I was fortunate enough to grow up within the Sicilian community in New Orleans, the granddaughter of Sicilian immigrants. Food was the heartbeat of both our culture and the city that held it, which allowed me to grow up eating deliciously at every turn.
Immigrants often struggle to feel completely at home in their new country, even if they have had a good life. I am a third generation American, and old enough that, in my childhood and early adulthood, I was interacting with family and friends who still spoke Sicilian as their native language. That not only marked them as from Sicily, but indicated that they held onto the values of that culture. Today, as fewer and fewer people speak the language here, the memory and values of our homeland live on most resiliently in our food.
One of my favorite traditional Sicilian dishes is stuffed artichokes—my mother’s were legendary, at least to me. Eschewing the simple breadcrumb stuffing that is usually served with the dish, my mother would add crabmeat, as well as freshly chopped basil, parsley, oregano, Parmesan cheese, olive oil, and lemon zest. Her artichokes were baked in the oven with more olive oil and white wine. The result would melt in your mouth. They were magnificent.
When I got my law degree, I became a useful commodity within my Sicilian family. I was unintimidating (they had probably changed my diaper when I was a baby) and someone they trusted. Unlike outsiders, I wouldn’t try to take advantage of them. For my great aunts, I became the interpreter of the formal letters of information from the government, the applications or questionnaires that they received.
[Read this—"The Taste of Creole Italian: A cultural history told in terms of Cuisine"]
They would call me, explain that they had received a letter or form of some sort, and I was expected to come to them. I would sit at the kitchen table while they explained the issue at hand. Sometimes all I had to do was answer their questions. Sometimes I had to write a letter. Occasionally there was something that truly required my intervention, but that was rare. But no matter what kind of legal service I provided, I was always paid the same way: I received a disposable pan full of stuffed artichokes. I could not take money from these aunts. They knew that, and these perfectly made stuffed artichokes were a sign of respect for me, their much younger relative.
The ritual would unfold as I acknowledged that I knew that they took no shortcuts—no commercially made breadcrumbs, hand-grated cheese. They also wanted me to say, and I almost always obliged, that their stuffed artichokes were the very best, better than those of the client aunt’s sisters, the other aunts. Whoever’s kitchen I was sitting in made the very best stuffed artichokes.
"No matter what kind of legal service I provided, I was always paid the same way: I received a disposable pan full of stuffed artichokes. I could not take money from these aunts. They knew that, and these perfectly made stuffed artichokes were a sign of respect for me, their much younger relative."
While I was there, I was almost always served a cup of coffee and some sort of simple dessert—perhaps a biscotti assortment, or a canolo purchased from one of the local Sicilian bakeries. In the middle of summer, sometimes there was mineral water with a side dish of lemon ice or, even better, watermelon ice.
All of those great aunts are gone now. There is no one left in the family who speaks with a Sicilian accent. We are all now American-born and spread around the country. And I am older, now, than my elders were when they called on me for reassurance and advice. They taught me the importance of family, and I was always honored that they trusted me to be a family consigliere, thrilled to come home with stuffed artichokes that filled the car with the cheesy, winey aroma.
But the truth is that no one made better stuffed artichokes than my mother. And no aunt ever asked me to say so.
