The Cooking and Cuisine of Emilia-Romagna

[FoodMan]

I am really glad we are giving E-R it due. This region is so inspiring and rich with good food, it would've been a shame if we let it slip. Great job everyone.

That cabbage with garlic is sure catching on, and I have to try it alla Pontormo with cream and pasta.

Weinoo- you meal looks fantastic and perfectly harmonious.

Abra- Only 30 recipes are marked! was just telling my wife yesterday how amazing ST is and I always get flustered trying to pick one or two things to cook especially in the awsome pasta section. I keep going back and forth till I finally breakdown and decide on one damn thing.

Kevin- Great looking meal, especially that antipasto salad and the beautiful pasta. Yes, veal chops are prohibitvely expensive.

[Kevin72]

One nice touch about ST is the menu suggestions for each dish. Marcella Hazan had it for her first book but it was removed in subsequent iterations. Really evokes a clear picture of the flow of the meal and inspires.

[FoodMan]

Sunday dinner was also supposed to have a main dish (Balsamico Chicken probabaly) and a dessert, but you know how these "lazy" Sundays go. With errands to run and two kids, plans have a 50/50 chance of actually working out.

Piadina for an early snack/antipasto. I've had these flatbreads on my mind ever since I first read about them in the ST. They are very very easy to make and make for a staisfying quick meal. These flat breads are so very similar to flour tortillas and even taste similar, since they both have lard in them. For toppings I had:

- Fresh Squaqerone cheese, well actually the imitation of that cheese provided in, what else, the ST book. It is a mixture of cream cheese, buttermilk, yogurt, sour cream, lemon juice and salt. This is a traditional topping for Piadina

- Proscuitto di Parma

- Red and green baby letuces

We basically mixed and matched the toppings, a favorite was the combo of fresh cheese, lettuces, sea salt, coarse pepper and olive oil.

Pasta/Main course

Fresh Tagliatelle with Proscuitto Di Parma and peas. the recipe is from ST as well, but the peas were my addition and they work so well that I am not sure I will make this without them. This simple dish IMO embodies everything that we love in E-R- butter, proscuitto, fresh homemade egg pasta, stock and Parmegianno Reggiano. It really was so satisfying that we did not miss a main course and head two bowls each instead. Note: my 3 year old had a blast helping with the pasta machine.

[Kevin72]

Glad you got to make piadine. How'd it stack up the Umbrian flatbread you made?

I was going to do them for lunch also this weekend but ran out of time. They'll be a simple dinner later this week, then.

And that pasta looks wonderful; you've hit it on the head about getting everything you love in one dish there. Something about the butter, prosciutto, parm, and pasta mixed together sends everything into orbit.

[FoodMan]

Glad you got to make piadine.  How'd it stack up the Umbrian flatbread you made?

I was going to do them for lunch also this weekend but ran out of time.  They'll be a simple dinner later this week, then. 

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The Umbrian flatbread is more fluffy almost like the Gyro bread, I don't remember if it had baking powder in it or not. Piadina on the other hand reminded me a whole lot of flour tortillas, thin pliable and flavored with lard. I think the Umbrian ones are more suited for what I used them for (stuffed with hearty meats and greens). Piadina work great with simpler toppings.

Do try them for a simple dinner, they take less than an hour from start to finish. Use a hot well seasoned cast iron skillet to cook the bread.

[FoodMan]

Last night I made the Pampepato or Christmas Chocolate Spice cake. This is one of the cakes LRK describes as winter keeping cakes in Splendid Table. So, I am hoping to age this for a few days and try it out this coming weekend, if I can wait that long.

I used home made candied citrus peels (orange and pumello) and I made one cake out of the recipe using a cake ring instead of two cakes. We'll see how it comes out (it sure smelled heavenly).

[hathor]

Beautiful meals everyone! Kevin, your veal chops look perfect, and I love the farfalle, or whatever they are called. Ellie, I'm now craving piadini with bitter greens. Your mention of Umbrian flat bread...I don't think I've ever seen it, I'll have to keep an eye out for it. Maybe I'm just naturally drawn to the flat bread style. They freeze pretty well too and then you can have a really quick meal!

