What’s Cooking Wednesday Recipe: Calabrian Cuzzupa for Easter/Pasqua
OK, I know Easter has come and gone, but I promised a cuzzupa recipe about a week ago, and a cuzzupa recipe you shall have.
So this week’s What’s Cooking Wednesday is a recipe out of my friend Mary Amabile Palmer’s cookbook, Cucina di Calabria: Treasured Recipes and Family Traditions from Southern Italy. This is a wonderful collection of authentic Calabrese recipes interspersed with essays about the history and culture of this region as well as family memories.
Check out the book on Amazon, but if you’d like to buy it, please let me know as I can get you both a discount and a signed copy.
Cuzzupe di Pasqua*
4 tbsp butter/margarine (softened)
1/2 c sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 large egg
1/2 c milk
1 tsp lemon extract
1 3/4 c all-purpose or unbleached flour
1 tsp baking powder
Preheat oven to 375°F.In a large mixing bowl, add butter, sugar, and salt. Cream until well blended. Gradually add egg, milk, and lemon extract. Mix well. Stir in the flour and baking powder and mix until smooth.
Shape dough into cakes as shown in the above picture, and brush with melted butter; you can also sprinkle some sugar on top as well.
Place cakes on lightly greased cookie sheet and bake until a light golden brown (about 15 minutes).
Note that you can make the icing as seen in last week’s photo by mixing 1/2 cup of confectioner’s sugar with 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons of water. Rainbow sprinkles are a common addition once the glaze in on the cakes.
*I left out the instructions on making the ring or basket which holds hard-boiled, colored eggs as that’s not what’s made where I am; for more instructions, looks like you’ll just have to get a copy of the book!
Buon appetito!
And now, as a special bonus this Wednesday, a cooking meme that Shannon (the founder of WCW) tagged me with a while back:
1. Can you cook? If yes do you like to cook?
Why yes and yes again.
2. When does your whole family come together to eat?
Suppose it depends on how you define “whole family.” P and I eat together twice a day usually. With the rest of his family, we haven’t had a meal yet with everyone (he has 2 brothers and 4 sisters spread around Italy and France), but the closest we came was last summer when there were 2 sisters, 1 brother, and their kids in one tiny room. With my family, well, P hasn’t even met them yet.
3. What do you have for breakfast?
On colder days, something warm to drink (coffee, cappuccino), but in the summer iced coffee. Sometimes I have toast, other times a cornetto, sometimes a banana. Depends on my mood.
4. When, where and how do you eat through the week?
Breakfast either at home or at the bar any time between 6:30 and 9:30 a.m. Lunch at home at 12:30 on weekdays, later on the weekends. Dinner at home anytime between 7:30 and 10:00 p.m.
5. How often do you eat out?
Not very often, although more frequently in the summer. Food’s better at home!
6. How often do you order in or get take out?
Not a common occurrence, but P will sometimes go and pick up pizza on Saturday nights.
7. Re: 5 & 6 – if money were no object would like to do it more often?
Nah. We’d just buy a lot of really good ingredients–and probably eat a lot more seafood.
8. Are there any standards that make a regular appearance at your table?
Um, you could say pasta is a frequent visitor.
9. Have you ever tried a recipe from another blog?
Not yet, but that’s mostly because I can’t find the ingredients I need to make the things that look so yummy. I’m storing them away, though, for when I go to the States.
10. Are there any quarrels because of food?
Not anymore. P likes to cook, but he basically likes to do it alone (no problem there!). Once I understood that, I just learned to make myself otherwise useful when he’s cooking. When I’m cooking, I’m much more relaxed in the kitchen, so I’m easy to get along with when I cook.
11. Are you a vegetarian or could you imagine living as a vegetarian?
I’m not a vegetarian, but I could imagine doing so–the biggest stress would be going to people’s houses for dinner and finding something to eat. I already have problems with that if all they’ve made is frittole (boiled pig parts)….
12. What would you like to try out that you haven’t dared yet?
I’d try sushi just to see what all the fuss is about, but that won’t be happening in southern Italy anytime soon.
13. Would you rather cook or bake?
Hmm…probably bake because I’d probably rather eat baked goods than real food. Sad but true.
14. What was the most terrible mess you’ve ever made in the kitchen?
Thanksgiving last year. That was something.
15. What do your kids like to eat best? What would your kids never eat?
N/A, but I can almost guarantee any kids I have will like pasta. Or at least will be forcefed it.
16. What do you dislike most?
Wow, those boiled pig parts come to mind again. Then there’s “suzzu” (spelling?) which is (again) pig parts mixed with gelatin so that it’s a pudding. And then there’s ghiro (dormouse). I’m gagging just thinking of these things.
I won’t tag anyone, but you foodies out there should feel free to play along!
Still Celebrating: Pasquetta
Last we left off, I promised that I would make time to eat and relax on Pasquetta, as Easter Monday is called here. P and I ended up spending the day with some of his friends and their wives, and now I have photographic evidence.
There was eating:
There was drinking:
There was singing:
There was bocce:
Oh was there ever bocce.
