The name of this Italian soup, Stracciatella, comes from the Italian verb meaning “to shred,” a reference to the strands of egg in the soup.
I learned to make this from Auntie Helen d’Aquili when I was in college.
Auntie Helen and I in 1976. Can you believe my hair!!!
It’s really simple to make but, like so many Italian dishes, it relies on few ingredients that must be of high quality. In this case the broth is absolutely paramount as is high-quality Italian imported Parmigiano Reggiano cheese.
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I have a few friends in Santa Fe who raise chickens and I am occasionally gifted with freshly laid eggs but good supermarket eggs are usually what I use.
I’ll let you in on a little domestic struggle, however. I want to raise chickens. My husband doesn’t. So far, he’s winning the struggle but I haven’t given up. His excuses are pretty lame as far as I’m concerned. The most common one is that chickens will attract coyote.
HELLO! We live in the forest. We are surrounded by coyote and other wildlife. Just an hour ago, while sitting at my desk getting ready to write this blog, a big deer walked through the paved area in front of our house gnawing down our landscaping like it was a salad bar.
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Most summer nights we hear the coyote yipping as go hunting. They are mere yards from our house. I don’t think a few chickens will bring them any closer than the already abundant rabbits currently do. We just need to build a coyote-proof chicken enclosure. There’s a great how-to right here (Frank! Frank, are you listening?).
Frank seems pretty happy in this selfie we took on Kauai. Chickens roam everywhere on Kauai. I think that is part of Frank’s happiness though he has yet to admit it.
Homemade broth is essential. Chicken or beef broth are both standard choices, though Auntie Helen used beef. You can make an excellent beef broth as part of the process of making Marisa’s Mystical Meatballs. In fact, this soup would make an excellent first course followed by the meatballs and accompanied by a vegetable or two and some rice.
If you have a favorite family recipe and a bit of a story to tell, please email me at santafecook@villasentieri.com and we can discuss including it in the blog. I am expanding the scope of my blog to include traditional recipes from around the country and around the world. If you haven’t seen Bertha’s Flan or Melinda’s Drunken Prunes, take a look. They will give you an idea of what I’m looking for.
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Stracciatella (Italian Egg Drop Soup)
This classic Italian soup requires top-notch broth and Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. Homemade broth is essential. See the Notes section, below, for a link to my blog post that contains instructions on making a wonderfully flavorful beef broth.
As a freshman in college who made tentative forays into non-Western European cuisines, I was transformed into a person who couldn’t find a cuisine he wouldn’t try, and didn’t like, by the end of sophomore year.
Junior year was really an intensive study in cooking. It’s the year I became a respectable Sri Lankan, Indian, Chinese, and West Indian cook. There were many other cuisines that I dabbled in but those four formed the basis of what I cooked during the year. By then I considered myself a good Italian cook but my repertory and skill level have expanded significantly since then.
Starting junior year, and for many years thereafter, Reggie and Nanacy Rajapakse taught me much of what I know of Sri Lankan food. Several cookbooks by Charmaine Solomon, as well as the [Ceylon] Daily News Cookery Book, provided much additional guidance. Several trips to Sri Lanka with Nanacy, many years later, confirmed to me that I had captured the taste of Sri Lankan food.
In 2005, I accompanied Nanacy Rajapakse to her nephew’s wedding. The groom (with flower on his lapel) and his family approach the wedding venue.
I understand that Sri Lankan food may be a stretch for some of my readers but I really want to introduce you to it. As a starting point, I’ve selected a vegetable dish that pairs really well with a wide range of cuisines, Zucchini and Peppers with Fennel Seed and Cinnamon.
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I actually made this a few weeks ago at an otherwise all-Italian meal. It paired really well. The dinner guests, all of whom were Italian, didn’t think for a moment that it wasn’t Italian!
The wedding ceremony
It’s an example of a style of cooking vegetables in Sri Lanka called tempering. The vegetables are cut into relatively small pieces. Aromatics (onion, garlic, ginger, etc.), depending on the dish, are first sautéed. The vegetables and seasonings are added and everything is cooked relatively quickly, 10 minutes or so depending on the vegetable.
Most Sri Lankans are ethnically Sinhalese. The next largest group are Tamils, followed by individuals of Arab descent (called Moors locally). Typically, Sinhalese are Buddhist, Tamils are Hindu, and Moors are Muslim. There is a smattering of others ethnic groups and religions.
A reception for the newlyweds, several days after the wedding. Nanacy is on the right and her sister Thilaka is on the left
Hindus and Buddhists in South Asia, are nominally vegetarian. Muslims typically don’t eat pork. This recipe, which is ethnically Sinhalese, includes bacon which 92% of the Island’s population theoretically would typically refrain from eating. But they don’t!
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In fact, I found no shortage of meat (and meat-eaters) on my trips to Sri Lanka. Even the most ubiquitous of condiments, pol sambola, contains flakes of dried fish which would typically be avoided by both Buddhists and Hindus. Clearly there is some sort of “accommodation” that the Sri Lankans have made around the idea of being vegetarian because the local cuisine contains a lot of (very wonderful) meat and fish dishes.
