by Lina Malafronte
Well, it’s time to start counting the days to Christmas. The city streets are livened up by a show of lights, colors and sounds that magically leads us to the most exciting day of the year.
Everywhere trees, more or less high and more or less decorated, are the perfect backdrop for hundreds of selfies, while the white bushy beards, under which we hear the hearty Ho ho ho! we all know, attract many children’s innocent eyes and smiles.
The better organized are having fun opening the Advent calendars windows and discovering what they hidden, the more anxious people have already collected all the gifts for their friends and relatives, the brave, or rather the latecomers, however, will wait until the last minute, with frenetic races and the stress level pushed to its peak, to spend, in the best way possible, the festivities.
To avoid dealing with the Christmas anxiety, having everything ready on time, so as to get fully immersed in the holiday atmosphere, this year, Enzo Coccia decided to offer his guests a very special present.
Always staying on food topic, after the “N-ration” and the Christmas beer brewed by Menabrea for 2014 festivities, it is the turn of the fry dripping tray.
Nothing to eat or drink, but a tool that reveals what’s cooking, or I’d say what it will be fried in his new shop.
Symbol of the Neapolitan cuisine, characterized as it is by a zillion of recipes that include the hot oil, a’ vacant, as the Neapolitans call it, is a concave container, to be filled – empty is the meaning of its name in the Neapolitan dialect – which, when turned upside down, has the shape of the Saturn priest’s hat. Made of aluminum, it is covered by a sort of perforated cap to drip the excess oil off, as the jealous Rosario, which used it with the deep-fried pizzas made by the curvy Sofia, did.
And given that the Neapolitans have always fried almost everything round the clock, the elderflowers and the rosemary sprigs, as Vincenzo Corrado wrote, the tender sprigs of sage and the parsley too, that is one of those things you absolutely must have.
In Brillat-Savarin’s words «All the merit of the friture is derived from the surprise», you will be surprised because, forget the empty tray!, a handful of crunchy chocolates will be waiting for you.
Merry Christmas to all from Enzo Coccia and La Notizia team!