And there was even playtime with Luna and my friend Helen:
Then today, I continued the Pasquetta celebration by turning an annoying work obligation into a fun time by meeting up with Cherrye in Catanzaro for some cappuccini with the stars (and she didn’t even mind her drink getting a little cold while I took a photo or ten):
And then, for the first time in a year, some McDonald’s, including a chocolate milkshake (woohoo!), with an Aussie friend who has a house in my village. Sometimes you just get cravings, you know?
*sigh*
La vita è bella.
Pasqua (Easter) in Calabria: Sabato Santo Photos
And so here we are at Pasquetta (Easter Monday).
Many people down here take the day to spend with friends, relax, eat, and whatnot, but since I’m a dedicated blogger, I’ve been going through the hundreds of photos I took this past weekend. Don’t worry, I’ve also made time to relax and eat too.
For a fuller description of events, check out my previous Easter post here.
Some quick background. I had, essentially, an all access pass to the behind-the-scenes events because of P. You see, he’s been involved in this forever and directs traffic so to speak at various parts. He kept telling people I was covering the whole thing for the BBC, so you can thank him for giving me the courage to get in the way of Jesus and co.
Ahem. The photos.
Starting at about noon on Saturday, the soldiers got their gear ready.
P and I headed down to where Jesus and the other two that would be crucified were getting ready. This happened inside a cantina while the soldiers and the penitent got in position outside. I thought the grated window would be a cool shot, and just as I snapped, a soldier walked by.
Here is one of the two to be crucified alongside Jesus waiting to exit the cantina.
And here are the sinners waiting to self-flagellate.
The two to be crucified and Jesus are being led down to one of the village’s thirteen churches, from where the procession will begin.
Jesus rounding the corner to go down the path to the church.
The path to the church.
The area behind the church where Jesus is tied to the tree and beaten.
A brief pause in the festivities to give you an idea of how many people participate.
One of those people is P’s nephew Vincenzo.
After Jesus is given his cross down there, the procession moves through the village and up to another church, formerly part of a monastery. This photo is taken from my balcony and is hazy because my neighbor decided to heat his house (read: smoke got in our eyes).
From here, the procession arrives at another small church in one of the tiny vicoli, and some of the major players hand off their robes to different participants.
From there, the procession moves to yet another church, where we await the arrival of the Madonna, but not before some further punishment of Jesus.
I don’t have a photo of the arrival of the Madonna as I took it all on video, which I haven’t been able to upload. Boo.
From that church, the procession goes all the way back down to the church where everything started, and we wait for the next day’s events.
FYI, the procession of Sabato Santo takes between 8 and 9 hours.
Then on Sunday morning we have A Cumprunta where the risen Jesus is met by the Madonna. Again, I have this all on video, but here’s a shot of the two statues together.
And one of the a guy dancing while balancing his church’s flag in his mouth.
And that’s all from this pretend BBC correspondent for today.
deno’s easter eggs
For decades, *the* place to be in my hometown sat at the corner of Third and Oak Streets. We’re talking wooden booths carved with names from my dad’s crew, vanilla milkshakes with bits of bean still visible served up in the metal shaker, and the best–I mean *the best*–cheeseburgers I’ve ever had in my life.
The entrance was angled on the corner so that when you walked in, you were greeted by the sight of two things nearly simultaneously. To the left was a long diner counter, red bar stools in front of it and behind it, a waitress wearing a pink dress covered by a white apron and a little nurses’-type hat. This was in the early 1990s, by the way, but I’m guessing it wasn’t too different when my dad hung out there in the 60s.
To the right was heaven, at least to a chocoholic, because this establishment also made candy and to-die-for chocolate year-round.
Deno, the owner, was one mean candy machine.
My mom used to buy his Easter eggs for my brother (coconut) and me (peanut butter) every year. If you’re envisioning those tiny, poor excuses for candy made by Reese’s or Cadbury’s, think again. These babies were the size of my hand–my adult hand, not my five-year-old one. And the best part was that the top was hand-decorated with flowers and swirls and *sigh* my name.
In pink!
In cursive!
So, every Easter morning after the excitement had died down from our indoor egg hunt (plastic, bright, filled with coins, and marked with our names), it was time for that first bite into the M of Michelle (good thing the eggs were so darn big!). I’d curl up with the dog, fill my mouth with tooth-achingly sweet peanut butter goodness, and dream about being that proverbial kid in the candy store.
Not surprisingly, Easter was always accompanied by an overwhelming urge to watch Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.
The building of the old diner is still there, but you’d never recognize it. Last I heard, Deno was still making candy and selling it out of another locally famous establishment. But even when Deno has made his last egg, his place will still exist in my and many minds exactly as it was for decades.
And isn’t that what’s great about the recesses of our minds? I remember every detail right down to Deno’s welcoming smile and the greasy grill smell as if I just scooted into a booth yesterday–but all I really did was reminisce about seeing my name in pink (in cursive).
Can Easter, or life, get any sweeter?
Buona Pasqua a tutti–photos of Calabrian festivities coming soon!
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[tags]chocolate eggs, diners, homemade chocolate, easter, easter eggs[/tags]
love thursday: lending a hand
A paw will work too.
Photo inspired by the story of Toby, a dog that saved his owner with the Heimlich.
Happy Love Thursday!
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[tags]love thursday, helping hands, dogs, paws[/tags]
Michelle Kaminsky is an American attorney-turned-freelance writer who lived in her family's ancestral village in Calabria, Italy for 15 years. This blog is now archived.
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