A Mess of Spring Vegetables
Vignarola

“Italian food is all about ingredients, not technique,” an Italian friend said the other day. I would disagree. Technique – cutting, slicing, frying, sautéing, knowing when to simmer and when to boil, or when the oil needs to be hot or just warm. You name the technique. You need to know them all, as in French or Chinese cooking. You name the cuisine. Italian food does, however, honor ingredients by not manipulating them as much as in some other cuisines. It’s not about sauce or embellishment as much as it is about finding a way to cook the food so it tastes like its best self. This only means that shopping for good ingredients is imperative.

I am reminded of this every time I go to a cooking school or other event where I have to cook food that someone else has shopped for. Recently, for instance, I was faced with asparagus that could have been older than I am. How did I know by looking at them? Most of the stems were wrinkled (dehydrated), as much a sign of age in asparagus as in people. The remainder had soggy, soft stems, most likely from being kept in water for too long, and/or from the stupid rubber bands that they wrap bunches of asparagus in and that, in essence, cut off their circulation. Of course, once cooked, they tasted like nothing, what little of the spears I could salvage.

I know what very fresh asparagus taste like because I have harvested them myself, eaten them raw, straight from the ground, and cooked them minutes later. Cooked even hours later, or the next day, they are vastly superior to anything you can buy in the supermarket, even when those supermarket asparagus have vivid color and full, firm bottoms. At best, supermarket asparagus arrive in the store when they are several days old, and then who knows for how long and with what care they were stored in the supermarket.

For the last two weeks, I have been buying New Jersey asparagus at my local Greenmarket. They are sensational, although they require thorough washing and soaking in cold water to remove the sand that gets caught in their tips. I have also been buying truly sweet, sweet peas. And last week I found fresh fava beans.

So Tuesday night I cooked the fava beans I bought on Saturday. I was wondering if that was fresh enough. But even bought three days before cooking, they were as sweet as could be. Of course, even at three days old they were much fresher than any beans I could buy in a store. They were picked the night before the morning I bought them, according to the farmer I bought them from. In the supermarket, the pods are invariably flabby, spotted with black, and obviously not very fresh. Could they be a week or even weeks old? My Greenmarket fava had, like the ones we ate at Seliano, firm, still-crisp pods, with no blemishes.

With peas, fava, and a bunch of freshly dug white onions in the refrigerator (spring onions, we sometimes call them), I couldn’t resist making vignarola, which is the Roman name for this mess of spring vegetables. In Sicily, the dish may be called frittedda, and have a typically exotic Sicilian edge – for instance, seasoning of fresh mint and ground nutmeg, and/or it might be made sweet and sour with vinegar and sugar. In Campania --Naples and Salerno, Avellino, Caserta and Benevento -- it is made more simply (as below and in Rome) and it might be called minestra di stagione, minestra of the season, or minestra primavera, spring minestra. Minestra are a category of dishes that are eaten as light meals unto themselves, or as a first course, instead of a first course of a soupier soup or a sauced pasta or risotto. I know this is confusing, but there is more: the category of minestra also covers pasta and bean dishes, and minestra can be dry or brothy. When brothy and poured over bread, they become zuppe. And, I need to add, there are probably a zillion dialectical names for the dish. (Minestrone, by the way, means big minestra.)

Besides peas, fava beans, and spring onions, vignarola usually has artichokes. But I didn’t have any. I did, however, have asparagus, so I used them. And although this dish doesn’t usually have potato, I had one I wanted to use up, also from the Greenmarket, and I felt it bulked up the dish a bit, making it more a whole meal. I was out of pancetta, which was just as well – I am trying to reduce – so I used olive oil only. Here’s the recipe, but don’t take it literally. This is a very flexible dish, and you can use more or less of anything in it. I didn’t have to say “this is fabulous” myself. My dinner companion did.

Vignarola alla Schwartz
Serves 4 to 6

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 or 3 (depending on size) spring onions, thinly sliced (about 1½ cups or so)
2 cups shelled fava beans (about 2 pounds in the pod)
1 large (10-ounce) potato (not russet), cut into 1-inch cubes
3/4 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2½ cups shelled peas (about 2 pounds)
3 cups asparagus that have been cut into 1½ -inch pieces (about 1 pound whole stalks)

In a 10-inch wide, deep sauté pan or stove-top casserole, combine the oil and onion over medium heat. Cover the pan and let cook for about 8 minutes, until the onions are well wilted, but not browned or even golden.

Uncover the pan and add the fava beans and potato with enough water to cover them well. Season with salt and pepper. Let simmer briskly for 10 minutes.

Add the peas and enough additional water to keep them covered. Bring back to a simmer and simmer briskly another 10 minutes.
Add the asparagus and enough more water to cover them – barely or well: It is up to you how soupy you want the dish. Bring back to a simmer and simmer another 8 minutes, or until the fattest asparagus pieces are fully cooked but not altogether soft. None of the vegetables should be undercooked.

Taste for salt and pepper and correct seasoning if necessary. You can still add more water if you want a soupier dish, but it should be much more vegetables than broth.

Serve hot, warm, or at room temperature.

If you make it a little brothy, you can pour it over some pane biscotato, hard-tack bread. I buy mine at D. Collucio & Sons on 60th Street and 12th Avenue in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. But you can find this product – either white or whole wheat -- in many Italian markets, as well as in many Italian delicatessens, pork stores, etc. The type with a hole in the middle is usually called freselle. You can also serve the vegetables fleshed out with separately cooked macaroni, such as ditali or shells, ziti or penne, or any other small tubular or fanciful shape. Pasta mista, which is mixed pasta shapes, is another excellent choice – and very Neapolitan. Serve with or without grated pecorino, Parmigiano-Reggiano, or Grana Padano. I usually prefer it without cheese, but sometimes I am in a cheese mood and I use it.


About Arthur:  The New York Times Magazine called Arthur Schwartz “a walking Google of food and restaurant knowledge.” As the restaurant critic and executive food editor of the New York Daily News, which he was for 18 years, he was called The Schwartz Who Ate New York.  Nowadays, he is best known as The Food Maven, the name of his website. Whatever the sobriquet, he is acknowledged as one of the country’s foremost experts on food, cooking, culinary history, restaurants, and restaurant history.

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