Kevin72

Another essential ingredient when cooking from Emilia-Romagna is their full-flavored brodo. One of the great smells to fill the house with, particularly at this time of year. When went to Emilia Romagna for our honeymoon, we stayed at Villa Gaidello, the farmstead near Modena that Lynne Rossetto Kasper mentions copiously in Splendid Table. It was a rainy, cold, miserable day, and we had had to walk from the train station in town to the farmstead since all the cabs in town were in Bologna for a huge business convention. Finally, exhausted, we trudged into the courtyard and the main house at Villa Gaidello. We opened the door and out wafted the smell of rich, luxurious brodo being cooked for that night’s dinner. Just the smell was a restorative. Normally what goes into a brodo in Emilia Romagna is capon, but they are too expensive and too rare here to just toss in a pot. Kasper recommends using turkey wings which amalgamate the best flavors of white and dark meat and that’s what I use:

Last night’s meal began with a mushroom soup: Though most recipes I’ve seen don’t call for pureeing the mushrooms and instead leave them whole, I did grow up on good ol’ cream of mushroom soup and can’t quite get away from that texture. Regular cremini mushrooms are given an added punch by a couple of packets of dried porcini mushrooms. I topped the soup with some pan-seared trumpet royales. We continued with balsamic-glazed chicken, a perennial favorite recipe from Mario’s older shows, and mashed potatoes. When we went to Bologna we had mashed potatoes a couple of times, but there they were much creamier, almost more a puree, and redolent of ample olive oil. I tried replicating that here.

Saturday night’s meal with some work friends began with gnocco fritto, fried puffs of dough that you then spread with a soft cheese (robiola) or cured meats. The heat of the gnocco, just out of the frier (or being kept warm in the oven) melts the topping a little and it melds in. Mine were a little too crispy, though. We continued with pumpkin risotto. I had saved some of the pumpkin soup from when I made it at Halloween (froze it, of course!) and then swirled that it with the broth for the risotto to make a double-whammy of pumpkin flavor. The main was pork braised in milk. This is another dish from all over Italy, and truth be told it seems fairly Roman in origin to me, but I always relate it to the richness of Emilia-Romagna and it comfortably fits in with their traditional dishes. The sauce, consisting of the cooked down, curdled milk solid melded with the pork juices, is rather hideous (and thus not pictured), but it’s the best part! One of my favorite recipes. The contorno was an “autumn medley” of fennel, apples, and celeriac, braised with broth and butter. I've noticed that as the months get cooler, the food gets much less photogenic. All those muted earth tone vegetables, and braises kind of make for a dull picture I guess. The dessert was zuppa inglese, the Italian take on English trifle: ladyfingers layered between chocolate and vanilla custards. No pics; it was delicious but not very cooperative for the camera.

In Splendid Table, Lynne Rossetto Kasper mentions a number of different variants including dried mushrooms and chicken livers. I guess this is further evidence to broaden this topic to include all manner of ragus, since the classic Bolognese doesn't seem to have the mushrooms, livers, or red wine elements.

Another topic I forgot to mention: tomatoes vs. tomato paste. Marcella goes for the canned tomatoes in her recipe and that's my preference, but many others advocate the tomato paste route. When I had it in Bologna I think they used paste for that restaurant's recipe as well since it was very full-on and meaty in flavor.

I've done that the past few times I've made it. I even made a batch one year and froze it in tupperware containers to give away as gifts. Just found one of them from two years ago buried at the bottom of my freezer. The red wine is something that I cringe at. I think it'd be too strong a flavor in there and not blend in the way white does. It crossed my mind when I was making the topic last night. I'm open to that, though I don't think I can edit the title anymore. Maybe Alberto or another mod can rename the thread to a more generic "Italian Ragu Thread" title or something . . .

Wednesday night we started out with an antipasto of sautéed pears with prosciutto, from Splendid Table: We then had for the main, bomba di riso, a specialty of parma. It’s a baked “dome” of rice stuffed with a wild pigeon ragu. My lazy, midweek cooking version: I lacked a bowl suitable to go into the oven so I baked it in a springform pan, and instead of the pigeon I braised some skinless chicken thighs and then shredded them up. I also made an additional filling of peas, ham, and mushrooms to form a bottom layer.

Purists may want to avert their eyes for this post. So, aceto balsamico. One of Emilia Romagna's holy triumvirate of artisinal products, and certainly the one that takes the longest to make. I have never even had the real deal, the vinegar aged in casks for decades to a syrupy consistency. It's hard enough to find in Dallas, and the couple times I have seen it it was obviously in the stratosphere, price-wise. What intrigues me most about the real, legitimate product is the consistency. I've splurged on some of the higher-end commercial bottles, and friends and family have bought me similar products back from Italy, but none have that tell-tale thickness. So every time, am I just getting artificially flavored syrup? To replicate the consistency, and maybe add another level of intensity to the flavor, I've taken up a little trick (Mario advocates a similar approach but I thought of it separately I swear!): buy a couple bottles of decent commercial balsamic (I like Colavita's), then reduce them in a pan over low heat along with trebbiano wine (trebbiano grapes are the base for the real product) and a pinch of brown sugar, as Kasper directs you to add with commercial stuff. Yeah, the whole house gets pretty pungent. After four hours on low heat though, here's what you get: Truth be told, mine got a little over-reduced and “cooked” tasting, but this is the first time it hasn’t turned out really well. I am certainly not claiming this subs for the real deal, or even decent facsimiles, but when the best access you have is to the thin, watery commercial kind, this adds a nice new layer and makes something better than it has any right to be.

