Forewarned, ragazzi: this one is a little emotional, and it's about a whole lot more than soup.
"Home." What does that mean to you? Annalena remembers Garrison Keillor's comment along the lines of "home is the place where, when you go, they can't throw you out." That's kind of bittersweet, but true, isn't it? And she remembers the wonderful line in one of John Cheever's stories "half the world is homesick all the time." (And it's funny that we think of homesick as meaning a yearning to GO home, rather than being SICK of being home, but that's something Annalena leaves to others to play with.
In any event, Annalena truly thinks that, even if we're not at a place that would be considered our "home," we can find ourselves feeling like we belong: like we are a part of that place. Annalena hopes that you have such refuges. She has found a few: one of them was her visit to Torgiano in Umbria. OH, that visit resonates more than any other part of her trip. And.. SICILY. One reads about "transformative events." Annalena's trip to Sicily, was transformative. In may ways. She rethought food, water, relationships, everything. The trip was a year ago: Annalena feels like she got back yesterday, and she wants to return to Sicily tomorrow. And... she knows she'll be welcomed: both by people she knows, and people she'll meet for the first time.
So, now to the recipe of the day. All of her life, Annalena had heard about "cucuzza," the big squash that Sicilians love. And she looked forward to having it in Sicily. And she didn't. Oh, it was there: it was EVERYWHERE. But not on menus in restaurants, and Annalena asked why. The reason she was given, made perfect sense to her "everyone makes that at home and a restaurant can't make it better, so why would you pay for it outside?"
Perfectly sound thinking, but it means that if you're a visitor, you miss out. And Annalena did. So, she determined to learn how to make it.
And talk about a coming home: when she filtered through the recipes, she learned, just like Dorothy did, that frequently, the answer is in your own backyard. If you know how to make soup, you can make cucuzza with tenerumi. All you need: are the cucuzza, and the tenerumi:
Those big pale green things are the cucuzze: if you know Indian food, you will know them as "snake gourd." And to the left of the cucuzze are the tenerumi: these are the tendrils, and the vines, on which the squash grow. And it is a testament to Sicilians, and how they think, that you use both of these in a soup: after all, once you pick the squash, if the greens are fresh....
Cucuzze can weigh up to 8 pounds when they're fully grown. Use smaller ones: do NOT do what Annalena's stepfather would do, and buy one 8 pounder, if you can buy 4 2 pounders. And in any event, a 2-3 pound cucuzza, will give you plenty to work with.
Your ingredients: a red onion (always red, with Sicilian cooking), 2 cloves of garlic, 2 potatoes, coming in at about a total of a pound, a pound plus of very ripe tomatoes, your 2-3 pound cucuzza, and a large bunch of tenerumi:
Some of Annalena's friends are thinking "this sounds like we're making vegetable soup," or "this sounds like we're making minestrone." In fact, we are. We're just changing things up a little.
Now, the first thing you do, is go to those greens (the tenerumi), and cut off a generous inch at the bottom. This portion is very tough, and it will never cook to tender. Then, chop your cucuzza and your tenerumi. (Some recipes tell you to peel the cucuzza. Annalena looked at the skin of hers, tasted a piece raw, and decided it was not necessary):
Put these aside, while you prepare the rest of the vegetables. IF you are fastidious (Annalena is not), then you should peel the tomatoes first, or go with canned. You'll need about 2 cups:
This is Sicilian food, so we're going to be generous with the olive oil: pour a half a cup of GOOD stuff into a pot, and add the garlic, and the onion. Bring your heat to medium, and cook for about five minutes. After that, add the tomatoes, and cook for another five.
Annalena wants you to see what happens when you use really good, ripe tomatoes:
The tomatoes have very much dissolved into an incredible stock. And this is why you don't need chicken stock (which you will rarely see in Sicilian cooking). When you have the tomatoes to this point, add the potatoes, the cucuzza, and the tenerumi, together with a quart of water. Add a big teaspoon of salt, and be ready to add more later. Leave this uncovered, and let it cook, for 20 minutes. Stir it every now and then, and check the potatoes to see how tender they are. These are the "mark" for whether or not the soup is done. During the cooking, you'll see the tenerumi go from a bright vibrant green, to a drab, almost brown color. That's what happens with cooked greens, ragazzi. Not much you can do.
When it's done, you may see pieces of tomato skin floating around. You should pull these out if you can, because they are not really edible. (Annalena thinks of this as the lazy girl's way of skinning tomatoes).
Taste this, and correct for salt, and then dish it up:
The careful reader may say - with good reason "this is VEGAN. This is GLUTEN FREE." And they'd be right, on both counts. See, the history of Sicily is such that, for the most part, the populace did not get to eat the meat from animals they raised: they couldn't afford it. And fishing, even on an island, is not an enterprise for people who are not well funded. So, Sicilians developed one of the finest vegetable cuisines in the world. So while you COULD do something like add some cheese rinds to this soup (the way we do for pasta e fagioli), why would you? Annalena knows of some folks who add sliced hard boiled eggs to theirs and call it "Palermo style." Ok, fine. Annalena is not a fan of hard cooked eggs. She'll stick to this.
In the time it took you to read this, you could make the soup. And for getting this far, Annalena wants to give you a link to one of her favorite homecoming songs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZsNDa6nFOw&list=PLX0O4AJMzcxY8P5A6dNKwa7jlmlJB_ZAU&index=19
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