RICE TIMBALE
Tummàla
Serves 8
One 1.5 kg/3 lb chicken, complete with liver, gizzard, and, if possible, unlaid eggs
1 celery stalk
1 onion
2 tomatoes
1 carrot
Boiling water
1 egg
2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley
2 garlic cloves, minced
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Pinch grated nutmeg
225g/8 oz fresh Sicilian pork sausage
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, minced
4 tablespoons tomato extract or 5 tablespoons tomato purée
Salt
4 peppercorns
1 bay leaf
125 g/4 oz stale white breadcrumbs
125 ml/4 fl oz milk
225 g/8 oz minced veal or beef
25 g/1 oz grated pecorino cheese
450 ml/16 fl oz water
450 ml/16 fl oz plain tomato sauce
450 g/1 lb Italian rice (preferably arborio)
2 tablespoons dried breadcrumbs
225 g/8 oz tuma or mozzarella cheese
1 egg
2 egg yolks
50 g/2 oz grated pecorino cheese
Place the chicken and the vegetables in a large flameproof casserole, cover with boiling water, and add salt, peppercorns, and bay leaf. Simmer 40 minutes or until the chicken is cooked.
Meanwhile, prepare the meatballs as follows: Soften the breadcrumbs in the milk, and squeeze out any excess liquid. Add the minced meat, cheese, 1 egg, parsley, garlic, salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Blend thoroughly and shape into walnut-size meatballs. Simmer half of the meatballs in the broth with the chicken for the last 15 minutes of the cooking.
Brown the sausage in 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Remove the sausages, cut into 2.5 cm/1 inch pieces, and in the same pan brown the remaining half of the meatballs.
Sauté the minced onion in 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Add the tomato extract, dissolving it with the water; add the tomato sauce. Simmer for 10 minutes. Add the browned sausages and the browned meatballs, and simmer for another 10 to 15 minutes.
When the chicken is cooked and cooled enough to touch, take it out of the broth, bone and skin it, and cut the meat and the giblets into bite-size pieces. Put aside, together with the boiled meatballs, also removed from the broth.
Strain the broth through a sieve (you should end up with roughly 2 litres/3½ pints), add salt to taste, and bring the broth to the boiling point. Add the rice and cook until it is al dente. Remove the pot from the fire, correct the salt again, cover, and allow to sit until the rice absorbs all the broth.
Grease a large casserole (at least 30 cm/12 inches wide and 12 cm/5 inches deep) and line it with breadcrumbs. Fill the casserole in layers as follows:
A layer of rice (about one-third of the total)
The boiled meatballs and about two-thirds of the chicken
Slices of tuma cheese (using all the cheese)
Rice (another third)
The sausages and browned meatballs with 125 ml/4 fl oz of the tomato sauce
Remaining rice, mixed with remaining chicken
Beat the whole egg and the yolks until fluffy. Fold in the grated cheese, and add a little salt and pepper. Pour over the top layer of the casserole. Bake in a 180C/350F/gas mark 4 oven for 45 minutes or until the crust is golden brown. Serve hot with the remaining tomato and meat sauce passed on the side.
Tummàla is traditionally served at Christmas, and has as many versions as there are families that observe the tradition. All of them, however, call for immoderate quantities of meat and cheese and eggs—a profligate celebration of the feast day that is a recurrent note in Sicilian cooking. (One Easter speciality from the town of Aragona, a timbale in which macaroni and pork take the place of rice and chicken, requires more than 1.5 kg/3 lb of cheese and a total of forty eggs.)
An American writer, J. C. Grasso, attributes to this same Emir Thummah a dish in which the chicken is baked in a hollowed bread loaf instead of rice. The attribution aroused my curiosity, and a little research uncovered three very similar recipes: one in Apicius, where it is called sala cattabia; one that Claudia Roden has adapted from a medieval Arabic cookbook and entitled ‘Chicken Awsat’; and one in a contemporary Sicilian cookbook by Giuseppe Coria. Although this is not a common dish on modern Sicilian tables, it is an eloquent witness to the unity and the continuity of Mediterranean traditions that the Sicilian table embodies. I include it both because it is emblematic and because it is very good. This is my rendition of Grasso’s recipe.
