Soffritto Napoletano

Soffritto Napoletano over homemade pappardelle

What is Soffritto? Traditional, that is what it is. As a proud member of a first-world nation and the middle class (though just barely), I don't need to eat the scraps. I also don't need to know where my food comes from: But I do both, passionately. We raise our own animals. We slaughter, butcher, package, and cook our own meat.

My last post was about our medical students dissecting Hearts and lungs. For that reason, I do not eat many of them, especially the pigs as they are a 1:1 ratio to human organs. As a child, my great grandmother from Napoli would make a Thick crust "white pizza" with Olive oil, rosemary, garlic, and anchovies. She also made the Soffritto. They did not encourage us children to learn Italian...they actually worked against it. I believe this was a mix of wanting to be able to talk about "adult things" without us being nosy. They also believed that we were Americans and should only speak English. Still, through her mix of languages, I could understand that the making of the Soffritto was a point of agitation for her. She would swear and wave her arms around and lament what freedom is. My father would only ever say, "Its the lungs. She is pissed about the lungs." Maybe I was five when I first took interest in her anger. She was old and Italian and always seemed so angry. I would try to press for more explanation to no avail. Well, a lifetime later I totally get it. Before we began raising our own animals, I searched high and low, legal and illegal for lungs. Both for the classroom and the kitchen. Maybe if my name was Smith, a butcher would have let it happen, but no. Nobody would allow lungs to leave their shop in anything other than a vat of caustic fluid. Though really, the slaughterhouse took care of lung disposal...into the dog and cat food industry. Yes, your dog and cat can eat lungs.

If you take a moment and look into culinary habits across the world, you will find a rich and often necessary tradition of eating organ meat. Why? The average American will ask that...why would you want to? Just the thought makes most feel queasy. The answer lies in survival. The poor wanted to eat and wanted to live. Lets take feudal Italy for example.

Italy was a collection of independent city-states, kingdoms, and duchies prior to the Risorgimento (unification) in 1861. Following the Risorgimento, though now a nation, the land remained as duchies with the lord of that area controlling everything. Peasants worked for the land lord and were indentured...basically slaves. Allow me to digress:

My mother's Great Grandfather was a member of an upper class, actually a Marconi. Well he had been out foraging and gathering firewood. Capos (enforcers) from a local lord approached and claimed that he was poaching. They proceeded to stab him 12 times. He lay in his pool of blood through the night and crawled home the following morning. He was a large man and their pocket knives did not manage to get to any vital spots. He healed and the neighboring lord attempted to make amends. Retribution was the way of the day and he would not accept anything short of an eye for an eye. Understanding that there would be blood, the three assailants fled to America. That was not the answer for those men. Great Grandad had a brother already in America. His name was Guglielmo Marconi who was manufacturing and selling his wireless radios out of New Jersey. His brother used this as a base for his search. The Search for those three men was 66% successful. The first was in White Plains, NY. The second was located within weeks of the first but in Waterbury, CT. He then was informed the third went to Chicago. Great-Great Grandad had no desire to travel any further having decided he liked the Waterbury area. He also saw a need for stone mason's in that area and sent for his family. He sent word to that third man that the other two were dead and he had found him and might come and finish him. The family lore remains that he enjoyed having let this man live and how miserable looking over his shoulder must have been. And that is how I ended up here. I also do not remember why I told this story!

Oh yeah. So they took property rights seriously in the Italian Duchies. Though my ancestors were not the peasantry, the abuse of people and freedoms extended between classes. The peasants would farm, hunt, and slaughter for the lords. They would then be allowed to eat the scraps. Over the centuries, poor peoples all around the world worked out how to take the undesirables and create delectables. As such the entrails and sweetbreads became cuisine. Lung tissue was one of those things. The rich land owner did not want them so if the poor workers could find a way to make them yummy then life would be better. There is a bit more to it than that. Many humans have been stranded on tropical islands or in the vast stretches of wilderness throughout the world. Research of those destitute finds that they initially did what you would expect...they ate the flesh; protein rich and delicious. But as the weeks continued, those humans would find a growing hunger for different parts of the animal that they previously would not dream of eating.

What is happening to these starving wretches? They were becoming deficient in micro-nutrients. Vitamins, minerals, trace minerals, specific amino acids, glucosamines, and chondroitin's. An animal's muscle mass does not contain many of these nutrients. It is the organs that hold them. Liver, Pancreas, Lungs, Kidneys, etc. hold the gold. Now lets return to feudalism. Those lords tended to have signs of deficiencies due to poor nutrition more than the peasants. They had the best cuts with the lowest nutrition ratios. The wealthy would have more fruits and vegetables throughout the year, but many did not wish to eat fruit and suffered for it.

Now we move to more recent centuries. The classes evened out their freedoms but the eating styles did not drift away for many if not most cultures. The eating of offal and sweetbreads transitioned from necessity to desire. Dishes have been perfected and handed down through generations. My ancestors in Italy can continue to make their Soffritto uninhibited. Those emigrants, not so much. Back to my great grandma. She had to barter for pig or lamb lungs to make her dish. We could not talk about it, what it was, where it came from.

