A year of Italian cooking

[Kevin72]

November is the “officially unofficial” beginning of the Holiday season in the U.S., and so to go with it I’m doing the classical, comforting cooking of Emilia-Romagna.

This is my favorite regional cuisine of Italy. The sheer volume and depth of artisanal food products and that so many “classic” recipes originated or are perfected here is simply staggering. Parmigiano Reggiano, Aceto Balsamico, Prosciutto di Parma, lasagna Bolognese, tortellini, cotechino, zampone, rich, luscious egg pastas . . . need I go on? It is a cuisine unto itself.

Just about any introduction to this region in Italian cookbooks points out everything I noted above, mentions that Italians from all over the peninsula regularly hold it in the highest regard--second only to their mothers’ cooking of course--and then the author themselves adds a testament to the greatness of this cuisine. Waverly Root devotes 103 pages of Foods of Italy just to Emilia-Romagna, most of it just listing the unique dishes in each province and capital or twists on the traditional dishes (frankly, it gets tedious). Only Fred Plotkin, who, while acknowledging it is one of the best cuisines of Italy, offers a complaint: that what keeps it from truly rising above the rest is having great wine to match the food (a fair point, but not enough to hold it back in my opinion, especially when you have Tuscany just to the south, the Veneto just to the north).

Then there’s the fact that Marcella Hazan, and, to a lesser extent, Mario Batali, really carved out my initial understanding of Italian cooking during my formative period of learning, and both are extensively influenced by Emilia-Romagna. My Mom gave me her copy of Hazan’s The Classic Italian Cookbookas I was really getting into cooking (right after the film Big Night came out) and I was hooked. I read it cover to cover, twice, and spent the next year cooking almost exclusively from that book. Like the cooking of Tuscany, Emilia-Romagna is practically ground into my genetic code at this point. I’ve broken in many a dinner party guest on regional Italian cooking by starting with Emilia-Romagna, and it is the one I go to most often when I need to make an impression.

As if I need any greater authority than Marcella Hazan for reference for this month, but really, we can’t talk about this region without mentioning the very best Italian regional cookbook out there, Lynne Rosetto Kasper’s The Splendid Table: The Cooking of Emilia Romagna. This has it all: regional histories, folklore, stories about dishes, profiles of notable restaurants and chefs in the region, personal anecdotes, and a bewildering volume of recipes. There’s a whole chapter just on variations of ragu, and another on recipes of the Renaissance, which profited Emilia-Romagna greatly and lay the foundation for its elaborate cooking traditions. And yet, for as good as I say this book is, it’s that much better. I’m rereading it now to research this month and finding all sorts of things I’d forgotten. I’d need one month just to make my way through all the standards of the cuisine and then another to do more unknown, interesting-sounding dishes. Nobody who likes Italian cooking should be without this book.

This, then, was the region I first chose when we decided to go to Italy for our honeymoon. Though, after our planning, we had the Veneto and Tuscany in there as well, so I didn’t get to spend as much time as I’d have liked there. Our stay was pretty much restricted to Bologna, the epicenter of Emilia-Romagna cuisine. Here’s what I wrote about Bologna when we came back from the trip:

One of the side benefits, of course, to visiting Italy is that you eat very well.  But if you go to Bologna, that side benefit now takes center stage:  if you come to Bologna, you are coming to eat . . . Witness the “Via Grassa”, my (hopefully not too offensive) nickname for the blocks in and around the intersection of Via Caprarie and Drapperie Calzolerie.  There’s not just Tamburini, the foodie mecca at its center, featuring everything great about Bolognese cuisine (cured meats, cheeses, homemade pastas, succulent roasts), but literally every store here sells food.  By my count, I saw three bakeries, two pasta shops, at least seven produce stalls (some hawking truffles!), three butchers, four salumerias, a latteria (all cheese), two stalls selling dried goods like mushrooms, beans, tomatoes, and pastas, two pastry shops, two seafood stalls . . . and Gilberto’s, which to my mind should be every bit the foodie destination as Tamburini.  Gilberto’s has not just a whole wall of liquors you’ve never heard of, and another wall of every sauce and condiment you can imagine, and a basement cantina that I didn’t even dare go into full of wines, but every spare inch in between is stacked with little boxes of candies and chocolates

