Discover the cradle of Jewish-Italian cuisine

Jews have been living in Italy for more than 2,000 years. Rome, in particular, is home to the oldest continuous Jewish community in the Western world. Jewish cuisine is inextricably linked to Italian cuisine as the two developed alongside and influenced each other. It's a fascinating story and culinary relationship that Silvia Nacamulli, an Italian Jew with roots in the Roman community, explores in her book, Jewish Flavors of Italy. It's a love song to her community and a document of how her family cooks.

KCRW: Italian Jews aren't Ashkenazi, Sephardi, or Mizrahi. They're not from Eastern Europe or the Spanish expulsion, and aren't considered Middle Eastern Jews. Is there a name that describes the community?

Silvia Nacamulli: The community is called the Italkim, because they originally came over 2,000 years ago, before the split into Ashkenazi and Sephardi. Some say that the Minhag, the liturgy in synagogues, is as close as the one from the Beit HaMikdash, the temple in Jerusalem. They kept their own rites and they're called the Italkim, especially the community in Rome. The Jews from other parts of Italy, like in the south, had more of a Sephardi Spanish influence throughout the centuries. In the North, it was a mixture of both Sephardi, who came from Spain and Portugal, and Ashkenazi who came from north of Italy. So it's a bit of a melting pot. I am from Rome and as Rome goes, we are definitely Italkim.

Does anyone know how the Jews in Rome came to be in Italy, where they came from?

The first settlement seems to be the one in Rome, but in the south, in Sicily and Puglia, there were very early settlements. They had already come in 200 BC. But the largest number came straight from Jerusalem after the destruction of the Second Temple, when the Romans brought them back to Rome as slaves. Since then, there's been a continuous Jewish community, which is the oldest in Western Europe.

How many generations does your family go back in Rome?

That's a very good question. In Rome itself, perhaps from the time of the ghetto. We could trace [our family] back, my mom said, somewhere between 13 and 16 generations. A lot of last names with Italian Jews (and I think it's quite a common denominator with other Jews), they take the name of towns. So my mother's maiden name is Dell'Ariccia. Ariccia is a small town outside of Rome. Jews probably arrived and settled there when they moved after the Inquisition, in 1492. 

At the time of the creation of the ghetto, which in Rome was in 1555, Jews in the small towns were gathered and brought into larger cities. That's when they actually acquired their last names. So you have Dell'Ariccia, Di Nepi, Di Castro, Di Nola. They're all names of small towns.

On my father's side, my last name is Nacamulli, which actually comes from the Hebrew word "nacham." They've been in Venice for probably 200, 250 years. Before Venice, they seemed to arrive from Corfu. In Corfu, they scattered. Some went to Venice, some to Turkey, some to Egypt. So they've been fully Italian for at least 200, 250 years but probably much more on my mother's side.

Pumpkin, as seen in this zucca disfatta, is popular among Jews in Venice and in the north of Italy, where the ingredient is still a classic during the High Holidays. Photo by Barbara Toselli.

As an American Jew whose family came from Belarus and Ukraine just two generations ago, to hear that kind of family tree is just extraordinary. I love how you describe Italian-Jewish cuisine as a story of migration, creativity, and necessity. You say it's a gastronomical osmosis of Italian cuisine, and local produce that has adapted throughout history. How important have kashrut or kosher laws been in the development of the cuisine of Italian Jews? And how do you see that still living in modern Italian cuisine?

It is of paramount importance. It's really the core and what made it survive for so long and what they believe in. Jews in Italy, there's just one type of community, which is Orthodox. We are quite liberal but it's still an Orthodox community. So kosher rules have been applied throughout the centuries without a break. They very much shaped the local cuisine. The fact that Jews have been living there for 2,000 years means that what they eat is Italian cooking. They grew wheat and helped create Italian cooking, as such, but always made sure to keep kosher. So they were inspired by the local cuisine but they changed certain dishes in order to conform to kosher rules and, in the process, they created new and original recipes. 

Italian cooking, for example, has cold cuts of meat, which are mostly pork. Italian Jews thought that was a great idea and they used whichever animals they had locally and could make kosher. So in Rome, we have a lot of cold cuts of beef. In the north, they used to have a lot of cold cuts of goose. 

Then they changed some Italian dishes in and made them kosher. For example, a bolognese sauce, which classically would have some pork, you would do it without. 

And, of course, no mixing of meat and milk still very much applies. 

