Giambotta

A friend called the other day wondering if I have a recipe for giambotta. She'd had some at the Cucina di Roma out here in Naperville before they closed. The dish included chicken, sausage and shrimp. She's interested in making it for Christmas Eve and is not finding any recipes for it. I said I'd ask here, as I'm now intrigued and would like to try it myself.

Does anyone have either any recipes for this - or hints has to how to cook such a dish?

Thanks!

Ann

Ann,

I just did a couple of Google searches with, for example, giambotta (try also the spelling with 'c', ciambotta) and sausage and recipe and some recipes do turn up for a dish close (to varying degrees) to what you describe. E.g.:

http://www.chefdepot.net/entree.htm
http://www.bigoven.com/recipe136286

This version with sausage and sometimes other meats is, I believe, an American thing: in Italy, ciambotta, cianfotta, ciammotta etc. has a number of regional variants but they are pretty much all vegetarian, so if you search for 'cianfotta' etc. and get Italian versions, they won't have meat (that's why I included 'sausage' in the Google search). A basic southern Italian version has eggplant, peppers, potatoes and tomatoes, flavoured with onion and garlic and perhaps an herb or peperoncino. It is, in effect, a summertime vegetable stew, with close analogues throughout the western Mediterranean, as I discuss at length here:*
http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=9771#9771
See also:
http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=40962#40962

I myself would never be inclined to include sausage and other meats in the ciambotta itself, though I happily eat it alongside meat (or fish or eggs). In fact, it is particularly swell alongside a piece of properly roasted chicken and also alongside some pan-fried or grilled sausage.

I usually don't make this dish much out of season (most of the vegetables are mid to late summer crops) but do every now and again, if things in the grocery look good and tasty and the whim hits me. I made ciambotta as part of New Year's Day meal last year, a meal which also featured sausages. But for some of us traditionalist, fuddy-duds, no meat on Christmas Eve...
http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=64580#64580
cianfotta/alboronía/xamfaina:


I hope that's of some help.

Antonius

*A more detailed and developed discussion now available in this volume on sale at amazon.com.

Though I cannot approximate Antonius' experience or expertise, I can offer two further sources for you: I found recipes in both Arthur Schwartz's Naples at Table and Carlo Middione's The Food of Southern Italy. As Antonius notes, neither includes meat, though Middione remarks that "This contorno is good with any roasted fowl or meat, be it beef or pork or veal, etc. It is awfully good as a contorno with Fried Codfish, Roman Style or Fried Squid," which recipes are referenced elsewhere in the book. Schwartz has a page-long discussion of the origins and variations to be found and subtitles the dish "vegetable stew." Middione calls it "mixed vegetable stew" and has a somewhat simpler recipe (lacking, among other things, the olives, onions, and capers from Schwartz's recipe). If you'd like either, pm me and I can forward the recipes to you.

P.S. If you have any interest at all, I have no shame in a far more ostentatious plug for Antonius's essay in the Amazon link he provides. The essay is fascinating and highly readable, wearing its erudition lightly, as they say. It is contained in the volume of essays collected from the 2005 Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, Authenticity in the Kitchen, featuring his Sophie Coe-award winning essay on very nearly exactly this subject.

Ann... I suspect you might also have some good results by simply searching for "sausage and peppers" which, though not nearly as fun to say as giambotta, is how the Italian-American dish you mention is frequently titled when it isn't pretending to be Italian*.

* - Let this not be read as a praising of one cuisine and a chastening of the other. I love them both dearly for what they are, and this couldn't be further from the truth.**

** - I'm feeling particularly plucky today, and as such have apparently spontaneously decided to do my very best Erik M. impersonation.

Wow, and thank you all. I knew this was the place to post the question. I'll follow the websites you directed me to, try the different spellings and see what I find. I had thought about advising her to cook her meat separately and then toss it in to the vegetable mix a few minutes before serving to mix flavors.

Again, many thanks.

Ann McCarthy

Dmnkly wrote:Ann... I suspect you might also have some good results by simply searching for "sausage and peppers" which, though not nearly as fun to say as giambotta, is how the Italian-American dish you mention is frequently titled when it isn't pretending to be Italian*.

