Memorie di Angelina

Funghi in pastella (Mushroom Fritters)

2012-01-29T19:21:00.002-05:00

I was so very pleased to read in the paper the other day that frying need not to be bad for you, especially if you fry in olive oil. The news didn't come as a surprise—I had always figured if Angelina managed to live to be 98 eating fried foods all the time, it couldn't be nearly as toxic as modern-day health nuts made out. Still, it was nice to see folk wisdom, once again, confirmed by empirical evidence.

Fried foods are a mainstay of Italian cookery. There's an old saying that "even a shoe tastes good when it's fried"—as true a sentiment as I can imagine. In our family, one of Angelina's signature dishes was fried mixed vegetables, usually including asparagus, cauliflower, artichokes, which appeared as an antipasto at many a Sunday dinner.

Another vegetable that lends itself wonderfully to frying is the mushroom. But given their irregular shape and small size, frying whole, individual mushrooms—while possible—is not very practical for the time-pressed home cook. In this recipe from Puglia, mushrooms are chopped and sautéed, then folded into a thick batter to be deep-fried. The resulting fritters make for a great (and addictive!) snack, an antipasto, a part of a fritto misto or even a light vegetarian second course.

Ingredients (to serve 4)

For the mushrooms:
1 lb. mushrooms, roughly chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 handful of parsley, chopped
Salt and pepper
Olive oil

For the batter:
1 egg
3/4 cup water
1-1/2 cups flour
Salt and pepper

Optional:
A few spoonfuls of grated parmesan cheese

For deep frying:
Olive oil (or a mixture of olive and canola oils)

Directions

Sauté the mushrooms in a bit of olive oil with the garlic and parsley, and seasoning lightly with salt and pepper, as if you were making funghi trifolati. (Be sparing with the oil.) Let cool.

Beat the egg and water together, and whisk in the flour little by little until you have a homogenous batter.

Add the mushrooms to the batter. Season the batter with a bit more salt and pepper—not too much as the mushrooms are already seasoned and, if using the grated cheese. As you add ingredients, fold everything together well with a spatula until the mushroom and batter mixture is quite uniform.

Now heat abundant oil in a pan, at least one inch (3 cm) deep. When the oil is hot (but not boiling) drop spoonfuls of the mushroom batter into abundant hot oil, keeping them well spaced. Deep fry until golden brown, proceeding in batches if need be, and transferring the fritters as they are done to a tray lined with paper towels or (my preference) a cooling rack placed over a baking sheet.

Serve hot, sprinkled with some additional salt if you like.

NOTES: This recipe will work with just about any type of mushroom, but of course the more interesting the mushroom, the better the fritters will taste. A mushroom mix of the kind often sold in better supermarkets is a nice choice. The traditional recipe calls for adding raw chopped mushrooms into the batter—if you take that approach, then I'd suggest limiting yourself to tender-fleshed mushrooms like chanterelles or oysters.

Pesce spada al salmoriglio (Swordfish with Salmorigio Sauce)

2012-01-14T15:39:00.000-05:00

Salmoriglio is a typically Sicilian sauce that adds great flavor to fish, particularly that most typical of Sicilian fishes, swordfish. The fish is grilled or otherwise simply prepared and napped with sauce before serving. Salmoriglio looks like and plays a culinary role similar to the salsa verde that goes so well with bollito (boiled meats), adding zest to an otherwise 'plain' dish. But salmoriglio uses lemon (and lemon zest) rather than vinegar and some fresh oregano for a distinctly southern taste.

Swordfish is a great choice for folks who may not be too partial to fish. It has a mild taste and firm texture that really reminds me (almost) of a kind of white meat. Add some tasty sauce on top and even the most hardcore piscisceptic might fall in love.

Ingredients (makes enough sauce for a dinner serving 4-6 people)

For the sauce:

A handful of fresh parsley

2 sprigs of fresh oregano

1 garlic clove

A spoonful of capers

2 or 3 strips of lemon zest

Salt and pepper

The juice of one lemon

Olive oil, q.b.

For the fish:

Swordfish steaks

Olive oil

Salt

Directions

Add all the dry ingredients to a food processor.

Use the pulse function to chop the ingredients until they are fairly finely minced. Add the lemon juice and a good pour of olive oil, enough to submerge all the other ingredients.

Now whiz all the ingredients together until you have a fairly smooth sauce. Check the sauce for taste and consistency and see what it needs: if it's a bit too thick or too tart, add some more olive oil. If it's a bit too bland, add some more salt. If you want it tarter, add a bit more lemon juice. And so on. You can play with it until you reach a balance that appeals to you. The sauce should, in all events, be very flavorful.

Set the sauce aside in a bowl and turn to your swordfish. Rub a bit of olive oil on your steaks, just enough so it glistens, and sprinkle them with salt. To cook them, you typically grill them, but if it's winter outside (as it is where I live) you can run them under a hot broiler or sear them in a skillet. Make sure they are nice and browned on at least one side. Be aware: having very firm flesh, swordfish takes a bit longer to cook than other kinds of fish and, at least to my taste, is not all that pleasant to eat when underdone. On the other hand, it can dry out so don't overdo it; 3 or 4 minutes per side for thin steak (see below) should do the trick.

Plate your swordfish steaks and drizzle some sauce on top. Serve any extra sauce in a bowl for those who want more. Make sure to have some crusty bread at the ready to soak up any leftover sauce.

NOTES: Of course, if you want to make this sauce the old fashioned way, you will finely chop all the dry ingredients with a knife or a mezzaluna (half-moon chopper), then whisk them together in a bowl. The look will be a bit different, since a food processor homogenizes and emulsifies the sauce, making it rather 'creamy' in look and mouth-feel, while a whisked sauce will be clearer and less smooth. Some recipes call for simmering salmoriglio over gentle heat for 5 minutes or so, including the one included in La Cucina Sicilian di Gangivecchio, a lovely regional cookbook by Wanda and Giovanna Tornabene. They describe the sauce as being used on cold leftover fish and call it salmoigiano (which is a closer Italian approximation of the dialect name for this sauce, sammurigghiu.)

The use of fresh oregano is really pretty important for this dish, in my humble opinion, even if you will see many recipes that call for dried oregano, either as a substitute or as the ingredient. It may surprise some readers, but I'm actually not a big fan of oregano in general. I find it too pungent for my tastes. But if I do use it, I like to use it with discretion, and fresh oregano lends a much 'softer' oregano taste than dried. And in a raw sauce like this, a dried herb is not particularly appealing. Still in a 'pinch'...

I would recommend you ask your fishmonger to cut the steaks fairly thin, no thicker than a finger. This will let you cook the fish fairly quickly and ensure a proper fish-to-sauce ratio. If you have rather thick steaks on your hands (which is very common if you buy them pre-cut) then you can either cut them into thinner slices (a bit tricky but doable) or just cook them longer.

While swordfish is perhaps the most typical fish to serve with salmoriglio sauce, at the price of swordfish steaks these days ($25/lb. when I bought them yesterday!) it's a good thing that it really goes well with almost any simply prepared fish. And it can do double service as a sauce for grilled lamb, chicken or veal.

Pane casereccio (Homemade Bread)

2012-01-08T16:56:00.000-05:00

I am not a baker. Never have been. I have always found stove-top cooking fun and easy but baking is a very different art. Cooking lets you stir and taste and adjust as you go along to get things to come out just right. But with baking—once you close that oven door, your success is in the hands of fate. I've always found that nerve-racking.

But I've recently changed my mind, at least when it comes to bread. I was forced into it, in a way, by the indifferent quality of the bread that I can find where I am now living. Even at the 'fancy' supermarkets around, and even at the few remaining bakeries in my area, the bread is almost always disappointing—the crust isn't crusty enough, the crumb too soft and bland and too 'tight' as well. What I have been looking for is that bread that I remember appearing on Angelina's table, large round loaves that she would hold close to her chest and cut with a large knife. That bread was crusty and chewy and delicious, with big holes that were perfect for catching sauce when wiping up sauce on your plate ('facendo la scarpetta' as the they say in Italian). I rediscovered that kind of bread when I moved to Italy, where it is variously called pane casereccio or pane di casa or (especially in and around Naples) pane cafone. It was cheap and good and ubiquitous, one of the small but wonderful pleasures of Italian life.

When I moved back to the States, I was desperate to find something comparable. After looking around for at least a year, I realized that I might as well be looking for unicorns. The obvious solution was to do what more and more people are doing: make my own. Not being a natural baker, I was amazed that I could do it in the first place. In fact, turns out it is not all that hard to do, especially with the help of a standing mixer.

Over the past year or so, I've collected a number of books on bread baking. All of them teach you to make great bread, but just this past Christmas I found gold. Some friends gave me My Bread, by Jim Lahey, founder of the Sullivan Street Bakery in New York. Lahey has developed an excellent, incredibly straight-forward no-knead bread recipe that that turns out a loaf as close to the pane casereccio as anything I've tasted since I left Italy. It really could hardly be easier to pull off—all you need are the ingredients—flour, water, salt and yeast—a good cast-iron casserole and a bit of patience. Oh yes, and an oven. The 'secret' of this method lies in giving the dough a very slow initial rise, which eliminates the need for kneading, and the use of the cast-iron casserole or 'Dutch oven', which you preheat in a hot oven to recreate conditions inside that Lahey says are similar to a bakery oven. I'm not expert, but I can say that the crust that forms in that environment is just wonderful.

Ingredients (for a medium loaf)

3 cups bread flour (or all purpose flour)

1-1/2 cups cold water

1/4 teaspoon yeast

A pinch of salt

Directions

Mix the dry ingredients in the bowl of a standing mixer, using the paddle. Then add the water in a drizzle until a very stick dough has formed. If the dough seems dry, then add a bit more, a spoonful at a time. Take the bowl from the mixer and cover it with a towel and/or a plate and leave it in a warm (but not hot) place over night. Lahey recommends 18 hours (or at few as 12) but I've found that 24 hours produces an even better loaf. There's no problem as long as you think just a little ahead and make mix the dough the day before and let it rise overnight.

[NB: No worries if you don't have a standing mixer, you can just mix your dough in a normal bowl with a wooden spoon.]

After this initial rise, the dough will have expanded, darkened in color and be spottled with 'pock marks' on its surface.

Now scrape the dough out of the bowl with a spatula or wooden spoon onto a lightly floured surface. You will notice that it will have a rather stringy consistency, which is just what you want: this shows how the slow rise has allowed gluten to form even without kneading.

Flour your hands and form the mass of dough into a ball without kneading. Just sort of glance your hands over the surface of the dough, tucking it under itself to round it and smooth its surface. (NB: Use a minimum of flour both on the surface and on your hands, so you don't incorporate too much into the dough. A wet dough is important to the rustic texture of the bread.)

Then gingerly lay the dough on a lightly floured tea towel, then fold the ends of the towel on top of the dough. Let the bread rise again (this step is called 'proofing' by bakers) until it roughly doubles in size, which can take anywhere from 1 to 2 hours. If you have the time, take the whole 2 hours.

About 30 minutes before the second rise is over, preheat your oven to 400F/200C. Put a 4-1/2 or 5-1/2 quart cast iron casserole (about 10" in diameter) with its cover, in the oven to preheat along with the oven itself. This will act as an oven inside the oven: intensely hot and small enough that it retain the moist atmosphere that really excellent bread needs.

Now you're ready to bake. This is the one tricky part of the recipe, and just a little dangerous as you'll need to handle the very hot cast iron casserole. Make sure you have heavy oven mitts (it'll be too hot for a towel) and proceed with care!

Take the casserole out of the oven using your oven mitt and lay it on a heat-resistant surface. (I use a a turkey carving board with spikes that hold the pot slightly above the surface.) Then remove the cover and lay it aside. Take the towel with the dough and quickly flip the dough into the casserole (it will go in 'upside down', which is fine). Shake the casserole, if need be, to center the dough and then quick re-cover it.

Put the casserole back in the oven and bake for 30 minutes. Then take it out of the oven and remove the cover. The bread will be ever so slightly browned.

Now put the casserole back into the oven, uncovered, and bake for another 15-20 minutes, until the bread has developed a beautiful golden brown crust. Turn the bread out onto a cooling rack and leave it until it has completely cooled. (This cooling period is critical, as the crumb (ie, the 'insides' of the bread) will continue to cook; you may hear it 'crackle' as it does, which means it's doing its job.

When the bread has cooled completely, after about 45 minutes to an hour, it is ready to enjoy!

NOTES: The best flour for making bread is, of course, bread flour. Bread flour has a high gluten (protein) content that produces a nice, firm crumb and crusty crust. These days, with so many people making their own bread, it is fairly easy to find in better supermarkets. It can also be ordered online. But if you like, you can also use all purpose flour; it works almost as well.

As for the casserole, the usual brands, such as Le Creuset, Staub and Lodge, all make the kind of casserole you'll need. Lahey says he likes Staub the best, and that's the brand I use as well, but it's an expensive solution (around $250). Le Creuset has one drawback, which is that the plastic knob on the cover is only guaranteed up to 375F, just under the temperature you need. And since constant baking an empty casserole at high temperatures will, over time, discolor whatever casserole you use, you may just want to opt for the economical choice: the Lodge, which costs only $30.

This recipe is an only slightly revised version of the basic no-knead bread recipe found in My Bread. I've upped the water content slightly (as I like a 'holey' crumb) and lengthened the initial rise even more, but otherwise this is his recipe. I heartily recommend you buy the book, which is filled with little tips and tricks not mentioned here. And it has many other variations on this basic recipe, including a whole-wheat loaf, that I am anxious to try!

On Dressing a Salad

2012-01-01T17:03:00.000-05:00

The proper dressing of a salad has got to be one of the most overlooked techniques in all of cookery. For many people, a salad is something so common that it hardly merits thinking about. But there is actually a kind of art to this everyday task that can really transform your salads from the pedestrian to—dare I say it?—the sublime. Perhaps nothing else demonstrates so well the importance of technique in the act of cooking.

The Golden Rule: The Italians also have their own particular way of dressing a salad, which can be nicely summed up by the following proverb:

A ben condire l'insalata, ci vuole un avaro per l'aceto, un giusto per il sale e uno strambo per l'olio.

Which, loosely translated, means: "to properly dress a salad, you need a miser to add the vinegar, a judge to add the salt and a spendthrift to add the oil." In other words, there are only three ingredients for dressing the salad and the proportions are as indicated—very little vinegar, the 'right' amount of salt (not too much, not too little) and a generous amount of oil.

The taste of the oil, in fact, should dominate, not—as is usually the case for oil-and-vinegar dressings in the States but also (albeit to a lesser extent) in a French vinaigrette—the vinegar. Of course, this means that a fruity extra-virgin olive oil is essential. (See my post on The Italian Pantry for details.)

Despite the popular misconceptions, everyday Italian dressing does not contain garlic or oregano or grated cheese or indeed anything else—not even, depending on who you ask, pepper.

The vinegar should be wine vinegar (of course!) but both white and red wine vinegars are perfectly fine, according to your preference. Personally, I like white wine vinegar as it is milder (or so it seems to me) and its light color does not 'stain' the salad. One common variation is to use freshly squeezed lemon juice in place of the vinegar. It is especially nice as part of a fish dinner, of course. But be very careful: lemon juice tends to be very sour, so use even less of it than you would vinegar. (Some varieties of lemon, like the lovely Meyer lemon, are milder in flavor and can be used with less restraint.)

This is all you'll need...

Dressing is a verb, not a noun: The other thing that sets the Italian approach apart is that the dressing does not exist separately from the salad itself. You don't mix the dressing in a bowl and then add it to the salad, as for a vinaigrette; you add the three ingredients, one at a time, to the greens, tossing quickly and very gently after each addition. Taste and adjust for balance, toss again if need be, and serve the salad right away, as the greens will begin to wilt almost immediately. The dressing should just coat the leaves so they glisten. A proper salad is never 'swimming' in dressing.

On the order for adding oil, vinegar and salt: I usually start with the oil, then the vinegar and then finally the salt, but not everyone does it this way. A reader named Giulia, now a scholar in Scotland, recently sent me this wonderful story about her experience making salad while visiting her native town in Treviso:

The Incident

Last time I was home visiting my family and friends (I come from a small village, south of Treviso), I went to a fundraiser lunch with a friend of mine. The kitchen was full of ladies, every one of them having her own task(s).

But there was one lady in particular that seemed in charge and she looked like she knew what to do. I thought she was a bit grumpy, but maybe it was just the stress of the situation. When time came to dress a saeada, the salad, my friend took the bottle of olive oil in an attempt to help, since it was getting hectic in there. E ociáde, the looks, she got! Like flying knives! That one lady almost yelled at her and my friend froze with the bottle of oil of olive in mid air. That same one lady asked my friend: ‘Situ sposada?’ Are you married? My friend isn’t and the lady replied 'Of course you aren't. Because if you were, you would know that sale, pepe, olio, aceto, otherwise is not as good as mom (of the husband) makes it.'

Of course the answer revealed the traditional tension between wives and mother in laws. This incident got me thinking about the order of the ingredients. I never really thought about it until that day.

Giulia's story got me to thinking and I did a little research. It seems that none other than Il cucchiaio d'argento, an authoritative cookbook, endorses that bossy lady's position: salt first, then the vinegar and the olive oil last. No pepper mentioned. (They are specific about the order but don't give reasons.) On the other hand, Ada Boni's Talismano has a recipe for insalata di lattuga alla casalinga ("Housewife-Style Lettuce Salad) that tells you to do it 'my' way, starting with the oil, then vinegar, then salt and pepper.And then there are yet other methods: the doyenne of Italian cookery in the US, Marcella Hazan, tells you to start with salt, then the oil and the vinegar only at the last, saying that the vinegar wilts the lettuce, so it needs the oil as protection first. Another well-known cookbook author from Florence, Giuliano Bugialli, makes the same point about the vinegar but recommends mixing the salt into the vinegar in a large spoon before adding it to the salad and tossing.

I've also come across a number of online 'debates' among Italian home cooks. It seems there are, indeed, two schools of thought: both agree that the oil coats the lettuce and 'seals' it. Some see this as a good thing, others see it as a defect... I would suppose it depends on how prominent you prefer the taste of the vinegar to be. And then there is a minority that says the traditional Italian way is all wrong, and it's better to mix all the ingredients beforehand, as the French do. And I ever found at least one fan of American-style bottled dressings...!

As for so many things Italian, I guess there is no definitive 'right' answer and the debate will no doubt rage on forever. For myself, I've tried different methods and still like 'my' way the best. I don't like assertive sour tastes and adding the oil before the vinegar does soften the sourness of the vinegar.

Lettuce is the star: Insalata verde and insalata mista. Although generalizations are always a bit risky, it is fair to say that Italians don't generally weigh their salads down with lots of different ingredients in the manner of a salad bar. The most common type of salad is an insalata verde, a 'green salad' of lettuce, more often than not a mix of different types. The most popular mix in Rome is called a misticanza. It's actually quite similar to the mixed baby greens you can buy here in States, although a true misticanza, consisting as it does of wild greens picked from the Roman countryside, can only be had in Rome itself. Salads of arugula only (called rughetta in Rome, rucola in standard Italian) are also quite popular. What I never saw was the kind of lettuce sold in the US as 'Romain' which, despite the name is very un-Italian in its super-firm texture and near tastelessness. And of iceberg lettuce, well, the less said the better, at least when it comes to making an Italian salad. (I actually have a weakness for a wedge of iceberg with roquefort dressing, but that is a salad from a completely different tradition.)

When you do add things other than lettuce to a green salad, you get an insalata mista, or mixed salad. These other ingredients are used sparingly: a few carrot shavings, a few very thin slices of cucumber, some shredded green onion, a few finely sliced mushrooms, a thin wedge of tomato, etc. (Tomatoes for salads, by the way, are best when still quite green; a fully ripened tomato will make your salad red and soggy.)

