The Cooking and Cuisine of the Veneto

[FoodMan]

Beautiful stuff Kevin. Those scallops look so good and so huge. I've been debating for a long time whether I should give squab a try. The Asian market and Central Market sell the same brand, but obviously one is cheaper . Your looks so nice and golden brown. Would you try cooking them again? I have the same worry that my wife might not be thrilled about eating rare-cooked pigeon.

[FoodMan]

Considered by many to be the most romantic city in the world, Venice is most appropriate as our choice to cook from this month of February. Of course more specifically I am talking about the wonderful Hallmark celebration of Valentine’s Day. Usually we send the kids away for Valentine’s dinner and I prepare a nice intimate sometimes elaborate dinner for two. This year, unfortunately, our babysitter (mother in law) was not available. Still, how can we be cooking from the Veneto and not make a Venetian inspired Valentine’s dinner. Actually, I went for a breakfast to kick start the day and then end it with a dinner. Most of the prep was done on Tuesday night, between the hours of 9PM and 1AM, the only time I have a chance to prepare everything and the kids are sleeping.

Valentine’s Day – Breakfast

Rossette Veneziana (Venetian Bread Roses), from Carol Field’s “The Italian Baker”. Even the name of these things is sexy and romantic…roses made of bread…mmmmmm. You can probably tell that I did not follow Field’s instructions on how to properly form these to make them look like flowers or roses. It was very late and I was in no mood to do that. So, I formed them the way I do Kaiser rolls. These babies have both olive oil and lard in them and were baked 30 minutes before serving on Valentines’ morning. Yes, they were as good as they look. I had two more for lunch at work with ham and cheese.

Spinach and cheese frittata from Mario Batali’s Molto Italiano. Very good frittata and it makes me wonder why I do not do these more often for breakfast! I mean they are easy, delicious and look damn cool.

We drank coffee

Valentine’s Day – Dinner

Homemade Tagliatelle with lemon and chile from Molto Italiano as well. I used my own homegrown Meyer lemon zest and juice to sauce these luscious pasta dish and it was great. The sauce is basically a lemon butter sauce .

Proseco “Braised” stuffed chicken breast with cherries and apricots, recipe is online from one of the Molto Mario Veneto episodes. Ok, the actual recipe is for rabbit legs, but the wife wanted chicken. So, I pounded the breasts thin, stuffed them with the walnut stuffing and rolled them. Of course I “braised” them for a significantly shorter time so as not to overcook them. Good dish but not spectacular. Hey what more can we ask from chicken breast?

Contorni-

Sauteed mushrooms with garlic

Radicchio sautéed briefly and dressed with vinegar and olive oil

Dessert: Bittersweet (more on the bitter side with 70% cocoa) chocolate pots with polenta-orange cookies. Both recipes here are from Jamie Oliver’s second book (well, I added the raisins to the cookies to make them more like Venetian Zalettis) and they are made for each other. The chocolate on it’s own is rich in both flavor and texture, so eaten with the crispy crunchy cookies it works great.

[Pontormo]

What wonderful husbands you two are!

The beet ravioli are especially romantic, though the it's the scallops that appeal the most. (Bravo on the squab, Kevin. Next thing you know, you'll be out in the backyard with a hatchet, like April in one of our earliest threads.)

Of course Elie's bread is stunning. Those rolls are perfect for lunchtime, as is the frittata, to be sandwiched within. The complementary pairing of cookies and rich chocolate looks really good, too.

[Franci]

Yes, Kevin and Foodman, you are really great!

Everything looks wonderful.

Can I send you my husband for a quick lesson on how too be more thoughtful?

Of course we never celebrate Valentine's day and yesterday he came from work at 11 pm as usual

Going back to birds. Honestly it is more in recent years that I see birds cooked somewhat rare. Italians usually like their meat well done. My mom used to cook birds and polenta often, always well done, hers came out tender. I don't know if because of the stricter hunting regulations of what, she has stopped cooking little birds.

I still think tenderness has a lot of to do with the age of the birds and sometimes with hanging them the correct time, but maybe this is more true for bigger ones like pheasants

[Kevin72]

Lovely meals of your own, there, Elie. I forgot that rossette are made with lard, which I didn't have on hand when I made them originally. I'll bet they were great as sandwich bread! And I also like the dessert.

I remember that recipe for the pasta in Mario's book. He gives full credit to his latino kitchen staff for modifying the original version, which had radicchio in it in place of the chilies. Interesting stuff.

[Shaya]

I am loving this thread.

