Kevin72

I didn't find that it was much in the way of flavor; more a color/visual thing when you mix it in with the pasta. Go easy on the amount you put in; like bbq says 2 teaspoons at the most would be enough. It's very potent. Make sure you don't work the dough on a surface that stains easily/permanently and have flour on hand.

Great job Nathan! Quite a start to the month already.

"Put the meats to the butter, fryingly."

Oh, and finally, maybe another map could get posted? One of the region and then one of where it is in Italy? I did a cursory search yesterday and found a few maps of Lombardia, but all had the copyright symbol on them and I didn't want to chance it.

Voting is still open for March, but I'd like to get it settled soon. Again, the strong leaning is towards Friuli, so that will most likely be the region. The question at this point is whether or not to do another two-fer and include Trentino-Alto-Adige in there, as well. Once March hits and I start a new thread for that region, we'll also start voting for Q2 and get that locked up. To avoid cluttering these threads, maybe it's best to PM me your votes. From time to time I'll do an update in the thread and bring ideas to the group.

So this month's thread will begin the topic of the cooking and cuisine of Lombardia, due east of Piemonte. Obviously, Milan is the best-known city of the region, which also offers the Lake district along its northern and western borders. Like many of the far Northern regions of Italy, Lombardia embraces risotto as its primo of choice. There is, of course, the famous, saffron-tinged risotto alla Milanese (another dish with many conflicting stories of its origin), the sine qua non accompaniment to osso bucco alla Milanese. The common theme I've run across in the limited cookbook literature I have on Lombardia is that there is a definite juxtaposition of the cooking of Milan and then the cooking of the rest of Lombardia. Milan's cooking is more about convenience, getting things done quickly, and has come to embrace global traditions and cuisines. Surrounding Lombardia, though, bears more in common with Piemonte and the Veneto, utilizing lots of sturdy braises and other hearty, slow-cooked countryside fare. So, as I've said, I'm not aware of much out there, cookbook-wise, that is devoted exclusively to this region, at least in the U.S. I'm sure more industrious and thorough eG'ers will prove me wrong, though, so don't disappoint me! Hopefully Hathor will venture along in a bit and hit us with another excellent regional writeup like she gave us for Piemonte. Let's do it!

Fellow eG'er Swiss_Chef had a number of interesting threads posted on his experiences in Piemonte this past month: Grasping Grappa Continued Cooking and Eating in the Piemonte Changing Times in the Piemonte Returning to Piemonte

Thanks. I have an unbelievable amount of my homemade mostarda left from Emilia Romagna; hopefully that stuff keeps a while. I didn't get the brand of cotechino I use but it's got to be some industrial maker like Molinari, I'm sure. Good stuff; you should check it out soon. What about another combo region? There's a number of similar recipes between the two. Doing twofers each month isn't something I want to trap us in; however, I'm worried that there may not be enough out there on T-A-A to sustain a whole month's worth of cooking and it may feel a bit redundant with Friuli, or vice versa.

I attempted a similar dish to the stradette one time using a high percentage of cornmeal in the mix and they came out very fragile, even though it was a fine cornmeal as well. I had to cut them into short, wide noodles instead of long thin ones to get them to work. Then I sauced them with a spicy boar ragu. Good stuff. The meal looks great. Again, it's so great to have this collaborative effort going because other posters invariably get to recipes that catch my eye but I didn't have time to try--the guinea hen, in this case. Wonder if salt-crusting would work as well?

Thanks to everyone for the ongoing encouragement and discussions throughout the year. It was a lot of fun being able to share this with all of you, discuss variations on dishes, new ways to do it, new resources to search for. The thread wouldn’t have been even half what it was without your input and probably wouldn’t have made it as far without everyone sharing. The new thread, and the direction it appears to be taking, is a great extension of that and has far exceeded my expectations. Everyone’s doing a great job and I’m really looking forward to extending my stay and learning from you all! Thanks to my wife for her patience and support (particularly while she sat at the table waiting for me to snap 10 different shots of the same dish!). Every meal I make is a tribute and inspiration to her; I can’t conceptualize a dish without imaging her expression when she tries it for the first time. Thanks to Italy, for, well, being Italy: home to the most comforting, honest, inspiring, appetizing, welcoming food on Earth. ~Finito~

