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Fried Squash, Parsnips, Celery, and Mushrooms
Take two small squash, the smallest size possible; cut off the two ends, divide them in two, and slice them in fine slices lengthwise. Put them in an earthen dish and sprinkle well with salt. Take one parsnip, scrape it, wash it, and boil it slightly, slice it, add it to the squash with more salt. Take the heart of celery, boil for a moment, and slice as with the other vegetables. Lastly, take some mushrooms, not very large ones, clean them, boil them a moment, and add them to the rest. Then dry all the vegetables with a clean towel, mix them all together, roll them thoroughly in flour, dip in egg, and fry in hot lard, dropping them in carelessly. Serve them in a hot dish with a napkin under them.
Pumpkin "alla Parmegiana" Take a slice of pumpkin, remove the rind and the seeds, cut into square pieces, and then slice these into slivers about the thickness of a ten-cent piece. Boil these for a moment in salted water, drain and put them into a saucepan, and fry in butter, with a little salt and a pinch of allspice. Serve with grated Parmesan cheese and melted butter. Or, if preferred, when the pumpkin is fried, put it in a baking-dish, add thin slices of cheese (Parmesan or Gruyere), and put it into the oven until browned.
This is a fritto misto of vegetables followed by a second, unrelated pumpkin dish that the printer ran on without a break. Both are straightforward; the difficulties are in the vocabulary and in the vagueness of "boil a moment."
- What "squash" means hereThe small squash wanted is most likely a summer squash — zucchini or a young pattypan, picked small enough that the seeds are undeveloped. Winter squash would not soften in the frying time given.
- The salting is the hingeSalting the sliced squash and letting it stand draws out water; the recipe assumes this before the towel-drying step. Give it 20-30 minutes in a colander, then press dry. Wet vegetables will shed their coating and drop the oil temperature.
- "Boil for a moment"This is blanching, not cooking. The parsnip needs 3-4 minutes to soften slightly, celery hearts and mushrooms 60 seconds at most. Mushrooms boiled longer waterlog and will never crisp.
- Frying medium and temperatureHot lard means roughly 350-375F. A neutral oil substitutes without complaint, though lard gives a cleaner, less greasy result. "Dropping them in carelessly" means singly and loosely, so the pieces do not raft together.
- Flour then egg, no crumbsThe coating is deliberately thin — flour to give the egg something to grip, egg to set into a fragile golden skin. Do not add breadcrumbs; the point of this style is that you can still taste the vegetable.
- The napkinA folded linen napkin under fried food in a hot dish absorbs steam and grease so the underside does not go soft. A rack over a warm platter does the same job.
- "Thickness of a ten-cent piece"A dime is a little over a millimetre — very thin slivers. Use a mandoline or a steady knife; anything thicker will not soften in the brief butter fry.
- "Alla Parmigiana" in the second dishHere it means only "with Parmesan," not the layered baked treatment Americans associate with eggplant. The recipe gives no temperature for the baked variant with sliced Gruyère: a hot oven, only until the cheese browns.
- YieldTwo small squash, one parsnip, a celery heart and a handful of mushrooms make a side for four, or a first course for two or three.
Fried mixed vegetables of this kind are the vegetable wing of the Italian fritto misto, a category rather than a fixed recipe: whatever the market gave up that morning, blanched, coated lightly and thrown into deep fat. The pumpkin dish tacked on at the end is a reminder that zucca was a staple of northern Italian cooking long before it became a seasonal novelty elsewhere; pairing it with allspice, butter and Parmesan is the same sweet-savoury instinct that produced pumpkin-filled tortelli in Mantua and Cremona, a preparation generally traced back to Renaissance court kitchens.