A year of Italian cooking

[hathor]

Kevin, everything is looking lovely!

The real deal Balsamic is a very expensive gift from the gods. I do the reduced balsamic trick all the time and it scratches the itch, but one day, treat yourself to the real thing. Right after you win the lottery!

The pork in milk dish is also big in Umbria, and the food mill does get rid of that ....sort of road kill effect. And you made the poofy bread things whose name I can never remember. It is impossible for them to be too crispy.

What's up for dinner tonight?? I'm looking for inspiration, myself!

[FoodMan]

I also use two bottles of Colavita to make about 3/4 of a bottle of Balsamico for my use. Unlike Kevin, I actually learned this from Mario. I never add wine to it though, next time I will.

BTW, Kevin I bought me a bottle of the Alessi Toscan oil you mentioned earlier and it is quiet a deal for the price. they also had Apuglian and Unfiltered at Central Market plus one or two others that I do not recall now. the Tuscan one has nice peppery, grassy taste that I love. Is that your favorite among them?

and yes...what's for dinner tonight? (we are going to be at Symposio restaurant in Houston eating some good Italian as well )

[Kevin72]

Last Wednesday we started with a salad from Molto Mario consisting of roasted beets and asparagus.

We then continued with “gnocchi misti” and a sausage ragu.

These were gnocchi misti because the leftover pumpkin gnocchi (from when I made this meal) that were lurking at the back of my freezer weren’t enough for a full serving for two so I made some potato gnocchi as well.

The sausage ragu, unlike the Bolognese I made earlier, cooks a much less amount of time. I do like the caramelization to really play up the sweet and intense flavors, and to that end I use lots of carrots, no celery, onion, and garlic to get them really sweet. I also use tomato paste and red wine for a full contrast.

[Kevin72]

For a region that can be maligned at times for its native breads, (Batali is a vocal critic, and Carol Field acknowledges their polarizing effect and describes their dinner rolls as “cottony” in Italian Baker) Emilia-Romagna has a vast array of interesting and very regional offerings. One is the rustic, hearty piadina: lard-rich leavened flatbreads that are folded over savory fillings. We saw a number of “Piadinerie” in Bologna. In fact our last day there was more or less a nonstop gorge-fest where we ran frantically all over the city cramming everything we hadn’t eaten yet down our throats. For lunch we went to one such Piadineria, overestimated our hunger, and ordered three piadine to split between us when one or two would’ve done nicely. We then took a nap and went on a tear that included a stop for crepes at another stand and some roasted chestnuts (an impulse buy that I put in my jacket pocket and forgot about until the next day going through airport security).

Friday I recreated two of these piadine, one with bresaola and arugula, the other with mortadella, muenster, and frisee.

Washed it down with the much-maligned lambrusco. I kinda like it, though. I have to ask, what is with all the frizzante wines in Bologna and its environs? Even when we ordered Pino Grigio it came bubbly.

Kasper does a solid job defending these regional breads, and I will hopefully be exploring a few more of them before this rapidly-going month ends.

[Kevin72]

Pasta-palooza!

I’ve tried to avoid piling on a bunch of pasta dishes on adjoining nights, but in Italy’s capital of handmade pastas it’s fairly impossible. This weekend I rolled out a batch of different pastas to be used in upcoming meals.

Not only is E-R famous just for its egg pastas, but it goes the added step of having a rich and elaborate tradition of various stuffed pastas, many called by different names in different regions even for the same shape.

I made, for some upcoming meals (L-R): mezzelune, tortelloni, and anollini. I also made some sheets of pasta verde with spinach (barely in the upper right hand part of the pic).

The stuffings for each will be given later for their meals.

[Kevin72]

Saturday night’s meal is more a “border” meal, rather Tusco-Emilian, inspired by a meal at regrettably defunct, true trattoria-style place in Houston. (Foodman and other Houston-ites: I think it was Bella Cucina or something like that. It was a house in the Heights, closed in 2000 or ‘01). You brought your own wine, there were no menus, and the owner and her family waited on guests, told them the offerings, then cooked and served the food themselves. Nothing mind-blowing but I really got into the style and what she was attempting to do. This style of restaurant is an unfortunate rarity in my experiences in Texas.

