Livorno, and The Best of Rosh Hashanahs

This is going to be a long and slightly disjointed issue, so let's get going. First of all, a belated best of Rosh Hashanahs to those who celebrate the holiday. As I've noted before, though people wouldn't think so, given the presence of the Vatican, Italy has always had a significant Jewish population -- the urban Roman Jewish community at the time of Tiberius (14-37 AD) is estimated to have been 60,000 strong, and many Jews fleeing persecutions elsewhere in Europe settled in the Peninsula during the Renaissance; Ferrara, Venice, and Rome, among other towns, had flowering communities. So did the Tuscan port of Livorno, which boasted a beautiful synagogue that was destroyed during the war. You can see photos and drawings of it, however, in the new Synagogue (built by the Italian state on the site of the old one, in Piazza Benamozegh), which may look futuristically '60sish from the outside, but is awe-inspiring inside -- the architect wanted to capture the feel of a tent in the Desert and did so beautifully, with acoustics that must make services very moving. The bimah (the pedestal from which the Torah scrolls are read) is made from marbles recovered from the old Synagogue, and there's an extraordinarily rich Hekhàl (Ark, in English) carved by Angelo Scoccianti in 1608, from the Synagogue in Pesaro, whose Jewish community was smashed during the War. Downstairs there's a second, smaller Synagogue (because of the high ceiling, the it's difficult and expensive to heat the main Synagogue in the winter) with furnishings from other temples whose communities have scattered.

If you happen to be in Livorno -- a common stop for Mediterranean cruises -- a visit to the Synagogue (in the morning except Saturday; ring the bell of the Jewish Cultural center next door), followed by a stop at the central market, with its extraordinary fish and beautiful produce, a wander about the canals of the Quartiere Venezia (dug in the 1500s, when Florence built Livorno's port so as to have an alternative to Pisa, a historic enemy whose port happened to be filling in with silt), a stop at the Fortezza Medicea, and a meal at the Trattoria L'Antica Venezia (great Cacciucco; Via Dei Bagnetti 1, tel. 0586 887 353, closed Sundays) will be much more satisfying than either going to see Pisa's Piazza dei Miracoli or braving the crowds in Florence. In the afternoon? Villa Mimbelli hosts the Museo Fattori, a fine collection of Macchiaioli paintings (Tuscany's reply to the French impressionists), while the Terrazza Mascagni, on the waterfront not far from the museum, is a delightful Liberty (the Italian equivalent of Art Deco) terrace overlooking the sea.

Rosh Hashanah Desserts

Returning more towards food, Giuliana Ascoli Vitali-Norsa, author of La Cucina nella Tradizione Ebraica, says that, among other things, the standard Italian Rosh Hashanah meal will include ricciolini, triglie alla mosaica, polpettone di tacchino, fried yellow squash or other vegetables prepared without vinegar, and either a honey cake, sfratti, or apples and bananas cooked with rum. Ricciolini are pasta served in broth, a sort of noodle soup, while triglie alla mosaica are reef mullet cooked in a tomato sauce, sometimes with a jolt of hot pepper; you also find them referred to as triglie alla livornese, and by extension other kinds of fish cooked in this sauce can be called "alla livornese" too. Polpettone di tacchino is turkey loaf, and can be simple (the above link), but can also be extraordinarily refined.

Sfratti, she says, are a traditional Italian Rosh Hashanah sweet, and the combination of honey and nutmeats the recipe calls for does look quite old; the recipe's obvious sweetness also suggests age -- before the advent of readily available refined sugar, sweets were very prized and reserved for extremely special events, for example greeting the new year. You'll need:

For the filling:

18 ounces (500 g) honey

2 1/4 pounds (1 k) unshelled walnuts

Orange zest

A pinch each ground pepper, cloves and cinnamon

For the dough:

10 tablespoons white wine

5 tablespoons olive oil

1 1/2 cups (300 g) sugar

Flour

Begin by shelling the nuts and mincing the nutmeats with a little orange zest. Heat the honey with the spices, and when it reaches the thread stage slowly stir in the nuts and cook them in the honey over a low flame.

Unfortunately, Ms. Vitali-Norsa was writing for Jewish women who were familiar with the recipes, and assumes that her readers will know what the results should be like. Hence, she simply says to cook the honey-nut mix until done; I would cook the mixture until I have finished making the dough, and then remove it from the burner. She also omits the quantity of flour for the dough. You'll need enough to form a smooth, workable dough, which you'll want to knead well and roll out about an eighth of an inch thick. Next, she says, take tepid blobs or cylinders of the honey-nut mixture, wrap them in the dough, and form them into doughnuts or snakes -- in other words, once you have laid out equally spaced blebs of filling on the dough, cut the dough into rectangles, each with a bleb of filling, and roll them up to make tubes, either pinching the ends off to form snakes or twisting them around and pinching them together to form doughnuts. Once you are done rolling and shaping, bake the sfratti in a moderate (350 F, 175 C) oven until lightly browned.