Chufi, I am not a big fan of liver, but you made it look so gorgeous I would have to have some. Did you manage to eat any?

Kevin, your crab pasta looks wonderful. And your duck looks great too. I love the way you make your polenta wedges. It makes me want to make polenta. And what a gorgeous Valentine's dinner you prepared. The head-on bird sounds a bit extreme for me; and wait, you actually gutted a bird? Now THAT is love.

Hathor, thanks so much for those pics of Carnivale. My older guy has just read through the "Magic Treehouse" series and one of the recent ones took place in Venice during Carnivale. I must show him your photos. He is also obsessed with Pompeii and I know you've been there too - he would be fascinated to have a chat with you!

Franci, I love the artistry of your plate of fish with fried squash. Just beautiful. Fried squash sounds great, too.

Foodman, wow, you've embraced yet another region just beautifully. First off, I can't get your blood-orange negroni's off my mind. The color is so gorgeous. I love your Valentine's day meal. The rolls look exceptionally good. I must look up that recipe. I brought back a tub of duck fat from montreal - does that count as lard? The pasta and contorni are just my type of food, too. Very nice work.

[Shaya]

Kevin, I took my inspiration from you and made some heart-shaped beet ravioli for Valentine's day. I'm not a fan of poppy seeds, but I love the combination of citrus and chevre with ravioli, so I added those along with ricotta. They were really awesome. I froze the leftover filling so I can make them again sometime.

For the next course I took further inspiration from Kevin, and made a version of his scallops "gratinee" which I thought my sweetie would really like, as he loves scallops. Although I had everything prepped hours ahead, in the final rush to get dinner on the table I forgot to add some wine to the dish before broiling, so we ended up adding a splash after the fact. Definitely not the same impact.

I also made a fish "en saor" - used a boston blue here, as it looked hardy, and let it sit all day. I caramelized the onions as I really only like them that way. Loved this dish.

[FoodMan]

Shaya-

you are undoubtedly the stuffed pasta queen here. The hearts look perfect.

Sure you can use duck fat instead of lard, but I think the flavor of duck fat is more assertive than pork fat. So, if you do not mind that, go for it.

[hathor]

Ditto what Pontormo said: Kevin and Ellie...you guys are great husbands! Beautiful, beautiful meals.

I love squab! I do have a thing for those little birdies.

Franci, where/how did you mother get the little birds that she served with polenta? Every once in awhile you can find them in Umbria and they are delicious.

Those heart shaped raviolis are gorgeous. What fun!

I have to make do with extremely limited ingredients, and looking at those scallops....just makes me ....hungry! For something other than meat!

[FoodMan]

You know, a few days ago it was in the low 30s high 20s here in Houston (freezing cold), then yesterday, Sunday, was a lovely Spring day in the 60s! So, a more or less spring-ish meal inspired by the Veneto and the desire to cook fresh fish followed...

Roasted striped bass with white wine, Meyer lemon and garlic.

Steamed and briefly sauteed fresh Asparagus with Meyer lemon zest, garlic, parm cheese and excellent extra virgin olive oil.

Dessert, from Marcella Hazan's Essentials..., an excellent Polenta shortbread cake with dried figs, cherries and pinenuts. It is also flavored with fennel seeds. Marcella writes that this was made based on James Beard's request of a cake he's had in Venice. It is very delicious, dense but not too rich and goes great with sweetened whipped cream and an espresso. I added the minor embelishment of drizzled honey before baking and I like that. It makes a very good breakfast the next day too.

Before baking

Sliced and ready to eat

[Pontormo]

Elie, since Judith is off in the hinterlands, Kevin enjoying a holiday, and Klary recovering from a major culinary feat, let me apologize for not seeing this sooner in the day and beaming as is your due.

You know, I am not sure I have ever tried making any of the desserts in the Hazan cookbooks, always gravitating towards French or American things instead. Still haven't tried to replicate my beloved little Florentine budini di riso pastries. This, however, truly looks good especially with the personal touch of a honey spiral. The texture's reminiscent of cakes made with ricotta in appearance, though denser I'm sure.

The bass, of course, also honor the lunar new year. Can't wait until asparagus is in season; sounds like Texas can't either given the warmth that is heading our way, too.

[Kevin72]

Looks like someone's meyer lemon tree is out of control! Nice seasonal matchup; like Pontormo, I find this bout of warmer weather has banished my craving for braises and is making me eager for some spring dishes.

Shaya, I didn't get a chance earlier to say how flattered I was about your own Valentine's meal and how much better your stuff all turned out. Bluefish, I think, is perfect for these fried and then marinated fish dishes. And the ravioli are exquisite!

