FOOD ON THE FOOD

Cookbook Friday: Tomato Sauce

Dora Barbaresi (my grandmother) with sweetheart, Freddie Donarumo, in 1940 in front of her house in New Haven, CT.

Dora met Freddie at a party hosted by the Junior League club.  She was 18 years old and was there with her boyfriend at the time.  Freddie, 20, was there with his girlfriend.  Dora took one look at Freddie and decided right then that he was the one.  He must have noticed her, too, because the very next week, Freddie invited Dora on a hayride.  After that, they were inseparable.

No one in the family has ever heard anyone say a bad word about Freddie.  He worked as a manager at the local A&P, and was known as an all-around great guy.  After dating for five years, Freddie proposed.  “Will you marry me?" he asked Dora.  "Because if you don’t, I’m going into the seminary.”  He was only being slightly dramatic; he actually was considering the priesthood.  But, Dora accepted and, reflecting back, she says, “Of course, I was going to marry him.  I wasn’t going to waste him on the church.”

Nonni’s Tomato Sauce

But, where’s the oregano?  Where’s the basil?  She doesn’t use it, and I’ve never missed it.  This sauce is great with her eggplant parmesan, lasagna, manicotti, and tortiere.  It also freezes well.

2 Tbsp. olive oil
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1 pork chop or 2 sausage links
1 large (28 oz.) can tomato puree
½ can water
Salt and pepper

Heat olive oil in large frying pan.  Add meat and cook until nicely browned.  Remove meat and set aside.  Add garlic and cook until fragrant (about 10 seconds).  Add tomato puree, water, cooked meat, and simmer for about an hour (she says, taste and you’ll know.).  Add salt and pepper.

Dora [Barbaresi] Donroe
New Haven, Connecticut
1918 -

Next Recipe: Eggplant Parmesan

     (Previous Recipe: Passatellis)

Cookbook Friday: Passatellis

A park in New Haven circa 1941.  From left, Dora Barbaresi (my grandmother), pregnant sister Jean [Barbaresi] Borrelli, mother Lydia Barbaresi, and sister Edith [Barbaresi] Piccolo.  Lydia died when I was a baby, but I do remember my Auntie Jean and Aunt Edith (both great-aunts to me).  I thought Jean was very nice, but Edith scared the hell out of me!

What, you’ve never heard of passatellis?  Neither has anyone else.  Nonni pronounces it “passa-TAYS.”  It’s a tubular pasta made from breadcrumbs and Parmesan cheese that is served in chicken soup.  This is another old recipe from the 1800's, passed down from the Polverari/Belbusti families of Castelvecchio in the Marches region.  It evolved as an ingenious way of using up stale bread. 

Growing up in the 1980's, I got used to the inevitable blank stares I'd receive when describing the Italian food that Nonni cooked for us.  Sauceless pasta?  In soup?  It was as if I were Laotian trying to pass myself off as Italian.  But, what of lasagna, manicotti, and ziti, they would inquire at recess?  Well, Nonni made those, too, I clarified, but the pasta we hold most dear comes in soup.  Then, they would beat me up.

Only a small handful of people in our family know how to make passatellis.  Nonni freezes and bags them in big batches, but only the lucky ones get to bring them home!

Passatellis

I’m not sure how they shape them in Italy, but Nonni uses a meat grinder to extrude the noodles.  You could also use the meat grinding attachment on your stand mixer.

4 cups plain breadcrumbs
3 cups Parmesan cheese
Pinch of nutmeg
Pinch of lemon zest
8 large eggs

In a large bowl or pot, mix breadcrumbs with cheese, nutmeg, and zest.  Add eggs and mix thoroughly until cohesive dough forms.  Make into small balls (about 2 inches in diameter) and set aside in a covered bowl. 

One by one, put balls through a meat grinder to form thick strands.  Cut strings to about 4- to 6-inch lengths and lay them out on the table to dry for several hours before cooking.  To freeze, let them dry overnight before storing. 

Serve in Nonni’s chicken soup.  To cook, bring soup to a boil and add fresh or frozen strands (no need to defrost).  Cook until done, about 3 minutes.

Dora [Barbaresi] Donroe
New Haven, Connecticut
1918 -

Nonni’s homemade passatellis.  Photo by Trish Barker.

Next Recipe: Tomato Sauce

     (Previous Recipe: Chicken Soup)

Cookbook Friday: Chicken Soup

Or when your cable Internet goes down, Saturday (thanks, RCN).

Dora Barbaresi (my grandmother), on the right, around 1941, with her father, George, and older sister, Eva Blasi.

It’s hard to believe that Nonni (Dora) is younger in this picture than I am now, but I guess the camera doesn’t lie.  Is this the same woman who, in my recent memory, would feign a heart attack when the cops pulled her over for speeding?  Sure is.

She’d be in her early twenties here.  She spoke English and Italian fluently, although her parents got by speaking hardly any English.  New Haven was very Italian back then and her father was a member of the Marchigiano Club.  No ladies were allowed, and you peed into a trough right there at the bar.  Ah, the good old days.

