New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
20,000 cooks keep Italian cuisine fresh
Two years ago, in an effort to offer an opportunity for readers of this column to gather in a common venue of interest, Sonny Martone, Jane Scarpellino and I organized a Facebook group called Wooster Square Cooks. It was intended to provide an informal virtual gathering place for us to celebrate our wonderful cooking heritage.
The group has now grown to 20,000 members, many of whom check in each day to see the latest posting or seek some guidance on the best method of frying eggplant, or whether to fry or bake meatballs, or put them in the sauce raw.
The consistent theme is the level of pride that we all share in our love of the food that we were raised on: the delicious, hearty, and healthy meals, prepared with simple and fresh ingredients, that were presented on our family table day after day.
The desire to prepare those foods and offer them to the next generation to enjoy is one of the most compelling aspects of the group’s motivation to share and learn from each other. This is part of a desire, for many of us, to maintain a connection to our heritage and our traditions, and to try to interest our children and grandchildren in accepting the challenge.
During the time of the great wave of immigration, Wooster Square and the other Italian neighborhoods in New Haven were all enclaves of people who were new to this country and seeking support from each other. The one common thing they desired was to replicate the familiar food from their lives in Italy. And Wooster Square was a textbook example of the resourceful way that the newcomers were able to set up shop with familiar foods and goods.
The legend is that the traditional meatball that has been embedded into our national cuisine is the result of the thrifty Nonna, who used a lesser cut of meat to make a delicious addition to the Sunday ragù by chopping it up and adding flavorful ingredients.
The tavolo povero, which translates to poor table, represents the basis of the many traditional dishes that have been absorbed into our American cuisine. In our store at 460 Chapel St., my parents sold the foods that were integral to the typical meal. All the vegetables were fresh and seasonal, and everything that we sold was usually destined for the meal that night. A delicious meal could be made from dried beans or chickpeas — ceci — and macaroni, some greens sautéed in olive oil or fresh local fish, baked or fried.
Every housewife knew how to create something flavorful out of the simplest of ingredients: eggplant, peppers, root vegetables or especially verza or Savoy cabbage, and the large orange squash or cucuzza, which was usually sold in chunks. Soups made from a few pieces of chicken or beef made a hearty meal with the addition of some small macaroni or pastina.
Meat was not usually the star of the meal, except perhaps the Saturday night steak as a reward for the weekly paycheck. I can still visualize that store in my mind’s eye, bursting with the fall bounty, and the women selecting their daily supply of fresh ingredients. Abbondanza!
Of course, preserving the summer bounty was a fall ritual, and just about everyone I knew put up pickled eggplant, peppers and the ubiquitous tomatoes, peeled, cooked down and then poured into thin-necked bottles and capped for use throughout the winter. Usually done in a large basin over an outdoor fire, it was always a family event, with the children allowed to use the machine that secured metal caps on the bottle top. All the local farmers, at the wholesale market on Spring Street, would pack bushel baskets of vegetables for that purpose.
And, of course, the first apples would appear. Mr. Young would stop by our store with his truck loaded with boxes of Delicious and Mcintosh apples from his orchard. One of the most iconic harbingers of fall would be the appearance of locally grown fennel or finocchio, sold in bunches with the long fronds cascading behind. Some would dry the stems and use them to flavor the porchetta for a special-occasion dinner, but we just enjoyed eating the bulbs raw, as a digestivo. And, of course, the first chestnuts would arrive from Italy in sacks, dark and plump, waiting to be roasted and eaten after Sunday dinner.
Some of our friends would venture out to water company property to forage for wild mushrooms, which were considered a delicacy. Legend had it that if you dropped a silver coin into the pot as the mushrooms were being boiled, a darkened coin would signal bad mushrooms. But of course the mushroom pickers always harvested the same edible varieties, so no one ever got poisoned as far as I know.
Wine making was also prevalent, and we sold the special varieties of California grapes for those who enjoyed homemade wine throughout the year. Mr. Russo, who had a laundry on Hamilton Street, rented wine presses to facilitate the process.
Of course, who would have ever thought that the simple bread dough pizzas, reminiscent of the Neapolitan classics, created by the early innovators, would morph into New Haven apizza, known around the globe as the best of the best. I try to remind myself, from time to time, how fortunate we are to live here, where the apizza is beyond comparison. We judge one against the other, but they all excel by comparison to the pizza that others have to choose from.
So how can we not think back on those times with fondness and an appreciation for the simplicity of a way of life that is long gone. A way of life however, with an occasional resurgence whenever we stop to cook a familiar food or tell a story or share a fond memory from that time.