Thread Index January: Friuli Venezia-Giulia February: The Veneto March: Liguria April: Rome May: Puglia June: Abruzzo July: Sicily August: Calabria/Basilicata September: Umbria/Le Marche October: Tuscany November: Emilia-Romagna December: Campania January: Piemonte/Val d'Aosta

Here is the long-promised Bibliography of the preceding 13 months of cooking. I have tried to be as thorough and accurate as possible in recounting which resources were used, but there may have been some oversights and omissions. Fullest apologies if there are. Bastianich, Lidia (1990). La Cucina di Lidia: Recipes and Memories from Italy’s Adriatic Coast. New York: Broadway Books. Batali, Mario (1998). Simple Italian Food: Recipes from My Two Villages. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc. Batali, Mario (2000). Holiday Food. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc. Batali, Mario (2005). Molto Italiano: 327 Simple Italian Recipes to Cook at Home. New York: ECC, An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Batali, Mario (1996-1999; 2000-2004). Molto Mario. New York: Food Network Television Show. Boni, Ada, translated by Maria Langdale and Ursula Whyte (1969). Italian Regional Cooking. New York: Crescent Books/a Random House Company, Inc. (1994 ed.) Bugiali, Giuliano (1992). Giuliano Bugiali’s Foods of Tuscany. New York: Stewart, Tabori, & Chang. Callen, Anna Teresa (1998). Food and Memories of Abruzzo: Italy’s Pastoral Land. New York: Hungry Minds, Inc. de Blasi, Marlena (1997). Regional Foods of Northern Italy: Recipes and Remembrances. Rocklin, CA: Prima Publishing. de Blasi, Marlena (1999). Regional Foods of Southern Italy. New York: Viking/Penguin Publishing, LTD. della Croce, Julia (2002). Umbria: Regional Recipes from the Heartland of Italy. San Francisco: Chronicle Books. de Mane, Erica (2004). The Flavors of Southern Italy. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Downie, David. (2002). Cooking the Roman Way: Authentic Recipes from the Home Cooks and Trattorias of Rome. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Field, Carol (1985). The Italian Baker. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Granof, Victoria (2001). Sweet Sicily: The Story of an Island and Her Pastries. New York: ReganBooks/An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Hazan, Marcella (1973). The Classic Italian Cook Book. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. (1979 Ed.) Hazan, Marcella (1997). Marcella Cucina. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Jenkins, Nancy Harmon (1997). Flavors of Puglia: Traditional Recipes from the Heel of Italy’s Boot. New York: Broadway Books. Johns, Pamela Sheldon (1997). Parmigiano! 50 New & Classic Recipes with Parmigiano-Reggiano Cheese. Berkley, CA: Ten Speed Press. Johns, Pamela Sheldon (2000). Italian Food Artisans: Traditions and Recipes. San Francisco: Chronicle Books. Kasper, Lynne Rossetto (1992). The Splendid Table: Recipes from Emilia-Romagna, the Heartland of Northern Italian Food. New York: Morrow Cookbooks/ HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Kasper, Lynne Rossetto (1999). The Italian Country Table: Home Cooking from Italy’s Farmhouse Kitchens. New York: Scribner Kramer, Matt (1997). A Passion For Piedmont: Italy’s most Glorious Regional Table. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc. Luongo, Pino (1998). A Tuscan in the Kitchen: Recipes and Tales from My Home. New York: Clarkson N Potter, Inc. Maresca, Tom and Darrow, Diane (1994). The Seasons of the Italian Kitchen. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press. Maresca, Tom and Darrow, Diane (1988). La Tavola Italiana (A Common Reader Edition, 1998). Pleasantville, NY: The Akadine Press. Martin, Damiano (2003) The Da Fiore Cookbook: Recipes from Venice’s Best Restaurant. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Negrin, Micol (2002). Rustico: Regional Italian Country Cooking. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc. Palmer, Mary Amabile (1997). Cucina di Calabria: Treasured Recipes and Family Traditions from Southern Italy. New York: Hippocrene Books, Inc (2004 ed.) Piras, Claudia and Medagliani, Eugenio (Eds) (2000). Culinaria Italy. Cologne: Culinaria Konemann. Plotkin, Fred (1997). Recipes from Paradise: Life and Food on the Italian Riviera. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company. Plotkin, Fred (2001). La Terra Fortunata: The Splendid Food and Wine of Friuli Venezia-Giulia. New York: Broadway Books. Roden, Claudia (1989). Claudia Roden’s The Food Of Italy: Region by Region. South Royalton, VT: Steerforth Press (2003 Ed.). Root, Waverly. (1971). The Food of Italy. New York: Atheneum (Vintage Books Edition, 1992) Schiavelli, Vincent (2002). Many Beautiful Things: Stories and Recipes from Polizzi Generosa. New York: Simon & Schuster. Scicolone, Michele (2001). Italian Holiday Cooking: A Collection of 150 Treasured Italian Recipes. New York: Morrow Cookbooks/ HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Schwartz, Arthur (1998). Naples at Table: Cooking in Campania. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Spieler, Marlena (1997). The Islands in the Sun Cookbook. Los Angeles: Lowell House. Steingarten, Jeffrey (2002). It Must’ve Been Something I Ate: The Return of the Man Who Ate Everything. New York: Alfred A Knopf, Inc. Willinger, Faith (1996). Red, White, and Greens: Italy’s Way With Vegetables. New York: Harper Perennial/HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Wolfert, Paula (2003). The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen: Recipes for the Passionate Cook. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

