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Cooking and Cuisine of Piemonte and Val d'Aosta


Kevin72

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Ciao tutti!

Kevin, why do you say Italian stocks use meat and not bones? The chefs we worked with used bones....but I have to say the word you may have been looking for in comparing French stock to Italian stock, might be ....bland.

The Italian chefs thought it was a big deal to throw in a carmelized onion...cut in half, the flat side scorched. They never carmelized the mirepoix which I always thought was strange...and bland. Just rough cut vegetables thrown in a pot, with some salt.

My take on the interchangeble-ness (thats a word that doesn't show up on spell check) is just the over-all blandness that it really doesn't make a difference.

As much as I adore Italian cooking, I make French stocks...and demi-glace... :unsure:

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Logging in one last time today--this time I mean it--before I put on my Asics and walk brisky for an hour or more in the cold, invigorating air...this new thread is just too addictive.

I finished a quick read through Kramer, so I will jump in to mention that he includes a very long discussion of stock where he recommends using FOUR :blink: chickens, tons of vegetables and calls for letting a stock simmer overnight in the oven or 9-12 hours if you can manage.

His personal gripe is with the diminished flavor of most birds available to readers in the U.S. Thinking back to some things that Lida M B prefers to put in her stocks, including the turkey that was indispensable to the patriarch of an Italian-American [i know, not the same, but bear with me] family in Brooklyn who always made the soup for major celebrations, I am guessing that a big blast of assertive flavor is more essential in some Italian dishes than the exact nature of that flavor.

As conservative as Italian cooking is and as insistent as it is upon the quality of its ingredients or the exact nature of the ingredients (see Ragu thread) that go into authentic dishes, I imagine we're seeing one place where flexibility is possible and personal taste is allowed. After all, there are many different versions of authentic dishes. Folklorists, linguists and anthropologists will tell you it is as difficult to find the "pure" or "true" form of a cultural phenomenon as it is to keep it from "corruption" or change.

Kramer admits that he finds chicken-based stock superior to beef in most things, citing a taste-testing of French onion soup in which the non-traditional chicken stock used by one cook received the highest praise. He finds the taste of combined meats too "muddy."

I can't resist adding that I was pleased to discover not only that Piedmont is serious about its anchovies (see reference to bagna caoda above), but that hazelnuts rule. Gianduia has got to be my favorite when it comes to Italian chocolate things, so I will have to bake at least one cake.

As for the remark about cornmeal's importance, I am also interested in its use in dolci. However, what I would like to try making is pasta that includes a small amount of cornmeal along with farina produced from wheat.

If you shelve copies of *Gourmet,* look for Andrea Lee's article in the issue of May 2004. The writer lives in Turin whose pastries are acclaimed.

Finally, if you rent DVD's, add The Best of Youth to your queue since much of the plot in this incredible work takes place in Turin, the former capital of the House of Savoy and the site of Piedmont's major university, a hothouse for idealistic political dissent. It releases next month, when I for one, will still be making sformati, risotto and anchovies with salsa verde.

Basta. Enough.

More later about other cultural and culinary matters in Piedmont.

Edited by Pontormo (log)

"Viciousness in the kitchen.

The potatoes hiss." --Sylvia Plath

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That black kale looks very similar (OK identical) to cavalo nero, which is a very common winter veg in Tuscany.

I've seen it called at least five different things between three stores I find it at here in Dallas: black kale, Tuscan kale, cavolo nero, lacinto kale, dinosaur kale.

Here is a photo from last year:

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Great stuff, wonderful texture. Ironically, now that I live in a place where I can get all the ingredients, it is really hard to find specialized cookbooks. Any suggestions for online regional guides? I probably have versions of most recipes in some book or another, just not listed by region.

