With Felicia Mohan
When Felicia was growing up this special recipe was prepared by her Aunt “FeFe“, Vincie and Uncle Mike (Militello). Now she makes it herself and passes along the family’s recipe secrets. The main ingredients are cauliflower, fava beans, and the ferns on top of the anise bulbs. In fact, since the grocers and supermarkets typically throw away this part of the plant before even putting it on the shelf, Felicia goes around each year to remind them to avoid that for this special week of St. Joseph’s Day so that she and others can properly make the dish.
Her aunt and uncle FeFe and Vincie used to create an alter every St. Joseph’s Day and that became very big, so big that many people came each year to pay their respects and eat some of the special pasta dish. The pasta sauce was served over home made St. Joseph fettuccini pasta. What made this St. Joseph Pasta is that all the flower used to prepare the feast was blessed by a priest the day before St. Joseph day. It was done, in fact, at a very special mass in Aunt FeFe and Uncle Vincie’s home in front of her alter. You cannot get much more authentic than that.
Ingredients
2 cans (14 ounce) chick peas w/ juices( not drained)
4 heads cauliflower washed & cut up in 2 inch pieces ( don’t cut to small b/c they cook down
1 cup fennel fauns - the feathery leaves at end of fennel stalks
1/2 cup Olive oil plus more for drizzling over the top
8 chicken bullion cubs
7 cups water
2 49.5 ounce can of chicken broth
1pound fava beans soaked in pot of water for 24 hours
Salt & pepper to taste
Instructions
1. Drain the fava beans & place fresh water in pot to cook beans on high heat till fork tender. Drain water and remove outer skin (You can use frozen Fava Beans. You do not need to soak them and can just boil them.)
2. Cover the bottom of a large stock pot w/ olive oil. Add cauliflower and sauté 3-5 minutes.
3. Add fennel frauns, chick peas and cooked fava beans.
4. Cover with chicken broth, add chicken bullion cubes and water. Drizzle top of mixture with olive oil, lower heat and cook till cauliflower is cooked through. Season w/ salt and pepper
This dish, also known as a “goranza,” is going to look like a slightly thick soup.
We serve over home made St. Joseph’s fettuccini pasta. What makes pasta St. Joseph’s Pasta is that all the flower used to prepare the feast was blessed by a priest the day before St. Joseph’s Day at a very special mass. In my family it was in Aunt FeFe and Vincie’s home in front of her alter.
Recipe courtesy of Felicia (Ciaramitaro) Mohan, 2011.
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