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The first night there we played “restaurant lottery” and just wandered into the first place that looked good (and it was a tough choice!). Just some anonymous trattoria-style place with the hostess/waitress/owner sitting in a corner peeling chestnuts and popping them in her mouth (we compared chestnut peeling scars!). Every table had “riservado” on it, but we were eating at the Americano hour of 8 and when we left at 10, the first few Italians had just come in. How do you guys do it? Food was great, simple, honest, straightforward, right out of any Bolognese cookbook. Ate lunch at Tamburini, ate crepes with nutella for a snack, went to a piadineria, ate another lunch at Diana (we weren’t dressed for it and the service responded accordingly), and out last dinner there was at Montegrappa DaNello, fantastic. Our one foray outside of Bologna was to Villa Gaidello, a farmstead halfway between Bologna and Modena, for a night’s stay and a seven-course meal of E-R standards that still makes me misty-eyed just thinking about it.

Emilia-Romagna is a cooking and feasting with a passion for the very best way to do a dish, no matter what the cost, wallet or waistline. Loosen your belts, tuck away your Atkins books, and hide the children.

[FoodMan]

Nobody who likes Italian cooking should be without this book.

....and in my "to buy pretty damn soon" bin it goes.

I am looking forward to the next month or two. Your praise of E-R is very inspiring to say the least. What's Atkins BTW ? Right! they went bankrupt for some reason.

[Adam Balic]

Pasticcio di Maccheroni with the sweet crust has to be one of my favourite dishes to make and eat of all time. Any region that can produce this (or more accurately, 'not abandon this') dish is right up there as far as I am concerned.

[FoodMan]

Pasticcio di Maccheroni with the sweet crust has to be one of my favourite dishes to make and eat of all time. Any region that can produce this (or more accurately, 'not abandon this') dish is right up there as far as I am concerned.

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Can we have a little more detail about this please? Inquiring minds want to know (actually I'm probably tghe only one reading this who doesn't know what it is).

[Adam Balic]

Pasticcio di Maccheroni with the sweet crust has to be one of my favourite dishes to make and eat of all time. Any region that can produce this (or more accurately, 'not abandon this') dish is right up there as far as I am concerned.

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Can we have a little more detail about this please? Inquiring minds want to know (actually I'm probably tghe only one reading this who doesn't know what it is).

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Pasticcio di Maccheroni con pasta dolce is a festival (Carnivale I think) of the ER region, there numerous variations.

The one I like is this, it is very easy, flavours look weird, but it tastes excellent. You try, you like.

Pasticcio di maccheroni in crosta dolce (loosely based on a recipe by Pellergrino Artusi)

Ingredients:

Pastry:

Pate brisee sucree made with 500 gm of Italian 00 flour and 100 g of castor sugar

Filling:

250 gm penne

2 Tbsp truffle butter or crème etc

20 gm dried porcini, soaked in hot water for 2 hours, finely diced

125 gm fresh chicken livers, cleaned and soaked overnight in milk

125 gm of prepared sweetbreads or partridge breasts (or poultry offal of choice, gizzard, cocks combs, unlayed eggs form a slaughtered hen - go crazy).

1 medium onion, two sticks of celery including leaves, two carrots, very finely diced

50 gm of pancetta, finely diced

50 gm of fatty prosciutto, finely diced

finely cut up bunch of flat leaved parsley, 6-8 sage leaves, 2 bay leaves

70 gm of grated Parmesan

tiny pinch of ground cloves, 1/2 tspn of nutmeg, 1/2 tspn cinnamon (not cassia), pinch of ground coriander seeds.

salt and pepper, knob of butter

Béchamel sauce made with 600 mls of full fat milk, flavoured with the bay leaves and the nutmeg. This has to be very good quality stuff, not just knocked up at the last moment.

Method:

1. Set oven to 200.C, cook pasta until done in salted water, drain and loosen with a little butter. Melt butter in frying pan; add sage leaves and chicken livers. Cook livers until done (pink stage). Remove do the same for the sweetbreads or partridge breasts. Allow to cool then very finely dice.

2. Sauté prosciutto, pancetta, celery, carrot and onion until very soft, add spices, porcini and cook down further with the porcini liquor. Allow to cool completely then mix through truffle butter.