I think tomorrow is ravioli day for me. Need to stock up before the hoards arrive.

[FoodMan]

Beautiful meals everyone!  Kevin, your veal chops look perfect, and I love the farfalle, or whatever they are called. Ellie, I'm now craving piadini with bitter greens.  Your mention of Umbrian flat bread...I don't think I've ever seen it, I'll have to keep an eye out for it. Maybe I'm just naturally drawn to the flat bread style.  They freeze pretty well too and then you can have a really quick meal!

I think tomorrow is ravioli day for me. Need to stock up before the hoards arrive.

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Hathor-

The Umbrian flat bread we are talkign about was the one called Testa, click here for the pictures when I baked some in the Umbria thread.

[Shaya]

Kevin, those strichetti are so gorgeous. They must have been tasty with the lemon zest and parsley. Did they not give you any trouble to roll out? Your veal and beans look great too.

Elie that dinner looks wonderful. Beautiful pasta. And that cake... I commend you for pulling off so much great cooking with such a little baby in the house. What sort of surface did you use to cook the piadina?

Edited December 18, 2006 by Shaya (log)

[FoodMan]

I commend you for pulling off so much great cooking with such a little baby in the house.  What sort of surface did you use to cook the piadina?

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I do lots of cooking and prepping late at night...that's why I am so tired during the day .

For a cooking surface I used my trusty well seasoned Lodge cast iron skillet. I did not even need to rub it with oil or anything.

[hathor]

Elie, I see what you mean about the testa or torta di testa. You were right, usually its a bit thinner. The E-R version is even thinner, but these two breads are certainly related. That testa looked marvelous on the Umbrian thread!

And I blew by that spiced chocolate when I was looking at the thread earlier. What a would give for a whiff of that cake.

[Kevin72]

Kevin, those strichetti are so gorgeous.  They must have been tasty with the lemon zest and parsley.  Did they not give you any trouble to roll out?  Your veal and beans look great too.

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Why thank you. The lemon zest got a little lost in the mix, I think. And I should've chopped the parsley finer: it was too big and would tear the pasta when it was rolled out. Plus, not sure if you can tell, but they more or less lost their lovely shape when they hit the water and become just crumpled ribbons again.

[Pontormo]

Beautiful, Kevin, very creative in making the speckled herb dough and re-inventing your soup as a sauce. The combination of pears and greens seems a refrain this month and I'm glad the veal chops came out so well. Looks like a celebration.

Elie, the peas are mandatory with prosciutto and such a bounty of golden tagliatelle. Thanks for the description of the piadini. Isn't that the name Franci used for a different type of seed-speckled bread? I wish you self-restraint on that gorgeous cake for Christmas.

* * *

I just wanted to report that I tried the ragu alla contadina, ST, p. 48, the choice deliberate since it seemed a perfect thing to compare with Marcella Hazan's bolognese. The only thing I regret is that when I made a recent comment about the need for lots of salt in a recipe, my cold must have been changing. I'm suffering a mild case of taste-deprivation, so I have to qualify the following report.

I cheated a little and upped the number of canned plum tomatoes from 3 to 5. Otherwise, the only other things I changed stem from the fact that I don't like to wait until something is cooked to add salt the way LRK does, and I decided to lengthen the final stage of cooking.

Basic distinctions from Hazan are as follows:

1) Numbers and types of meats: veal, pork (as sausage meat or ground loin, pancetta & Prosciutto) and poultry (as stock, turkey in my case) join the beef. Kevin mentioned how LRK advises you to grind mixtures yourself. Okay, that's a step I omitted.

2) Greater quantity of onion (whole vs. 2 T)

3) Red wine vs. white

4) Twice as much milk PLUS stock, so more liquid if fewer plum tomatoes

5) Instead of cooking meat until it just loses its pinky color, you're asked to really brown it for quite some time in a sauté pan, then after pouring out fat, transfer the meat to a saucepan or pot. Wine is simmered in the sauté pan to pick up all the crusty bits before the next step.