When to serve a salad: I've heard different things about the proper place for salad in an Italian meal and the answer, as so often is the case, is "it depends"—on the region, on the family, on personal preference. When I was in living in Rome, a green or mixed salad was typically served as a contorno, or side dish, especially for grilled or roasted meats or breaded cutlets. But Angelina served the salad as a separate course following the secondo, the usual habit among Italo-Americans, and I am told this custom is also not unheard of in parts of southern Italy.

Besides its usual role as a side dish to meat, salads can also be an integral part of a dish as a bed for sliced steak (tagliata di manzo) as featured in my Italian cookout post—it's a fabulous combination. And nice green salad can be wonderful served over a salmon carpaccio, a great meal for times when you want something light to eat.

Other kinds of salad: This post has been about the most typical of salads, those based on lettuce. But there are other kinds of dishes also called 'salads' that made with more substantial ingredients. They are traditionally served as antipasti but could pass as a vegetarian main course: insalata caprese, insalata di fagioli e tonno, insalata di rinforzo to name just a few that have been featured on this blog. And I remember a place close to work back in Rome that made a great insalatone, or 'big salad', during the summer months. It was a kind of composed salad in the tradition of a salade niçoise that was a meal in and of itself.

Insalata caprese

Finally, I can't write a post about salads without mentioning the exception that proves the rule(s): puntarelle, a kind of chicory that is a quintessential part of Roman cookery. It is also unique, as it breaks most of the rules I've just outlined for you: for one thing, it is the singular example of a 'dressing' that is actually made separately from the salad, and the dressing includes not only the holy trinity of oil, vinegar and salt, but pepper, garlic and anchovy as well. The strong flavors of this dressing are the perfect balance for the assertively bitter taste of this unusual green. It is near impossible to find puntarelle outside Italy (as far as I am aware) but the hearts of curly endive, which is a variety of chicory, makes for a decent substitute. See my post on puntarelle for more details.

Pollo al vino bianco con funghi (Chicken Braised in White Wine with Mushrooms)

2011-12-28T08:28:00.001-05:00

I love recipes that combine meat (or fish) with vegetables. In Italian cooking terms, it combines secondo and contorno in a single dish, and if you serve the dish with some good bread, it becomes a one-pot meal, especially appreciated after the holidays when many of us are probably "cooked out".

Chicken, with its mild taste, lends itself to almost endless pairings. One that I particularly like in the cold weather months is chicken and mushrooms. I found this recipe in a wonderful, under-appreciated 1978 cookbook entitled The Cuisine of Venice and Surrounding Northern Regions by Hedy Giusti-Lanham and Andrea Dodi. It is, sadly, out of print but can be bought used on amazon.com.

This dish is typical of the spezzatino, a kind of stew. The name comes from the verb spezzare, which means to break (or in this case, cut) into pieces, which is want you want to do with whatever meat you are using. Smaller is better, as this not only speeds the cooking process but ensures that each piece of meat is impregnated with the flavor of the sauce. For most spezzatini, you typically add just a splash of wine, which you let evaporate over high heat as you turn the pieces to coat them, before covering the dish and simmering it to completion over very low heat, adding just a bit of liquid as it cooks if needed to keep things moist. In this dish, however, you add a generous amount of white wine in which you braise the chicken, more in the French style. The wine, slightly thickened from the dusting of flour on the chicken pieces, then becomes your sauce.

Ingredients (serves 4)

1 young chicken, cut into 10 pieces (see Notes)
1-2 cloves of garlic, peeled and slightly crushed
1 sprig of fresh rosemary
250-350g (8-12 oz.) of fresh mushrooms (or a handful of dried imported mushrooms, soaked until soft)
250 ml (1 cup) dry white wine
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Flour for dusting the chicken pieces

Minced parsley (optional)

Directions

In a large sauté pan or braiser large enough to hold your chicken pieces in a single layer, sauté the garlic and rosemary gently in the olive oil until the garlic is lightly browned. Remove both garlic and rosemary from the pan.

Pat the chicken pieces dry with paper towels, dust them ever so lightly in flour and add them to the oil, raising the heat a bit. Brown the pieces on all sides, turning them from time to time for even cooking. Season generously with salt and pepper.

Add a generous amount of white wine, enough to come up about 1 cm (1/4 inch) up the pan. Turn the chicken pieces in the wine for a minute or two so they are covered well, then lower the heat and cover. Let the chicken simmer gently until it is cooked through and tender. For a young chicken, this should take about 30 minutes. For older or larger chicken the cooking time may be upwards of 45 minutes to an hour.

About halfway through the cooking time add your mushrooms. If you are using reconstituted dried mushrooms or very tender fresh ones, you can simply cut them up roughly and add them raw (see Notes). (If using dried mushrooms, add their water, too, as it has lots of flavor.) Then re-cover the pan and continue simmering until the chicken is done through.

When the chicken is done, uncover and remove the chicken pieces to a warm serving platter. Check the consistency of the sauce. If it is a bit watery, raise the heat and let it reduce a bit. Taste and adjust for seasoning. Then nap your chicken with the mushrooms and sauce. Top with a bit of minced parsley, if you like, for color

Serve immediately, while still hot, with some nice, crusty bread and a crisp white wine. (Giusti-Lanham and Dodi recommend a Durello or Pinot Grigio.)

NOTES: For a simple recipe like this, the quality of the ingredients will matter a lot. Use an organic chicken, which tends to have better flavor and texture. And to make sure the chicken absorbs the flavor of the sauce, cut it up into 10 pieces: 2 wings, 2 legs, 2 thighs and 4 breast pieces, which you get by cutting each breast in half crosswise. (For birds with 'swollen' breasts, typical of modern 'industrial' birds) you may even want to cut them into thirds.) To ensure proper browning, it is very important to dry each piece thoroughly before flouring them and frying them.

The original recipe calls for using reconstituted dried mushrooms soaked for a good half hour or more in water. Remember the cookbook is from the 70s when the only fresh mushrooms available in US stores where the rather bland 'button' mushrooms. We are lucky nowadays to have a variety of mushrooms to choose from. For this dish, I often use one of those packages of mixed, already cut up mushrooms. If you are using tender-fleshed mushrooms like shiitake or oysters, you can be add them directly to the pan without preliminaries. If you are using firm-fleshed mushrooms, however, like those old-fashioned 'button' mushrooms or Bellas, you'll want to slice them and sauté them in olive oil before adding them to the simmering chicken, or they will have an unpleasantly tough and spongy texture.

Tortellini

2011-12-20T08:15:00.001-05:00

Among the dizzying variety of stuffed pastas in the Italian repertoire, perhaps none—with the exception of ravioli—is more famous than the ring-shaped tortellino. These bits of bliss are ambassadors of Italian cuisine abroad and these days they (or aberrant facsimiles) can be found on the shelves of almost any supermarket. Within Italy, tortellini are practically synonymous with the region of Emilia-Romagna and more specifically with the cities of Bologna and Modena. And tortellini (along with their close cousin cappelletti) served in capon broth, are a fixture on Christmas Day dinner tables in central and northern Italy.

As regular readers of this blog will know, I usually like to stress how easy most of the dishes I feature here are to make. This is one exception. While the recipe is fairly simple, to be perfectly honest, it is not easy. The process of forming tortellini—folding little squares of dough in half over just a dot of stuffing and twirling them around your index finger—is no mean task for the beginner. It helps to have smaller hands and good fine motor skills so, although it may sound sexist, this is a dish more easily made by women than men. But that doesn't keep me from trying, nor should it you, man or woman: the pay off really is worth it. The "tortellini" you can buy in stores (outside Italy) simply do not do this wonder justice—the pasta is typically too thick and tough, the stuffing cheapened by "filler", among other travesties. And like anything else, practice makes perfect. A practiced tortellini maker can turn them out with amazing speed.

Ingredients (for 4-6 or more, depending on the use)

Stuffing:
300g pork loin
Butter
150g mortadella
150g prosciutto crudo
200-300g freshly grated parmesan cheese
1-2 eggs
A good scraping of nutmeg

Optional dry marinade for the pork loin:
1 garlic clove
1 sprig of fresh rosemary
Salt and pepper

1 batch of freshly made egg pasta (see recipe), rolled out into thin sheets

Directions

Step 1: Make the stuffing: Cut the pork into smallish cubes and mix with a finely minced battuto of the garlic and rosemary, a generous salt and pepper. Let the pork marinate for at least a couple of hours. (The traditional recipe—see Notes below—say at least two days, but even a short time adds flavor.)

Sauté the pork in butter over gentle heat. When the pork is cooked through, transfer it to a food processor, leaving the butter and bits of garlic and rosemary behind. (Again, the traditional recipe says to clean off the dry marinade but that's a bit too fussy for me.)

Now add the mortadella and prosciutto to the food processor and process using the pulse function until you have a finely minced and fairly homogenous mixture. Add egg, grated cheese and nutmeg, then let it process until you have a very fine paste. The mixture should be quite dense and almost complete dry. If it is either a bit loose or a bit wet, add more cheese (or, if no one is looking, some breadcrumbs, but not too much). Taste for seasoning; the mixture should be very savory—if not, add more salt.

The stuffing is now done. Set it aside in a bowl and refrigerate until you are ready to stuff your tortellini. (A spell in the fridge, besides avoiding spoilage, helps firm up the mixture, which makes it easier to work with as well.)

Step 2: Now make your fresh pasta, following the master recipe. You want to roll out the pasta into thin sheets. Since you will fold the pasta twice, your tortellini will be unpleasantly chewy if the pasta is not rolled out thin enough. On the other hand, if you roll it out too thinly, it will be impossible to work with, so shoot for a happy medium. On my KitchenAid pasta attachment, I find that ending with the 5 setting works well.

The pasta should be freshly made, or it will not adhere properly, so wrap it in plastic wrap until you are ready to roll it out and stuff it. But do resist the temptation to make it too moist, thinking it will help the pasta to adhere better. Yes, it will, but it will also adhere to your finger when you try to form the tortellini! (Trust me on this one—I'm speaking from experience...)

Step 3: Cut the pasta into squares and add the stuffing. Take a sheet of pasta and lay it out on a clean, flat, lightly floured surface. Cut the sheet into small squares, about 3-4cm (1 to 1-1/2 inches) wide. (Since I have large hands, I tend to make them on the large side of this range—but if you make them too large, you will have tortelloni, not tortellini!

Now take your stuffing and place a small dot of it in the middle of each square. (You should use just a tiny bit or the filling will overflow in the course of the next step!) Some recipes will say to use a 1/4 teaspoon per, but for me a measurement like that is practically meaningless and, in any event, if you actually try to measure each bit of stuffing, you'll be at it all day. When in doubt, use less than you think you need.

Step 4: Form each tortellino by folding each square into triangles, taking one end and pulling it over the stuffing to touch the other end. Don't try to line up the points exactly. They should be ever so slightly askew to give the tortellino its classic look. (And, in any event, it would be practically impossible to do otherwise.) Now take the two points at the 'base' of the triangle and twirl them around your index finger, attaching them on the other side of your finger to form a kind of ring. As you form each tortellino, place it on a dry towel, preferably one that has been draped over a baking rack, which allows for even air-flow above and below.

This key step is the hardest part of making tortellini and, as mentioned, requires a bit of dexterity. But the operation is not quite as complex as it sounds when described in words. The best thing to do is to find an online video that shows you how, and there are many on You Tube. My favorite is a cute homemade video called "The Best Tortellini Maker in the World", made by an Italian couple (but narrated by the husband in English) in their home kitchen. What it lacks in production value is makes up in sheer charm. To see how tortellini are made professionally, check on this video (in Italian only, but you'll get the idea.)

The tortellini are now ready to cook. You can keep them out for a good while until you want to cook them. If you make them ahead, let them become dry to the touch and either refrigerate or freeze them until you want to use them. Don't defrost them, however, or they will become gooey; just drop them in boiling water.

Step 5: Cooking. Boil the tortellini in well-salted water (or, even better, in broth) until done. You don't want them al dente in the manner of pasta secca. They should be tender without being mushy, either. The time it takes will vary wildly according to how long they have been drying, but in no event should it take longer than a few minutes. Freshly made tortellini will be done in about a minute or two. Serve immediately either in broth (the most classic method) or with a sauce (see Notes below).

NOTES: The stuffing recipe given here is a somewhat modified version of the "official" recipe established by the Dotta Confraternita del Tortellino, or "Learned Order of the Tortellino". (You can find the original here.) The official recipe includes equal amounts of pork loin, mortadella and prosciutto and half again as much of parmesan, and specifies you should add even more parmesan if it has not been aged for at least three years. These proportions make for an even richer and more savory stuffing. But given the exorbitant price of these items, I've reduced the proportions of cured meats and cheese in relation to the pork loin, with perfectly delicious results, while saving on cost. The Confraternita also tells you to marinate the pork loin for two days before cooking it and to let the stuffing rest in the fridge for at least an additional day for the flavors to meld. If you have the time, I am sure these extra steps make the stuffing even better, but I usually marinate for no more than an hour and don't necessarily make the stuffing ahead—and it still tastes wonderful. Many modern recipes reduce the amount of cured meats, as I have done here, eliminate the marination of the pork loin entirely, and call for a mixture of pork and chicken or turkey breast, rather than pork alone, in a 2:1 or 1:1 ratio, which I imagine lightens the mixture.

These days, you will find tortellini stuffed with all manner of things. But real tortellini are made with the pork stuffing given here. The other kinds are the brainchildren of food marketeers. Sadly, in most stores here in the US the only kind of tortellini you aren't likely to find are the real ones... Another more reason to make these babies at home.

The most classic way to serve tortellini is in brodo, or in homemade broth. That way you really can enjoy the subtle flavors of the stuffing without distraction. But, for me, tortellini in panna, made with a sauce of butter, cream and grated parmesan cheese reduced until syrupy, is a very close second choice. Whatever you do, however, avoid travesties like tortellini with pesto (the pesto would completely overwhelm and clash with the taste of the stuffing) and—even worse‚ tortellini "salad". Whoever thought of the latter monstrosity should be strung up.

Tortellini alla panna, simmering away...

Tortellini are the most famous of a number of similar stuffed pastas from the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, which is justly famous for its stuffed pastas and for fresh pasta generally. As mentioned, there are tortelloni, larger versions of tortellini and usually stuffed with ricotta cheese and leafy vegetables rather than meat and most often served with a butter and sage sauce. (They are too big for serving in broth.) Tortelli are square or round stuffed pastas, much like ravioli, but typically stuffed with pumpkin (see my recipe for tortelli di zucca). (Confusingly, the name tortelloni can also described a square stuffed pasta.) Cappelletti, or little hats, is similar in shape to and slightly larger than tortellini (made from 2 inch squares of pasta) and stuffed with a mixture of ricotta, capon breast, eggs and grated parmesan cheese, and laced with the ever-present scraping of nutmeg.

There are several stories about the origins of tortellini, all of which point to Modena as their place of birth. According to one, obviously apochryphal story, the tortellino was invented by an innkeeper in Castelfranco Emilia (near Modena) who was inspired by the navel of Lucrezia Borgia, who he spied through the keyhole of the door of her bedroom. Another separate but similar story has the innkeeper hosting none other than the goddess Venus and being inspired by her navel, again peeking through the keyhole of her bedroom, where she was staying with the god Jupiter after a night of debauchery. Perhaps a bit more believable, tortellini are also said to be an homage to the turtle-shaped roofs of 17th-century buildings in Modena.

Pasta con la ricotta

2011-12-04T09:18:00.001-05:00

Pasta and ricotta make for a perfect impromptu meal or weekend dinner. The mellow flavor combination of tomato, ricotta and a bit of parmesan cheese is vaguely reminiscent of southern-style lasagna. But, like many simple pasta dishes, it'll be done in less than 30 minutes—the time it takes to bring the water to the boil and cook your pasta.

Ingredients (serves 4-6 people)

400-500g (3/4- 1 lb.) of short pasta (see Notes)
200-250g (7-8 oz.) of canned tomatoes, whole or crushed, or passata (see Notes)
A garlic clove, peeled and slightly crushed
Olive oil
250-300g (7-8 oz.) of ricotta (or to taste)
Salt, to taste
Grated parmesan cheese (to taste)

Optional:
A fresh basil leaf or two

Directions

Put the water on the boil for the pasta.

Meanwhile, begin your sauce: add the tomato, a drizzle of olive oil, the whole garlic clove, the basil (if using) and a pinch of salt to a heavy saucepan or pot and let it simmer gently for 10-15 minutes, just enough to lightly cook the tomato and meld the flavors—or, if you like you can keep it at the barest simmer until the pasta is done. Remove the garlic clove.

When the water comes to a boil, salt it generously. Then add your pasta and cook it al dente.

When the pasta is done, drain it—but not too well—and add it to the pot with the tomato sauce over very gentle heat. Mix well, then add a few dollops of ricotta, enough to coat the pasta nicely but not enough to 'bury' it. I usually don't measure, I just mix the pasta after adding each dollop to see if I need more and keep adding until I reach the consistency I want. Add a bit of the pasta water if the mixture seems too thick. Then add grated parmesan (a spoonful per person should do) and mix again. Taste and adjust for seasoning. (Remember, ricotta is rather bland and you'll need to season well.)

Top with some more grated parmesan cheese if you like, and serve immediately.

NOTES: This sauce goes with almost any kind of short pasta. I think rigatoni or paccheri are particularly nice made this way. In Puglia, they would use orecchiette. For this meal, I took curly lasagna noodles (sometimes called reginette) and broke them into short lengths.

The simple tomato sauce can be made from canned tomatoes that you have squeezed between your fingers (if they are of proper quality, they should melt down in no time into a sauce) or crushed tomatoes (which will give you a more assertive tomato flavor) or sieved tomatoes in jars, known as passata. You may have noticed that, exceptionally, this tomato sauce does not begin by frying the garlic in oil. Instead, you just add the garlic and oil, raw, directly into the tomatoes. Angelina used to make tomato sauce this way sometimes. It makes for a lighter, mellower tasting sauce, with just the barest hint of garlic, which is just what you want here to complement the delicate flavor of the ricotta.

You can also make this sauce entirely in bianco—just add the ricotta to the cooked pasta with salt and some of the pasta water. It's surprisingly good. Now that's what I call simple cooking.

Fondue au fromage (Cheese Fondue)

2011-11-27T09:37:00.001-05:00

When you want something filling and warming but don't feel like spending a lot of time in the kitchen, cheese fondue is your ticket. 'Fondue' means melted in French and, indeed, cheese fondue is basically melted cheese, flavored with just a hint of garlic and thinned out a bit with white wine and kirsch, into which you dip some good, crusty bread. It's comfort food without the effort!

The only complication is that you need some special equipment, namely a fondue set. These used to be very easy to come by, back in the days when fondue was 'trendy'. They are still available in finer cookware shops and online. For cheese fondue, by far the best choice is the kind of set that includes a terracotta pot (called a caquelon) like this one from Emile Henry. Terracotta ensures even cooking and much reduces your chances of burning the cheese.

Ingredients (serves 4-6)

1 clove of garlic, cut in half
800g-1 kilo (1-1/2-2 lbs.) of melting cheese (see Notes below), shredded or cut into small dice
A generous splash of dry white wine (traditionally, half as much as the cheese by weight)
1 shot of kirsch, mixed with a teaspoonful or two of potato or corn starch

A baguette or other crusty bread with firm crumb, cut into bite-sized cubes

Optional:
Some new potatoes, steamed or boiled in their jackets
Pickled onions
Cornichons
A few drops of lemon juice

Directions

Rub the inside of your caquelon with the cut end of a halved garlic clove. (Use both halves if you want a more emphatic garlic flavor.)

Place the caquelon on the stove. Add the cheese and the wine. Melt the cheese over gentle heat until it forms a smooth mixture. Add the kirsch and starch and continue to cooking for 5 minutes more, stirring from time to time. Throughout the cooking process, be careful of the heat; the mixture should never boil, only bubble very gently.

When you are ready to serve, light the heating element and place the caquelon on its stand. As you eat, adjusting the flame to make sure the cheese mixture just barely bubbles.

