American Italian Food

By Patricia Winton

     MENÙ DEL GIORNO
Spaghetti al pomodoro

(Spaghetti with tomato sauce)

Polenta con salsiccia

(Polenta with sausage)

Gnocchi alla parmigiana

(Potato dumplings with Parmesan)

Risotto con la zucca

(Rice with pumpkin)

Christopher Columbus by Sebastiano del Piombo

The items listed above could appear on the daily menu of any restaurant in Italy, but without explorations begun by Italy’s native son, Cristoforo Colombo, not one could be there today. The fact of the matter is, many of Italy’s favorite foodstuffs originated in the Americas. Most traveled first to Spain.

Look at the first item. No, spaghetti, arguably Italy’s favorite food, did not originate in the New World, but the preferred sauce for that spaghetti is tomato-based. Native to South America, tomatoes were transported by Spanish explorers. Initially believed to be poisonous because they come from the nightshade family—it’s not called Deadly Nightshade for nothing—tomatoes were originally used by the Europeans as decorations. The first cookbook to use tomatoes in cuisine came from Naples in a recipe called ”Salsa di Pomodoro alla Spagnola,” Spanish Tomato Sauce, and tomato sauce is still a Neapolitan—in fact, Italian—favorite, especially when paired with the ubiquitous spaghetti.

The second American ingredient on our menu is corn, or maize. Columbus most certainly carried maize from Cuba, though it’s not clear if he transported it on his first or second voyage. Our menu has just one form of maize, or mais as it’s called in Italy, but Italians generally use it in three modes. First, canned kernels are popular additions to salads. I’ve never seen these served any other way. Grocery stores sell pre-mixed salad bowls topped by the yellow kernels and cans of them grace supermarket shelves. Second, the ears are roasted on a barbecue. The ears sold in the markets are much too mature for my taste. The sugar has turned to starch, and even if you cut the kernels off the cob, they taste starchy and vile. However, the calderrostai, who fire up charcoal braziers in winter for chestnuts, offer roasted ears in tourist centers, and people buy unshucked ears In the market. I must admit that I’ve never seen these on a restaurant menu.

The prime maize product is a coarse cornmeal that produces polenta, a cornmeal mush. The traditional recipes call for slow stove-top cooking that requires constant stirring for ages. Today, instant polenta is available in the supermarket here, boxed much like minute rice. It takes far less time to prepare and tastes reasonably good. Polenta can be spread in a rectangular pan and allowed to cool before being cut into squares. These squares, often grilled, serve as the base for toppings of cheese, fish, or sauces for antipasti. Polenta can also be spooned into bowls and topped with a sauce. Sausage, cooked in a robust tomato sauce, reigns as the favorite, but any hearty sauce with meat or game makes a filling, warming winter dish.

Preparing Gnocchi

Consulting our menu again, we see potatoes, which originated in Peru about 7,000 years ago. They also made their way to Europe with Spanish explorers, arriving in Italy in the mid-1500s. And while potatoes are fried, boiled, roasted, scalloped, and made into chips here, the Italians created a unique potato dish in gnocchi, a type of dumpling made with mashed potatoes, flour and eggs. The dough is formed into long ropes then cut into 3/4 inch pieces. They are then rolled across a grooved surface—like a fork or a wooden paddle designed for the task—to make ridges to catch the sauce. Like polenta, gnocchi are served in place of spaghetti. They can be sauced simply with butter and cheese or elaborately with lobster or asparagus.

The zucca in the next menu item is pumpkin. American lore tells us that the Pilgrims learned about pumpkin from the Native Americans and celebrated the first Thanksgiving with a pumpkin dessert. And that is certainly true, but in fact, Columbus carried pumpkin along with the other seeds to Europe a couple of centuries earlier. Pumpkin is rarely used in sweets here, but it is cooked as a vegetable, made into soup, flavors risotto, and stuffs ravioli. It is even used in place of potatoes in gnocchi some recipes. One of my favorite preparations is pumpkin gnocchi served with gorgonzola sauce. Ummm.

