Lindsay Marie Morris

Late summer to early fall was harvest season for my Sicilian grandfather's garden, where he grew, among other things, five-foot-long cucuzzi (also known as snake squash or bottle gourd) with seeds from Palermo. He'd bring it in for my grandmother, along with some of the leaves they called tenerumi, and she'd cook both in soups and stews. 

You won't find cucuzza in a supermarket. Most cucuzza cooks grow it themselves. I recently spotted cucuzzi hanging from a fence near my home in the San Fernando Valley. 

But every so often, this Sicilian specialty makes an appearance at farmers markets. That's where Northern California food storyteller Simona Carini encountered her first U.S.-grown cucuzza, a squash she'd only previously seen in Sicily. 

Simona bought that cucuzza along with its leaves and created her own recipe, cucuzza e tenerumi al pomodoro. She shared with me the story behind the recipe and what she hopes readers will take away from her blog.

 

 

Tell me about your background.

I was born and grew up in Perugia, Central Italy, where I spent the first half of my life. I went to school there, my friends are there, and my family is there. At age 30ish, I moved to Northern California. My husband is American.

 

My last name is Sicilian. Carini is an ancient town not far from Palermo. However, my immediate family is not from Sicily. On both my mom's and my father's sides, our family is from Lazio, about 40 miles north of Rome, although my maternal grandmother was from Croatia, from Split.

 

When did you first encounter tenerumi and cucuzzi?

So it was 1980, which historically, for Italy, was a very hard summer. In June, a passenger plane was shot down over the island of Ustica. And shortly after that, there was a bomb in the city of Bologna. That was the year I flew for the first time.

 

We spent a couple of weeks there in this little town not far from Carini, which is called Villagrazia di Carini. And why there? It's because three of my classmates from elementary school were originally from Sicily. And I guess their uncle had a house there. We were basically 17 or 18; there were seven of us. And we hopped on a plane. It was my first flight, and we spent two weeks there. So that was the first time I had tenerumi.

We weren't really cooking, but we were in this small community, mostly of locals. We were not in a tourist place, so they kind of took pity on us because we were without anybody. And so I remember this neighbor bringing over pasta with tenerumi. I asked what it was, and I was told it was the leaves of young zucchini, but that was it. 

Fast-forward. In 2007, I went back to Sicily with my husband, and we stayed in Palermo. We went to the market, and finally, I saw the cucuzza with the tenerumi. However, at the time, we were staying in hotels, so I couldn't really cook anything, but I took pictures.

 

So, for the first experience, we had the kitchen, but we weren't cooking, and for the second, I was cooking, but I didn't have a kitchen. 

Then, in 2019, we were living in Berkeley, and I used to go to the farmers market on Saturday morning. I got there, and it was really funny because there was this group of people crowding around something. And this something was actually cucuzza and tenerumi.

 

They had never seen it. And one of the farm helpers was explaining. 

The cucuzza had been harvested young, so it was shorter, but I bought it, and people were looking at me like, "How are you going to cook it?"

I was like, well, I know in Sicily they make pasta, they make soup. I developed my recipe mostly because I didn't want to make soup. I wasn't interested in trying to make pasta, so I wanted to cook it as vegetables. And so I basically put together what I had—the tenerumi and the cucuzza, tomato from the farmers market, and onion. So that's how I kind of developed the recipe. 

 

What is the history of the cucuzza?

The thing about the cucuzza is that this plant actually came from Africa. It's been in Europe for a lot longer than zucchini. Then zucchini kind of took over. 

 

Can you speak to the idea of consuming the whole plant? 

This idea just speaks to me. It's a little bit like the tradition we have in Italy of using everything.

 

What do you hope that at-home cooks will take away from this recipe and your work?

Things don't have to be complicated, particularly Sicilian cooking. I mean, look at desserts, for example. Sicily has quintessentially decadent desserts if you think of cassata and all that kind of stuff. But the food itself is very simple. They cook fresh fish, they have vegetables, they have fruit, they make wonderful bread. And so I really try to make it so that people are less worried about the end result or if it fits some specific idea or if it is authentic.  

 

The whole thing about authenticity is very difficult because if we look at the history of migration from Italy, people left because they were starving. I mean, not everyone, but there was an enormous amount of poverty. They came from Sicily or, in general, southern Italy; they arrived in New Jersey or New York. 

