Eating Italy: A Chef's Culinary Adventure (42 page)

That year, we had two weddings: one in Nashua, New Hampshire, at Alpine Grove with a justice of the peace; and another in Trescore Balneario, Italy, which was an all-day extravaganza. Trescore Balneario is where I had my first cooking job at Loro, so my life in Italy had come full circle. We were married in Italian by Claudia’s childhood priest, Don Camillo at Santuario della Madonna dello Zuccarello, a tiny mountainside church in Nembro. Twelve of my family members came from America, including my eighty-five-year-old grandmother. Around noon, the reception began at Locanda Armonia, a drop-dead gorgeous inn and restaurant nestled among the olive groves and vineyards above Trescore
Balneario. We started with
stuzzichini
(hors d’oeuvres), such as house-cured prosciutto sliced to order, oysters with caviar zabaione, grilled veal sausage with spring onion mostarda, eggplant cannoli with burrata and oregano, and mortadella pigs in a blanket. We took pictures among the vineyards, danced, and dined on beef tartare with fried egg yolk and Tropea onions, grilled seppia with sweet peas and mâche, fava bean and robiola agnolotti with culatello, and whole roasted quail stuffed with foie gras and fig agrodolce. Lunch lasted until five p.m. After cutting the cake and sipping lemon sgroppino, a kind of alcoholic slushy, the party moved downstairs to the tavern with a DJ, more dancing, and a dessert buffet full of citrus rum babas, olive oil panna cotta, and other sweets. It was an orgy of food. The party went from noon to midnight and brought together two big, boisterous families from the United States and Italy. Neither family spoke the other’s language, so the only way we could communicate was through food. As Claudia and I danced, we looked over and her Uncle Bruno was shoving little cotechino panini, grilled to order, into my Uncle Al’s mouth. It was a daylong celebration of everything I loved about Italy.

CORN TORTELLI
with
RICOTTA SALATA

When it was my birthday in Italy, I threw myself a party. That’s what you do there! I planned an all-American barbecue with smoked meat and boiled corn. I went to every
supermercato
for the corn and all I could find was preshucked three-packs of corn that had probably been sitting in the case for the whole month of July. Let me tell you, it wasn’t Jersey corn! In the land of polenta, I couldn’t find any sweet corn! But it was a great birthday anyway. When I got back to the States, I made this dish thinking that this is what I would have made if sweet corn had been available in Italy. When pureed and mixed with a little cheese and egg to bind it, fresh corn makes an incredibly creamy pasta filling. Turn to this recipe in the height of summer when corn is sweetest.

MAKES ABOUT 4 SERVINGS

5 ears fresh corn

1 tablespoon (15 ml) olive oil

½ medium-size yellow onion, chopped (⅔ cup/80 g)

1 small egg

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

8 ounces (227 g) Egg Pasta Dough (
page 282
), rolled into 2 sheets, each about
inch (1.5 mm) thick

4 ounces (1 stick/113 g) unsalted butter

½ cup (120 ml) black truffle paste

4 ounces (113 g) ricotta salata

Shuck the corn, stand each ear upright on a cutting board, and cut the kernels from the cobs. Heat the oil in a large, deep sauté pan over medium heat, add the onion, and sweat until soft but not browned, 4 to 5 minutes. Add the corn, and cook until tender, 3 to 4 minutes. Transfer to a blender and puree until very smooth and thick, 2 to 3 minutes. If the mixture is thin and easily pourable, stir it in a fine-mesh sieve to drain some of the liquid. The corn mixture should be thick enough to stand on a spoon. Let cool slightly, then quickly blend in the egg and season with salt and pepper. Transfer to a resealable plastic bag, seal, and refrigerate for up to 1 day.

Lay a pasta sheet on a lightly floured work surface and trim the edges square. Cut the pasta into 3-inch (7.5-cm) squares. Spritz the dough lightly with water to keep it from drying out. Put teaspoon-size spoonfuls of filling on each square, then bring the opposite corners together over the filling to make a triangle. Press gently on the edges to seal. Bring the two opposite points of the triangle up over the pasta and pinch them together to seal: you should have a large tortellini shape. Repeat with the remaining pasta dough and filling. The filled pasta can be refrigerated for up to 8 hours on a sheet pan or frozen for up to 3 days before cooking. You should have about fifty tortelli.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Drop in the tortelli in batches if necessary to prevent overcrowding; quickly return the water to a boil and cook until tender yet firm, 2 to 3 minutes. Drain the pasta, reserving about 1 cup (235 ml) of the pasta water.

