This is the Volpe family way of preparing eggplant. I learned this method of preparation from my father Carlo Alberto Volpe. He was born in 1897 and came to America in 1916 with a few lira, a younger brother Gaetano, and the desire to live the American Dream. He was a teenager in a foreign country, who did not speak the language and he had no immediate family members to rely on for support. He taught himself to read and write English, became a devout US citizen, married and raised seven children, while building a multi-million dollar trucking empire. His personal observation of human conveyance ranged from horse and wagon, to watching a man walk on the moon! As soon as he achieved his first bit of financial success he sent back to Italy and brought over his brothers and sisters one at a time. His father came to America but only stayed for a short while before he went home with his remaining children who did not want to emigrate to America.
My Mother Rachele died a few days after my sixth birthday. My father never remarried and in addition to playing pinochle with his friends at the Italian club on the weekends, one of his pleasures was the preparation of our Sunday dinners. Pop would solicit opinions from me and my brothers and sisters as to what would be our choice for Sunday dinner. The two basic classifications were Brodo (Soups) or Gravy (Tomato sauce based Italian delicacies). I loved hanging out with my father and was his little Sous chef for many years. Kitchen tasks such as peeling and chopping garlic, onions, and many other vegetables weren’t chores to me but ways of spending more quality time with my father.
Pop had very specific rules about the correct way that everything should be done. Kitchen prep certainly had a right (Pop’s Way) and a wrong (any other way) to be executed. Therefore the ways in which I describe preparation of my recipes reflect Pop’s views of how a dish was to be made. I do not know if it was always related to the region of Italy where he was born, or recipes that he may have picked up from one of his friends from other Italian paesi(hometowns). Carlo Alberto Volpe came from Montella, Provincia de Avellino, Campagnia. I equate these places to what would be city, county, and state here in the United States. To most Americans Italian is Italian! However, to Pop, and most members of his generation, it made a difference whether you were from one paesi or another. In the early 1950’s when I was a youngster growing up in Norristown, PA there were 6 or 7 different local Italian social clubs. These clubs were formed by immigrants who came from specific regions of Italy. Calabrese, Abruzzese, Marchegiano, even down to Sicilians from different regions of Sicily. For some reason a very large number of Italians from the town Sciacca, in Sicily settled in Norristown, and they had their own social club. But I digress! Let’s get started with this eggplant.
When you pick out your eggplants make sure that they feel firm. When you turn it over in your hand ensure that the skin does not feel loose. Typically the smaller eggplants are younger and a lot of times sweeter. But depending on what form your final dish will be, you can choose eggplant by the size that best fits your needs. If your dish is a type of “roll up” you may want to use longer eggplant and slice it lengthwise. The Volpe intensive preparation procedure insures that whichever eggplant you choose it will be sweeter than what you are normally used to. Nice big dark purple eggplant are what I typically use. But in the last few years I’ve seen farmers in our area grow a smaller rounder, lighter color purple eggplant. These are known as Sicilian eggplant and when you peel them the flesh is much whiter than the classic eggplant and I think that they are in fact almost always sweeter, than the more common, regular eggplant.
TO BE CONTINUED ?!?