So the primo to start off was mezzelune, half-moons filled with sweet potatoes. Marcella advocates using sweet potatoes to replicate the full-flavored pumpkins from Italy that were not yet available Stateside in the early 70s when she wrote The Classic Italian Cookbook. Now, with more flavorful squashes available, they are recommended, or are still mixed with sweet potato for an interesting flavor. I still prefer sweet potato. The shape themselves are not traditional to Italy; they are more typically cappellacci, little pointed hats.

Also traditionally, pumpkin-stuffed pastas in Emilia-Romagna as well as Lombardia to the north are augmented with grated amaretto cookies. Instead of going that route, I’ve taken to adding a splash of Amaretto liqueur instead to the butter and sage condimento.

We then had pork chops stuffed with apples for a secondo. To me, this seems to be the more “Tuscan” side of the meal and the place we had this meal at was very much influenced by both Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna, right down to the saltless dinner rolls.

For a contorno, it was a gratin of radicchio bundles stuffed with chestnuts, not part of our meal at this restaurant but something I came up with later. I really like the interplay of the two flavors.

Dessert was panna cotta, the eggless custard we had for the first time at Montegrappa DaNello in Bologna on our last night in Italy. I served it, as they did, with a reduction of pomegranate juice.

[Kevin72]

Ragu Bolognese is just too good a thing to only make once this month. While serving it over tagliatelle is my favorite approach, of course the next most popular fashion is lasagna Bolognese, aka lasagna verde al forno. Sheets of spinach pasta are layered with ragu, then béchamel, then baked off.

The secondo was roast veal with sage and lemon, a modification of Lynne Rossetto Kasper’s recipe in Splendid Table. While I had certainly hoped to be able to do veal, I was fully prepared to have to fall back on pork since veal is so expensive, and the cut I wanted (shoulder) is pretty hard to come by. I asked the butcher if they carried any at our local CM, and he gave me a blank stare, but went in the back anyways. I was already thinking about how to modify the dish for pork shoulder when he re-emerged thirty seconds later with a large packet of shoulder, and at a quite affordable price. I was absolutely giddy afterwards.

So I butterflied it out at home, then sprinkled it with sage leaves, rolled it back up and tied it. I then used the slow-roasting technique from Paula Wolfert’s Slow Mediterranean Cookbook by searing it off, then placing in a very slow oven to gradually come to the desired internal temperature. This is the second time I’ve tried this technique and both have yielded incredible, moist, full-flavored results. Per Kasper’s recipe, I reduced the pan juices with white wine, stock, and lemon juice.

The contorno was another Kasper recipe, cabbage braised with garlic. 6 fat cloves went into this dish and are slowly stewed in olive oil to really get a full-flavored effect, then a whole head of slivered cabbage is braised in the oil. Perfect standup to the veal, and after all that cooking, the garlic-infused cabbage emerges very sweet tasting and silken-textured.

>Sigh<. More panna cotta for dessert. Someone has to do it.

[Kevin72]

BTW, Kevin I bought me a bottle of the Alessi Toscan oil you mentioned earlier and it is quiet a deal for the price. they also had Apuglian and Unfiltered at Central Market plus one or two others that I do not recall now. the Tuscan one has nice peppery, grassy taste that I love. Is that your favorite among them?

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Yes. People look at me funny when I say "grassy" then I pour them a taste and they understand. Love it!

[FoodMan]

That Lasagna is just luscious! I cannot believe you had a secondo after it. The Veal is wonderful looking as well, almost like it was cooked rare. gotta love Paula's tips.

[hathor]

Beautiful pastas Kevin! Nicely done! That veal looks exceptional.

And don't get too twitchy about going too Tuscan, the border Emilia-Tuscan border has been moved around a few times, once at the request of Mussolini! What about Thanksgiving, do you have a tacchino recipe up your sleeve??

[Chufi]

That cabbage looks so good. Is it just garlic, oil, and cabbage? No other liquid added?