NOTES: To eat your fondue, each diner skewers a piece of bread (through the crust) with a special, elongated fondue fork and dips it into pot, scraping the bottom of the pot (this helps ensure that the cheese at the bottom does not burn) and lifting out the cheese-coated bread onto individual plates. Some sources I've read say that you should never use the fondue fork to eat with, only to dip. Other sources will say that, at least among family, it's OK to place your bread into your mouth, as long as you take care not to let your lips touch the fork—which is good advice as well as good etiquette, since the fork can get very hot!

When the cheese is almost used up, you will notice that, even if you have been dliigently scraping the bottom of your caquelon, a round crust will have formed at the center, called la religieuse, or the 'nun'. You can lift this out with a fondue fork—and eat it like a cracker. It is considered the best part of the fondue, a bit like the socarrat of a properly made paella.

The choice of cheese is, of course, the key to a good cheese fondue. A combination of at least two cheeses is usual; the easiest classic fondue to pull off in the US being a half and half combination of gruyère and Emmenthal, which is called fondue neufchâteloise. Resist the temptation, by the way, to use only Emmenthal (aka 'Swiss cheese') as it tends to be bland and a bit stringy. Emmenthal is great as a 'filler' but you should combine it with a more assertive cheese for flavor. Other common cheeses for fondue include Appenzeller, Conté and Vacherin. If you can't find these, you can also use Butterkäse, or even non-Alpine cheeses like Gouda or Cheddar. For an Italian touch, some fontina adds a wonderful, if distinctive, flavor. (Remember that Italian fonduta is made with fontina.) The important thing is that the cheese be meltable. And on this score, make sure to get the real thing. I've tried cheaper domestic forms of gruyère thinking I'd save a little money, with disastrous results.

The wine should be very dry and, ideally, a bit sour. I understand that in Switzerland a Chasselas or Sauvignon Blanc is typical but in a pinch you can add a bit of lemon juice (just a few drops!) to lend a bit of sourness to an otherwise smooth wine.

The best bread, in my opinion, for fondue is a good quality baguette. You cut it into sections, then lengthwise into fours, then across, into cubes. This way, each piece has a bit of crust, which will help 'anchor' the bread on your fondue fork. If you try to dip a piece of bread that is entirely crumb into hot cheese, it is bound to slip off your fork. An old tradition, by the way, has it that a diner who loses his/her bread in the fondue pot has to buy drinks all around (if a man) or kiss everyone at the table (if a woman).

I understand that in Switzerland bread, and only bread, is used to dip into the cheese. But in France they are apparently a bit less strict about this. I find that boiled new potatoes are perfectly delicious for dipping. And I like to have some pickled onions and cornichons on hand to nibble on once in a while; they cut the richness of the cheese very nicely. It is traditional to accompany a cheese fondue with more of the same white wine you used to make it, but this being a winter dish, I also drink red wine—probably a sacrilege for fondue aficionados, but it actually goes very well.

I'm not one to pay much attention to proportions, but the classic recipe calls for 150-200g of cheese per person, and for half as much white wine by weight as cheese. You can play with these proportions according to the appetite of your dining companions and how thick you like your fondue. If you find the cheese mixture is too thick, just add a bit more wine. If too thin, a bit more corn or potato starch to thicken it up. In fact, if you're low on cheese, you can stretch it by adding more wine and thickening the whole thing up with starch. It will be perfectly delicious if potentially intoxicating... although since the wine is simmering the whole time, the alcohol content should be much reduced.

Cheese fondue is always served as a one course meal. It is very filling and you really won't want much else afterwards. But if you have really hungry guests, besides the bread and boiled or pickled vegetables, you could accompany it with some sliced charcuterie.

For more information on making and serving cheese fondues, check out Wikipedia articles in English or French, or this superb blog post from Just Hungry.

Spezzatino di manzo con la polenta (Beef Stew with Polenta)

2011-11-20T08:47:00.001-05:00

It's hard to believe, but in the two and a half years that I've been writing this blog, somehow I've managed to avoid writing a post about Italian beef stew. I suppose that's a tribute to the vast variety of Italian cooking or perhaps a reflection of the somewhat secondary role that beef plays in Italian cuisine. Or perhaps it's just a reflection of my own tastes.

Be that as it may, it is true that on a cold winter's night a hearty beef stew, served over polenta, makes a delightful piatto unico. And it's very simple to make: start (as always) with a soffrito, add your meat to brown lightly, then a splash of wine, then your braising liquid and, if you like, some fresh herbs. Cover and let it simmer very gently until tender. It sounds straightfoward—and it is. It is also economical, as stewing cuts are cheap and, if you serve the stew over polenta, just a little bit goes a very long way.

The Italian way with stew is very much like the stews of other cuisines. The main difference lies in the use of a soffritto of aromatic vegetables to start with, before you add the meat. Since you then add the meat to the already soft vegetables, they will not caramelize as much as in recipes where you begin by browning the meat directly in hot oil. Rather than forming a nice dark crust around the meat, the meat absorbs the sweetness of the aromatic vegetables. The result is sweeter and mellower than other beef stews you may have tried.

Ingredients (serves 4-6)

500-750g (1 to 1-1/2 lb.) of beef chuck, cut into cubes
1 medium onion, finely diced
1 medium carrot, finely diced
1 stalk of celery, finely diced
Olive oil and/or butter
Red wine
Beef or mixed meat broth (or water)
Salt and pepper

Optional:
1 tsp. cornstarch or potato starch
1 sprig of fresh rosemary, 1 bay leaf and/or 1 sprig of fresh marjoram

Directions

Pour a generous amount of olive oil (or a mixture of butter and oil) into a sauté or braising pan. Add the onion, carrot and celery and sauté very gently until the vegetables are very soft and the onion translucent. Adding a pinch of salt and a spoonful of water helps the vegetables cook and avoids browning.

Now add the beef cubes and turn them with a wooden spoon or spatula so they are nicely coated with the vegetables and flavored oil. Season well with salt and pepper. Raise the heat a bit and let the beef brown very lightly, turning constantly to avoid burning.

Now add a splash of wine and let it evaporate. Then add enough broth to almost cover the meat and, if using, nestle your fresh herbs among the beef cubes. (NB: Most Italian recipes call for much less broth than this, but this way will give you abundant sauce for pouring your polenta: see Notes below.)

Cover, turn down the flame as low as it will go, and let the beef simmer very gently until fork-tender. Most recipes say an hour and a half, but I find two to three hours is more like it.

When the meat is tender, uncover and check the consistency of the sauce. If it is rather thin, you can either raise the heat and let it evaporate and/or add a spoonful of corn or potato starch, dissolved in an equal amount of water, to thicken the sauce. If, on the other hand, you want more sauce, then just add more broth or water and let it simmer, uncovered, for a few minutes. Taste and adjust for seasoning.

Remove the fresh herbs, if used, and serve over a nice, hot bed of freshly made polenta (see recipe here).

NOTES: To my taste, chuck is the ideal cut of beef for making spezzatino. It has good flavor and enough marbling to stay juicy after a long braise. The unidentified 'stew meat' you find in supermarkets, on the other hand, can sometimes dry out. So, to be sure, I buy my own piece of chuck and cut it up myself into cubes.

As mentioned, the usual spezzatino recipe actually calls for much less broth (or water), just enough to moisten the meat. More broth can be added if needed during the braise. This produces an intensely flavored but rather skimpy sauce at the end. So when serving the spezzatino over polenta as pictured here, I like to add a generous amount of broth so I have ample sauce at the end, in which case it is usually best to thicken the sauce at the end with some starch.

The braising liquid is usually meat broth, either beef broth or a broth made from a mixture of chicken and beef. You can use plain old water as well in a pinch, in which case be extra-generous with your salt and pepper. (And I have been known to add beef base or even a bouillon cube to a stew—just don't tell anyone!) If you have some extra wine around the house that has been open too long to drink, you can make a spezzatino di manzo al vino rosso—use wine not just to splash over the meat for some extra flavor and let evaporate (a process called sfumare in Italian) but enough to act as your braising liquid. And you can also make this dish in rosso, with tomato sauce, instead of or in combination with the broth. All of these variations are very good.

If you're not in the mood for polenta, this stew is equally good with mashed potatoes or just a nice piece of crusty bread. And, though not very Italian, it would also go well with some buttered noodles.

Frank's Hot Chocolate

2011-11-06T09:18:00.002-05:00

Is there anything quite so comforting, after a chilly day's outing, as a cup of hot chocolate? It almost makes me look forward to the cold weather. But, if you ask me, most hot chocolate you can find commercially, either entirely pre-made or from a mix, is either too thin or too bland or too sweet—or all of the above. So I've developed by own recipe that I'd like to share with you, one that produces a fine cup of thick, deep, intense ambrosia, which is just perfection topped with an ethereal layer of slightly sweetened whipped cream.

It's actually incredibly easy to make—almost as easy as using a mix—but for a little extra effort you get a quantum leap forward in taste and texture. Made right with quality ingredients, I think this hot chocolate is as good as any you can buy at any price, and I've tasted the hot chocolate at some of the world most famous cafés: Angelina in Paris, in the coffee houses of Vienna, at Caffè Florian on St. Mark's Square in Venice. Besides which, what can beat sipping some hot cocoa while you cozy up with a good book by your own roaring fire?

Ingredients (for each cup)

2-4 heaping Tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder, preferably Dutch

1-2 Tablespoon(s) Demerara sugar

1 cupful of whole milk

For the whipped cream:

1/2 cup whipping cream

1 Tb. caster or confectioner's sugar

A few drops of vanilla or orange extract (optional)

Directions

Add the cocoa powder and sugar to a heavy pot. Whisk in just enough water to form a thick paste. Heat over a low flame, stirring stirring constantly. The paste will bubble gently and after a minute or two, it should darken in color as the sugar begins to caramelize.

Now add the milk, little by little, whisking vigorously so that the chocolate paste and milk are completely amalgamated. Let the mixture heat up, until it is just about to boil—but remove it from the heat just before it does. The liquid should be quite thick and very dark in color.

While the liquid is heating, whip the cream, sugar and (if using) extract in a standing mixer until stiff.

Pour the hot chocolate into a cup (or mug) then top with a generous dollop of whipped cream, and enjoy right away!

NOTES: The secret of this great hot chocolate is to use lots of cocoa, at least 2 heaping Tablespoons per cupful of milk but more is even better, enough to thicken your hot chocolate, with just enough sugar to balance its bitterness without really sweetening it, and to caramelize the cocoa and sugar before adding the milk. The caramelization step is key: it gives the hot chocolate its special, deep flavor and color. And don't bring your hot cocoa to a boil—it will give your mixture an 'off' boiled milk taste. And, anyway, hot chocolate should be hot, but not scalding. Otherwise, you'll miss the wonderful flavors.

You can add the whipped cream of not, but I like it. This hot chocolate is so intense that you need something light and mild to balance out its intensity. A bit of vanilla or (for a change of pace) orange extract really brings the whole thing to another level.

For measuring, I like to use an actual cup (as pictured above) rather than a mug, even if true cups seem to be becoming a specialty item these days. A mug normally holds about 50% more, so adjust quantities accordingly if using one.

Of course, the cocoa you use will have a decisive effect on your results. The main thing is to avoid pre-sweetened cocoa, which is always too sweet and usually includes powdered milk as well. You can find unsweetened cocoa in almost any supermarket in the baking section. I am particularly fond of Dutch cocao powder, like Droste, which I find gives your the most intense and fragrant brew. In the US, the Scharffen Berger brand is also excellent. But even Hershey's produced a "Dutched"cocoa and the San Francisco based Ghirardelli brand is not bad, either, although not quite as rich in flavor and it does not caramelize as well as Dutch cocoa.

And need I say that whole milk works best? Yes, you can reduce fat and calories by using 2% or even skim milk but then, what's the point? Splurge a little! It's only a cup, after all...

Post scriptum: As it turns out, this is my 300th post. Where has the time gone?

Filetti di pesce al finocchio (Fish Fillets with Braised Fennel)

2011-10-29T18:08:00.002-04:00

Where would Italian food in the US be without Marcella Hazan? As much as I treasure my Campanian and Puglian food roots, I am forever thankful for the horizons that Marcella's 1973 Classic Italian Cooking opened up for me. And even almost 40 years later, she continues to inspire. Here is my take on a lovely recipe that, for me, epitomizes Marcella's special genius, from her Essentials of Italian Cooking, recently released as an e-book. (And if you don't own it, you absolutely must get it.)

Marcella's recipe calls for a whole fish, which is the way I think most Italians would make it. Fish on the bone, like meat on the bone, does have better flavor. But here in the US fillets are much easier to come by and, it must be admitted, quicker to cook and easier to serve and eat. So I have adapted her recipe for fillets. I have also made one other little tweak: rather than making the entire dish on the stove, I use a two-step process, braising the fennel then finishing the dish in a hot oven. That ensures the will cook more evenly and avoid the need to turn the fish over, which can be a bit awkward for the novice cook. The short time it takes to cook fillets ensures that the dish will not dry out.

Ingredients (to serve 4)

4 fillets firm-fleshed fish
3 large fennel bulbs (with fronds if possible), trimmed and thinly sliced
olive oil
water
salt and pepper

Optional:
1 clove garlic, split in half
Fennel fronds, finely minced
Fresh herbs such as rosemary or marjoram, finely minced

Directions

Cover the bottom of a capacious sauté pan with a generous coating of olive oil, then add your sliced fennel, a splash of water and sprinkle with salt. Give it all a good turn to coat the fennel slices, then cover and let the fennel simmer for about 15-20 minutes, or until the fennel has become very tender. While the fennel is simmering, uncover from time to time and give it all a very gentle turn—or, if you are feeling a bit adventurous, a flip, which will be less bruising to the fennel. Either way, however, by the end of the cooking, the fennel is likely to have broken up, which is perfectly fine.

Uncover the fennel and raise the heat to cook off all the excess liquid in the pan, turning (or flipping) the fennel frequently. If you like, you can let the fennel go a bit longer to caramelize it a bit. Season generously with salt and pepper. I like to add a handful of the fronds, finely minced, to the fennel just before removing it from the heat for some extra fennel flavor. Or you can add some fresh herbs if you like, like rosemary or marjoram.

Grease a gratin dish large enough to hold your fish fillets in a single layer (which, if you like, you will have rubbed with a split garlic clove) and into which you lay the fennel to make a 'bed' for your fish.

Season the fish fillets with salt and pepper and lightly oil them as well. Then lay the fillets in the gratin dish on top of the bed of fennel.

Roast the fish and fennel is a hot oven (200°C/400°F) for about 10-15 minutes, or until the fish is just done, taking care not to overcook the fish.

Serve the fillets on to plates, with a generous heap of fennel—which by now will have turned into a rough purée—on top of each fillet.

NOTES: If you are serving this dish as a piatto unico (ie, without a preceding first course of pasta, rice or soup) then a few steamed potatoes on the side rounds things out very nicely.

Marcella recommends red snapper for this dish, although most Italian recipes I've seen call for orata (sea bream), branzino or swordfish. It is also very good (but different) made with the assertive mackerel (merluzzo). Really, any firm-fleshed fish will do nicely. Last night we had good 'ol American catfish fillets. They were very economical and perfectly delicious made this way.

For whatever reason, I usually associate the pairing of fish and vegetables with Ligurian cooking, but this dish actually hails from Sicily, or so they say. It should not be surprising, then, that some versions of this recipe call for adding pachini (cherry tomatoes), capers and/or olives, which, of course, give the dish a lot more zest. But personally, I like the mellow flavors of fish and fennel without much else to get in the way. It is another example of culinary balance, this time with two flavors complementing, rather than contrasting, each other.

Radis, beurre et sel (Radishes with Butter and Salt)—A Study in Culinary Balance

2011-10-22T09:56:00.003-04:00

I've been convinced for a long time now that really good cooking basically comes down to two things: technique and balance. The first requires some skill but can be learned by most people with enough practice, practice, practice. The second is more subtle and elusive. Yes, there are some basic rules of thumb can be learned by the book—and developed by experience. But past a certain point, it becomes a matter of intuition, something that you develop a feel for, or not.

This intuitive feeling for "what works" may be the thing that separates an average cook from a superlative one. Understanding just how much to season, for example, is probably the single most important skill a cook can have. A perfectly seasoned dish is surprisingly rare because, at the end of the day, you can't learn it from books or cooking lessons. You just need to 'know'. In the same way, knowing what sauce or other condiment will best complement a particular pasta shape—key to being a good Italian cook—is something that can only be partially conveyed through the few rules of thumb that exist. You either "get it" or you don't.

Balance is often a matter of contrasting flavors and textures, and nothing illustrates this principle better than this simple appetizer: radishes—crisp, astringent, sharp—perfectly set off by butter—soft, smooth, creamy—and both exalted by just a light sprinkling of salt. Get the balance right and you will have achieved a kind of culinary nirvana.

The 'recipe' is simple enough: Take the best and freshest radishes you can find, the kind that come with their stems and leaves still attached. Trim them of their root ends and all but a few millimeters of their stems, rinse them gently but thoroughly of any grit and let them air-dry in a colander.

Meanwhile, take your butter out of the fridge and let it come to room temperature. Like cheese, butter is at its best served this way. Besides returning to its naturally soft and creamy texture, you'll be amazed at just how much taste good butter actually has. As for your radishes, try to find the best butter you can; "European style" cultured butter will have much more flavor than 'sweet' butter.

Now serve the radishes on a plate, split in half vertically so a bit of stem clings to each half. Accompany the radishes with the butter, served in a small bowl or butter 'bell'. Along side, serve a small bowl of best-quality sea salt so you can use your hands to pinch as much as you need. (A salt shaker is a crude instrument and in cases like this, when you need just a few grains of salt, you will almost without a doubt wind up over-salting.)

Each diner takes a half radish by its stem, smears it with some butter and sprinkles over just a few grains of salt with their fingers.

NOTES: One of the charms of this dish is the way you can vary it by using different varieties of radish, and different kinds of butter and salt. The endless varieties of 'gourmet' salts sometimes seems a bit superfluous to me, but you can see the point when salt is used in a dish like this.

Although a cold dish of raw ingredients, I find this appetizer as attractive in the cool weather months as at any time of year. And it goes equally well with a medium-bodied white wine, a rosé or a light red like Pinot Noir.

Funghi ripieni al forno (Oven-Roasted Stuffed Mushrooms)

2011-10-16T10:16:00.003-04:00

Autumn is really in the air these days here on the East Coast of the US. The sun is shining, the air is crisp and cool and redolent with the scent of freshly fallen leaves. The markets are full of all the wonderful produce of the season: curly chicory, radicchio, Belgian endive, chestnuts, a panoply of winter squashes. No wonder this is my favorite time of year.

And while you can buy cultivated mushrooms all year round, the fall is also the time you start to see a larger and more interesting variety of fresh mushrooms—if you're lucky, even fresh porcini (also known and marketed by their French name, cèpes or by the botanic name, boletus edulis). Nothing says fall to me like a well-prepared mushroom dish.

In Italian cooking, mushrooms are often sliced, simply prepared and served either as a side dish, as for example in the case of funghi trifolati, or as an complement to pasta, gnocchi or risotto or even meat. But here is a dish where the mushroom—stuffed and roasted in the oven until golden brown—is the star. While usually served as an antipasto, when you make mushrooms this way, they take on an almost meaty flavor that is satisfying enough to serve as a (semi)-vegetarian main dish. If making them a main course, those extra-large mushrooms are best. If you can't find porcini or if you don't want to shell out for them, the easily found portobellos or another medium or large sized mushrooms with 'character' will do fine.

Ingredients (for 4 people)

5 extra-large porcinis (or portobellos)

1 onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
A few sprigs of fresh parsley, finely chopped
2 or 3 anchovy fillets, cut up into small pieces
Salt and pepper
1 or 2 slices of Italian or French bread, crusts removed and soaked in a bit of water or milk for a few minutes
1 egg

Breadcrumbs
Olive Oil

Directions

Remove the stems from four of the mushrooms, and chop the stems up finely, together with the entire fifth mushroom. Take the four mushroom caps and set them upside down in a greased baking dish. Bake in a moderate oven (180°C/350°F) for about five minutes to dry them out slightly.

