When you’re Italian, even summer barbecues take on different meaning: it’s never just hamburgers, hotdogs, potato and macaroni salad from the local deli for us. Aside from the fact that the salads are homemade and we use the recipes with real mayonnaise that my grandmother somehow learned 75 years ago, burgers and dogs are evening snacks after the grilled steak, ribs, chicken and sausage. And of course, and there’s always something Italian on the menu, and I don’t necessarily mean pasta.
So you probably wonder about the barbecue story behind this because, after all, my recipes always come with that! The barbecues I remember years ago took place at my grandparents’ house and though my grandparents were Italian, they were both born in the US and behaved more like Americans in so many ways, except of course when it came to food… oh, and the backyard: between my grandfather’s handmade cement-based clothes line where my grandmother dried zucchini strips in curls for an antique Calabrese recipe and his imported marble statues and hand-built fountains spraying water, you would think you were vacationing in Rome’s Tivoli Gardens! On those occasions when we went to Grandma and Grandad’s house for 4th of July or Labor Day, the Iannuzzi Gardens were in full display: red, hot (and mean looking) pepper plants were growing in cement pots on the outer terrace, Italian music was piped outside and playing loudly, littleneck clams were chilling on ice in the outdoor kitchen sink, the watermelon laced with anisette was brewing in one of the fountains and my grandfather could be found tinkering in the basement with the water pumps or on his originally designed spit for the charcoal barbecue grill that they would use to roast beef.
If I haven’t already told you, Grandad was a mechanic and an inventor and with just an 8th grade education, a self-made businessman who manufactured steel parts used by the US Navy, Westinghouse and the Verrazano Bridge. His eccentric genius afforded him a fairly luxurious lifestyle in a very prestigious neighborhood where clothes lines and fountains were not indigenous. Grandma was a beautiful, sweet, dignified lady who grew into her role of the successful businessman’s wife intelligently and gracefully, socializing with women from all backgrounds. With her innate interest and talent for Italian homestyle cooking, came the natural ability for cooking authentic, delicious recipes of different ethnicities supplied by these women she met, hence the origin of our American potato salad, stuffed cabbage, icebox cake and a variety of other delicacies. So while Grandad was tinkering, Grandma was putting the finishing touches on the barbecue’s menu and as we arrived, I would find her preparing the Bermuda onion salad that would accompany the thin sliced boneless club (ribeye) steaks that were waiting to be grilled, still wrapped in the brown butcher paper. Only one small part of our menu, these steaks were served on a sandwich with a seeded Kaiser roll and the Bermuda onion salad which has now become my family’s staple at every barbecue. Even when the steaks weren’t there, the onions were and they have become the perfect accompaniment for hamburgers and hotdogs too. This is one of our heirloom recipes I am providing below so I ask that you treasure it.
Once the steaks were grilled, everything for the time being, was ready to go. The adults sat at the concrete table and benches while the kids sat at a nearby folding table on the patio that had its very own double fountain with a bridge between. During this session, before the hotdogs and hamburgers, we laughed and talked and drank while eating the sausage and peppers, steak sandwiches with Grandma’s Bermuda Onion salad, the homemade potato and macaroni salad, corn on the cob with butter and salt, tossed salad made with iceberg lettuce, red wine vinegar and more salt, and another Italian summer barbecue specialty that lives on in my family: tomato salad. As a kid, I ate very few tomatoes out of that salad in favor of the crusty Italian bread dunked into the indescribably delicious juices that the tomatoes made when mixed with the fresh basil, garlic and “dalianeed” peppers. Old habits die hard!
