Calabrian Roots

Wikimedia Commons

"It's the part of the boot that's kicking Sicily." That's how my dad describes Calabria, an intentional dig at my half-Sicilian mother. The region isn't as well known to Americans as Tuscany, Rome, or Venice, but a vast number of the immigrants that found their way to the New World during the diaspora were from this area, and it has indelibly marked what we know as Italian food and, even more so, "Chicago food."

This southern Italian region claims a rich and vibrant history due in no small part to an endless stream of invaders stretching from the beginning of recorded history to the Italian unification. The Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Normans, Spanish, Swabians, Spanish and Bourbons have all forcibly laid claim to Calabria at one time or another.

Where an endless parade of invaders brought hardship and upheaval to it's inhabitants, Calabria's culinary tradition was undeniably a beneficiary. The Arabs introduced the eggplant and citrus (staples in the diet), the Spanish brought tomatoes and now celebrated peppers to the region, and the Greeks vastly expanded the planting of olives - fully 25% of Italy's olive oil is produced in Calabria.

Invading forces pushed the natives inland to more mountainous areas, where the rugged terrain and potential crop failures necessarily created a tradition of food preservation, one that is still prevalent in the area and that influences the flavors of Sweet Home Chicago's menu today.

Cipolla rossa di Tropea

Capicollo, prosciutto and salami, the sliced meats found on our "Taylor Street" pizza, are spiced, dried and cured. Vegetables are preserved in olive oil and vinegar, a technique that is almost certainly ancestral to the creation of giardiniera by Calabrian immigrants in Chicago.

During the summertime, tomatoes are preserved by spreading puree on a wooden board and allowing it to dry in the sun; the resulting paste can be used during the winter months to make tomato sauce. We still use some tomato paste to create our sauce at Sweet Home Chicago, and even though my culinary sensibilities say we should only use fresh-pack tomatoes, it's the recipe that my great-grandmother brought with her to America, and we're nothing if not authentic.

Preservation also has a an important role with one of Calabria's most beloved ingredients, the pepper. Both sweet and hot peppers will be found hung and drying in every home; the hotter variants, or peperonicini, are a signature of the cuisine. La Provincia di Consenza, from where my family hails, is home to L’Accademia Italiana del Peperoncino (The Italian Chili Pepper Academy) which annually hosts a festival in the pepper's honor.

The ubiquitous red pepper shaker of the American pizzeria is a direct descendant of the ground peperoncino shakers found on the tables of Calabrian homes; most likely the sport pepper sitting atop your Chicago-style hot dog has the same roots, especially as it fairly closely resembles a Calabrian peperonicino. Every time we receive sport peppers the container invariably contains a handful of red peppers among the sea of green, which I will openly admit I always grab for myself. Hey, it's in my blood.

The new hot, cased sausage that we recently developed for our menu, used on the "Calabrian Pasta" at our South Jordan location as well as "The Ditka" pizza (with both also featuring roasted sweet peppers), heralds our roots as Calabresi. Pork, fennel, red pepper, paprika - all the usual suspects in the lineup. It would have been easy, perhaps even satisfying, to grab a vendor catalog and pick out a hot sausage when the urge grabbed us, but we think we found a better sausage by instead grabbing our history books.

My Calabria,
Rosetta Constantino

There are unfortunately only a handful of cookbooks focused on the food of Calabria. My Calabria: Rustic Family Cooking from Italy's Undiscovered South, by Rosetta Constantino, is a favorite - I  read it like a novel, cover to cover, in one sitting upon receiving it. A native of the region, Ms. Constantino takes you on a full tour of her homeland, reminiscing along the way about her childhood there.  She also has a blog, Calabria from Scratch, that offers an excellent primer on all things Calabresi.

This is obviously just a brief introduction to the food and tradition of Calabria, but I hope anybody with an interest in Italian cooking will spend some time getting to know this region that has so heavily influenced some favorite American dishes.