Quando era Festa...
Gnocchi alla Sorrentina
A couple of weeks ago Yvette informed the readership of the It.Hobby.Cucina newsgroup that Lucrezia had tired of sitting around and was banging to come out, signing off with "…Ouch!" Then she vanished, and for two days we all read Marco's minute-by-minute report of the Big Event, which went quite well; mother and child doing fine. Now there's an active thread on breast feeding, and lots of people are sending Lucrezia recipes. Most are just for food, and much better suited to Marco and Yvette. However, Teresa di Masi did much more, and kindly gave me permission to translate:
THIS IS A HOLIDAY DISH FROM WHEN I WAS LITTLE. My mother didn't make it: She was responsible for the more humble day-to-day cooking, but not the holiday meals. Father stepped in then, and I learned this from him.
He's been gone these past seven years, but he's standing before me now, big as life. Physically he's a cross between the De Filippo brothers (two great Neapolitan actors): the jovial expression of Peppino, and the bitter humor of Eduardo. He began, it's obvious, by setting the potatoes to boil. Then, after peeling them, he'd mash them and mix them with the flour on the marble kitchen table. Slowly, very slowly, because nothing was hurried on a holiday.
Meanwhile, he'd tell us "his stories," the same ones told by many older folks, probably: Memories of the War, the hunger suffered, the sorrows that never fade. Told lightly however, with a deftness capable of instilling wonder, and with a smile that never left his lips, the same that, thanks to him, has with time shaped mine. And who knows why, among his many tales, one especially comes to mind. It's well known that in small towns everyone has a nickname. My father's, inherited from my grandmother Teresa, was o' riso (a contraction of "the smile") because, people said, neither knew how not to smile.
The proportions were those classic for gnocchi but a bit stiffer (down South we like them like this). I'd say more than a half kilo of flour per kilo of potatoes, but that's up to you. Once the gnocchi were done, he'd move on to the sauce: He'd gild a few cloves of garlic in olive oil and then add tomatoes, cooking rapidly to keep the flavors intact. A pinch of salt, and then, with the burner off, a goodly handful of fresh, hand-torn basil leaves. Then he'd boil the gnocchi and season them with most of the sauce, stir in quite a bit of coarsely diced mozzarella di bufala, a healthy grating of pecorino, and put them in terracotta bowls, topping each with more tomato sauce, a little more mozzarella, another grating of pecorino, and a drizzle of olive oil. Then into a hot oven, for about a half hour.
In a few more years there's going to be another child where those three were. A child who won't see the preparation of gnocchi, but perhaps a risotto or something else…. Her eyes, however, at the sight of her father's hands, will be filled with the same wonder mine were then.
Lucrezia, may you always have a sense of wonder equal to that I see now in your father's eyes.
Teresa's recipe assumes you have made gnocchi and tomato sauce. If you haven't, here are further instructions for the former and the latter.
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Good Food &
Drink,
Kyle Phillips
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