A year of Italian cooking

[Kevin72]

Thanks, Lexy! I guess this is an easier resolution to stick by than the usual weightloss/self improvement tact, and it's a good excuse to break out all these unused cookbooks of mine. Just an excuse to completely geek out!

[Kevin72]

Friday night, we had an appetizer of bruschetta with pan toasted olives and tomatoes.

Olives play a prominent role in Pugliese cooking and cuisine. Puglia is the #1 producer of olive oil in Italy (I want to say it produces 40% of the volume of Italy's olive oil but I'm not sure on that figure). The dominant tree in Puglia is the olive tree, and there are entire forests of them, many with the nets draped under them to catch the olives as they fall.

Il Frantoio, where we stayed, has three methods of collecting the olives: picking the low-hanging olives as they ripen, coming back later in the season to get the higher-up olives, and also collecting them as they fall in large nets laid out under the tree. Furthermore, Il Frantoio varied in their methods of producing some of their oils: some are only made from pitted olives, giving the oil a rich, round, fruity flavor. Silvio, in charge of the Il Frantoio's agricultural development, is an olive oil sommelier and one of the youngest to take the test. The test involves sipping 13 samples of olive oil and putting them in order of production, as well as identifying which of the samples is flawed, and how.

>Whew!< Got carried away there. Anyways, olives are used quite a bit in the cooking of the region. Searing them in a pan gives them a different flavor, eliminating some of their harshness. I used green (cerignola?) and gaeta. I'm not sure what the Pugliese varietals are, but I am pretty sure we don't get 'em here.

The secondo was grilled calamari steaks and a seared pepper relish, an adapted recipe from Lynne Rosetto Kasper's book Italian Country Cooking. She gives a vivid description of a ramshackle hut on the Pugliese seaside where two teenage boys worked a griddle and cooked calamari to order, while their mother chopped peppers and onions nearby. Sure enough, when we were wandering the Bari docks, we passed a guy selling calamari and octopus, and he, too, had a little hotplate and frying pans set up to cook them to order for customers.

[Kevin72]

Saturday night was an attempted recreation of some of the antipasti we had in Ostuni at Osteria del'Tempo Perso.

In my opinion, there are five regions in Italy well-known for their elaborate antipasti culture: the Veneto, Sicily, Lazio (esp. Rome), Piemonte, and up at the top has to be Puglia. Several places we went in Puglia offered multiple antipasti before you even got to the primi and secondi, and in Ostuni there were a number of places that only offered antipasti. Tempo Perso is a place well-documented for its own antipasti procession (see my Top 5 thread), which we greatly enjoyed.

What kicked off this meal was that I recently saw that Mozarella Company is making buratta, the soon-to-be-hip cheese from Puglia that is basically a fiore di latte cheese with a filling of cream and whey which decadently ooze out when you cut into it. This was something we had for the first time at Tempo Perso, just a little ball of the buratta, topped with pomegranate seeds. Saturday morning I drove downtown to the Mozzarella Company to get a fresher batch, only to find they only make it to order there, and otherwise I'd have to just try my luck at area stores. Drove back to my side of town and bought it where I had first seen it. It was an older batch, though, and supposedly buratta is best consumed within days or even hours of production.

So we tried it that night as the first of four antipasti. Instead of the out-of-season pomegranates, I thinly shaved rhubarb and tossed it with salt to purge it of its tartness, as Paula Wolfert directs in her spectacular cookbook Slow Mediterranean Cooking. Then I tossed everything in a salad. Nothing at all like Tempo Perso, in other words.

Rhubarb when does this way is quite different and unusual tasting. It cut the richness of the cheese well but lacked that sweetness that the pomegranate seeds leant to the dish in the original. The buratta was good enough, but not at all like what we had in Puglia. The filling was more like ricotta, barely distinguishable from the rest of the cheese. Good on its own merits, but once you've had the real deal it's only frustration.

Next up we had "simple" eggplant parmigiano: fried eggplants topped with tomato sauce, pecorino, and a little mint.

