A Helping of Summer Comfort

Recipe for Zucchini Parmigiana with Ham and Smoked Scamorza

Enjoying the bounty of early zucchini. Illustration by Daniela Bracco

Welcome to Buona Domenica, a weekly newsletter of Italian home cooking and baking. I’m a journalist, cooking teacher, occasional tour guide, and author of eight cookbooks on Italian cuisine.

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This week’s newsletter features a recipe for paid subscribers for Zucchini Parmigiana with Prosciutto Cotto and Smoked Scamorza. Early summer—right now—is the ideal season for this dish, as zucchini at the markets are young, firm, and sweet, and go beautifully with ham.

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I have not done much cooking since arriving in Italy two weeks ago. If you read last week’s newsletter, you probably get why. There are simply too many places where you can pick up good ingredients at good prices and more or less lay them out on the table: sheep’s milk ricotta, fior di latte (cow’s milk mozzarella) and semi-aged pecorino; local prosciutto and culatello; tortarello cucumbers from Abruzzo and red, red tomatoes brought up from Sicily, tossed with salt, good olive oil, and basil; daily bread. Apricots and cherries for dessert.

We have our two favorite take-out places, which I’ve probably mentioned before. One is Nonna Ersilia, a tavola calda run by three women who prepare and set out an array of dishes in the display case every morning. Wednesday, for example, it was eggplant parmigiana, pork and cheese involtini, meatloaf, two kinds of lasagne, farro salad, and simply cooked chard, among other things. Our other favorite take-out spot is Libera Pizza, just outside Porta San Francesco, one of the two arched entrances into Penne’s centro storico. The pizzas are small, meaning just the right size, with a crisp-tender crust and a range of classic and creative toppings. Current favorite: Piccante d’Abruzzo, with tomato, fior di latte, and spicy ventricina salami.

Also: the house-made sausages and already-breaded chicken cutlets from the butcher shop down the cobblestone hill from our house (about 200 steps) need only to be plopped into a pan with a splash of olive oil. The only exertion required on the part of the cook is to walk back up the hill and turn the knob to light the burner.

This is dandy, I am not complaining, but I have missed the actual act of cooking, which I find grounding. Lately, there’s been some cacophony around here, a portion of it coming from work being done on a house just down the hill from us. The buzzing and drilling and scraping and hammer tapping start promptly at 7 a.m. and don’t usually let up until somewhere between 4 and 5 p.m. except for a pause (I think) at lunch time. The rest of the noise is coming from inside my own head, and it’s been pretty loud. Our little group of five has scattered as of this weekend, the kids off on their own European adventure and my husband back to work in the U.S. I’m about to set off on the first leg of a research trip, about which I hope to share more soon. A fair bit of planning has been involved, and I keep second-guessing my choices, going over and refining the routes and itineraries in an effort to pack as much as possible into the next several weeks. At night, I have vaguely unsettling dreams about the places I’m going to.

Before heading off, I wanted to slow down and concentrate on one enjoyable task. I have a tiny, kind of random selection of cookbooks on my kitchen counter here in Penne. I like each of them for various reasons, but the one that was calling out to me the other day was The Italian Table, by

Elizabeth Minchilli

. It’s a book about entertaining, with recipes that are timeless and also accessible. But it’s also full of insider tips for where to go in Italy for a taste of la dolce vita (nobody conveys la dolce vita better than Elizabeth!). It’s a good armchair travel book, and flipping through it put me in a better frame of mind.

I soon found the dish I didn’t know I was looking for: Parmigiana di Zucchine, a summer squash version of eggplant parmigiana. Over the years, I’ve made several versions of zucchini parm, sometimes on its own, sometimes mixed with eggplant, usually with tomato sauce. What I like about this one is that it is “in bianco,” which is to say without tomato sauce. But there’s no bechamel to mess with, either. It’s just pan-fried zucchini layered with smoked scamorza (which is like smoked mozzarella), parmigiano cheese, and thinly sliced prosciutto cotto (ham). Coincidentally, I had nearly everything I needed to make it; I had bought smoked provola (similar to scamorza) from La Dispensa delle Sorelle, in Pescara (see last week’s newsletter); and I had young zucchini from the farmers’ market here in Penne. This is my favorite time of year for zucchini, as they are small, tender, and tastier than the more mature ones you find later in summer.

A quick trip to the salumiere for the prosciutto and I was ready to go. Assembling the ingredients, prepping and frying the zucchini, layering it with care in the baking dish, and enjoying the perfume of smoke and ham as it baked, was like pushing the reset button. If you’re in the market for a little cooking therapy, or need a helping of summer comfort, or if you just want to channel the homey flavors of southern Italy, this is your dish.

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RECIPE: Zucchini Parmigiana with Prosciutto Cotto and Smoked Scamorza