Can you make a frittata without eggs? You can if it’s a frittata di scammaro, a Lenten pasta omelette from Naples with its origins in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies when the word scammaro referred to lean aka meatless Lenten meals. (More on the back story in the Notes below.)
It’s a dish where ingredients that often turn up in southern Italian cookery as supporting flavorings—anchovies, capers and olives—take on the starring role as a savory dressing for pasta. You could see this dish as a kind of tomatoless spaghetti alla puttanesca. But it goes a step further—once dressed, the pasta is fried on both sides, just like an egg frittata, until it forms a golden crust. With tons of umami and a lovely contrast of textures between the crunchy crust and delicate interior, frittata di scammaro is simple but delicious. Fasting never tasted so good…
The following recipe comes from Jeanna Caròla Francesconi’s classic La cucina napoletana. She got her recipe for frittata di scammaro from the famed 19th century Neapolitan gastornome Ippolito Cavalcanti’s La cucina teorica-pratica, one of the most important compendia of Neapolitan cookery and our first written source for this recipe. It’s said to have been a favorite of actor and playwright Edoardo de Filippo, who I’ve written about in this post.
Ingredients
Serves 4-6
- 500g (1 lb) vermicelli, spaghetti or spaghettini
- 1-2 cloves of garlic, peeled and lightly crushed
- 50g (2 oz) anchovy fillets
- 75g (2-1/2 oz) black Gaeta style olives, roughly chopped
- 50g (2 oz) capers, well rinsed and squeezed dry
- A few sprigs of fresh parsley, finely minced
- olive oil
- salt
Optional:
- 25g (1 oz) pine nuts
- 25g (1 oz) raisins, soaked in warm water until soft and squeezed dry
Directions
Cook and dress the pasta
Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to the boil. Add the pasta and cook until al dente.
Meanwhile, in a skillet, gently sauté the garlic until just lightly brown around the edges. Remove and then add the anchovies, capers and chopped olives, and (if using) the pine nuts and raisins. Let them sauté gently as well, just until the anchovies have melted. Then turn off the heat.
When the pasta is done, transfer it to the skillet and toss, together with the minced parsley.
Fry the frittata
Now heat another skillet preferably non stick of seasoned carbon steel. When it’s hot, drizzle in some olive oil, then add the pasta and its dressing.
Even out the pasta as much as you can, then let it fry undisturbed until it forms a golden brown crust on the bottom, just like you would an egg frittata. Try to brown the bottom as well as the sides as evenly as you can manage, tipping the skillet if need be to brown the sides if the pasta is particularly thick.
When the bottom has browned nicely, flip the frittata over and, after adding another drizzle of oilve oil to the skillet, brown it on the other side as well.
Serve
Slide the frittata onto a serving plate and serve while still warm or at room temperature.
Notes on frittata di scammaro
The usual tips on making a frittata also apply here. See this post for details.
While you don’t need to worry about cooking the insides as you would an egg frittata, do try to judge the heat so the pasta forms a nice golden crust without actuallly burning. So as with an egg frittata, low to moderate heat in best. And while you should mostly leave the pasta alone as it browns, you can peek underneath from time to time by lifting the edge with a spatula.
Francesconi provides rather detailed instructions about how to brown this frittata evenly, telling you to tip and rotate the skillet so each part of the bottom and sides gets direct contact with the flame. Obviously this isn’t strictly necessary if you’re cooking on an induction cooktop or have a gas cooktop with ringed burners. But if your frittata is rather thick, you may still find you need to tilt the skillet to brown the sides.
The only real tricky part of making a frittata di scammaro, just like an egg frittata, is flipping it over once it’s browned on the bottom. There are a few different ways to go about it. See my pointers in this post, but I would not use the broiler method for this kind of pasta.
As for the measurements, take them with the proverbial grain of salt. When it come to the anchovies, olives and capers in particular, I’ve given you Francesconi’s measurements as a reference, but I’d just eyeball it to your taste. And speaking of salt, do be careful to salt the pasta water only lightly in this case, as the flavorings are all quite savory.
Pasta
You make this frittata with long pasta shapes like vermicelli, spaghetti or spaghettini aka ‘thin spaghetti’. Francesconi’s recipe calls for vermicelli, a pasta shape typical Neapolitan cookery. It is very much like spaghetti but for those who only know it abroad, be aware that in Naples vermicelli are actually a bit thicker, not thinner, than regular spaghetti.
Do not attempt to make a frittata di scammaro with short pasta. It would no doubt taste good, but without egg to bind it, the frittata will just fall apart.
Anchovies
Anchovies come packed either in salt (sotto sale) or olive oil (sott’olio). Salted anchovies are packed whole, they generally come in large cans They need to be rinsed of their salt, then filleted. Oil packed anchovies come in fillets, so you can use them right out of the jar or can, drained of their excess oil.
Either kind of anchovy will do for making a frittata di scammaro. There are those who say salt packed anchovies are superior to those packed in olive oil. But while there are admittedly some poor quality canned anchovies around, I don’t find there to be much difference—provided you look for oil packed anchovies from a quality brand like Delfino or Agostino Recca. Here in North America, you can also find some excellent Spanish anchovies in oil, like those from Ortiz. One telltale sign: better quality anchovies usually come in jars rather than cans.
Capers
In Italian cookery, the most famous capers come from the small volcanic island of Pantelleria between Sicily and Tunisia, which enjoy indicazione geografica protteta or IGP status.
