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Roast pork was always the main course for New Year’s dinner. Eating pork was a portent of good luck. Pigs, when the forage, move forward, shoveling their snouts before them. Pigs burrow into the future. Fowl, on the other hand, are bad luck for the New Year. Fowl scratch backward.
From what I have found in researching the Italian New Year’s dinner, the common people did not enjoy the full meat of the pig. The common peasant contented the family with “zampone,” pigs feet or with “cotechino,” a crude sausage made from pig left-overs. Cotechino with lentils and poloenta http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotechino_Modena
The zampone or the cotechino were served with lentils. In the Italy of the landlords, the master had the best part of the pig, the peasants made the best of whatever was left over.
Many Italian sites online suggest that the pork and lentils are served with polenta. We never had polenta in our kitchen. Any grain product as a food was, as my grandmother said, “for the horses.” Perhaps her rejection of grains was a reaction to and rejection of her childhood in Italy. Pork for New Year’s Day is not just Italian. Pig’s feet for the New Year dinner are at the foundation of many traditional French menus. Pork side cuts are also fundamental to the traditions of Germany and Poland for New Year. A most curious coincidence is the almost identical tradition for the New Year among African Americans.
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Ham hock, black eye peas and collards http://forums.egullet.org/
. In America’s past, slaves prepared the pigs for the tables of the big house, but they did not partake of the finer cuts. The slaves ate the feet and the other less desirable parts of the pig just as the Italian peasants turned over the best cuts to the land owner and made the best of leftovers for their own use. While in Italy, the legume was lentils, in America, the common legume was not lentils but black eye peas. In both cultures, corn meal was the principal starch. In Italy they called it polenta, in the American South it was called grits. The parallel between feudal Italy and enslaved America is striking.
While the foundation of our New Year’s dinner was roast pork, the side dishes were very much of German origin. There was always sauerkraut braised in white wine with apples and onions and seasoned cloves and star anise. We also had mashed potatoes and green peas with pork gravy When I asked other Italian Americans about New Year's pork dinner, they also noted that the pork is accompanied by sauerkraut and mashed potatoes. Green peas also made a repeated appearance. A favorite twist is to push the peas into the mashed potatoes, a blend that I believe is Irish in origin. Green peas are certainly not lentils. But green peas blend wonderfully with mashed potatoes.
I’m not sure of the source of these non-Italian side dishes. Perhaps it was the German and Irish influence in Philadelphia. One way or another, the sides of sauerkraut and mashed potatoes and peas with the golden pork gravy offered that comfort food blanket that cuddled your innards on the cold first day of January. |
Porchetta with Sauerkraut and Apples
