La Festa
THE SPRING FEASTS
ST. JOSEPH’S DAY
The theme of this “blog” came to me after an email exchange with my good friend John. It centered on his late mother Mary’s annual St. Joseph’s Day preparation of scarpella or St. Joseph Cakes as she called them. A tradition that John’s sisters continue to today. The feast is marked by the baking of special breads and/or the preparation of fried sweets all to mark a break in the Lenten fast as well the remembrance of St. Joseph.
The months of March and April contain two important dates in the Italian Roman Catholic Church’s liturgical calendar. One, the March 19 Feast of St. Joseph, and of course Easter which is a “movable feast” depending on the first full moon occurring on or after the vernal or Spring equinox. These feast days are filled with both liturgical ceremonies as well as the preparation of special foods to heighten the celebrations. The spring equinox is one of the four great solar festivals of the year. Day and night are of equal lengths. This balance marks the beginning of nature providing the earth with more life-giving light. Critical obviously for agricultural societies and resultant astronomical observations in both early Judeo-Christian societies as well as pagan cultures. Nor is the celebration of the first day of Spring limited to Western traditions. Many cultures throughout present and past civilizations mark the rites of spring with a variety of revelries both secular and religious.
The importance of St. Joseph’s Day in the Italian and Italian American culture cannot be overemphazied. As the foster father of Christ St. Joseph is the patron saint of fathers, families and workers. Until Italy’s recent past the date also marked the observance of “Father’s Day”.
As mentioned, St Joseph’s feast day serves as a break from the eating restrictions of Lent. This results in some sweet indulgences. Despite their different names and regional variations, the many delicious pastries of the day are invariably fried such as our scarpella, other forms are filled with egg cream or ricotta or the soft and spongy sfingi and ricotta-stuffed cassateddi of Sicily. Filled zeppole are a common St. Joseph Day specialty sold in modern Italian American bakeries.
Below is a reduced version of Mary’s wonderful scarpella. It is to be enjoyed warm and with coffee if possible. You couldn’t get enough! It is interesting to note that in Mary’s Scarpella recipe she mentions that as a young girl once the delicacies were ready to eat, she would be asked to distribute some to friends and neighbors to honor St. Joseph.
Thus, the ritual continued.
Zeppole
Celebrating knows no bounds
MARY’S SCARPELLA
For small serving batch
Ingredients
· 3 ½ cups flour
· 4 large eggs
· 0.5 Teaspoons salt
· 0.25 Teaspoon cinnamon
· 0.25 Teaspoon cloves
· 1 Tablespoon butter (melted)
· 1.25 Teaspoon yeast (dissolved)
· Granulated sugar for dipping
· Olive oil for frying
Directions
Mix dry ingredients, beat eggs thoroughly add melted butter and dissolved yeast. Mix dry ingredients and slowly add the wet to beat in mixer….to reach elastic consistency. You can add a small amount of warm water until dough is elastic yet easy to handle. Set aside and let rise until it doubles in size…. push dough down and let it rise again. Heat oil to 350 degrees…. drop one tablespoon of dough at a time into hot oil until golden brown. Remove and dip into fine granulated sugar, serve warm with hot coffee!
In addition to the cream filled pastries St. Joseph’s bread is also a customary food that marks the celebration. In parts of Sicily, altars are decorated almost entirely with so-called pani votivi, or votive breads; intricately-shaped bakes in various sizes and shapes that are arranged around an image of the Holy Family. Outside the home, 'St Joseph's bread’ may be distributed from house to house or donated to the local church. As you can see the tradition of passing the bread among friends and neighbors is timeless.
Those of you who have read my prior blogs know that I try to link modern Italian and Italian American feasts and their food to the early Roman indulgences and the recipes as recorded by our ancient gastronome Apicius. The countless fascinating food rituals surrounding the spring equinox derive from both ancient pagan and early Christian customs. Historians tell us that in ancient Rome, the 10-day rite in honor of Attis, son of the great goddess Cybele, began on March 15th. A pine tree, which represented Attis, was chopped down, wrapped in a linen shroud, decorated with violets and placed in a sepulcher in the temple. On the Day of Blood or Black Friday, the priests of the cult gashed themselves with knives as they danced ecstatically, sympathizing with Cybele in her grief and helping to restore Attis to life. Two days later, a priest opened the sepulcher at dawn, revealing that it was empty and announcing that the god was saved. This day was known as Hilaria or the Day of Joy, a time of feasting and merriment.
EASTER
Of all the observances in the Christian and Roman Catholic liturgy only Christmas can compare to Easter. These are the “high holy days”. Their celebration is again a reminder of the spring fertility rites which were the supreme rituals of ancient pagan calendars, especially Rome.
