ITALIAN FARE: We turn today’s RTS over to free-lance writer and
Bradford native Carole Longo Harris who writes us about “Frittatas
and figs.”

Parma had a love affair with food and transformed the frittata,
regional peasant dish of Calabria, into a delicacy any time of the
day. While guests sipped coffee and munched biscotti she heated the
cast iron skillet. The ingredients for the frittata varied
according to the season. When the neighborhood gardens were in full
bloom the paisani would save unusual vegetables for Parma’s
frittatas.

The East Main Street master gardeners, Giovanni Romano and
Tullio Lucarelli, loved to delight Parma with little twin orange
tomatoes, tiny white scalloped squash (patty pan), long, thin
lavender eggplants and baby broccoli rabe. They also surprised her
with green and white striped zucchini, red hot peppers and sweet
yellow peppers.

The immigrants were ingenious about acquiring seeds. Several
claimed they brought seeds from Calabria in their pockets to Ellis
Island.

Parma’s frittatas were the benefactors of the seed gatherers’
wisdom. She quickly sautéed a colorful variety of vegetables in the
hot skillet then added several beaten eggs. Next she tossed in
generous amounts of aged grated cheese, black pepper and parsley.
Parma took it up a notch with a few freshly picked wild mushrooms.
BAM! Meat was expensive so this was her vegetarian version. If
Parma had any leftover bits of pepperoni, sausage, ham or
proscuitti she tossed them into the frying pan.

The love for the fruit of his homeland, Calabria, forced Angelo
to smuggle a small cutting from his beloved fig tree to
America.

He planted the twig in the side yard of his new home in Bristol,
Pennsylvania. When the tree matured, Angelo generously shared
cuttings with his neighbors. Later, in the spring they all enjoyed
the beauty and sweet smell of the fig blossoms. A treat fit for a
Queen was fresh warm figs served with sharp, aged Parmesan cheese.
Angelo created a wreath of figs for drying and his wife learned to
make fig jelly. Fig-filled “cucchatta” cookies were more popular at
weddings than the bride and groom.

Parma’s friendly gardeners often argued about the best way to
grow tomatoes. But they all agreed to add a fish head (zinc), a
rusty railroad spike (iron) and earthworms (nitrogen) to their
soil. Today the minerals are duplicated in Miracle Grow.