And then there was dessert, the best part for any kid though our dessert did not follow the path of tradition. The spiked watermelon is something I will never ever forget, or duplicate. My grandfather would drill a small hole into the watermelon manually with a drill crank and drizzle anisette into it first thing in the morning, then leave it in the cold fountain water all day until it was time for dessert, which, due to the thin fleshiness of the fruit, enabled the liquor to completely permeate it. As the women brewed the espresso, Grandad sliced and plated the watermelon so that when it was joined at the table with the freshly brewed black coffee, kid or no kid, you wanted both. The smell completely surrounded us and one slice of watermelon was never enough for anyone. Ironically Grandad was never really sitting there enjoying this with the rest of the family because he was on to his next mechanical exercise, making the homemade strawberry ice cream. With fresh strawberries, cream and lots of ice on hand, he and my father took turns cranking the old wooden “machine” with the stainless steel top until we had the perfect dessert. Although I am a chocolate lover, I have to say that there was no ice cream that ever tasted so good.
Fully satisfied, the kids would spend the rest of the day into evening running around the yard, taking another dip in the fountains and catching lightening bugs; I liked to lay down on the chaise lounge in the screen porch and listen to the sounds that, I have to admit, would sometimes lull me to sleep. Grandad could be found sitting in a lawn chair in the midst of his Roman empire, toothpick hanging out of his mouth, with his head falling to the side as he nodded on and off. My uncles and father would be rehashing funny stories about the factory that granddad owned and where they worked while Grandma and the ladies did a lot of clean up. When dusk set in, the grill would go back on, the hotdogs, hamburgers, Bermuda onion and tomato salads making a final appearance before the party came to a close.
Bermuda Onion Salad
1 large Bermuda onion, peeled, and diced
2 T. Oregano
¼ cup of red wine vinegar
1 tsp. Salt
Touch of olive oil
Mix all ingredients in a bowl several hours before serving to enable the juices to release their flavors.
Serve at room temperature.
Tomato Salad
6 large ripe tomatoes
2 cubanelle peppers
1 hot green Italian pepper (optional)
2 cloves of garlic
Fresh basil to taste (I like alot so I would put about 6 large leaves)
Sea Salt
Olive Oil
Cut the tomatoes into quarters and each quarter into 2 or 3 pieces crosswise. Place in a large bowl.
Slice the peppers in half, scoop out the seeds, and slice each half into 4 slices, then cut each slice into bite size pieces and add to the tomatoes.
Slice the garlic and add to the bowl; tear the basil leaves in half and add. Sprinkle with sea salt and drizzle with extra virgin olive oil. Add a drop of water and toss. Refrigerate for no more than one hour before serving or add a couple of ice cubes to cool off. When mixed with the tomatoes, the water and ice creates this delicious juice that is just asking to be sopped up with crusty Italian bread.
I'm back... at least for now. Since I bought these today - 2 for $1.00 at Wegmans, this great store in Princeton, NJ where I am currently working - I've been inspired to contribute to my blog again so here goes.
Clue: They're strangely beautiful, like a tropical flower; bland and yet somewhat exotic in taste; and a bitch to clean and prepare with their thorny and tough outter leaves and inner choke. When I was a kid, my family were the only people I knew who ate them, always stuffed with breadcrumbs and covered in tomato sauce. My friends gaped at them in awe demanding to know just what they were while I scraped the stuffing and soft layer from each leaf with my front teeth to reach that creamy concentrated burst of flavor buried in the heart. Yeah, they mighta choked Artie but, like Stymie, they weren't gonna choke me.
Give up? If you guessed artichokes, you were right. Even though we always ate them the same way, I loved artichokes then and I love them more now and I have my life in Italy to thank for that.
In the motherland, artichokes are not just artichokes - they're "carciofi," pronounced car-choe-fee, a word that sounds just like what they might do if the preparer doesn't take care. But there's nary a choke in those equisite carciofi, regardless of whether they're Roman or Jerusalem. When I saw Italian artichokes for the first time, my husband and I were visiting his aunt in Sicily and there were a bunch of them, "un mazzetto," propped in a bucket of water on her terrazzo, long-stemmed and full flowered, like peonies about to bloom. Aside from their "cuter" look, they were softer than the artichokes I was used to - those outter leaves weren't so thick, tough or thorny in Italy so although cleaning them was time consuming and a "bitch" as I lovingly say, the process was precise, helping to create a pretty perfect dish that was always worth the work. And once that part of the preparation was complete, the rest was usually a piece of cake because in Italy, carciofi are made in so many ways, each one more delicious than the next, far exceeding our traditional stuffed and sauced variety.
