Gnocchi

I’ve discovered that shaping gnocchi with flour and a fork is a tranquil way to spend an afternoon, chatting with a loved one. Each small peace of potato dough is methodically thumbed over a fork to create the perfect (with practice) scored “pillow” pasta. It was during this process that I sat at a table with my Nonna, gossiping and catching up.

Like many Italian recipes, there are bound to be variations of the dish depending on the region of Italy. For Nonna (representing Sicily) the recipe is very simple: flour, eggs, and potatoes. That’s it.

The ingredients are few, but that’s not to say making gnocchi is a walk in the park. There is some elbow grease involved. First, we boiled the potatoes—Ten, to be exact, because we were making gnocchi to give to family. If you were making gnocchi for just a few people, then you would use only three potatoes. 

Then, we mashed the potatoes on a wooden board and added lots of flour and two eggs to create the dough. (This is where the elbow grease comes in.) One must knead the dough and keep adding flour until it is firm, and not sticky.

Once that was done, we rolled it out and chopped the dough up into small pieces. Then we could sit down, take our hundreds of gnocchi pieces and use our thumbs to roll them over a fork to fold them into just the shape we wanted. During this time we talked about important things—mostly family. I also spoke to her sister Maria on the phone. She wants to know when I’m going to visit her in Italy. I wish I was there right now, is what I was thinking. “Non lo so,” I managed to pipe up. (My Italian is pathetic.) It was about then I drifted into lala land and imagined myself boarding a plane and going back to Italy. Someday…someday, I keep telling myself.

To complete the dish, we boiled the gnocchi and put in a dish with homemade tomato sauce and grated Pecorino Romano. So. Delicious. It was an amazing lunch and time well spent with Nonna.

Italian Festival Meatballs

Spending time with old people gives insight into what old age will be like, whether you want that insight or not.  Are these the conversations I’ll be having when I’m older?...

“Oprah’s not gonna to be on T.V. anymore. I’m gonna have to survive without Oprah.”

“I’m not gonna leave any money to my kids when I die. Only Sicilians feel like they got to leave money to their kids.”

“I’m getting a chair lift put in my house.”

“Always make sure you have on clean underwear when you leave the house in case you have an accident and need to go to the hospital.”
“I could die at any second. I have a condition!”

Okay, so obviously I won't be talking about Oprah.

I spent my morning with all these women because my nonna asked me to make meatballs with her at a Catholic school near her house. The meatballs are for an Italian Festival that will be held there in a few weeks.

Even though the meatballs were being made in bulk, the women were very meticulous about how they were made. Every woman there, each an expert meatball maker in their own right, had an opinion about the right size of the meatball and how to properly roll one in their hands. Being that I was the youngest there, I automatically took on the roll of the apprentice, and took criticism from each woman. “That’s too big,” “No, that’s too small,” “Make sure you roll it like this.”

About a thousand meatballs later, we were done. I got to taste one too. It was DELICIOUS. I’m definitely going to have to go to this festival. I was told they’ve been having it for years and the food is always amazing. Who wants to come with me?!

Chocolate and Hazelnuts

I was introduced to a gelato place in Manhattan called Grom. This place is fantastic. Their gelato is the closest thing I’ve had to the real-deal gelato you can only get in Italy. It’s seriously delizioso! Whenever I’m at Grom, I usually order the Bacio (translated means “kiss”). This flavor is a combination of chocolate and hazelnuts. I looked on their website to see if I was missing any key ingredients. I didn't, but there was a lot of description devoted to this one flavor:

When the Gianduja chocolate meets the best Tonda Gentile Trilobata hazelnut chips from the Langhe region (and we did not spare ourselves: the chips measure 5-8 mm!!!) which have been lightly toasted to bring out all their flavor, the result is Bacio: a true love marriage between chocolate and hazelnut enhanced by the delightful sensation of "crunchiness" that the chips give. Enjoy this flavor along with our Crema di Grom and a generous amount of whipped cream to put a smile on your face or offer it to someone you care to make them smile and much more!

Whoever wrote the copy for their website deserves an award. Describing chocolate and hazelnuts, as “a true love marriage” could not be a more accurate depiction of what the combination of chocolate and hazelnuts is like for your taste buds.

There are so many other Italian desserts that use chocolate and hazelnuts: chocolate and hazelnut biscotti, Baci (a chocolate candy that has a whole hazelnut in the center; translated means "kisses"), and of course, Nutella. Nutella is the best because you can smear it on anything to make it instantaneously tasty. But who am I kidding? I’m more inclined to just take a spoon and eat it right out of the jar. 


