Chicken Parm with Alfredo: The Italian Version of Chicken Fried Steak with Cream Gravy?

There it was, on a little whiteboard at my gym. Each trainer had listed their favorite food. I was expecting things like "açaí bowls" and "grilled salmon." The new trainer — someone I don't know yet, someone whose job it is to make people healthier — had written: Chicken Parm with Alfredo.

I stood there longer than I should have.

Chicken Parm with Alfredo. Said with the same reverence one might reserve for bistecca alla Fiorentina, or a bowl of pasta e fagioli made by someone's grandmother in Umbria. A favorite food. Not a guilty pleasure. Not a "once in a while" thing. A favorite.

I was gob-smacked - I thought about it all the way home.

For those unfamiliar — and I was, until recently — chicken parm with Alfredo is exactly what it sounds like: a breaded chicken cutlet smothered in marinara and mozzarella, served over fettuccine (or fusilli or linguine or spaghetti...)) in cream sauce. Two American (Italian inspired?) classics, stacked. The culinary equivalent of wearing a tuxedo over a tracksuit. The recipe, as best anyone can trace it, originated on the side of a jar of Ragú. Which tells you everything you need to know about its provenance, and nothing about why said trainer loves it so. 

Here's what's funny: neither half of this is Italian.

 

Chicken parmigiana — the parm part — is a purely American invention, a Frankenstein assembled from three different regional Italian dishes that no Italian ever thought to combine: the Milanese cutlet, the Neapolitan tomato sauce, the Sicilian eggplant preparation. Fettuccine Alfredo — the other half — was indeed invented in Rome, by a man named Alfredo di Lelio, who made it for his postpartum wife with butter and Parmesan. No cream. No garlic. Certainly no jar. What Americans call Alfredo sauce, Romans call an abomination. It’s as if the recipe magically teleported itself into an Olive Garden in Orlando, Florida. The only thing more extreme one could imagine might be Chicken Parm with Ranch Alfredo (Yes, Virginia, it is a “thing”).

So we have these two myths, married to each other, served on a plate, and beloved by millions.

Which brings me to chicken fried steak with cream gravy.

Texas's own contribution to the mythology of comfort food is equally confusing in origin, equally indifferent to authenticity, and defended with a ferocity that would embarrass a Bolgheri producer. Nobody knows exactly where it came from. Nobody cares. It exists in its own sovereign republic, answerable to no history, no region, no nonna.

Both dishes are the food equivalent of a cover song that became more famous than the original. Both require a certain suspension of culinary disbelief. Both are, if we're honest, deeply satisfying to some in ways that more legitimate foods sometimes aren't. Just ask the trainer.

You would no more find chicken parm with Alfredo in a trattoria in Trastevere than you'd find chicken fried steak on the menu at a high tone Dallas steakhouse. They live elsewhere — in the oddly painted, fluorescent-lit comfort of places that don't need to justify themselves to anyone in cafés - with names like Mary’s - and in towns with names like Strawn.

The new trainer, meanwhile, looks absolutely fine. Ah, youth!

Buona Pasqua. Eat what you love. No one is keeping score. Not in this America! 

Wine pairing: for this I chose a Gavi from Aldi grocery store, which retails for $7.99. Hey, when they go low, we go lower. 

As them there Eye-talians say, “In culo alla balena!”

 

 

© written and photo-synthed by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy

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