The first kind of carciofi I made were Roman style which I learned, among other things, in the Regional Italian Cooking Class, Lazio Region, I took through the American Women's Club of Rome. These classes met once a week for the entire day, a different region for each class spanning over a couple of months for the northern regions, a couple of months for the south, and it was quite an excursion! On cooking days, I'd put my kids on the school bus and my friend would borrow my husband's BMW, (I couldn't drive stick), to drive us the 45-60 minutes north of Rome to Lake Bracciano. The ride would often include us crying over the heart wrenching Italian music playing on the radio,even if we didn't understand all the words, stopping along the side of the road to buy "cheap" porcini or making a detour for an always perfect cappuccino in a ceramic cup! We didn't dilly dally much though because we were anxious meet with the other students and instructors to learn about the history of the week's particular region, follow the recipes to work in teams preparing various specialties and then spending the rest of the day sitting at a beautifully set table eating the dishes we cooked, sampling the wines of the region for each course, while surrounded by the beautiful scenery and distinct smells of the food, the lake around the restaurant, and Italy in general. No matter what you think, Italy does smell differently from New York and every once in a while, I get a whiff of Rome as I stroll up Fifth Ave. that makes me want to just stand perfectly still while my mind wanders back 15 years...
But back to the artichokes, thanks to the Lake Bracciano cooking classes, cleaning artichokes became a science to me that I use to this day:
- take off the tough, dark, outter leaves (and there weren't many),
- cut the top of the artichoke to discard the thorny tips and the stem, discarding the 1/4" at the end of the stem.
- Pull the artichoke open and use a demitasse spoon to remove the choke, (again, not much there)
- rub the cut leaves and the base with a lemon and put both the artichoke and cut stem into a pot with acidulated water while cleaning the rest of the artichokes.
So did the many different ways to prepare them. At Lake Bracciano, I learned how to cook Roman style carciofi, stuffed with pancetta and mint. But that wasn't where it stopped - in restaurants I had delicious and light homemade fettuccine noodles with artichokes and cream; risotto with sauteed artichokes, and best of all, carciofi alla guidia - deep fried and smashed with the back of a wooden spoon, drained and fried again artichokes that, with just the right amount of sea salt, just dissolve in your mouth with eat bite. I never did muster up the stamina to cook those but they are the first thing I want when I touch down on Italy's hollowed ground.
Well, I have 6 artichokes waiting to be cleaned and cooked, a $3.00 investment. I'm doing them Roman style.
Carciofi alla Romana
4 artichokes
2 1/2" slices of round pancetta
3 cloves of garlic minced
2 T. chopped mint
1/2 c. dry white wine
2 T. extra virgin olive oil
Salt and Pepper
Water to almost cover
Prepare the artichokes as I now do regularly, described above.
Slice the pancetta and cut it crosswise to make small cubes
Randomly stuff the pancetta into the artichoke leaves, pulling the artichoke open. Do the same with the chopped garlic and mint.
Put the artichokes into a pot large enough to hold all four in an upright position. When the stem is removed, the artichokes should remain flat in the pot. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, drizzle olive oil and wine over the artichokes and fill water halfway up the artichokes. Cover and let boil; then lower heat and cook till tender, adding more water if needed.
NOTE: Cut the artichokes into quarters and sautee in a frying pan with all the same ingredients, replacing the mint with parsley. While simmering, add the prepackaged cream sauce, panna, found in Italian specialty shops and deli's. Toss this sauce with pasta.