To make your stuffing, begin by sautéing the onion in a generous amount of olive oil until soft and translucent over gentle heat. Add the garlic, parsley and anchovy, and continue cooking for a few moments, just until you can smell the aroma of the garlic. Then add your chopped mushrooms, raising the heat a bit, and continue to sauté the mushrooms for 5 minutes or so, stirring frequently and seasoning with salt and pepper as you go. After you're done, the mushrooms should have given up their juices and browned nicely. They will be much reduced in volume. Taste and adjust the mixture for seasoning; it should be very savory.

Transfer the mushroom mixture to a mixing bowl and let it cool a bit. Then add the bread, squeezed dry and crumbled in your hand, along with the egg. Mix everything together vigorously with a wooden spoon until everything is well incorporated and you have a uniform (if chunky) paste. (NB: You can 'stretch' this mixture, if you like, with more bread and egg.)

Season the mushroom caps with salt and pepper, and drizzle them with oil. Then fill the mushroom caps with the stuffing mixture, piling it up into a nice mound on top of each cap. Now sprinkle each stuffed mushroom cap with breadcrumbs (not too much) and drizzle with olive oil.

Place the caps back into the oven, at the same moderate temperature, and roast them for 20-30 minutes until they are cooked through and nicely brown on top. Check on them from time to time and, if you see juices in the bottom of the baking dish, use them to baste the mushroom caps. If you want, you can pass the mushrooms under the broiler for a few minutes at the end, which turns them a nice, golden brown.

Take the mushroom caps out of the oven, give them one last basting and let them cool for five minutes or so before serving.

NOTES: This recipe is adapted from the Bible of Italian home cooking, Ada Boni's Talismano della Felicità. As mentioned in my post, this quintessential book has a status in Italian households that The Joy of Cooking used to have in American ones, and almost every Italian kitchen has (or at least used to have) a copy. If you are ever in Italy and can read Italian, it is well worth picking up a copy. (There is an English language version, although somewhat abridged and a bit compromised by the addition of some Italian-American recipes, available in the US called The Talisman Italian Cookbook.) I picked my copy up while living in Rome, and it is still a constant source of information and inspiration all these years later.

The method is just the same using medium-sized mushrooms, calculating, say, 3 medium-sized ones for each extra-large one indicated in the recipe above. If you can't find good Italian or French bread—one with good structure that won't turn completely mushy when soaked, you can substitute a few spoonfuls of breadcrumbs for the bread, in which case you may need to add a drop of milk or an extra egg to loosen the stuffing. If you want to make this dish entirely vegetarian, you can omit the anchovies, but they do lend a certain savory—and not at all fishy—flavor. And, for those who are squeamish about anchovies or have family members who are, I can assure you that if you didn't know, you would never guess this dish contained them.

Needless to say, there are many, many ways to stuff a mushroom. But I particularly like this method because it really emphasizes the 'mushroominess' of whatever mushroom you choose. And, as I mentioned, it brings out the meaty quality that mushrooms, especially larger ones like porcinis or portobellos, can have. I swear to you that this stuffing tastes to me of well-seasoned sausage.

Cioppino, an Italian-American Classic

2011-10-09T10:12:00.000-04:00

As regular readers will know, this blog is focused on authentic Italian home cooking, the kind that you might eat in Italy itself. But it is also, in some sense, about the Italian diaspora, so it is only fitting that, from time to time—at least once a year—we feature an Italian-American dish, and Columbus Day seems as good a time as any to do just that.

This Columbus Day I'd like to offer up for your delectation Cioppino, which may be San Francisco's most important contribution to the culinary world. (No, dear readers, in my book "Rice-a-Roni" doesn't really count.) Cioppino is clearly a relative of the many fish soups of Italy and in fact, is said to be a descendant of the Genoan version. You might even assume, especially given the Italian-sounding name, that it was an Italian fish soup. Its extravagant layering on of flavors, however, gives it away as a New World creation. The soffritto includes three different members of the onion family, plus red and black pepper, as well as, in some versions, the unusual but appealing addition of fresh fennel. Multiple herbs are added to the broth, itself made from wine, fish stock and tomatoes, and a dollop of tomato paste. And, finally, of course, lots of fish and shellfish. The whole dish is a tribute to ostentatious abundance, one of the hallmarks of Italian-American cooking.

Ingredients (serves 4-6)

1 medium onion, chopped
1 large shallot, chopped
1 medium fennel bulb, trimmed and chopped
Salt and black pepper
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
Red pepper flakes, to taste
Olive oil

2 Tbs. tomato paste
1 large can (28 oz., 800g) of canned tomatoes, passed through a food mill (or use crushed tomatoes)
16 oz. (2 cups/500 ml) of fish stock or 2 bottles of clam juice
1 cup (250 ml) of white wine
A sprig of fresh thyme
A bay leaf, preferably fresh

1 lb. (500g) of halibut or other firm-fleshed fish, but into cubes
12 jumbo shrimp (as big as you can find)
12 clams
12 mussels

Optional:
12 sea scallops
4 small crabs, trimmed and cut up

Directions

In a large pot, sauté the onion, shallot and fennel gently is abundant olive oil until the onion is very soft and translucent, seasoning as you go with salt and black pepper. (Add a spoonful of water if you like, to help soften the vegetables and prevent browning.) Then add the garlic and red pepper, and continue the sautéing for just a few moments, until you can smell the garlic's aroma.

Add the tomato paste and continue cooking for about 30 seconds or so to 'open' its flavors. Then add the milled (or crushed) tomatoes. Allow the tomatoes to simmer for 10-15 minutes, or until they start to separate from the oil and take on a 'saucy' consistency. Taste the tomatoes; they should have lost their rawness—if not, continue cooking for a few more minutes. Then add the fish stock or clam juice, and the white wine, together with the thyme and bay leaf. Simmer for another 10-15 minutes to allow the flavors to meld and the liquid to reduce a bit. Taste the liquid carefully; it should be well seasoned and quite intense. If not, adjust for seasoning and, if it seems a little thin, let it simmer a bit more.

Now, add the seafood, beginning with the fish, then the shrimp (and scallops and crabs if using) then the clams and mussels on top. Bring up the heat to a brisk simmer, cover the pot, and let it all cook for about 5 minutes, or until the clams and mussels open. Top with some minced parsley and a drizzle of olive and serve.

NOTES: My favorite way to serve fish soups of any kind is to place toasted bread, rubbed with garlic on both sides and drizzled with olive oil, into the bottom of deep plates and ladle your fish soup over. Make sure everyone has a nice balance of seafood and sauce. Then drizzle a bit more olive oil, if you like, over it all.

There are lots of Cioppino recipes floating around the web. This version if my personal riff off a recipe from Giada de Laurentiis, 'celebrity chef' and grand-daughter of film producer Dino de Laurentiis, with a few touches from others I've seen. In tweaking the recipe to my own taste, I've changed the way in which the soffritto is handled, as well as the sequence of ingredients, adding steps here and taking others away. And I've toned down the typical recipe a bit, making it a bit perhaps a bit less American and a bit more Italian than most versions.

Of course, the exact choice of seafood is up to you. After all, this is a fisherman's dish made from the leftover catch of the day (see below). In addition to the types of seafood listed above, you could add squid or octopus, for example, but if you do, then you will need to simmer these a good 30-40 minutes, or until tender, before adding the rest of the seafood. For a truly authentic Cioppino, they say you should include Dungeness crab, cut up but unshelled, to your soup.

Some versions of Cioppino omit the fennel, and add the other typical soffritto vegetables, carrot and celery. I actually don't like the taste of carrot with seafood, and I do like the subtle anise flavor that the fennel lends to the dish. It reminds me a bit of bouillabaise. Some versions call for some green pepper and I've even come across recipes that call for jalapeños, but neither options appeals to me at all. And the herbs that go into the cooking liquid can vary. Modern recipes tend to include dried herbs, including dried basil (ugh!) but if you can find fresh herbs it will, of course, improve the dish enormously. Which version is the original/authentic one is probably unknowable and I certainly don't hold myself out as an expert. What I do know if that the version offered today makes for very good eating.

The exact origins of cioppino are obscure, but sources tend to agree that it was developed by Italian and Portuguese immigrant fisherman in San Francisco in the late 19th century. There are various stories about the name, but the most common and logical explanation is that it derives from ciuppin, a Ligurian fish soup. Other stories have it that the name derives from 'chip in', since the soup was a collective effort of the various fishermen who each added their bit from their leftover catches.

Post scriptum

A fellow blogger has written in to point out the strong resemblance that Cioppino bears to cacciucco, the fish soup typical of the city of Livorno in Tuscany. She's quite right about that. In fact, Cioppino is closer in culinary terms to cacciucco than to either ciuppin or, for that matter, buridda, the better known Ligurian fish stew. And yet all the sources attribute Genoan origins to Cioppino.

The reason probably lies in history. While in most of the US, most Italian immigrants came from Campania and points further south, California was different. There was a tremendous influx of Ligurians during the "Gold Rush" in the 1850s and the genovesi became the dominant group among Italian-Americans there. They played a major role in the development of the state, including founding the Bank of America, the Del Monte canned food company and Ghirandelli chocolates. And they planted the first vinyards in the Napa and Sonoma Valleys (although the Mondavis, who would play such a crucial role in the 20th century winemaking in California, were from Le Marche). An excellent article on this fascinating history can be found here.

Pasta al forno (Baked Pasta)

2011-10-02T13:48:00.003-04:00

Is there anything more comforting than baked pasta? If there is, I haven't come across it yet. And while some baked pasta dishes in the Italian repertoire—especially the two 'star' lasagne dishes, the South's lasagna di carnevale and the North's lasagne alla bolognese—are elaborate affairs, there are everyday baked pastas that don't require days in the kitchen.

Here's one that you can whip up practically at the spur of the moment. It is a simple mixture of parboiled store-bought pasta, meat sauce and bechamel, seasoned with some grated cheese and perhaps a bit of nutmeg, the baked in a hot oven until bubbly and bursting with flavor... Now, that's my kind of eating.

Ingredients (serves 4-6 people, or more as part of a multicourse meal)

500g (1 lb.) short, dried pasta such as penne or rigatoni
1 recipe of sugo di carne
1 recipe of béchamel sauce
100g (4 oz.) grated parmesan cheese (or more to taste) plus a bit more for topping
Salt and pepper
A pinch of ground nutmeg
A few pats of butter

Directions

Cook the pasta in well salted water as you normally would, but drain the pasta while it is still slightly underdone.

Pour the drained pasta into a large bowl, add the sugo di carne and mix well. Then add the bechamel sauce, grated cheese and nutmeg, gently folding it into the pasta and sauce. Do not attempt to make a smooth mixture out of it—just the opposite, you want interspersed 'streaks' of sauce and bechamel, which makes for a much more interesting dish. The mixture will be (and should be) rather loose—remember, the pasta will continue to absorb liquid as it bakes. If the mixture is a bit dry or sticky, add some liquid (milk or broth or just some water). Taste and adjust for seasoning; the mixture should be quite savory.

Pour the contents of the bowl into a greased baking dish. Top with more grated cheese and a few pats of butter here and there. (Some people like to hold back some of the bechamel as well as a topping.) Bake in a hot oven (200°C/400°F) for about 20-30 minutes, until the top is nicely browned and the pasta is hot and bubbly. Let the dish rest at least 5 minutes before serving.

Chances are, there won't be much leftover...

NOTES: You can use just about any store-bought pasta for this dish, although short, tubular pastas like penne or rigatoni are probably the most commonly used. This time, though, I used some store-bought lasagnette, which I broke into short lengths, and it was delicious.

The portions here of the two sauces sauce are really just indicative; if you like your dish meatier, feel free to add more meat sauce, if you like it creamier, more béchamel and, as mentioned above, you can add more cheese if you like it cheesier. You can be creative with this dish if you like, adding one or two other ingredients that may strike your fancy, for example, cubes of mozzarella or provola to the mixture, or sliced and sautéed mushrooms, some cubed ham, peas, sliced hard-boiled eggs or even tiny meatballs. But do resist the tempation to add everything but the kitchen sink. As I've said before the Italian culinary aesthetic is mostly about balance, not extravagance.

There are many versions of pasta al forno, many of which are vegetarian. A typical southern baked pasta dish is zitoni al forno con le polpettine, known among Italian-Americans as Baked Ziti, which we have featured here on Memorie di Angelina. Some Italian baked pasta dishes are very cheesy, a bit along the lines of American macaroni and cheese. But to mind, this version will always be the pasta al forno, the one to master first before trying anything else.

Pasta al forno is traditionally considered a primo or first course, but I suspect most people today would be happy to make it a meal in itself, perhaps followed by a green salad and a piece of fruit. That's certain enough for me, even on a Sunday!

Sugo di carne (Meat Sauce)

2011-10-02T13:47:00.001-04:00

When you mention Italian meat sauces, most people will immediately think of those monuments of Italian cooking, the ragù alla napoletana and the ragù alla bolognese, sauces that require hours of cooking and fairly elaborate preparation. These time-consuming ragù are, quite rightly, reserved for special occasions. Ragù alla napoletana is often called 'Sunday sauce' among Italian-American (and 'il ragù della domenica' among Italians), an expression from back in the days when the main event of every Sunday was a grand, multi-course meal. I suspect that for most people, even in Italy, these dishes are prepared less often than that these days.

For everyday cooking, however, here is a far simpler meat sauce that may not exactly be fast food, but it certainly take far less time and effort. This generic meat sauce doesn't have the complexity of one of those monumental sauces, but it's plenty satisfying nonetheless, All you need is some chopped meat, some canned tomatoes and a few aromatic vegetables, and about 2 hours to spare, most of which can be spent away from the stove. I love to make this sauce with ground pork,which to my taste is more savory, but you can use ground beef as well, either instead of or in combination with the pork—in fact, it is far more common to do so.

Ingredients

1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 small carrot, finely chopped
1 stalk of celery, finely chopped
Olive oil
500g (1 lb.) ground pork (and/or beef)
A splash of red wine
Salt and pepper
1 large can (800g, 28 oz.) of canned tomatoes, passed through a food mill (or use crushed tomatoes)

Optional:
1 spoonful of tomato paste
A few dried porcini mushrooms, reconstituted in water

Directions

In a large pot, preferably of terracotta or enameled cast iron, make a soffritto by gently sautéing the onion, carrot and celery in olive oil until the vegetables are very soft, taking care never to brown them. (It helps to add a pinch of salt, which draws out the vegetables' own liquids, as well as a spoonful of water from time to time. This both speeds up the softening process and helps avoid browning.)

Add the ground pork (or beef) to the pot, breaking it up with a wooden spoon and mixing to combine it well with the soffritto. Season with salt and pepper, and let is simmer gently, stirring almost constantly, until the meat has lost its raw look. Then add a splash of red wine and continue simmering, until the wine has evaporated.

Add the tomatoes, stir again. Then let it simmer for at least an hour, stirring only occasionally, until the meat is tender and the sauce has thickened and developed a deep flavor. (You can let it go longer if you like and it will only get better the longer it cooks.) If the sauce gets too thick before you think it's done, then just add a bit of water or broth as needed.

NOTES: If you like, you can add a bit of tomato concentrate (aka tomato paste) along with the canned tomatoes. The pasta adds a more intense tomato flavor as well as acting as a thickening agent. But since most imported canned tomatoes in the US already come packed in tomato purée, adding tomato paste is sort of overkill, at least in my book.

You can also add a few pieces of dried porcini (or other) mushrooms, soaked in water for 20 minutes or so, either to the soffritto or to the sauce as it simmers. Don't throw out the soaking water; if you use it to thin out the sauce as it cooks, it will add extra flavor.

And there are other variations, too. The most traditional recipes call for meat that has been finely chopped with a knife rather than ground; other recipes call for cubes of meat, which produces something akin to a stew. Some people like to add a bit of garlic and/or parsley to the soffritto. Some add a bay leaf or a clove or a bit of grated nutmeg to the sauce as it simmers. In Tuscany, they will use a red onion rather than the more common yellow onion found elsewhere. And you can use butter along with, or instead of, the olive oil.

This sauce can be used to dress a wide variety of dried or fresh pasta. Stubby dried pastas are wonderful this way, as are longer fresh pastas like tagliatelle or fettuccine. Spaghetti and linguine, on the other hand, don't really work that well with meat sauce, despite the popularity of 'spaghetti bolognese' (a fake Italian dish is there ever was one). It is also a fine substitute for ragù alla bolognese in making lasagne. But perhaps my favorite way of using sugo di carne, is to make a pasta al forno, which is featured in today's companion post.

Fregola con arselle (Sardinian Couscous with Baby Clams)

2011-09-24T19:36:00.000-04:00

Fregola (also called fregula) is a kind of pasta, typical of Sardinia, that looks and tastes much like Israeli couscous. Arselle are tiny clams that live under the sand right on the shore line. Although you might be surprised by the pairing, this odd couple makes for some delicious eating.

Ingredients (to serve 4-6 people)

250g (1/2 lb.) of fregola (or Israeli couscous)
750g (1-1/2 lb.) fresh clams, as small as you can find them
A bit of white wine
250g (1/2 lb.) of canned tomatoes, passed through a food mill, or the equivalent amount of purée
1 liter (1 quart) of fish stock or well-seasoned water (see Notes)
3-4 cloves of garlic
Olive Oil
A handful of fresh parsley, finely chopped
Salt and pepper

Directions

If you have any suspicions that your clams will have some sand in them, soak them in water for at least an hour before cooking.

In a large pot, lightly brown a clove of garlic or two in some olive oil. Remove the garlic clove and add the clams, along with a splash of white wine. Cover immediately (depending on the heat, the wine may cause the oil to spatter) and cook over a lively flame until all of the clams have opened. Remove the clams and remove the meat from their shells. (If you like, you can leave a few clams in their shells for decorating your final dish.) If your clams are large, cut them up roughly. Keep the juices in the pot for later.

Meanwhile, make a soffritto of finely chopped parsley and another clove or two of garlic gently sautéed in a generous amount of olive oil. Add the canned tomatoes and simmer for a few minutes to let the flavors meld.

Add the fish stock or water to the tomato sauce, along with your fregola and the juices from the clams. Raise the heat until you have reached a low boil. It will seem as first as if you have way too much liquid, but not to worry: fregola absorbs a lot of liquid. You will soon see that the fregola will have absorbed most, if not all, of the liquid. In fact, you will probably need to add water from time to time; the fregola should be covered with liquid until it is almost done; then let it cook down to your taste (see Notes). Cooking time will vary, but count on 20 minutes or more.

When the fregola are al dente, add the shelled clams to the pot, just long enough to heat them through. Ladle the fregola and accompanying sauce into deep pasta plates, top with reserved clams in their shells, a bit of finely chopped parsley and un filo d'olio (a drizzle of olive oil). Some freshly ground pepper would not be amiss, either.

NOTES: Fregola can be found in Italian specialty shops or online. And, if you're feeling ambitious, you can even make it yourself. If you can't find any, Israeli couscous is a good substitute, although fregola is toasted, so the flavor will not be quite as rich. In a pinch, I imagine you could even use risoni (orzo pasta) but, of course, the result will be quite different (reduce the amount of liquid as well, perhaps by half). Although this might well be the best known dish made from it, fregola is an extremely versatile pasta that can be dressed not just with seafood, but with vegetables or meats as well. As some readers may remember, fregola made its first appearance on this blog in late 2009, when we featured fregula e salsiccia. I have not been able to find any information on the origins of fregola, but my bet is that it is, in fact, a relative of couscous and a product of Moorish influence, which was considerable in Sardinia, if perhaps not as strong as in Sicily.

Finding true arselle is probably an impossible dream for most of us, so best to simply make sure that the clams you do buy, as mentioned, are as small as possible. You can even cheat a little and use bottled or canned clams, but, of course, the taste will not be same. (Nor will the texture, since the meat tends to be quite rubbery.)