On the other hand, it’s also an easy place to be vegetarian. One of my trips to Sri Lanka coincided with one of my periods of vegetarianism (which I ultimately gave up for cultural and health reasons). There was an array of vegetarian options available at every meal.
A view of the Indian Ocean not far from Thilaka’s house south of Colombo
The most difficult time came when neighbors of Nanacy’s sister Thilaka, with whom we were staying, invited me over for a lunch of “curry and rice” which, although it sounds innocent enough, means you’re in for a delightful meal and lots and lots of food. On the other hand “short eats” refers to snack food.
The neighbors had gone all out! There was a huge array of dishes, each more wonderful than the last. It truly was the best food I ate in Sri Lanka. I tried to just eat the vegetarian options but it was clear that my hosts were distraught, though they would never have said anything to me.
Thilaka tempering vegetables for dinner
I decided that the appropriate response to their generosity was to eat everything. My hosts quickly became delighted (as did my taste buds)! Only years later did I come to understand that in Sri Lanka (and many Theravada Buddhist countries of South East Asia) Buddhist monks are obliged to accept all food offered to them, even meat, unless they suspect the animal was slaughtered specifically for them.
Since I was most certainly not a monk, I’m sure they couldn’t understand why I was only eating the vegetarian dishes rather than everything that was offered to me. In the end, it was a happy accommodation for everyone involved.
If you have a favorite family recipe and a bit of a story to tell, please email me at santafecook@villasentieri.com and we can discuss including it in the blog. I am expanding the scope of my blog to include traditional recipes from around the country and around the world. If you haven’t seen Bertha’s Flan or Melinda’s Drunken Prunes, take a look. They will give you an idea of what I’m looking for.
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Sri Lankan Zucchini and Peppers
I learned to make this from Nanacy Rajapakse who is from Sri Lanka. Nanacy made it with bacon, and, while very good with bacon, it is also wonderful without. As a variation, cabbage, cut into ½ inch wide strips, can be substituted for the zucchini. Feel free to adjust the quantity of spices to your taste. Curry leaves can be difficult to obtain outside of large metropolitan areas with large South Asian or Southeast Asian populations. There is no substitute. If not available, just omit the curry leaves as I often do.
As you may have figured out by now, we live in a multi-generational household.
My husband’s parents live in our casita in Santa Fe. Before we moved to Santa Fe, they lived in our coach house in Chicago.
Meals are usually communal affairs and, after many years, I’m learning to make some of my mother-in-law’s dishes that I’ve taken for granted for more than 20 years.
Though these beans could easily be the centerpiece of a vegetarian meal if you leave out the bacon, they usually accompany something more pleasing to carnivores (that would be my husband and my father-in-law). For this rendition, I went back to the original recipe, with bacon, though usually my mother-in-law leaves it out and simply adds a few tablespoons of olive oil to sauté the onion and bell pepper.
My husband at two years of age with his parents
As I was learning to make these with my mother-in-law, I also learned that the recipe originally came from Lorraine, the wife of my brother-in-law’s godfather, Jack. Lorraine is of Polish heritage but was married to Jack, a close friend of my father-in-law who moved to the USA from Italy.
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I’m totally confused by the heritage of these beans. My mother-in-law says they’re Polish based on Lorraine. I always thought of them as Italian because, until recently, I thought the recipe was from my mother-in-law’s family and, also, because the red sauce with bacon is pretty similar to an Italian-American adaptation of a classic Italian method for cooking green beans. The bacon is a substitute for pancetta which is the same cut of meat as bacon but which is not smoked after it is cured.
I guess I’m going to have to go with my mother-in-law’s assertion that these are Polish though I can’t say I ever had anything like them among the Poles and other Eastern Europeans in my hometown of Johnstown, PA. Really, though, that’s not definitive. I’ve never had any potato cakes like my Slovak grandmother’s (unless they were made by one of her daughters-in-law, of which there were seven!). That doesn’t make those potato cakes any less Slovak, though.
Red beans and tomatoes are a common combination internationally. There are versions from New Orleans to Haiti to India to South America to Italy to name just a few. To be sure, the seasonings vary tremendously but the basics, red beans and a tomato-based sauce, remain the same.
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Fast forward to the 1970’s: my husband (on the right) and his brother (on the left) with their parents
I’ve decided to keep this recipe in its original form, with canned beans and tomato sauce. Although I keep an array of canned beans in my pantry for unexpected events I usually prefer to start with dry beans. Most commercial brands of tomato sauce are made from tomato paste and water, with a bit of onion powder and garlic powder added. In place of tomato sauce, I typically use tomato paste and water to achieve the same results.
If you have a favorite family recipe and a bit of a story to tell, please email me at santafecook@villasentieri.com and we can discuss including it in the blog. I am expanding the scope of my blog to include traditional recipes from around the country and around the world. If you haven’t seen Bertha’s Flan or Melinda’s Drunken Prunes, take a look. They will give you an idea of what I’m looking for.
