Good Enough to Read: The Southern Italian Table
Veteran food writer Irene Sax tells us about The Southern Italian Table by Arthur Schwartz and shares healthy and delicious recipes from the cookbook.
Article By: Irene Sax
There was pizza, of course, and fried calamari; spaghetti marinara and veal parmigiana; parsley-flecked garlic bread and biscuit tortoni served in pleated paper cups. They were my first tastes of Italian-American food, and they may have been yours as well. What I didn't know was that all this deliciousness had its origins in the foods of southern Italy, brought here by immigrants and altered to fit American products and love of abundance.
Now Arthur Schwartz has written a book about the real thing. It's The Southern Italian Table (Potter, 2009), and if you're like me, it will make you very hungry.
The dishes are both homey and sophisticated, familiar and surprising. Pasta and beans but also macaroni with cauliflower, raisins and saffron. Roasted peppers and capers but also fennel braised with sun-dried tomatoes. Lots of vegetables but oddly, no green salads at all. More seafood than meat, of course, but also more pork than chicken (it seems that until recently, chicken wasn't an everyday food in southern Italy). And pizza from Naples, the place that invented it.
This is a book for anyone interested in la cucina povera — the cuisine of poverty — that was the mother of our beloved Italian-American dishes. And it is even more a book for anyone who wants to eat healthfully. Build your meals on grains, greens, tomatoes, peppers, beans and olive oil. Add a little fish or meat, some cheese and a glass of wine, and you'll find yourself at the southern Italian table.
From the book, I made a dinner that started with spaghetti in tomato sauce and went on to shrimp baked with seasoned bread crumbs served with sautéed peppers, zucchini and eggplant. Just espresso afterwards, although I was tempted by Schwartz's semifreddo con croccante, an almond-crunch frozen-cream dessert that looked to me a lot like my old favorite, biscuit tortoni.
No-Apologies Crunchy Shrimp
Maybe you've had clams oreganato in Italian-American restaurants. Here's the same flavorful, crunchy topping over easily available shrimp. A real midweek dish, it should take about 20 minutes in all.
Gamberi Oreganati (Shrimp Baked with Flavored Bread Crumbs)
Serves 2 or 3
Ingredients
- 1/3 cup fine dry bread crumbs
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 large garlic clove, very finely chopped (about 1 tsp)
- 1 tsp dried oregano
- 1/8 tsp hot paprika
- 1 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 lb cleaned large or jumbo shrimp (20 to 24 to the lb)
- Lemon wedges
Instructions
- Place a rack on the top rung of the oven. Preheat the oven to 400º F.
- Combine the bread crumbs, salt, garlic, oregano, paprika and olive oil in a large mixing bowl. Stir well.
- Add the shrimp to the bowl and toss until all the shrimp are coated with crumbs.
- Arrange the shrimp in a single layer in a 10-inch baking pan or on a baking sheet. Sprinkle with the remaining crumbs.
- Bake for 12 to 14 minutes, until the shrimp are cooked through.
- Serve immediately with lemon wedges.
Notes from Arthur Schwartz
- This is such an easy and delicious recipe that you will, as I do, make it for everyday meals all the time. It can also be an antipasto for a party. Be aware that not all the bread crumbs will stick to the shrimp. But an excess of delicious bread crumbs, to eat along with the shrimp on each forkful, isn't a bad thing.
Easily Improved Meatballs (Oops, Polpette)
Schwartz himself tells us how to make this recipe lighter. "If you don't want to fry," he writes, "the patties are also good grilled over charcoal, or cooked under a kitchen broiler, or on a griddle on top of the stove. If you use one of those methods, cook about 3 minutes a side under or over the highest possible heat. They should be crusty outside, still slightly pink and juicy inside."
Polpette alla Maria Talerico (Maria Talerico's Meat Cakes)
Makes 8 or 9 patties, serves 4
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup fine dry bread crumbs
- 1/2 lb ground beef (no leaner than 80% lean)
- 1/2 lb ground pork
- 1 large egg
- 2 rounded Tbsp finely shredded parsley
- 1 rounded Tbsp grated Parmigiano cheese
- 3/4 tsp salt
- 1/4 tsp finely ground black pepper
- Vegetable oil for frying
- Tomato sauce (optional)
Instructions
- Cover 1/4 cup of the bread crumbs with warm tap water. Reserve the other 1/4 cup to coat the patties.
- In a mixing bowl, combine the meats, and with your hand, roughly mix them. Add the egg, the moistened 1/4 of bread crumbs, squeezing out excess moisture, and the parsley, cheese, salt and pepper. Again with your hands, knead the mixture until smooth and tight.
- Spread the 1/4 cup dry bread crumbs on a plate.
- Using a 1/4 cup measure, make the meat patties, then coat each patty in crumbs.
- In a medium skillet, over medium-high heat, heat about 1/4 inch of vegetable oil until bubbles gather around the handle of a wooden spoon. When hot, fry the patties until well browned on both sides. As soon as the pan is full of patties, lower the heat slightly. The patties should take 2 to 3 minutes a side. Drain on absorbent paper.
- Serve immediately, or at room temperature. No sauce is necessary, but you can dress them with tomato sauce, if desired.
Notes from Arthur Schwartz
- Polpette is the Italian word for "meatballs," but it is also used for patties — what Americans might call "burgers." I found these small, juicy patties on a mixed-meat platter served at La Casella, a restaurant in Calabria where Maria Talerico prepares fantastic home-style food in her husband Giuseppe Guarascio's rustic, stone ancestral house.