L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, AUGUST 20, 2026 www.italoamericano.org 22 L'Italo-Americano S o m e t i m e i n t h e spring of 1958, a p a r t y o f m e n i n dark suits walked i n t o t h e d i n i n g r o o m o f t h e H o t e l d a R o c c o a t M a r i n a d i Gioiosa Ionica, on the Ion- ian coast of Calabria roughly seventy-five miles up from Reggio, and asked for some- thing local and something quick. They had spent the day in court at Locri, a few miles down the road, where the session had run long, and the kitchen had not been warned to expect them. The young cook on duty, Gae- tano Belcastro, did what cooks in that position have a l w a y s d o n e , a n d l o o k e d h a r d a t w h a t e v e r w a s already in the room: toma- toes, garlic, oil, parsley, and a great deal of chili, and put a pot of water on to boil. W h a t c a m e o u t w a s a plate of spaghetti hot enough to stop the conversation and t h e n , a m o m e n t l a t e r , t o restart it, because one of the magistrates asked for a sec- ond helping and afterward for the name of the dish. T h a t p u t B e l c a s t r o i n a n awkward position, the thing having been invented forty minutes earlier and never c h r i s t e n e d . T h e j u d g e offered to settle the matter himself: call it spaghetti alla Corte d'Assise, he said, after the court he had just come f r o m , s i n c e t h e s a u c e s h o w e d m e r c y t o n o b o d y and was, all the same, per- fectly fair. The joke lands harder if y o u k n o w w h a t a n a s s i z e court is in Italy: the court- r o o m r e s e r v e d f o r t h e gravest offenses, those carry- i n g t w e n t y - f o u r y e a r s o r m o r e , a n d t h e o n l y o n e where ordinary citizens sit in judgment beside the profes- sionals. Two robed magis- trates, the giudici togati, hear the case alongside six giudici popolari drawn from t h e m u n i c i p a l r o l l s , a g e d between thirty and sixty- four, who take their places wearing a sash in the nation- a l c o l o r s . T h e m o d e r n arrangement dates from a law of April 1951, so when Belcastro's spaghetti went out to that table the institu- tion was barely seven years old: naming a pasta after it was either a considerable compliment to the cook or a remark about the state of the judge's palate. Whatever the magistrate meant by it, the name stuck, and the reason it stuck is the chili. Calabria has grown, dried, strung up, and pound- ed peperoncino since the peppers came east from the Americas by way of Spain, and the region reaches for it where other places would reach for black pepper: in its traditional sausage, in the 'nduja, in the little bottle of oil kept on the table. Here, peperoncini do structural work: three or four of them, f r e s h o r d r i e d , c h o p p e d small and left to open up in olive oil with sliced garlic until the oil goes orange, then tomato pulp or passata a n d a g o o d h a n d f u l o f chopped parsley, simmered ten or twelve minutes and no longer, so the tomato keeps its edge instead of turning sweet. Everything then depends on the last two minutes: the spaghetti come out of the water three or four minutes early, still stiff at the center, and go into the pan to com- plete their cooking in the sauce with a ladleful or two o f t h e s t a r c h y w a t e r t h e y were boiled in, so the pasta drinks the sauce up, instead of just getting coated in it. The pan then comes off the flame and the cheese goes in last, pecorino in most Cal- abrian kitchens and Parmi- giano in some restaurant versions, worked through until everything turns glossy. Add it over heat and it seizes into strings, the one reliable way to ruin the plate. Up the coast at Roccella Ionica, a few miles north of M a r i n a d i G i o i o s a , t h e Agostino family has been running La Cascina 1899 for three generations, in a restored farmhouse of that year standing on some thirty acres that slope toward the sea: the Corte d'Assise is the dish they are known for. Sal- v a t o r e A g o s t i n o s a y s t h e whole business comes down to the balance between the heat of the sauce and the exact quantity of Parmigiano stirred in at the end, which is as much of the method as he will give away; the house version has never been writ- ten down for publication, though they now bottle the sauce and sell it, which is one way of keeping a secret while doing very well out of it. Founded in 1964 by the advertising man and gas- t r o n o m e D i n o V i l l a n i t o defend Italy's regional cook- ing at a moment when hotel menus everywhere were slid- ing toward an international sameness, the Unione Ris- toranti del Buon Ricor- d o , t o w h i c h L a C a s c i n a belongs, runs on a simple a n d o b s e s s i v e r u l e : e a c h member restaurant nomi- nates one dish it will always have on the menu, and the g u e s t w h o o r d e r s i t g o e s home with a hand-painted ceramic plate depicting that v e r y d i s h , f i r e d a t t h e Solimene workshop in Vietri sul Mare. There are about 108 such restaurants now, ten of them abroad, and col- lectors hang the plates in r o w s d o w n t h e i r k i t c h e n walls. La Cascina's plate is the spaghetti. There is a line Agostino likes to repeat, produced at h i s t a b l e y e a r s a g o b y a n American journalist: the dish is the Italian flag laid out on a plate, red tomato, white garlic, green parsley. Given the name the pasta carries, it makes for a stern reading of our national character. L a s t b u t n o t l e a s t , spaghetti alla Corte d'Assise is surprisingly easy to make at home! Twelve ounces of spaghetti will feed three or four; you want a pound of tomato pulp, two cloves of garlic, three or four chilies, a bunch of parsley, good olive oil, and a couple of ounces of grated pecorino – Calabrian if you can find it, or ricotta salata if you prefer the drier, saltier finish. S o m e c o o k s m e l t a n anchovy into the oil at the start, or stir a spoonful of 'nduja through the sauce; a few build it on celery, carrot and onion, for a rounder and less severe result. The chili count is where every cook negotiates with the recipe, and where the recipe, faith- ful to the court it was named for, tends not to negotiate back. CHIARA D'ALESSIO A plate of spaghetti alla Corte d'Assise, the fiery Calabrian pasta made with tomato, garlic, parsley and plenty of peper- oncino (Image generated using Adobe Illustrator AI) LA BUONA TAVOLA RECIPES COOKING TIPS SEASONAL DISHES N o m e r c y , p e r f e c t l y f a i r : spaghetti alla Corte d'Assise

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