The first person I asked to was Carmela.
She represents the stereotype of the MAMMA, because she is the mother of three friends of mine and she is the typical Italian mum always welcoming everybody at her table, with the concept that I already explained of "where we eat in two, we can also eat in three".
When I asked her "what are we gonna cook, to show our traditional food" she quickly said "obviously Stuffed Squid with Tomato Sauce!".
And here we are, we go together to LEONE, the best fish shop in town, and we are ready to start.
According to the tradition this is the dish of the "domenica delle Palme" that is the Sunday before Easter, but also good to eat in every moment of the year.
Carmela welcomes me in her house, she offers me a delicious aperitif with Campari and Prosecco (we all love this drink here!) and we take all the ingredients which we'll need to cook.
Squids (we have 8 of them)
3 eggs
1 onion
1 garlic
Pecorino Cheese
Bread crumbs
White Bread
Fresh Persil
Milk
Tomato Sauce passata (this is hand-made by Carmela with the sweet tomatoes of August)
Evoo
Salt
Black Pepper
First we start preparing the stuffing for the squids by softening the white bread with milk and adding eggs, bread crumbs, pecorino, salt and pepper.
She also adds some squid's tentacles in the stuffing saying
"This is how my mom used to prepare it, because it gives love to the stuffing".
She got me. Storytelling is part of our way of cooking, is the way to preserve our culture, is an act of love and Carmela today is sharing with me the secrets of her mum and I'm so thankful to be part of this ritual.
Stuffing is ready, then we start filling the squids. I love this part! Carmela Says: "hold it from its head, and don't fill it too much". Yes Sir! I proceed following meticulously her instructions, she is the boss!
She closes the top of each squid with a steel stick which makes emerging in my mind the gesture of my grandpa Stefano while closing the holy "brasciole", the typical horse-meat rolls of the Sunday family Lunch (calm down, I'll post it tomorrow :) )
Our babies are ready to be cooked. We can proceed to next step which is making a saute' of onions in evoo.
After have cut one whole onion, Carmela starts grinding an half garlic in the pot together with the onion and evoo saying: "My mum used to put the garlic as well because it takes away the wildness of the squid".
She got me again. I love to think of having an intimate connection with the wildness of the sea.
When onion and garlic are frying we add the squids and then a bit of white wine. We let them cooking for 10 minutes, covering the pot.
When they gets solid, we can add the tomato sauce.
This tomato sauce home made by Carmela is so sweet that I start eating it with the spoon from the jar, as you normally do with Nutella.
Then she stops reminding: Don't eat it all! we need it for the squids! Yes Sir.
We will eat this sauce with some pasta, the traditional way, so before to put the water for the pasta to boil, we remove the squids from the sauce and we put them "resting" on a deep plate.
Then the door opened and and all my friends (kids and grandkids of Carmela) came in, kissing carmela and saying the divinatory sentence: "MAMMA! SMELLS GOOD!"
Then the bash starts,the house is full of joy, laughters, rounds of drinks, memories and so much love and friendship.
Then we take the time to take some pictures:)
All this to say that I was so overwhelmed by being with people I love that I forgot to take pictures of the final result.
But no need to say it was de-li-cious
Curious to know the full menu? because of course Carmela doesn't welcome guests without cooking 5 courses!
This is the Italian Lunch baby! Not peanuts!
- Inevitable Mussels
- fried sweet olives
- Borage frittata
- Home made focaccia
- 5 kinds of different cheeses
- Fruit
- Coffee
- after-coffee
