Italian BBQ Numero Uno

                           Italian BBQ ?


Is there really such a thing as Italian BBQ?  Gosh darn you know there is.....I've got to tell ya it is a hoot and the food is just as hootery. That is a new word I just invented for all you folks that feel compelled to look it up on your I phone. So don't bother. What we are interested in here is not the English language but Bar B Que. That's right. So for all you fancy pants. Get's get right down to the, come si chiamas. That is about all the Italian you are gonna' get. Except for the food.  The Italians got some sausage that is just fantastic. I don't know if you would ever want to eat another brot after sampling a real thin sausage that that traditionally comes wrapped around itself in a circle. Like a boat line on the deck of a sailing yacht.  Laid out all nice, neat and pretty. Now the wonderful thing about "skinney"sausage is that it can be cooked fast over the hot coals of an open pit or commercial kettle type bbq contraption. Usually the one that is most popular is a cheese and parsley sausage. It is good and you just can't stop eating away at that circle until it is gone. It usually comes in a 1lb to 2 pound circle. Now to make it easy to handle they put these wooden round kind of skewers through the circle. Holding it together so it easy to handle. There are other combinations of this sausage. Some without the cheese and parsley and some with other ingredients like a kind of turnip green that is known as broccoli rabe or rappini. A bitter vegetable that finds it's way onto the adult palate.  Something I would never have eaten as a kid. Growing up can be a wonderful thing.

There are other sausages too that you may be familiar with that are " fat" and full of parsley and cheese.  Green peppers, onions and other good things. Some have fennel seeds and others not. I love the spicy hot kind. This fat sausage as they are often referred to. Takes a little more cooking time over the coals. Now don't get thrown off here when I mention the word " fat" that is strictly to describe their shape. They come in links or ropes. The links are much better to handle when cooking on an open pit. These larger sausages can be smoked as well and stand up to any treatment you may subject them to. Lemons seem to be the part of the equation when serving these.  Biting into them is a thrill all it's own. Seems to me that the ladies love to bite into them. Must be a Freudian thing.


You have got to have bread. Now I don't mean that starchy flimsy white bread. I have often heard referred to as American bread. None of that for Italians. They are a hard bodied group of people for the most part. I would assume in their case "you are what you eat".  They want Italian bread. Sort of like a french or Cuban bread in size and shape. But crustier and I would say a lot better in texture. There is something about it that makes it good enough to eat for dessert. If you can find a good bakery that makes it. The Italians down here look high and low for a bakery that can meet their standards. Especially it they immigrated here from N.Y. or some other northeast Italian neighborhoods.  When they do the word goes out.  In some parts the quest is fruitless. They search like that Greek guy looking for a totally honest man. Bread is very important to Italians. While others may use the term, "as good as gold". Italians can be heard to say, "as good as bread". 

Of course there is always the wine