Only in Naples (33 page)

*
Gallinella di maiale
is Neapolitan dialect for the meaty muscle from the lower part of the pig's thigh. (I come from the
We use every part of the pig but the squeal!
Wilson family but have no idea what this is called in English. Boned pork foreleg, possibly?) Talk to your butcher. The important thing is that it is fleshy and divided in three quarter-pound, 2-inch cubes.

(Serves 6 to 8)

Raffaella starts her preparation of the octopus with this warning: You must make sure your
polipo
is
verace. Verace
means authentic—an octopus that is a real Neapolitan, and not some impostor from the Indian Ocean. You may trust your fishmonger; for all Raffaella knows, he may have been the best man in your wedding. But still, my mother-in-law asks you to double-check that he has sold you an octopus that is
verace:
a real, fresh, just-yesterday-he-was-clinging-to-a-cave-in-Marechiaro octopus.

The way you do this is to look for a “double crown” of suction cups on each tentacle. Two parallel rows of suckers, or you've been had. If he's the real thing, get out your meat hammer and cutting board and go to town. Pound the octopus as hard as you can on the cutting board with a meat tenderizer. Crush his squishy, slimy brains out. Then, in a calmer mode, put him under running water and caress his body, gently pulling off any little black filaments.

Turn his slippery head sac inside out with your fingers (
Peekaboo!
Raffaella sings with a sly smile), and take out all the gloop. Dig your fingers deep under the head to remove the
polipo'
s hard “beak.”

In a large pot, boil water with the cork from a wine bottle. Hold the octopus by the head above the pot and dip its tentacles three times in the boiling water. Check out the octopus's curly new hairdo. Put the whole animal in, turn down the flame, and cover. You must maintain a
bollo dolce,
a gentle boil, meaning that the water continues to boil without spilling over the sides. To do this, Raffaella poises her wooden spoon between the lid and the edge of the pot.

Cook the octopus for 20 minutes. The water will become a dark pink, like rosé wine. (This piping-hot pink octopus water used to be drunk with salt and pepper on January 5, the night before Epiphany, in downtown Naples. It was served with the end of the octopus's tentacle, or
'a ranfetella,
floating in the cup, and it really warms you up, apparently. If someone gives you an espresso that isn't strong enough and you want to tell them it's too watery, you can say, “Hey, this octopus water is missing its tentacle!”)

Turn the flame off, and let the octopus stay in the water until it cools. This can take a long time, so if you want to speed things up and the weather's chilly, take the pot outside. When it has cooled, take the octopus out and snip it into ½-inch pieces with scissors. Cut the parsley leaves (again, with scissors is the easiest way) and mix them with the octopus, olive oil, garlic, and salt. Let the
insalata
sit for at least one hour at room temperature. Add the lemon juice before serving, and garnish with slices of lemon and parsley leaves.

PS: Raffaella is worried about the fishy smell of your kitchen, your cookware, and your fingers. She hopes, for your own good and that of everyone in your family, that you've turned on the ventilator. For the bowls and your hands, smush damp, used coffee grounds around the pots with your fingertips before washing them with dish soap.

(Serves 6 to 8)

Your eggplants must be long, skinny, hard, and so dark they're almost black.
Insomma,
like a tall, fit Italian woman after a summer on the beach in Positano. Eggplants with the least pulp and seeds (found in summer and early fall) make the best
parmigiana,
Raffaella says. The ones you find in winter tend to be fleshy and moist inside and need to be dried out for at least a day. Otherwise all their white flesh will absorb the frying oil and you'll get a greasy
parmigiana.
One of the worst insults you can lay on someone's
parmigiana
in Naples is that it's greasy.

Cut the stems off your eggplants, and use a carrot peeler to take two long strips of skin off each of them, from opposite lengthwise sides. Then cut them (again, lengthwise) in slices ½ centimeter thick (1⁄10 of an inch). Each slice will be framed by some skin, but no slice will have an entirely purple side. Place the slices of eggplant on an unlined cookie sheet and set them out to dry. (Letting them sunbathe on your roof or balcony is ideal, but if that's not possible, lay them around the house. Warn family members not to knock them over, Raffaella reminds you.)

