Buona Pasqua! Proudly, I am a first-generation Italian. My mom, with my grandparents and three siblings, emigrated from Vasto, Italy, settling in da Bronx, where Gaetano and Graziella – that’s my Nonna – raised a garden-variety immigrant family.
My dad, Mario Perillo, Mr. Italy, had a similar background, but his birth certificate said “Da Bronx,” and my grandfather, Joseph Perillo, set up his first office, Joseph Perillo & Sons, right on Third Avenue at 4545, and raised his four boys along with Nanny, Dora there.
The tomato never falls far from the plant, and you can never take Belmont out of anybody.
This week we celebrate ooey, gooey “Amerigan” Easter baskets of joy. Italians celebrate too, with roasted lamb. Somehow, cannelloni made it in there, too.
But the other 364 days of the year? My family, like many before us, had, well, a Jeffery Dahmer-style approach to livestock — and definitely to leftovers.
So on this holiday, let’s take a culinary walk down memory lane.
I visited Nonna every Thursday after kindergarten at her apartment in the Dennis Lane Mitchell-lama building on Crotona Avenue. That place is iconic. The smells that emanated from the hallway surrounding my grandparents’ apartment forced me to think constantly about food. A lifetime of cheese, meat, pizza, sauce, sausage. There wasn’t a moment in time when we weren’t eating or cooking.
Nonna singlehandedly created my Venus Di Milo profile.
After countless trips to Arthur Avenue or Little Italy of the Bronx, I fully understood the Italian diet. A necessary evil, animals were not laid to rest in peace like the Lord. In the new country, nobody slaughtered in vain, nobody wasted the literal hair of the animal. Unfortunately.
You hadn’t shopped until you shopped with Nonna. The lambs? Mary cannot help you now.
This Easter dinner carnage doubled as a tasty add-on for a future meat sauce. And never doubt the power a tasty capozella – a stuffed lamb’s head – to complete the Bovidae roster.
Feeling sorry for the dismembered rabbit skinned and hanging feet first in the butcher shop was not allowed. Thumper was supper, lunch the next day and in a soup on days three and four.
I spent most of my youth finding it all repulsive. But I’m now aware that, as a younger, less cognizant diner, I was fed many treasures.
Take Tripe. A doppelgänger for something normal. with a texture like Michael Jordan’s last free-throw. But in sauce.
This gorgeous plate of NBA rubber covered in Nonna’s tomato sauce looked dive-in quality. Nonna said, “U-ah try. Its’a very good.” Once I chewed it enough to swallow it, I kind of liked it. Of course, I had no idea what it was. Enter big brother, Steve – “You know you’re eating pig stomach.”
He then said, “or maybe the cow’s.” Okay, so much better. Not.
“Sanguinaccio.”
“Sangue” = blood.
Blood pudding. Why? Because the sausage, bacon, pancetta, chops, feet, ears of that poor, porker wasn’t enough. So we also made him into… dessert.
The banner in the butcher, akin to selling the winning ticket in the $500 million Powerball, announced its availability. My mom got so excited, she had to take it home to my father. A martini and “Sanguinaccio.”
And now, one of my favorites. Sweetbreads.
Duped again. The words “sweet” and “bread” are just a misleading deviation tactic – aliases to get you to stick your fork in it and savor the delicacy of this mouth-watering, succulent nectar of the Gods. Just don’t call them what they are.
Innards. Another useable slaughter leftover.
My mother loved them. She would order them if available. Their scarcity made them more desirable.
My mother ordered calves’ brains once at Villa Cesare. I went to the bathroom or whatever I was doing, not paying attention, and when I returned to find them on my plate, they looked good, good and fried. Once again, here comes brother Steve with the low-down – “Those are chicken cutlets.”
My mother chuckled. They looked like really good cutlets. I tried one.
The texture was soft, slimy, and unrecognizable. They almost melted and certainly didn’t taste like chicken. “Steve, you lied.” He laughed the diabolic big brother laugh, “You ate calves’ brains.” I hated him from that day forward.
Still, fish was not my go-to as a kid, but post-leftover experience, I drooled over Nonna’s whiting with the parsley and olive oil. I even preferred the bones over cow tongue. The “every-last-drop” immigrant practice of no organ left behind had me begging for Baccalà.
The gastronomic moral: Waste not, want not. All resources consumed to provide for their families and birth a new life. Sacrifices made so my children would never starve or want. Parenting at its best.
Linda Perillo is a mother of eight and the daughter of Mario Perillo, founder of Perillo Tours, America’s leader in Italy travel since 1945, carrying forward a multigenerational Italian-American legacy rooted in family and tradition.
