NONNA’S BREADCRUMBS

Key breadcrumb ingredients!...(that beautiful parsley is from my garden!)

Whenever my grandparents came over, they always had a cardboard box of  “goodies”…it was usually…no, I take that back …it was ALWAYS food.  Nonna would come in with a dish of breaded meat (aka- veal cutlets), a pot of sauce with meatballs, a small jar of Caponatina (which is how my Sicilian grandmother referred to what you may know as Caponata –and if you don’t know what that is just wait…it’s coming soon!) and very often, there would be a plastic bag full of breadcrumbs sealed with a twisty tie!  I never questioned why my grandmother brought us breadcrumbs…it’s just what she did!

Now you have to understand those breadcrumbs because even though I never questioned, I also didn’t understand the importance of them in our lives until many years later.  Now I look back on those breadcrumbs as a blessing.

Nonna’s breadcrumbs were not JUST breadcrumbs.  First of all…she made her breadcrumbs.  She never bought those dry powdery things pre-packaged at the grocery store.  She bought “yesterday’s bread” and made her breadcrumbs in her blender.  (long before the wonderful food processor which will hold much more bread than the blender used to!)  These breadcrumbs were not as bone dry as the ones you buy…they still had a bit of moisture to them but they were dry enough.  They were not powdery, but had consistency to them. Almost reminds me of those “panko” breadcrumbs everyone is using these days…I have never used them…I just looked at a little jar that was almost 5 dollars and I mean a LITTLE jar (not enough to bread anything I make for dinner for MY family!) and all I could think of was that I could go over to the reduced “yesterdays bread” shelf and get a nice loaf of Italian bread for a dollar and make 5 times as many crumbs!!!

So Nonna would then take her breadcrumbs and “spice” them up.  You see no matter what she used breadcrumbs for, she treated them the same.    It was one of her “signatures”.  This is how she made her breadcrumbs…

 

Nonna’s Breadcrumb Concoction

• breadcrumbs
• chopped fresh parsley
• very finely chopped fresh garlic
• salt and pepper
• grated Romano cheese
• –and only before it went into some dishes…would she add some olive oil to make them “stick together” a bit.

There was no set amount…but figure that you had to be able to SMELL each addition…you had to smell the parsley, you had to smell the garlic and you had to smell the cheese!  She was pretty generous with all these things tho.  You really could smell just the breadcrumbs even before she started cooking.

So now that we have all these breadcrumbs…..here are some ways to use them…

• NUMBER 1!!!  This was the base for Nonna’s FAMOUS meatballs.  (that recipe will be forthcoming as well!)
• to bread her breaded meat or chicken or turkey or veal cutlets.
• as stuffing for artichokes, peppers, zucchini,  etc.
• to sprinkle on top of potatoes to roast in the oven (kind of like what was on my “twisty potatoes” in an earlier post)
• meatloaf
• breaded zucchini, eggplant etc etc
• …and even our Italian style  Thanksgiving turkey stuffing!

I now keep my bag of  breadcrumbs (minus the cheese and oil until I use) in a bag in the freezer.

Whenever I have the ends of the bread that no one wants to eat, or I get a loaf of yesterdays bread, I make up some crumbs in my food processor and have them ready for whenever I need them.  This is definitely one of the “family secrets” that made so many of Nonna’s dishes taste so good…that she passed on to my mother and to me.  ( and of course the rest of the family as well!!!)

Definitely a time saver if you make ahead and keep in the freezer and definitely a money saver.  This is how they made the most of old bread back in the old days…turn them into crumbs and find another use for them!  See?  no waste-and plenty of taste!!!  (hee hee –I love it when it rhymes!)

♥Dorina