Like the rest of her sisters, Dora couldn’t finish high school because she needed to help support the family.  All of the girls were smart, but their mother insisted that they go to work as soon as the law said they could.  Rumor has it that on more than one occasion, Dora fought to keep what she had worked so hard to earn in the dress shop. 

Several of her sisters, like Eva, were already married and starting families.  World War II was heating up, and Dora’s boyfriend, Freddie (whom she would later marry), was considering enlisting in the Army. 

Around this time, Dora’s sister, Anne, a platinum blonde, was sitting in the audience of the Miss New Haven beauty pageant when the judges pulled her onstage with the other contestants.  Their father, usually a mild-mannered man, was horrified.  “You’re beautiful,” he would say to his girls, “but you’re not supposed to brag.  You’re supposed to be quiet.  Act like a lady.”  But they made Anne go up, and she won.

 

Chicken Soup

This simple soup goes hand in hand with two of the family’s favorite pasta recipes coming up.  Nonni isn’t big on amounts, as she just uses what she has around the house, but this recipe will get you where you want to be.  She cuts her whole chicken in half because her pot isn’t big enough to accommodate a whole one.  She freezes the other for later use.

1 whole chicken (3-4 lb.), cut in half
2 cloves, pressed into chicken (not garlic cloves, actual spice cloves)
2 small onions, peeled and halved
2 ribs celery, cut into large pieces
2 carrots, cut into large pieces
Small can (14.5 oz.) of stewed tomatoes
Salt and pepper

Add all ingredients to a large pot and cover with water by two inches.  Bring to a boil, then cover, lower heat, and simmer for 1 hour.  Strain soup and set aside.  Reserve carrots and chicken (remove the cloves).  Cut carrots into chunks and pull off shreds of chicken meat with a fork to add to soup.  Season with salt and pepper.  Serve with cappellettis or passatellis, or freeze. 

Dora [Barbaresi] Donroe
New Haven, Connecticut
1918 -

Next Recipe: Passatellis

     (Previous Recipe: Friselles)

Cookbook Friday: Friselles

The Barbaresi family in 1925.  Clockwise from left: Dora, George, Jean, Eva, Anne, Lydia, Edith, Septimina, and Dava Barbaresi.  According to Dora (my grandmother), she is pouting because she didn’t get to sit in a chair like her younger sisters.  Septimina died of pneumonia within months of this photograph.  Gerry, the only surviving son, was born two years later.

In Italy, there is a saying: “Better a corpse in the house than a Marchigiano at the door.” 

They couldn’t be more right.  Marchigianos are my people.  Northern Italians who hail from the often-overlooked Marches region of Italy, just across the tracks (in this case, mountains), from Tuscany.  I say northern Italian, but really it’s about five paces north of the Italian equator, if there were such a thing, but somehow this makes a big difference to my grandmother.

Anyway, the reputation Marchigianos had, as I understand it, was due to the fact that they comprised the vast majority of tax collectors at one time in the Old Country.  If the taxes weren’t paid, then there would be hell to pay instead.  And I can believe it. 

But my relatives weren’t tax collectors; they were farmers in the little town of Castelvecchio.  And they cooked in the true peasant style.  Suffice it to say that there wouldn’t be a corpse in the house if there were a Marchigiano in the kitchen.

George Barbaresi and Lydia Belbusti, in the photo above, were both born in the Marches and immigrated to the U.S. independently of each other by way of New Haven, Connecticut.  In some pre-Internet, trans-Atlantic feat of communication that only Italians could pull off, they were set up on a blind date/arranged marriage in this country by their families back in Italy, or so it goes.  When they met for the first time, George reportedly offered Lydia the following proposal: “Will you have my babies?” 

It appears that she agreed.  They were married in 1910, and raised seven children (two others died very young).  They lived in a rented flat in New Haven during the Depression.  The daughters went to school until about age 14, when they were old enough to work in the dress factories to help support the family.  Their everyday dresses were made from flour sacks.  Only the youngest child, a son, was able to go to college.

Most of the recipes I have came from the little girl on the left, Dora (my grandmother, who I’ve always called Nonni), who learned the dishes from her mother, who learned them from her mother.  I’m not sure of the extent to which these recipes have diverged over time from the original Marches recipes, but they have not changed much over the lifetimes of my relatives who grew up on them. 

They would never let that happen!

Friselles

These peppery little biscuits are an acquired taste to many.  But once you’re bit, they’re addictive.  We keep bags in the freezer (courtesy of Nonni) and wash them down with non-Italian beer.

3½ cups flour
3 Tbsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
1½ Tbsp. black pepper, coarsely ground
1 cup water
¾ cup oil

Preheat oven to 300 F.  Grease a large sheet pan.

In a large bowl, mix flour, baking powder, salt, and pepper.  Make a well and add water and oil.  Mix well (the dough will be soft and oily).  Form dough into several thin logs (about the diameter of a nickel) by rolling against the countertop.  Slice into pieces about 1/4-inch thick and set on pan.  Press thumb into the center of each coin to form a large indentation.  Bake for 25-30 minutes, flipping once halfway through before bottoms start to color.  Cool. 

Dora [Barbaresi] Donroe
New Haven, Connecticut
1918 -

Next Recipe: Chicken Soup