Giuseppe Mazzini’s Fried Pumpkin
Much is known about Giuseppe Mazzini’s fondness for coffee, chocolate, and sweets. Perhaps apocryphal, a rather beguiling quote about chocolate is ascribed to this 19th-century Italian writer and politician who so greatly shaped the Italian unification movement, or Risorgimento: noting chocolate’s ‘thousand virtues’, he extols its ability to alleviate life’s failures, betrayals, injustices, and sorrows for ‘passions lost or never had’. Mazzini also documented his favorite dessert in a letter written in 1835 to his mother. In it, he lists the ingredients for a cake that he ‘liked rather a lot’—almond, sugar, egg, lemon—and implores dear mum to try her hand at it. Today, la torta di Mazzini is a well-established Italian recipe, forming part of a larger culinary collection thematically linked by the Risorgimento era, such as anguille alla Garibaldi, agnolotti alla Cavour, and zuppa alla Ricasoli. (By the way, Mazzini’s letter to his mother is housed at the Risorgimento Museum in Genoa.)
Mazzini-related food lore doesn’t end here. One of his favorite dishes was zucca fritta, or fried pumpkin/squash (zucca means both pumpkin and squash in Italian), which was frequently served during the secret meetings of Mazzini’s political group, Giovane Italia. Apparently Giuseppe Mazzini loved to snack on slices of fried pumpkin while plotting insurrections against Austrian rule to bring about a united republic in Italy. The dish is called both zucca fritta della Giovane Italia and zucca fritta alla Mazzini.
You can use a butternut squash or other pumpkin type of choice. Serve with a dusting of rosemary salt and spicy cream (optional), explained below.
If you’re working with a whole pumpkin or squash, open and clean it then slice several ¼-inch thick pieces. Peeling the veg is optional. It will become very soft by the time the pumpkin is ready to eat. Place the slices in a casserole type pot and cover with milk. Bring to a low boil and cook for about 10 minutes. Carefully strain the slices and set them aside to dry.
Beat the eggs together in a shallow bowl. Dust one plate with flour and the other with breadcrumbs. Heat a generous amount of your preferred frying oil in a pan. Pass each slice through the flour and then the egg, and then coat both sides with the bread crumbs. Fry for a few minutes on each side until crisp and golden. Remove to paper and dust with rosemary salt, made by grinding a tablespoon circa of rock salt with a few sprigs of fresh rosemary, either in a mortar or a processor (I use a coffee bean grinder). Serve with a slightly spicy cream—something like crème fraîche or sour cream blended with some of your favorite hot sauce (optional).
