1/2 cup broth or water and add to mixture. Mix well.
Lower heat and simmer uncovered for 15 minutes.
Remove from heat and
run sauce through a sieve removing pulp and sage. Return sauce to skillet,
return heat to medium-high, simmer for 5 minutes, reduce heat and simmer
uncovered for 15 minutes or until sauce begins to lose bright red color.
Add fish. Cover and simmer slowly for 30 minutes or until sauce is a brown-red
and oil begins to separate and float on surface (skim if desired). Do not
stir or turn. If sauce begins to dry, add remaining broth.
Serves: 6-8, depending on
size of fish.
Lena Poletini’s Tuscan
Cod with Sweet and Sour Sauce
Sweet and sour sauce:
1/4 cup olive oil
1 cup thinly sliced medium
yellow onions
2-1/2 cups whole or crushed
canned tomatoes
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
2 T red wine vinegar
2 T sugar
2 T fresh mint; or 2 tsp.
dried
1 salted and soaked whole
cod fish
1/2 cup flour
1/4 tsp. pepper
1/2 cup corn oil
For sauce: Place a medium-size
iron skillet over medium-high heat. Heat to hot and add oil. Heat to hot.
Peel, clean and slice onions. Add to oil and reduce heat. Sauté
until soft and transparent (about 10 minutes) stirring regularly. Do not
brown.
Add tomatoes, salt,
pepper. Cook uncovered, stirring frequently until slightly thick, about
15 minutes, or until tomatoes begin to lose bright red color. Add vinegar,
sugar, and mint (you can cut mint into small pieces if desired). Mix well
and set aside.
Soak and prepare cod
fish. Wash, drain, and pat dry. Mix flour with pepper (do not add salt)
and place on a board.
Place a large-size
iron skillet on medium-high heat. Heat to hot and add oil. Press fish into
flour. Turn and press again. Coat well. Fry until a golden brown, turning
once to brown both sides. Remove from skillet and place on paper towel
to drain.
Place baccalà
in agro dolce sauce. Bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and allow to
simmer slowly for 20 to 30 minutes, or until the sauce is deep brown-red
in color. Oil will float on surface when done (skim, if desired). Do not
stir while simmering or baccalà will fall apart.
Serves: 6-8,
depending on size of fish.
Notes: If sauce is too sour
add a little more sugar, if too sweet, add more vinegar. If sauce becomes
too thick, add a little broth and continue to simmer.
Del Bene’s Abruzzi-style
Savoy Cabbage with Potatoes
1 Savoy cabbage, steamed
and cooled
Olive oil
3 cloves of garlic, diced
1 can anchovies
5 potatoes, peeled and diced
Place olive oil in
a skillet. When hot add diced garlic. Allow to brown. Reduce heat and add
anchovies. Allow to cook until anchovies break apart with a fork.
Chop cooled cabbage
and add to skillet. Mix well and add potatoes. Allow to simmer until potatoes
are cooked, about 15-20 minutes. Stir often so as not to stick. Add additional
oil only if absolutely necessary.
Serves 6-8 as a side dish
The article is copyrighted
material and
cannot be produced without
the express
permission of the author.
To get copies, with photographs,
see below.
The recipes are yours with
the
best wishes of all the people
who contributed them.
See below to add a recipe
or two or seven or thirteen.
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"Campania." Windows on Italy:
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Dolliver, Mark. The Global Kitchen.
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Pastry Lovers are Sweet on Alba’s Bakery. New York Daily News March 6,
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Hoobler, Dorothy and Thomas.
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Lepschy and Miriam Voghera. Linguistic Variety in Italy, in Levy, C. Italian
Regionalism: History,
Identity and Politics. Oxford:
Berg, 1996. 69-80.
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A version of this article
and some of recipes appeared in Western Pennsylvania History, the official
magazine of the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania in December
1999. Part II: Christmas Day is in the December 2000 edition. To obtain
copies write to The John Heinz History Center Gift Shop, 1212 Smallman
Street, Pittsburgh PA 15222, or query them on the web.
Add your family's Traditional
Recipes
If you would like to add
your Christmas Eve feast to this page, let us hear from you. In order for
your information to be included it must have (as much as possible) the
region of Italy which the dish represents, the region of the United States
where it was/is being prepared and served, the name of the immigrant who
brought the recipe to America, the approximate date of their arrival, your
name and relationship to the immigrant, and the recipe. Add any family
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