Probably the closes approximation of the Tempo Perso version we had that night.

Third were fried dough fritters, topped with pancetta and mozarella (I mean, fiore di latte). At Tempo Perso, the pancetta was cut so thin that it melted right into the fritter, still hot from the oil, and softened the mozarella topping. The butcher botched the pancetta and cut it much thicker, making it a little texturally challenging, the the mozarella was the more sturdy, domestic variety in the U.S., so it didn't melt so much, until I put everything back in a still-warm oven to give it a boost.

Last we had miniature mushroom tarts.

My aversion to pastry came back to haunt me here: at Tempo Perso the dough was thin, almost like a custard, a souffle, and a pie crust all at once, protecting braised wild mushrooms in olive oil. Here the crust soaked up all the oil and was way too thick, crumbly, and dry.

This was a pretty frustrating meal, and a perfect illustration of the dangers of trying to replicate such a simple cuisine, as Adam pointed this out on his Tuscan thread. You have to have top-quality, freshest possible ingredients, and I was lacking in almost all cases. It was fine enough, but everything just reminded me of how much better Tempo Perso was, and how far off the mark I was. None of this is to imply, of course, that Tempo Perso doesn't have top-quality, skilled, imaginative chefs, either: witness the pastry crust incident. But where I was most frustrated in this meal was just the quality of the raw ingredients going in.

Well, at least that's out of the way. I think that will probably be my one attempt to recreate items from the trip. Hopefully I'll be able to work around the ingredients issue with future dishes; there's two more antipasti meals I want to give a spin as well.

[Kevin72]

Oh, forgot to add on the previous post:

try tracking this wine from Puglia down. We had it with the orecchiette meal and enjoyed it so much that we had it again Saturday night. Good stuff. The bottle is taller and thinner than normal wine bottles, so that should help narrow it down.

[Kevin72]

Sunday night's meal:

Primo: Cavatelli(?) with cauliflower.

Secondo: "Cutturiedde" (sp?)

The cavatelli were handmade from semolina flour. I'm not quite sure if that's what they're called, but basically you make them like orecchiette (roll a ball of dough into a dowel, cut off pieces of it, flatten these pieces with your thumb), but then roll them up.

The condimento for tha pasta was an even more simple variation on the broccoli rabe condimento for the orecchiette. Now you only braise the (romanesco) cauliflower with garlic, and then top the whole dish with breadcrumbs, coarsely grated pecorino, parsley, and more olive oil.

Cutturiedde (I apologize for the spelling, I'll look it up when it's handy) is a dish of braised lamb and bitter greens. Taking a chance, I didn't pre-blanch the bitter greens this time to rid them of their bitterness and just coarsely chopped them and tossed them into the pot raw, as the recipe directs. They leant a good taste to the braising liquids; you could almost taste all the nutrients and minerals in there.

Reason 5,281 to love Puglia: a great culture of baking and breads. One of these breads of great reputation is pane di altamura, made from semolina flour to give it a golden crumb. I only finally put out decent loaves when I got a stand mixer that can give this tough dough the beating it needs to get the gluten working. Baked two loaves of it yesterday, and we used some of it to sop up the ample juices from the braise.

When we were staying at B&B Soleblu in Ostuni, we were talking to the owners about why we were in Puglia, and I was telling them about how much I loved the cooking there. They asked if I had made any dishes from Puglia and I listed, among other things, this bread, which they were impressed by. The next morning for breakfast, they had a loaf of yellow-crumbed bread and I excitedly asked if it was pane altamura, and they shook their head, then drew themselves up with pride and said "Pane di Ostuni!". Ah, that micro-regional pride!

For a contorno, it was grilled eggplant smeared with capers, mint, garlic, and olive oil all chopped together.

Dessert was an aniseseed-studded tart with the non-Pugliese filling of rhubarb.

Edit: forgot a picture.

Edited May 9, 2005 by Kevin72 (log)

[hathor]

Excellent fun as usual!