Other plants and animals native to the Americas are common fare in Italy today—from turkeys to tobacco. Columbus intended to chart a route that would bring flavors to enhance food in Europe. Instead, he brought a whole new supply of food, especially to his homeland.

I blog on alternate Thursdays at Italian Intrigues. Please join me there.

The Well-Traveled Coconut

By Beth Green

If there’s a food that world travelers could take on as a mascot, it’s the coconut.

Shade. Photo by Beth Green

Round and buoyant, the fruit of the coco palm has crossed vast oceans and provided food, drink and even shelter to millions of wanderers.

The origin of the coconut is unclear, though most sources I’ve seen point to the tree developing somewhere in the reaches of the Pacific Ocean—South America, Indonesia, or somewhere in between. Because the versatile plant can grow in sandy soil as long as it has direct sun and warm temperatures year round, it quickly spread along trade routes, masking its true source. Ancient traders probably carried coconuts with them in their canoes as they traveled between Pacific archipelagos. They could drink the water of the coconut, scrape the insides to eat the white, translucent flesh, then use the split shell as a dish or other tool. The fibrous husk was woven into ropes and cloths. But even without human help coconuts are ready travelers; blown from their trees to the water in a storm, coconuts can float for leagues and germinate on whatever tropical shore they land.

Green curry in Bangkok.

The uses of the coconut fruit, tree and leaves are nearly limitless—and the societies of South East Asia have relied on this miracle food for millennia. Anyone familiar with Thai curries is probably aware that their creamy texture comes from coconut cream, which is the liquid derived from mashing coconut meat. (Coconut cream is also a main ingredient of one of my favorite sundowner cocktails and the official beverage of far-away Puerto Rico—the Piña Colada.) Coconut cream is a very important source of dietary fat for Asia. 

In the West we’re told, in an effort to be healthy, to avoid fats whenever possible but some fat is important for our bodies to work properly. In the far north, native cultures relied on seal fat, in middle China and middle Europe, pig fat, in Japan, fish oil, and in South Asia and Polynesia, coconut oil. The availability of sources of protein and fat in the diet shaped and changed the regional cuisines into what they are today.

Mature coconuts drying in Bohol, Philippines.

In Cambodia a few years ago I took a half-day cooking class at the Smokin’ Pot in Battambang. The highlight of the class—other than the final meal, of course—was walking to the local market and watching the coconut seller grate up a huge bag of coconut meat for our class to use. Because of the high fat content of the cream, we didn’t have to add any other oil to our dishes.

If it isn’t harvested from young coconuts, the dried white meat of coconuts is delicious too. In the West we use it as a snack, grated into a pretty garnish for chocolatey cakes, or perhaps with sugar as a filling for candy bars like Bounty. In Asia, you may be more likely to find coconut bits in a soup, or candied, or even used as part of an offering in a temple or shrine.

Photo by Dan Pelka.

But it’s coconut water that made the coconut the ideal travelers’ companion hundreds of years ago and which still makes it a refreshing pick-me-up after a day of sight-seeing in the tropics. Unlike rivers, lakes, or rainwater catchment, the water found inside young coconuts is pure, hydrating, and cooling, and can be drunk immediately after opening the shell. Travelers today drinking coconut water out of the green husk of the fruit can know they’re experiencing exactly what travelers thousands of years ago would have tasted, and out of the same,natural, cup.

Finger Food Kyrgyz Style

By Kelly Raftery
 

The Kyrgyz people’s traditional foods and hospitality reflect a long history of nomadic living. Or, as I put it, Kyrgyz food consists of “Leave yurt, catch animal, kill animal, cut up animal and throw in pot to cook, serve animal, eat animal.”  When everything you own has to be packed up on a couple of animals and moved to another place periodically, cuisine remains simple and unadorned. Pastries, spices and sown vegetables are simply not part of the nomadic diet. While today the Kyrgyz diet has expanded far beyond its nomadic roots, there are dishes that are part of the fabric of society and reflect the culture. The dish I would like to present to you is beshbarmak.

