An Italian-American Family at Table Alice Marchitti Scheller

An Italian-American Family at Table: Eating Well During the Great Depression

By Alice Marchitti Scheller

Fifteen years after she died, I’m still going through boxes of my mother’s things. I recently found a few pages she wrote late in life, describing, for her food-oriented Internet chat group, the meals she and her family ate when she was a girl in the Thirties. I retyped it while listening to one of her tapes, of the great tenor Beniamino Gigli singing Neapolitan songs.

Growing up during the Depression in the bosom of an Italian family we always ate well, though on a shoestring. The food was freshly prepared each day, always with fresh, seasonal ingredients. Leftovers were unheard of.

Meat. while not being too costly by present comparison, was considered something of an extravagance and we usually ate it two or three times a week. Protein was dried legumes, cheese, and eggs. We did not eat eggs for breakfast except on unusual occasions. I recall eggs being the main ingredient for Saturday night dinners, as hapless Catholics spent eternity in Hell for eating meat on Friday, back in the pre-Pope John XXIII days. (I wonder if the meat-eaters got reprieved when the rules changed?) You can whip up a simple little tomato sauce, then just before you are ready to eat and the sauce is bubbling gently, poach as many eggs as you need in the sauce. Serve eggs and sauce in a soup bowl, with a crusty loaf of bread, and enjoy Eggs in Purgatory. (Is Purgatory still there? I haven’t heard it mentioned in a long time.)

We didn’t eat omelets, we ate frittatas. These could be any ingredients at all, set in beaten eggs and cooked in a frying pan lightly touched with olive oil. Being southern Italians, we rarely ate butter. We didn’t need a spread for our bread because it was always used to mop up the delicious juices in the bottom of the bowl of whatever it was

we were eating, and to cook with anything but olive oil, or sometimes fatback, was heresy. Some of my favorite frittatas were made with cubes of boiled potatoes, chopped onions lightly browned, and beaten eggs (with an eggshell of water added) poured over all and lightly cooked until the eggs were set, then flipped over to the other side. When the vegetable garden was ready, we had asparagus, broccoli, zucchini or peppers in our frittata.

When I was older and our family had successfully weathered the Depression, I made a frittata on Sunday mornings which was a mixture of mozzarella, salami or prosciutto, and eggs, which kept everyone satisfied until the big event of the week – Sunday dinner.

I must make mention of another Friday night specialty. We called it macaroni pie, although it was made with fine egg noodles rather than macaroni. Simply cook a package of egg noodles and drain well. Meanwhile beat six eggs with a tablespoon of fresh parsley, salt, pepper, and grated Romano or Parmesan cheese in a large bowl. Add the drained noodles, mix all together, and pour into a lightly oiled, heated frying pan. Allow to brown slightly, then place a dinner plate over the “pie” and turn onto the dish. Slide it back into the pan and continue cooking. This requires a little dexterity, but just take your time and don’t get nervous.

Summer was the best time of all. Everyone had gardens and everyone’s garden had, primarily, tomatoes – beautiful Jersey tomatoes with a flavor that I have not found in any others in this country. We had both plum tomatoes and the big round beauties, bursting with juice. How good they were picked form the vine, warm from the sun and eaten out of hand (if Grandma wasn’t looking). Then the dark green bell peppers, and the long, skinny hot peppers that turned a bright red and looked like so many Christmas ornaments hanging from their green vines. These were hung up to dry on back porches and in kitchens and attics. Zucchini, asparagus, green beans, broccoli, eggplant, lettuce, and most necessary of all, beds of parsley and basil and peppermint. Grandma would pick some of the zucchini flowers and do wondrous things with them; she mixed a little flour, salt, pepper, baking powder and the washed flowers into a batter that made lovely little pancakes – pizzella, they were called, as were any little fritter-like goodies similarly prepared. Sometimes Grandma stuffed the zucchini blossoms, which I remember eating although I cannot duplicate the stuffing. I know there were bread crumbs and garlic but there must have been other things, and they were sautéed.