You are 1000% right about the ingredients needing to be top notch when you back off and only have oil and lemon to rely on. Its scary business, if you ask me. You have some nice looking eggplants going on there! I also think subbing rhubarb because you have it in season is totally in keeping with contadini tradition. Use what's good now. Always.

I fell in love with Calabrian cooking a few weeks ago, I love the piccante-ness of it all, but Puglia is looking pretty good right now. Any region that likes its vegetables is fine with me!

(Random observation: Italians love raw meat...but generally speaking cook the life out of vegetables. They leave raw meat unrefrigerated, and practically freeze the vegetables in the refrigerator. It can be a funny country... )

[Kevin72]

You are 1000% right about the ingredients needing to be top notch when you back off and only have oil and lemon to rely on. Its scary business, if you ask me.  You have some nice looking eggplants going on there! I also think subbing rhubarb because you have it in season is totally in keeping with contadini tradition. Use what's good now. Always.

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Unfortunately, the rhubarb wasn't much better.

I fell in love with Calabrian cooking a few weeks ago, I love the piccante-ness of it all, but Puglia is looking pretty good right now. Any region that likes its vegetables is fine with me!

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Will you be covering Puglia in your cooking classes? I'll be interested to hear what your thoughts are when you do!

(Random observation: Italians love raw meat...but generally speaking cook the life out of vegetables.  They leave raw meat unrefrigerated, and practically freeze the vegetables in the refrigerator. It can be a funny country...  )

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I remember being in a toasty deli in Rome and looking over to the shelf and seeing stacks of eggs in their cartons, just sitting out.

Hey, where's the details on your Friuli getaway?

Edited May 9, 2005 by Kevin72 (log)

[Pan]

[...]My aversion to pastry came back to haunt me here: at Tempo Perso the dough was thin, almost like a custard, a souffle, and a pie crust all at once, protecting braised wild mushrooms in olive oil.  Here the crust soaked up all the oil and was way too thick, crumbly, and dry.[...]

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It looks good anyway.

On antipasti, I think antipasti napolitani are excellent, but I suppose they're similar to antipasti pugliesi. Is calabrese cuisine much different from pugliese?

[Kevin72]

On antipasti, I think antipasti napolitani are excellent, but I suppose they're similar to antipasti pugliesi. Is calabrese cuisine much different from pugliese?

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I'm not as familiar with Calabrese cuisine. It's much spicier, and my understanding is that it probably doesn't have the wealth of vegetable dishes as Puglia does as it has a much harsher soil. There's always similarities to be sure, but to a Pugliese and a Calabrese these would be worlds apart.

[hathor]

Ciao!

I don't think we are studying Puglia..but I could be wrong. I know Sicilia is up for next week, but I'm not sure what else. I know we are not studying Sardenia or Liguria which is too bad.

The Calabrese chef brought a ton of vegetables with him, so I can't comment on there being less vegetables in Calabria. Nor would I want to get into the middle of that debate between a Calabrian and a Pugliese!!

I was thinking of you in class today, our Umbrian chef brought in a load of herbs from his garden, and he kept refering to this one type of mint as "Roman mint". Turns out its peppermint!

Normal "mentucia", Italian mint is very mild compared to "Roman mint".

Eggs go in the cupboard here, not the refrigerator...although at school they go in the fridge... who knows!

What more do you want to know about our "Friuli getaway"? I thought I gave plenty of details.... (as our threads merge....)

So, anyway, what's for dinner??

[Kevin72]

Ciao! 

I don't think we are studying Puglia..but I could be wrong. I know Sicilia is up for next week, but I'm not sure what else.  I know we are not studying Sardenia or Liguria which is too bad.

The Calabrese chef brought a ton of vegetables with him, so I can't comment on there being less vegetables in Calabria. Nor would I want to get into the middle of that debate between a Calabrian and a Pugliese!! 

I was thinking of you in class today, our Umbrian chef brought in a load of herbs from his garden, and he kept refering to this one type of mint as "Roman mint".  Turns out its peppermint! 