Dom,

I have to disagree a wee bit. 'Sausage and peppers' is one thing, ciambotta another and Italian-American 'giambotta' yet a third. What makes 'giambotta' something other than 'sausage and peppers' is the presence of other vegetables, such as zucchini and potatoes and eggplant (and, as Ann's post brings to our attention, other meats as well). It is, in effect, an Americanised, carnified version of the vegetable stew. Sausage and peppers, a combination that naturally comes together both here in this world and there in the other senior one. Pork products and peppers -- pickled or otherwise -- like one another, from a Terronian perspective.

Antonius

Ann McCarthy wrote:Wow, and thank you all. I knew this was the place to post the question. I'll follow the websites you directed me to, try the different spellings and see what I find. I had thought about advising her to cook her meat separately and then toss it in to the vegetable mix a few minutes before serving to mix flavors.

Again, many thanks.

Ann McCarthy

Prego. If I were going to make a meaty summer vegetable stew, I would brown the meat in a deep pan or Dutch oven, set it aside, adjust the fat in the pan, and then build a normal 'cianfotta' in selfsame pan (Middione's and Schwartz' books, mentioned by Gypsy Boy, give fine recipes). Once the stew is going, the meat would be added back to simmer a bit, cooking through completely and sharing flavours with the vegetables. I would, however, prefer to just make the cianfotta in the traditional way and serve it as a side-dish to meats cooked on their own.

***

Gypsy Boy,

Mille grazie per le tue parole; sei troppo gentile.

A

There used to be a restaurant in New York's Little Italy called Palucci's. It was the first Italian restaurant I went to in Little Italy, and I had a dish there called pileggi, which was basically roasted meat and vegetables. It could be made with chicken, veal, sausage, or a combination of the three. In addition to the meat, the dish consisted of roasted potatoes, onions, and peppers, either hot or sweet. It seemed like everything was roasted together, with the meat cut into small pieces to match the size of the potatoes. It was really tasty, and I miss the dish and the restaurant very much.

Antonius wrote:I have to disagree a wee bit. 'Sausage and peppers' is one thing, ciambotta another and Italian-American 'giambotta' yet a third. What makes 'giambotta' something other than 'sausage and peppers' is the presence of other vegetables, such as zucchini and potatoes and eggplant (and, as Ann's post brings to our attention, other meats as well).

De jure, Antonius, we're absolutely in agreement. De facto, however, I think a lot of people use the two titles interchangeably. The dishes you and I might call giambotta, carnified or not, are frequently referred to on menus and in recipe titles as "sausage and peppers". Conversely, I have seen preparations that include nothing but sausage, peppers, olive oil and garlic referred to as giambotta. And while I'm fully in support of proper food terminology, in my experience most folks are not. As such, the strictest interpretation does not necessarily elicit the most comprehensive web search

Hi Ann,

I used to work for Cucina Roma years ago when I was home for the summer from college. It has been over six years or so, but I do recall that Cucina Roma was owned by Cafe Concepts, the company that also owned Cafe Luciano (now closed on Rush). I seem to also remember Cucina Roma and Cafe Luciano had similar menus. I still drive by the still open Cafe Luciano in Evanston on the way to work, but haven't ever stopped in. Maybe you could call over and see if they serve the giambotta. I do remember the dish being popular, but I wouldn't know how it tasted, because the restaurant was pretty stingy in giving their wait staff samples of the menu (I guess I was supposed to just know about how it tasted by smelling and looking...grrr)

Sharona

Cafe Luciano
2676 Green Bay Rd
Evanston , IL 60201
(847) 864-6060

Dmnkly wrote:

Antonius wrote:I have to disagree a wee bit. 'Sausage and peppers' is one thing, ciambotta another and Italian-American 'giambotta' yet a third. What makes 'giambotta' something other than 'sausage and peppers' is the presence of other vegetables, such as zucchini and potatoes and eggplant (and, as Ann's post brings to our attention, other meats as well).