6) Instead of adding wine, watching it evaporate, then milk, ditto, then piling in tomatoes and letting the sauce simmer for 4 hours, you stay pretty close to the pot to introduce the wine, then the stock or broth incrementally as if making risotto. Then all 2 cups of milk are poured in with the last 1/2 cup of stock for an hour's worth of simmering. Only then, during the last 45 minutes, tomatoes simmer with the white-speckled meats. (I prolonged this final stage to around 1 1/2 hours.)

The aroma is just as maddening. The fresh ragu's taste really is much richer, deep and complex when just finished because of all the pork, especially. I'm not sure what the stock did except to make the ragu more sauce-like, or less concentrated. Tonight, when I served it for the first time, the flavors had mellowed (I think) and sweetened. I also found that reheating the sauce in milk made sense and brought out the creaminess of it. I still light candles at the altar of Marcella, but I am pretty confident that this ragu is just a wee bit better.

* * *

FOOTNOTE: I complained to a local culinary web site that Whole Foods added big, whole leaves of Italian parsley to its mild sausage, and worse, tons of fennel seeds that I had to pick out. This got into a discussion of what constitutes Italian sweet sausage since my neighborhood store doesn't add the seeds. Another member posted FDA regulations today which stipulated that sausage sold as Italian MUST contain fennel or anise seeds.

Edited December 19, 2006 by Pontormo (log)

[little ms foodie]

tonight we started with proscuitto, the last of our salumi from bologna and some pecorino

then I grabbed my gnochhi board that I bought in Florence and made gnocchi ala parma- the first time I have ever made potato gnocchi

the 'batter' had butter and egg in it. the sauce was butter and parm but I also added some parsley

I know that gnocchi isn't primarily ER cuisine but I had it a few times there and my book says it's quite common now but definately made with more dairy and more seasoned.

So a question about my board- what the heck was i suppose to do with the stick???

[Kevin72]

I think it's to wrap squares of pasta dough around to make garganelli.

Lovely stuff. The dough wasn't too wet with the butter in there?

Edited December 19, 2006 by Kevin72 (log)

[FoodMan]

Pontormo-

Another great report with tons of information. Thank you for detailing the LRK (not HAZAN right?) procedure. But, what did you serve it with?

[Pontormo]

Elie, it sounds as if you had another late night:

I just wanted to report that I tried the ragu alla contadina, ST, p. 48, the choice deliberate since it seemed a perfect thing to compare with Marcella Hazan's bolognese. 

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This was the first I didn't follow Hazan's recipe for this type of ragu.

The ragu was served on tagliatelle. Green salad with roasted beets and toasted walnuts. Persimmon flan with pomegranate glaze.

* * *

Wendy, very nice toy and lovely gnocchi.

[mrbigjas]

Persimmon flan with pomegranate glaze.

can you tell us about this? i have two very ripe persimmons here that i need to use. is it germane to the topic, or just something you made?

[little ms foodie]

kevin the butter wasn't melted, it was at room temp so it was worked in with the egg.

Garganelli! hmmmmmmmmmmm thanks!

[Pontormo]

Persimmon flan with pomegranate glaze.

can you tell us about this? i have two very ripe persimmons here that i need to use. is it germane to the topic, or just something you made?

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The dessert is not an example of Emilia-Romagna's cuisine; I was simply answering Elie's question about the entire meal. (I also consulted him since I was developing the recipe myself and had never made pomegranate syrup out of the fruit before. I'll send you a PM. It was delicious, but the recipe needs tweaking.)

[Abra]

I finally got in the game today by following in Elie's footsteps on the winter keeper cakes. I made the Spongata di Berceta, a honey, fruit, and nut cake. Here's a peek at the filling before the top crust goes on

ground toasted almonds, walnuts, and pine nuts, mixed with chopped raisins and some beautifully candied citron. I've always detested citron, but this stuff really tastes good, and very delicate. The filling is spiced with cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg, and it's bound together with honey. I used half Tuscan chestnut honey, and half of a lighter domestic honey. This goop has an intoxicating flavor.