My mother was staunchly against this sort of "yucky" food. She could smell it on me and knew what it was. I would be shunned and berated for eating something so dangerous and disgusting. Luckily for me, I had a strong constitution and an innate desire to eat weird things. Pancreas is a limit. I can eat it in sausage, but not alone. I also have never been able to just do as I am told. I must have a logical reason. I must be able to show that the way we have always done it is the best possible way. If it is not, then we must change it. Mom said lung meat was dangerous. I wanted to know why. She could not tell me. Over the years I have found many different reasons. The first of which is heavy metal toxicity. This makes sense at first. I do know that heavy metals collect in body tissue. If an animal is breathing air filled with a heavy metal then that metal will get trapped in the lung tissue and stay there for a very long time. The issue with this is that heavy metals are in fact heavy. Heavy things don't really float in the air. It is only in very specific and rare circumstances that mercury will aerosolize. The metals will "infect" other tissues as well so this alone cannot be the reason.

Prior to starting this article, I looked at the actual statute and studies behind it. The statute is, 9 CFR § 310.16 - Disposition of lungs. Every year the USDA puts out a recommended regulations list for the following year. I cannot find any reference to who creates this list or how the items are added. However it happened, in 1969, the report had a recommendation to investigate the safety of lung meats. The USDA sent out a small group of investigators to three giant Midwestern slaughterhouses. I will paraphrase...I initially started copying and pasting but it became arduous and confusing. The gist is this. They went to three commercial slaughterhouses and randomly picked a total of 600 Beef lungs for testing. In 1970, 27.5 million cows were slaughtered for consumption nationwide. Anyway, 600 lungs were isolated. I can only assume one of the following: The decision to ban Lung meat had already been made and this study was just for show. My other assumption is that they had a finite budget and timeline and good intentioned government bureaucrats did what they could. The 600 lungs were not sampled and tested individually. Instead they took 1 oz worth of random samples from a lung and mix it with 1 oz from four other lungs making a sample of 5oz which they sent to the labratory for testing. Their tests showed "measurable amounts of airborne particulates and stomach juices." Not deadly amounts...not dangerous amounts, just measurable amounts. In the 1970's we were able to measure CDEC in parts per million while you would need parts per thousand to make someone sick. There was no reference to quantities of stomach juices referenced. Again, as someone who believes most of our government's decisions over the past 150 years have been nefarious in nature, I cannot believe that this one study of 600 beef lungs scared real scientists enough to cause a ban.

I believe this ban was planned and the study was used to justify it. I have more research to do but am currently torn between an attack on the ethnic classes that frequently ate this sort of thing...our American Empire has been quietly subduing cultural differences since we claimed cuba and the Philippines. Removing one of the foods that these ethnocentric people frequented was one small way to further homogenize the masses. The other hypothesis is the dog food industry. The early seventies was a tumultuous time. With great strides being made by the "New World Order' types. Nixon was destroyed and replaced with one of their Manchurian candidates. The gold standard disappeared and manufacturing began to leave our shores. Dog food companies needed cheaper ingredients and organ meat was a good option. Tell the slaughterhouses they could no longer sell parts to the masses decreased their value to $0 overnight. Actually a net loss. Remember they were selling lung meat for money now they had to pay money to destroy the lungs and dispose of them. Dog food companies to the rescue. Read the statute and see all the different ways they state that the lungs can be used for nothing but dog food. They would take them for free. This might have saved the dog/animal food industry in America, but again this is currently only a hypothesis until I can provide references.

Have I mentioned that there is very little historical record of eating cow lungs. Pig and Lamb lungs are on the menu. I did not look very hard but all reference I can see to lung meat is lamb and pig yet our USDA did not bother to test these animals prior to banning them. It is also uncanny how little discussion there was. Or should I say was NOT. There were no hearings. There was no public notification. Just a quiet addition of a new regulation...no vote, no congress, no president. Just a couple of bureaucrats and one small study.

For those who might be interested in the recipe, look no further:

I don't do so well with measurements but will provide the process.

• Porcine Heart

• Half to all of a Porcine Liver ( depending on your love of liver)

• A Kidney or two

• Lungs

For the Sauce

• 1 large onion

• a couple sticks of celery

• 1 large carrot

• A ton of garlic

• 4 or 5 10 oz cans of crushed tomatoes or 50oz of fresh crushed tomatoes

• Large Handful of Parley

• Small handful of Marjoram

Process:

• Dice the meats:

  • I like to do a fine dice, Like 1/8 in cubes. Do your best based on your knife skills

• set aside in the fridge.

• Saute your Soffritto (italian Miriproix) celery, carrot, onion, and garlic

• Add the cans of tomatoes

• add the minced meat and stir to incorporate.

• Set stove to low and let it go.

• 3- 5 hours once it begins to simmer.

Note: This can be pressure canned. I would never advise anyone to actually can meats because canning is dangerous and you probably would never figure out how to do it without killing everyone you know with botulinum toxin. If you were to try regardless of the severe risk to your life, you could pressurize to 15 pounds and let pints cook for 35 minutes. Quart jars 45 minutes. Remember that this is based on ladling the simmering sauce directly into your sterilized jars. If you cool the Soffritto Napoletano, add 10 minutes to both. I do this and had just opened a pint the other day that I canned a year and a half ago. It was delicious on some home made pasta.