L'Italo-Americano

www.italoamericano.org 26 L'Italo-Americano THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2018 Luscious - and fortune bringing - cotechino with lenticchie N ew Year's Eve in Italy is marked by a large, festive meal which might have seafood as the pro- tagonist.  The dinner on December 31st is called the cenone di San Sil- vestro or cenone di Capodanno, the word cenone being Italian for "big dinner."  Many Italian regio- nal traditions see cotechino with lentils served for dinner but many actually serve it at midnight – after the main cenone. I make it as our one and only main meal for New Year's dinner. I might be more creative and add other dishes if we have guests, but if it's just us – then cotechino with lentils will be the only thing I cook. Cotechino is a richly seasoned pork sausage from Emilia-Romagna. It is boiled, sli- ced and served on top of a bed of lentils. While preparing it for New Year's Eve every year I ask myself why on earth I don't make this dish more often – especially during win- ter.  This is a delicious,  comfort dish and one that I only discovered once I started living in Italy twenty years ago! It's definitely not so- mething we had growing up in Au- stralia. (Although my father and his brothers would have an annual sausage making day, a tradition my cousins continue every year).  You might hear some people say they are having cotechino, or you may hear them say zampone. It's pretty much the same thing although there is a way to distin- guish the two. The difference between cotechino and zampone is actually quite simple. They are di- stinguished mainly by what enca- ses them. Cotechino is stuffed into the gut or pork skin, while zam- pone is made and presented in the front leg (trotter) of the pig. The presentation is a bit more dramatic, but the taste and end result is pretty much the same.  This means that both are im- mediately recognizable, but also involves some differences from a nutritional point of view. Although neither is considered a light dish, zampone has a greater caloric intake because the trotter releases fat during cooking which in turn adds extra flavour to the zampone itself. Researching the dish's history, a date is certain. In 1511, in Mi- randola, in the province of Mo- dena, the troops of Pope Julius II were besieging the city. It is said that the Mirandolesi, not to waste even a crumb of the last remaining pigs, thought to keep the meat in the trotters and pig rinds, thus gi- ving life to the zampone. Cotechino, on the other hand, is the result of the creative genius of some cooks of the past and the very ancient tradition of preserving fresh pork meat in its gut. As it often happens when we want to discover the secrets of foods and products that are rooted in Italian culinary tradition, each butcher or norcino has his own re- cipe for the filling and seasoning of his cotechino and zampone. I have bought it freshly made by my local butcher but I actually really love the pre-cooked, pre-packaged ones for sale. Italian custom believes it is a good omen for economic prospe- rity, if you start the New Year ea- ting lentils, the more you eat, the richer you will be apparently! Although originally a local specialty, thanks to modern industrial production cotechino (like panettone, originally from Milan) has become a national ho- liday tradition, and is found in all markets and supermarkets. Cotechino with lentils is an ex- tremely poor dish, made with very economical and simple ingre- dients. The cotechino itself isn't very expensive and it can be pur- chased raw from a specialty but- cher or already pre-cooked and packaged in a vacuum-packed pouch.  This definitely speeds up the preparation of this dish and like most people, I buy it like this. This makes life easy because aside from Zampone is a preparation similar to cotechino, also typically served with lentils © Nelly Kovalchuk | Dreamstime.com Aromatic lentils and soft, rich cotechino are a match made in culinary heaven@Toni Brancatisano LA BUONA TAVOLA RECIPES COOKING TIPS SEASONAL DISHES TONI BRANCATISANO Continued to page 28

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