Shorpo, the broth base for beshbarmak.

Beshbarmak means “five fingers” and there are two versions of why the dish has been given this name. The generally accepted explanation of the name states that beshbarmak is a dish eaten in the old-fashioned way, with the hands, not utensils, thus the name. Another version of the origin story of the name says that beshbarmak is best made with meat with a fat layer five fingers wide.

And, as long as we are on the topic, let’s talk about fat in the Kyrgyz diet because it’s important and is one of those cultural things that turns off Americans. Picture yourself living in a tent on the Steppe, tending a herd of sheep and horses (not what one would consider a sedentary occupation) through long, cold winters. You layer your clothes, you keep the yurt warm, but the key to survival is the calories you can take in over the course of the day. Thus, the fatty bits of the animal are still valued today as a food source.  Large, fatty meals are not the daily norm in Kyrgyzstan, but for special occasion feast meals, fat is considered an essential part of many dishes, including beshbarmak and manty.

Beshbarmak is a feast dish, prepared and served for important events such as births, deaths, or the arrival of prestigious visitors. Kyrgyz hospitality towards guests is notorious. The first Kyrgyz phrase I learned during my wedding trip visit to my husband’s family was “Ich, al, je” which loosely translated means, “Drink, take more, eat.” 

To prepare beshbarmak, an animal (usually a sheep, though sometimes a horse) is slaughtered, cut up into pieces left on the bone and put into a pot to boil. While the meat is boiling down to well-cooked chunks and a tasty broth, pasta is made from scratch, rolled very thin and then cut into large pieces called “leaves” in Kyrgyz, though there is some variation in noodle shape regionally. The noodles are boiled quickly, placed on the bottom of the plate, and then topped with some finely diced or thinly sliced pieces of meat. The broth is either poured over the entire dish, or served alongside the noodles and meat in small bowls.  A complete recipe can be found here. Since leaving behind their nomadic way of life, some variations of beshbarmak developed to add a stir fry of onions, peppers and tomatoes, but the dish in its purest form is noodles, meat and broth.   

Beshbarmak, meat served over noodles, with a side of head.

 

On the Steppe while herding your animals, if a guest wanders by, you open your home to him and use the occasion for a feast. Guests bring news of family, friends and the greater world and are hosted with the best the family has to offer and given a place for the night. During the meal, the guest is given the place of honor, most often the place across from the yurt opening (or today, the doorway between the dining area and kitchen area.)  When serving beshbarmak, the guest of honor is given the boiled head of the sheep, which he cuts up into smaller pieces and gives to others, the eyes to the eldest or most honored guest, the ears to his son or a young boy, so that he should listen carefully and the upper palate to his daughter or a young girl so that she should be a productive homemaker. The senior male host then divides the remainder of the meat is among the other guests. The aksakals or “white beards” or village elders get the more easily chewed piece either a shank or in some areas, the head; senior women get the fat tail of the sheep. Legs and shoulders are distributed among the younger adults at the table and smaller bones such as the neck and lower back pieces are given to daughter-in-laws. There is a cultural order and importance given to each part of the sheep, so much so that a chart has been published which shows the parts and their names in Kyrgyz.

Chart in Kyrgyz that shows the name for each section of sheep.

The meal is finished only when the guest could not possibly eat another bite and is concluded with a prayer, begun by cupping both hands in front of the heart and held there while someone says a short prayer.  When the speaker says, “omin” everyone’s hands are drawn over the face and downward, as if rinsing the face.  Everyone gives thanks for a good meal around a congenial table and the evening is finished, always with leftovers being sent home with guests, to ensure no waste.  With bulging bags, full stomachs and satisfied souls, the feast breaks up until the next special occasion on which to enjoy beshbarmak.