As the bus swerved round a long bend into Testaccio, I remember thinking how stern and linear it all looked. It was my first visit and it was 12 years ago. It is stern – compared with, say, the echoing cobbled streets and ruins and glories of the historic centre. Testaccio was built in the late 19th century on a grid system: the undistinguished buildings – many of them still council-owned – are functional. I got off the bus on Via Galvani and walked and walked, past tenement blocks and courtyards, groups of chattering signore, a school, a market, a peculiar hill, and as I did the place softened. It was the colours. Testaccio, I discovered, was like the rest of Rome, in that its buildings with their shades of orange, ochre, dusty yellow and tawny brown give off a deep warm glow, even when it is pouring down. Add to that the Roman light – soft and fluid. The buildings, like us, soak it up.
Twelve years on (I never left) I am still soaking it up in matter-of-fact awe – especially in autumn, a season that suits the city: its grand sights, but also everyday ones, like the numerous street markets that still – just– punctuate the city. Nature’s timing is good: when the sun stops blazing quite so hard, fruit and vegetables do it instead. These days, Testaccio market is splashed with orange. There are new-season oranges and mandarins, persimmons: some hard, the flesh astringent and puckery – Italians say it ties up your mouth – others as soft and heavy as a small balloon filled with water. Then, right in the middle of many stalls, is a great pumpkin; a slice removed looking rather like a great orange smile.
I have written about pumpkins before, for one of my first columns. You find various varieties in Rome but the most common – the one in the middle of the stall – is a squat variety with smooth orangy-green skin known simply as zucca. These zucca are fluted, providing neat portions to be cut away and taken home in clear plastic bag. The flesh looks impressive – bright, high-vis orange – but it can seem a bit flabby compared with the creamy mantovanas and sweet, dense butternuts. As with Halloween pumpkins, the flesh can easily seem lacklustre – which means, like Bonnie Tyler, these pumpkins are holding out for a hero; some coaxing to bring out the best in them.
Hot oil is one such hero and the answer given to me by Flavio, the owner of a local trattoria. Fry the flesh, he suggests, until tender and ever-so- slightly golden, then marinate it in a mixture of vinegar, sugar and a little mint. After a few hours the elements come together into a melodious but formidable whole, with sweetness from the fried pumpkin (helped by the sugar), sharpness from the vinegar, heat from the chilli and garlic and the contradictory musty-freshness of the mint. This dish is known zucca alla scapece in Rome, which – like the Spanish escabeche – is a dish cooked or marinated in vinegar; a habit brought to Europe by the Arabs. This dish is a powerful reminder that the origins of what we eat, therefore who we are, are wide-reaching. A vital reminder too, in these contentious times.
Another answer is to bake it – a Sicilian variation on the same theme. Baking can make lacklustre pumpkins good and dense butternut ones divine, although teetering on the edge of slightly too sweet for my taste. That’s where the hero onion comes in – a streetwise Hercules, sweet but also sour and sharp with vinegar – the ideal match for the pleasing orange flesh with its fashionable caramelised fringe. Like zucca alla scapace, zucca in agrodolce needs a rest: a few hours – overnight even – giving it time to soak up the favours. It makes a good antipasti with cheese, olives or salami. Both dishes are good with fish or meat – particularly lamb. I also like a blazing pile in the middle of some emerald- green leaves.
Zucca alla scapece – Roman-style marinated pumpkin
Serves 4
400g pumpkin or butternut squash flesh
200ml olive oil, for frying, plus extra
100ml red wine vinegar
50ml water
1 garlic clove, peeled and sliced
2 tbsp sugar
1 small dried red chilli, crumbled or chopped
A handful of mint leaves
Salt
1 Cut the pumpkin into 5mm thick slices, then each slice into 3 cm sections. Heat the oil in a small pan and, once it is hot, fry the pumpkin in batches until it is soft and golden. Lift from the oil and blot on kitchen towel.
2 In another small pan, heat the vinegar, water, garlic, sugar and chilli. Bring to the boil for 4 minutes and then remove from the heat.
3 Arrange the pumpkin in a bowl or dish, rip over some fresh mint, pour over 2 tbsp olive oil then pour the dressing on top and leave it to sit – turning every now and then – for a few hours.
Zucca in agrodolce – Sicilian-style sweet-and-sour pumpkin
Serves 4
400g pumpkin or butternut squash flesh
Olive oil
Salt
A large red onion
80ml red wine vinegar
20ml water
2-3 tbsp sugar
1 Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4. Rub a baking tray with olive oil. Slice the pumpkin and lay on the tray. Sprinkle with salt, drizzle over a little more oil and bake for 20 minutes or until soft and golden at the edges.
2 Meanwhile, peel and slice the onion. Fry the onion in 6 tbsp olive oil in a small frying pan until soft.
3 Add the vinegar, water and sugar and cook – stirring and tasting often – until the mixture is slightly syrupy, but not too thick, with the right balance of sugar and vinegar.
4 Once the pumpkin is ready, put it in a serving dish, then pour over the onion and any sticky juices. Leave to sit – turning every now and then – for a few hours.
- Rachel Roddy is a food writer based in Rome, the author of Five Quarters: Recipes and Notes from a Kitchen in Rome (Saltyard) and winner of the André Simon food book award