Edit: Okay, I am an idiot -- just saw Nathan's photo and also just realized you guys already listed several online sources. But I did make Bagna Caoda for a party we had last Friday so maybe I am still in the game? (This city has cardoons and white truffles :wub: though the latter will wait until I am gainfully employed) :wink:

Edited by Behemoth (log)
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Finding a good chicken (or cock) for stock is near impossible for me. Either the chicken that is worth the effort is far to expensive to make into stock or the other option is to buy and old chicken from the Chinese grocer, but I can't bring myself cook a chcicken that is obviously ex-battery hen form it's appearance.

What I wouldn't give for one of these guys.

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For what it is worth I quite like beef stock for a base in soups. Goes well with sherry.

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In addition to Hathor's excellent info on piemonte I'd like to add a couple of things.

Commonly used vegetables are zucchini, leeks, bell peppers and oninons. In wintertime there is of course cabbage and kale. Hazelnuts are commonly used for cakes and desserts.

Some examples of piemontese dishes (with a bias towards the langhe region):

Antipasti:

Onions stuffed with forcemeat

Bell peppers struffed with tuna

Savoury flans with e.g. zucchini or leeks

Zucchini flowers stuffed with risotto

Insalata carne cruda, finely chopped raw veal meat, dressed with EVOO and lemon juice.

Vegetable crudites with bagna caoda

Vitello tonnato

Primi piatti:

Tajarin, which is a rather thin fresh egg pasta. This pasta is very heavy with egg yolks. I've seen recipes that calls for up to 40 egg yolks to one kilo of flour. Tajarin may be served with just some sage infused butter a simple porcini sauce, meat sauces consisting of either veal or rabbit. Another popular sauce for tajarin is based on the sausage that hathor mentioned (salsiccia di Bra). Another option for tajarin is of course to just serve it with shavings of white alba truffle.

Agnolotti are minuscule meat stuffed raviolis. The type of meat that are used in the stuffing varies form sub-region to sub-region, but topside veal, pork shoulder, rabbit or salsiccia all feature in different combinations. The meat is roasted or braised and then it is finely cut or minced and mixed with parmiggiano reggiano and egg yolks. Sometimes spinach or cabbage may be thrown inot the mix as well. The agnolotti are simply served with sage infused butter or the roasting juices ( sugo di arrosto).

Potato Gnocchis may be served with a cheese fondue (fonduta) as the sauce.

Risottos may contain truffles, different cheeses or wine (e.g barolo).

Polenta.

Secondi

Rabbit, braised in white wine or together with bell peppers.

Brasato al Barolo. Topside veal pot roast marinated and braised in barolo wine. Other types of wine may be used, for instance there are Brasato al Barbera or Brasata all'Arneis. Arneis is a white wine from the Lange or Roero regions.

Stracotto. Another take on pot roast with wine. I've not managed to find out what the exact differences between this nad the brasato are, except that stracotto isn't marinated first.

Different preparations with guinea hen are also quite common.

Dolci

Hazelnut cakes of different kinds.

Panna cotta

Bonet, a custard that contains cacao powder and powdered amaretti biscuits.

Zabaione using either moscato or barolo wine.

Christofer Kanljung

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Dinner tonight featured two Valdostan recipes, Carbonada and Pears in Red Wine Sauce. I was intrigued when I read that Carbonada was traditionally made with salt-cured meat. Most recipes mention salt-cured beef, though I swear that one on-line site mentioned that salt-cured chamois was also used, before the chamois became protected. This stuck in my mind while I was out shopping yesterday. When I arrived at the meat counter, there was a nice chunk of meat labeled “dried beef”. This is usually sliced thin to be used on sandwiches, but I had an idea. . . The butcher was happy to sell some to me unsliced, but it definitely made him curious.

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Here is a before photo of the dried beef.

I’m happy to report that the Carbonada turned out well. I even found a Barbera d’Asti wine to use in the recipe. The resulting sauce was very dark and flavorful, though I should have soaked the meat ahead of time to remove some of the salt used to cure it. I'll try to post photo of the finished product tomorrow. All of my attempts to photograph it tonight turned out blurry. I guess that I had too much wine sauce!