So, ordering the regions by favorite: 1. Emilia-Romagna 2. Sicily 3. Rome 4. Tuscany 5. Naples/Campania 6. Puglia 7. Friuli Venezia-Giulia 8. Venice/The Veneto 9. Liguria 10. Umbria 11. Piemonte 12. Calabria 13. Abruzzo 14. Le Marche 15. Basilicata 16. Val d’Aosta With the bonus month and a number of double-headers, there wound up being only four regions left out. All four, to my observation, lack a depth of cooking literature on them (in the U.S., at least) other than the requisite chapter in regional treatments, which was a major consideration in their omission. • Of the four, the one I most regret not getting to is Sardinia, which I could probably get a month out of by culling all my resources together. I even debated extending this thread by one more month still to get it in there, but then decided that was pushing it too far. Hopefully it will get a nod in this year’s threads. • Lombardia is home to a number of classic dishes in the Italian repertoire, and Waverly Root’s chapter on this region in Food of Italy is one of the best. Unfortunately, it has the misfortune of being surrounded by three other regions with towering cuisines of their own: Piemonte, the Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna. I'm glad to see that it's the next region up for February; however, I'll have to enjoy the region by proxy and see what everyone else does instead of cook it myself; we're kicking off the diet in earnest this coming month and I'm on sabbatical from the stove. • Trentino Alto-Adige probably could and should have been affixed to either the Veneto or Friuli’s cooking months, but both are such heavyweights in their own right that it would have been hard to make room. T-A-A is one of the last regions to have joined Italy and a couple of authors I’ve read, notably Marlena di Blasi, dismiss it at too Germanic or Austrian: in fact di Blasi leaves out of her Northern Italian cookbook entirely. • Molise, recently separated from Abruzzo, is practically nonexistent in the cooking literature I have. It gets a sidebar recipe in Culinaria: Italy (a ragu made with goat meat). Di Blasi again dismisses it in her Southern Italian cookbook, telling readers interested in the region to just cook something from the mountainous part of Campania for the best approximation. Root’s chapter on Abruzzo-Molise sticks only with Abruzzo and is woefully short still.