Normal "mentucia", Italian mint is very mild compared to "Roman mint".

Eggs go in the cupboard here, not the refrigerator...although at school they go in the fridge... who knows!

What more do you want to know about our "Friuli getaway"? I thought I gave plenty of details.... (as our threads merge....)

So, anyway, what's for dinner?? 

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I figured I'd get in trouble on the Calabria comparison. Just what I've read seems to outright state that it's a pretty hard region to grow stuff in, whereas Puglia is so fertile. Calabria is alot more in common with Sicily and Campania than Puglia.

I wrote the Friuli thing I guess as you were giving the update. Really good stuff there. You did indeed hit all the highlights, particularly the wine which I wish I'd get to try more of.

[mrbigjas]

Next up we had "simple" eggplant parmigiano: fried eggplants topped with tomato sauce, pecorino, and a little mint.

kevin, your eggplant there looks like it's battered rather than breaded before frying. true? i have an eggplant at home and your pic is looking great to me--not as heavy and mushed together as the italian-american breaded/baked version.

[Kevin72]

kevin, your eggplant there looks like it's battered rather than breaded before frying.  true?  i have an eggplant at home and your pic is looking great to me--not as heavy and mushed together as the italian-american breaded/baked version.

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Correct, it was battered (dipped it in a flour, pecorino, and water "paste") and then deep fried.

Actually, normally I just grill the eggplant for my parmigiana. Adds a great smoky flavor to the dish and it isn't so heavy, either. I did the deep fry here just for authenticity's sake.

[mrbigjas]

excellent. i did end up grilling the eggplant, because i was out gardening and got started late, and didn't feel like dealing with the hassle of frying. combo of mint and basil (because that's what i had) and a lot of pecorino instead of parmigiana--it was a great meal for a warm day. thanks for the tip.

[hathor]

Ciao! We are studying Puglia next week...so, I'll report back.

As far as Calabria goes, the way the chef explained it: its primarily a mountain based culture, not a sea culture. The Calabrians kept getting raided by the Greeks..and others, perhaps the Arabic countries, that they just moved upland and inland, so once in the mountains, you would have a vegetable/garden culture. And that's the very, very short Cliff Notes version of Calabrian cuisine!

[Kevin72]

Ciao!  We are studying Puglia next week...so, I'll report back.

As far as Calabria goes, the way the chef explained it: its primarily a mountain based culture, not a sea culture.  The Calabrians kept getting raided by the Greeks..and others, perhaps the Arabic countries, that they just moved upland and inland, so once in the mountains, you would have a vegetable/garden culture. And that's the very, very short Cliff Notes version of Calabrian cuisine! 

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Interesting. Hadn't heard that angle before. Almost sounds like Sardenia in a way: they too were driven inland and don't have the strong tradtion of seafood that your would think. Game and sausages are their primary meats, too, it seems?

[Scarpetta]

Fantastic thread, Kevin, thanks for your efforts and please keep up with your reports on Italian regional cuisine. BTW, "al cruschello" means "with bran". The orecchiette you bought were whole wheat, right? Though the traditional way is with plain semolina flour from the ample durum wheat crop in Puglia.

One small word of advice, if I may -- when cooking something Italian most Americans can't resist complicating the original recipe at least a bit. Well... don't, if you really want to cook in the spirit of Italian cookery. Rather, you might try to subtract some not-so-indispensable ingredient. That's what makes for true Italian recipes.

I often read the expression "layers of taste" and "complexity" applied to food and it usually is linked with the use of more and more herbs and spices.

I believe that an excellent olive oil (or any really good ingredient) has by itself all the complexity it needs and it's better to restrain oneself from muddying up and confusing its pristine quality and purity. Of course, this works when you can get hold of excellent ingredients. Ciao.

[Kevin72]

Thanks for the input, Scarpetta! Please let me know if I stray off the path, or have so far!