As for dessert, didn't quite work. I tried following the recipe in Culinaria:Italy for Pears in Red Wine sauce. The pears are supposed to bake for about an hour in a “medium” oven. The accompanying photo in the book shows pears that are soft and collapsed and a lovely wine color. After baking for two plus hours at 350F, my pears are were still tan and resolutely pear-shaped. They tasted sweet, but didn't seem to have absorbed much wine flavor.

Nathan P., your version of Zuppa Valpellinentze looks better than the one in Culinaria!

April

One cantaloupe is ripe and lush/Another's green, another's mush/I'd buy a lot more cantaloupe/ If I possessed a fluoroscope. Ogden Nash

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Ciao tutti!

Kevin, why do you say Italian stocks use meat and not bones?

I guess I meant that a higher proportion of meat as opposed to only bones, as in the French or professional tradition where they are laboriously browned and only one type is used. Italians use scraps, whole cuts of meat, and bones, and from many different kinds of meat. In my observation, of course. Even that scorched onion half you mentioned is news to me, all other recipes I can think of basically do the other method you mention where whole aromatics are added with no caramelization. I go for the roasting of the bones/carcasses, etc in high winter when (ostensibly) it's coldest out.

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Ciao Christopher Kanjlung! Very nice breakdown of typical foods!

Azureus, how dry was that beef? In the photo it still looks pretty juicy. Was it 'air dried", or really as dry as say a bresola is?

I've been stuck in the office cleaning things up...its killing me that I'm not cooking! Hopefully tommorow....

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Azureus, how dry was that beef? In the photo it still looks pretty juicy. Was it 'air dried", or really as dry as say a bresola is?

Hathor, my photography was misleading. The meat wasn't juicy at all. The wrapping it came in remained dry, and no juices ran out when I cut it up. The local Hutterites produced it, but I don't know exactly how. The butcher just stated that it was salt-cured and then dried. I've never had bresola, so I can't compare. The meat was quite firm, nearly as firm as the mass-produced hard salamis that you find everywhere in the U.S.

Here's a photo of the finished product:

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I simmered the Carbonada until the meat broke apart into strands:

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Oddly, each individual strand of meat was still firm when chewed.

April

One cantaloupe is ripe and lush/Another's green, another's mush/I'd buy a lot more cantaloupe/ If I possessed a fluoroscope. Ogden Nash

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Hathor- now u know we will need a breakdown of every region just like that. This thread has already been so educational and I am loving it!

Sformati has been on my to do since I saw Mario's recipes. Since Cardoons are widely available here this time of year, I might do one Sformato with them or maybe Mario's onion one. Maybe an artichoke risotto as well and some sort of beef stew.

For dessert, I am thinking hazelnut cake or hazelnut semifreddo.

Nathan, that Valpellinentze looks terrific.

E. Nassar
Houston, TX

My Blog
contact: enassar(AT)gmail(DOT)com

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Please, please make the sformato with cardoons! I would if I could. I don't understand why you have them there in Texas, yet they're not disseminated by Whole Foods!

In his discussion of sformati, Kramer links these custardy antipasti to the primacy of France vs. Italy/Chicken or Egg debate by discussing bechamel or balsamella. Of course, he favors Italy. However, he is the traditionalist when it comes to using this white sauce as a binder when producing sformati which some cooks nowadys make with cream instead to produce something lighter and I suppose, more familiar to diners who order flan for dessert.

Batali calls the binder besciamella, and also uses it in all three versions of sformato (chestnut & fennel are the other two) in Molto Italiano.

"Viciousness in the kitchen.

The potatoes hiss." --Sylvia Plath

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Tonight I made the palline di carne con le mele in brodo as a first course, using the roasted beef stock I had prepared over the holidays, waiting for the urge to sip French onion soup.

In this month's continuation of last year's thread, Kevin mentions how tangy, light dishes complement the otherwise rich cheesy, substantive foods of Piemonte.