On the agricultural calendar flocks of baby lambs begins to appear in Italian fields as spring arrives. As Carol Field explains, “It is just in time for them to become the succulent centerpieces of a traditional Easter dinner. Lamb is one of the great delicacies of a pastoral culture, but as a symbol of innocence it is also the sacrificial dish par excellence. Since 1500 the food of Easter has been the food of the Last Supper, the ultimate meal in gastronomy in history; lamb( the symbol of Christ), bread (from grain, the gift of the pagan god Demeter known in ancient Roman as the goddess Cybele) and wine (the blood of the earth a gift from the god Dionysius)
Today in Rome and for most Italian homes at Easter everyone consumes baby lamb in observance. The same is true in many if not most Italian American homes.
Our household Easter feast was an annual meal to remember. It consisted of the normal Sunday four or five courses…antipasti, lasagna for the secondi but the main course was always the Easter baby lamb. The weekend before my grandfather would have been driven to a nearby farm to personally select the baby lamb. He would have it killed and butchered. As an aside I should note that in our household neither my mother nor her parents ever learned how to drive. Yet meals were always prepared with fresh ingredients. The Italian tradition of using only fresh ingredients meant a daily walk to the market with a small shopping cart in tow!
As a young boy when my grandfather returned from the farm with the family’s lamb he also brought me a live rabbit or baby chicks. We were not a very pet friendly family for many practical and cultural reasons. So, my only “pets” were the Easter rabbits or baby chicks. But have no illusions once the spring moved into early summer the “pets” were delivered by my grandfather to the local poultry market to fulfill their destinies.
To this day I love to eat rabbit.
Of the various lamb delicacies that were prepared by my grandmother I will relate but two. Both harken to the typical Pasqua feasts of their rural home in Castel di Ieri. Both recipes are not exactly hers. I tried for many months to have her handwritten recipe book translated without success. Her script was too difficult to read even for trained Italian translators. However, these are very similar.
The first is Capuzzelle di Agnello or Lamb’s Head. It was eaten exclusively by my grandfather for many reasons not the least of which was his status as our head of household
Here is a recipe for this Italian Easter delicacy from Nonna’s Kitchen:
Ingredients
1 lamb's head, skinned and cleaned (cut in half and tied back together with twine)
4 ounces butter (melted or room temperature)
0.33 cup extra virgin olive oil0f
4 cloves garlic finely chopped
1.5 teaspoon oregano
0.5 teaspoon Kosher salt
0.5 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
0.25 cup red or white wine
Directions
Remove eyes and tongue of lamb's head.
Parboil lamb’s head and tongue fully submerged in pot of boiling salted water covering head for 10 minutes.
Leave tongue to simmer for 20-30 minutes longer in salted water. Remove, run under cold water, remove the outer tongue skin, or can be sliced into small slivers after cooked.
Return tongue to lamb's mouth.
Make a marinade by combining Butter (½ the amount), Olive oil (½ the amount), red wine, oregano, garlic, salt and pepper ingredients; pour over head while warm and marinate for 1 hour, turning occasionally.
Bake in a 325F oven for 1 1/2 hours, basting and turning over every 20-30 minutes.
Remove from oven and turn oven broiler on high.
Take the remaining butter (melted) and olive oil with a minced clove of garlic, salt and splash of wine mixed together. Pour half of this mixture onto the head put into the broiler about 6 inches from flame for about 5-10 minutes until minced garlic becomes lightly browned, turn over and put on the remaining mixture and again broil until lightly browned.
The second was one of my favorites. It is Costolette d’abbacchio fritte (Roman-Style Breaded Lamb Chops)
Simply delicious
Use a rack and trim it yourself, remove the fat.
This recipe is the closest to my grandmother’s delicious Easter lamb chops. It is from Memories of Angeline. It yields 4-6 servings.
Ingredients
8 rib baby lamb chops
Flour
3-4 eggs, beaten and seasoned with a pinch of salt
Breadcrumbs
Salt
Olive oil for frying
Lemon wedges for garnish
Directions
Trim the lamb chops of as much fat as you can, then flatten them with a meat pounder.
Holding them by their bone 'handle', pass each chop through the flour, egg and then the breadcrumbs. If you like a thicker crust, pass it through the egg and breadcrumb again.
Add olive oil to a skillet so it is about 1 cm (1/3 inch) deep, so that the oil can bubble up around the sides of the chops. They should not, however, 'deep' fry. Heat the oil until it is moderately hot and add the chops. Fry them gently until they are nice and golden brown on each side. Make sure the oil is only moderately hot, so they have time to cook inside.
As the chops are done, transfer them to a rack or a dish lined with paper towels. They are equally good served hot or at room temperature, sprinkled with best quality salt, with lemon wedges on the side.
The Italian and Italian American Easter table is filled with remembrances of ancient celebrations. Hard boiled eggs were eaten to break the Lenten fast and were dyed around 1400. They were wrapped in herbs, onion skins and flowers to impart color. Egg filled breads are also common. The eggs are inserted in the dough. The delicacies of Easter chocolate eggs also date back to the middle ages.
BUONA PASQUA
