La Zucca

That early stirring of globalization that was the Columbian Exchange changed Italian food and cooking forever. That’s well known. What would pizza be like without pomodori and peperoncini, after all? There’s also polenta — and pasta e fagioli. And no doubt also traditional potato-based dishes, though I can’t think of one just now. But the third member of the Mesoamerican Trinity is often forgotten when the usual suspects of the exchange are trotted out, as I’ve just done.

Which is a pity, because the pumpkin features in some pretty nice dishes. ((Ok, I cheated a bit. The Mesoamerican trinity is maize, beans and squash, rather than pumpkin, but you know what I mean.)) So it was nice to see it celebrated last week in Tolentino. We found this sculpture in the piazza which houses the regular fruit and veg market.

On the wall is the text of an ode to the vegetable (or fruit, but I’m not going there) by the local poet Giovanni Sebastiani (1874-1959). You can read “La Zuccahere. But don’t ask me to translate. The local Marche dialect is all but impenetrable to me.

8 Replies to “La Zucca”

  1. And no doubt also traditional potato-based dishes, though I can’t think of one just now.

    Looking in my copy of Whiteman & Boggiano’s Encyclopedia of Italian Cooking, on page 422 I found tortino di patate e zucca or, in the vulgar tongue, “potato and pumpkin pudding.” I’d try it, but it happens I really hate the taste of pumpkin.

  2. Personally, of the trinity, squashes are superfluous.
    Can’t live without potatoes. Can’t imagine life without beans. Squash…, um, what?

  3. Hi!
    nice blog, I translated in my july posts the poem,
    the Marche dialect is translated freely as follows:

    a globous pumpkin,
    a day it was laying on ground,
    had the strange desire
    to climb on a building..
    “I would be a fool to stay down here
    -while talking to itself-
    I get tired to get stumps
    and kicks everytimes”

    try and try agian, after a while
    really it got up
    over a roof and there found its position..

    But a cat, that was taking the sun,
    as soon as got a look of it,
    greeted the pumpkin with a laugh
    and said these words:
    ” only you was missing
    to annoy me.. neither up here
    I can stay in peace… who brought you
    my humbless Miss pumpkin?

    ” forgive me, my wisdomed cat,
    by myself I came…
    do you think that I am not able to do anything?
    the pumpkin answered…
    and the cat: “tell me, then,
    when you learnt these new things?
    but, you have potatoes in your head,
    in these times, who doesn’t know that
    a pumpkin has a meaningless value?

    “Well, hear, how many wrong sentences”
    said a horse at pasture,
    few steps from them;
    “you don’t know society, my cat,
    you lack knowledge…
    but why, don’t you know
    that only pumpkin heads
    these times come floating up to surface?

    and, since nobody
    was answering to him,
    the horse concluded with this:
    “in the present days, my friends,
    the best positions are honoured
    only with pumpkins and donkeys!

  4. BTW, have you ever tried the pumpkin soup with tofu cubes? a japanese summer dish, fresh and tasty, kind of “vellutata”.
    it’s delicious, and I prefer it to the italian dish “tortelli di zucca”.

  5. Thanks for the translation, that’s really great! I’ve tried pumpkin soup, of course, but not with tofu cubes. I shall have to give it a go.

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