I remember a friend of mine told me that she could always tell an Italian family because, in the winter, they would wrap up their fig tree. And I understand that everybody has fig trees in Italy; they don't need any care, and the fruit is good. But if you live in New Jersey or New York, you have to be careful about the winter. So what happened is that people had to adapt because they just didn't have the ingredients. So, already, to me, authenticity is not the right way to look at this. It is adaptability, which is how these people try to hold on to their traditions in a place that is completely foreign. And that's beautiful. 

 

>>Get Simona's cucuzza e tenerumi al pomodoro recipe here!<<

 

 

 

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Among the most commonly consumed nightshades, the eggplant is a favorite among market-goers.

 
Celebrated for their varying shapes and colors, these versatile vegetables (technically fruits) are rich in anti-inflammatory anthocyanins and the essential trace element manganese, which is important to bone formation. They are also full of fiber. 

 
It's no wonder they've taken a foothold in Sicilian cuisine. But there would be no pasta alla Norma, pasta 'ncasciata, or eggplant Parmesan without the arrival of the Arabs in the ninth or tenth century, says Clifford Wright, a James Beard award-winning author of 19 books on cooking, food, history, and politics. His latest tome, An Italian Feast: The Celebrated Provincial Cuisines of Italy from Como to Palermo, features more than 800 recipes from the 109 provinces of Italy's 20 regions.

 
We recently discussed the eggplant's fascinating history and how its perception and use have evolved over the centuries.

 

 

What is your background, and how did you become interested in Italian food history?

I began cooking in 1967. I'm part Italian [with family from Pago Veiano in the province of Benevento in Campania]. My mother cooked Italian-American food; it was my home food. I also worked in restaurants whose chefs were Italian, and lastly, I often traveled to Italy and loved the food.

 

How did the eggplant first arrive in Southern Italy, and what were the initial reactions to eggplants?

Although most botanists believe southeastern India is the place of origin of the eggplant, and some botanists make a case for China, as well as the Malay peninsula, the place of origin is still unknown. Nikolai Vavilov identified the mountains of central and western China and its adjacent areas as the place of origin and India as the center of origin. It seems clear, though, that India is, at least, a secondary area of origin. The cultivated eggplant appears to be an improved form of either S. insanum or S. incanum, both of which are native to India.

 

What is the history of the eggplant?

Arab agriculturists brought the eggplant to the Mediterranean from Persia and perhaps from the Arabian Peninsula in the ninth or tenth centuries. The Arabs seem to have discovered the eggplant already growing in Persia shortly after their conquest of that country in 642 A.D., although several ancient Arabic names for the eggplant seem to come directly from other Indian names, indicating that the plant may have arrived in the Arabian Peninsula in pre-Islamic times. 

The Arabs have long been fond of eggplant, and medieval Arabic cookery manuscripts always have many recipes. Although eggplant was initially treated with suspicion, it soon became a favorite vegetable. In fact, the medieval Arab toxicologist Ibn Waḥshīya (circa 904) said it was fatal when eaten raw. 

Sicily was one of the first places in Europe where eggplant was grown after being introduced by Arab farmers. They were grown in Spain by the tenth century, although the first clear reference to them in Sicily is from 1309, where they are called melingianas and are grown in a garden along with cucumbers and a kind of gourd (squash).

Although the eggplant was once called "mad apple" (mala insana) because it was thought to produce insanity, this expression is not the etymological root of the Italian and Sicilian words for eggplant, melanzane, and mulinciana, respectively. 

The Italian and Sicilian words derive from the Arabic word for the plant, bādhinjān, with the addition of the initial "M." 

There are numerous recipes for eggplant from thirteenth-century Spain. This is notable because eggplant was a relatively new vegetable in Europe, and this is an early date for its being common.

Tortilla de berenjenas, an eggplant puree tortilla from Seville, is a recipe from the thirteenth-century Arab-Andalusi cookbook of Ibn Razīn al-Tujībī, the Kitāb faḍālat al-khiwān fī ṭayyibāt al-ṭacam wa'l-alwān.

 

How did the perception of eggplant change?

The eggplant probably began as an ornamental in gardens as it was thought to be poisonous. Slowly, it became a Sicilian favorite. 

 

What's a favorite traditional Sicilian dish that prominently features eggplant?

Certainly there is eggplant Parmesan. Although also popular in Campania, it is typically Sicilian.

 

For further insight and eggplant recipes, check out Clifford's books, A Mediterranean Feast, An Italian Feast, and Mediterranean Vegetables, available at cliffordawright.com or through your favorite online bookseller. 

 

 

 

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