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Kidney Beans in Tomato Sauce
These beans can be made without the bacon, or with less bacon, in which case a few tablespoons of oil will need to be used to sauté the onion and bell pepper. If you want extra sauce just increase the amount of tomato sauce. You can sauté a clove or two of minced garlic with the onion and bell pepper if you would like. The liquid from the canned beans will improve the consistency of the sauce. Before using it, however, taste it to be sure that it does not have a metallic flavor which happens with some brands of beans. If so, drain and rinse the beans and add additional water in place of the liquid in the cans.
Sauté the bacon until it begins to color, adding a small amount of oil if needed to keep it from sticking.
Add the onion and bell pepper to the bacon.
Sauté until the onion just begins to color and the pepper becomes a dull green and starts to soften. It may be necessary to cover the pan and/or add a tiny amount of water if the onion and/or pepper begin to get too brown.
Add the beans and their liquid.
Season with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil.
Add tomato sauce and water.
Simmer, partially covered, for approximately one hour, adding additional water if necessary.
Taste and adjust seasoning while the beans are cooking.
Growing up, Sunday dinner almost always included some sort of pasta with my mother’s long-simmered Southern Italian sugo.
The sauce was made with large pieces of pork which were always served on the side. In addition, there might be meatballs, simmered in the sauce after being fried to a deep brown. Sometimes, actually, much more often than sometimes, there would be veal cutlets. This was back in the day when people didn’t really think about how veal was produced…or maybe it was produced more humanely back then. I’m not sure.
Sometimes a pork roast would accompany the pasta. Occasionally, though not often, the pork roast would be accompanied by potatoes and there wouldn’t be pasta on the table.
A Sunday without pasta, though, was quite unusual in my parents’ house.
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The pasta could have been homemade linguine or fettuccine, which my mother and her sister, my Aunt Margie, made on a regular basis and then dried and stored in large rectangular aluminum tins that once held baccala (salted cod).
Those tins had a myriad of uses, from protecting pasta and cookies to storing recipes and papers. Even though they were made of an inert metal, they had to be thoroughly scrubbed and allowed to air out, uncovered, for weeks to rid them of the smell of baccala.
My mother learned her style of Southern Italian cooking from her mother, Angelina (far left). No doubt she learned it from her mother (center).
Sometimes the Sunday pasta was homemade ravioli, never was it gnocchi as my father didn’t like gnocchi. Those were reserved for dinners when my father was out of town.
Usually, though, the pasta was dried pasta from a box: spaghetti, rigatoni, wagon wheels, fettuccine, and so forth. Dried pasta is really a different sort of pasta with some different uses than fresh pasta (even if the fresh pasta is dried before use as mom and Aunt Margie often did).
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I know many of you have heard me say this, but roasts in our house were much more similar in texture to pulled pork than the typical French-American style of “just-how-little-can-we-cook-this-hunk-of-meat-and-say-it’s-done” type of roast.
A huge advantage of this style of cooking is that you can know in advance when it will be done because it’s really the clock that counts, not the thermometer. I don’t like making an American style roast for a dinner party. It makes me crazy.
I don’t get to enjoy cocktails and I don’t get to enjoy the first course because I’m focused on when the thermometer might say the roast is done. While the temperature to be achieved is precise, the time is not.
On the other hand, the Italian style of roasting eliminates all of these problems because the meat is not “just barely cooked enough.” The collagen begins to liquefy and the roast becomes unctuous.
If you haven’t experienced this style of roast, give it a try. If you like it, look up my recipe for Italian Slow-Roasted Chicken or Turkey for the poultry equivalent.
If you have a favorite family recipe and a bit of a story to tell, please email me at santafecook@villasentieri.com and we can discuss including it in the blog. I am expanding the scope of my blog to include traditional recipes from around the country and around the world. If you haven’t seen Bertha’s Flan or Melinda’s Drunken Prunes, take a look. They will give you an idea of what I’m looking for.
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Mom's Slow-Roasted Pork
I have an assortment of blue spatterware roasting pans which are perfect for this type of roast. I also have an array of heavy stainless steel, aluminum, and enameled cast-iron roasters. The more important issue is using a roasting pan of the right size to hold the roast without crowding (it shouldn’t touch the sides or top of the roaster) or without too much empty space. The initial cooking at higher temperature not only browns the roast, it helps it to reach the optimum temperature for collagen to break down to produce that pull-apart texture. You can easily increase the size of the roast. With a 4 to 5 pound roast, you would probably need to add another 45 minutes to 1 ½ hours to the roasting time.
Plunge a paring knife into the pork at intervals to make small pockets about 1 inch deep. Space the pockets out around the roast.
Put a piece of garlic and some of the fresh rosemary into each pocket.
Some of the rosemary will invariably stick to the fat cap. Don’t sweat it, just try to get most of it in the slits.
Put the roast into a roasting pan that is just large enough to hold it.
Generously season the roast with salt and pepper.
Pour the wine (or water) into the bottom of the roasting pan.
Roast, uncovered, at 375°F until the roast is browned a little, 45-60 minutes.
Baste with pan juices.
Cover and continue to roast at 275-300°F for about another three hours, basting with the pan juices every 30-45 minutes or so.