This soup definitely falls into that category. Instead of the contrasts of anchovies and sweet roasted peppers or sharpness of vinegar, the unexpected factor was tripartite: the sweet-sour taste of a peeled, grated Granny Smith apple, minced garlic and lots and lots of Parmigiano-Reggiano in small veal meatballs that contain no bread crumbs and have no flour coating. After the palline are mixed and browned in [bright yellow Icelandic] butter, white wine was added to the pan and the heat turned up high. Once the meatballs simmer briefly in the stock, more cheese is sprinkled onto the soup.

Perhaps it's just as well that I cannot append photographs to this post. The results were absolutely delicious, but brutto ma malfatto might be another good name for the soup. :wink:

The quality of veal in Piemonte is supposed to be stellar, and raw, chopped veal is one of its best antipasti.

My small veal meatballs might have been superior had I purchased the veal in Bra on the day that I cooked it after grinding it myself. My meat was a little too wet and my apple, a bit too watery. Were I to make the veal mixture again (it's also served in larger patties), I would drain the meat and squeeze out the apple. The large quantity of grated cheese helped dry out the mixture somewhat; cream vs. milk and a little less egg....or some time spent in the fridge might have been a good idea too.

I managed to keep the little guys mostly intact when browning them, but they ended up as rhomboids rather than nice spherical palle. Very light, on the other hand, without the crumbs.

When added to the broth, the beautiful clear brown immediately became spotted with flecks of grated apple that broke free from confinement.

Not having to show this to you, I did not get out the slotted spoon and the sieve. I ate it as it was. Quite good.

I would make it again, but I have to say that although I figured the veal and beef would go together in almost a familial way, because I had roasted my meat, bones and even some of the vegetables, the broth was a little too assertive. I do think a good chicken stock would be better.

I also kinda preferred the one meatball I ate straight from the pan. Wasn't as sophisticated, but the surprising contrasts were more pronounced.

"Viciousness in the kitchen.

The potatoes hiss." --Sylvia Plath

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Here are some of the links I have been collecting. Please forgive me if some are repeats of others you've seen.

General overview of Piemontese cooking

Series of recipes

Batali's cookies that Albiston also makes on Il Forno

More recipes, this time in pastel tones

A lot of info on wine and tons of recipes

And since I almost lost this stuff, consider this Part I.

Edited by Pontormo (log)

"Viciousness in the kitchen.

The potatoes hiss." --Sylvia Plath

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Since we're also learning more about the region itself, just a few more for background.

If you ever read or watch movies while you eat or watch your stew simmer, do note that in addition to all that the Savoy, pastries and university brought to Turin, Piemonte is the setting of several Italian films and home or birthplace of some of the nation's major 20th-century writers.

One century earlier, Piemonte also supplied the reason just about every city in Italy has a street named after Camillo Benso di Cavour who had to learn Italian to help with the process of national unification. (In Florence, you can get really good warm custard doughnuts on Via Cavour. Also see label on jar that Kevin holds up during the last month of his personal blog.)

Cf. a thematic program of a few years ago for movies.

There's Marcello.

And two of the literary giants:Natalia Ginzburg, the daughter, wife and mother of amazing men, although the most noted of her family. You have to read her, if you haven't. All Italian school children do.

And only one other: Cesare Pavese.

Now, here's dessert!

Edited by Pontormo (log)

"Viciousness in the kitchen.

The potatoes hiss." --Sylvia Plath

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Woo-hoo!! I got into the kitchen last night. After too many nights out or working too late, I needed a little kitchen time.

So, I made “smformato di porri e tatate con fonduta” and “vitello al sale con pomodori marinate” (leek and potato flan and veal roasted in salt with marinated tomatoes). Both recipes inspired by Beppe Barbero, the chef at Osteria del’Boccondivino in Bra.

The veal roast was trussed up good, then I put one clove of garlic very thinly sliced on top of the meat, with a sprig of rosemary. The roast was then packed in coarse sea salt and put into the oven for about an hour.

