Tavula 'e Dummenica/A Neapolitan Sunday Dinner

'Na Bella Tavula 'e Dummenica


'o pane fatto a ccasa




pasta 'e pane, pasta 'e maccarune


'e strangulaprievete fatte a mmano


'a sasiccia e 'e polpette


nu raù


carciofe...


... e pisielle












Accusì magnammo a ccasa nosta.

Antonius


Links to other recipes and cooking notes by this writer: http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=55649#55649

Antonius,

What in the world is strangulaprievete? It looks amazing. Everything does. I'll be right over!

Bill/SFNM

Strangle the priest?

Strozzapreti aka "priest stranglers," are long strands of pasta, like twisted tagliatelle, usually made with wine instead of water. One famous dish from Emilia uses a pasta called gramigna ("little weeds", which look like wiggly or curly cords) with wine-braised sausage (gramigna alla salsiccia e vino). But once we cross the border into Romagna, the gramigna are replaced with strozzapreti. Another dish from Romagna, strozzapreti con poveracce e le seppie (strozzapreti with clams and squid) also features this evocatively-named pasta. (This, all courtesy of Lynn Rossetto Kasper's Splendid Table)

The name, at least in one explanation, "goes back to the tradition of the women from Romagna preparing this type of pasta for the local priest, while the husbands, evidently a little bit more anticlerical, wished the priest would choke while he was stuffing himself with it." The linked site (you'll need to type "strozzapreti" into the search function since the complete link doesn't seem to work here) goes into far more detail, should you be interested.

The always-infallible Wikipedia, offers "that gluttonous priests were so enthralled by the savory pasta that they ate too quickly and choked themselves, sometimes to death. Another explanation involves the azdora [the housewife in Romagna], who ‘chokes’ the dough strips to make the strozzapreti: "... in that particular moment you would presume that the azdora would express such a rage (perhaps triggered by the misery and difficulties of her life) to be able to strangle a priest!"

P.S. Fra Antonio: were it not for extraordinary resources (and the lucky fact that I happened to remember this particular item from reading the cookbook), you would leave us bereft. Our linguistic abilities are poor indeed compared to yours. Have mercy!

Bill,

Many thanks! Alas, this meal is not available at the present time but will be served again at some point in the not too distant future. Today was something also very Italian but quite different from the above... more on that anon...

Annieb is quite right... this form of pasta bears a name that means literally 'priest-stranglers'... the name occurs for generally similar but, of course, different in significant detail forms of pasta across a good stretch of Italy. In this case, they're of the Campanian/Neapolitan sort, made with semolina.

Since bread has been much discussed of late here (and elsewhere), the bread shown above is of a sort I'm wont to make, following a traditional approach (water measured, flour 'q.b.'; long slow rise, long proof'). For Chicagoans, this should mean something: it's very much like the double rounds that old D'Amato's makes (the one at the corner of May next to Bari).

Time to do dishes!

Antonius

P.S. Just as I was about to post, I saw Gypsy Boy's post; yes, strozzapreti are as you say but these are a bit different, the Campanian version which resemble gnocchi more than some of the other, stringier versions from Germa... I mean, further north in Italy...

A

Antonius wrote:'e strangulaprievete fatte a mmano

Those priest stranglers (beautiful, by the way) look an awful lot like Lithuanian mealy hedgehogs.

And those mealy hedghogs look an awful lot like the squid that comes in the frozen bags of mariscos:-)

Antonius,

The 'strangulo' part was easy--I guessed on 'previete.' Is it priest or prelate?

annieb wrote:And those mealy hedghogs look an awful lot like the squid that comes in the frozen bags of mariscos:-)

Antonius,

The 'strangulo' part was easy--I guessed on 'previete.' Is it priest or prelate?

Good guess/analysis!
Neapolitan prievete and the truncated Tuscan (and hence standard It.) prete are 'priest'. (The Italian and the English are both from the Latin presbyter and ultimately Greek presbyteros.)

Hmmm, come to think of it, these strangulaprievete would go nicely with a rich sugo of squid or cuttlefish, though with that condiment the usual form of pasta used (at least in northern Campania) are long noodles of the tagliatelle shape.

Antonius