The pan juices will dry up. Be careful not to burn the bits on the bottom of the pan, but allow them to brown before adding another ¼ cup of water or so. After two or three cycles of this, the pan juices will be a luscious dark brown.
Remove the roast from the pan. Allow to cool for 10 minutes.
To serve, pull the roast into large pieces. Don’t even try to slice it. It’s not supposed to slice.
Pour a little of the pan juices on top. Pass the rest.
These meatballs are really mystical if you consider the sway they hold on my husband, his brother, and his father. They go wild for these meatballs.
Well, wild in that very restrained Northern Italian way.
If they were Southern Italian, where a dinner conversation can seem like a minor riot, their meatball response would barely register on the scale. It would signal almost utter disregard for the meatballs.
But that, in fact, is not the case. The meatballs hold some sort of magical, mystical charm.
Marisa, of course, is my mother-in-law and these are her meatballs. She considers them quite unusual, having learned to make them from her mother and basically not remembering any other relatives or friends making something similar.
And, as meatballs, they ARE unusual!
An old-fashioned ricer is still an indispensable piece of kitchen equipment. Make sure yours is very sturdy. Many new ones are not.
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But here’s a secret that I haven’t told anyone yet. They really AREN’T meatballs. They’re croquettes! Crocchette in Italian.
There, I said it. Marisa’s Mystical Meatballs aren’t really meatballs. But everybody in the family calls them “Ma’s Meatballs.” “Ma’s Croquettes” doesn’t have the same alliterative allure, even if it’s more accurate.
My mother-in-law and father-in-law celebrating his birthday.
When I did a Google search for crocchette, Google turned up about 1,730,000 results in 0.51 seconds. When I searched for crocchette patate e carne (potato and meat croquettes), Google returned 1,500,000 results in 0.72 seconds.
And that was doing searches in Italian!
I found a Japanese woman who seems to have the same relationship to her mother’s meat and potato croquettes (korokke) as my husband and his family have to his mother’s.
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The meat for these “meatballs” (a word I’ll use in deference to my husband and his family of origin) is boiled before being finely chopped. This presents a perfect opportunity to make a really nice beef broth. You don’t have to do that, of course, but since you’re going to be boiling the meat anyhow, and since it only takes a few extra minutes to throw some aromatics into the pot, why not!
The broth from the meat for the specific batch of meatballs shown in this blog is sitting in the freezer ready to be turned into Auntie Helen’s Stracciatella, which will be coming up on the blog next month.
If you have a favorite family recipe and a bit of a story to tell, please email me at santafecook@villasentieri.com and we can discuss including it in the blog. I am expanding the scope of my blog to include traditional recipes from around the country and around the world. If you haven’t seen Bertha’s Flan or Melinda’s Drunken Prunes, take a look. They will give you an idea of what I’m looking for.
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Marisa's Mystical Meatballs
Marisa says she usually uses cross-cut beef shank for the meatballs. When we made them, she also had a piece of beef she bought for soup so we used both. In the end, we got ½ pound of cooked beef, with fat and gristle removed. Adjust the proportion of the other ingredients if you get substantially more or less cooked beef. If you want to use just cross-cut beef shank, I would try about 2 ½-3 lbs. The beef is boiled and then finely chopped to make the meatballs, giving you the opportunity to make a really nice beef broth with just a few minutes more work.
Growing up I never really understood why this was called Wedding Soup. It was NEVER served at weddings.
It was mostly served at home, unceremoniously.
The fact that it was unceremonious is a shame. It is a wonderful soup and, being honest, takes a bit of work to pull together. Both the soup, and the soup-maker, in my estimation, deserve a bit of attention.
Although it takes some work, it doesn’t require much in the way of heard-earned skills like frosting a cake or making pie crust. It’s just a bit of slogging through a series of steps.
This is a beloved soup among Americans of Italian descent. Interestingly, my in-laws who are actually from Italy had never heard of it until I made it for this blog!
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But back to the “wedding” part. I did a bit of internet research (thanks Google!). Actually, I hesitate to call it “research.” I’m old school. I remember when doing research meant hours upon hours spent in libraries looking at actual hardcopy materials. It almost doesn’t seem fair to sit on my sofa with my laptop and read materials served up by Google based on natural language questions and call it research.
The “natural language” part is interesting too. In the “old” days, if you found an article that was relevant to the research topic, you would look at the articles referenced by the author and find, potentially, other relevant articles. But they would all be older than the first article. This is where the “Science Citation Index” came into play.
The Index was a series of periodically published volumes that listed all the articles that cited a particular article in their bibliography. With the Science Citation Index, you could start with a relevant article and then work forwards finding all the newer articles that had cited that article.
Now I just tell Google what I’m interested in and I get a bunch of (almost always) relevant “hits!” Google is even nice enough to tell me how many hits there are and what fraction of a second it took Google to identify them.
Even when I’m researching a biomedical topic I sit on my sofa with my laptop and search the National Library of Medicine. The search language is a bit more arcane than the natural language used by Google but it still feels like cheating compared to slogging around a library. I can even have the full article delivered to my laptop so I don’t have to figure out what library has the publication I need.
