As a boy growing up in Sicily, my partner Vincenzo remembers the promise of fuochi e lenticchie a mezzanotte (fires and lentils at midnight), meaning that everyone went up on the roof and watched the fireworks that illuminated the Bay of Gela at midnight, then ate lentils or grapes. Some believe that you must eat the lentils while the clock is striking for them to be truly fortuitous, others that one chicco (grape) should be eaten with each of the 12 strokes, a challenge happily accepted by an eight-year-old boy with an elastic mouth.
It was in a room full of eight-year-olds where I first ate New Year lentils. I had foolishly gone to a party even though I wasn't well. Realising I wouldn't make it to midnight, I borrowed a hooded top that smelled of cigarette smoke and lay on a quiet sofa in a study, which turned out to be not so quiet when a dozen children arrived to watch a film. I couldn't move, so lay with one child on my legs, another hitting me with a light sabre, listening feverishly to Madagascar in Italian. At midnight, the kids rushed off to throw party poppers and themselves around the garden and I listened to voices and glasses in the other rooms feeling like a melancholy teenager. Eventually I went through, at which point someone gave me an effervescent pill fizzing in a wine glass and a brown splodge of lentils. Each seemed bizarre, but welcome, especially the lentils, which were soft, warm and floury, also dull in the way that lentils are, almost muddy, but in a good way – pure comfort.
It isn't just at New Year; Italians cook this most ancient legume all year round. Lentils are simmered for soups and stews, some of which are as beautifully spiced with cumin and coriander seeds as an Indian curry, braised as a side dish, often to go with pork and game. There are several prized varieties; the slate-coloured ones from Castelluccio in Umbria, roof-tile red ones from Santo Stefano in Abruzzo, and pale green-grey from a Sicilian island called Ustica, all of which are relatively expensive, but very good to eat. There are also lots of everyday lentils, the small green or brown ones being the best for today's recipe, I think.
It is true that many recipes we make often are not really recipes at all but ways of doing things. Over time, taste and habit shape them. I am nosy and like the domestic details and culinary gossip that comes free when you ask someone how they make something. Even though I have my way, I will happily listen to another way to make lentils. While buying a packet the other day, I met my friend's neighbour, an elderly lady who has spent her life cooking for many, who told me she simply cuts a stick of celery, onion and tomato into pieces the size of her fingernail, adds a handful of lentils per person, a bay leaf for flavour and good fortune, and enough water to come three fingers above the lentils, then simmers all this until the lentils taste as her late husband liked them. For others it is even simpler, lentils boiled with a whole carrot and a stick of celery until tender, then olive oil or butter is added at the table.
You might serve the lentils and cotechino sausages with the poached quince, in which case I suggest a tray of baked apples that requires nothing more than lots of cold cream and a hungry crowd, and a chocolate and chestnut cake that pleases almost everyone.
But recipes, lentils and grapes aside, whatever you cook or don't cook, however you choose to celebrate, auguri di buona fine e buon principio – best wishes for a happy ending and a good beginning.
