Erica De Mane

A real skinny guinea: Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975).

Recipe:

Caponata with Pears and Almonds

You know the classic Italian mamma, huge, aproned, her big arms swinging with fat, hoisting a steaming pasta pot? She’s an Italian-American invention. That woman hardly exists in real Italian life. Look at the classic Italian movies. They always show something much more complicated. Like the exquisite and exquisitely svelte Silvana Mangano, in Pasolini’s Teorema, who spends her afternoons driving around the slums of Milan in her Lamborghini, picking up young men. And of course Pasolini himself was skinny as can be, maybe partly because he spent more time in the same pursuit as his character in Teorema than he did overeating (or making some of the most amazing films the world has ever seen). I think there’s a lesson here. Keep yourself busy and you won’t think so much about food. (more…)

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Veal, prosciutto, and sage, ready to roll.

Recipe:

Saltimbocca with Chicory and Capers

My initial attempt to diet was very lame. Being a complete novice at it, I figured it would be easy. Why, I have no idea, since I’d watched my sister and friends struggle with diets of all sorts for years. I suppose I reasoned that I didn’t have much weight to lose, so it would be no problem (in fact it seems to be just as hard to lose 12 pounds as 25). So in my naive way I decided to just eat less of everything, not cutting out any foods in particular. It didn’t work, mainly because having such small portions of things I loved made me antsy. So I added exercise. That may have been working, but it made me eat more, so it boomeranged. (more…)

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A negroni warms up a winter afternoon.

A big lifestyle change I made when I decided I needed to lose some weight was not drinking wine before dinner. It was a bad habit to begin with, and not very Italian in concept. Wine is made to go with food, and a glass of wine before dinner, especially red, just made me want to start my dinner early. I’d start the inevitable snacking on cheese and bread and hunks of salami. Bad. Wine as an aperitif is, I believe, something of an American invention. I’ve had very light whites served before dinner in Italy, but the endless glasses of thick, oaky chardonnay that get passed around at American cocktail parties make me want to send out for a bucket of Kentucky Fried chicken to go with them, not those measly mini crab cakes that always seem to circulate. (more…)

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The secret ingredient: cappacola.

Recipe:

Farro Strozzapreti with Broccoli Rabe, Hot Cappacola, and Fennel Seeds

Pasta with broccoli rabe and sausage is one of my all-time favorite dishes going back to childhood, a Southern Italian classic that I still indulge in from time to time. But I’ve found a much less bloating alternative to the fatty pork sausage and tons of olive oil I generally like to throw into it. I’ve replaced the sausage with capacolla, a lean but extremely flavorful air-dried pork shoulder that originated in Calabria (in Northern Italy it’s called coppa). With capacolla I can get a rich pork taste without all the grease. And the great thing about this pasta is that it’s in no way a compromise. Capacolla isn’t a substitute for sausage but an elegant product on its own that makes for a pasta loaded with authentic Southern Italian flavor. And I include a little reminder of the original dish by including fennel seeds in the mix, a palate-teasing trick, but a good one. (more…)

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