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So, what did I learn from my Google search?
It appears (at least it’s a plausible theory) that Wedding Soup is an inaccurate translation of Minestra Maritata or Married Soup; apparently so-named because of the way the different ingredients marry together so well.
I’m guessing that many Americans with no affiliation to Italy have never had escarole.
Interestingly, my husband’s Tuscan grandmother would use up small amounts of different types of dried pasta, perhaps putting them into a soup or serving them with a simple sauce. She referred to this as Pasta Maritata because she was marrying the different types of pasta to create a dish.
If this theory is correct, I am perplexed by the inaccurate translation but, be that as it may, the soup is wonderful. I urge you to give it a try.
I like breaking up the work over two days, especially since I like to make a long-simmered broth as the base of the soup. My mother didn’t do this. Once the chicken was cooked, it was removed and shredded and the broth was used without additional simmering to make the soup. It shaves about 3 hours off of the prep time. But, since making broth is mostly hands off, and the improvement in flavor is dramatic, I simmer everything a bit longer before straining and discarding the solids.
If you have a favorite family recipe and a bit of a story to tell, please email me at santafecook@villasentieri.com and we can discuss including it in the blog. I am expanding the scope of my blog to include traditional recipes from around the country and around the world. If you haven’t seen Bertha’s Flan or Melinda’s Drunken Prunes, take a look. They will give you an idea of what I’m looking for.
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Italian Wedding Soup
If you don’t want to use the white center of the escarole, start with two heads and just use the dark green parts. The pale inner portion can be served in a salad or cooked in a number of ways. I like to divide up the work over two days, making the broth on the first day and the remainder on the second day. It’s perfectly feasible to do it all on the same day, however. I always keep a stash of rinds from Parmigiano Reggiano and Pecorino cheeses in the freezer. They add great flavor to broths, beans, and an array of other dishes.
Cut the chicken into breast halves, legs, thighs, and wings. Cut the back into 2 or three pieces. Reserve the liver for another use but chop the remaining giblets.
Slice the onions. There's really no need to peel them first.
Same with the garlic, no need to peel. It all gets strained out in the end.
Combine all ingredients in a large stock pot. Cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer, partially covered for two hours.
After two hours, remove the breasts, legs, and thighs. Continue to simmer the broth.
Remove the meat from the bones. Return the chicken bones and skin to the broth.
Continue to simmer the broth for another two hours, adjusting seasoning as needed.
Meanwhile, shred the breast meat and refrigerate.
Reserve the leg and thigh meat for another use.
After the broth has finished cooking, cool it for several hours. Strain and discard the solids. Allow the broth to come to room temperature and refrigerate.
Alternatively, immediately strain and discard the solids and proceed as below.
Meatballs
Put all the ingredients except the bread into a mixing bowl.
Cut the crusts from the bread.
Cover the bread with warm water for 3-4 minutes.
Squeeze some of the water from the bread.
Add the bread to the mixing bowl.
Mix with your hands, until thoroughly combined and no streaks of white from the bread remain visible.
As you are mixing add a bit of the bread soaking water from time to time (about a quarter cup or so total) to keep the mixture moist but not wet.
The mixture should become tacky from the effects of the water and the mixing on the proteins in the meat. The tackiness will help the meatballs hold together for the same reason that sausage doesn’t fall apart when the casing is removed.
With damp hands, roll the mixture into approximately 50 meatballs. Keeping your hands moist will enable you to create a smooth surface on the meatballs. If there are visible cracks, the meatballs will split when cooking.
Final assembly
Skim the fat from the broth. Add water to make 6 quarts of broth. Bring the broth to a boil.
Meanwhile, coarsely chop the escarole.
As the broth comes to a boil, adjust the salt and pepper.
Add the chopped escarole. Return to a boil and cook at a moderate boil for approximately 5 minutes.
Add the meatballs. Return to a boil and boil gently, so the meatballs don’t break, for 10-12 minutes.
Add the shredded white meat chicken and return to a gentle boil.
Adjust salt and pepper. At this point, slightly over-salt the soup as the dry pasta will reduce the saltiness of the soup. The soup can be made ahead to this point. Return to a boil and add the pasta just before serving.
Add the pasta and boil gently until pasta is cooked, approximately 10 minutes.
Adjust salt and pepper.
Serve with freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese.
My father liked soup. Actually, my father really, really liked soup. Every few weeks my mother would make beef noodle soup as it was one of my dad’s favorites. Beef noodle is the soup we had most often. Goulash was the “stew” we had most often. In fact, I don’t remember my mother ever making an American-style beef stew.
The first American-style beef stew that I ever made was from a recipe that my sister started using after she got married. It was definitely not one of our family recipes, though it was good.
After the beef noodle soup that my mother made on a regular basis, other soups were just occasional affairs, though soups of various types appeared often on our table.
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Italian “Wedding” Soup was a favorite but not something that we had more than a three or four times a year. Everyone in the family really loved Wedding Soup but, honestly, it’s a lot of work. It’s coming to the blog next month but today we have my Mom’s Lentil Soup.
