By Joe Massaglia
It’s hard to believe that another year has come and gone so quickly. I keep asking myself where has the time gone? I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling this way and believe many Shore Local readers also feel this way.
As with everyone who has had career in the food industry, I’ve spent my New Year’s Eves working, either in big party venues like the casino parties in their large ballrooms or in smaller venues like my own restaurants. But when I was growing up in Italy, which is a very superstitious country, we had many ways to celebrate New Year’s Eve, known as the Vigilia, Capodanno or Festa di San Silvestro.
Italians celebrate New Year’s with a cenone (big feast), often featuring foods symbolic of wishes for the coming year, washed down with plenty of Prosecco or spumante (“sparkling wine”). Pork plays a role in many New Year’s feasts around the world, and in Italy it is the star of the show. Italian folklore suggests that eating sausage before midnight is a good omen for the New Year because sausage made with pig’s trotters (pig’s feet) contains a high fat content which symbolizes abundance.
Some think that the custom of serving pork comes from the pig’s habit of rooting forward, symbolizing our intention to mark the New Year with a renewed commitment to moving forward ourselves. When pork is eaten with coin-shaped lentils, which are believed to bring good luck and prosperity, the diner’s financial outlook for the next year is supposed to be better than the previous one.
New Year’s Day dinner historically features zampone e lenticchie (pig’s trotters and lentils). Zampone is a hollowed-out, deboned pig’s foot stuffed with sausage, then cut into rounds after cooking and served with lentils. A variation on this is cotechino e lenticchie, a big, fat sausage from Modena that contains the meat of the trotter and is sliced into coin-shaped rounds after cooking; it is served with lentils and mashed potatoes.
In the past several years cotechino has been imported into the United States, but you only could find it at high-end Italian restaurants in New York City. But, if you want to try it here in South Jersey, I have it available at Eat @ Joe’s in EHT. I serve it on a grilled sandwich roll with caramelized onions, spicy bagnetto verde sauce (a pesto-like sauce made with parsley) and provolone cheese. Mama Mia, it’s delicious.
In the Piemonte where I grew up, grains of rice represent coins, because rice “grows” or increases in volume in the pot, the way we would like our wealth to multiply in the new year. So, we always included risotto in bianco with our meal.
Dessert is dried fruit and red grapes. It’s said to take great willpower to conserve some grapes from the harvest until New Year’s Eve, indicating that everyone at the table will hopefully be wise and frugal with their newfound wealth.
One fun custom that starts right after Christmas is that stores start hanging red undergarments in their windows because both men and women are supposed to wear red underwear on New Year’s Eve to bring luck in the coming year. And since red is the color of fertility, those hoping to conceive in the following year also wear red.
To banish previous bad luck, particularly in southern Italy, there’s an attitude of out with the old and in with the new, and in the old days old pots and pans, clothes or any old and unwanted items were thrown from upstairs windows. Today you’re more likely to see people smashing plates and glasses on the ground to drive away evil spirits.
All Italians love fireworks! And New Year’s Eve celebrations, like in almost every other country, are celebrated with amazing fireworks to drive the evil spirits away.
Finally, although I don’t usually make New Year’s resolutions, I really am going to try to slow down a bit in 2019 and as they say, “take time to smell the roses!”
Buon anno!
Joe’s Table for Two radio show airs Saturday mornings from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on WOND 1400 AM. Website: joestablefortwo.com. Facebook: Joe’s Table for 2 and Eat at Joe’s EHT. Contact Joe: joestablefortwo@gmail.com. Eat @ Joe’s: 609-484-8877.
