By Patricia Winton
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| Saltimbocca with chicken |
Many Italian dishes have strange
names. In Rome, Saltimbocca alla Romana reigns as a favorite main
course. The Roman version is made from thin slices of veal cutlets topped with
slices of prosciutto crudo and sage leaves. Sometimes, the concoction is rolled
up like a jelly roll, fastened with a toothpick, and sautèed in olive oil.
Other times, the sage is fastened to the meat with a tooth pick, and it is
cooked flat. It’s a succulent dish that “jumps in the mouth,” which is what
saltimbocca means. Sometimes, it’s made with chicken breasts or pork, but then
it’s not alla Romana.
Another Roman dish, a pasta sauce
this time, is called Pasta all’Arrabiata. To make this simple pasta
sauce, sautè a bit of garlic in olive oil; add red hot pepper, canned tomatoes,
and parsley. Meanwhile, cook short dried pasta like penne. This dish is fast to
make and tasty to eat. It’s a mainstay in my fast food arsenal. It gets its
name, angry pasta, from that hot pepper.
Sometimes, it’s impossible to guess
how a dish gets its name. Genovese Napolitana, for example, is a sauce
from Naples. A slow-cooked dish made with lots of onions and a little meat, the
onion sauce usually tops pasta while the meat appears as the main course. The
strange thing about this name is that while it’s a Naples dish, the name
Genovese means “from Genoa,” town of Columbus’s birth. One theory is that the
Genovese don’t use much tomato in their sauces, unlike the Neapolitans who were
the first Europeans to cook with tomatoes. Another suggests that the
restaurateur who created the dish came from Genova, as the town is called in
Italian.
Sweet dishes can also harbor strange
names. Popular cookies called brutti ma buoni, ugly but good, are simple
meringues laced with ground nuts and cocoa powder. And they are good. My all-time
favorites, however, are called Minne di Virgini, Virgin’s Breasts. These
little white hemispheres, topped with a cherry nipple, were first made at the
Monastery of the Virgins in Palermo. The confection quickly became the symbol
for Saint Agatha whose torturers ultimately cut off her breasts before killing
her. While available in any Sicilian pastry shop year round, the Minne di
Virgini star in the feast of St. Agatha, patron saint of Catania, on February
6.
Bread, too, offers amusing names. Ciabattine
(or ciabatte) are small flat rolls that I understand have become quite trendy
in the US and the UK where they are used as sandwich bread. I usually cut them
in strips and use them to accompany dinner. I always buy two, although I eat
only one with my meal. They just need to come in pairs, I feel, since the word
means “little slippers.”
But pasta, oh pasta, offers the
strangest names. If you think about it, some names are downright unappetizing.
Who really wants to eat vermicelli (little worms), linguine
(little tongues), capellini (little hairs), or even orecchiette
(little ears)? Some pasta names just make me laugh. Why, I ask, are two popular
pastas called ditali (thimbles) and mezze maniche (short
sleeves)? In America, farfalle are known as bow ties. That used to make
me wince. “Oh no,” I’d say. “Farfalle are butterflies.” Only later did I learn
that in Italian, bow ties and butterflies are both farfalle.
The name strozzapreti baffles
me most. Just who wants to strangle the priests? Theories abound. One says that
housewives from Emilia-Romagna, one region where this pasta is popular, made
the dish for local priests, while their anti-cleric husbands hoped the priests
would choke on the dish. Another says that when cooks prepare this pasta by
hand, they must grab the dough with two hands and twist, or strangle, it. Yet
a third holds that peasants prepared food as partial payment for land rents.
The priests, who were notoriously gluttonous, ate this dish so rapidly that
they choked on it.
As I look
through my pantry now, I find strozzapreti, linguine, capellini, orecchiette, ditali,
mezze maniche, farfalle. And there’s one ciabiattina, the mate to the one I had
for dinner last night. There are tomatoes and hot pepper for making arrabiata
sauce in the cupboard, and genovese in the freezer. Burtti ma buoni never stay
here long enough to be considered staples, and I’m not at all fond of minne di
virgini.
