By Sheilah Kaufman , Special to JTNews
Over 50 years ago, while I was growing up, my father did business with an international Italian company. One Friday night, my father brought home a visiting Italian business acquaintance. Since my mother had not expected a guest, she had made a Shabbat dinner for us (chicken soup, roasted chicken, challah, vegetables, cake). As we sat down to eat my father waited and waited before serving us.
Finally my father said to our guest: “Don’t you want to say grace?”
“Say grace?” the man replied. “I’m Jewish!”
We were stunned. None of us had ever thought about or heard of an Italian Jew. But the history of Jews in Italy goes back to before the Common Era. Jews arrived in Italy as traders, slaves, businessmen, and refugees. By the time of Tiberious (14-37 C.E.), there were many Jewish communities in Rome and throughout Italy.
Brodo con Polpette e Uova per Pesach (Passover Soup with Chicken Dumplings and Eggs)
“When I was a little girl, my family lived near a kosher chicken market,” writes Joyce Goldstein in Cucina Ebraica: Flavors of the Italian Jewish Kitchen (Chronicle Books). “We would select the chicken and the butcher would clean it while we waited. If we were lucky, inside there was a treasure of unborn eggs. I loved those tiny egg yolks, which we poached in chicken soup, because when I bit into them, they popped in my mouth. I remember them with great nostalgia, for today they are nowhere to be found.”
From Cucina Ebraica.
1 large whole boneless chicken breast, ground (about 2/3 pound)
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/3 cup matzoh meal
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Pinch of ground cinnamon
8 to 10 cups chicken broth
1/2 to 1 cup white rice
8 hard-cooked egg yolks, chopped
In a bowl, combine the ground chicken, beaten egg, matzoh meal, salt, pepper, and cinnamon. Form into walnut-sized balls. Refrigerate until ready to cook.
In a large saucepan, bring the chicken broth to a boil. Add rice and the chicken balls, cover, reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer until the rice and chicken balls are cooked, about 20 minutes. Ladle into shallow soup bowls and garnish with the hard-cooked egg yolks. Or if you like, separate raw eggs, reserving the whites for a Passover cake, and very carefully poach the yolks until semi-firm in the broth.
Serves 8
Caponata Con Peperoni
This sweet-and-sour eggplant with red bell pepper comes from a rural agriturismo (a bed and breakfast that is usually on a working farm) in Catania Province. It is one of Sicily’s most popular dishes and can also include other ingredients, even fish. It’s from Eat Smart in Sicily: A Travel Guide for Food Lovers by Joan Peterson and Marcella Croce (Ginkgo Press). Goes great with matzoh.
2 medium eggplants, 1-3/ 4 to 2 lbs. combined weight, unpeeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
1 large red bell pepper, deseeded and cut into 1-inch pieces
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1 stalk celery, finely sliced
1 Tbs. olive oil
2 Tbs. capers, drained
1/ 4 tsp. salt or to taste
2 Tbs. honey
6 Tbs. white vinegar
Heat the oil over high heat in a large, deep frying pan. Use enough oil to cover the eggplant so it does not become mushy. Slowly add eggplant to hot oil.
Deep fry until cubes are light brown and crispy, about 12 to 15 minutes. Remove from oil with a slotted spoon and drain well. Set aside.
Add pepper pieces to the same oil and fry about two to three minutes over high heat. Remove from oil, drain, pat dry, and set aside with eggplant.
Sauté onions and celery in a small frying pan in olive oil over medium heat until onion is translucent. Stir in capers and salt. Transfer onion mixture to a medium-sized frying pan without additional oil. Add eggplant and pepper and mix well. Stir in honey and vinegar. Cook and stir over medium heat until vinegar evaporates, about five minutes.
Serve at room temperature.
Serves 4.
Sea Bass Baked in a Salt Crust with Fresh Tomato Sauce
“When you are seated on the terrace of the Hotel Cipriani in Venice, sipping an Americano and gazing across the lagoon to St. Mark’s square, life can seem perfect. I was lucky enough to do this once and even luckier to watch chef Renato Piccolotto demonstrate his famous sea bass baked in a salt crust. This recipe is adapted from that day,” writes Jennifer McLagane in her cookbook BONES: Recipes, History, & Lore (Harper Collins).
3 ripe plum tomatoes, cored and diced
6 large basil leaves, shredded
1 garlic clove, crushed
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 whole sea bass, about 3 lbs., cleaned but with scales left on
1 sprig each, rosemary, basil, and sage
3-1/2 lbs. kosher salt
1 lb. fine sea salt
12 large egg whites
Begin by making the tomato sauce: mix the tomatoes with the shredded basil and garlic in a bowl. Season with salt and pepper and let marinate at room temperature for at least two hours. Remove the garlic before serving.
Preheat the oven to 375º F. Select a baking sheet, with a lip, large enough to hold the fish with two inches space all around. Line the baking sheet with aluminum foil and then with parchment paper. Pat the fish dry and place the herbs in its stomach cavity. In a large mixing bowl, mix the two salts and egg whites very well using your hand for five minutes.
Put about half the salt mixture on the prepared baking sheet, spreading it out to create a bed for the fish. Lay the fish on top and cover with the remaining salt mixture, making sure the fish is entirely buried under a blanket of salt from head to tail.
Bake for 35 minutes, or until an instant-read thermometer inserted in the thickest part of the fish registers 130ºF. Remove the fish from the oven, break open the crust with a sharp knife, and lift off the pieces of crust to reveal the fish.
Remove the skin, and any remaining scales, and cut the fish into portions. Serve with the tomato sauce.
Serves 4