My parents in 1981
Let’s face it, lentil soup isn’t something people swoon over. At best it is good comfort food. That’s exactly what this is for me.
It’s also easy to make. A few minutes of chopping and some stirring off-and-on are rewarded with a really good pot of soup.
My mother’s lentil soup was unusual in that she put enough black pepper into it to create a distinct bite. The first time I tasted it, as an adolescent, I was surprised by how peppery it was but I loved it. Whether or not you add that much black pepper is entirely your choice but, in my mind, it’s the black pepper that sets my mother’s lentil soup apart from the pack.
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Consistent with my mom’s low-and-slow philosophy, this soup is cooked longer that would be typical, for the average American cook at least. Despite the long cooking, the lentils remain intact though soft. They don’t really fall apart the way that dry beans might.
This soup freezes well so a big batch shouldn’t be a problem.
While a ham bone makes great lentil soup, it’s not something that most households have on a regular basis but a handful of baked ham or a few ounces of bacon make an awfully tasty soup.
If you have a favorite family recipe and a bit of a story to tell, please email me at santafecook@villasentieri.com and we can discuss including it in the blog. I am expanding the scope of my blog to include traditional recipes from around the country and around the world. If you haven’t seen Bertha’s Flan or Melinda’s Drunken Prunes, take a look. They will give you an idea of what I’m looking for.
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Mom's Lentil Soup
When my mother made this soup, she added enough black pepper to give it a distinct bite. The addition of a bay leaf is my only modification of the original recipe.
Tomatoes…and tuna…not clams or squid…as a sauce for pasta…quite a challenge for me as a young adult!
Although pasta (spaghetti, really) with red sauce and clams or squid was in my wheelhouse as an adolescent, the idea of a red sauce with tuna was, most definitely, not!
My undergraduate advisor, and later my business partner when I set up my psychiatric practice in Philadelphia, Gene d’Aquili, was a first-generation American of Italian and French descent. I frequently cooked at his home in Berwyn on Philadelphia’s Main Line. (If you read the obituary link above, you will notice a comment about a sign that read “Fantasyland.” I was the person who had that sign painted after years of Gene referring to his estate by that name. I had the sign painted in Guyana on a trip when I was doing research for my doctoral dissertation and ended up on the Guyana Airways float for the Mashramani parade but that’s a whole other story!)
The 1981 Guyana Airways Mashramani float. I was supposed to represent one of the Canadian pilots.
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Gene’s father’s family was from Rome. Gene’s grandparents emigrated to the United States with their four children, Gene’s father Guido, and Guido’s three sisters, very early in the 20th century. One of the sisters died not long after coming to the United States. The other two, Auntie Helen and Auntie Louise, are the reasons I now drink bourbon (Auntie Louise) and know a lot about traditional Roman cuisine (Auntie Helen).
The family home is now part of the American Embassy in Rome. There are several buildings that are part of the American Embassy but I believe the palazzo pictured below was the one the d’Aquili family owned before coming to the United States.
One of the American Embassy buildings in Rome that I believe was the d’Aquili palazzo.
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Gene’s father, Guido, was a fine artist of the New Hope School. In a previous post, I included some pictures of some of the Old King Cole murals that he painted for a private club in Trenton, NJ. Those murals ended up in the dining room of the carriage house I rented on the d’Aquili estate in Berwyn, PA when I was in medical school.
One of Gene’s ancestors was Antoniazzo Romano, a famous artist of the 15th century. His father’s artistic bent is part of a long family tradition.
The Annunciation by Antoniazzo Romano
For one dinner at “Fantasyland,” really known as “Salus House,” Gene and his wife, Mary Lou, wanted to serve spaghetti with tuna sauce; a classically Italian dish but completely unknown to me at the time.
I winged it based on his description. It was basically a simple tomato sauce (what we as Americans might call Marinara but what Italians would call Pomodoro) with tuna simmered into it.
It was good, and although many years went by before I made it again, it stuck in my memory.
I’ve tweaked the recipe over the years but it really hasn’t varied much from my initial foray into making spaghetti with tuna sauce based on Gene’s description.
If you have a favorite family recipe and a bit of a story to tell, please email me at santafecook@villasentieri.com and we can discuss including it in the blog. I am expanding the scope of my blog to include traditional recipes from around the country and around the world. If you haven’t seen Bertha’s Flan or Melinda’s Drunken Prunes, take a look. They will give you an idea of what I’m looking for.
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Spaghetti with Tuna Sauce
Although mushrooms are not strictly traditional, their presence is not really noticeable and I think they add a bit of savoriness to the sauce. You can omit them if you wish. It is important to use good quality tuna to avoid any “tinny” taste. Italian Tonno is ideal but a good American brand will work fine. The small amount of sugar is intended to counteract the sourness that some canned tomatoes can have. Adjust up or down to your taste. The presence of the sugar should not be detectable, however.
I don’t remember my mother making Roman Beans and Kale till I was in my late teens.
The first time she made it, I remember her talking about her mother making it. For something she really liked, she waited an awfully long time to make it. But then, again, I did the same thing with her pasta è fagioli.
