Saint Lucia Day Pudding

With Felicia Mohan

Santa Lucia Day, a traditional Sicilian holiday that many celebrate, is December 13th. To Felicia (Ciaramitaro) Mohan and many other Sicilians it is remembered as a day when her grandmother invited all of the kids to her house to eat the large pan of pudding simultaneously in an “eating race.”

Catholic traditions tell the legend of how there was a great hunger in Syracuse, Sicily, and the town's people had gathered in the cathedral on her feast day, December 13th, to pray, and two ships loaded with wheat arrived, with her at the helm of one, dressed in white, with a halo of candles on her head. This is the explanation given for the cucci, or cooked wheat, which is an ingredient in all her festival 's foods. Cuccia, a kind of sweet porridge is made with wheat berries, chocolate, sugar and milk. Each family has their own versions of this dish.

For Felicia’s grandmother’s version, additional ingredients of cornstarch, vanilla, salt and fresh ground cinnamon are added. She strongly recommends that it is worthwhile to go to a specialty spice store and find the Italian cinnamon sticks and grind them yourself.

Ingredients

St. Lucia Pudding
(Served on Santa Lucia Day, December 13th) 4 cups wheat berries, soaked in water overnight
8 cups whole milk
2 cups sugar
8 tablespoons Argo cornstarch
1 teaspoon pure  vanilla extract
1 teaspoon salt (Kosher recommended)
1 teaspoon fresh ground cinnamon
1 lg. Hershey's Milk Chocolate w/ almonds candy bar ( Chopped into bite size pieces)

Instructions

1. Drain wheat berries, and add them to a fresh pot of water bring to a boil and cook for 20-25 min.
Drain and set aside.
2. Mix milk, sugar, cornstarch, vanilla and cinnamon into a large pot. Over medium heat, continuously stir until it thickens and comes to a boil, scrapping the bottom of the pan making sure it doesn't stick or burn.
3. Remove from heat add  3 cups of cooked and cooled wheat berries to pudding ,& mix well.
4. Pour into large platter let cool for 5- 10 minutes on countertop, and then sprinkle with chocolate pieces, dusting with 2 tablespoons of fresh ground cinnamon.

Recipe courtesy of Felicia (Ciaramitaro) Mohan, 2010.

From "Food For Thought" Column by Heather Atwood: Felicia Mohan lives in a sparkling new house in Gloucester, and has twin 11-year-olds: Amanda, playing 12-year-old tennis and ranked No. 32 in New England, and B.J., a catcher for AAU Baseball who will play in the Gloucester All-Star 11-year-old team. Felicia looks like a beautiful, modern mother, struggling to get her kids where they need to go while keeping up with life at home, but Felicia is also adamant about preserving her family's Sicilian heritage, particularly the dishes her grandmother, another Felicia, prepared. Felicia Mohan's grandfathers were named Joseph Salvatore Ciaramitaro — both of them, spelled the exact same way. One Joseph fished first from his boat The Benjamin and Josephine, which was sunk by a German U-boat off the coast of Maine, and then he fished from his Benjamin C, named after his father-in-law, Benjamin Cucuru. Later he founded Capt'n Joe's Lobster Co. on the wharf in Gloucester, now run by Felicia's brother, Joey, and cousin Frankie. Felicia's other grandfather owned Pat's Center Grocery, that not only sold groceries but provided all the fishing boats with food for their long trips, delivering the "speza," as the supplies were called, to each boat before it left port.
Grandpa with the wharf was married to Felicia's namesake. Holidays at this Felicia's house began a full week ahead as all the women in the family gathered at her home, which had two full kitchens, to cook together. When school let out at 3, the children went straight to Grandma's house that week because that's where their mothers were cooking. Not only were these women making all the traditional Italian holiday foods, from appetizers such as octopus salad, a standard which the men insisted upon at every holiday, to a wealth of Italian cookies, homemade bread, and New World foods such as pies, but the women were also making ordinary dinners those weeknights for all their husbands and children. Felicia and Joseph have passed away. Now, holiday meals are at young Felicia's, where 35 to 40 people come to celebrate. Felicia, like her grandmother, still sets a formal table with china and linen; her custom-built table seats 25, with two more tables in the great room for overflow, replacing her grandmother's enormous table that started in the kitchen, extended through the dining room, the hallway and ended at the living room. In her large, creamy, new kitchen, Felicia still makes dishes like braciole, spiedini, and olive gonzathe. She makes videos for this newspaper showing how to prepare her grandmother's special bread crumbs, "mudiga," with chicken and steak. This past December, Felicia gathered all the cousins together to make their great-grandmother's Santa Lucia dessert, "cuccia," a vanilla pudding made with wheatberries which the playful great-grandmother had always encouraged the children to eat in a race. Contact Heather at heatheraa@aol.com. Her blog is at gloucestertimes.com/foodforthought