Fish stock (fumetto di pesce in Italian) is quick and easy to make: just simmer a fish carcass (heat, bones and tail, or just a head) and/or the shells from shrimp, lobster and/or crabs) in enough water to cover with a sliced onion, a sprig of fresh parsley, and a chopped stalk of celery and ample salt for about 30 minutes. (Some recipes, like this one, are more elaborate, adding more herbs and white wine, among other ingredients and calling for an hour of simmering.) If you don't feel like making stock specially, then some bottled clam juice diluted in water will do nicely, as will simple water, well seasoned.

The portions indicated, by the way, are really just notional. Like many traditional recipes, they can vary freely according to taste and pocket-book. Add more clams if you want, and more or less tomato as you prefer (or none at all, for a version in bianco). Some recipes for this dish call for sun-dried tomatoes and/or a bit of peperoncino, added to the soffritto.

The ratio of pasta to water, on the other hand, is important, although there, too, the quality of the pasta will determine how much liquid it absorbs. The quantity indicated here is a kind of minimum. The dish can be served quite brothy, more of a soup than a pasta, quite dry or, as I prefer, something rather in-between.

Pesce al forno con patate (Oven Roasted Whole Fish with Potatoes)

2011-09-18T10:18:00.000-04:00

Just a few weeks ago we looked at my grandmother's pollo e patate (chicken and potatoes) and last year it was agnello e patate (lamb and potatoes). Well, fish is also exquisite oven-roasted with potatoes as well, and while the chicken and lamb were 'down home' dishes pesce al forno con patate is elegant enough to serve for a formal dinner party. It is a popular item on the menu of Roman restaurants, where the waiters may dazzle you with their fish-bonding skills, as they separate the fish fillets from the lisca (fish backbone) and serve it too you, fully intact, along with a nice helping of creamy, unctuous potato.

The basic technique, however, is a little different from the other dishes we've looked at. The main difference is that fish, even a whole fish called for here, takes less time to cook than potatoes. The recipes for this dish generally suggest one or both of two ways to get around this: some recipes (including most modern ones) will tell you to slice the potatoes into paper-thin slices; this speeds up their cooking time. Older recipes, including one from Ada Boni in her iconic Talismano, suggest that you oven roast the potatoes for a good 20-30 minutes before you add the fish; this gives them a good head start in the cooking process. I prefer the older method, since it is basically fool-proof. Either way, the fish is not mixed up in pieces as for chicken or lamb, but laid, whole (head and tail included) on top of a bed of potatoes. Often, a few pomodorini (cherry tomatoes) are laid around the fish as well to add color and flavor.

Ingredients (serves 3-6, depending on the size of the fish and appetites)

1 whole fish, cleaned and gutted, but with the head and tail left on (see Notes)
4-6 medium potatoes (or more if you like)
Olive Oil
A sprig of fresh rosemary (or another fresh herb of your choice)
Salt and Pepper

Optional:
A garlic clove, finely chopped
A few cherry tomatoes, split in half
A drizzle of white wine

Directions

Peel and slice the potatoes as thinly as you can manage. (If you have a 'mandoline' or food processor with a slicing blade, it will make short work of this. But if you have decent knife skills, it should not take long.

Mix the potato slices with a generous amount of olive oil, salt, pepper and a few rosemary leaves that you will have finely chopped. If using the garlic, add it as well. (In the alternative, you can simply rub the baking dish with garlic, which gives a very subtle savoriness to the dish, suitable for more formal occasions.)

Lay the potato slices on the bottom of a baking dish large enough to accommodate the fish and potatoes comfortably. (If you want to be fancy, you can arrange the slices in neat rows or an attractive pattern for a more elegant look.)

Roast the potatoes in a moderate hot oven (190°C/375°F) for about 20-30 minutes. Then remove them from the oven and lay the whole fish, which you will have seasoned well with salt and pepper, over the potatoes, with the sprig of rosemary inserted inside it. If using, arrange the tomato halves around the fish. Drizzle the whole with some more olive oil and, if you like, a bit of white wine (not too much) which will help the potatoes to soften and add a slight tartness that complements the dish.

Roast the fish until done, usually about 20-30 minutes more (see Notes). Let the dish rest and cool off for a good 5-10 minutes before serving. Now it's time for you to show off your fish-boning skills for all your guests... and even if your fish boning skills won't dazzle them—and that's certainly the case with me—the fish will still be delicious!

NOTES: Just about any decent sized fish will do. In Rome, I remember the most popular fish seemed to be orata (sea bream) and spigola (aka branzino), European sea bass, which I have seen marketed here in the US with the Italian name 'branzino'. But red snapper, for example, is very fine indeed made this way, too. Do be sure to tell your fishmonger to scale and gut the fish, but to leave head and tail on. Not only is the presentation more dramatic, these parts of the fish do add a great deal of flavor, even if you don't eat them. (Actually, they say the most delicate part of the fish is the cheek, which you can 'fish out' with a spoon—pardon the pun—right below the eye.) If you are squeamish about the idea, however, the recipe will still work with head and tail removed. You can even use fish fillets if you like, but then increase the cooking time for the potatoes so they are almost done before laying on your fillets, which should only take about five minutes more.

Speaking of cooking time, you may have seen or read the 'rule of thumb' for cooking fish: 10 minutes per 2.5cm/1 inch of thickness. I find that this works rather well, but I usually shave a couple of minutes off the total cooking time, as I abhor overcooked fish. You can also calculate cooking time by weight, as shown here. As for meat, you can usually tell when fish is done by its texture: once it loses its springiness when you poke it with your fingers, it is done. If you wait until the flesh is flaky, it'll be overdone.

Boning a whole fish is a real skill. Watching your waiter fillet a fish at tableside is one of the small delights of dining in a good fish restaurant in Rome (and elsewhere in Italy). But it is a skill that just about anyone can master, and a great way to impress your dinner guests! There are a few different ways to do it, but my basic technique is to slip my filleting knife from the sides of the fish, along the top of the backbone to loosen the fillets above. Then I cut vertically from above along the backbone to cut the flesh into two halves, then lift each half, intact, on to plates. The backbone will now be exposed, ready to lift out, leaving the flesh below, which you can easily cut in half and lift out. This produces four nice fillets for your diners. Smaller fish (like trout) will produce only two fillets, one top and one bottom, while very large fish you can give your eight pieces by splitting the fillets cross-wise. It's one of those things that sounds more complicated than it really is. The best way to learn is to see it done; this video, which shows a slightly different and simpler method, is a bit worn but it shows you the basic method.

Personally, I love fish skin so I never remove it, but for those who want skinless fillets, it is quite easy to remove the top side skin before you begin this operation. In fact, as shown in the video, it does make the job of filleting that much easier.

NB: Remember, filleting a fish only removes the backbone. You and your dining companions will still need to take care to remove the pin bones as you eat.

But don't all this deter you, as it will become second nature with time, and oven roasted fish is one of the great delights of the Italian—or any other—table!

Zucchine alla parmigiana (Zucchini Parmesan)

2011-09-10T20:47:00.000-04:00

Eggplant isn't the only vegetable that you can make alla parmigiana, fried and baked in layers with a light tomato sauce, mozzarella and grated parmesan cheese. Zucchini, another typical summer vegetable, also enjoys the same treatment. It is a fine way to exalt the sometimes rather bland vegetable. While the delicate taste of zucchini can get a bit lost in the sauce (literally), with all those delicious flavors, who cares? It's a fine and tasty way to use up the last zucchini of the season.

You make the dish almost exactly as you would parmigiana di melanzane (Eggplant Parmesan), which we have featured before here at Memorie di Angelina, so I will not repeat the recipe. There are a few twists: I often don't bother to salt and drain zucchini as I do eggplant, when making this or any other zucchini recipe, although many recipes do call for it. As with eggplant, size matters. Small, tender zucchini don't need it; larger, seedy ones usually do. This late in the season, it might be a good idea.

And for this dish I decided not to use Angelina's method of dipping the slices in flour and egg, but simply deep-fried the zucchini directly in oil. This 'lightens' the dish a bit, and emphasizes the taste of the other ingredients, in particular the tomato and cheese. When using this method (which is actually more popular these days than Angelina's old-fashioned method) you need to be more stingy with the liquid ingredients, since there is no batter to soak up the excess. So use your tomato sauce sparingly and make sure to drain and pat dry the mozzarella (which can be quite watery) before using. If all else fails and the dish is watery when it is otherwise done, continue baking in a moderate oven for, say, 10-15 minutes more, to allow the excess liquid to evaporate.

Otherwise, proceed exactly as you would for eggplant, following the master recipe.

NOTES: While it won't replace Eggplant Parmesan in my pantheon of favorite dishes of all time, I do like zucchini made this way an awful lot. The sweetness of the zucchini balances nicely with the acidity of the tomato—which is one reason why zucchini and tomatoes are so often paired—and the mozzarella, well... is always delicious. Try to find smallish zucchini, which are sweeter and tastier, but this is a dish that (with the precautions mentioned above) that will accommodate perfectly well older, larger vegetables.

For a very different but delicious-looking tomato-less version of this dish, check out this post from one of my favorite Italian food blogs, Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino.

Angelina's pollo al forno con patate (Chicken with Potatoes)

2011-09-05T09:08:00.000-04:00

The weather this Labor Day weekend hasn't been too congenial for a cookout. It seems Mother Nature has been in a changeable mood, sunny for a while, then cloudy, then stormy, and hot and muggy the whole while. So I took the chicken I was meaning to grill indoors and gave it an old-fashioned treatment that brought me back to Angelina's Sunday dinners: cut up in pieces, mixed with potatoes, drizzled with a generous measure of oil and seasonings and roasted in the oven. Nothing could be simpler or more satisfying.

Angelina had her own take on this classic dish, which is usually made with garlic and rosemary. Angelina used more onion than garlic, which gives the dish a pleasant, mellow sweetness, and substituted parsley for the rosemary. And she added a bit of parmesan cheese (not too much) for extra savoriness. Sometimes she added a bit of chopped tomato, too. The result is not very pretty to look at perhaps, and it certainly isn't elegant. But it is honest, unpretentious cooking, and it sure is delicious eating!

Ingredients (to serve 4-6 people)

1 young chicken, cut into serving pieces
4-6 medium potatoes, peeled and cut into wedges
1-2 cloves of garlic
1 médium onion, finely sliced
50g (1/2 cup) grated parmesan cheese
A handful of parsley, finely chopped
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Optional:
A few ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped

Directions

Mix all the ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Be very generous with the salt, pepper and especially the olive oil.

Arrange the chicken and potatoes in a baking dish large enough to accommodate the ingredients. (The chicken needs to be in a single layer, with potatoes strewn around them.) Drizzle any remaining oil from the mixing bowl, together with a bit of white wine or water over all.

Roast in a moderately hot oven (375°F/190°C) for an hour, or until the chicken and potatoes are cooked through and golden brown. Turn the ingredients once or twice during the roasting process for even cooking, and baste it from time to time with the oil and cooking juices. But let it alone for the last 10 minutes to allow a nice crust to form. If, on the other hand, the chicken seems to be browning too quickly, lower the temperature a bit (to 180°C/350°F).

Let the dish rest for at least 15 minutes or so before serving, so the juices can be absorbed back into the chicken and potatoes.

NOTES: The real secret of this dish is not to go light on the seasonings, in particular the oil and salt. Yes, I know, I know... but if you want that old fashioned taste, you just can't skimp on either. When you take the dish out of the oven, it will seem to be swimming in oil—that's the way it should be. After the dish rests—and resting is the other key step here—the oil will be drawn back into the chicken and potatoes and infuse it with unctuous deliciousness. Other than that, as you can see, the dish practically cooks itself.

You want a young chicken, a 'fryer' rather than a roaster, cut into ten pieces: two drumsticks, two thighs, two wings, and each breast (bone in) cut into two. Each piece should be small enough that the seasonings can really penetrate the meat. For the same reason, you should give the chicken a long cooking time as indicated in the recipe. Don't worry, the generous amount of oil will keep the chicken from drying out, so long as you turn and baste the pieces as directed.

Some recipes will call for splashing a little white wine. Angelina didn't do that but there's nothing to stop you if you want to. I do find that modern chickens tend to give off quite a bit of liquid on their own, however, so judge for yourself.

Long-time readers may recognize this dish as a close relative to another meat and potato dish: agnello e patate al forno, which we featured some time back.

Angelina's New Digs

2011-09-03T08:47:00.000-04:00

Gentle reader,

It's been a while. As mentioned in the last post, your correspondent has moved kitchens (and other rooms as well) from the city to the suburbs. The change has been exhilarating but exhausting as well. Between packing and unpacking, renovating and repairing and generally re-ordering our lives, it's been a hectic few weeks, with precious little time for R&R—or blogging. Experts say that moving house is one of the most stressful life experiences and, if this move is typical, I'd say they're right!

But, when all is said and done, it's been well worthwhile. The new kitchen is bigger, brighter and, in just about every way, better than the old one. And while I try to keep the focus here at Memorie di Angelina on the food, not on me, I couldn't resist the temptation to share this new space with you. After all, this is where the cooking actually happens. So, without further ado, here's a brief tour of the new digs:

First, the kitchen island, my "Command Central" where the prep work happens. It has plenty of room for chopping and slicing, with room to spare for all my ingredients and an open cookbook:

Command Central

Against the windows there's the cooktop—finally, I'm cooking with gas again!—and room for keeping all (or most of) my utensils at the ready, plus assorted oils and sauces, plus some extra work space on both sides. Notice the daylight streaming into the room. And, on the left, my trusty stand mixer:

Cooktop and plenty of counterspace

One of the great things about this kitchen are the shelves. I can now keep most of my cookbooks right in the kitchen!

Books

And more books! (and a few bottles of wine)

I love our new KitchenAid refrigerator, with a huge center drawer for produce:

That entire central drawer is for produce!

On the far side of the kitchen, a double wall oven:

And now perhaps my favorite corner of the kitchen, with more counter space for appliances, plus shelving above for canisters of dry ingredients, my terracotta pots and, yes, more cookbooks. At the moment I have my toaster oven and trusty rice cooker out on the counter. Below the counter I've stashed away my deep fryer, blender, fondue pots, vacuum sealer, spice grinder and other goodies. (Stuff I used to keep down in my basement, requiring a special trip to retrieve.)


More counterspace and shelving

(NB: The laptop work station is where I now do my online culinary research and, dear readers, am writing this post.)

On the right side of the sink is the coffee station. This might be the most important part of the kitchen; where would I be without my morning cup of cappuccino?

The coffee station

Right off the kitchen, there is a pantry with generous storage space and (out of sight) an extra fridge and a 'spillover' closet for serving pieces, oversized cookware and other stuff that I don't use every day:

The pantry

The 'spillover' closet

And did I mention lots of drawers and cabinets to keep pots and pans and dishes and all sorts of the gadgets, and special purpose drawers for cutting boards and baking trays? Folks, I finally have a kitchen where I can keep, at the ready, all of the stuff that I've accumulated over a lifetime of food obsession.

Of course, what you cook has got to be eaten. Off the kitchen, we have two areas for enjoying the fruits of my labors, an indoor breakfast area which, truth be told, is where we have lunches and dinners more often than breakfast:

The 'breakfast area', which still needs a plant, I think to liven the place up.

And, right outside the kitchen door, we've set up a space for dining al fresco:

Ready for our Labor Day cookout...

And, for formal occasions, the dining room:

Yes, this new place is a wonder. It certainly makes for a real change from our city galley kitchen! And it makes an even bigger difference from the kitchen where Angelina prepared her wonderful dishes:

When I think that she turned out exquisite multi-course meals for ten (or more) people at a time...which only goes to prove that you don't need a 'gourmet' kitchen to prepare wonderful food. But, I can say, it does make cooking a lot more fun.

Now that we're settled into the new digs, I'm looking forward to getting back to presenting you, dear reader, with more recipes from Angelina's repertoire and beyond, just in time for the dreaded but inevitable rientro (return to work after the summer holidays). Until then, happy cooking!

Polpette di melanzane (Eggplant 'Meatballs')

2011-08-07T09:33:00.002-04:00

The cooking of Puglia, the region that encompasses the 'heel' of the Italian peninsula on the Adriatic Sea, deserves to be much better known. It practically defines the Mediterranean diet, with a strong focus on simply prepared fruits of the sea and fresh produce like fava beans, cime di rape and eggplant. Puglia produces some of the best olive oil in Italy, of the deep green, fruity kind, which is used with abandon in the region's dishes. And it has its own rustic fresh pastas, made with semolina flour and water—no eggs—that come two typical shapes: orecchiette, concave little rounds of pasta called literally 'little ears' and cavatelli, which are short strips of pasta curled (or, literally, 'scooped out') into little cylinders.

I have a special fondness for Puglian cooking, since my paternal grandfather was from Grumo Appula, a small town not far from the regional capital of Bari. But my knowledge of the cooking is fairly slight. Angelina did all the cooking in her household, and she was from neighboring Campania. I did get to know a few dishes, including orecchiette con le cime di rape, which, together with the tiella pugliese, is probably the best known dish of the region. Angelina would also make some dishes, like baked chicken or lamb with potatoes, that are common to both regions. And one of my great aunts would make a wonderful calzone pugliese, a kind of onion pie.

I recently picked up a lovely small cookbook called Puglia: A Culinary Memoire by Maria Pignatelli Ferrante, originally published in Italian as La Cucina delle Murge. It is part of an ongoing series of cookbooks, each featuring a different Italian regional cuisine published by Oronzo Editions. One recipe that immediately caught my eye was polpette di melanzane, or eggplant 'meatballs'. It is made almost exactly like classic meatballs but substituting the flesh of a roasted eggplant for the meat—a brilliant idea, given the 'meaty' taste and texture of eggplant. Like so many dishes of the cucina povera, it was no doubt born from necessity, with incidentally delicious results.

Ingredients (for 4 servings)

1 medium eggplant
100g grated parmesan cheese
1 egg
1 clove garlic
A handful of parsley
Salt and pepper
Bread crumbs (as much as needed)

Olive oil for frying

Directions

Roast the eggplant, whole and unpeeled, in a hot (200°C/400°F) oven for 15-20 minutes. Remove the eggplant from the oven and let it cool a bit. Skin the eggplant and place the flesh into a food processor. (If you find the flesh is watery, gently squeeze out the excess liquid with some paper towels.) Add the remaining ingredients (other than the bread crumbs) and process until well amalgamated and fairly smooth.

Then, spoonful by spoonful, and using the pulse function on your processor, mix in bread crumbs until the mixture holds together into a soft but workable paste. (Use only as much as you need, no more.)

Take a bit of the mixture at a time, form little 'meatballs'. Shallow fry the meatballs in olive oil, or a mixture of olive oil and vegetable oil, until golden brown on all sides.

You can serve your polpette as is, either hot or at room temperature. Served this way, they make a great antipasto or snack. In the alternative, you can simmer them in a simple sugo di pomodoro (tomato sauce) made with a soffritto of onion and garlic for a vegetarian secondo.

For this evening's dinner, I made a vegetarian version of another popular Puglian dish, orecchiette con le polpette, dressing the pasta with the sauce, topped with the polpette and some grated cheese. It was, if I say so myself, perfectly delightful.

Insalata di riso con würstel (Rice Salad with Wieners)

2011-08-03T07:00:00.063-04:00

Insalata di riso, or rice salad, is another staple of Italian summertime cooking. It's quick and very easy to make, it can be made ahead—in fact, it only gets better after a day in the fridge—and it's light on the stomach. And it lends itself to variations limited only to your imagination.

Last August, I wrote a post on my favorite rice salad, a seafood based version with tunafish, anchovies and some typical condiments. This year, let me present a landlubber's version that features—believe it or not!—hot dogs, or the Italian equivalent that goes by the German name of würstel. And while last year's rice salad was very grown up and almost elegant, this year's salad is colorful and 'fun', with tastes that are usually a big hit with kids of all ages.

