A winter warmer recipe from the best food writer in NZ letters I have started to cook the way my father does. Dino Pellegrino grew up in southern Italy during the wartime years and often went hungry. It made him a thrifty no-waste person, especially in the kitchen. A small amount of meat was used to flavour a dish, and we ate whatever vegetables were on special bolstered by beans, rice and pasta. I used to get impatient when he would allow only one rasher of bacon for a spaghetti sauce to feed five people. We can afford to use the whole packet, I would complain. But now, as I rear back like a startled horse at the rising prices every time I go food shopping, I have seen the wisdom in his ways.
My father cooks “cucina povera”, the classic Italian poor people’s food. Almost any country with a history of a peasant class surviving on very little will have evolved similar dishes. Cheap and nutritious, most importantly delicious. And, in Italy at least, every family will have a different way of making a dish, which is of course the right way.
In my house over winter a regular weeknight dinner is pasta e fagioli, a bowl steaming with a mix of pasta and beans. When I told a Neapolitan chef that I put celery and pancetta in my version he was visibly horrified. His pasta e fagioli only had about three ingredients. But with poor people’s food there are no rules. You cook with whatever you happen to have.
You don’t even need a recipe really, only an idea of what you want to eat. On these cold and wet wintry evenings, I want something warm and comforting. So, I fry a diced onion with a little chopped pancetta or bacon, then add a jar of passata and some diced carrots and celery including the leaves, especially the leaves. You could put kale in if you were mad enough to eat it. You definitely need to chuck in a can of red kidney or white beans. Then some water or stock (often I use the powdered Vegeta chicken stock but it’s really salty despite the low sodium claim on the label so don’t add extra salt). Simmer until the vegetables are tender, adding extra liquid if necessary. If you want to make this dish go further, you can boil pasta in a separate pan, then mix at the end.
My father was a shrewd provisioner. He would hang around the supermarket late on Saturday afternoons until they marked down the “exotic” vegetables that hardly anyone in our northern English town ever bought back then; the capsicums and eggplant. I find myself shopping like him now. I gather food here and there, from lots of little places. It’s practically become my hobby. There’s a store called the Euro-Dell in West Auckland which is great for pancetta and ‘nduja, the soft and spicy Calabrian sausage that I’m addicted to. Fruit and vegetables come from the orchard shops, slabs of hard Italian cheese from a funny little grocery on Ponsonby Rd.
Some of my father’s dishes, I will never make. Anything with offal because ugh. His pasta with potatoes served with a basket of bread, because it’s like being bludgeoned by carbs. A dish he calls spezzatino that seemed to be just chewy meat and peas. I’m sure there is a better way to make this Italian beef stew, but I haven’t bothered trying. Why would I, when I can enjoy my own take on his cabbage and rice, with the spicy hit of ‘nduja, even though I know, at the very idea, he would shake his head and throw his hands in the air and say “Nooooo’.
Food is love to me and my father. And there shouldn’t be a high price to pay for either.
Cabbage with rice
Green cabbage (savoy is nice)
Onion
Garlic
Pancetta or bacon
‘nduja or chilli
Rice
Chicken stock
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
Pour a big puddle of olive oil into a large pan or casserole, then gently fry a diced onion, chopped pancetta and lots of garlic (my father puts the cloves in whole then takes them out before serving so my Mum doesn’t know they were there). Add a hunk of nduja or just some chilli flakes. Put in lots of chopped cabbage and stir fry until it is starting to wilt. Then add a little water or chicken stock, about half a finger, adding more if needed. You’re not making soup but you do want the dish to have a slightly soupy consistency and the cabbage to be well cooked. In a separate pan you’ll be boiling some rice. I prefer brown but I think we all know what my father would have to say about that.
Once the cabbage is tender, mix the rice with it and serve in bowls, covered in grated cheese (Parmesan or pecorino is good, but I reckon plain old Tasty would be fine).
The bestselling novel PS Come to Italy by Nicky Pellegrino (Hachette, $36.99) is about food and love, and is available in bookstore nationwide.
