quick and easy meals for 1 or 2

Mrs. Ricci’s chicken.

When I was in the Coast Guard I was stationed in Libya from August ’59 to Aug. ’60. The headquarters for the Coast Guard for the Mediterranean area was in Naples and they sent supplies down to us twice a month by plane from Naples. Well, Christmas was approaching and they let half the crew fly back to Naples and stay for the 2 weeks ‘til the plane went back to Libya and the rest of us went the next 2 weeks. We got to Naples and 3 of us decided we wanted to go to Rome for our stay. We got on a train and went. Didn’t have anyplace to stay, but we found the Pension Ricci. A pension, we learned is a family owned boarding house, kinda. Well the Pension Ricci was owned and run by the Ricci family, obviously. They didn’t feed their guests. You just got a room. The first day there we were on our way out to get some supper and the Ricci’s cute, no beautiful, 2 teenage daughters were on their way in. They didn’t know any English and we knew about 3 words of Italian between us, but we were making each other giggle when Mrs. Ricci shows up. She gave us a pretty stern look. We thought we were going to get kicked out right then. Well, in a second or 2 she smiles and invites us to come in and join them for supper. We sat at the kitchen table, the girls and boys eyeballing each other while Mrs. Ricci did this for supper. She sent one of the girls out to get another chicken and some more bread to take care of us too. She cut up the chickens so she had breasts thighs and drumsticks. She had a big cast iron skillet and she put some olive oil (I guess) in it. She made shallow cuts in the chicken. Through the skin and about a ¼ inch more. Then the chicken into the pan, no flour, no bread crumbs, and squeezed lemon juice on the pieces. When she turned them over to cook the other side she squeezed more juice on them. While the chicken was cooking she had one of the girls do the pasta. It was ziti or something like it. When the pasta was done and drained the pretty girl put in some garlic she had mashed up, some olive oil and a good bit of grated cheese. Mixed it all up with a spoon. They fed us all that with some salad and some of the best bread I’ve ever had. No butter just olive oil for dipping. Mrs. Ricci hollers out for Mr. Ricci to come to dinner. He looks at us with a what’s this? Look on his face. Mrs. Ricci tells him and he shrugs like its ok with him. The girls giggled. We were very quiet. Things loosened up a little with the help of some good red wine from a big jug wrapped up with straw. They fed us a few more times while we stayed there and I’ll tell you about some of the other meals we had in the next few blogs.