Then there are the results of globalization in cooking, so it's harder to see the origin of specific dishes. But throughout the centuries, Jews had traditions of eating food at room temperature so it would be suitable for Shabbat, or the combination of pine nuts and raisins, or sweet and sour flavors, because they preserve food longer. So you see it both in specific recipes and generally as a way of cooking.

You say that the cradle of Italian-Jewish cuisine sits in the south of Italy, through a rich Jewish history that lasted over 1,500 years. What caused it to be swept away?

The Spanish Inquisition in 1492. When the Spanish Inquisition started, the south of Italy, in particular Sicily and Calabria and Puglia then also Sardinia and Naples at a slightly later stage, were part of the Spanish Empire. We say "Italy" but Italy, as we know it today, is a relatively new concept. It is only about 150 years old. Before, it was a conglomeration of independent states. They were either papal states or part of the Spanish Empire. It was not "Italy," as such. 

[During the Spanish Inquisition], Jews in Spain were forced to either convert or escape. The ones that refused to convert, they would die at the stake. The persecution of Jews continued throughout the centuries afterwards, both in the south of Italy and of course in Spain and Portugal. But the Jews brought with them their own cooking traditions and their own ingredients. They introduced them to the center and the north of Italy, which was a lovely gift for us.

We're coming up to the High Holidays, a period that starts with welcoming in the new year, Rosh Hashanah, and ends with the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. Start us off with a couple of ideas for Rosh Hashanah. Are there any pre-meal rituals your family observes?

The Jews in Rome, we do a Seder. It's literally called a Seder di Rosh Hashanah, which is thankfully shorter than the one for Passover. It's lovely and it's all about different foods. The interesting thing is really the choice of the different foods, there are nine of them. There are figs, fennel, leek, pumpkin, dates, a type of chard, which is called Bieta in Italian, fish, pomegranate and lamb's brain, which in Italy sell and eat. 

Everyone can make them the way they want. In my family, we will make a frittata with chard and leeks. Then we fry the pumpkin. We make the fish with pine nuts or raisins, which is not a traditional dish. Then, there is a Berakha, a blessing on each food. Some are positive berachot (blessings), like "may we multiplicate." Others are kind of "may those that hate us stop." It's a mixed bag.

Jewish Flavors of Italy highlights the 2,000-year-old influence of Jews in the country, who arrived long before the division between Ashkenazi and Sephardi.  Photo courtesy of Green Bean Books.

Can you describe the Zucca Barucca Disfatta?

The Zucca Barucca Disfatta is a traditional food that comes for Rosh Hashanah but it's also often eaten to break the fast of Yom Kippur and for Sukkot, which is just after. It originally comes from Veneto, and the name "barucca" is from the type of pumpkin that is used, which is a little bumpy and warty. Some say the fact that it also has the name "baruch" (blessing) in it (we Italians like to put vowels at the end of every word), so the barucca kind of became an Italian version of the word "baruch," as well.

Which means "blessed."

That's right. Bless the pumpkin mash. You boil it, then you crush it. It's a very simple dish but it's full of flavor. It has a little bit of sugar, a little bit of cinnamon and some people put candied fruit inside. I do mine without and serve it with a little bit of parsley. It's an appetizer so you could have it with the dips at the table

Your family goes all out for the meal after Yom Kippur. You have this meatball recipe called Ngozzamoddi. Can you describe that?

The Ngozzamoddi recipe in my book is from Micaela Pavoncello, who does wonderful tours of Rome. We make this dish in our own family as well. They're more often called Polpette de Sedano, which are like meatballs with celery. The unique part is the shape. They're a bit oblong and usually made with chicken. 

Ngozzamoddi is Roman Jewish slang. Jews have been [in Rome] for over 2,000 years, they not only developed their own type of cuisine, they also developed their own dialect. "Azamot," in Hebrew, means bones and Ngozzamoddi is a kind of deformation of the Hebrew word for bones, "azamot," because the bones were crushed and mixed together with the meat in order to feed more people and give more taste to the meat. You have to remember that the living conditions in the ghettos, in particular the one in Rome and then the one in Venice, were particularly poor. So Jews had to be very creative in how to make more food and [there is] what is called "stretched," like Carne Allungata, which means "stretch meat." You see it in recipes like Ngozzamoddi or Zucchine Ripiene, which is zucchini stuffed with meat. So creativity in the kitchen has always been very important.