Just before the pasta is done, melt the butter and truffle paste in a large deep sauté pan over medium heat. Spoon in about ½ cup (120 ml) of pasta water, and cook until the sauce is creamy, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the pasta in batches if necessary, and toss gently to coat. Transfer to a large serving bowl and shave or grate the ricotta salata over the top.

SCHISOLA (POLENTA STUFFED
with
GORGONZOLA DOLCE)

Claudia’s grandfather kept cows and made butter and cheese. He would put some formagella cheese and leftover polenta in his pocket to eat as a snack in the fields. The two would get smooshed in his pocket and they called it
schisola
, which means “squished” in the Bergamascan dialect. I like to roll the polenta into balls, squish pieces of Gorgonzola inside, and then broil them. Just be sure to blast them at high heat so the polenta browns before the cheese oozes out.

MAKES 4 SERVINGS

2 cups (475 ml) cooked Polenta (
page 281
)

4 ounces (113 g) Gorgonzola cheese, divided into 12 pieces

4 ounces (1 stick/113 g) unsalted butter, divided, plus some for greasing the pan

1 ounce (28 g) Parmesan cheese, grated (¼ cup) for garnish

8 sage leaves for garnish

Using a 2-ounce (60-ml) ice-cream scoop or your fingers, scoop out twelve balls of polenta, each 1 to 1½ inches (2.5 to 3.75 cm) in diameter. Wet your hands, make a dimple in each polenta ball, and press a piece of Gorgonzola into the dimple. Form the polenta around the Gorgonzola, rolling it between your wet palms into a neat ball. Use immediately or place on a parchment-lined tray, cover, and refrigerate for 2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 500°F (260°C). Turn on convection if possible. You want to blast these at a pretty high temperature. Grease a baking sheet with some of the butter. Melt 3 tablespoons (42 g) of the butter, arrange the polenta balls on the sheet, and brush each one with butter. Bake until the polenta lightly browns and the cheese just starts to melt inside, 5 to 7 minutes.

Meanwhile, melt 5 tablespoons (71 g) of the butter over medium heat in a small skillet and add the sage leaves. Cook until the sage lightly browns, the butter turns golden, and the milk solids fall to the bottom of the pan and turn light brown, 6 to 7 minutes.

Divide the schisola among plates, sprinkle on the Parmesan, drizzle with brown butter, and garnish with the sage leaves.

PROSCIUTTO COTTO
with
STONE FRUITS

Ham, or prosciutto, is the hind leg of the pig. Italians make two different kinds:
prosciutto crudo
, the raw dry-cured type that’s sliced paper-thin; and
prosciutto cotto
, which is similar to American wet-cured, cooked ham. The difference is that Italians leave the bone, fat, and skin on the cooked ham during the entire curing and cooking process, which keeps the meat moist and makes it taste richer. At our wedding, we served slices of prosciutto cotto wrapped around melon as an appetizer. I also like to serve it with a salad of late-summer fruits, such as plums, apricots, and peaches. You’ll need a large marinade injector for this recipe (see Sources,
page 289
). Or you could soak the raw, bone-in ham in brine for thirty days. If using boneless ham, soak it for twenty-five days. Either way, you will have leftover ham from this recipe. It keeps for several weeks in the refrigerator.

MAKES 6 TO 8 SERVINGS (PLUS LEFTOVER HAM)

Ham:

1 uncooked bone-in ham (pork hind leg), 20 pounds (9 kg)

3 gallons (12 L) 3-2-1 Brine (
page 280
)

4 teaspoons (24 g) curing salt #1 (see
page 277
)

4 teaspoons (9. 5 g) ground mace

4 teaspoons (8.5 g) ground coriander

4 teaspoons (8.5 g) freshly ground black pepper

2 teaspoons (8 g) ground juniper berries

Stone Fruits:

2 tablespoons (30 ml) sherry vinegar

6 tablespoons (90 ml) extra-virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons (7 g) chopped mixed fresh herbs (parsley, rosemary, and thyme), divided