Ingredients (for 4 people)

200g (1-1/2 cups) raw rice
2-3 hot dogs or German-style wieners, thinly sliced (and/or cooked ham, cubed)
100g ([4] oz.) Emmenthal, Gruyère, Fontina or other Swiss cheese, cut into small cubes
Mixed pickled and/or fresh vegetables and/or condiments of your choice, cut into small pieces, to taste (see Notes)
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Optional additions:
Fresh lemon juice or white wine vinegar
Mustar
Mayonnaise
Chopped parsley or other herbs

Directions

Boil the rice in abundant, well-salted water just until al dente, as you would pasta. The time will vary according to the rice (see instructions) but regular long grain rice should take about 15 minutes or so. As soon as the rice is done, run it under cold water in a colander to stop the cooking. Drain well for a minute or two, gently turning the rice once or twice with a rubber spatula to help it drain and prevent sticking.

While the rice is cooking, slice the hot dogs and cut up the cheese, along withthe various veggies and other condiments of your choice (see below). If your wieners don't come fully cooked, then simmer them before your slice them.

Turn the rice into a large bowl, then add the hot dog slices (and ham, if using), cheese and veggies and condiments, mixing gingerly with a spatula. Season with a drizzle of olive oil, and a bit salt and pepper. Mix again, taste and repeat, mixing gently each time, until the salad is seasoned as you like it. Make sure not to overdo it with the salt—the rice should already be seasoned as it cooked, and the condiments are already salty.

The salad can be eaten immediately, but it improves when made ahead and kept in the fridge, ideally at least an hour before and even overnight. Let the salad sit out for a few minutes to take the chill off before eating.

NOTES: The hot dogs can be any kind you like, although 'German style wieners' that you can sometimes find are probably closest to the kind you would find in Italy; it is very common to substitute cooked ham, cut into cubes, for some or even all of the hot dog slices, which gives the salad a bit more panache. The amount and variety of vegetable and other condimenti you want to add to your salad along with the würstel and cheese are up to you, but very typical choices include roasted red peppers (or pickled red peppers, called 'pimentos' here in the US), olives, cornichons (aka gherkins) and pickled baby onions, all of which I added to this batch, along with capers which, for me, are a must in any rice salad. I also like to add some chopped celery for a bit of crunchiness and, to balance all the strong flavors, a bit of astringency. But you can use your own imagination to create your own version of this dish. Chopped carrot, sliced cherry tomatoes, scallions, pickled cauliflower, eggplant or mushrooms sott'olio and blanched frozen peas are just some of the possible additional vegetables people like to add. Some add some chopped hard-boiled egg as well. And some Italians even like to add that most American of ingredients—corn kernels—to their rice salad. Fresh chopped parsley and/or other herbs are optional as well. The choice of condimenti is yours (as are quantities), so you can really put your personal stamp on the salad. In Italy, by the way, a rice salad like this is so popular they sell a ready-made mixture of pickled vegetables especially made for rice salad, which makes things more convenient (if less creative) for the cook.

Rice salads are traditionally dressed only with oil, salt and pepper, but some people like to drizzle just a bit of freshly squeezed lemon juice or a bit of white wine vinegar for some 'zip'. (If you do, however, best to do this just before serving, or the taste will grow overwhelming.) Given the Germanic influence in the dish, a lot of recipes call for a spoonful of mustard—not my thing, personally. And some modern online recipes even call for mayonnaise, something that I never came across when I lived in Italy but would no doubt appeal to many palates here in the US. It does, of course, make the salad a bit heavier.

This is one Italian dish where the fine risotto rices—arborio, Carnaroli and vialone nano—are actually not ideal. In fact you don't really want short or even medium grain rices at all, as they tend to be 'sticky' when cooked. For rice salad you want grains that will keep their shape and stay separate, so you want a longer grain rice. Most any variety will do, but stay away from basmati, which is rather too delicate to stand up to boiling and mixing going on in this recipe. Many Italians use a variety called ribe or even parboiled rice (like the Uncle Ben's brand here in the US) which keeps its shape and stays separate practically no matter what you do to it, but as long as you are careful not to overcook the rice, good old fashioned American long grain rice is actually an excellent choice.

Frittata di zucchine (Zucchini Frittata)

2011-07-29T16:48:00.005-04:00

Frittata is another one of those dishes that lends itself well to the dog days of summer: quick and easy to prepare, amenable to eating hot or cold, and it keeps well, overnight or even longer. And, of course, it can accommodate an almost infinite variety of fillings that can change with the seasons.

The summertime frittata I may like best is made with zucchini. The combination is a classic one that appears time and again in Italian cooking. There is something about the mild and slightly sweet taste of cooked zucchine that lends itself to eggs. (For an example, see my recipe for zucchine cacio e uova.)

Ingredients (for 4 people)

6-8 eggs
2-3 smallish zucchine
Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper
A good handful of grated cheese

Directions

Making a frittata is one of the basic techniques of Italian cooking, and territory we've already covered on this blog (see the link at right or click here for the master recipe, "How to Make a Frittata"). When making a zucchini frittata, you start by slicing your zucchini into thin rounds and fry them until soft in olive oil. I like to brown them just slightly—not too much—and actually let them get pretty soft—but not mushy—to emphasize their natural sweetness.

Then mix the sautéed zucchini with beaten eggs, salt, pepper and lots of grated cheese. For this dish, a mild pecorino (such as a pecorino toscano) does nicely, as would grana padano or parmigiano-reggiano. Of course, you can get a bit crazy and try something entirely different, but I'd avoid a cheese that's too sharp, as it would overwhelm the delicacy of the zucchini.

The mixture goes into a skillet to fry in a bit of olive oil. As explained in the master recipe, there are different methods for cooking the top of a frittata once the bottom has browned. This time, feeling a bit lazy, I just ran the skillet under a broiler for a few minutes, until the top was nice a golden brown.

NOTES: Try to find smallish zucchini if you can. They taste so much better than the sometimes gigantic varieties found in supermarkets. I also prefer the kind with spottled skin rather than the dark green variety which when I first moved back to the States I would regularly mistake for cucumbers! If you can only find large ones, you may want to cut them into quarters length-wise before slicing them. You don't want large chunks of vegetable in your frittata—you want small bits so you get a bit of veg and egg in every bite.

Frittate are best, I think, served either at room temperature or just slightly warm. The taste of the filling is much more pronounced when the dish is not too hot and the rest while it's cooling seems to enhance the flavor.

Pane Burro e Acciughe (Bread Butter and Anchovies)

2011-07-24T15:09:00.005-04:00

I don't know about you, but when temperatures rise into triple-digits (on the Fahrenheit scale) as they have lately in much of the Northern Hemisphere, even my enthusiasm for cooking begins to lag. That, and our impeding house move, has meant that any cooking that I do indulge in these days is as quick as possible and, whenever possible, doesn't involve the use of any heat source...

So here's a quick note on a great non-recipe for times like these: anchovies and butter on bread. All you do is take some good, crusty bread, cut it into slices, slather a bit of fresh butter over each slice and top with one (or if you really like them, two) anchovy filets. Ecco fatto!

Serve with some sprightly, crisp white wine that will stand up to the assertive flavor of the anchovies.

NOTES: At the risk of sounding like a broken record, when it comes to a dish this simple, the quality of your ingredients really matter. Good, crusty bread with excellent crumb is very important. (NB: Bread like this can be hard to find in the US, so I like to lightly toast my bread, which helps give it better structure.) The butter should be fresh and unsalted—we get ours from a local dairy—and allowed to soften for just a few minutes; it should be neither rock hard nor too soft. And the better the anchovies, the better the dish, although regular supermarket canned anchovies packed in oil will do you fine.

The 'genius' of this dish lies in the contrast in flavor and texture as between the butter and the anchovies. The butter should be smooth and creamy and mild—it will balance out the assertiveness of the anchovies perfectly.

These are traditionally served as an antipasto or snack, but if you ask me, you can make a light meal of them if you want, just followed by a salad and some fresh fruit.

And for all of you who don't care for anchovies, what can I say? I guess you'll have to give this one a miss, but that's really too bad. You're missing a real treat.

Ciliegie su ghiaccio (Cherries on Ice)

2011-07-13T07:41:00.004-04:00

A quick note on a fine and fun way to enjoy cherries and lots of other summer fruits—su ghiaccio or 'on ice'. Fill a bowl a third or half full of ice, place your fruit—however much you're having—over the ice and add water to come, say, halfway up the fruit. Serve.

Yep, that's the 'recipe'! It may seem almost absurdly simple, but slightly chilling fruit in this way subtly changes its character for the better. The chill firms up their texture and brightens their flavor. Summer fruits with a pit, cherries in particular, seem to benefit most from an ice bath. (On the other hand, the treatment does not do much for citrus fruits or bananas.)

One important point: the fruit you are serving this way should be at room temperature when you immerse it in its ice bath. Otherwise, the fruit will simply be cold, not slightly chilled. So if you're keeping your fruit in the fridge, take it out some 30-60 minutes before you want to serve it.

And make sure you have napkins on hand. There is no way around getting your fingers a little wet when fish the fruit out of the ice water!

Milanese con insalata di pomodoro (Milanese-style Veal Chop with Tomato Salad Topping)

2011-07-10T10:35:00.002-04:00

I once knew a charming couple from Milan named Omer and Maria Grazia. My memory of them is a bit hazy by now—sadly, we lost contact and it's been years since I've seen them—but two food-related memories still stick out in my mind. The first was the time I made them minestrone alla milanese and they pronounced it not just excellent, but the best they had ever had! They had me describe how I had made it, step by step, and the table, which included a friend of theirs from Bologna, decided that my 'secret' was the time and care I had taken with the rosolatura of the aromatic vegetables. I had to admit, I was beaming with pride—after all, this was their dish, so to speak, and here I was, an Italo-American with southern roots and no real connections to Milanese cooking. I still count that as the nicest culinary compliment I have ever received.

It was at that same meal that Omer and Maria Grazia described to me one of their favorite dishes, which has come to be a part of my summer repertoire: a cotoletta alla milanese (a breaded veal chop) served with a delicate tomato salad, not as a contorno (side dish) but spooned on top as an integral part of the dish. It's a simple combination that looks and tastes like summer on a plate. Even though I don't care at all for breaded items in tomato sauce (a common Italian-American conceit in dishes like Chicken 'Parm') I do find the combination of the breaded meat with fresh tomato simply to die for. Go figure.

Ingredients (per person)

One cotoletta alla milanese (see this recipe)

For the tomato salad:
One ripe, juicy tomato, cut into small dice or sliced
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
A few basil leaves, ripped into small pieces

Directions

Make the cotoletta as per the usual recipe.

While the cotoletta is cooking, make your salad by putting your tomato in a mixing bowl with a bit of salt. Allow the tomato to macerate for just a minute or two, then drain out the excess liquid along with most of the seeds. Take the pulp, mix it with the basil leaves and toss with the olive oil. Adjust for seasoning.

Serve the cotoletta, still hot, with the tomato salad spooned over the top, and eat it right away!

NOTES: The character of the dish depends almost entirely on using the best possible tomatoes. If you have access to some garden or farm tomatoes at the peak of the season, by all means use those. If not, small hydroponic tomatoes, the kind called 'Campari' tomatoes here in the US, or cherry or grape tomatoes, will do.

You may have noticed, the tomato salad used in this recipe contains no vinegar or lemon juice, which was a point that Omar and Maria Grazia really emphasized. And you can see why: the assertive sourness of either condiment would throw off what is otherwise a very delicate combination of flavors. In fact, many Italians will tell you that neither vinegar nor lemon belongs in a proper tomato salad anyway. My usual preference (when making tomato salad on its own) is to add just the tiniest bit of white wine vinegar, hardly enough to notice. Not for this dish, but I also actually rather like a tomato salad dressed Italian-American style with red wine vinegar and a light sprinkling of dried oregano, one of the few uses for dried oregano in my kitchen. It makes especially good eating when you fa la scarpetta...

The cotoletta is, classically, a veal chop. But as mentioned in the master recipe, a nice pork chop is very nice made the same way and costs much, much less. And this dish succeeds even with your 'cotoletta' made with chicken or turkey breast, too. In fact, you could even made a vegetarian version with eggplant slices, which is perfectly delicious too.

Milan, by the way, as Omar never tired of pointing out, may be one of Italy's most under-appreciated cities, by tourists and other Italians alike. Heavily bombed during the Second World War, many parts of Milan lack the overwhelming 'surface' beauty of so many other Italian cities. But Omar' was fond of saying that Milan's beauty was hidden away—in its courtyards, on its side streets and other unexpected places. Its shopping is second to none in Italy and it has some of the best food in Italy. As Italy's business capital, Milan can afford to eat very, very well, and it does.

Post scriptum: Regular readers may have noticed that our recent posts are not appearing quite as often as they have in the past. There's a reason for that: we're moving house! The house search took up most weekends and, now that we're closing soon, the details of the transaction and moving itself is also taking up most of my spare weekend time. So please, dear readers, bear with me! The good news is that the new kitchen is absolutely gorgeous, and at least three times the size of my current kitchen, with a huge bank of beautiful windows to let in the sunlight. A perfect kitchen, in fact, for cooking—and blogging. So, I promise, your patience will pay off.

Pesto alla trapanese (A Sicililan pesto)

2011-07-01T10:34:00.001-04:00

One of the great joys of summer is the appearance of juicy, ripe tomatoes in the marketplace. Tomatoes that, for once, actually taste like tomatoes! And, of course, think about tomatoes and you'll immediately think about pasta. There's something about fresh tomatoes and pasta that was just meant to be.

Pasta with fresh tomatoes and basil is a summer classic, but there are other options. One of the best is this Sicilian cousin to pesto alla genovese. You will immediately recognize the family resemblance, of course, what with the presence of fresh basil, garlic and nuts (this time blanched almonds rather than pignolis). But true to its southern roots, this pesto stars abundant ripe tomato.

NB: The main recipe in this post is for the easy-peasy modern version of this pesto. The more traditional mortar-and-pestle recipe, which actually produces a remarkably different dish from the same ingredients, is described in the Notes.

Ingredients (serves 4-6 persons)

400g (1/2 lb.) ripe, fresh tomatoes (see Notes)
2-3 cloves of garlic
A handful of fresh basil
A handful of blanched almonds (see Notes)
Salt and pepper
Olive oil,
100g (4 oz.) grated pecorino cheese

400g (1/2 lb.) of pasta of your choice (see Notes)

Directions

Make your pesto by adding tomatoes, garlic, basil, almond, salt and pepper in the food processor. Process on 'pulse' until the ingredients are well chopped, then with the motor running, add olive oil in a stream until the mixture comes together and forms a smooth sauce. (The almonds should not become completely pulverized, however, but retain some of their crunch.)

Cook your pasta al dente. Drain and pour into a warmed serving bowl. Add your pesto and mix well, then add the cheese and mix again. (If the pasta is a little dry, add some pasta water to loosen it up.)

Serve immediately, perhaps with a dollop of extra pesto on top, and with additional grated cheese in a small bowl for those who want it.

NOTES: If using mature fresh tomatoes, you should peel them and remove the seeds before adding them to the food processor. Otherwise, your pesto will be too watery and have unpleasant bits of skin in it. Tomatoes are easily peel if the skin is loosened a bit by a quick blanch in boiling water (no more than 30 seconds or so) or by charring the skin over a flame as you would a bell pepper. You can also, as pictured below, use small grape or cherry tomatoes, which have tender skins and very little by way of seeds and water inside. They need no particular prep before they are added to the rest of the pesto.

Blanched almonds are commonplace in US supermarkets (they are used extensively in baking here) but if you can't find them, then take regular almonds, shell them and then blanch them for a few minutes. Their skins should then slip off easily.

You want a nice, fruity, deep green kind of olive oil for this dish. This being a Sicilian dish, olive oil from Sicily would be perfect, of course, but they make similar olive oil in Puglia and that would certainly do quite fine, as would any similar olive oil from elsewhere.

The traditional recipe for this dish using a mortar and pestle produces a rather different result—which is why many traditionally minded recipes will warn you never, even to use a blender or food processor to make pesto alla trapenese. You grind up the garlic with a bit of salt, then the almonds, then the basil, just as you would a traditional pesto alla genovese. The tomatoes is not ground up with the rest, but chopped into little cubes and mixed with the pesto. The texture is, of course, quite different: he tomato retains more of its original character and the pesto has considerably more chunkiness to it. And it looks quite different on the plate, with contrasting red and green bits. Nothing prevents you, of course, from mixing modern and traditional methods by making your pesto with a food processor but folding in hand-chopped tomato to it at the end.

The traditional pasta for this pesto is the home-made Sicilian pasta called busiati. But this pesto is delicious with linguine, spaghetti or even short pastas like penne or farfalle. In fact, if you ask me, it goes well with pretty much any pasta you feel like having.

There are some variations to this dish that you can try at your leisure to see if you like. I've seen some recipes that call for a bit a red pepper which is actually quite nice. Others, call for topping your pasta with ricotta salata or fried bread crumbs rather than the pecorino—both very Sicilian touches. In summer a bit of mint along with the basil makes for a nice change of pace.

Happy Birthday, Memorie di Angelina!

2011-06-27T01:00:00.002-04:00

Folks, we've reached another milestone. Hard to believe it's been two whole years since we began this humble tribute to the fine home cooking of nonna Angelina. But it's true... And so it's fitting to take a moment, once again, to thank all our readers for your kind readership.

I can only guess what Angelina would think if she knew that literally hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world have read about her cooking. She was such a humble person, someone who never tried to draw the least attention to herself. It seemed her only ambition in life was bringing happiness to those she loved, in her own quiet, unassuming, almost self-effacing way. I'm not sure if she'd be happy or embarrassed by this demi-celebrity. Perhaps a bit of both? I guess we'll never know, but one thing I do know: she deserves it all.

Caponata alla siciliana

2011-06-18T20:57:00.008-04:00

Even if I love some of the island's most emblematic dishes like pasta alla norma—and who doesn't like cannoli?—Sicilian food has always been something of a mystery to me. Many of the dishes remind me of Angelina's Campanian cooking—and Sicilians actually lay claim to melanzane alla parmigiana, which was one of her signature dishes—but there is something a bit 'different', if not downright foreign about some of the taste combinations, especially the tendency to combine sweet and sour, something Angelina would never do.

Getting to know Sicilian cooking has been on my 'to do' list for some time now. And one of the biggest regrets from my years in Italy was not getting down to Sicily to try out the cuisine first hand. Everyone I knew who went there on vacation raved about the food, but I never seemed to have the time or the inclination until it was too late. Well, not entirely too late. The plane trip would be a lot longer now, but I guess there is still time.

In any event, without any pretense of being an expert in Sicilian cooking, let me present my take on one of the most famous Sicilian dishes, la caponata. A kind of southern cousin to the ratatouille of Provence, this dish stars eggplant, with celery co-starring and with tomato and onions in supporting roles. And, as mentioned, it has a sweet-and-sour finishing touch that, if not overdone, perfectly balances out the flavors.

Ingredients (enough to serve 6 or more, as an antipasto or as part of a buffet)

1 kilo (2 lbs.) eggplant, cut into small cubes
1 bunch of celery, cut into bite-sized pieces
1 large onion, thinly sliced
1 small can of tomatoes or 250g (1/2 lb) fresh, skinned and seeded
Salt and pepper
A handful of capers
A handful of pignoli nuts
250g (1/2 lb.) of green olives, pitted and halved
A sprig of fresh marjoram
Olive oil
Sugar and vinegar, to taste

Directions

The first step in this recipe, which is not absolutely necessary but a good idea, especially for larger, more mature eggplant, is to remove the excess liquid from the eggplant by sprinking the eggplant cubes with salt and placing them in a colander, with a small plate on top to exert some gentle pressure and one below to catch the eggplant liquid as it drains. Let the eggplant steep for an hour or more.