Italian word of the day: baci; kisses

Forza

My Nonna is a constant reminder of human strength. No, I don’t mean physical strength, because for her that is fleeting every day. I’m talking emotional strength. The kind of strength that only a person who’s familiar with the true meaning of survival can emit.

I was thinking about this today when I saw her at lunch.  I don’t usually wear my emotions on my sleeve when I’m with her, but when she asked about a certain someone who recently broke my heart, I started to tear up. Apparently a week has not been quite enough time to heal. I didn’t want to cry in front of her because I didn’t want her to feel sorry for me or carry my worries (as she often does for a lot of people.) I think the sudden emotion surprised her and she said to me, “You have to be strong.” And she’s right of course. Nonna embodies strength. It’s who she is. But to hear her actually say the words was particularly meaningful.

If Nonna had a life slogan it would be, “Be strong.” Her whole life has been about surviving, and continuing on until you’re happy. I mean, for Christ’s sake the woman has lived though a ship-wreck, a disappointing move from Sicily to Yonkers (she said she hated the United States when she came here), multiple health scares, and probably a bit more strife than the average person can relate to. But she’s happy now and she also has a lot to be proud of. 

So after the quick and certain reminder that although there will be ups and downs in life, what matters is getting though and being strong, we did not speak of the ass-clown again. (I’m still retaining a little bitterness for the time being, okay?).  In time I’ll feel stupid I wasted any tears on him at all, but right now I will keep on the legacy of being a strong Italian woman, just like my Nonna. 

Here's Nonna as a teenager. I love
how she has her hand on her hip.

Italian word of the day: Forza; strength

Making Tomato Sauce

For Italian families, tomato sauce is a pantry essential because it is used so often in cooking. Like many Italians, my grandparents make their own. Since I’d like to continue the tradition, I helped out in making it (Plus it’s fun and the taste beats any store-bought brand out there). Typically, the tomatoes are ordered and delivered to my grandparent’s house. Other times, they go to Arthur Avenue in the Bronx to purchase them. From 3 crates, each weighing about 63 pounds, there was a lot of tomato sauce to be had! And so, on an early September morning we got right to work making sauce to have until next year. Here's how the process goes:

1. Dice the tomatoes.

2. Boil the tomatoes and add basil, salt, and olive oil.

3. Grind them up.

4. Fill the jars.

The sauce should be very hot when added to the jars.

It can be messy to make, but once you gaze at your collection of beautiful red jars, it’s so worthwhile. The best part for me is spending time with my nonna and nonno. It makes me feel all the more Italian even though I’m in a garage in New York and not on a farm in Sicily.

Italian word of the day: salsa di pomodoro; tomato sauce

Penne....yum.

Ciao readers!

No, there isn’t a typo in the title of my blog. Penne translates to “pens” in Italian. It’s also a kind of pasta. Not so coincidently, each piece of penne pasta looks like the nib of a pen.

For my first post, I’d like to confess a couple things about myself.

1. I am half Italian. To some people, my muddled racial blood does not make it okay for me to just say I’m Italian. But I’m sick of having to explain (in essence, apologize) the precise amount of Italian blood in me every time I say to someone that I’m Italian. If you must know, my remaining heritage, from my mother’s side, is very diverse; French Canadian, Irish, English, Norwegian, and German, just to name the ones I’m certain of. It’s hard to make any cultural connection when there are that many cultures. They are pretty much indistinguishable in my family, and there are few traditions from any of those countries that we truly hold on to and deem special. There’s nothing wrong with that. The Italian, however, dominates. Not just because it takes up half my background, but also because the traditions of Italy are strong in my life thanks to my father’s side of the family. It’s a huge part of who I am. There’s no mistaking it. I even look like my father’s mother—Nonna, we call her.

2. I don’t speak Italian well. But to be fluent in Italian is probably the number one thing I wish to accomplish most in my lifetime! I used to be bitter about not having been raised bilingual (I’m not bitter anymore).  I asked my father about it one day. He said he didn’t because I was with him much less than I was with my mother, who does not speak Italian. And so it was not passed on. Oh well. I’m over it. Instead, I studied the language in school. When I no longer took Italian classes in college, I studied with a tutor. Still though, it does not stick very well in my brain. Until my dream comes true and I actually get to live in Italy (hah!), where I’m completely immersed in the language, I’ll have to be content with memorizing and rememorizing the vocabulary whenever I get a chance. One day, Italian will roll off my tongue like I’m a native. And one day, when I have children, I will raise them to speak it as well.

Italian word of the day: nonna n — grandma. You’ll be well acquainted with my nonna as you read this blog.