“Tinnirumi” are the leaves and shoots of a long pale summer squash particular to Sicily. From heat-stroke to a hangover, they are said to cure whatever ails you during the hot season. I am not built for the heat, and spend the whole summer swooning about, nauseous from the humidity. My first summer in Palermo, one of my husband’s coworkers at the botanical garden, sensitive to my “problems of acclimatization,” gave me a bunch off tinnerumi. Most vegetables grown here are also grown in California, but I had never seen these before. “How do I cook them?” I asked. He admitted that his mother always prepared them for him, and that he had no idea. When I asked my husband what to do with them, he had a similar story. It should be no surprise, then, that I got the recipe from my mother-in-law.
Pina is in her mid-eighties. I only see her a few times a year but we speak nearly everyday around 11. The conversation rarely wavers from clarifying wether I come from England, South Africa or Australia (she never identifies me correctly as American) and finding out what we are eating that day. When I told her I had a bunch of tinnirumi but I didn’t know how to prepare them, she got very excited. “Oh in America there are no tinnerumi? They are very detoxifying and full of salts and minerals. Very good for you in the summer.” Here is her recipe:
To make tinnirumi, first, strip the leaves, buds and tendrils from the stem, rinse them in a colander under cold water and chop them coarsely. Then, dissolve 6 salted anchovy fillets in olive oil in a large pot over a medium flame. Add a few squashed garlic cloves, and saute them until they turn golden. Next, add the tinnirumi, a 500g can of peeled tomatoes and salt and pepper to taste. Thin the soup with some water and let it simmer until the tinnirumi are tender. Meanwhile boil 350g of of broken spaghetti. When the pasta is al dente, drain it and add it to the tinnirumi. This pasta is served tepid with a drizzle of raw olive oil.
When my husband came home I proudly presented him with my creation. “What’s this?” he asked. When I told him I had made the tinnirumi, he laughed. “This really is pasta asciutta!” Pina had forgotten to tell me that tinnerumi is served as a soup. The bristly leaves should become slippery and create a fragrant green broth. Instead, mine were still rough and the cold pasta stuck together.