When you are ready to cook, gather up a handful of eggplant with a paper towel, give it a gentle squeeze to dry the cubes, and throw them into abundant olive oil—about 1 cm (1/2 in) deep—in a large pot. (Enameled cast iron pots work particularly well.) Work in batches to avoid crowding the eggplant, removing them with a skimmer when the eggplant cubes are just lightly browned to a basket or bowl lined with paper towels to soak up the excess oil.

When all your eggplant is done, there should be less oil in the pan, but still enough to cook with. Add the celery, sauté for a few minutes until the celery is tender but still has some 'bite' left in it. Season with salt and pepper as it cooks. Remove with a skimmer and set aside.

Now add the onion to the remaining oil in the pot and sauté it gently until it is quite soft. Add the tomato. Simmer the tomato until it has melted and reduced to a nice, sauce-like consistency.

Now add back your eggplant and celery, along with the capers, pignoli, olives and the marjoram. Allow everything to simmer together for about 5-10 minutes. A minute or two before it's done, add the sugar and vinegar, mix well (but gently!) and let it finish simmering. Turn off the heat and let your caponata cool entirely before serving.

NOTES: There are two main points to watch out for when making this dish. First, depending on the quality of the eggplant, it may become very soft and, if it gets stirred too much, it will turn to mush. You can avoid this by browning the eggplant over high heat (and thus it will brown before getting too soft) and to limit the final simmering of the ingredients to just a few minutes. Of course, limit your stirring as well once all the ingredients have been mixed together.

The initial steeping in salt also helps. Besides removing the often bitter natural liquids in the eggplant, it produces a firmer texture. Recipes vary as to how long you should leave them to drain; some call for several hours, but with most eggplant an hour will do. In fact, even 30 minutes will help. The size and age of the eggplant will determine how long you will need. Smaller eggplant, by the way, tend to be firmer and are less needful of this initial step.

The other point is greasiness, since everything gets cooked in abundant oil. Now, of course, one person's greasy is another person's unctuousness, and this dish will never be fat-free. But if you want to lower the oilyness (and the calorie count) there are a few tricks. First, as mentioned, fry your eggplant at high heat, this will limit the amount of oil that the eggplant will absorb. Make sure to sop up the excess oil with paper towels. The same goes for the celery. And once the dish has cooled, if you find the resulting dish is a bit too rich for your taste, you can either skim the excess oil off with a spoon or even (as I did last night) strain the entire thing over a sieve for just a minute or two to allow the excess oil to drain off.

By the way, most recipes will tell you to fry the eggplant and celery separately, and then sauté the onion in yet another pot. But I find that my 'one pot' method works perfectly well and saves you some clean up afterwards.

Traditional recipes will tell you to de-string the celery and blanch it before sautéing, because in the old days celery was very strongly flavored and had tough filaments. Modern celery (at least here in the US) is raised to be almost 'stringless' and very mild in flavor. If in doubt, take a bite and see if these preliminaries are needed.

The capers should be the kind packed in salt, in which case rinse them and, if they are very salty, you may want to soak them for a few minutes. But the kind packed in brine will do fine in a pinch. Of course, if you can find imported Sicilian capers, in particular the famous capperi di Pantelleria, that would be perfect.

Since this is obviously a summer dish, fresh tomatoes rather than canned are traditional. But unless you are sure of the flavor and freshness of your tomatoes, to my mind canned is a better choice, even in hot weather.

How much sugar and vinegar, you ask? Well, I tend not to measure, but a couple of spoonful of sugar along with a splash of the vinegar (I prefer the white wine variety) should do you fine. Add more if you want a more pronounced sweet and sour flavor, but I like just a hint.

I've also seen recipes with considerably less celery and/or tomato. Other recipes add tomato paste for a 'redder' version. In short, you can play with the proportions and ingredients—but whatever you do, the eggplant should always be the star of the show!

Caponata is said to be of Spanish origin and, like many Italian dishes, has an interesting history, which you can read about here.

Angelina's Pizza Dolce (Italian Cheesecake)

2011-06-05T11:20:00.002-04:00

For most of us, pizza means just one thing: a round disk of dough topped with tomato, mozzarella and other goodies and baked in a hot oven. But the word 'pizza' can also refer to a sweet pie, typically made with ricotta and eggs, flavored with sugar and other things, called pizza dolce di ricotta.

Angelina made a simple, crustless version that she simply called pizza dolce, or 'sweet pizza'. And while her exact recipe seems to have been lost, I've been able to recapture the taste of her dish through some trial and error. Here the basic recipe:

Ingredients (for a small pie to serve 4-6 people)

500g (1 lb.) ricotta cheese
5 eggs
100g (1/2 cup) sugar
Zest of a small lemon, finely grated
A splash of sweet anise liqueur (anisette or sambuca)

Directions

Mix all the ingredients together until they form a smooth and uniform whole. Pour into a greased pie pan and bake at 180°C/350°F for about 45 minutes, or until completely set and golden brown on top.

Allow to cool before serving. (The pie will deflate a bit as it cools, which is perfectly normal.)

NOTES: Angelina would sometimes add bits of semi-sweet chocolate to the mixture and it is also very common to add bits of canditi (citron)—one or the other but not both. Some recipes call for a bit of cinnamon and/or vanilla extract, which (to my memory) Angelina never did.

The ricotta-to-egg ration in the recipes you can find around the internet vary wildly. Obviously, the more egg, the more 'custard-y' the resulting pie. Conversely, the less egg, the more 'cheese-y' the pie will taste. I find that a 1 egg per 100 gram ratio—besides being easy to remember—gives a fine, balanced result. Likewise, you can add more or less liqueur to suit your taste.

Some recipes also call for a crust of pasta frolla, or pastry dough, but Angelina never made her pizza dolce that way.

Those of you who know Neapolitan cuisine will no doubt realize that pizza dolce is essentially a vastly simplified version of the classic pastiera napoletana, the traditional ricotta cheese cake made in Naples and environs around Easter time. (I made one for Easter this year, but sadly forgot to photograph it, so I didn't blog about it...) But although some Italian-Americans do associate pizza dolce with Easter, in our family it was enjoyed year round. After all, it's so easy to make, there's just no reason not to!

Scalloppine al marsala

2011-05-21T16:24:00.002-04:00

The scalloppina (in the plural, scalloppine) and its manifold variations may be the most common secondo in Italian cooking. To me, it is typical of that Italian knack for using a bland main ingredient as a foil for a flavorful sauce. Pasta is the example we all know and love, but in this case una fettina di carne, or a slice of meat, serves as the foil instead. Veal is the classic choice, as it has only a very mild flavor of its own. These days, turkey or pork (and, particularly outside Italy, chicken breast) provide less expensive alternatives.

Scalloppine look very elegant on a serving platter, but they are really very quick and easy to make, as perfect for a weekday supper as they are for an important dinner for company.

Ingredients (for 4 servings)

4 slices of veal, cut from the loin (or pork loin, turkey breast or chicken breast)
Flour
50g (1/2 stick) of butter, or a combination of butter and oil
Salt and pepper
A glassful of dry marsala wine

Directions

Take you slices of meat and, placing them between two sheets of waxed paper, give them a good thumping with the back of a heavy skillet—or with a meat pounder, if you have one. This will thin them out even more and break down some of the fiber in the meat, rendering it more tender.

Meanwhile, heat the butter (or butter and oil, or even just oil if you'd rather) in a skillet over medium-high heat. When the foam subsides, add the slices, which you will have very light floured just beforehand. Make sure they are not crowded in the pan or they will not brown properly. (If your skillet is not big enough to hold all the slices at one go, you can proceed in batches.) Sear them for just 30 seconds or so on each side, seasoning well with salt and pepper. They should lightly brown around the edges. Remove the slices to a heated platter and keep warm. (A toaster oven set to 'warm' is perfect for this.)

Add the marsala to the pan, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the skillet. Let it reduce until it forms a syrupy sauce. Then, turning off the heat, add the slices back to the pan and turn them around to coat well.

Arrange the slices on a warmed platter, pour over any remaining sauce in the skillet, and serve immediately.

NOTES: The above recipe will produce a small amount of intensely flavored marsala 'sauce', which is just the way I like it. I also like to swirl in a pat of butter off heat, which smooths out the sauce and gives it a nice sheen. If you prefer more sauce—better to 'fare la scarpetta'—you can dilute the marsala in a cup or more of broth mixed with a spoonful of flour or corn starch. In this case, simmer the sauce over gentler heat for a minute or two, long enough to thicken, but don't allow it to reduce very much.

I think it was Marcella Hazan, way back in the 1970's, who pointed out that veal scalloppine should be sliced against the grain. Unfortunately, American supermarkets don't seem to have listened. You will still find most veal slices cut with the grain, which means that they will tend to curl and toughen as they cook. Not much that can be done about this. Marcella's solution—buying a whole veal loin and slicing it yourself—is an effective but prohibitively pricey for most of us. I just whack the heck out of the veal and trim off any filament in hopes that that will do the trick, and I usually get a serviceable result.

If you are using chicken breasts, you should start by slicing off the little 'extra' flap of meat on the underside of the breast called the tenderloin, then cut the main part of the breast width-wise into two slices. The operation is easier if you apply gentle pressure on the top of the breast with the palm of one hand while slicing with the other. (NB: Extra-plump breasts you often find these days are thick enough for three slices.) Then proceed to flatten the tenderloin and slices as described in the main recipe.

No matter what meat you use, it's crucial that the slices be quite thin—remember, the meat is really meant as a foil or vehicle to carry the sauce; it is not actually the star of the show.

There are other well-known scalloppine dishes, perhaps the best known being the scalloppine al limone (finished with lemon juice rather than marsala wine). Saltimbocca alla romana, one of the signatory secondi of Roman cookery, is really just a kind of scallopine dish, a bit more elaborate. Some recipes can get quite elaborate, adding ham, cheese, asparagus... And if you stuff and roll your meat slices, you wind up with involtini. But I guess I'm getting ahead of myself; I'll save these subjects for future posts...

Ananas alla sambuca (Pineapple Laced with Sambuca)

2011-05-17T22:56:00.002-04:00

Here's a really quick note on a combination that may surprise you but was simply meant to be: pineapple and the Italian anise liquor called sambuca. Sprinkle a few drops of sambuca over freshly sliced pineapple, just enough to exalt the flavor of the fruit without drawing attention to itself, and you'll be in for a treat...incredibly intense pineapple flavor with a subtle retrogusto (aftertaste) that I bet most of your guests will not even be able to identify.

I'll guarantee it'll be some of the most delicious pineapple you've ever tasted!

Asparagi alla milanese (Milanese-Style Asparagus)

2011-05-15T11:17:00.003-04:00

Asparagi alla milanese, or Milanese-style asparagus, might just be the best known asparagus dish in the Italian repertoire. True to its Northern roots, it features butter and cheese, whose sweetness is the perfect offset to the somewhat astringent, slightly grassy taste of asparagus. A 'sunny side up' fried egg completes the dish. When eating, I like to break the egg yolk and allow it to run over the asparagus, making sure that each bit of asparagus I bite into has ample butter and cheese and egg yolk... Dietetic it's not, but it's awfully good!

Although actually rather simple to make, if you ask me, this dish is too impressive to be relegated to side dish status. But, otherwise, it is very versatile: It makes for an elegant Springtime antipasto, and it works as an unusual primo, when you don't feel like a starch. It can even do service as a quasi-vegetarian secondo. And it makes a fine light supper all by itself, with some crusty bread and a piece of fruit for dessert. In fact, that's what we had for dinner last night...

Ingredients (for 4 people)

A large bunch of asparagus
100g (one stick) butter*
100g (4 oz.) freshly grated parmesan cheese*
4 eggs
Salt and pepper

Directions

Cook your trimmed asparagus in well-salted water, using one of the standard methods (see below) until just tender—removing them from the heat slightly less tender than you like to eat them, as they will continue to cook as you proceed with the next steps. Let the asparagus stalks drain in a colander. (NB: Do not refresh with cold water; you want the asparagus to stay warm.)

While the asparagus are draining, take a skillet big enough to hold all your eggs and melt the butter in it. Fry the eggs gently in the butter. Regulate the heat to make sure the butter does not darken or (God forbid!) burn. (Although unorthodox, I like to add just a bit of olive oil to the butter to help prevent this.) As they eggs cook, spoon the hot butter over the whites of the eggs to help cook them on top. Season to taste. The eggs are done when the whites are just set and the yolk still liquid.

While the eggs are cooking (they will only take a minute or two) arrange the asparagus on a heated serving platter. The traditional pattern is to arrange the asparagus stalks in a 'star', with the tips all pointed towards the center of the platter, which should, of course, be round and large enough to accommodate this arrangement. Personally, I find this a bit fussy (and the asparagus tends to lose heat this way) so I simply line them up more or less neatly on an oval platter.

Then sprinkle the grated cheese, which you should grate at the last moment to retain its full flavor, all over the asparagus. It should look like a heavy dusting of snow that covers the asparagus more or less entirely. Then place your eggs on top of the asparagus and spoon the melted butter remaining in the skillet all over. The eggs and hot butter should melt the cheese entirely.

Serve immediately, as this dish is at its best when it is still nice and warm.

NOTES: Asparagus comes in several varieties. Leaving aside white asparagus, which is wonderful but perhaps not ideal for this particular dish, the basic choice is between young, thin asparagus and the older, thicker kind. Either kind needs to be trimmed of the rather woody base: just line them up on your cutting board and cut off the bottoms, about where they begin to lose their green color. Thin asparagus (which I personally prefer) needs no more preparation. Older asparagus develops a tough skin, which should be peeled off. If in doubt, bite a bit of one of the stalks to see whether the skin is noticeably tough; if so, peel.

The only slightly tricky part about cooking asparagus is that being essentially shoots, they have very think, tender tips (with very delicate buds on them), which need hardly any cooking at all, and rather thicker bases, which need a bit more time to cook until tender. The older the asparagus, the greater the difference between tip and base.

To get around this problem, you can buy an asparagus cooker, which is a tall, narrow lidded pot with a basket insert, which holds the asparagus stalks together upright and allows you to remove them easily. Water is put into the bottom of the cooker, just enough so that the thicker stalks are immersed in boiling water while the delicate tips simply steam. If you are using older asparagus, an asparagus cooker is practically a necessity. (One of the few cases, in my opinion, where a single-purpose pot is.)

An Asparagus Cooker

Younger, thinner asparagus can be made two other ways: the modern method is to lay your asparagus out flat in single layer in a a skillet filled with boiling water, which has the advantage of being quite fast. (The inch or two of water will come quickly up to the boil, especially if you've covered your skillet, and will return to the boil quickly as well.) Or, using a more traditional method, you can tie your asparagus together with kitchen twine and boil the bunch in a lots of well-salted water in a large pot. This takes a bit longer but tying the asparagus together makes things a bit easier when it's time to remove the asparagus from the heat.

It hardly needs saying, but, of course, like so many simple but exquisite Italian dishes, success will depend largely on the quality of your main ingredients. The asparagus must be impeccably fresh—the stalks firm, with their buds intact and tightly gripping the tips. The cheese must be real parmigiano-reggiano, preferably freshly grated while your asparagus is cooking. And if you can find butter from a local dairy farm, well, you'll be experiencing the dish at its very best!

* Most recipes for asparagi alla milanese will call for a lot less butter and cheese than I do here. I like to 'overdo' these rich ingredients, but leaving behind any butter I feel I don't need in the skillet, and sprinkling only as much cheese as I feel like using. (Excess butter needs to be thrown out, but the excess cheese can be used another day.) Better to have more than you need on hand than too little, I say! But, of course, you can hold back on both ingredients if you like.

Crocchette d'agnello e bieta

2011-05-01T21:41:00.001-04:00

About this time of year we often find ourselves facing the same culinary conundrum: what to do with leftover lamb? I have always thought that throwing food away was almost criminal, but, truth be told, it is hard to know what to do with leftover lamb. It tends to develop a strong and, to my mind, none too pleasant taste when cooked again for any length of time. One stratagem to deal with this is to simmer the lamb with strong flavors like curry, that will stand up to (aka cover) the strong taste of re-cooked lamb. But, personally, I think the best way to use leftover lamb is to eat it at room temperature as a kind of salad with a mustardy vinaigrette, or to cook it very quickly.

For example, leftover lamb can be substituted for leftover braised beef to stuff pasta, as for mezzelune al brasato. Or, for a nice secondo, try this recipe: croquettes of lamb and Swiss chard:

Ingredients (of 4-6 people)

500g (1 lb.) leftover lamb roast
250g (1/2 lb.) Swiss chard, trimmed and parboiled
100g grated parmesan cheese (or more if you want)
150-200g country-style bread, crust removed, soaked in milk and squeezed dry
2 eggs
Salt and pepper (if needed)
Bread crumbs

Optional:
A finely chopped garlic clove, or some finely chopped onion or shallot, sautéed until soft and translucent

Directions

Cut the lamb into chunks and put it in a food processors along with the rest of the ingredients other than the bread crumbs.

Using the pulse function, chop until you have a fine and well-mixed mince. I prefer to chop the meat into small nuggets, but not completely ground up, which gives your croquettes a more interesting texture. But, of course, you can suit yourself. Taste and adjust for seasoning; the mixture should be very savory.

Take a hunk of the mixture into your hands and press them tightly into small balls. Flatten the balls into patties or a lozenge-like shape if you like (or just leave them as is).

Roll the patties very lightly in bread crumbs and fry them over moderate heat in olive oil until nice and golden brown on both sides. Serve them immediately, with lemon wedges or, if you like with a light tomato sauce.

NOTES: This is about as casual a dish as you can imagine, so all of the measurements given above are really just suggestions. The ratio of lamb to chard, about 2:1 above, can vary as you prefer. You can use more bread, which adds more binder and makes for a tighter (but softer) mixture. And you can add more cheese, which gives the mixture a nice flavor, or omit the cheese if you don't have on hand or don't like cheese. You can omit the breadcrumbs as well. No big deal. The above directions assume you're using some leftover roast lamb that has been well seasoned, say with garlic and rosemary. Otherwise, if using an unseasoned roast or even raw lamb, you can add a bit of finely chopped garlic, or sautéed onion or shallot to lend some more flavor.

Swiss chard (pictured below) has large stalks, which you should trim before parboiling the leaves for about 3-4 minutes in lightly salted water. You then refresh the leaves in cold water and squeeze the leaves tightly to remove as much moisture as you can before adding them to the food processor. The stalks make for good eating just by themselves, by the way, for example, gratinéed like this cardoon dish.

For tonight's dinner, I made a light tomato sauce, seasoned with garlic and rosemary: you sauté the seasonings in abundant olive oil until the garlic is just beginning to brown. Remove them from the oil and then pass a can of best-quality tomatoes into the pot through a food mill. Season with salt, pepper and just a pinch of red pepper flakes. Simmer gently for 15-20 minutes.

Carcioli trifolati

2011-04-22T12:03:00.001-04:00

The trifolati technique is one we've seen before on this blog. And although it is probably most often associated with mushrooms, you can make many different non-leafy vegetables using the same basic technique: slice it and sauté it in garlic and oil, and season with salt, pepper and finely chopped parsley. That's all there is to it. It's just about the simplest way of preparing vegetable side dishes and, to my mind, one of the best, because it has a way of bringing out the natural flavor of your main ingredient so it really shines. Artichokes are particularly nice made this way and they make a perfect complement to roast lamb for Easter Sunday dinner.

Harder vegetables like artichokes can be made using the trifolati technique, but they need a bit of help in the form of a short braise in a covered pan with a bit of water or white wine to soften them up. But otherwise, the recipe is just the same:

Ingredients (to serve 4-5 as a side dish)

500g (1 lb.) of artichokes, trimmed and sliced into wedges (see Notes)

1-2 cloves of garlic, peeled and slightly crushed

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

A handful of fresh parsley, finely chopped

Directions

Begin, as usual with a soffritto: sauté the garlic gently in a generous amount of olive oil until it just begins to brown.

Remove the garlic from the skillet and add your artichoke wedges. Increase the heat a bit and toss the artichokes in the seasoned oil for a few minutes without browning.

