Il Fricando di Casa Mia

The French word fricandeau describes a veal dish with sauce. In the dialect of Rome, transliterated into fricandò, it came to mean a medley, a hodgepodge, and, metaphorically, a messy situation. From there it became the name of a dish of widely assorted vegetables, no longer related to the original French cooking term. A “mess” it may be, but a gloriously exuberant one.

It is a preparation so susceptible to improvisation and individual style that nearly every family I