[Kevin72]

I did add a splash of water, but that was partly because I was deperately searching for a lid to cover and simmer it and it was cooking too fast. It doesn't need any, really, if you salt it liberally when it goes in the pan. It sheds enough liquid on its own.

[Kevin72]

Earlier last week, we had a couple of soups for our dinners.

First up, anolini in brodo. Anolini are traditionally little discs of stuffed pasta. Their filling is the juices only of straccotto, beef braised in red wine over the period of a day. The juices are mixed with breadcrumbs, cheese, parsely, and egg for binding. I didn’t go this route but instead used the same basic idea for the ample leftover sauce from the pork braised in milk dish.

The next night we had Emilia-Romagna’s version of pasta e fagiole, a bean and pasta soup.

This version was only a faint, bittersweet echo of the mind-blower I did last fall, largely because of absence of the prosciutto rind I had then that I was able to use. Last year I was at the Central Market deli counter and the guy there, whom I frequently dealt with, gave me unsolicited and at no charge a package of prosciutto rinds from their freezer. He handed it to me in such a reverential fashion, as if I alone would appreciate its value, and I accepted it as graciously as I could. Once we had our first bout of cooler weather, I quickly began planning to make a bowl of pasta e fagiole, Emilia-Romagna-style: homemade sheets of irregularly-cut pasta, use the brown, creamy borlotti beans, sauté the aromatics in lard, add a little tomato paste for a deeper color, and some diced pancetta when the beans went in. Crowning all this of course was the prosciutto rind, simmering away with the soup to add its porky flavor and then discarded.

Then, I made the bean soup a few days before we were to eat it. Once the beans, broth, and rind were added I covered the pot to let it cook for an hour. After that time I removed the lid and was hit with an aroma so intense that I was suddenly walking the streets of Bologna again. For the first time in the year since I had been to Italy, despite making Italian food for 99% of the meals I made since then, I had made a dish that smelled like being in Italy. Even though I never even had pasta e fagiole while there! I had never identified the smell, in fact I don’t think I had noticed it all by that point, but something about the air there must be laden with that porky, homey smell, exactly as Mario Batali has observed.

Suffice it to say was a culinary and eating highlight of that time. I attribute it solely to the prosciutto rind, adding a richness and viscosity to the broth and binding the dish expertly together. Too, its cured, salty taste lent seasoning to the soup, impregnating the beans with flavor that the pancetta and lard alone would not do.

Unfortunately, I had used the last of the rinds. I returned to the same deli and asked the new guy there (my friend disappeared from there shortly after he gave me those rinds) for their reserved prosciutto rinds and he gave me a look that was equal measure bemusement and alarm. He pointed to a large coffee can with the trimmings from the cured meats, all glistening as they ripened at room temperature. “We put all our trimmings in here and throw ‘em out at the end of each day. Do you want me to get the rinds out of that?” I quickly refused. “Do you eat the rind?” The guy asked and I had to explain it to him.

So, this version was made without the prosciutto rind. Oh, and I had to use Anasazi beans as they were out of borlotti at the time. But the real loss was that rind and the wonderful, rich, viscous texture in leant to the soup.

>sniffle<

[Kevin72]

Ah, Thanksgiving. That most Italian of Holidays.

The meal I made will actually eventually become our Christmas dinner, once we have kids and get more rooted at our house instead of traveling to the parents’. In a move that is equal parts contrarianism and food snobbery of the highest order, I have come to prefer capon over turkey. I find it cooks more reliably and has a more subtle and rich flavor.

But first, a Modenese countryside breakfast, from Marlena di Blasi’s Regional Foods of Northern Italy cookbook:

Stubs of pancetta and onion are cooked together until golden, then you crack eggs over them and let the eggs set up. Then, sprinkle with balsamic vinegar and serve. Di Blasi recommends tumblers of a rough red wine to make it truly authentic, but I had too much cooking to get to without being thus impaired.

First, I baked a loaf of mountain bread, the bread that Lynne Rossetto Kasper says is the one that she could live off of the rest of her life if she was only allowed one kind to eat. It is made of potato, whole wheat, wheat berries (I used wheat germ flakes), and white flours, along with an overnight sponge. It was supposed to go with dinner that night but got lost in all the shuffle and was relegated to breakfast the next day, along with some home-made sausages and balsamic vinegar.

