When asked if I’d like to contribute a family recipe from Abruzzo to a charity cookbook, my first answer was, of course! That it will be helping save the dwindling population of Marsican brown bears in Abruzzo – wonderful! And that my recipe will be alongside those the likes of Niko Romito, a 3x Michelin star chef, Vincenzo’s Plate and food journalist, Rachel Roddy of the Guardian, I suddenly quaked. Ma dai! Really?! 👀
After some thought, the recipe I couldn’t go past is, Maccheroni alla chitarra with wild greens. I’ve known this dish from when I was a little girl, have cooked and eaten it in both Italy and Australia and it has ties to my Abruzzo ancestry going back more than 600 years. It’s also a lovely connection to Bisnonna Maddalena and Nonno Anni recalling her foraging for wild greens on hillsides around Fossa and carrying them in her apron back to the kitchen. (‘Maccheroni’ is the original Abruzzese name used for this dish, while in Italy’s north where maccheroni is a short pasta, it’s called ‘spaghetti alla chitarra’.)
Pictured for the cookbook is my chitarra – made of beechwood and strung with steel wires, which are ‘tuned’ like a guitar. A sheet of fresh pasta is laid across the wires and pressed through with a rolling pin. One side creates thin strands with a square profile, the other side, wider strands, like fettucine, as I’ve made here. In the little vases (old inkpots!) are some edible greens I picked – yes, I went foraging in the backyard, not quite the Abruzzo hillsides but I was amazed how much it yielded (and I double-checked they were safe to eat – dandelion leaves, cobbler’s pegs, purslane among them).
The napkin I chose is one Nanna Francesca brought me back from Italy many years ago and the fork is from a cutlery set bought in L’Aquila in 1970 by a Fossa relative, Pierina who gave it my parents who passed it down to me. Once you start delving into it, it’s incredible how much history can end up in sitting down to a bowl of pasta! 💚🍝 xxx
* An Abruzzo invention, the ‘chitarra’ dates back to at least the 1800s, its ancestor being a rolling pin with notches in it that cut the pasta into the wider strands. (Chitarra may be found in many shops, markets and online.) Will keep you posted when the cookbook is available. 😊
In recent weeks, I’ve had some unexpected serious health news with a bit of a cancer scare. It’s all happened quite swiftly and following numerous tests, I’ve had abdominal surgery, been in hospital and am now back at home in what I’m told will be a six-week recovery. I’m extremely relieved and grateful to say that it was caught in time, I am in the clear and recovering well so far.
Spaghetti squash… a sunny winter vegetable. It grows on a vine like pumpkin and has yellow, star-shaped blossoms that only open for one day. Love how, once tender, you can gently fork the strands from the sides to create spaghetti in its own bowl.
On the kitchen table… a couple of pumpkins we bought from a farmer’s roadside ute near Esk. I love being able to buy straight from a farm ingredients that are in season at their peak and pumpkins even have autumn colours! These will help make many meals but my first thought was pumpkin and ricotta crespelle with crispy sage leaves and a little Parmigiano on top. (Luckily Roger is a fine maker of crespelle, crepes, or scrippelle as they’re called in Abruzzo.)
The Italian saying, ‘Prendere due piccioni con una fava’ – catch two pigeons with one fava bean – sounds slightly kinder than ‘kill two birds with one stone’ but its meaning, ‘achieve two aims at once’ is the same. It’s fave (broad bean) time again here and they’re particularly fresh, sweet and earthy tasting at present.
‘Gallina vecchia fa buon brodo’ – an old hen makes good broth as the Italian saying goes, for it brings age and experience in the magic of food being medicine and comfort. (A good quality, free range chicken who’s led a pleasant, kind life in the outdoors and lived a bit longer is good too.) It’s been a while since I’ve roasted a whole chicken and made broth, something Granny Maddalena did as one of her remedies as the village witch. (Her chicken soup was said to cure her son, Elia from typhoid when a doctor couldn’t.)
January 6th – Epiphany and the visit of la Befana, the wise men and women and marking the end of 12 days of Christmas. Whatever your beliefs, ‘epiphany’ is a lovely word with connotations of insight, discovery and a sudden understanding of something that is very important to you.
In another Italian tradition… after learning about Abruzzese pizze fritte – its song and secret recipe handed down from mother-to-daughter (and sometimes son), but only on New Year’s Eve – Roger and I decided to end the year by cooking these.
Except, not knowing all of the secret recipe that contains anise and saffron, we decided to make our own version with toppings of basil pesto and crispy prosciutto, bufala di mozzarella, melanzane, tomato and basilico leaves from the garden. The fritte were also cooked in a wok and finished in the oven, which worked well, but isn’t quite traditional! Yet they were delicious and I loved thinking about their connection with Abruzzo.
If it otherwise means not following a tradition at all because it’s too hard or the recipe is lost, perhaps it’s okay to adapt them at times. For that becomes part of our history too, all of us adapting here and there along the way over the years, while still understanding what is important overall. Tanti auguri di felicità per l’Epifania! Many wishes of happiness for Epiphany! xxx
Nonno Anni told me when he received an orange for Christmas during his childhood in the 1920s, he treasured it. I knew he and his Mum were poor and village life in Italy was hard at that time, especially with his father far away in Australia to seek work, but an orange… I couldn’t quite believe it when I found this out as a child in the 1970s and oranges were so easy to get then. But fresh oranges were considered treasures before refrigeration and faster transport. Especially at Christmas considering that since ancient times, oranges have been said to bring joy, good luck and to ward off evil. (What must Nonno Anni have thought once he had a whole display of oranges at his fruit shop and milk bar!)