The dough is a nuisance to work with. It's fragile and fussy and not that fun, so I'm hoping the taste and texture will justify the trouble. Evidently alliteration-inducing, the cake is very rustic-looking

Now it's wrapped up until Christmas. It should be great by then, and I can already anticipate how it will age, thanks to my recent adventures with cuccidati, to which it's clearly related.

I unexpectedly have some carnivores coming to Christmas dinner, so now I can go mark another 10 or so recipes that were formerly excluded from my consideration. Yay!

[little ms foodie]

tonight was Polenta al Sugo (polenta with meat sauce)- it was good! the first time I have made polenta (this is a cooking region with many firsts for me!) total stick to your ribs, cold winter night dish. We will make this again!! the sugo recipe I followed had dried porcinis in it

[Mottmott]

...I just wanted to report that I tried the ragu alla contadina, ST, p. 48, the choice deliberate since it seemed a perfect thing to compare with Marcella Hazan's bolognese. 

I cheated a little and upped the number of canned plum tomatoes from 3 to 5.  Otherwise, the only other things I changed stem from the fact that I don't like to wait until something is cooked to add salt the way LRK does, and I decided to lengthen the final stage of cooking.

Basic distinctions from Hazan are as follows:

1) Numbers and types of meats: veal, pork (as sausage meat or ground loin, pancetta & Prosciutto) and poultry (as stock, turkey in my case) join the beef.  Kevin mentioned how LRK advises you to grind mixtures yourself.  Okay, that's a step I omitted.

2) Greater quantity of onion (whole vs. 2 T)

3) Red wine vs. white

4) Twice as much milk PLUS stock, so more liquid if fewer plum tomatoes

5) Instead of cooking meat until it just loses its pinky color, you're asked to really brown it for quite some time in a sauté pan, then after pouring out fat, transfer the meat to a saucepan or pot.  Wine is simmered in the sauté pan to pick up all the crusty bits before the next step.

6) Instead of adding wine, watching it evaporate, then milk, ditto, then piling in tomatoes and letting the sauce simmer for 4 hours, you stay pretty close to the pot to introduce the wine, then the stock or broth incrementally as if making risotto.  Then all 2 cups of milk are poured in with the last 1/2 cup of stock for an hour's worth of simmering.  Only then, during the last 45 minutes, tomatoes simmer with the white-speckled meats.  (I prolonged this final stage to around 1 1/2 hours.)

The aroma is just as maddening.  The fresh ragu's taste really is much richer, deep and complex when just finished because of all the pork, especially.  I'm not sure what the stock did except to make the ragu more sauce-like, or less concentrated.  Tonight, when I served it for the first time, the flavors had mellowed (I think) and sweetened.  I also found that reheating the sauce in milk made sense and brought out the creaminess of it.  I still light candles at the altar of Marcella, but I am pretty confident that this ragu is just a wee bit better.

When I made the Country Ragu (last winter), I used the fresh pork instead of the sausage, ground the meats at home (I can get a coarser grind this way), and followed the recipe carefully. I find the result is in another class from Hazan's recipe. In addition to being "richer, deep and complex," it also has a subtlety that makes it special. When I made Hazan's ragu, I had it on pasta the first night and have frozen the rest to use in a lasagna or other baked pasta dish where bechamel and/or cheese will balance it.

[Kevin72]

I took a turn at piadine myself last night. Kudos to Elie for making the squaquerone cheese that is often served with it; I've never had the foresight enough to make it in advance for these meals. He also appears to be able to roll his out thinner and more uniform:

One had bresaola in it, the other mortadella, then some tossed greens.

Something fun about this meal; I remember it fondly from last year as well, and they're so easy to make that I really should do them more often.

[Pontormo]

Abra: I see why you had to take a picture of your cake's batter before you encased it. How beautiful! Where did you get your citron? I think LRK says there's a difference between the kind you find at the supermarket and superior brands.

I hope you and Elie will take shots of your respective cakes when they are sliced.

Wendy: thanks for inspiration for dinner tonight. I just need to find something new to do with Swiss chard.