Pugliese cuisine seems to be alot about what you describe, so I'll be practicing that restraint alot this month!

[Kevin72]

Last Wednesday I made Barese-style tiella.

Tiella is a layered casserole of vegetables cooked in an earthenware or terra cotta vessel of the same name. It is considered Barese-style because it uses rice; there are numerous variations on tielle throughout Puglia, each one incorporating a local ingredient (and each of course only calls it a "tiella", not "tiella di . . . and wherever they are). A common element through all tielle, is, according to Nancy Harmon Jenkins, a layer of potatoes.

When studying on Puglia, I figured that their tielle were a mark left by Spanish rule, as indicated by the presence of rice and the casserole cooking method named after its vessel. No sooner had I theorized this than I got smacked down by Jenkins in her writeup on tielle in Flavors of Puglia. She almost immediately dismisses this common misconception, saying that the rice was a later addition to a pre-existing dish. In fact even the essential element of potato is an addition: she says that the dish originally consisted of pounded grains and vegetables layered together, and more than likely came from the ancient Greek's rule.

On our last night in Puglia, it suddenly struck me that I hadn't encountered this dish at all yet, and was beginning to lament this oversight. Sure enough, though, at dinner we were served two tielle: one of mussels and potatoes, another of potatoes, cardoon, and olives.

In addition to the rice and potatoes, this version had a layer of artichokes, zucchini, tomatoes, and was flavored with a mixture of parsley, oregano, and garlic scattered over each layer. Finally the top had a layer of breadcrumbs and pecorino cheese. I do not have an earthenware vessel large enough for this dish: in fact the recipe made two batches.

[Kevin72]

Saturday night, I made an appetizer of grilled oysters, topped only with olive oil, lemon juice, and just a pinch of sea salt.

The instep of the "heel" is the Gulf of Taranto, and Puglia makes up the eastern half of this gulf. Here, and in fact all up and down the Pugliese peninsula are a number of beds ideal for growing bivalves, particularly oysters and mussels, so there are numerous dishes for both in Puglia.

I love oysters, but I think they are going to be a only-in-restaurant dish from now on. Even though I by the "preshucked" oysters that have become commonplace now, they are still an unbelievable pain to open. And I can't quite get the cook timing right, so some were pleasantly cooked through, others halfway between soft and raw but slightly cooked, so it was an unpleasant mediation. Plus, I vastly prefer oysters raw. I've never tried raw clams or mussels and would have done so in a heartbeat had they been available on our trip to Puglia.

For the main course, we had a pizza made of potatoes.

Casual observation of Pugliese cuisine reveals they adore potatoes. Witness their essential presence in the tiella above, or a dish I'll be getting into later, or this pizza, where boiled potatoes are peeled and passed through a ricer into flour, then worked into a dough with some of the potato's cooking water and yeast. The dough is quite sticky and ungainly, and I pre-bake the crust to set it and so it doesn't soak up all the toppings in its final pass in the oven. Topped it with tomato sauce, mozzarella, and two different sheep's milk cheeses (one being feta, a new favorite). When removed from the oven, it got topped with fresh arugula. I make no claims for Pugliese authenticity on the toppings, but the sweet, chewy crust is a nice variation on an old classic.

[Kevin72]

Sunday night was a Pugliese seafood antipasto feast, inspired by recipes and vivid descriptions in Flavors of Puglia.

The large white dish in the front is broiled stuffed mussels. The mussels are steamed slightly open (even Jenkins admits to this shortcut rather than prying them open while still raw and alive). Then you remove one of the shells, leave the meat in the other half, and top with breadcrumbs, minced garlic, oregano, parsley, and pecorino cheese. I'm curious as to why the no-cheese and seafood rule seems to only apply to pasta combinations, but whenever you "stuff" a seafood item, be it calamari or shellfish, you invariably throw in a bit of cheese. Not that it wasn't a success here: I thought it was the best of the dishes. But it's been so ground into me to not put grated cheese over a pasta, that I'm not even willing to experiment and lose my Italian street cred in doing so. Is it because the pasta dishes are usually a little more delicate?

