Timpano revisited

[Gifted Gourmet]

After seeing Big Night in 1996, I always wanted to try this dish .. did anyone here among us chefs or simply Italian food enthusiasts ever try to make one of these? The article

Ever since seeing Big Night, my dreams had been filled with visions of the timpano. I tried to convince the chefs at Chez Panisse to put timballo on the menu, saying that though it might be a lot of work to prepare, it would be easy on the line, but they never went for it .....

Timpano, which means "drum" in Italian, and timballo are two different names for the same thing. As they put it in Big Night, "A timpano is a drum with the best things in the world inside!" Traditionally from the south of Italy, there are different versions wherever you go -- some with rice, some with pasta, some with both -- the timballo is a slightly sweetened pastry crust filled with all sorts of savory treats, ranging from hardboiled eggs and meatballs to chicken livers and mozzarella cheese. It's a party dish, brought whole to the table and sliced with theatrical flare before the guests, accompanied, of course, with plenty of oohs and ahhs and in Italy, usually applause.

[Carolyn Tillie]

I have -- and pictures with comments are located in the thread Northern California Potluck as it was shared by many...

Edited for correction -- the first thread is the planning, the second thread Northern California Potluck #2 has the pictures!

Edited July 1, 2004 by Carolyn Tillie (log)

[slkinsey]

I've probably made 4 or 5 of these in my day. Much like a turducken, it was an interesting novelty but, I felt, ultimately not worth the effort.

[Pumpkin Lover]

Mario Batali's got a recipe for this in his Holiday Cooking (I think that's what it's called) cookbook. Looks great.

[russ parsons]

i did a recipe when the movie came out, adapted from la cucina napoletana. to me it was much more of a novelty than anything i'd ever make again (uh, never did, actually). but i did learn a couple of really good dishes from it--a wonderful dark-braised beef (progressively cooked in tomato paste and wine) and a nice pasta sauce with peas and pigeon. why you'd want to combine them with a half-dozen other things is something i never have understood.

i did go to a dinner party a lunatic cook friend through where she cooked three (count'em) timpani. for 6 guests. oy vey. must have been like 3 days cooking.

[halland]

There was a website on Northend.com, Skip's Recipe Archive, a number of years ago that had a great recipe for Timpano and all the various component parts. That site is long since gone, and it appears to be blocked from the Internet Archive (www.archive.org), but luckily I have a printed copy.

I've made this maybe 4 times now and every time I really enjoy the preparation and the presentation, but once I'm finished eating it I think "eh, I could have made something better"

There is also a cookbook that Stanley Tucci was involved with that had a recipe for timpano.

While its not Italian, Julia Chile in one of the Mastering The Art of French Cooking volumes has a recipe for a Gateau du Crepes (or something like that) which is a stack of about 40 crepes filled with alternating layers of gruyere and a spinach & bechamel combo. That is good!

Hal

[Tracy K.]

A recipe for Il Timpano (plus a veggie version) is in the cookbook published Stanley Tucci's (now ex-) wife Joan called Cucina Familiglia. (Pub. by Morrow). While I haven't made it (because it will serve the First Army...) there are other very nice southern Italian recipes in there.

Love that movie! Made me yearn for Jersey...and it takes a lot to do that!

[mighty quinn]

al dente did a few years back- i was only given the leftovers, but i thought it was great- he thought that the dough he used was too sweet. i still hold him in very high regards just for that undertaking.

[s'kat]

I made one this past winter for a holiday feast, using Mario Batali's recipe. I'm not sure why, but mine didn't slice neatly... all of the contents slid right on out. It was good, and I might make it again for another large event. The presentation is awesome.

[Gifted Gourmet]

Thanks for the photograph! Does it really matter how it looks as long as one can savor and devour the contents with appropriate glee?