It was served with a ‘sauce’ of marinated, quartered cherry tomatoes. The tomatoes were marinated in chopped basil, fresh garlic, salt, pepper, EVOO and a little bit of balsamic.

The veal that emerged from its salt casing was extremely moist and flavorful and the tang of the tomatoes set off the rich flavor beautifully.

The smformato was made using the cream method mentioned upthread. The potatoes were sieved and the leeks were sautéed to the almost browning point. Then served with a basic fonduta. I wanted to find Raschera cheese, but wound up settling for a fresh provolone dolce that was just fine. This smformato was sinful.

Nice salad and a bottle of Dolcetto d’Alba and a fine time was had by all!

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Does anyone know how to rotate an image?? I posted it rotated, but then it reverted.

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Great posts Pontormo! Lots and lots of good info. Grazie mille! The soup sounds luscious even if it wasn't photo worthy.

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Not really Piedmontese, but try this: take a whole red snapper, put in some orange slices, thyme and some parsley. Coat the fish in salt and bake. Sometimes I make a little orange butter to serve along with the fish. Honestly, its heaven.

I'm a big fan of salt crusts.

Not sure about dinner tonight. But, planning a small feast for tommorow! :biggrin:

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Hathor, that roast looks fantastic. Thanks for showing it while still in its salt crust, too!

I am intrigued by your promises for Wednesday....and am still waiting to see what Adam Balic has ordered.

"Viciousness in the kitchen.

The potatoes hiss." --Sylvia Plath

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ciao from Firenze!

I have been out of town ( palermo) and haven't had time to catch up on egullet!

I will look forward to participating this year...

Right now I am preparing for my panel with... drumroll... Fergus Henderson at IACP in Seattle in March!

so am also blogging on pork.... as well as my other blog.

From Torino.. I am a ex pastry chef.. so am a nut for Chocolate... baci da Cherasco... Grom Ice Cream.... Bicherin... Bunet...

When is this over.. I will try to make a bunet and post it!

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Thanks for jumping in, Divina, and may you be snatched from the mouth of a wolf regarding all your other current projects.

Since I must accommodate an allergy to nuts when I get around to choosing a dessert, I hope you or others will make something with chocolate and hazelnuts.

"Viciousness in the kitchen.

The potatoes hiss." --Sylvia Plath

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OK, I've got another Piedmont meal to add. I started dinner tonight with very nice cipolle ripiene.

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This is a recipe I picked up on Langhe.net and consists of onions stuffed with ground veal, salami, the inner part of the onions, parm. cheese, parsley and topped with breadcrumbs before roasting. Very tasty, and in proper thrifty Italian cook fashion I was able to use up the last bit of stale bread from my bread soup. As I looked at the recipe though, it calls for cooked salami. I am familiar with cotto and crudo in hams but have not seen this term applied to salami. Anyone know the scoop? I used a sopressata from Molinari which my butcher carries. FYI, if no one has looked at Langhe.net there are around 150 recipes with only a few obviously non-regional. There is a tasty sounding timbale of breaded fried potatoes with almost equal parts of murazzano cheese and prosciutto that sounds like the kind of antipasti that will let you skip primo and main courses. For the more adventurous, there is an interesting sounding fried pigs trotter and a pork blood lasagna! Langhe.net

For my main, I prepared Trota alla Piemontose following the recipe in Ada Boni's Regional Italian Cooking. This recipe calls for braising the trout in stock and vinegar with celery and white raisins. Additional seasoning comes from rosemary and sage. This turned out good with a nice balance between the sweet raisins and the acidity of the sauce. Interestingly, the recipe I have called for Olive Oil to cook in.

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For a contorno I sauteed some cauliflower in tasty taqueria lard with a couple of garlic cloves.

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I was pretty happy with this meal though adding fish stock to a sauteed fish dish and then thickening the sauce with a flour slurry challenged my ideas of Italian cooking.

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