A Neapolitan pickle: papaccelle

Southern Italians are not usually great fans of pickles, at least compared to Northern Europeans. In Naples for example you'll find loads of olive oil preserved vegetables, fish, cheese, even salami but hardly any pickles on sale. There is one exception to this. In winter, before and after Christmas, olive shops display big piles of mixed pickles and papacelle on sale. Papacelle are a kind of round pepper which is sometimes used fresh (great for stuffing) or pickled to be used for typical winter recipes. I mentioned them before. I intended to tell you about this pickled peppers and their uses

I wanted for example to explain how they're a fundamental part of the Neapolitan Christmas pantry. How they're used in insalata di rinforzo, something that can't miss on a typical Christmas Eve dinner: a salad made with cauliflower, black and green olives, anchovies, mixed pickles and clearly a good amount of julienned papacelle. How people argue about which pickled peppers are better, if the green ones the yellow or the red ones.

I would have added that papaccelle are an integral part of the pig butchering ceremony in small villages or farms. That they're used to accompany liver, chops and fresh sausage eaten in these occasions. And that they're simply chopped and warmed up in the cooking fat and juices of these meat cuts

But actually I wanted to shamelessly praise myself :-). Recently I cooked some pork chops and a few papacelle (what gave me the idea for the post in the first place) to go on the side. Since I felt something else was missing I decided to prepare some "Neapolitan style" potatoes: blanched potato pieces sauteed in olive oil till crunchy outside and flavoured with garlic and oregano in the last few minutes of cooking. And these were the best potatoes I've ever made, if I may be so arrogant to say so. Perfectly crunchy, each piece separate and fluffy on the inside. It gave me for once nice the feeling of having done something really well, nothing I would or could have improved there. And so the idea of writing a post about the pickled papacelle became not so important... or did it :-)?

Comments

[Deb]

arghhh, now you have me craving this meal, pork chops, potatoes and papacelle sounds delish!

[Alberto]

Deb, want to come over for dinner :-)?