Anyways, on to the other dishes.

Starting in the middle row, on the left, is shrimp roasted with olive oil and sea salt. Get an earthenware dish very hot in an oven, toss the raw shrimp with olive oil and coarse sea salt, put them in the pot (they should sizzle and hiss immediately), cover and bake for ten minutes, then finish under a broiler if you desire.

Next, in the yellow dish, is tomatoes with oregano, olive oil, and more sea salt.

In the white, smaller dish are fried baby zucchini that are then steeped in a marinade of vinegar, mint, and garlic.

In the green bowl is a squid and potato salad (try bringing that to your next office function when you get stuck with having to make potato salad!). It was actually supposed to be octopus, but my usual sources for it have dried up, so squid was substituted. I was actually a little relieved since it saved me the added step of pre-cooking the octopus first.

On the back row on the far left is Pane Pugliese, a large round loaf of crusty bread that is almost as doted on as the semolina flour Pane di Altamura.

Had a Pugliese rosato (the "Silvium" bottle) that we bought on our trip. Pretty good. Also a Sicilian grillo(?) which I find to be a good, reliable Southern Italian white.

Dessert was "calzoncelli", a pastry that is folded around a jam filling (I used a compote of oranges and apricot preserves) and cooked. The recipe says they should be fried, but I got nervous that the filling would leak out while frying and lead to disaster, so I baked them instead. Good thing, too, as they did indeed split open a little as soon as they hit the heat. They were finished with cinnamon and powdered sugar, which really made the dish, particularly the cinnamon element. My wife remarked that they tasted "like Christmas" which was dead-on, since they are traditionally a Holiday dessert item.

[Swisskaese]

I have to confess that I have not been looking at the Italy and Italian cusine section of eGullet because I was afraid that it was going to make me homesick. My other excuse is that I have been occupied with Middle Eastern cusine since moving to Israel.

Now, I am officially homesick! I used to live in Lugano, Switzerland and was constantly travelling to Italy.

When I saw Adam's picture of pasta and wine from Cinque Terre, it brought back wonderful memories of hiking and eating my weight in pesto there.

I lived with an Italian from Genoa in Germany and his mother would come visit and bring us her homemade pesto. I have never been able to replicate the pesto from Liguria. I am convinced that the reason is the soil makes the basil taste like manna from heaven. And, it is also a different variety of basil that what we buy in the stores. However, I bought basil seeds in Genoa and grew them elsewhere and they did not produce the same pesto.

Great job Kevin.

[Kevin72]

The basil more commonly available is indeed one of the reasons why it's said that pesto is so difficult to replicate outside of Liguria. Apparently, also the sea air contributes to its unique flavor. Finally, Fred Plotkin and others insist that the only way to make it truly authentic and optimally flavored is to pound the ingredients in a mortar and pestle, and well, we all know what my stance on that is . . . Having not eaten authentic Ligurian pesto at its source, I'm concent to revel in my ignorance!

Thanks for the input, Michelle! Feel free to share your homesickness here anytime. I haven't lived there, but I'm even homesick for Italy!

[Kevin72]

Last night was ciambotta, a "stew" of summer-type vegetables.

Onions, green and red pepper, eggplant, tomatoes (which fell apart and made the "body" of the broth), and lots of potatoes: Jenkins says that her research turned up that there should be more potatoes than all the other ingredients combined. I forgot this little tidbit, which cut back dramatically on the previous volumes I've had when I've made this dish before, but truth be told that many potatoes in the dish kind of soaks up all the flavor after several days in the fridge.

I like her suggestion to swirl in some pecorino at the end, and I added a squeeze of lemon, also, to "lift" the cooked down flavors.

[Chufi]

I just want to say how much I love this thread. I think there's not a single dish you cooked that I would not want to eat, and many of them I want to cook!

Your enthousiasm is very inspirational. I willbe following you all over Italy!