Capers come packed in salt or brine. Here I find that the ones in salt, though harder to find, really are superior for most uses, including this one. The prized Pantelleria capers are always sold sotto sale. Salt packed capers taste, well, of themselves while brine packed capers taste mostly of their brine, quite vinegary. While both will do, if you can find salt packed capers go for them. Here in North America, you can find a large 1 kilo jar of salted Pantelleria capers on this website and a smaller half kilo packet from my old reliable resource, Alma Gourmet. They’re not cheap, but they will last you for quite a while.
Variations
I haven’t been able to identify too many variations on the recipe, other than the optional addition of pine nuts and raisins. Personally I’ll go with Francesconi and leave them out, though she says that the original Cavalcanti recipe had them. Here’s the text of his recipe, little changed from today’s recipe:
Scauda tre rotole de vermicielle, ma teniente, teniente (ben al dente), li scule e li buote dinto a no tiano (recipiente) co tre mesurielle d’uoglio zoffritto co miezo quarto d’alice salate e pepe, quanno l’aje mbrogliate e asciuttate, ne miette na mità dinto a la tiella (padella) e nge miette na mbottonatura (ripieno) d’aulive senza l’osse, de chiapparielle (capperi), d’alice salate a meza a meze, passe e pignuole (uvetta e pinoli), nge miette l’auta mmità de li vermicielle e nge farraje fa la scorza (crosticina) sott’e ncoppa (sotto e sopra), facennola friere co la nzogna (sugna) o co l’uoglio.
I’ve made a few minor adjustments to Francesconi’s recipe. She tells you to sauté the olives and capers as well as the parsley before adding the anchovies. Personally, I don’t think they need to extra cooking.
By the way, the pasta itself is perfectly delicious dressed and left unfried. And if you add some tomato and perhaps a bit of hot red pepper and let them simmer together with the seasonsings before throwing in your pasta, as alluded to at the top, you’ll have a lusty dish of spaghetti alla puttanesca.
About that name ‘scammaro’
The name of this dish has an interesting monastic back story. Back in the day, Lent was a time for Catholics to abstain from meat and other rich foods. That was, of course, also true in monasteries. Older and sick monks were exempted from the fast but they had to stay in camera—in their cells—so as not to tempt the others.
Well, in old Neapolitan dialect the word for the standard Italian word camera was cammaro (camera in standard Italian). And if you’ve studied Italian, you’ll know that an initial s- in a word often (but not always) is a negative signifier a bit like dis- in English (to which it is related). So a scammarato was a monk who wasn’t confined to his cell—in other words, among those who were obligated to observed the Lenten fast. Over time, the word scammaro came to mean Lenten foods in general.
Making frittata di scammaro ahead
You can make this entirely ahead and serve at room temperature if you like. In fact, I find it tastes even better after a short rest.
Frittata di scammaro
Ingredients
- 500 g 1 lb vermicelli, spaghetti or spaghettini
- 1-2 cloves of garlic peeled and lightly crushed
- 50 g 2 oz anchovy fillets
- 75 g 2-1/2 oz black Gaeta style olives, roughly chopped
- 50 g 2 oz capers, well rinsed and squeezed dry
- A few sprigs of fresh parsley finely minced
- olive oil
- salt
Optional:
- 25 g 1 oz pine nuts
- 25 g 1 oz raisins, soaked in warm water until soft and squeezed dry
Instructions
Cook and dress the pasta
- Bring a large pot of well salted water to the boil. Add the pasta and cook until al dente.
- Meanwhile, in a skillet, gently sauté the garlic until just lightly brown around the edges. Remove and then add the anchovies, capers and chopped olives, and (if using) the pine nuts and raisins. Let them sauté as well just until the anchovies have melted. Turn off the heat.
- When the pasta is done, transfer it to the skillet and toss, together with the minced parsley.
Fry the frittata
- Now heat another skillet preferably non stick of seasoned carbon steel. When it’s hot, drizzle in some olive oil, then add the pasta and seasonings.
- Even out the pasta as much as you can, then let it fry undisturbed until it forms a golden brown crust on the bottom, just like you would a frittata. Try to brown the bottom as well as the sides as evenly as you can manage, tipping the skillet if need be to brown the sides if the pasta is particularly thick.
- When the bottom has browned nicely, flip the frittata over and, after adding another drizzle of oilve oil to the skillet, brown it on the other side as well.
Serve
- Slide the frittata onto a serving plate and serve while still warm or at room temperature.
Nutrition
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Such a fun dish! Now I wish I eat pasta. Love olives and anchovy a lot though.
This sounds brilliant and I love the history. I will be passing the recipe on to the Canon and the Carmelite Sisters, who might appeciate a new Lenten dish. I’m highly likely to make this myself, too!
Ortiz sell vacuum packed salted anchovies, which are excellent, though they might be harder to find in America. It is said that fish, beans and pulses are better in glass jars, because they use a lower temperature, than for cans. This is because at high temperatures the glass will break. The lower temperature means that the contents maintain a better flavour and texture.
Oh Frank, you use these dishes with green decorations all the time. They must have been Angelina’s. Can you look at the bottom and tell us the manufacturer and pattern? I will find some and buy them. Please oh please.
Thanks, Frank — I really enjoy this combination of flavors, though I’ve never had anything like it. Mark and I were looking over the recipe this morning and decided we should make it while it’s still Lent. Thanks for the note that vermicelli isn’t what we think of in terms of thickness. I think I will try this with regular spaghetti.