There were some dishes from her childhood that she talked about but never made. Tiella is the one that I remember most. It took me multiple tries over many years to recreate it from her description.
Roman beans and kale might seem a little unusual to many American palates due to the length of time the kale is cooked. There is a point where it becomes silky but most definitely not mushy. Southerners, though, would find the kale in this recipe cooked in a familiar way. It is much like the Southern low-and-slow style of cooking greens of various types, such as collards or mustard greens, until they achieve the requisite tenderness.
A bunch of kale
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Texture is an important part of this dish. The beans should yield but not be falling apart. The kale should not provide any resistance the way it would if it were just quickly sautéed. The pasta, however, should be al dente.
Roman beans
Beans, kale and pasta are all pretty mellow-tasting in my estimation. The garlic, olive oil, and Parmesan cheese are what give this dish its flavor oomph! At the table, I add crushed red pepper but it shouldn’t be cooked into the dish.
Roman beans are also called Borlotti or Cranberry beans. Depending on where you live you might have to order them. In a pinch, though, you could use pinto beans or Anasazi beans. (If you’re a bean savant, you’ll notice that I used Anasazi beans as I was unable to find Roman beans after searching market shelves in two different cities for a couple of months. Though I could have gotten them online, I didn’t think the huge price premium was worth it.)
Anasazi beans
My mother’s approach to cooking most foods was definitely low and slow. It’s classically Italian and so NOT French, which often aims for “high and fast!” Though culinary education is now more inclusive and not so heavily French, we have a strong cultural bias away from slow, leisurely cooking due to the strong French influence of the past decades. There are exceptions however, largely based on strong regional traditions, barbecue, for example. But for the most part, mainstream America, and certainly mainstream American food and cooking publications, just don’t “get” low and slow.
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There are some foods that don’t benefit from low and slow, at least when cooked traditionally; steaks for instance. My mother’s approach to these was that they should be well done, even though that state was achieved quickly. In our house steaks were most often seasoned with olive oil, garlic, oregano, basil, salt and pepper and broiled. I think it’s a wonderful flavor combination. But it wasn’t until my late teens that I developed an appreciation for rare beef.
I remember one meal where my sister and I cooked the steaks for ourselves and our dad. They were medium rare, as I recall. Even though our mom didn’t have a hand in cooking them (and cooked her own steak well done) she spent the entire meal feeling like she had served us bad food. The fact that we liked it didn’t seem to matter. She had very definite opinions about what constituted good food, and something that was bleeding onto the plate didn’t fit!
If you have a favorite family recipe and a bit of a story to tell, please email me at santafecook@villasentieri.com and we can discuss including it in the blog. I am expanding the scope of my blog to include traditional recipes from around the country and around the world. If you haven’t seen Bertha’s Flan or Melinda’s Drunken Prunes, take a look. They will give you an idea of what I’m looking for.
Recently I bought sous vide equipment. I haven’t tried it yet but I’m itching to do so. Steaks will be first. The food gets vacuum sealed and then cooked slowly…for hours…in a hot water bath that is maintained at the temperature one wants the food to achieve. The meat is cooked uniformly throughout…low and slow! For steaks, one would want to quickly sear the outside before serving but many foods, like fish, poached eggs, and even hollandaise sauce can be used right out of the water bath.
For now, though, let’s try a slow-cooked pot of beans and greens…Italian style!!
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Roman Beans and Kale
The beans should be cooked through but not falling apart. The kale should take on a silky texture but not be mushy. The pasta should still be a bit “toothy." This is even better if made a day or two in advance and refrigerated. If you are doing this, you will want to undercook the pasta so that it is not too soft after the dish is reheated for serving. Alternately, you can omit the pasta when mixing the beans and kale, then add it when reheating. Depending on where you live, you might not be able to find Roman beans. Roman beans are also called Cranberry or Borlotti beans. If you can’t find Roman beans, you can substitute Pinto or Anasazi beans.
Simmer the beans until almost fully cooked, adding 2 teaspoons of salt and black pepper to taste after the beans have cooked for an hour. If necessary, add a bit of boiling water from time to time to keep the beans just submerged. The beans will cook for about 10-15 minutes more after the kale is added so don't overcook them.
Meanwhile, cut out the center ribs of the kale.
Kale ribs about to be discarded.
Cut the leaves crosswise into large pieces.
Rinse and drain the kale.
Bring a quart of salted water to a boil.
Add the kale. The kale should quickly wilt enough to be covered by water. If not add a bit more water to just cover the kale.
Simmer the kale, covered, stirring occasionally, until cooked to a silky texture, approximately 1 hour.
While the kale is cooking, crush the garlic with the side of a chef's knife.
Slowly brown the garlic in the olive oil.
Once the garlic has browned, remove the oil from the heat. Discard the garlic. Reserve the garlic-infused oil.
If using pasta, bring two quarts of water seasoned with 1/4 cup of salt to a rolling boil.
When the pasta-cooking water comes to a boil, add the pasta. At the same time, add the kale and its cooking water to the beans. Keep the beans and kale at a simmer.