3. Line spring form tin with pastry. Mix pasta with béchamel sauce and parsley. Place a layer of pasta in the pie, sprinkle with Parmesan, added a thin layer of proscuitto mixture and a layer of offal/poultry. Continue the layering, until the pie is just over-full (to give the pie a slightly domed lid). Cover with pastry lid, decorate with pastry bits. Glaze with egg/milk mix. Make a few hidden holes for the steam to escape. Place in oven, turn temperature down to 180.C after ten minutes and cook for an additional 20 to 30 minutes or until golden brown. Allow to cool for 10 minutes (very important) unmold and serve.

[Kevin72]

Geeze, Adam, way to throw down the gauntlet on me. I considered that dish but then decided with all the other stuff I'm going to make it was just too much. "Surely, nobody will miss it if I leave that one out . . . "

[Adam Balic]

Seriously K, it is bllody easy and you can do a lot of it a head of time. But it isn't really a casual meal for two either. Re-heats well and it is one thing that I make that my wife really likes.

[Kevin72]

Yeah, gonna have a hard time with both the sweetbreads or the partridge breast element of that recipe.

Actually, I've made another pasticcio before, though this was the tortelloni variation, which I originally thought is what you were talking about. There will be a similar dish in the next few months, however.

So, NOW do we talk about Splendid Table?

[FoodMan]

Looks like a worthwhile project, thanks for sharing Adam. I have Artusi's book and I will look for it in there. I can see the face of the butcher at my local supermarket when I ask for "Unlayed Chicken eggs" LOL.

NOW, to the Splendid Table.

[Adam Balic]

Bah, as you don't live in Scotland, don't complain about food availability.

Nope that would be Pasticcio di tortelloni in crosta dolce. I think that the two regons differ in their preferences for the pasta filling.

As for the ST. I think that the thing I like the best about this book is the way that she combines modern extant (if traditional) recipes with recipes that are not made any more and even some quite histroical ones, which out the book coming across as a hodge-podge. I think that this is a very difficult thing to do as as she does it so well, it really does illustrate 'continuity of the cuisine' in a very good way.

[ludja]

"The Splendid Table" is an excellent book. As you mention, the chapter on ragus alone is worth the price of admission. I've only made the "classic ragu" so far. It would be fun to see you try one of the other ones. If you've tried some of the other ragu recipes, do you have any commnents to share?

[Kevin72]

Bah, as you don't live in Scotland, don't complain about food availability.

Nope that would be Pasticcio di tortelloni  in crosta dolce. I think that the two regons differ in their preferences for the pasta filling.

As for the ST. I think that the thing I like the best about this book is the way that she combines modern extant (if traditional) recipes with recipes that are not made any more and even some quite histroical ones, which out the book coming across as a hodge-podge. I think that this is a very difficult thing to do as as she does it so well, it really does illustrate 'continuity of the cuisine' in a very good way.

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I think we've alread laid to rest, you spoiled Aussie globe-trotter, over which has less availability: Dallas or Scotland. Need I remind you of the skin-on porchetta debacle or pull up butcher pics from your blog?

You're dead on with the ST assessment; that you really get a sense of singular themes or patterns that are well woven in going back several hundred years and she really does a good job tracing the roots (though to be honest I have no interest in the Renaissance pasta recipes) and showing how they've evolved.

Edited November 4, 2005 by Kevin72 (log)

[Adam Balic]

You seem to have done OK over the last year with just the very basics.

[Kevin72]

Let’s get this one out of the way.

In my opinion, the crowning achievement of the crowning cuisine of Italy is Ragu Bolognese, the mythical meat sauce cooked for hours and hours. It was the first big culinary challenge I undertook and succeeded with when I was first really getting into cooking. It held a certain mysticism for me, reading about it in Marcella Hazan’s essential tome, The Classic Italian Cook Book. It cut to the very heart of my perceptions of Italian cooking at that point: the big pot of pasta sauce with rich meats and tomatoes, simmering together all day. I must have made it six times at least in that first year I learned to cook it and now I just cook it by recall.

I’ve tinkered around with various recipes and of course eaten the real thing in Bologna now. While I accept that the “true” recipe likely has tomato paste and has a full-on, meaty flavor, I prefer Marcella Hazan’s technique in her Classic Italian Cookbook, involving canned tomatoes. I like how they cook down slowly, slowly, slowly, their natural sugars caramelizing with the meat to the point where the two are nearly indistinguishable from each other. Ragu Bolognese is a true exercise in synergy where the whole is much more than the sum of its parts. But I’ve picked up some other flourishes from elsewhere: I use ground pork and pancetta in addition to ground beef, and also cook some stock in there. I have backed down a little on the tomato element over the years, but it’s still a definitive presence. In addition to the nutmeg Marcella uses, I’ve taken to adding just a dash of cinnamon for the most distant trace of something you can’t quite put your finger on. I don’t think it’s traditional though.