Pure self-indulgent geekery to follow; read at your own risk. Observations and reflections on the year: Most Fun month: Sicily. I was absolutely giddy when I started cooking from this region in July, and a number of times just found myself grinning widely while cooking as one new, exciting, enticing aroma after another filled my kitchen. Every dish and meal was an adventure; I got a chance to cook a lot of stuff I was always curious about and try a number of new and different flavors. Biggest Surprise: Liguria. I originally chose an abbreviated month, March (our trip to Italy took up the first half), to do Liguria since I originally figured I’d run out of things to cook. Instead, after reading Fred Plotkin’s Recipes From Paradise, I found myself with a whole bounty of dishes I never even got to get to. Very light, fragrant, and delicate: you can definitely see how the Mediterranean Cooking boom of the ‘90s had a number of influences from this region. It’s perfect spring and summer cooking and will definitely get added to my roster of go-to regions. Most unusual: Friuli Venezia-Giulia. About the furthest I’ve gone from Italian cooking that could still be called Italian. Horseradish, sauerkraut, baked ham in pastry crust, rye bread dumplings, plums, gulasch. . . . but yet no heavy-handedness, lots of delicate flavors and restraint running through each dish. Now that we’re back in the winter I find myself nostalgic for that month and wanting to start there all over again. Biggest Frustration: Tuscany. Nothing endemic to the region itself, just a mid-month run of bad luck caused me to botch a bunch of dishes that I’ve done before and know could’ve been standouts. It started and ended well enough, but in between I just kept screwing up. Biggest Disappointment: Abruzzo. I’ll own up to the fact that I probably didn’t give this region its full due since from mid-June on I was chomping at the bit to get to Sicily. Too, I messed up some of the key traditional dishes. And it was unseasonably hot, which really sapped the appetite for some of the more robust fare. Hathor very astutely pointed out once that so many of the simple, rural cuisines (Puglia, Abruzzo, Umbria) don’t travel well because they are so dependent on local ingredients. That said, there’s not much out there on this region, supposedly home to some of Italy’s best cooks, and by month’s end I was really scraping the bottom for things to cook. Favorite Meals: The Bologna Kickoff Meal, with Tagliatelle al’ Ragu, is always a favorite. Just about all of the Sicily meals. The “chili assault” meal that began the Calabria/Basilicata month. These two antipasti meals from Puglia (one,two). Rome’s fried artichokes, bucatini all’amatriciani, and lamb scotaditti. Real Fetuccini Alfredo needs to be carefully monitored, regulated, and distributed by some sort of neutral medical board. The baked ham in crust, fricco, and gnocchi di cjalson is a perfect example of Friulian cooking. The Valentine’s Menu from Venice, and also the Scallop Frittata, Baked Spaghetti and shrimp, and sea bass in potato crust . Despite the baccala drama, the Vigilia meal is worth the anticipation and effort. Umbria’s rib meal is a must for us right around the start of fall. My wife wants me to make piadine again, soon. I quite enjoyed our St. Joseph's Day Ligurian repast. La Fiorentina never fails to satisfy, provided I don’t scorch the hell out of it. Worst, biggest mistakes, frustrations, etc: The shriveled, tough baked portabello cap I made earlier this month for my Piemontese antipasti meal. The duck from Abruzzo dish from my birthday was flabby, fatty, undercooked, and lacked any depth of flavor despite the number of herbs rubbed on it. The "soft, softer, softest of all" lamb that was rock hard from a critical mistake on my part, also from Abruzzo. These chestnut gnocchi, made with rancid chestnut flour, were probably the worst single thing I made all year: we didn’t even make it through the first serving! The Ligurian fritters that were leaden and absorbed an obscene amount of oil when frying. The cod that fell apart when it hit the oil for the Christmas Eve meal. The fritters and mushroom torta from my Puglia meal attempting to recreate Tempo Perso’s food. From my “October Curse” in Tuscany: undercooked quail with tough pancetta and bland polenta; the bitter, hard, first attempt at panforte, the game hens with a lovingly made marsala and lemon sauce that vaporized to nothing in a too-hot oven (conversely, however, the mushroom papardelle that began the meal were a favorite from the month).

The last meal. I chose for this one not something so extravagant, but a perfect example of why I love Italian food, culture, and cooking so: pasta with leftovers. I saved a bit of the brassato and a bit of the lamb from earlier in the month in my freezer, reconstituted them a bit with white wine and broth, augmented them with peas, and tossed them with buttery tajarin noodles, then topped the whole with grated parmigiano. Suddenly, what would have been a mundane meal of leftovers for the third night in a row becomes wholly different. A new way to celebrate the same food again. And that’s what’s great about Italian food.

