Sicilian vegetarian
In writings about Italian regional cooking, you often find mention of the vegetarian side of Mezzogiorno cuisine. When Sicilians talk about the lack of meat on their tables, though, that doesn't apply to the fish and seafood in their cuisine. I suppose that's due to the legacy of the Catholic Church and their allegedly "no meat" Fridays and Lent which, however, allow fish. That never made any sense to me. Are fish plants or animals? Didn't any of those Church prelates study biology even a little bit?
Anyway, as a Sicilian exploring my ancestral cuisine, I find plenty of vegetarian tradition to draw on, and I feel more favored in this respect than I would with any other European ethnicity, or anywhere outside India.
The book Sicilian Home Cooking: Family Recipes from Gangivecchio by the mother-and-daughter team of Wanda and Giovanna Tornabene waxes lyrical about the glories of Sicilian food and the role it's played in their lives. Signora Tornabene introduces her chapter on meat dishes--the smallest one in the book--by telling how she doesn't really care for meat, and how Sicilian cuisine has historically gotten along without it.
In the past, only the rich could afford meat, even though they often opted for fish. But for the poor, meat was a dream of riches. So the clever Sicilians invented dishes that contained no meat but were given names that implied they did. For example, the word caponata, our famous sweet-and-sour vegetable stew, comes from the word capponi (capons). Cooks liked to serve stewed vegetables with the fowl; since the poor people could not have the capons themselves, they used the name for the vegetable dish to make them feel rich.
There is a story told here about meat and the separation of classes: A young boy was constantly ridiculed by his schoolmates, being the poorest child in the class. When the teacher questioned each pupil about what they had had for dinner the previous night, the boy always answered wild fennel, beet tops, chicory, or some other humble food from the earth. The other children would laugh because he only ate vegetables, and no meat. One day, fed up with this mockery, the boy announced that he had had veal for supper. "How much did you eat?" the teacher asked. "Two bunches," he replied.
Then Giovanna tells a story of how when her mother was a girl, she became attached to a lamb owned by the family, as her pet. When it grew up into a ram, they were going to turn it into mutton, but Wanda had become so attached to it she cried and pleaded for its life until they sent it into the hills to work as a stud for a shepherd. And she concludes, if this story hasn't made you vegetarian, then try these meat recipes. LOL
The chapter on vegetables is titled Regali dall'Orto (Gifts from the Garden), and begins:
Vegetables have always been the main component of the country table. The contadini were too poor to buy meat, and fish, beyond salt cod and preserved sardines, was unknown to them. If they were fortunate enough to own a cow, they made and sold cheese (which they called "fruit").
I arrived at Gangivecchio more than fifty years ago. I went around and visited the local inhabitants, listened to their stories and their complaints, and saw and tasted the humble dishes they made--la Pietanza--to survive. I learned how wonderful and comforting the qualazzi, a sort of wild cime di rape [translation: 'broccoli rabe'--J.Hy] cooked with potatoes, can be. And cicerchie, similar to lentils, cooked with wild fennel, made a delicious dish. Winters were hardest for the country people, when many were forced to dig for roots.
Caterina, a small, round, ever-smiling woman, was my confidant. I learned from her that it was possible to be happy in life with only a few ingredients, mostly vegetables, on the table. She never complained. Before Caterina died four years ago, at the age of seventy-six, she told me: "Now that my son can provide me with all the meat I want, I can't eat it. But I've lived a very long life. I believe it's because I ate so many vegetables."
Indeed, the people who live in Mediterranean regions have always believed that fresh vegetables in the kitchen means healthy nourishment and a delicious dinner.
John Penza's book Sicilian Vegetarian Cooking touches on similar themes in its introduction:
For many centuries, most Sicilians were honest peasants who worked the hard volcanic land in the hot sun and prepared their simple food simply--sizzling fresh vegetables and herbs in hot olive oil and tossing the result with pasta or eating it with bread, then washing it down with homemade wine.
... My grandparents were among those who came to America, seeking freedom and upward mobility. Their cooking still remained rooted in the old country's soil: vegetables, braised, roasted, grilled, and fried; pasta with artichokes, peas, beans, zucchini, cauliflower, and broccoli; soup and bread; egg pies; and simple green salads. Meat meant poultry once or twice a week and fish on Friday. ... Sicilian-American baby boomers ate more cheese, eggs, and meat. ... But what goes around comes around. Today, as lighter meals are sought, the old ways seem fresh. Vegetables have become the food of choice rather than necessity.
Penza's introduction also contains a reminder that the Divine Feminine is never far from the subject of Sicilian heritage (and food, of course):
During the late Greek and early Roman periods of the Mediterranean's history, about 500 BC to 100 AD, there were great feasts for the goddesses of fertility and agriculture. From Messina to Agrigento, Trapani to Syracuse, in grottoes and in temple shrines to the Greek goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone (who later became identified with the Roman deity Ceres--from whom we derive the word "cereal"--and her daughter Proserpina), there remains much evidence of this devotion to the symbols of the powers-that-be in the earth. Today, in the Christian era, Mary is revered as both the source of the earth's bounty and as the mother of God. Beneath their patriarchal social customs, Sicilians do more than enjoy the fat of their land: they worship it in the forms of the earth mother, celebrating Regina Campestra, the Madonna dell'Agro, and Santa Maria di Grotta on feast days that may date back to the feasts of Isis, the ancient Egyptian goddess of fertility.
From my childhood, I remember my grandfather's garden, the vegetables he grew that graced the table and my grandmother's homemade tomato sauce made from his garden and her sfincione (Sicilian pizza) when the extended family gathered there; his homemade wine; and the special pride he took in growing a fig tree in northern Ohio that actually bore fruit--a true Sicilian-American miracle. I'll never forget my first ambrosial taste of a fresh fig from Nonnu's tree when I was only 6 or 7. That was many years before they became available in American groceries. Of course, when I visited relatives in Sicily, they fed me all the fresh homegrown figs I could eat, under the shade of an olive tree.