To get rid of the moisture in the eggplants, let them perspire for as long as possible. When you take them off the tray to fry them, you'll notice wet patches on the tray where they've been lying. This is good: it means they'll fry quickly and lightly, without absorbing oil.

Before frying the eggplant slices, begin your tomato sauce. With an immersion blender, grind up the contents of the cans of tomatoes (remember, the ingredients should say:
TOMATOES
,
e
basta
) and put them in a pot with a few of the basil leaves and one smushed garlic clove. (
Gli dai un pugno in testa, e si toglie la camicia,
Raffaella says: Punch it on the head and its shirt will come off.) Cover the pot and cook on low for about 20 minutes. (After 10 minutes, take the lid off or wedge your wooden spoon between the rim of the pot and the lid. We don't want watery sauce.) Add salt to taste.

As the sauce simmers away, turn back to your bathing beauties. Line a tray with paper towels, to receive the slices of eggplant after they've been fried. Heat up your peanut oil so that it's hot enough to make the pieces sizzle but not so hot that they smoke. (Try the sizzle test with the edge of one piece before sliding them all in. If the piece bubbles, the oil is ready.) Now ease the slices in for their hot bath. Put in enough pieces to cover the surface of the oil, but not so many that they're crowded on top of each other. (Think of vacationers on the beaches of the Amalfi coast in mid-August. People are touching each other, but it would be uncool to get on top of anyone.) Flip them after about a minute, and then take them out when you see that they are becoming light brown. (This should happen pretty quickly if they've sweated properly beforehand.) Use a skimmer to take the slices out, and hold them over the pan to let the excess oil drain off before positioning the eggplant on the paper towels. Cover the slices with more paper towels to absorb the oil (Repeat:
My
parmigiana
will not be greasy!
). Make sure the oil is still hot enough for the next batch—if not, pump up the fire. After frying the next round of slices, position them on top of their predecessors, separated by paper towels. Repeat the process until you've fried all the eggplant. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Now assemble the layers of the
parmigiana
in an 8-by-8-inch casserole dish. Start by putting a few spoonfuls of tomato sauce on the bottom of the dish and smoothing it into a red carpet with the back of your wooden spoon. Then arrange the first layer of eggplant slices (slightly shriveled and brown now, as if they've spent too much time at a tanning salon) side by side across the bottom of the dish. Spread another layer of tomato sauce on top of the eggplant, and sprinkle a few spoonfuls of Parmesan cheese evenly across it. Tear some basil leaves with your fingers (never touch basil with a knife, because it alters the taste!
Mi raccomando!
), and drop the torn leaves to the north, south, east, and west. Then distribute about a third of the
fior di latte
cubes.

The next layer of eggplant slices should be placed crosswise to the one before, so that the
parmigiana
is easier to cut. Continue with the same pattern—eggplant slices (each layer running crosswise to the one before), sauce, Parmesan, basil, and
fior di latte.

Stop the pattern after the Parmesan. The top of the
parmigiana
should be Parmesan-dotted red, with only a vague hint of the brown treasures inside. Bake at 375 degrees for about 25 minutes, or until you see a crust forming on the top. Serve at room temperature.

If your
parmigiana
turns out greasy or is swimming in oil, please don't mention to anyone where you got the recipe.

(Serves 6 to 8)

The
sartù di riso
isn't hard, Raffaella reassures you, it just takes organization and assembly. (And a big table, I would add. And an efficient, empty dishwasher. And a well-developed capacity for multitasking. And a few other things…) The various elements can be cooked ahead of time, frozen, and defrosted if need be. It's particularly helpful if you've already made the
ragù
and the baby meatballs.

(Heads up! Have
ragù
at the ready and make the baby meatballs first! Raffaella says,
che problema c'è
if you haven't prepared these beforehand. But I would argue that there is a
problema
.)

Prepare the
ragù
if you haven't yet (see
this page
).

For the meatballs: Take off your rings. In a bowl, soak the day-old bread in 4 cups water. Smush together the ground beef, egg, salt, and Parmesan. Squeeze the bread to release as much water as possible, add it to the meat mixture with your greasy, sticky hands, and work it together like dough. Then roll out little marble-sized balls. Put the peanut oil in a tall pot or deep fryer and heat it over a high flame. As the oil heats up to its sizzling temperature, line a tray with paper towels. Fry the little balls for a few minutes or until they become light brown (they should float around in the oil, bubbling away. Don't skimp on the oil and don't crowd the meatballs). Remove them with a skimmer, and place them on the paper towels. Like anything small and fried, they are at risk of being stolen by hungry, roaming family members. Keep your wooden spoon at the ready: these
polpettine
are destined for your
sartù.

