Have a Happy & Healthy New Year! - the Parklander

CHICKEN SOUP: IT’S ALSO ITALIAN
By John Bagnato
You turn on the TV and the re-run of the Best of Jackie Mason performing
at the Palladium in London brings the house down when he refers to chicken
soup as Jewish penicillin.
I’m Italian, that is to say I am an American first, Italian second, but my
mother and father are Italian/Italian, then American/Italian, which is to
say that they were born in Sicily and became Americans, so I am Italian,
minus the Ellis Island trip.
Chicken soup and I go back a lot farther than Jackie Mason, who at this
point in time is a junior waiting to become a senior, while I am a senior waiting
for a re-birthing to become a kid once again. That is to say as a kid,
chicken soup and I grew up together long before smart-ass comedians
picked on our Monday night Italian traditional meal: Chicken Soup.
To me and the family, Monday night chicken soup was not a Jewish
penicillin event, but an Italian cathartic. It was our purger, our high colonic
sanitizer to regain normalcy from Friday night’s Linguine Con Frutta di
Mare, Saturday night’s Peppers and Sausage with a loaf of semolina bread,
Sunday’s 2:00 pm, (on Sunday we couldn’t wait ‘till 6) lasagna, meat balls,
brocciole with another loaf of semolina bread all followed by roast chicken
or silver tip with roasted potatoes and onions. We were stuffed, so we waited
three or four minutes to allow the fermentation process to kick-in, then
we added frutta verdi; that’s celery and fennel and frutta secca, that’s pears,
oranges, which were topped off with peaches floating in a pitcher of
Fortissimo wine. When the upside down pot for coffee sizzled as the water
hit the hot burner, it told us that it was dolce time. We lovingly called the
pot: macchina di caffé and served the black irresistible sleep-killing mixture
in little cups with a slice of lemon peel and doused in Anisette. All this was
like a horse race in the final stretch headed to the ultimate diabetic cheer
leaders: cannoli, sfogiatelle, cassatta, spumoni and whatever else was needed
to fill the three boxes from Delgado’s Pasticceria.
So in a way, I guess Jewish penicillin was Italian as well. But I should have
known that because my mother grew up on Hester Street and could out
Yiddish the Yiddish and the best pushcart Yiddishers. And so chicken soup
crossed the ethnic barrier disguised as medicine; thus the Ashkenazi
befriended the Palermotese.
FRESH KILLED
Did you ever go with your mother to buy a fresh killed chicken? If your
answer is no, then listen carefully.
Fresh killed chicken-buying was to the Italian women the ultimate
public display of authority. It was a ritual, a non-alterable rite. My
mother would ask for a 3-pound pullet, feel the beating breast of the
white, soon to be bloodied, bye bye birdie and nodded her head in
affirmation.
Now comes the critical part and why only mothers ever went fresh
killed chicken-buying: they developed a maternal bond with the
flightless bird, so to speak. Nevertheless one could argue that
Mama didn’t trust the cut-throat chicken man to put her baby into
the bleeding trough, head down, legs jolting, so Mama followed
the dying creature through the processing line until life left, but still
stuck around to see the chicken tossed into boiling water, then defeathered
by a myriad of rubber fingers. It was also an observation act
for detection, so as to insure honesty since chicken market impresarios
were noted for mischief when it came to fleecing older women with six
children.They often winked at the younger women and stuffed their bird
80 JANUARY 2007
with extra vitals belonging to the aging matron’s pullet. But my mother
was wise to that game, since she was young and attractive not too many
years ago and benefited from a sly blinking eye with a bust thrust thus, she
made sure her bird’s innards were not given to an eye-batting bimbo.
Mama oversaw the cavity of her naked 3-pound pullet where stuffed
inside were feet, head, comb and neck…all. Mama never gave the Tootsie
Bimbos a chance to pluck her plucked innards.
At home I, Little Jonutzzu, made ready for Monday night’s chicken soup
preparation. And, in deference, I seriously doubt that Jackie Mason ever had
to, or was ever involved with, washing the intestines of a 3-pound pullet. I
was an expert. I took the open end of the intestine and ringed it around the
faucet and let the water rush through, then I cut them, full length with a
scissor, the same scissor that my brother Nick used for my regular-irregular
haircut; nor did Jackie Mason ever clean out the accumulated gravel from a
coveted gizzard.
Some times we got lucky and had a bonus of a few unfertilized eggs about
the size of my belly button. I truly believe that was why my mother felt the
pullet’s breast; to be sure she wasn’t ripped off with a cock-a-doodle-do.
And so as I reminisce about the good old days and the times past and
have now arrived as an octogenarian, the experience of buying a fresh killed
chicken with my mother still stands out in my mind.
Chicken soup, while not listed on Humana’s antibiotic treatment program,
is by far and away my medicine of choice.