[FoodMan]

Pontormo-

Thanks for the compliments. You have to try some of Marcella's desserts in that book, especially those simple, ver Italian "dry" cakes. I loved her almond cake, walnut cake and the olive oil cake as well as this latest polenta one.

Kevin-

Yeah the Meyer lemon tree is very prolific and everyone thinks it produces oranges since the fruit is so big! Wanna trade some lemons for figs ?

[Franci]

I haven't been cooking a lot of veneto food...I bought some radicchio tardivo

Since it was pretty good, not bitter at all, it was almost a sacrilage to cook it, expecially given how much it costs.

I sacrificed only the outer leaves of a couple bunches for a risotto. As you can see, I have been very stingy with the radicchio

I used as a base a little bit of white onion and the guanciale I bought in Rome a couple weeks ago, saute' the radicchio in another pan at added at the end, I should have deglazed it with red wine but I didn't have any good handy at the moment.

Is not this beautiful?

This is the recipe from Kucinare, sorry in Italian

If tomorrow I manage to go to Borough Mkt and buy some more there are other recipe from the same person I would like to try, as

radicchio tardivo marinato

Fried radicchio

or even a spezzatino al radicchio con polenta

And have you ever seen this broccolo, broccolo fiolaro? , also tipycal from around Vicenza.

[Pan]

[...]Sliced and ready to eat

←

As a lover of bread pudding, that looks like a delicious, rich one to me. Except that I know that it must have corn (polenta) in it, too. Beautiful!

[FoodMan]

Franci-

That Guanciale is beautiful...almost a sacrilage to cook it!

Pan-

Sorry to disaapoint you buddy, but the cake is nothing like a bread pudding . It is pretty dense and a little crumbly due to all the polenta in there. Still very good and keeps for days though.

[FoodMan]

Dinner from Wednesday (Just got the chance to download the pics):

The whole idea here was to try out this green apple risotto from Mario Batali's first book. When he first saw it served in Venice, he thought it was a new fangled thing that his hosts were trying. Apparently though, it is quiet typical in the Veneto during apple harvest season and it is very delicious. Since apple and pork is a match made in heaven, I was hoping to serve it along side a pork loin...maybe cooked in milk Venetian style.

Unfortunatly -or maybe not- I had no time to buy and cook a loin in the middle of the week. Then I remembered a recipe from the Passione website for sausages cooked with oinons and vinegar from the Veneto. Guess what! I have a selection of homemade sausages (Italian with fennel, garlic-thyme and the decidedly un-Italian Chipotle-Mole). So, I did have apples and pork after all. It was quick and simply divine. Just ask my 3 year old who kept saying "this is soooo gooood". I have to admit the Chipotle-Mole sausage was definitly not suitable for a Venetian meal, but it still tasted good.

My wife's plate, with the three different kinds of sausages. Can u guess which is which? She opted for no onions for some reason...so I had to show you my plate...

Is that too much risotto for one person? Technically, yes, but...

[Kevin72]

So, everyone's in a risotto kinda mood, I see . . . I'll be doing one of those this weekend myself, also.

Elie, your meal sounds like good, mountain, ribsticking stuff. And Franci, as always, your photos are perfect. I had the opportunity to experiment with tardivo the first time myself last week.

[Kevin72]

Last night's meal started with a spritz cocktail; mine was a slight variant on the normal preparation by using lemon pellegrino, vodka, and a dash of bitters.

We then continued with turkey meatballs in citrus sauce from Della Croce's Veneto cookbook.

These were highly addictive. Very delicate meatballs and then the trace of citrus sauce really sent them into orbit. There probably, in fact, could have been even more sauce: I doubled the recipe and it still made just a thin dribble to coat the meatballs.

Incidentally, della Croce has two recipes in her cookbook that call for ginger and lemongrass in them. I know Venice is of course a spice and exotic flavor capital, but I wonder how traditional those two in particular are. Not that I'm complaining since they do make for a novel break.

Then we had bigoli with duck ragu.

"Bigoli" loosely translated mean "monstrous pain in the ass". Hathor already went over the real traditional method in her intro writeup: a bench-type mechanism you sit at and then "screw" the pasta through to extrude. Mario has recommended running the dough instead through an electric meat grinder with the cutting blade removed.