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Dolce di Miele -- Honey Cake

Honey is common in Italy, and was once about the only really sweet substance readily available. It's not that common in recipes, however, I suspect because the sweetness of refined sugar, which is also much cheaper, is more consistent. It does add a distinctive touch, however. This recipe is also drawn from Giuliana Ascoli Vitali-Norsa's La Cucina nella Tradizione Ebraica and is again on the Rosh Hashanah menu:

• 3 cups (300 g) flour
• 1 cup honey
• 4 tablespoons sugar
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon baking powder or powdered yeast
• The juice of a half a lemon, plus the grated zest
• 1/2 cup hot water
• 2 tablespoons rum or cognac
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1/2 cup minced walnuts
• Cinnamon and cloves

Combine the honey and the sugar in the water, stirring until the sugar dissolves, then work in the remaining ingredients, adding the raisins and nuts last. Pour the mixture into a high-sided pan that you've oiled and lined with oiled paper, and bake it in a hot (200 C, 400 F) oven for about 45 minutes.

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Breaking the Fast of Yom Kippur

Finally, since the breaking of the Yom Kippur Fast is next week, here are Ms. Vitali-Norsa's Sumsum cookies, which she says are oriental in origin. You'll need:

2 eggs

2 tablespoons sugar

4 tablespoons olive oil

8 tablespoons flour, sifted with a tablespoon of baking powder or powdered yeast

2 cups sumsum (sesame seeds)

Mix the eggs, sugar and olive oil. Sift in the flour and then mix in the sesame seeds. Make balls of the mixture, set them on a lightly greased cookie sheet, and bake them in a hot (200 C, 400 F) oven until golden.

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Recipes from the Forum

Moving in another direction, there have been a number of interesting recipes posted on the forum of late. In particular, one person asked for an Easter bread recipe, and Peg Polevari replied:

Hi,

I believe the recipe that you're referring to is called Crescia. My family is 3rd generation Marchegian and we always have this bread at Easter and at Christmas. I hope that you enjoy it!

Crescia

• 1 pound Pecorino Romano cheese (finely grated)
• 1 dozen jumbo eggs (we always have used brown eggs)
• 3/4 stick melted butter (cool after melting)
• Wine glass of oil (LOL...the glass my Nonny used came to approximately 1/2 cup) I still use the same glass LOL
• Black Pepper
• Salt, a scant 1/2 tsp
• Yeast cake, 1/2 pound (I get my yeast from a local Italian bakery that also makes bread...just go in and ask for one pound of yeast...it comes frozen and you'll have to cut it in half and thaw)
• Flour (twice as much flour as you have cheese...you may need to add to this when you start mixing the dough...depending on the weather and the size of the eggs, which can make a difference)

Soften the yeast with lukewarm water.

Beat the eggs in a bowl. Mix in the butter, oil, and the yeast.

Grease a pan with shortening (the pan we use is the same one my Nonny used...a metal pan that is the size of what we call a Dutch oven type pan although my Uncle sometimes uses loaf pans)

Pour cheese and flour onto your board and mix together with black pepper until you see black specks (this is pretty much to taste as we like it peppery) add the salt and make a well in the center (if you're not used to using a board you can also use a HUGE bowl to mix it) Pour the liquid mixture in your well and start mixing the dry with the wet until you make a dough. This is where you may need to add more flour. Knead this very well. Put the dough into the greased pan and pat it down. Let it rise to the top of the pan (it might even be over the top) surface will bubble.

Bake approximately 1 hour at 350 degrees Fahrenheit, test by inserting a knife into the center...it should come out clean.

Sorry about some of the ingredient measurements being approximate but if you've ever used handed down recipes you'll understand.

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And here are a couple more from Aggie, who posted the artichoke dish in the last issue:

Microwaved eggplant

A non-Italian friend whose husband is Italian made a delicious eggplant recipe. She cut some slits in the eggplant, microwaved it until it was cooked. Then she cooled it off, sliced it in half the long way, scooped out the eggplant and mixed it with cream of mushroom soup, replaced the whole thing in the skin and baked it. Everyone loved it.

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Lemon Ice

This is a Lemon Ice recipe from a friend in CT who said it was passed down from her Italian ancestors. We have enjoyed it.

1 Cup sugar

4 Cups boiling water........dissolve the sugar in the water, cool.

Then add 3/4 Cup fresh lemon juice and 1 Tablespoon grated rind...do not grate the pith (white) or it will be bitter. Freeze in a tray, stirring the crystals about every now and then lest the ice freeze rock solid. When it's frozen scoop into little pleated cups and enjoy!

It comes closest to the lemon ice we had in Brooklyn when I was a little girl.