Thanks again for the shout out! Looks great. So it sounded like you've only recently started making pasta . . . ? That pasta rack in your pic reminds me that my mom has one of those at home that she once offered me when I relieved her of her own hand-cranked pasta machine. I didn't have room for it at the time, but now with a house it may be a good time to track it down. Getting tired of having to drag chairs in from the dining room and drape the sheets over their backs.

Now that the image is up, I think that brushing with the egg is certainly the way to go to get the texture you're after. I forgot to do it with the mushroom torta and it was kinda dry, too (though the filling soaked in some in subsequent days in the fridge). The lard on the top from the recipe helps it get browner.

So, I recently cooked what is certainly one of my favorite single dishes in the Italian repertoire, Ragu Bolognese. Seems to have generated lots of interest and cooking. And certainly this is not to try to move the discussion out of my Year of Cooking thread, but I just thought that such a heavyweight deserved its own topic. So, let's do this. Anything at all ragu bolognese related: Historical facts, debates, etc. Where is the best version you've had in Italy? Elsewhere? What version do you use? What meats do you use? Anything unusual in your version? Anything off limits that drive you nuts when you see it in other recipes? How long do you cook it? What pastas do you serve it with? Stand-alone meal or part of a full feast? I want a good, clean fight folks.

Spain? How random.

La Cucina Di Lidia, by Lidia Bastianich, has a whole section on how to make prosciutto. I know the first answer is that you lay it in salt, no brining.

Huh, you're right it isn't working. I'll post last night's dinner later. I usually have a problem with that folded up part in a corner, also. One thing that really helps with the flakiness I've found (not to assume you didn't do this) is to brush the top with beaten egg. I keep thinking it's superflous but everytime I've done it it adds a wonderful new texture to the pie, soaks into the crust and keeps it more moist, and reduces the whole flaky thing.

Italy, specifically, Emilia-Romagna. Or Spain, since it's white hot in the culinary world right now.

I've followed the thread on it over on the Food Media board and checked it out on Amazon. My only hesitation, and this is not a knock on the book itself, is that with cookbooks I really like the writeups and intros and backgrounds on each recipe. I just glaze over when I get a cookbook and it's just one recipe after another, and from what I saw on the Amazon samples, that's pretty much how this book is laid out. I think maybe that's why I struggled with Bugiali's Tuscan cookbook: while he does do an intro to a group of recipes, he doesn't say much after that and I just lose interest.

Ha, I do that too! I said this a few months back, but the more familiar I am with a cuisine, the more experimenting I do. I was pretty precise and even measured ingredients when I was doing, say, Friuli, but with places like E-R, I skim the directions real quick, make sure I have all the right ingredients, and then go to town. But even then I don't always get it exact: that erbazzone had a whole bunch of extra steps at the end that I totally missed. Not that the final product suffered any. And I was precooking some stuff for tonight and as I was wrapping up I saw a little batch of ingredients that I had left out, and I could have sworn some ingredients were in there that actually aren't. Of course, I'm only talking about cooking here. With baking I've got the book right next to me on the counter and I'm reading each line of the instructions and following them to the letter.

Oh, that smell it fills the house with! I love eating it just with a spoon too, particularly over the many hours it cooks and tasting that transformation. And dipping bread in to sop up some of the fat that collects at the top . . . but once it hits the pasta it just goes into orbit. Any differences in your recipe?

Is mustard seed oil the same as mustard oil? And do they work in this recipe, or is the mustard essence everyone's talking about a different thing altogether?

Wait, I only use the processor the get the aromatics chopped fine and the pancetta ground up. I use the stand mixer for the gluten buildup on the pasta. I . . . can't go back now after trying a batch of pasta that's been pounded for five minutes or more at higher speeds. So firm and supple. C'mon! I rolled it out by hand this time! Edit: I used my Le Creuset pot for this. And, your use of earthenware is exactly what Marcella says is most ideal for this sauce.

Yeah, you braise the greens (and SWISS CHARD!!!, for you!) with the pancetta and onions, then cook off the liquid. There's eggs and parmigiano in the filling as a binder once it's cooled, and don't forget the garlic, onions (two) and pancetta. There's a variation with ricotta mentioned in Splendid Table, and I was, for some reason, considering some potato in there.

Comforting, instantly familiar. Vaguely spanikopita-like in the filling.

Like the Ligurians to the west, Emilia-Romagna has a rich heritage of savory pies, harkening back to the Renaissance. I started the month off last week on a rather unappealing-looking note with a not-so-traditional mushroom torta. When this year is up, I'm going to own the Dinner II: The Gallery of Regrettable Foods thread on recycled pics alone. This was modified from Diane Darrow and Tom Maresca’s cookbook Seasons of the Italian Kitchen. To really give it a mushroomy whallop, I ground up some porcini in a spice mill and then simmered it into the béchamel for the filling. Also in the filling were cremini mushrooms and prosciutto cotto. I think next time I’ll mix in some eggs to the filling isn’t so runny when you cut into it. Monday night we had erbazzone, another savory torta filled with a variety of greens (I used kale and Swiss Chard), pancetta, onions, and garlic. Oh, the things I do for you all! A lot of the dough recipes for the savory pies of Emilia-Romagna call for lard and never one to shy away from tradition, I’m indulging. I think I gained 5 pounds just writing this entry.

Where did the smoked eel part of that recipe come from? Are they freshwater eels, and is it a common element of Dutch cooking? They look great though!

Thanks for all the encouragement and kind words, everyone.