Italian Jewish Cooking
By Mira Sacerdoti
As a Jewish girl growing up in Italy between the wars, Mira Sacerdoti had to endure the increasingly antagonistic climate set by the Fascists, which culminated with the enactment of the race laws in 1938. Though life was difficult, it didn't become dangerous until the Italian surrender in 1943, at which point the Nazis began deporting Italian Jews from the sections of Italy they still controlled.
Mira Sacerdoti and her mother were among the fortunate; they managed to get to Korcula, an island in the Adriatic off Yugoslavia, and though German airplanes occasionally strafed their town they were otherwise left alone. After the war she returned to a changed land -- families were scattered and entire communities had vanished.
One unexpected victim of the tragedy was Italian Jewish cooking; it was primarily family oriented, and almost entirely passed on from mother to daughter, aunt to niece. Many of the younger women establishing families had been too young to cook before the war and now had nobody to turn to. Mira, on the other hand, still had her mother to learn from and remembered the dishes prepared by her aunts and neighbors. Once her children were grown they asked her to write down the recipes they had loved in childhood. She did, under the title Italian Jewish Cooking.
The book is delightfully written, with many anecdotes, some funny and some
sad, comments and explanations that both Gentiles and Non-Italkim Jews will
find helpful, lots of recipes covering the entire gamut of Italian Jewish
cooking (the emphasis is North-Eastern, because that's where she was from), and
menus for the major Jewish holidays. A book that's fun to cook from and also
fun to read; highly recommended and well worth seeking out.
A sample recipe, which will serve 6:
Salame di Spinaci -- Spinach Roll
- For the pasta:
- 2 eggs
- 2 cups flour
- For the filling:
- 2 1/4 pounds spinach
- 3/4 cup unsalted butter
- 3/4 pound fresh ricotta (the kind sold by delicatessens)
- 2 cups freshly grated Parmigiano
- 1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
- Salt & pepper to taste
- Melted butter and more grated cheese for the serving dish
Combine the eggs and flour and knead the resulting dough until it is smooth and quite elastic, between 10 and 15 minutes.
Wash the spinach, chop it coarsely, and sauté it for a few minutes in the butter. Then reduce the flame, cook it for about 10 minutes more, and let it cool. Work the ricotta with a fork until it is soft, then stir in the spinach, nutmeg, and Parmigiano, and season the mixture to taste with salt and pepper.
Roll the dough into a rectangle that's dime-thin. Spread the spinach mixture evenly over the sheet of dough and roll it up into a log. Wrap the log in a linen cloth and tie it at both ends and in the middle. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil and carefully lay the log in flat. When the water resumes boiling cover the pot, reduce the flame, and simmer the log for 20 minutes. Remove it with care, untie the strings, open the cloth, cut the log into half-inch slices, and lay them on a warmed serving dish. Sprinkle the slices with a little more butter, dust them with some cheese, and serve.
Publishing Info:
Trade Paperback
272 Pages
Hill of Content Publishing, April 1994
ISBN: 0855722088
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