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Horsemeat, Culatello, and Il Trovatore

Got a letter from Bruce, who writes:

On a day trip to Parma, a town we loved, we ate at a charming restaurant: Il Trovatore.
We ordered the tasting special. It began with an assortment of salami and prosciutto, which was the best we had in Italy. We later learned there are different cuts of prosciutto and this was the cuore, the heart, I guess that's like the tenderloin. An amazing potato pasta ravioli dish. Then a secondo that was one of the best things we had during 2 weeks of one great meal after an other. It was kind of a vegetable stew with ground meat. I think it was called "La Vecchia" - but the menu also said this item was something about "cavallo". Is it possible it was horse meat? Or was it something about in the style eaten by horsemen. Either way it was great meal. And I never saw carne di cavallo in any of the butcher shops.

First of all, the white pages website says that the Ristorante Trovatore is in V. Affò Ireneo 2, 43100 Parma; Tel. 0521 236905.

Next, prosciutto is a salt-cured ham, and as a rule is the whole ham, which can be either boned or not. What Bruce was served was more likely culatello, a delicacy Burton Anderson discusses in a chapter of his "Treasures of the Italian Table." According to Orlando Manetti, who wrote an interesting book about pork processing entitled "La Scienza del Maiale," it's actually the happy outcome of a mistake: a young man who was new to making prosciutto ruined one, and in attempting to salvage something (a whole ham is a lot to waste) cut out the major muscle, which Anderson terms filet, and processed it as if it were a prosciutto. The result was extraordinarily delicate, and people began to make it intentionally, cutting the filet free, salting it, trussing it up in a sheath to give it a pear-shape, and hanging it up to age for 8-12 months in farm buildings in the lowlands around Parma, where the winter fog and the molds on the walls impart tantalizing flavors.

Culatello is expensive, because the rest of the ham from which it comes cannot be cured, and also appeared doomed to extinction because the EEU health people had decided that the damp, moldy farm buildings filled with mist where the culatelli age are unsanitary. The attempts to make culatelli in the sterile environments demanded by the EEU proved unsatisfactory, and true culatello production went underground, with people making it furtively and dolling it out to a lucky few -- I've found it once or twice in spectacular delicatessens. Assuming Emilia Romagna has put it on the list of traditionally prepared foods to be exempted from the EEU health controls, we can hope it will reemerge. At which point we'll be able to enjoy it in Italy (the exempted foods cannot be exported), but at a price: in Emilia Romagna, two culatelli cost as much as the rest of the hog pot together.

With regards to cavallo, yes it was horse. The animals are raised specifically for human consumption, much like cattle, and the meat is sold by butchers who specialize in horse meat. It is, incidentally, extremely rich in iron; Italian doctors often prescribe it for their anemic patients.

Never had horse? If you live in California you'll have to go elsewhere, as I discovered when searching the web on the subject -- they've passed a law forbidding the sale of horsemeat for human consumption. Assuming you are elsewhere, here's Picula ad Caval, which sounds much like what Bruce enjoyed. The recipe is piacentina -- from Piacenza, which isn't far from Parma, and is drawn from Alessandro Molinari Pradelli's Grande Libro della Cucina Italiana. It will serve 6:

• 2 1/4 pounds (1 k) ground horsemeat
• 2 onions, minced
• 2 1/2 ounces (60 g) ground cured lard or pancetta
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 glass dry white wine
• 6 ripe tomatoes, blanched, peeled, seeded, chopped and drained
• 2 bell peppers, ribbed and seeded, then diced
• 2 tablespoons minced fresh herbs (basil, sage and rosemary in proportions to taste)
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• Salt & freshly ground pepper

Begin by heating the oil, lard and onion in a skillet; sauté until the onion has become golden 9don't let it really brown), then add the horsemeat and brown it, stirring it about frequently. When it has browned, sprinkle in the glass of wine, reduce the heat to barely a simmer, cover, and cook for at least an hour. Mix in the chopped tomatoes and diced peppers and continue cooking a half hour longer.

10 minutes before you remove the dish from the fire, sprinkle the minced herbs over everything. Serve it hot. Mr. Pradelli notes that some prefer to use broth rather than wine as the liquid, while I would suggest that this will work quite nicely with polenta..

Another suggestion for horsemeat would be pastissada de caval, a tasty stew made in Verona.

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Thoughts on the weather

Finally, a couple more words on the weather, with an eye towards the vintage. Last week the northeast was hammered by rain and hail, which took out much of the apple crop in Trentino's Val di Non. They didn't say anything about vineyards, but those that still have grapes on the vines (the harvest has been extremely early this year because of the dry summer) probably got brushed by it if not worse. This week there have been heavy rains, which will again probably affect some people. It's going to be an interesting vintage to evaluate, with considerable high points and the possibility of serious lows as well.

Sorry this has gone on at such length, but there was lots of ground to cover. A presto,
Kyle Phillips
Webweaver, About Italian Cuisine

PS -- Send a card from the Italian Cuisine Post Office!

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