If I’m honest, Christmas isn’t always the easiest time for me as it feels bittersweet with the happiness of those present mingled with the quiet of those unable to be or now gone. But food is so special in that certain dishes can trigger those lovely memories of people dear to us no matter how long it may be since we’ve seen them and this year, I feel happy that oranges can bring that little bit of sunshine.
Warmest wishes and thank you for your lovely support and messages throughout the year. May 2020 be filled with light and some happiness no matter what else it may bring! Wishing you tante belle cose – many beautiful things, Zoe xx
When we cook the same dishes that our ancestors cooked it connects us to them, to our history and it also brings us back to something within ourselves that we mightn’t have thought of for some time or something we hadn’t yet discovered. Just the aroma of a dish cooking can release a trigger of deep memories that lets things rise up and take shape in us.
The maccheroni Calabrese (pasta rolled on a knitting needle for its shape) has a richer red sauce with melanzane and chillies that Francesca’s town of Palmi is known for. And the chitarra pasta has bitter, wild greens added to the passata, inspired by Maddalena walking hillsides near Fossa picking wild greens into her upturned apron and taking them back to cook with. It also has pecorino cheese on top because that part of Abruzzo is known for its sheep.
These lovelies are some baking treats from having more time in the kitchen of late (and there’s been some fiascos as well as triumphs, I admit!) Roger is the scone baker in our house so gets credit for these. He likes following set recipes, while I’m more of a ‘bit of this and that’ cook, assessing as I go. The last time I baked scones was in a school ‘home economics’ class where the teacher said my hands were too warm for the dough (cool hands are better so scones aren’t tough apparently).
Amazing how a much longed-for pour of rain a few days ago has brought about a basil forest in the vegie patch! So, it’s all things basil for a bit with this beautiful harvest… homemade pizza with basil, tomato and mozzarella, basil pesto with orecchiette and crispy prosciutto, as well as bruschetta with basil, tomato and balsamic. (Any other ideas for basil are most welcome. As is a little more rain all round for everyone in Australia!) And I have to say that Costa 
The mysterious… spigarello, this ancient, Italian, wild green that seems also called cima di rapa, cavolo broccolo, getti di Napoli, spigariello and mistero nero. Some say it’s part of the broccoli family, others dispute it. I found this bunch at a roadside stall in southeast Queensland hinterland, a long way from southern Italy where for centuries women have picked and gathered into their upturned aprons this bitter green from the mountainsides.
A little while ago I mentioned some wood-smoked chillies that I’d bought from a roadside stall. I’m going to use some as a bit of a twist on pasta arrabbiata.
Making pasta alla chitarra just as my Abruzzese great-grandmother, Maddalena used to make. The shoebox-sized wooden box strung with steel wires must be ‘tuned’ like a guitar (chitarra). A sheet of pasta is laid over the strings and pressed through with a rolling pin, slicing it into strips. And the pasta sauce is like the ‘gravy’ Nanna Francesca cooked (with a few extra greens I added!)
A decadent version of little pizzas with the fluffy dough fried then oven-baked – pizzette fritte. {Apparently, considered the way pizzas were first made.} They are very light and if made well in the traditional way, should not absorb the olive oil.
Slow-roasted artichokes, fennel and red onion… perhaps not as pretty as when in their natural state {see link below} but a little more tasty. These I roughly chopped to similar sizes and slow-roasted for about an hour drizzled with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and a sprinkling of salt, brown sugar, smoked paprika and rosemary leaves.
Home-baked focaccia with rosemary from the garden and Australian-grown garlic and olive oil. Although I had a very brief knead of the dough, the credit all goes to Roger for this one. A lovely way to eat it is to make tramezzini by slicing the focaccia in half, spreading the inside of each piece with basil pesto and then for the filling, adding pieces of grilled haloumi, slices of barbecued eggplant marinated in olive oil, ripe tomatoes, a handful of rocket, roasted capsicum and thinly-sliced, roasted pumpkin.
I had never tasted this before but decided to make it anyway. Sliced fennel, orange segments, a drizzle of olive oil and some salt may sound like a curious combination of flavours but I was pleasantly surprised. Delicious on its own or great accompaniment to slow roasted lamb.
For my Great-Granny Maddalena’s frittata, the main ingredients were eggs, some salt and flat-leaf parsley. She also used a lot of olive oil (her frittata never stuck to the pan!)
My Italian grandmother made these all the time so I thought it fitting to serve them on one of her Florentine, painted wooden serving trays on the terrazzo table that sat on my grandparents’ patio for decades.
Saw these sweet, baby capsicums at the market and couldn’t resist buying them, though I wasn’t sure how I was going to cook them. Decided to stuff the capsicums with a mixture of seasoned goat’s cheese, pine nuts, parsley and basil, then bake in the oven. Served with some crusty bread on the side…
Zoë Boccabella 