Category Archives: Italian language

Pasta e ceci

Pasta e ceci, or past-uh-cheech-u-ruh as it is known here, is probably our favorite pasta dish.   But it is not everyone’s, and there might be a bit of a taste  “learning curve”  for many.  Cooked  chick peas have a complicated flavor, and while they absorb some of this from their cooking liquid, they maintain that leguminous “soil”  taste which you either love or hate.  We love it.

I always appreciate a good hummus , and falafel is also really good,  but as they say here in the south, “La morte sua”*  is in the form of  this recipe which we all love.

—–Ingredients for four:

1/2  cup of minced celery, carrot, and onion

1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

two cans cooked chickpeas

one medium ripe tomato

two garlic cloves

about 3/4 pound (not quite a whole package) of dry tagliatelle, or any flat and thin pasta

salt and pepper, Q.B.**

If you are a dedicated cook, someone who plans ahead (bless you!) you can start a day or two early with dry chickpeas and get them soaking.  Change the water often.  It may take from 24 to 36 hours of soaking to get them softened enough for cooking, depending on their age.   But I am a  short-attention-span type, so I buy the canned ones that are already cooked and soft in their own liquid.  Make sure there is no added flavoring.  I think it is detestable that tomato sauces and other canned veggies are often degraded with added flavorings  in the U.S…What, is it too difficult to add roasted garlic or salt yourself?

Start with a soffritto of finely minced celery*** onion and carrot, about a half of a cup, maybe a little more.  Saute these in a third cup of olive oil until softened.  I know that seems like a lot of oil, but remember, the olive oil in Italian cooking is an integral part of the flavor and mouth-feel of the dish, not just a lubricant to keep it from sticking to the pan!   Cook the soffritto gently, until translucent.   Don’t let it burn!

At this point, add one large  chopped and peeled tomato to the pot.  If you want to be a stickler and pick the seeds out then be my guest, but I have never been quite so dedicated to perfection.  Tomatoes are often used in small quantities in Italian cooking, to add acidity as much as flavor.  They are not necessarily the star ingredient of the dish.   A couple of minced garlic cloves, generous pepper, a bay leaf, and the two cans of chickpeas with their water then are added.  Add  two more cans of water.   Get it simmering and taste for saltiness.  It needs to be well-salted because the pasta that will be added will need to absorb plenty of salt.

This is a mixture that will burn, so don’t toddle off to another room and start working on your taxes!    Few things are nastier in a dish than burned legumes.  This “soup” will begin to break down into a nice velvety mix in about half an hour.  At this point I give it a little nudge by whacking it with my “Mini Pimer”  (stick blender)  just enough to break up about half of the chickpeas.

Taste again for salt, and take your flat pasta (tagliatelle or nested noodles made with hard wheat, no egg please, although…****) and break it up with your hands before dumping it directly into the pot.  Now you will have to stand over it and stir, there is no escape, otherwise it will stick and burn.  After about five minutes you can turn off the heat and cover the pot.  Check the liquid level frequently, because the pasta will drink up an incredible amount in no time.   When the pasta has soaked up most of the liquid and when it is “al dente” it is ready to serve.  The consistency should be about the same as gooey mac and cheese.

As always, I admit to  nonconformist behavior at the Italian table:  I love to add grated Grano Padano to this dish.  My husband sneers as he adds (I kid you not) about a cup of freshly-ground pepper to his, so we each have our personal preferences, as any married couple should!   I also like to add a generous dribbling of homemade jalapeno chap-your-ass hot sauce to mine!

Enjoy!!

“Strada sul fiume” pastel, 5×5 inches

*(“Its ideal death,” meaning roughly, ” The best way for it to go.”)

**”Quanto Basta” which means “as much as it takes.”

***I am frustrated that the part of the celery that I need for my recipes is often amputated before it even gets to the market.  As much of this mixture should be made of the leaves of the celery stalk as is humanly possible.

****However we have found that pasta all’ uovo doesn’t ruin the recipe, and actually it is quite good made with egg pasta.  Try it!

What did you say?

I always think it is incredible when someone asks me if I speak Italian, forgetting that they might not know that I have been here for  thirty years.   Of course I speak Italian; I had to learn it to get along when I first stayed behind in 1982 after the excavations group flew back to the States without me.  And then I remember that there are people living here, people who claim to adore the local culture and society, who after almost as many years still do not speak the language.

How can you live in a place and not learn the language?   I know the answer.  You form your own small comfortable ghetto comprised of people just like you and continue to live in the bubble.  The culture “outside” is a cinematic illusion, to be sampled on outings, a kind of  resident tourism.  You are able to conserve your romantic views of the culture without getting your hands dirty, and without truly understanding what the hell is going on around you.  Good luck with that.