This was the first Thanksgiving with me cooking for my parents, and so when they arrived, we had a little snack platter.

Starting from the back are tigelle, little breads traditionally baked between earthenware tiles. Instead, I used two skillets. They actually got browned, though the real recipe does not get them colored much at all. Moving on, we had dates stuffed with sweetened cream cheese, a Thanksgiving tradition from my wife’s side of the family. We’ve actually moved into stuffing them with sweetened mascarpone, but the package we bought had spoiled somehow, so we fell back on the cream cheese option. Good stuff! Finally, there was brie, topped with homemade mostarda from Mario Batali’s new cookbook Molto Italiano.

I tweaked it a little and used fresh pear and apple instead of dried, along with maraschino cherries instead of dried as well. Otherwise, it turned out great. I had asked about how to make it on the Mostarda thread and it appears that the key ingredient for the real deal is a mustard essence. It’s not widely available here and I didn’t really want to handle something that was sounding like a WMD, but luckily Mario’s recipe only calls for mustard seeds and powder. The poweder seized up when it hit the syrup and didn’t widely distribute, and I used brown mustard seeds instead of yellow, which leant a more pungent flavor to the finished product. It was still very good and unusual and played the proper counterpoint to the rich cheese.

Now, the Thanksgiving meal itself.

First, a pomegranate cosmopolitan, the one cocktail my mom enjoys and requests every time we get together:

We started off with Tortelloni Villa Gaidello from Lynne Rossetto Kasper’s Splendid Table. We actually were also served this item as one of two primi when we stayed there. The dough is lightly seasoned with nutmeg and lemon zest. Inside is homemade “ricotta” and parsley. Butter and sage is the condimento.

Then, the main dish. The capon recipe is borrowed in equal parts from Kasper’s Splendid Table and Michele Sciccolone’s book Italian Holiday Food. The stuffing is made of sausage and chestnuts. I think in previous years I’ve used apples, and I may add them back to lighten the stuffing up a little, but it’s really good, if a little rich, on its own. So this is the item I frantically started a thread about on the General Food topics board the day before Thanksgiving: I had been alarmed to find one end of the package puffed out when I took it out of the freezer. The previous time this had happened was this past summer with a putrid duck, so I was really worried that by the time I go it defrosted and found out it was rotten, it would be too late. I got some good reassurances on that thread, then when I got home I literally sniffed every inch of that damned bird, inside and out to make sure. Turned out fine, but I did cook it a little longer than I normally do to be extra careful with the stuffing. As a result, the breast did get a little dry. But otherwise, a good meal.

Gah! What kind of food photographer doesn’t get a pic of the bird right out of the oven?! The kind that’s had a couple of cosmos and a glass of wine already, I guess. Sorry everyone. You’ve got the capon and stuffing in the foreground. In the back left are green beans Bolognese from Splendid Table: green beans braised with mortadella, brodo, and a pinch of clove. On the right are baked “fritters” of potato and prosciutto, a recipe modified from the magazine Cucina Italiana.

My wife took a turn at dessert and won raves with a pumpkin cheesecake.

Edited November 28, 2005 by Kevin72 (log)

[Kevin72]

Yesterday for lunch I made a very bastardized version of borlenghe, an odd, crepe-like item traditional to the E-R countryside. The real version calls for very little egg, lots of water in proportion to flour, and is cooked slowly, a half an hour total, to result in an odd, cratered, crackly wafer. However, I was pinched for time and added much more egg to make them basically a very thin crepe. I certainly feel a little guilty for not going the traditional route and cooking them to specification, but even with two pans you’re looking at almost two hours of constant attentive cooking just for a snack. Plus, there’s no guarantees, especially with my crepe skills, that they would even turn out right. So, here they are in various stages of being filled with the even more non-traditional accompaniments of prosciutto and mortadella (the real deal is smeared only with lard or pancetta and rosemary):

For Sunday’s dinner, I thought it would be an appropriate time to break from all the meaty, rich eating of late and explore the seafood cookery of Romagna, which takes up the eastern half of Emilia-Romagna and forms the majority of the Adriatic coast, along with the Comacchio region, a delta formed by the Po river. Romagna is quite different from Emilia, so much so that Marlena di Blasi separates the two regions in her treatise on Northern Italian cooking. Both di Blasi and Kasper point out that Romagnoli cooking is much rougher, rustic, and has more in common with the Central Italian states of Tuscany, Umbria, and Le Marche than it does with the rich, elaborate cooking of Emilia.