Add a splash of water (not a lot) and cover the skillet. Let the artichokes simmer until they are tender but not coming apart. Cooking time will vary according to the size, age and quality of your artichokes, and how thin your wedges are, but normally somewhere between 10-20 minutes will do.

Uncover the skillet, raise the heat, and season generously with salt and pepper, tossing the wedges to season them evenly. Then, at the last, add your parsley, give the skillet another toss, and serve immediately.

NOTES: The only real tricky part of this recipe is the trimming of the artichokes, which can take some time and skill—although it actually becomes quite easy once you get the hang of it. In the markets of Rome, friendly vendors will trim artichokes for you, but here in the States you'll usually have to do this yourself.

The Italian way of trimming artichokes can be a bit surprising to the uninitiated, as you take so much off the vegetable. To some, it can seem like a 'waste'. But the idea is to reduce the artichoke down to its edible parts, but you are still left with the tender inner leaves, so it's not quite a matter of eating only the hearts. Here's a good video tutorial featuring the genial Lidia Bastianich to show you how:

You can use any kind of artichoke for this dish. Obviously, large artichokes will take longer to cook than the smaller ones. The photo above shows smaller artichokes cut into quarters, but if you like you can cut them into eighths or, for large artichokes, even more finely.

Carciofi trifolati make for a superb contorno, but they also make a great filling for frittata and, if cut finely, can also be used to dress pasta.

As I've mentioned before, the same basic technique, when applied to leafy vegetables, takes on a name, either ripassati in padella or just in padella (in the skillet).

Uova in purgatorio

2011-04-08T18:31:00.000-04:00

A perfect light lunch or dinner for those times when you don't feel like making anything too complicated, these Neapolitan 'eggs in purgatory' take perhaps 25 minutes and practically make themselves.

Ingredients (for 2 people)

4 eggs
1 small (14 oz.) can of tomatoes (or passata di pomodoro)
1/2 onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 basil leaf
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Optional:
A small pinch of red pepper flakes, or
A spoonful of grated parmesan cheese

Directions

Make a soffritto by gently sweating the onion in a fairly generous amount of olive oil, in a shallow terracotta tiella (see photo) or a braiser. When the onion is soft and translucent, add the garlic, mix and let it simmer for just a few moments. (Add the red pepper flakes now, if using.)

Now take a food mill and place it over the pot, then pass the canned tomatoes through the mill into the pot. (If using the passata, just add it to the soffritto.) Add the basil leaf and let the tomatoes simmer, still over gentle heat, for about 10-15 minutes, until they have cooked down a bit and formed a sauce.

Now crack open your eggs, one by one, and gingerly drop them into the tomato sauce. (I usually open the eggs into a small bowl or cup and then slide the egg into the sauce. This helps avoid breaking the yolk and, if it does break, you can discard it before it's in the sauce.) Cover the pan and continue simmering the eggs in the sauce until the whites are set and the yolk has 'glazed over' but are still soft inside.

Serve immediately with some nice crusty bread to soak up the sauce.

NOTES: You will find rather more elaborate versions of this dish around, some that add olives and other flavors for a puttanesca-like sauce, others that add peppers or mushrooms or other vegetables. But this is the original and, to my mind, best way to make it. A few red pepper flakes—just a small pinch for a very subtle 'kick'—is as much of a variation as I like. If you like you can top the dish with a bit of grated parmigiano (in which case, best to omit the red pepper).

According to Jeanne Caròla Francesconi, the doyenne of Neapolitan cookery, the eccentric name of this dish come from the notion that the eggs floating in the red sauce look like so many souls dancing among the flames of Purgatory. It also goes by the more prosaic name of uova al pomodoro, or eggs in tomato sauce.

Waterzooï de poulet

2011-04-03T18:54:00.001-04:00

Recently, a Belgian colleague of mine (who is also a regular reader of this blog) was kind enough to give me a copy of her favorite Belgian cookbook written in English, entitled the Everybody Eats Well in Belgium Cookbook. Notwithstanding the hokey name, it really is a gem, with 250 classic recipes from one of Europe's great cuisines, the product of an intriguing confluence of Latin (French) and Germanic influences.

The book includes a recipe for one of my favorite Belgian dishes, which I hadn't made for many years, waterzooï de poulet: chicken poached with aromatic vegetables and the resulting broth turned into a velvety cream sauce. It is remarkably simple to make, light yet rich, and thoroughly delicious. Here is my slightly simplified version of the recipe.

Ingredients (for 4-6 persons)

1 onion, finely chopped
1 carrot, chopped or julienned
1 stalk of celery, chopped or julienned
A large dab of butter
1 kilo (2 lbs.) chicken 'tenders' (or other parts, skinned)
A bouquet garni of bay leaf, fresh parsley and fresh thyme
1 liter (4 cups) of chicken broth (or as much as you need)
2 large potatoes, cut into cubes

For the finishing:
1 egg yolk
Ladleful of cream
Some minced parsley

Directions

In a large casserole or saucepan, sauté the onion very gently in the butter until soft, making sure that the onion does not brown. Add the carrot and celery and continue sautéing for a minute or two more. Then add the chicken pieces, turning them in the butter for a few minutes, just until the meat stiffens a bit. Add enough broth to cover, nestle the bouquet garni among the chicken pieces, and simmer, covered, until the chicken meat is done. The cooking time will vary according to the size and type of meat. Twenty or 30 minutes will do for chicken tenders (boneless, skinned chicken thighs) while chicken breasts, for example, will take much less time, probably no more than 10-15 minutes at the most. Add the potato cubes to cook along with the chicken and vegetables about 15 minutes before the chicken is done.

Turn of the heat, and remove the chicken pieces and the bouquet garni from the pot. When the chicken has cooled off a bit, cut it into bite-sized pieces. (If using bone-in chicken pieces, bone them before cutting up the meat.) Discard the bouquet garni.

Meanwhile, whisk together the egg yolk and the cream in a bowl. Then whisk in a bit of the hot broth from the pot to 'temper' the mixture. (In other words, you are raising the temperature of the mixture—this helps prevent the egg from scrambling during the next step.) Then, stirring all the while, add the mixture to the pot. Bring the pot back to the simmer, stirring constantly, until the broth thickens enough to coat a spoon. The texture should be velvety but not too thick. Be careful not to let the broth come to a boil, or the egg may scramble.

Add the chicken pieces back into the pot, folding them gently into the sauce. Allow to simmer very gently for a minute or two to reheat the chicken.

Taste for seasoning and serve in heated bowls, garnished with a sprinkling of minced parsley.

NOTES: The traditional recipe calls for the use of a whole stewing hen, which is simmered in water for several hours. The bird is then removed and skinned only after cooking. You could also use a large whole chicken, which should take about an hour to cook. The longer cooking time produces a wonderfully rich sauce. My quick version above uses cut-up chicken pieces, which take only a fraction of the time to cook. I find that chicken thighs work best, as they have superior flavor, but those who prefer the breast, of course, are free to use it. To make up for the flavor deficit, though, be doubly sure to use some good, rich homemade chicken broth as indicated instead of water.

The waterzooï treatment can be made with rabbit instead of chicken and even with fish, and any number of other variations. As my friend's cookbook says, "throughout Flanders, one can find as many variations of waterzooï as there are church towers on the horizon."

You can make an ersatz version of waterzooï de poulet with the leftover chicken from making broth: Just simmer the aromatics in a bit of butter as indicated, add the broth, bring it to a simmer for a few minutes to cook the vegetables. Then thicken with egg and cream as indicated and add some cut up chicken meat. Leftovers never tasted so good...

Lamb Shanks «alla romana»

2011-03-25T15:28:00.002-04:00

Baby milk-fed lamb or abbacchio is one of the wonders of Roman cooking, in particular in the spring. Lamb that young is not often found in markets in our neck of the woods, but the same techniques work well with mature lamb as well. So the other day I took some lamb shanks I had in the freezer, braised them slowly until the meat was falling-off-the-bone tender, and finished them with flavorings typical of abbachio alla romana, Roman-Style Baby Lamb. The result was certainly different, but delicious all the same. I served the shanks with polenta, a combination perhaps more typical of America than Rome, but all the same it makes a fine combination for a piatto unico.

Ingredients (for 4 servings)

4 lamb shanks
1 garlic clove
1 sprig of rosemary
olive oil (or lard)
Salt and pepper
White wine

For the finish:
1-2 cloves of garlic
2-3 anchovy fillets
A spoonful or two white wine vinegar, enough to form a paste

Directions

Sauté the garlic and rosemary in olive oil (or lard) in a heavy casserole until the garlic has been ever so lightly browned and fragrant. Remove both the garlic and the rosemary from the pot.

Add the lamb shanks to the seasoned fat and brown them well on all sides. Season them generously with salt and pepper, turning all the while. Add a splash of white wine to the pot, turning the lamb shanks around once again to coat them well.

Then cover the pot tightly and lower the heat. Let the lamb shanks simmer, covered, until very tender, about 2-1/2 hours or so. Moisten from time time, as needed, with a bit more wine or water.

About 20 minutes before the lamb is done, mash together the garlic and anchovy finely, then add a bit of the vinegar, enough to form a loose paste. Add this mixture to the lamb and mix well. Then finish simmering the lamb.

Serve hot as a secondo. For a one-dish meal (but not in the usual Roman style but very nice all the same) accompany with some hot polenta.

NOTES: They say that meat is sweetest close to the bone, and lamb shanks are certainly evidence for that assertion. I don't recall shanks being served on their own in Rome, even if lamb was perhaps the favorite local meat. Rib chops, as is the iconic scottaditto, were, of course, very popular, but otherwise the whole baby lamb would be cut up into pieces and prepared just like this. Although shanks are particularly delicious prepared this way, the same method can be used with lamb stew meat or cut up lamb shoulder meat, or even with shoulder chops, adjusting times according. One hour should do fine for any of these other options.

In some recipes, chopped rosemary is added to the finishing paste, but personally I find that this gives it too strong a flavor. Many recipes call for sage as well as rosemary. Ada Boni, in her classic Talismano della Felicità, tells you to add the garlic, rosemary and sage, all chopped up, to the pot after you have browned the lamb pieces (in lard). If you want a stronger flavor, by the way, add the finishing paste only a
few minutes before the end or even at the very last minute. By the way, don't worry about the anchovies if you don't care for them—they melt into the sauce as the lamb simmers and lend a savory, but not at all fishy, note to the dish.

By the way, in Rome itself abbacchio alla romana is often called abbacchio alla cacciatora.

Bignè di san Giuseppe

2011-03-20T11:02:00.000-04:00

Being a Catholic country, Father's Day is Italy is celebrated on March 19, the feast of St. Joseph. The feast is associated with a number sweet and savory dishes, but none more so perhaps than the fancy, sweet version of zeppole usually called, appropriately enough, zeppole di san Giuseppe. Romans make their own homier version of this treat that they call bignè di san Giuseppe. Sweet zeppole are made with a cooked dough enriched with butter and eggs, formed into little balls and deep fried and, more often than not, filled with crema pasticcera or pastry cream. While savory zeppole have a firm, pizza-like consistency, these sweet bignè are soft and fluffy. It is funny to think that the typical Father's Day dish in Italy is not some he-man brontosaurus burger but, well... a cream puff!

Ingredients (for a plateful)

250ml water
100g butter
A pinch of salt
125g flour (pastry flour or all-purpose)
Sugar (at least a spoonful, more to taste)
4 eggs (or 2 whole eggs and 2 yolks)
Grated lemon zest (or a drop of limoncello) (optional)

For frying: vegetable oil, olive oil and/or lard

Confectioner's sugar
1 cup or more of pastry cream (optional: see Notes)

Directions

Bring the water, butter, sugar and salt to a simmer. Off heat, add all of the flour and whisk vigorously until the flour is well incorporated. Put the pot back on the heat and stir with a wooden spoon until the mixture breaks away from the sides of the pot and adheres to itself to form a ball-like mass. (This should be very quick and take only a few seconds.)

Remove the pot from the heat and let it cool off a bit. Then add the eggs, one by one, mixing well with a wooden spoon until each is well incorporated into the dough. Let the dough cool completely. It will be quite sticky and soft.

To fry your bignè, take two spoons and scoop up a spoonful of the dough with one of them. Then, passing the dough from one spoon to another, form a roundish little dough. (NB: It will be close to impossible to make perfectly round sphere with this wet dough.) Then flick your dough ball into the fat. Then proceed with the rest of the dough, until your skillet is filled (but not too crowded) with little bignè.

The fat should be only moderately hot at first. The dough balls will puff up almost as soon as they hit the oil. Nudge them gently as they fry. They will rotate very easily. When they have all lost their raw look and are nice and puffy, raise the heat and continue frying over high heat until the bignè are all golden brown. Remove them with a slotted spoon to a platter lined with paper towels or a baking grid to drain and cool. Repeat until you've used up all your dough.

If you have more dough to fry, remove the skillet to a cold burner to let it cool off a bit. (If you add your next batch to oil immediately, the oil will be too hot and the bignè will brown before they have a chance to puff up properly.) After a minute or two, you can add your next batch of bignè into the oil off heat, the oil will still be hot enough to start them cooking. Then put the skillet back on the flame and continue as for the previous batch.

After all your bignè are done, let them cool off completely. At this point, you can simply sprinkle them with powdered sugar and serve. Or, for a richer version, you can fill them first with crema pasticcera (see Notes). The easiest and best way to do this is to use a pastry syringe to inject the cream right into the center of each bignè, but if you don't have one—and I don't—then you can make do by slitting one side (the ugliest one) with a paring knife, very gingerly opening the resulting slit up a bit to reveal the insides of the bignè, and inserting a small spoonful of the cream. You can do this with a small spoon or a pastry bag. (Since I don't have a pastry bag, either, I use a makeshift one using a plastic sandwich bag with one corner cut off.) Place the bignè on your serving platter slit-side down, and continue with the others.

NOTES: Crema pasticcera, or pastry cream, is simply hot milk, usually flavored with some vanilla bean, thickened with egg yolks creamed together with sugar. These days, however, it is not unusual to use a bit of flour or cornstarch to do some of the thickening. This reduces the number of egg yolks you need and making the whole mixture more stable and less prone to curdling, at the cost of some richness. An illustrated, step-by-step recipe for the traditional version can be found here.

Most modern recipes will call for frying these bignè in olio di semi or vegetable oil. Older recipes use olive oil and even older ones lard. Personally, I use mostly canola oil mixed with some olive oil for flavor. For a (slightly) lighter version, bignè di san Giuseppe can also be made in the oven rather than fried, on lined cookie shett placed in a moderate oven (180°C/350°F) for about 20-30 minutes, or until golden brown.

The more common zeppole di san Giuseppe are made with essentially the same components put together in more elaborate way than these. The dough is formed into a kind of doughnut-like receptacle using a fluted pastry bag, deep-fried (or baked). They are then sprinkled with powdered sugar, the hole in the middle is filled with pastry cream (again with a fluted pastry bag) and topped with a bitter cherry or other candied berry. The resulting pastry looks like this:

Zuppa dei valdesi

2011-03-11T18:22:00.007-05:00

A reader who I'll call "Nancy T." wrote me recently to tell me about a dish called zuppa that her Piedmontese grandmother used to make. The word is one of several in Italian that mean 'soup' (see our Glossary for details). A zuppa is rustic soup, typically the kind that you are meant to have with bread, either dunk into it while you eat like the Neapolitan zuppa di pesce or laid at the bottom of your bowl before the soup is ladled on top like the Tuscan zuppa di porri. Nancy's grandmother's zuppa, on the other hand, is an example of the medieval practice of actually making zuppa out of leftover bread. In her zuppa, the slices of old bread are sautéed in butter and simmered with enough broth to cover and soften the bread while it cooks until it reaches the consistency of a pudding, reminiscent of the Tuscan pappa al pomodoro without the tomato.

Nancy asked if I had ever heard of her grandmother's zuppa. I hadn't but the recipe intrigued me—and it also sounded delicious! After a bit of digging, I found what I think is the traditional Piedmontese recipe for her grandmother's dish. The full name is zuppa dei valdesi, also known in the local dialect as supa barbetta, and it comes from the valli valdesi, an area consisting of three valleys near Torino. The dish is a typical example of cucina povera, showing how, with a little imagination, the humblest of ingredients can be turned into exquisite eating.

Ingredients (for 4-6 people)

500g (1/2 lb.) stale bread or grissini
100g (3-1/2 oz.) grated cheese (see Notes)
100g (1/2 cup) butter (or more, to taste)
1 liter (4 cups) chicken (or vegetable) broth, or as much as you need.
Nutmeg, cloves and/or cinnamon, to taste
Salt, if needed

Directions

Break up the old bread (or grissini) into pieces. Sauté them gently in half the butter until lightly brown on all sides. Season with one or more of the spices, mixing a few times to ensure that the bread is evenly coated, then add enough broth to cover. Simmer the bread in the broth, covered, for about 15-20 minutes, or until the bread has softened and the broth has been completed absorbed by the bread. (You should add a bit more broth if needed to keep the bread moist.)

When the bread is done simmering, taste it and adjust for seasoning. Top with the grated cheese and the other half of the butter, which you will have melted separately.

You can serve your zuppa just like this, but for extra flavor, put the zuppa in a hot oven (200°C/400°F) for about 10 minutes until golden brown on top. Or just pass it under a broiler for a few minutes. Serve immediately.

NOTES: Now here is the way that Nancy describes her grandmother's zuppa:

For us, typically after bagna cauda, when we have leftover bread, and it gets a little dry, we make this dish (unless, of course, we wait too long and the bread is like a brick). I slice the loaves into about 1" slices. Then, in a large pan, add "a nice piece of butter", as my grandmother would say. 3-4 Tablespoons. After the butter melts, the bread gets arranged, and it browns in the butter. It's turned over, adding more butter, of course. Meanwhile, I've got about 6-8 cups of chicken broth heating up in a pot behind the bread pan. When the bread's been turned and had a chance to brown a little, I start adding the broth, gradually. Kind of like risotto. When about half of the broth is absorbed, the bread gets turned again, and more broth added. In the end, I usually flip them once more.

The recipe today is usually a bit more upscale, made with those ubiquitous bread sticks called grissini, but Nancy T'.'s grandmother's version using stale bread is actually how the soup was originally made. In the old days, they often layered the bread with Savoy cabbage and let it simmer slowly for a few hours by the fire. There are also recipes that call for some sautéed onion. One rather extravagant version calls for cured pork and various herbs (bay leaf, rosemary, sage) interspersed between the layers of cabbage and bread.

The cheese would typically be Toma, a semi-hard cow's milk Piedmontese (and French) cheese, but if you can't find it, parmesan or grana padano would do. Or you could go for an Alpine cheese such as fontina, gruyère or Emmenthal.

Nancy recommends washing down this dish with some good, full-bodied red wine, and I would, too. It may be simple but—especially if you are generous with the cheese and butter—it is quite hearty.

There is little doubt that this dish is quite ancient in its origins. According to Anne del Conte in The Gastronomy of Italy:

Of all foods, zuppa is the most obvious inheritance from the feudal system centered on the castle. The lords and ladies ate what was considered noble food. The servants made use of the leftovers from the high table, which included large slices of bread that had been used instead of plates to hold meat, fish and other food, and to these they added herbs, wild plants and water, the result being cooked at length.

The zuppe of the 15th and 16th centuries were very thick, made with toasted bread layered with other ingredients, often cheese, sugar and spices, and then placed in the oven.

The valdesi, by the way, were the followers of a religious movement known as valdismo that began in the 12th century. It preached the virtue of humility and poverty, much like the Franciscans in Umbria who came shortly after them, and I suppose this 'poor' soup reflects those values. Unlike the Franciscans, however, they eventually broke with the Catholic Church. The Chiesa Evangelica Valdese still exists today and have a large place of worship in Rome among other places. They are known for their progressive social views, promoting, among other things, gay and reproductive rights, stem-cell research, the right to die and secular government. William Paca, one of the signers of the US Declaration of Independence, belonged to the movement. The US branch of the movement merged into the Presbyterian Church in the late 19th century.