Cook the pasta in boiling water until it is still a little crunchy on the inside.
Drain the pasta and add it to the pot with the beans and kale.
Add the garlic-infused oil.
Taste and adjust seasoning.
Cook everything, uncovered, until the pasta is al dente, just a few minutes longer.
In our house pasta mostly was dressed with a red sauce, specifically my mother’s long-simmered Southern Italian-style sauce. In Western Pennsylvania, we called it “sauce” or sometimes “spaghetti sauce” though it was used on much more than spaghetti. Further east, in Philadelphia, New York, and New Jersey the term “gravy” was common, but not where I lived.
Now I mostly use the Italian word “sugo” which is a general term for sauce, though commonly used for a tomato-based sauce. The word ragù definitely connotes a tomato-based sauce, specifically with meat. It also happens to be a trademarked name, though with a different accent mark on the last letter: Ragú.
I found it interesting that Ragú was started in 1937 in Rochester, New York by Assunta and Giovanni Cantisano, Italian immigrants who sold the sauce from their front porch. In 1969, the company was sold to Chesebrough-Pond’s. The brand became the best-selling pasta sauce in the country and ultimately achieved a reported 60% share of the pasta sauce market in the United States.
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Purchased pasta sauce was something that NEVERentered our house!
When pasta wasn’t served with a red sauce, it was typically served as Pasta è Fagioli (Pasta and Beans) and, once a year, on Christmas Eve, with crispy breadcrumbs and anchovies. You can find my mother’s recipe for Pasta è Fagioli here and mine here. In the coming months you’ll get my Aunt Margie’s recipe and Louis Evangelista’s recipe for Pasta è Fagioli.
Although not something I grew up with, a simple sauce of anchovies, garlic and olive oil is now a favorite in my household.
My recipe is adapted from one by G. J. Gillotti (whose family also hails from Calabria) in Our Most Treasured Recipes, published in 1993 by the Morning Star Lodge of the Order of Italian Sons and Daughters of America. The sauce comes together from pantry staples in the time it takes to bring the pasta water to a boil.
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Morning Star Lodge is in Pittsburgh, about 70 miles from my hometown of Johnstown, PA. If you’ve been following my blog, you know I have both Italian and Slovak roots. There are lots of people of Italian and Eastern European extraction in Western Pennsylvania. I found it interesting to peruse the pages of this ostensibly Italian cookbook. Among many Italian and Italian-American favorites are Eastern European dishes like holubki (stuffed cabbage), sweet sour kielbasa, and pierogi casserole. This speaks to the melting pot that is Western Pennsylvania!
If you’ve gotten this far, I hope you’re interested in trying this recipe but I fear there are many of you who hear the word anchovy and stop cold in your tracks. If any of you are still reading, however, I would encourage you to try this recipe. The anchovies provide a background savory note but really are not front and center!
If you have a favorite family recipe and a bit of a story to tell, please email me at santafecook@villasentieri.com and we can discuss including it in the blog. I am expanding the scope of my blog to include traditional recipes from around the country and around the world. If you haven’t seen Bertha’s Flan or Melinda’s Drunken Prunes, take a look. They will give you an idea of what I’m looking for.
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Spaghettini con Acciughe (Spaghettini with Anchovies)
Buy good quality anchovies packed in olive oil. The difference in price between low-end and high-end anchovies is not that much but the difference in taste is astounding. Good anchovies will have only the slightest smell “of the sea” when you open the can. After cooking, they will fade into the background leaving a savory (umami) note without any fishiness. Italians rarely use cheese in dishes that contain fish. I prefer spaghettini in this dish. Spaghettini is thinner than spaghetti but thicker than angel hair (vermicelli).
In a small frying pan gently sauté garlic in olive oil until golden brown.
Add the fennel seed, red pepper, oregano, and basil and cook for approximately 30 seconds.
Add the anchovies and their oil.
Cook gently, stirring frequently, until anchovies disintegrate. This will only take a few minutes.
Add white wine and simmer gently till most of the wine has evaporated and the anchovies have thoroughly disintegrated. Remove the pan from the heat.
Meanwhile cook pasta in 3 quarts of boiling water seasoned with 1/3 cup of salt until just al dente.
As the pasta nears completion, use some of the pasta water to warm the serving bowl. This is important as the egg will cook in the hot pasta and if the bowl is cold, the pasta will lose too much heat to do this effectively.
Just before draining the pasta, reheat the olive oil-anchovy mixture on medium-low.
Drain pasta, reserving at least one cup of the pasta-cooking water.
Drain and quickly dry the warmed serving bowl.
Put half of the olive oil-anchovy mixture in the warmed serving bowl.
Add the drained pasta.
Top with the remaining olive-oil anchovy mixture.
Toss pasta.
Add black pepper and beaten egg. Toss until well mixed.
In a leap of faith, add about ½ cup of the reserved (still hot) pasta-cooking water. Toss well.
Drizzle in approximately ¼ cup of finishing olive oil. Toss well.
Add more pasta-cooking water, if needed, to make a glossy sauce. You probably can’t go wrong with adding at least another ¼ cup of pasta-cooking water.
