My Uncle Frank loves books, but almost as much as he loves books, he loves to troll bargain tables for ridiculously cheap books. For quite a few years, this caused a bit of consternation among his children—my four California-based cousins—as well as the rest of us in the family on the East Coast. No one escaped the Box. “Oh, god—Uncle Frank sent me a Box!” my three sisters or my cousins Matthew or Christine or Steve would groan at the heavy load of hard and soft covers that would arrive via a beleaguered postal worker. “My Dad dropped off three boxes of books to me this week!” my cousin Susan would sigh to me over the phone. But she also knew that this was a habit that had to do with more than the thrill of just a simple bargain. Raised in hard-scrabble, rural Calabria, Italy, our grandparents didn’t have schooling past childhood. It was expected that all able hands were put to work to help the family survive. Born in America after the family emigrated in the early part of the twentieth century, my Uncle Frank was the only child of four to go to college. Not for lack of interest among my two aunts or my dad; but the simple fact was Nana and Poppy could only afford to send one. My dad chose to go into the family grocery store; my aunts didn’t have the choice, as women often didn’t back then; so Uncle Frank took to the books. Education equaled respect. Success. Escape from poverty. It was everything.
From what I’m told, Uncle Frank had to be excruciatingly careful with what little money my grandparents could spare to give him over and above tuition, and saved cash for text books and such by bringing home laundry and eating from care packages sent by his mom. Books were a precious commodity—for him to walk into a store and see hundreds of them for sale for two bucks, or even less? It’s just something he can’t resist.
But while everyone else in the family was gifted with tomes that would end up donated to the local library, Uncle Frank always sent me amazing books on food and wine (often Italian) that I might not have gotten around to, or maybe never would have found on my own. He sent me the irreplaceable, out-of-print Classic Italian Cookbook by Marcella Hazan (the one with the great Bolognese recipe that wound up in a later edition of another compendium of her recipes). He sent me several books on Italian wine, whose pages took me, region by region, through Italy’s uva. And he sent me a book that, this week, taught me something I didn’t know (a fact that I hope makes him very happy indeed). The book is called Celebrating Italy and it has long fascinated me for its author’s careful, detailed research on the culinary history of Italian religious festivals and how food always plays an inextricable role in them. I love this book, as much for its combination of factual information and fairytale-like stories, as for the recipes it holds.
Trolling for a good lamb recipe for Easter, I found all kinds of delicious bits of food lore to chew on, with maybe the most interesting of which having to do with the seders created by Rome’s strong Jewish community to celebrate Passover (yes, Passover!). The foods described piqued my curiosity and made my mouth water, like the ritual dishes of hard-boiled eggs and lamb shank; the crispy artichokes fried to a just-right crunchy; the risotto plump with spring vegetables. And then there’s the Scacchi, a lasagna-like layered dish using matzoh in place of the noodles that’s the center of Roman Passover meal, all thick and rich with ground beef, artichokes, rosemary, sage, spinach, garlic, mushrooms, peperoncino, and eggs. I learned that unleavened matzoh in Italian is called azzime, and is used to make pizarelle—sweet little fried rounds made with eggs, cinnamon, nutmeg, orange zest, raisins, and pine nuts.
Looking at all this great food, I tried to put it all together in my head and see if I couldn’t make it make sense on the table. I know Passover celebrates the freeing of Jews from enslavement by the Egyptians; Easter for Christians is resurrection and rebirth. One doesn’t really have anything to do with the other, but holding a bargain book in my hands given to me by my uncle—the son of immigrants, enslaved in a way by poverty and who found a way to start new; resurrected, if you will, by the desire for something better—makes me think that it’s not all so far apart. And if that just seems like entirely too much of a stretch for you, well, we can always just agree to disagree and eat Scacchi.
Are you combining any food traditions this weekend?
Scacchi
(Makes 8-10 servings)
- 12 thin maztohs
- 1 Tbs olive oil
- 1 lb chopped sirloin
- Salt and pepper
- 1 ½ lbs onions, thinly sliced
- 4 Tbs olive oil
- 4 artichokes, cleaned, chokes and fibrous leaves removed, cooked in water with lemon juice, and sliced thin
- 4 Tbs olive oil
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 peperoncino (dried red chile), seeded and minced
- ½ tsp freshly grated nutmeg
- ¼ tsp salt
- 1 lb mushrooms, sliced
- 4 Tbs olive oil
- 2 cloves garlic, finely minced
- ½ tsp salt
- 6 eggs
- ½ cup lemon juice
- 1 cup beef broth
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Cover the matzohs with water and let sit until wet and almost crumbling. Warm the olive oil and sauté the chopped sirloin, stirring until it is no longer red. Add salt and pepper. Saute each of the vegetables separately over very low heat: The onions are sautéed alone; the artichokes with the minced garlic, fresh rosemary, sage, and salt; the spinach with garlic, peperoncino, fresh nutmeg, and salt; and the mushrooms with the garlic, added after 3 to 4 minutes, and the salt.
Assembly: Oil a large, deep baking dish and cover the bottom with the sautéed chopped sirloin. Cover with a layer of 3 matzohs and cover them with the onions. Layer 3 more matzohs on top, and so on, using the individual vegetables. Finish with vegetables, not matzohs. Beat together the eggs and lemon juice and pour over the top of the mixture, shaking the pan to be sure that the liquid reached the various air pockets left between vegetables. Pour over enough broth to moisten the mixture well. Cover loosely with foil. Bake until the mixture is set and cooked through, about 30 minutes.