[Adam Balic]

I haven't made this version of a macaroni pie, but I have made the Emilia-Romagna "Pasticcio di Maccheroni in crosta dolce" numerous times and also made recreations of the pasticcio di maccheroni described in "Il Gattopardo". I really like making them, they are easy enough to put together and are a bit more interesting then the usual suspect type Italian cooking (Italian food is simple ingredients prepared simply blah, blah).

To get the pasta to "hold together" and slice well, resting the pie after cooking is really important, it should be served warm not oven hot. Also the binding sauce shouldn't be to sloppy and actually there shouldn't be that much of it. These are rich dishes after all and if you put in to much sauce, people will just pick at the pasta and sauce and ignore the crust which misses the point somewhat.

[MobyP]

There are a couple of recipes for these sorts of things in Anna Del Conte's Gastronomy of Italy.

I made a massive Batali-inspired tortellini Pasticcio once - it tasted great, but the bastard took me three days to put together.

[Adam Balic]

There are a couple of recipes for these sorts of things in Anna Del Conte's Gastronomy of Italy.

I made a massive Batali-inspired tortellini Pasticcio once - it tasted great, but the bastard took me three days to put together.

Yes, she has a version of the leopard pie in that book and a very good version of Artusi's pie in her Northern Italian cooking book (still one of the best in its class for use in the UK).

Three days? Now you know why they were so highly prized by the wealthy or only really made for feasts and festivals.

[Gifted Gourmet]

The recipe which accompanies the article in my initial post

This is Benedetta Vitali's recipe for timballo, which borrows heavily from the recipe in Jeanne Carola Francesconi's La Cucina Napoletana, one of my favorite cookbooks of all time. We are going to include it in the cookbook we're working on now, but the measurements haven't been converted from the metric system yet. So use the metric converter, along with some good judgment, and your timballo should come out beautifully.

Timballo di maccheroni

[russ parsons]

hey, that's who i stole my recipe from, too! (francesconi, collected in grande enciclopedia della gastronomia illustrata ... a really wonderful book that is too difficult to find).

[Raynickben]

A recipe for Il Timpano (plus a veggie version) is in the cookbook published Stanley Tucci's (now ex-) wife Joan called Cucina Familiglia.  (Pub. by Morrow).  While I haven't made it (because it will serve the First Army...) there are other very nice southern Italian recipes in there.

Love that movie!  Made me yearn for Jersey...and it takes a lot to do that!

I own Cucina Familiglia and while I have yet to make the timpano everything else I have made from this book from the sauces to the tiramisu has been excellent.

(by the way Tracy K.....I always yearn for Jersey )

[Okanagancook]

So, last night we had a "Big Night" evening.  Watched the movie then ate the timpano made by our friends.  It turned out quite well.  It fell apart a bit in the very centre.  We had with some 1982 and 1985 Barolo and Barbaresco.

[BeeZee]

@Okanagancook, that’s pretty spectacular. How large was it and how many people did it feed.

[Shelby]

1 hour ago, Okanagancook said:

So, last night we had a "Big Night" evening.  Watched the movie then ate the timpano made by our friends.  It turned out quite well.  It fell apart a bit in the very centre.  We had with some 1982 and 1985 Barolo and Barbaresco.

I have long wanted to make and eat this.  Very jealous!

[Okanagancook]

The pan it is sitting on is 13 inches on the outside rim.  It was about six inches tall.  There were nine of us.  Each of us got a large slice because that's the only way it could be sliced.  We probably ate half of it!

There were three layers with each layer containing 4 boiled eggs, 4 cups penne in tomato sauce, 1 cup meat balls, 1 cup Italian salami, 1 cup fontina cheese, 1/3 cup Romano cheese and two cups of tomato sauce.  At the end 8 beaten eggs are poured over the top to help it bind together when baked and the pasta sheets are folded on to the top.

Here is a picture of a slice.

[scubadoo97]

Blast from the past from the year I first joined eG 

[Toliver]

It's like the "turducken" of Italian food! 

Thanks for posting the pics.