We started with clams with balsamic vinegar from Splendid Table:

Clams are steamed open and set aside, then you stir into the base aromatics and pan juices a single, crushed can tomato and balsamic vinegar. Chill the sauce and the clams, then spoon the sauce over. I accompanied the dish with leftover tigelle to get the remaining sauce.

Then, it was catfish braised with peas, a combo of two more dishes from Splendid Table.

Eels are a defining specialty of the Comacchio part of Romagna, and lacking access to eels I fell back on catfish. My wife claims to like neither catfish nor peas (too many bad memories of the bloated, browned, flaccid canned variety) but was really impressed by this dish. “Very delicate”, she said, and didn’t even leave a little corner of peas on her plate like she normally does.

Dessert was a zabaglione and prune compote tarte:

[divina]

kevin.. you are the best!

for your mostarda, make a paste with cold water, then add to the hot fruit.

I add a little wasabi too for a kick that the Essenza di Mostarda gives you.

[Chufi]

You did some serious cooking the past week Kevin! All looks wonderful.

I became obsessed with that cabbage braised with oliveoil and garlic, I kept coming back to this thread just to look at it, so I finally made some today. It looked exactly like yours so I won't bother to post a pic. It was delicious!

[Kevin72]

kevin.. you are the best!

for your mostarda, make a paste with cold water, then add to the hot fruit.

I add a little wasabi too for a kick that the Essenza di Mostarda gives you.

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Why, thank you. Wasabi's a good idea. Like any foodie, I have a tube of indeterminate age and origin in my fridge. I had wondered about stirring in the powder when it was cool after I had that problem.

You did some serious cooking the past week Kevin! All looks wonderful.

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It's a serious region! Emilia Romagna demands no less!

I became obsessed with that cabbage braised with oliveoil and garlic, I kept coming back to this thread just to look at it, so I finally made some today. It looked exactly like yours so I won't bother to post a pic. It was delicious!

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Glad you liked it! Seems like it would be right at home with those dishes you're doing lately. Mmmm, like that butter-braised beef . . .

Did it get that sweet flavor? Did you use any special variety of cabbage or just the plain old green variety like I did?

[Daniel]

Wow Kevin.. I cant believe I have never read this thread before.. I just started reading today and am somewhere in March.. You have done really such a great job and have so many inspirational dishes.. Looking forward to hearing what this years resolution is going to be?

[Nathan P.]

I knew you could turn Thanksgiving into an Italian meal I had a fairly traditional meal cooked by my parents this year but managed to acquire the leftover turkey and made a very good tortellini in brodo with turkey stock with Kasper's tortellini from bologna recipe subbing dark meat turkey for the pork. Looked like your anolini pic though I gave myself a much bigger portion. I've checked Splendid Table out of the library so I could read along with your cooking and need to add this book to my modest collection.

[Chufi]

I became obsessed with that cabbage braised with oliveoil and garlic, I kept coming back to this thread just to look at it, so I finally made some today. It looked exactly like yours so I won't bother to post a pic. It was delicious!

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Glad you liked it! Seems like it would be right at home with those dishes you're doing lately. Mmmm, like that butter-braised beef . . .

Did it get that sweet flavor? Did you use any special variety of cabbage or just the plain old green variety like I did?

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yes it got very sweet.. I used ordinary green cabbage..

I actually served it with the rabbit in vinegar and the apple mash that I made tonight in the Dutch Cooking thread, but I did not put it on the plate for the pic, because, well, it was Italian

[Kevin72]

Wow Kevin.. I cant believe I have never read this thread before.. I just started reading today and am somewhere in March.. You have done really such a great job and have so many inspirational dishes..