Sunday night’s meal was a little celebration with my wife and I: seven years together. The items were not so much strictly Piemontese, but definitely inspired by the region. We started with a gratin of the leftover peppers and cardoons from the previous night. I layered the vegetables with some leftover bagna cauda, then topped the whole with béchamel and baked for 20 minutes in a very hot oven. The next was a “ravioloni” stuffed with blue cheese and topped with mostarda. To lighten up the pungent punch of the blue, I mixed in ricotta as well. There was also just a little bit of butter and broth cooked together to moisten the pasta. Last was duck breast “martini style”, in a nod again to Piemonte being the home of vermouth. The duck breast was marinated overnight with white wine, ample juniper berries, and thyme, then seared, outside again on the cast iron skillet atop the burner attachment on my grill. A pan sauce was made with the strained marinade, a little broth, shallots, butter, and ample dry vermouth. Here’s another region where I’ve really given the short end to desserts, and this time, it’s not for lack of recipes. We’re still living off of Christmas cookies!

This weekend, I did a couple of blowout feasts to wrap up the whole project and celebrate the final meals. Saturday night was a dinner party with work friends and I decided to mark the occasion with that dish which epitomizes both refined dining and comforting, familial feasting at once: bollito misto. But, first, to start the meal, bagna cauda, the “hot bath” of olive oil, butter, anchovies, and garlic that you then dip the region’s famed grissini (breadsticks) and raw vegetables into. (It was then served in little individual bowls, not out of that pot). Here again, note the favored flavors of the Piemontese worked into the dish: garlic and anchovies. And yes, if available, the whole is then blanketed with truffle shavings. I used Matt Kramer’s recipe for the most part as the basis of the recipe. Kramer advocates cooking the dish very slowly for an hour to really tame the rough garlic flavors and suffuse the butter and oil with the rich flavors. He also, as with the garlic soup, urges what I think is far too much garlic: one head per person! I went with a head and half for 6 people and it was plenty. As I have a gas burner and have troubles getting it to a low enough temp to not scorch the garlic, I instead put the pot in an oven on the “keep warm” setting: 160F. Having made this a couple times before, I find that all the butter and olive oil kind of weigh things down, even with garlic and anchovies in there to perk the dish up, so I add just a splash of vinegar to liven up the dish. Interestingly, Kramer gives a variation with red wine in his book, so maybe (well hopefully at least) I’m not so far off base with that flourish. So there’s the grissini in the back (brutto, like Hathor’s!) then carrots, red pepper, and steamed cardoons. Most recipes call for them to be raw, but no way that would work with the big, fibrous monsters we get here. I gotta say, cardoons just aren’t doing it for me. I vastly prefer artichokes (my favorite vegetable, in fact); these just aren’t worth all the effort, and when cooked they have a somewhat unpleasant, limpid, vaguely metallic flavor, unlike the nutty sweetness of artichokes. So, the bollito misto and primo. While bollito misto is considered at its best and most extravagant in Piemonte, I added some tweaks from Emilia-Romagna. For the primo: angolotti in brodo. I don’t think it’s traditional to serve them in a broth; maybe at the most you reduce a flavorful stock and sauce them, or even more typically, they are sauced with butter and sage. Mario Batali has said that some ristoranti in Piemonte only serve them in a kerchief, no sauce at all! These were obviously made shortly after Thanksgiving, back when I was doing Emilia-Romagna: the filling was leftover roasted capon and some of the roasted veal from earlier in that month, as well, along with either prosciutto or mortadella, and parmigiano. Okay, so, really, these aren’t even agnolotti; except that I did make the dough with only egg yolks. And the broth, obviously, is from the bollito. My version of bollito misto, which has evolved over time to be some feast we make during the Holidays, leaves out the more exotic ingredients: calves’ head or tongue, though I was tempted on the latter given FoodMan and azereus’s successes with it this past month. Still, it would have been a tough sell on everyone at the party, my wife included. What does go into mine: beef (chuck steak this time; I find that beef is always the weakest player in the bollito), cotechino, pork spareribs that have been separately blanched to leach out some of their fat, and Cornish game hens. Normally, capon is called for in a bollito, but even my stockpot isn’t big enough to hold one of those monsters, and I’m not splurging for one just to boil it. To accompany the meats: balsamic syrup and salsa verde, which I make with mustard, chives, mint, fennel fronds, vinegar, capers, and olive oil. Tastes outstanding with the game hens in particular. This is a really, really good dish. Like the equally mythic ragu Bolognese, I first read about this in Marcella Hazan’s Classic Italian Cookbook and it fascinated me from the start; her intro for the recipe goes on a couple of pages, and she quotes lavishly from “The Passionate Epicure” to make her point as to how far beyond the name of the dish the final product really goes. It’s fun to always introduce it by calling it “boiled meat” to guests and then watch them get won over after hearing such a plain title. The cotechino has, every time, been the standout hit of the meal and there’s always a tense moment when there’s only a couple slices left. After the meal, a tart salad of bitter greens is a must to get the digestion going. I tossed fennel slices (a known digestive aid) and oranges in with radicchio and arugula and a balsamic vinaigrette. Finally, inspired by the many great attempts at Hazelnut cake on the Piemonte thread, I gave it a spin myself, this one being the chocolate variation in Kramer’s book. I used baking powder, though, instead of yeast which Kramer goes for. This wasn’t too dry, either, but the chocolate did dominate and wash out the hazelnut flavors. I had originally intended to serve it with zabaglione as posters have done on the other thread, but ran out of time and stovetop space.