So let’s start off with the base. Two carrots, two ribs of celery, and a whole onion. For the meats, as mentioned, I use ground beef (I wanted to buy and chop skirt steak as Lynne Rossetto Kasper directs in Splendid Table, but had some pre-ground in the freezer), ground pork, and pancetta, which I cube up and toss in the processer to chop into a paste.

The vegetables, too, I chop up in a food processor. I like them to be minced really, really fine so that they completely fall apart and dissolve into the finished sauce. I cook them in a few tablespoons of butter and olive oil over low heat until they have softened but not caramelized. Then I add the pancetta and, still over low heat, let it shed its fat and cook down as well. After it has added a good deal of its fat to the pan, I then add the pork and beef, season them with salt, and cook them a bit. Here is a key difference between Marcella’s recipe and others I have seen, including notably Batali’s and Kasper’s: Marcella directs you to cook the meat only until it has lost it’s raw color and turned a little grey. Most other recipes have you cook the meats until they have shed their fat and are browning and caramelized. I tried this approach the last time I made this sauce and I must say I prefer Marcella’s technique: it lends a more delicate flavor and texture to the finished product. The latter technique creates a fuller, and again, more “meaty” flavor and is fairly close to the kind I had in Bologna, so I’d imagine it’s the more traditional way to go if that’s your preference.

So, after the meat has cooked just to being a pallid grey and lost the raw red color throughout, add some white wine, enough to come about halfway up the meat and aromatics in the pot, turn up the heat a little to bring to a simmer, then cook it, uncovered, until it is completely reduced away.

Next, I add the nutmeg, dash of cinnamon, and milk (the really Old School version in Splendid Table adds cream now and then again at the end of cooking). Again, you reduce it away to nothing.

Now, finally, add the stock and tomatoes (or tomato paste if that’s the route you’re going). As if it hasn’t become clear enough already, this is something that demands quite a bit of your time and patience. The total time elapsed from starting the aromatics in the pot with butter and olive oil to this point: an hour and a half. And that’s just the base!

Now it has to cook. And for quite some time, the longer the better. Recipes that call for an hour curdle my blood. At that point, it’ll still just taste like hamburger and canned tomatoes. I say, at least three hours, I usually go much longer, and in this particular instance, I cooked it overnight, covered, in a very low oven, put it away a couple of days to really deepen the flavors, and then finished it off the day we ate it.

Here it is just after the addition of the tomatoes and stock:

Rather limpid looking, huh?

Now here it is at the end of all that cooking:

Fairly red still from the tomatoes but it’s so, so much more than just tomatoes and meat at this point. Again, if you’re going the tomato paste/caramelized meat route it’s going to be fairly brown.

So, a sauce that cooks for three hours or more demands, not just homemade pasta, but handmade pasta, the taglietelle of Bologna. This is the only time I go through the effort of making it by hand (though I still use a stand mixer to give the dough the necessary abuse to build up that gluten). One of the reasons Emilia Romagna so dotes upon its homemade, fresh egg pastas is the soft wheat that readily grows there. I actually had some “Tipo 00” flour ready to go for this purpose but it got infested. Luckily I had cake flour on hand and went with the 60/40 ratio of AP and cake flours you are directed to by some authors in order to replicate 00 flour. This was a “four egg” recipe which meant 4 large eggs and 400 grams of flour (100 grams of flour, about ¾ cup, per “egg” used in the golden rule of pastamaking in E-R).

Here it is after it has been mixed, whacked around in the mixer for several minutes at high speed, and then allowed to rest and relax. I cut it into six pieces to roll out:

Rolling it out using a wooden dowel on a wooden surface yields a rough-textured pasta that perfectly captures the sauce.

After each has been made into a thin, sheer sheet (it’s supposed to be thin enough to read the newspaper through but I never can get it to that point), you set them aside to let them dry a little before cutting them.

In Bologna’s city hall, there is supposedly a golden strand of tagliatelle that represents the exact dimensions of the authentic recipe. It’s 8 mm wide, or about 3/8ths of an inch. I cut them out with the sheets laying flat, though the more traditional approach is to roll them up and cut them that way for more precision. That’s all well and good but mine always sticks together then from the pressure of cutting them and I have to spend several more minutes painstakingly unrolling each noodle.