De jure, Antonius, we're absolutely in agreement. De facto, however, I think a lot of people use the two titles interchangeably. The dishes you and I might call giambotta, carnified or not, are frequently referred to on menus and in recipe titles as "sausage and peppers". Conversely, I have seen preparations that include nothing but sausage, peppers, olive oil and garlic referred to as giambotta. And while I'm fully in support of proper food terminology, in my experience most folks are not. As such, the strictest interpretation does not necessarily elicit the most comprehensive web search

D.,

Having poked around a bit, I understand what you're talking about, in that there exists around here, served in a certain range of eateries, a dish called 'giambotta' which not only has meat (first and foremost sausage, sometimes chicken as well or even in place of the sausage) but also has a reduced inventory of vegetal elements. Nevertheless, I must maintain that I have nowhere come across a dish of just sausage and peppers (with, of course, onions) referred to as 'giambotta', nor have I seen a dish with sausage, peppers and onions AND other vegetables, such as potatoes, eggplant, zucchini, etc. referred to as 'sausage and peppers' tout court.

Now, what I believe you are referring to seems to be a somewhat conventional set of ingredients served in these parts, namely, sausage, peppers, onions AND potatoes, very often also with mushrooms, sometimes with further additions; this combination is widely referred to as 'giambotta' in the Chicagoensis but from one perspective looks like it is a tarted up, as it were, version of sausage and peppers, though it seems to me that it is in fact also to be regarded as an altered and regionally popularised version of ciambotta. Of course, there may well be someone or some ones who refer to just s&p as 'giambotta' or to something more complex which includes s&p as 'sausage and peppers', ignoring the rest, but such usage strikes me as marginal and not worthy of our attention.

Anyway, I now suspect that the dish Ann's friend had in mind was most likely this reincarnated and partially devegetated version of 'giambotta', with sausage, chicken breast, peppers, onions, potatoes and probably mushrooms.

So, all's well that ends well: we're both right.

Antonius

I've been making Chicago-Italian giambotta for years. Here's my recipe:

* Exported from MasterCook *

Giambotta

Recipe By :Karen Tursi
Serving Size : 4 Preparation Time :0:00
Categories : Party Pork
Spicy

Amount Measure Ingredient -- Preparation Method
-------- ------------ --------------------------------
6 Italian sausage links (hot or mild) -- cut in half
2 large russet potatoes -- scrubbed and quartered lengthwise
1 large Spanish Onion -- sliced
1 pound mushrooms -- sliced
1 large green bell pepper -- sliced 2" thick
1 large red bell pepper -- sliced 2" thick
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 cup dry vermouth
4 cloves garlic -- minced
salt
pepper
Pam cooking spray

Preheat broiler. Spray baking pan with Pam. Toss quartered potatoes in olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and put in oven. Remove when browned and fork-tender.

Meanwhile, spray broiling pan and rack with Pam. Cut sausage links in half. Place sausage on rack. Broil 15 minutes, turning every 5 minutes, until well-browned and cooked thru.

Melt butter in frying pan. Add onions and saute over medium-high heat until well caramelized. Add mushrooms and continue sauteing for 10 minutes, uncovered, until all mushroom liquid has evaporated. Reduce heat to medium-low. Add garlic and saute for 2 minutes. Add sliced peppers and saute another 5 minutes. Deglaze with vermouth and reduce by half.

When all ingredients are cooked, place sausage on platter. Top with vegetable/vermouth mixture, then top with potatoes.

Description:
"Italian Sausage, Peppers, Mushrooms, Onions and Potatoes"
Cuisine:
"Italian"
Source:
"Karen's kitchen"
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Per Serving (excluding unknown items): 859 Calories; 66g Fat (73.8% calories from fat); 28g Protein; 24g Carbohydrate; 4g Dietary Fiber; 144mg Cholesterol; 1317mg Sodium. Exchanges: 1/2 Grain(Starch); 3 1/2 Lean Meat; 2 1/2 Vegetable; 11 Fat.

NOTES : Reheat in 350 oven for 20 minutes,covered with foil.

Nutr. Assoc. : 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0