Last week I tried the Valpellinentze soup from Val d’Aosta that Eden and NathanP attempted earlier this month on the Piemonte/Val d’Aosta thread. Both mentioned being worried about how well leftovers would hold up, and recalling not-too-fondly how long my bread soup lasted when I made it in Tuscany, I made essentially a cabbage soup separately with onion, butter, cinnamon, a huge head of cabbage, and four smoked pork shanks to flavor the dish. It was then just ladled over more of the whole grain bread I made earlier this month and topped with fontina. If I had ovenproof bowls, I most certainly would have broiled these to get a nice browned cheese topping: So again, not so appealing looking. It’s not found everywhere, but a couple of recipes recommend adding red wine at the very end of cooking and I think it really livened up the dish’s long-cooked, muted flavors. In the time it took me to take pictures of the dish and then get it to the table, the bread had soaked up all the broth, so it actually had a similar effect to baking the whole thing as with the authentic recipes. And the bread's flavors, too, go very well with the soup and lent their sturdy, almost smokey flavors to the dish.

Oh, and to narrow things a bit, right now the clear preference for March's region is towards either Friuli or Trentino.

How was the Barolo, Marco? I was at a wine shop in Dallas here over the weekend and saw a $19 bottle of Barolo. I'd never seen it that cheap before and was too afraid to buy it. FoodMan, the brassato looks great! I use butter to enrich my sauce, also.

Thanks to Alberto for the thread change, and thanks to everyone for their input on taking this project in new directions. Minor point of clarification: the next thread for February will be "The Cooking and Cuisine of Lombardia". Let's also get the region for March sealed over in the next week, also.

Brilliant! Did you make that term up? More bagna cauda? Great meal and pics, Nathan. I was worried when reading this and saw you putting the truffles into the meat and cooking it that they wouldn't carry through in the final dish. Glad that they did; and I liked that they went in raw to the sauce at the end for two different flavor layers.

By the way, the pages are moving so fast that I barely get a chance to weigh in on what everyone's making, but it's all solid. And the photos are just perfect; right out of a cookbook. April's three antipasti would look right at home in Kramer's cookbook, Pontormo's putting me to shame with the feasts she's cranking out every other night, and the zabaglione experiments all look elegant and enticing.

I quite like the flavor of radicchio with chestnuts . . . maybe a red wine and radicchio risotto with the chestnut custard? Never noticed the Italian Bookstore link on Amazon before.

You mean offer reviews, thoughts, etc?