Anyway, as a Sicilian exploring my ancestral cuisine, I find plenty of vegetarian tradition to draw on, and I feel more favored in this respect than I would with any other European ethnicity, or anywhere outside India.
The book Sicilian Home Cooking: Family Recipes from Gangivecchio by the mother-and-daughter team of Wanda and Giovanna Tornabene waxes lyrical about the glories of Sicilian food and the role it's played in their lives. Signora Tornabene introduces her chapter on meat dishes--the smallest one in the book--by telling how she doesn't really care for meat, and how Sicilian cuisine has historically gotten along without it.
In the past, only the rich could afford meat, even though they often opted for fish. But for the poor, meat was a dream of riches. So the clever Sicilians invented dishes that contained no meat but were given names that implied they did. For example, the word caponata, our famous sweet-and-sour vegetable stew, comes from the word capponi (capons). Cooks liked to serve stewed vegetables with the fowl; since the poor people could not have the capons themselves, they used the name for the vegetable dish to make them feel rich.
There is a story told here about meat and the separation of classes: A young boy was constantly ridiculed by his schoolmates, being the poorest child in the class. When the teacher questioned each pupil about what they had had for dinner the previous night, the boy always answered wild fennel, beet tops, chicory, or some other humble food from the earth. The other children would laugh because he only ate vegetables, and no meat. One day, fed up with this mockery, the boy announced that he had had veal for supper. "How much did you eat?" the teacher asked. "Two bunches," he replied.
Then Giovanna tells a story of how when her mother was a girl, she became attached to a lamb owned by the family, as her pet. When it grew up into a ram, they were going to turn it into mutton, but Wanda had become so attached to it she cried and pleaded for its life until they sent it into the hills to work as a stud for a shepherd. And she concludes, if this story hasn't made you vegetarian, then try these meat recipes. LOL
The chapter on vegetables is titled Regali dall'Orto (Gifts from the Garden), and begins:
Vegetables have always been the main component of the country table. The contadini were too poor to buy meat, and fish, beyond salt cod and preserved sardines, was unknown to them. If they were fortunate enough to own a cow, they made and sold cheese (which they called "fruit").
I arrived at Gangivecchio more than fifty years ago. I went around and visited the local inhabitants, listened to their stories and their complaints, and saw and tasted the humble dishes they made--la Pietanza--to survive. I learned how wonderful and comforting the qualazzi, a sort of wild cime di rape [translation: 'broccoli rabe'--J.Hy] cooked with potatoes, can be. And cicerchie, similar to lentils, cooked with wild fennel, made a delicious dish. Winters were hardest for the country people, when many were forced to dig for roots.
Caterina, a small, round, ever-smiling woman, was my confidant. I learned from her that it was possible to be happy in life with only a few ingredients, mostly vegetables, on the table. She never complained. Before Caterina died four years ago, at the age of seventy-six, she told me: "Now that my son can provide me with all the meat I want, I can't eat it. But I've lived a very long life. I believe it's because I ate so many vegetables."
Indeed, the people who live in Mediterranean regions have always believed that fresh vegetables in the kitchen means healthy nourishment and a delicious dinner.
John Penza's book Sicilian Vegetarian Cooking touches on similar themes in its introduction:
For many centuries, most Sicilians were honest peasants who worked the hard volcanic land in the hot sun and prepared their simple food simply--sizzling fresh vegetables and herbs in hot olive oil and tossing the result with pasta or eating it with bread, then washing it down with homemade wine.
... My grandparents were among those who came to America, seeking freedom and upward mobility. Their cooking still remained rooted in the old country's soil: vegetables, braised, roasted, grilled, and fried; pasta with artichokes, peas, beans, zucchini, cauliflower, and broccoli; soup and bread; egg pies; and simple green salads. Meat meant poultry once or twice a week and fish on Friday. ... Sicilian-American baby boomers ate more cheese, eggs, and meat. ... But what goes around comes around. Today, as lighter meals are sought, the old ways seem fresh. Vegetables have become the food of choice rather than necessity.
Penza's introduction also contains a reminder that the Divine Feminine is never far from the subject of Sicilian heritage (and food, of course):
During the late Greek and early Roman periods of the Mediterranean's history, about 500 BC to 100 AD, there were great feasts for the goddesses of fertility and agriculture. From Messina to Agrigento, Trapani to Syracuse, in grottoes and in temple shrines to the Greek goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone (who later became identified with the Roman deity Ceres--from whom we derive the word "cereal"--and her daughter Proserpina), there remains much evidence of this devotion to the symbols of the powers-that-be in the earth. Today, in the Christian era, Mary is revered as both the source of the earth's bounty and as the mother of God. Beneath their patriarchal social customs, Sicilians do more than enjoy the fat of their land: they worship it in the forms of the earth mother, celebrating Regina Campestra, the Madonna dell'Agro, and Santa Maria di Grotta on feast days that may date back to the feasts of Isis, the ancient Egyptian goddess of fertility.
From my childhood, I remember my grandfather's garden, the vegetables he grew that graced the table and my grandmother's homemade tomato sauce made from his garden and her sfincione (Sicilian pizza) when the extended family gathered there; his homemade wine; and the special pride he took in growing a fig tree in northern Ohio that actually bore fruit--a true Sicilian-American miracle. I'll never forget my first ambrosial taste of a fresh fig from Nonnu's tree when I was only 6 or 7. That was many years before they became available in American groceries. Of course, when I visited relatives in Sicily, they fed me all the fresh homegrown figs I could eat, under the shade of an olive tree.