The dough shoots through the holes in the grinder, making nice, rough-looking strands of pasta. The problem is, though, that as it extrudes and gets longer, it comes back together. When you cut it off, then the end pieces all gum together. So after each pass you spend several minutes laboriously picking the pasta strands back apart again. So the other translation for "bigoli" is "Kevin's never doing these again". I can now see why when we were in Verona and ordered them we just got a plate of plain, box spaghetti. Too much trouble.

I posted this as a due warning to Elie, who I know is also planning to make them this month. Maybe he's more dextrous than I am.

[weinoo]

Last night I prepared a dinner from the Veneto for 8, including a fair number of egulleteers. One of my basic rules of cooking is to never prepare a dish for guests that I haven't tried previously, but throwing caution to the wind, with some success and some failure, herewith the menu with pix.

Things started off with assorted cocktails prepared by our mixologist nonpareil...to go along with the following...

ANTIPASTI e CICHETI

PROSCUITTO, SPECK e SALUMI

BACCALA MANTECATO

OLIVA d’ITALIA

ACHIUGA, TONNO, CIOPOLLINI, PEPE, CARCIOFI

Close ups of the baccala and mini-skewers...

PRIMI PIATTI

RISI e BISI

With vialone nano rice, and using frozen peas, this dish was one of the successes and quite delicious, imho!

SECONDI

SPIEDINI di VITELLO e SALSICCIA alla UCCELLETTO con POLENTA

These were inspired by Marcella's Essentials - skewers in a style similar to the way that small birds would generally be served; the sausage and pancetta were awesome, however the veal would have benefitted by being served immediately after these were cooked - holding them for an hour or so seemed to dry out the veal a bit - even though I used shoulder!

CONTORNI

ASPARAGI e RADICCHIO all’AGLIO e OLIO

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a snap of the asparagus and radicchio, but they were good and went nicely with the meats and polenta.

ASSORTED CHEESES FROM THE VENETO

Served with Sullvan St. Bakery's Pugliese and assorted jams and aceto balsamico.

DOLCI

PINZA di PANE

SHORTBREAD OF POLENTA WITH DRIED FRUITS

Allright, so this is where it fell apart and my golden rule come home to roost - it's a good thing we were already in our cups and had had plenty to eat!! Two desserts (no pix) that were really not that good. The bread pudding (from JDC) was way dry - perhaps the bread i used was too heavy, but basically not good! And the Shortbread, which Foodman had lots of success with, was met with less than enthusiastic ratings - it had some nice flavors, but boy was it dense and heavy. Next time it's biscotti and fruit...

One of our guests also brought some homemade chartreuse marshallmallow - be on the look-out for it at Will Goldfarb's real soon!!

A fair amount of wine was consumed and, needless to say, the company really made this meal special. Till the next month's region of Italy, buon appetitio!

[Franci]

Nice dinner Weinoo.

Tonight, we had a simple riso e patate

I would have liked to cook some seppie but it is not easy to find, sometimes at Billingsgate market (London's ichthyic market).

So I ended up frying artichokes and calamari, served with radicchio tardivo marinato. I follow the recipe from kucinare I previously posted.

the vinegar in the radicchio well balanced the fried food

Edited February 24, 2007 by Franci (log)

[weinoo]

Thanks, and that fritto looks delicious, Franci!

[Franci]

"Bigoli" loosely translated mean "monstrous pain in the ass".

Very diplomatic translation Kevin , let's say that if you call someone bigolo is not a compliment

[Franci]

I enjoy baking breads and I decided it was a long time I didn't bake anything apart from my weekly bread.

I wanted to give it a try to fugassa or fugazza, a brioche dough not as rich as the more famous Pandoro, it's not as complex but still requires a good day of work. This the recipe I followed if anybody is interested. It's a traditional Easter dough and could be baked also in a dove mold.

Before baking

Right out of the oven

My breakfast this morning

Not too sweet, not too buttery, overall a very nice dough. I think the general trend in pasticceria is making all the breads richer and sweeter than they used to be. The only mistake, if we want to call it so, is that I forgot before sliding it into the oven to make a deep cross on top.

Edited to add this comment: I just been told by someone from veneto that the traditional shape is not the one I choose, it's rather a round brioche with a cross in the middle, basically something like this

Edited February 26, 2007 by Franci (log)

[Kevin72]

Lovely meal, Weinoo. Kudos particularly on doing baccala mantecato. A favorite of mine from this region which I won't be able to get to. Though when I do make it I always wind up with waaaay too much leftover. I also love all the skewered goodies!

Franci, as always, wonderful pics and your baking efforts continue to turn out perfect looking. Funny how the marinated radicchio wound up kinda looking like calamari, which you served it with!