Luckily, I remember how to make the stuffing for the bell peppers. Take the crumbs of a loaf of day-old Italian bread and crumble it into a large bowl. Remove the stem end from fresh ripe tomatoes after they have been peeled and squish them into the bread until it is nice and moist, add some slivered garlic, chopped basil and parsley, a tablespoon or two of olive oil, salt and pepper, and mix. Use your hands so you can lick your fingers. Stuff your peppers, cover them with a little bit of the crust you have left from the bread, and sauté them gently in olive oil, turning as they brown on each side. They can be eaten warm or cold – they are great either way.

The string beans would be boiled and marinated with vinegar, oil, garlic, and basil to be eaten cold or tossed into a salad with the fresh, crisp lettuce, and tomatoes. For zucchini, the recipes are too numerous to mention. A few that come to mind: zucchini frittata, cubed zucchini and celery simmered in a tomato sauce and, at the last minute, a couple of beaten eggs poured into the bubbling sauce; or as one of the ingredients for a beautiful summer minestrone.

Of course, there were foods to be had for the picking without the labor of planting and cultivating – these were to be found growing wild in the fields and countryside surrounding our city. There were tender dandelion greens that had to be picked early before they became too tough for salad, and wild mushrooms. However, I remember every year hearing of some family who suffered a tragedy because they had eaten the wrong mushrooms. I knew personally of one paterfamilias who had his wife eat the mushrooms several hours before he did!

Fish, unlike today, was abundant and inexpensive, but most of the time we went out to eat fish. There were many little Italian restaurants that specialized in things like clams, mussels, or calamari with a fiery hot tomato sauce, or scungilli (conch) either in salad or in the hottest of tomato sauces served over biscotti– hard, toasted slices of Italian bread. My father taught me to eat raw clams on the half shell, with a drop or two of lemon juice or hot sauce, when I was very young.

My father’s tastes and mine were similar, and he enjoyed giving me new surprises in foods. But there was one I did not appreciate. It was during the Easter season, and he took me to our local pastry shop where we had a dish of delicious pudding with candied fruit and pignolenuts mixed into it. I thought it was chocolate pudding, but he later informed me it was made of pig’s blood.

We did eat meat – mostly chicken, veal, or sausage; beef was used primarily to make meatballs or brasciola. The chicken was served in many ways, but it had to be a freshkilled chicken. My mother and I spent part of Saturday afternoons at the chicken store, where she poked at the squawking fowl crammed into their cages. When she made her choice, the poor bird was unceremoniously hung by its feet on the scale. Sometimes at least four or five chickens had to be poked and weighed until one was deemed satisfactory. Then the bird was taken into the rear of the shop and would reappear shortly thereafter, plucked and cleaned. I really hated the chicken store, but that did not affect my enjoyment of chicken. It underwent such a transformation in our kitchen – into soup, or as a beautiful roast stuffed chicken, or broiled with a marinade of lemon, oil, oregano, and garlic.

Veal was another versatile meat for us. While the cutlets were favored, a breast of veal was also very popular. In was called panzetta. The butcher would cut a deep pocket in the meat, which was a long, flat piece of veal. This was stuffed with a bread, parsley, egg, and cheese mixture, then roasted and sliced.

I suppose pasta was the villain responsible for padding us so well. Most Italians must have their pasta at least once a week, preferably twice. A few of the old-timers insisted on it every day. There was such a variety of sauces that we never tired of it. I still love to make noodles – it is so easy. A few cups of flour, eggs, salt, a few drops of oil, a little water, and a lot of kneading until the dough is elastic and smooth – then rolling it out so thin, nearly like strudel dough, folding it, and cutting it to the desired shapes.

As she got older, my mother turned the job of rolling the dough over to my father, and eventually I bought her a pasta machine with an electric motor. It’s the one I use today. The garden she recalled was her grandmother’s, taking up nearly every inch of space behind a little house that was the last residence in Paterson, New Jersey without electricity. I remember it as mostly weeds, with a few tomato plants hanging on. My great-grandmother must still have been making sauce.

Long Beach, New York Photoby Karen Dinan