“Castello di Oriolo, Isolato” pencil and metallic pigment on paper

Down where we live, they proudly speak a dialect.  “V’rnallese” is its name, or “Bernaldese” in Italian.  It is one of hundreds, each uniquely-evolved on top of  crowded hilltops  in tiny anthill-like communities over three thousand years or more.  And yet these dialects are sprung from common roots:  Greek of course, as this area was Magna Graecia after all,  and Arabic.  Neopolitan, the “real”  Italian language, not that flat and colorless version spoken in Florence, which, thanks to television and the Republic, is today considered the standard version.  And smatterings of other languages as well.  Near us there are towns which conserve their Albanian language, including their street signs.  There are also towns which still have strong Aramaic roots in their dialect.  French, Spanish, even recent English contributions: In Bari they say “celery” for the Italian sedano, I am sure because of the second world war and the number of American servicemen there.   In Bernalda there are many oldsters who are known as “Shoomak” which reflects their experience as emigrants to the USA where they worked at making and repairing shoes to survive.   All these cultural contributions are smudged together in each small town to create a particular version unique to that town.

My learning curve was a little steep, because all my friends here typically spoke this dialect among themselves, although they could be prevailed upon to translate for me into Italian. If I had known Italian at that point I would have had it made!   However I spent many an evening laughing along with the group in utter ignorance of what was going on.  But I can be perceptive, and this saved me on many occasions in following the gist of things by observing body language and context in order to muddle through.   In the 1980’s, being young and blonde, it wasn’t hard to get along on nods and  smiles.

Notice I said “they” speak a dialect.  This is to say, while I understand almost everything (although I still encounter an obscure term every few days or so, and have to learn it) I do NOT speak it.  I think it.  So my cerebral routing procedure is as follows:  English to dialect, dialect to Italian.  The reason I don’t speak dialect I suppose comes from a sense of pride in my almost-perfect Italian pronunciation (people may or may not know that I am “not from around here”)…and it is also because I don’t relish the smirks and ironic comments which so often greeted my attempts at formulating thoughts in dialect.  OK, I learn.  In my mind, I speak it acceptably, but I still trust my Italian interlocutor to express my ideas.  And that Italian, in my case, is heavily-inflected with the southern accent of these parts, of which I am proud.  I ignore smirks from northerners as well.

I have spoken American English to my kids ever since they were in the womb.  They had to deal with the two most important people in their lives speaking entirely different languages to them at all times.  The conversations between myself and my husband are invariably in Italian, unless we are in the USA and he is required to use English, in which case he may surprise us all with his ability.   My kids and I speak English to each other, and they speak Italian with my husband.  It can get interesting at times, as we lapse into a strange patois  without realizing it!  “Ma!   Puozz’mangnia’ some of those biscuott’ you bought stamattina dal forno over by the ufficio postale?” *    The upshot is that my kids are truly native speakers, and by that I mean indistinguishable from natives, in both languages.  Of course we hope that this brain re-wiring will do us all good in some way.  We are flexible, and sometimes we are also confused!

I have my favorite examples, of course, of the incredible disparity between classic Italian and our jealously-preserved dialect.  My spellings are the best I can do to approach a phonetic  definition.  I enjoy following the town discussions on Facebook, where people’s attempts to write in dialect can be quite amusing.  Traditionally it has not been a written language, although scholarly types have published a couple of books on it recently.

Directly from the Greek is the orange, or arancia, which is the portaialla in Pisticci, the next town over, and l’ammaranch’ in Bernalda.   Need some wine, or vino?  Ask for “na zicca d’mieeruh.”  A napkin, or tovagliolo,  is “ooh shtiavruccula.”    Snails, or lumache?        “Cozzaiuffula.” 

Over in Pisticci, they came up with a relatively new expression–in the last century– to designate the mirage which sometimes forms over  asphalt, and I absolutely love it.   “Ooh marawall” means, roughly translating into Italian and English, “uguale al mare” which is, poetically, “the same as the sea.”    And it is!

In Italian, to ask, “If you are ready to go, let’s go, and if you’re not, we’ll stay” you might say, “Se dobbiamo andare, andiamo.  Se no, non ce ne andiamo piu‘.    In Vrnallese:  “Se ‘na ma shee, sha ma nneen.  Se nun a ma shee, nunn’ a shiamma shenn.”  It really does roll  musically off the tongue.

It is important to know which day you are speaking about, so “today,”  or “oggi”,  is ” iosh‘.”

Tomorrow, or “domani,” is “cra.”

The day after tomorrow, “dopo domani,”  is “p’scra,” and the day after that is “p’screedd.”     (The double consonant indicates a firmer pressure of the tongue against the palate.)

And the day after that?   “P’scruofula!”

What (She Says) He Said oil on canvas

*”Mom, can I eat some of the cookies you bought this morning from the bakery near the post office?”