Viva San Giuseppe!

I hope you enjoyed the Wigila post a few months back, because here comes Cultural Traditions 2: Sicilian Style!

St. Joseph's Table, for those of you who are not "in the know," is a Sicilian holiday held in honor of everybody's second-favorite carpenter: Saint Joseph! The story goes that there was a great famine in Sicily, so the people prayed to St. Joseph and said that if he would make the rain come, they would hold a feast in his honor. Then there was a flood. I guess Saint Joseph got pretty excited. That's understandable; he's the earthly father of Jesus and patron saint of things like unborn children and for a happy death. I've never been able to understand why the Sicilians prayed to Saint Joseph in particular. (OK, according to Wikipedia, Saint Joseph is the patron saint of Sicily. Well then.) His patronage covers a ton of things, but as far as I can tell, drought isn't really one of them.

Anyway, we have a feast in his honor during Lent, and since it's during Lent, there's no meat. What we do have is fish, because...It's Sicily, guys.

The traditional menu is as follows:

1. Lentil Soup
2. Pasta con sardi with bread crumbs (fish-based pasta sauces are not served with cheese. My aunt told me once that the bread crumbs are supposed to reflect the self-reflection and humility of the Lenten season, but I've also heard that they're supposed to represent sawdust, as a nod to the saint. Maybe it's both. I just report here, don't ask me.)
3. Olives and fennel (Fennel is a very mild vegetable with a slightly licorice-like taste. These foods are supposed to symbolize poverty and also cut through the deep-fried foods in the next course.)
4. Deep fried cod.
5. Fritattas
6. Sfinge, which are these delightful airy puffs of sugar-coated dough...oh hey, those are deep-fried too. Wow. Also strufoli, which are deep-fried balls of honey.

My parents have hosted St. Joseph's Table for several years now. Before then, we went to a church basement where the food was gross (especially to a little kid. I couldn't stand the pasta in particular) and we invariably got an ice-cream sandwich at the end of the meal. Nobody knows what the story was behind the ice-cream sandwiches, but they became a tradition.

Unlike Wigilia, which was heavily edited according to my grandmother's preferences, my family stays almost exactly true to the original meal. There are only a few very slight changes that are more due to logistics than taste. Because Buffalo has such a substantial Italian population, the specialty items like con sardi mix are actually very easy to get, but there are some limits. We usually make cardoon, spinach, cauliflower and asparagus frittatas, but this year the whole city was cleaned out of cardoon. (For reference, here's a picture. It's not terribly common.)

Cardoon is a little like celery; it's a mild-tasting vegetable. I've only ever eaten it on Saint Joseph's and only seen it in stores when we have to buy it for the feast.

This year, rather than just pass around a tray of fennel cut into manageable pieces, I made an orange and fennel salad. It was actually delicious; I would eat it any time. It's a light, clear taste that cut through all that fat very nicely.

We make fried artichokes, too, which may or may not be traditional but is certainly delicious. As my father pointed out to Marty, when you eat an artichoke. it makes whatever you eat next taste sweeter.

Nobody makes strufoli, because it's a hassle. Instead, my Aunt Grace makes cannoli, which is excellent. She seems to think we judge her for not making her own shells, but I certainly don't. As far as I can tell, that's the biggest nuisance of a culinary project ever.

The meal was a success. I took some pictures, but forgot to bring my camera cord. Keep your eyes peeled for a picture post next week...featuring....a convertible cake!

Stay tuned, my ever-faithful readers.