For the
sartù
and to assemble: Boil 3 of the eggs in a pot of water for 10 minutes, and while they are cooking, put 1 tablespoon of the olive oil in a small skillet with 1 cup water. Cut the ends off the sausages and poke holes in them with a fork. Put them in the oily water, cover the skillet, and cook over a medium flame. The water will boil off and the sausages will brown. This will take 10 to 15 minutes.

When the eggs are done, place them in a bowl of ice water for a few minutes so you can shell them more easily. Take the sausages off the fire, cut them into 1-centimeter (quite thin) rounds, and set them aside in a bowl. Dice the onion, and in another skillet, heat the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Sauté the onion over a low-medium flame until it starts to brown. If you're using canned peas, drain them first and then put them in the skillet with the onions; frozen peas can be thrown in still frozen. Cover the pan and let the peas and onions cook for 5 minutes (10 to 15 if you're using frozen peas). Put the sautéed peas in a bowl, then form an assembly line with the
ragù,
Parmesan, peas, sausage rounds, meatballs,
fior di latte,
and basil. Shell the eggs, cut them in quarters, and put them next to the sausage rounds and cooked peas on the assembly line.

In a tall pot, bring to boil 34 ounces (1 liter) of water mixed with two ladles of
ragù
and some salt. Put your rice into the orangey-red boiling water and stir. Take out a few ladles of the liquid and put them in another small pot on the stove. (The rice should absorb all the water like a risotto, but if it gets too dry, this hot broth will be useful. Ten or twelve more burners on your stovetop and a sous-chef would also be useful at this point.) Cover the pot of rice. Make sure you maintain the
bollo dolce—
the gentle boil that keeps on boiling!—and stir regularly. Turn off the fire 2 minutes before the advised cooking time of your rice, so that it's not crunchy hard but al dente. If the rice is cooked too much, your
sartù
will become a
papocchia,
or pigs' mush. (
Per carità!
Lord help us.) Let it cool.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. In a large bowl, beat the remaining 2 eggs with a fork, add a pinch of salt, and set aside. Using a piece of paper towel, spread butter over the bottom and sides of a deep casserole dish (Raffaella's is 3 inches tall, 9 by 13 inches across) to make a
velo di burro,
a veil of butter. Plop a ladle of
ragù
on the bottom of the pan and spread it out with the back of your wooden spoon. Make sure your rice is cool, then stir in the beaten eggs. (If the rice isn't cool enough, you'll inadvertently scramble the eggs. Please. These eggs are what holds the
sartù
together—Raffaella says
unite
the
sartù—
important eggs, for heaven's sake.) Now stir into the rice pot one ladle of
ragù,
2 spoonfuls of grated Parmesan cheese, a third of the sausage rounds, a third of the meatballs, a third of the peas, and a third of the
fior di latte.

Put down a 1-inch-thick layer of
sartù
on the
ragù-
lined bottom of the pan and level it out with the back of your spoon. Spread out another layer of
ragù
on top: your rice needs to be
ben salsato,
or sauced up, Raffaella says, otherwise it will stop in your throat. Not pretty. Distribute a few more spoonfuls of Parmesan, a third of the peas, sausage rounds, meatballs, cubes of
fior di latte,
and a few torn-up leaves of basil. Start again with another layer of rice.

Now it's time to pretend you're the Easter Bunny and hide 6 of the hard-boiled-egg quarters in the middle of the casserole where nobody can find them. Don't tell anyone where you put them. Dig little holes if you need to. (Raffaella puts her glasses on for this hide-and-seek.) Repeat the pattern once more: rice, sauce, Parmesan, the last thirds of the peas, sausage, meatballs,
fior di latte,
and basil, and make the Easter egg hunt with the remaining hard-boiled-egg quarters. End with sauce and Parmesan. Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes or until the
sartù
forms a crust on top. Dollop some hot
ragù
on each slice before serving.