I am not Italian-American and have no Italian blood in me. I was never a big fan of the Italian-American food I had in America, for me the portions were HUGE and too many courses.
NOW I get it!
After living here for 30 years, I get it.
I can see where a lot of the food has it roots.
The Muffaletto Sandwich is from Palermo and most immigrants from Palermo were fishermen and went to New Orleans and brought their sandwich with them. It is not Italian food, nor Sicilian food but a regional dish.
People don’t realize that there really is NO Italian food, but rather regional dishes, which are not found even 20 miles away or the recipe changes.
Gasoline is about $10 a gallon so you don’t find people driving all over the place and food doesn’t go very far either.
Things thought of as Italian such as Fettuccine Alfredo, really only exist at Alfredo’s restaurant in Rome. ( there is no cream in Fettuccine Alfredo).
I have seen the Sicilian Anelletti for sale in my grocery store in Tuscany and was inspired to share what the original Spaghetti-O’s probably came from.
The Timballo is one of my favorite Sicilian dishes, there are many versions, such as the spaghetti one I have already shown you from Planeta Winery.
The other day I made this version with the anelletti, basically the same theory.
Timballo di Anelletti
The pasta is cooked in salted water, then tossed in a light tomato sauce.
The pan is buttered and then breadcrumbed.
I layered the pasta with some cooked eggplant in pieces and sicilian cheese and baked at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.
The pasta I found at my local shop has an interesting story. It is from a farm that the land was taken back from the mafia and turned into farmland.
Organic wheat and extruded through bronze give an incredible pasta.
Yes! I grew up in Basilicata, and each town, nay, each family in each town had their own “proper” recipe for a local ingredient. We made timballo also, but only for very special occasions, weddings, first communion feasts, and the pasta was always rigatoni, the only pasta that was store-bought, I might add.
When I moved to Los Angeles I could not find any food that tasted good to me until Wolfgang Puck in Santa Monica came up with a minestrone that was better than anything else I had ever cooked or tasted.
thanks for the note @rosaria!
THAT IS GORGEOUS………are you going to share the recipe????
@la Contessa– if you read the notes– there are the simple tips on assembly and a link to the “spaghetti” version– which is pretty much the same–
Tomato sauce on the pasta.. I put a cooked eggplant and cheese filling.
What a show stopper. Please share with us how to cook it
I laughed out loud when I read the title – my mom would NEVER serve “Uh-oh Spaghettio’s” – but she would have loved this! It looks great.
When I was in Italy I ventured to Gragnano where they make pasta in the time honoured tradition with bronze dies.This is a fun dish to prepare I a sure.
SOOOO happy you shared this recipe. Drooled over the FB photo. Beautiful.