La Cucina Giudaico-Romanesca

The Jewish community of Rome is among the oldest in Europe, and its cooking is the product of a long residence in one city rather than of a single migration. In 1555 the papal bull Cum nimis absurdum confined the Jews of Rome to an enclosed quarter beside the Tiber, near the Portico d'Ottavia, where they remained until the walls were removed in the nineteenth century. Within that constraint the community kept the dietary law of kashrut and worked with what the Roman markets and the Tiber could supply, and the dishes that resulted are still cooked in the quarter and across the city, as Katie Parla and Kristina Gill describe in Tasting Rome.

The defining feature of the cucina giudaico-romanesca is the discipline of kashrut applied to Roman ingredients. Pork and shellfish were excluded, meat and dairy were kept apart, and the Roman habit of cooking with lard gave way to olive oil, which became the medium for the quarter's most characteristic dishes. Frying is the central technique, and it was practised with a skill that Roman cooking at large came to borrow. Parla and Gill treat the food of the quarter as part of the living table of Rome, and not as a relic preserved apart from it. The carciofo alla giudia is the best known of these dishes. The artichoke, the spiny Roman variety called mammola or cimaroli (Cynara cardunculus subsp. scolymus), is trimmed, opened out and fried in olive oil in two stages, first at a gentler heat to cook the heart through and then at a higher heat to crisp the leaves into a bronzed flower. The dish depends on the trimming and on the control of the oil, and it is eaten whole, the outer leaves brittle and the heart soft. It is the dish most often cited when the cooking of the quarter is described, and it is served in the restaurants of the former Ghetto in the season when the artichokes are cut. Fried fish and vegetables follow the same method. Pezzetti di baccalà fritto, salt cod in a light batter, and filetti di baccalà belong to the same tradition of the fry shop, and fiori di zucca and other vegetables are cooked in the same manner. The concia di zucchine, courgettes fried and then dressed with vinegar, herbs and often mint, shows the second habit of the cooking, which is to prepare dishes that keep and may be eaten cold, a useful quality in a household observing the rest of the Sabbath. Fish was important to the community, and anchovies, salt cod and the fish of the river and market all appear in its repertoire. The quarter's cooking also reflects the sources of the people who lived in it. The community included families long settled in Rome and others who arrived from Spain and Sicily after the expulsions of the late fifteenth century, and the cooking carries traces of this mixture in its use of raisins, pine nuts and sweet-and-sour dressings. Dishes such as the pasta with broccoli and arzilla, a skate broth, are cited by Parla and Gill among the Roman Jewish specialities, and the sweet pizza ebraica, dense with dried fruit and nuts, belongs to the same family. Each of these dishes has been absorbed into the wider Roman repertoire, which is the clearest sign of how closely the quarter and the city were bound together.

The taste of the cucina giudaico-romanesca is built on olive oil, salt and acidity, with fried textures set against soft interiors. Vinegar, mint, raisins and pine nuts give the sweet-and-sour notes, and the fried dishes are eaten hot from the pan or, in the case of the concia, cold and dressed. At the table the dishes follow the seasons of the Roman market, with artichokes in spring and fried fish and vegetables throughout the year.