Here they are all cut and laying on wax paper with a dusting of flour, waiting to be cooked.

So, Sunday night’s meal offered some of the dishes we enjoyed in Bologna, including, obviously, Tagliatelle al Ragu (aka Tagliatelle Bolognese to anyone outside E-R).

We started with a suggested antipasto in Splendid Table for this type of meal: wedges of raw fennel dipped in balsamic vinegar.

Then, the tagliatelle. In this instance, I toss the pasta in the bowl with the sauce and a generous pat of butter, instead of in the cooking vessel, since the sauce has been cooked to exactly the right point and I don’t want to risk cooking it further as necessary when tossing it with the pasta over high heat.

We continued with costolette Bolognese, cutlets of meat (I used pork, shhh!) breaded, sautéed in butter, and then topped with a slice of prosciutto and shards of parmigiano, then thrown into a really hot oven just to wilt the prosciutto and barely melt the parm.

The contorno was “Autumn Salad DaNello”, based on a contorno we ordered at Montegrappa DaNello on our last night in Bologna. There, it was porcini and ovoli mushrooms, sliced very thin and tossed with slivers of celery and truffles, along with lemon juice, olive oil, and more curls of parmigiano cheese. Lacking all the key ingredients, I still made a fairly serviceable version with trumpet royale mushrooms (see my current av), cremini, celery, and apples, a spur-of-the-moment addition which everyone enjoyed. A mandolin is pretty essential to get them as then as necessary. You “cure” the ‘shrooms and celery with olive oil, salt, and lemon juice, then right before serving add the apples and cheese.

We finished with a jam-stuffed crumbling cake out of Splendid Table. Ahh, Bologna.

[Marco_Polo]

One of your very BEST of many great posts, Kevin. That ragù looks just like the real thing, deeply dark, concentrated and glistening - I can just imagine the taste on those beautiful handmade noodles. And the meal itself, from antipasto, primo, secondo, contorno right the way through to dessert is truly Emilia-Romagnan in conception and outrageously generous bounty. As you've already suggested, this will not be a month for the fainthearted.

Bravo!

[Kevin72]

So, ludja, to answer your question, I haven't experimented to much with the other variations Kasper lists in Splendid Table, although I did make a ragu very similar to her giblet ragu and sauced some rosemary-sage pappardelle with it. The baroque ragu, the one with chicken thighs, sounds intriguing. But when I set about to make a ragu it often just gravitates back to the classic.

[lexy]

One of your very BEST of many great posts, Kevin.

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Bravo!

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Agreed - that looks fabulous!

[mrbigjas]

One of your very BEST of many great posts, Kevin.

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Bravo!

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Agreed - that looks fabulous!

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yeah, what they said. nice job.

[Kevin72]

Thanks for all the encouragement and kind words, everyone.

[Behemoth]

Kevin, as weird as it is since we've never met, I thought of you on the drive home today. NPR had a story about the newly translated Silver Spoon cookbook -- Basically, Italy's Joy of Cooking.

Amazon link

I think I see that and Cook's Book in my near future. They probably won't get here in time for our move, but I am sorta resigned to schlepping them over in my suitcase.

[ludja]

So, ludja, to answer your question, I haven't experimented to much with the other variations Kasper lists in Splendid Table, although I did make a ragu very similar to her giblet ragu and sauced some rosemary-sage pappardelle with it.  The baroque ragu, the one with chicken thighs, sounds intriguing.  But when I set about to make a ragu it often just gravitates back to the classic.

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What a meal, Kevin! I love the dishes you paired with the ragu as well, especially the fennel starter and the shaved porcini salad. The homemade pasta looks just perfect.

Thanks for the reply re: the other ragus in the book. Many of them are tempting and I just wondered if you could confirm via experience. Sounds like a good project for me to put on my own list, namely to try a few different of the ragu recipes this winter...

[Kevin72]

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.

[Pan]

[...]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.

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Looks great, though! How did it taste?

[Kevin72]

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

[mrbigjas]

wow, that looks great. i assume you cooked down the filling before making a pie of it? cooked and drained? was there any other binder in there? i just was at a market near my house and got a massive amount of kale, and that pie's looking pretty darn good to me...