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Allow me to return the compliment and say that your "Oink" thread on the Cooking board brought a tear to my eye. I was going to make an Iron Chef comment but someone beat me to it. Bravo.

Looking forward to hearing what this years resolution is going to be?

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Err, umm . . . I'd better start thinking of one, huh?

I knew you could turn Thanksgiving into an Italian meal   I had a fairly traditional meal cooked by my parents this year but managed to acquire the leftover turkey and made a very good tortellini in brodo with turkey stock with Kasper's tortellini from bologna recipe subbing dark meat turkey for the pork.  Looked like your anolini pic though I gave myself a much bigger portion.  I've checked Splendid Table out of the library so I could read along with your cooking and need to add this book to my modest collection.

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That's exactly what I do, right down to the saving a bit of dark meat to stuff a pasta with. In fact, earlier today I had a moment of panic when I didn't remember if I had saved the carcass. Then I realized I had put it in our fridge freezer instead of the usual deep freeze location, in anticipation of whipping out some stock fairly soon.

[Kevin72]

yes it got very sweet.. I used ordinary green cabbage..

I actually served it with the rabbit in vinegar and the apple mash that I made tonight in the Dutch Cooking thread, but I did not put it on the plate for the pic, because, well, it was Italian 

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Perfect! Right at home there. No one would've noticed if you'd mentioned it.

[Kevin72]

Our final day of cooking from Emilia-Romagna yesterday began with crepes with bananas and nutella.

A friend of ours’ had gone to Paris and when she got back waxed nostalgic for the banana-nutella crepes she ate every day for breakfast. When we were walking around in Bologna one night, we passed by a Creperie, looked inside and saw, first thing on the menu, the same crepes. We excitedly made our way there first thing the next morning for our breakfast, only to find that it didn’t open until 3 in the afternoon?! Who wouldn’t want crepes for breakfast? So we had to settle for steaming cappuccinos and some custard-filled pastries at a local bakery.

Last night’s meal was another procession of dishes that I attribute to Emilia-Romagna even without any real evidence to substantiate my claim. We started with pasta with mushrooms “two ways”:

Not because there’s two kinds of mushroom (cremini and chaunterelle) in the condimento, but because the homemade pasta has ground up dried porcini in it. Incidentally, Central Market, the gourmet grocery store I frequent has been selling fresh porcini the past week, at $70 a pound, up from the “normal” price of $54. Just to see how much it would cost, I scooped up three of the smallest mushrooms, thinking maybe I’d garnish the pasta with them, only to find that those three were $18! Back into the bin they go. I can’t believe anyone buys them at this price.

The condimento was basically mushrooms trifolati style, that is, sautéed in garlic-scented olive oil and parsley. I added a pat of butter to meld the condimento with the pasta when tossing them together. I’ve heard that E-R-ians regard putting parmigiano on mushrooms the same way they look at parmigiano on shellfish: a horrible use of both. Still, I couldn’t resist tossing in the scant bit of grated parm leftover in a bowl as I was tossing everything together. Bah.

For the main, it was seared duck breast with apples, along with Kasper’s Sweet Squash for Yom Kippur: roasted and pureed squash with citrus rind and spices.

How do Italians look at medium-rare duck? Is it commonly done, or, like tuna, is the tradition to cook it through?

That’s it for Emilia-Romagna. This month went so fast; it feels like I lost a week’s worth of cooking somewhere. So very, very much I didn’t even get to cook. I actually pondered a follow up “Year of Emilia Romagna Cooking” resolution at one point but then decided we probably wouldn’t be able to afford the wardrobe overhaul that would inevitably bring. It remains my favorite region to cook from though.

[Anna N]

Our final day of cooking from Emilia-Romagna yesterday began with crepes with bananas and nutella. 

How do Italians look at medium-rare duck?  Is it commonly done, or, like tuna, is the tradition to cook it through?

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I would be more than happy just to get my duck looking like yours! What a great thread, Kevin. Thanks so much.