Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (17 page)

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When you hear someone speak of Bolognese cooking, salute it, because this cooking deserves it. It is somewhat heavy perhaps because the climate requires it, but it is also succulent, tasty and healthy. This may explain why in Bologna a life span of 80 or 90 years is more common than elsewhere.

The following tortellini, though simpler and less costly than the preceding ones, are just as good—as you will learn when you taste them.

30 grams (about 1 ounce) of untrimmed prosciutto

20 grams (about 2/3 of an ounce) of Bolognese mortadella

60 grams (about 2 ounces) of ox marrow

60 grams (about 2 ounces) of grated Parmesan cheese

1 egg

a dash of nutmeg

no salt or pepper

Finely chop the prosciutto and mortadella with the mezzaluna. Chop the marrow equally fine, but don’t melt it over the fire. Add the other ingredients, and knead it all together with an egg, mixing well. Enclose this paste in a disk of the same dough used for the previous recipes cut to the size shown in recipe 8. These tortellini will keep for days and even for a few weeks, and if you want them to turn a nice yellow color, place them to dry in a warming oven as soon as they are made. With this amount, you will make about 300 tortellini. And you will need a dough made with three eggs.

“Bologna is a big old town where the feasting never stops,” said a fellow who went there now and then to dine with friends. The hyperbole in this sentence is based on a truth, one that might well be put to advantage by a philanthropist wishing to link his name to a new public work for the glory of Italy. I am speaking of the need for a culinary institute, or cooking school, to which Bologna would lend itself better than other city, given its excellent cuisine and its citizens’ passion for eating well. No one, apparently, wants to pay to much attention to eating, and the reason is easy to understand. But then, leaving hypocrisy aside, everybody readily complains about a bad dinner or about indigestion due to badly prepared food. Nourishment being life’s primary need, it is certainly reasonable to take care of this need and satisfy it in the best manner possible.

A foreign writer says, “The health, morale and joy of a family are dependent on its cooking. Therefore, it would be a wonderful thing if every woman, whether of common or high birth, knew an art that brings well-being, wealth and peace to the family.” Our own Lorenzo Stecchetti (Olindo Guerrini) in a conference held at the Exposition of Turin on June 21, 1884, said: “We must be rid of the prejudice that
deems cooking vulgar, for what nurtures an intelligent and elegant pleasure is not vulgar. A producer of wines who manipulates the grapes and occasionally the ground itself to create a pleasant drink, is coddled, envied, and granted public honors.
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A cook who likewise manipulates his raw materials to obtain a pleasing food, is neither honored nor esteemed—he is not even let into the waiting room. And yet the wise man says: “tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are.” And yet the very nations of the world derive their natures, strong or weak, great or wretched, in large part from the food they eat. There is therefore no just distribution of praise. Cooking must be rehabilitated.”

I say therefore that my institute should serve to train young women to be cooks, for they are naturally more economical and less wasteful than men. These women would then be easy to employ, and would possess an art which, when brought into middleclass households, would serve as a medicine against the frequent quarrels that occur in families as a result of bad dining. Indeed, I have heard talk of a sensible woman from a Tuscan city, who, to avoid such quarrels, enlarged her too-small kitchen to make it into a more comfortable place in which she can enjoy using my book.

I mention this idea in its embryonic state, as a suggestion that others may pick up, develop, and use to their benefit if they find it has merit. I am of the opinion that a well-managed institution of this sort—accepting private orders and selling already cooked meals— could be established, grow and prosper with relatively small initial capital and expense.

If you want even nicer tortellini, you can improve this recipe by adding a half-breast of capon cooked in butter and an egg yolk to the other ingredients.

These tortellini truly “deserve to be described here, for they are excellent in their simplicity. Take a squab (i.e., a young pigeon bred for meat) of about 1/2 a kilogram (about a pound) and, having plucked it, combine it with:

80 grams (about 2-2/3 ounces) of grated Parmesan cheese

70 grams (about 2-1/3 ounces) of untrimmed prosciutto

a dash of nutmeg

Clean and gut the squab (the liver and gizzard will not be used in this recipe), and then boil it in salted water for a half hour (it must not be fully cooked). Then remove the squab from the fire, bone it, and chop the meat and prosciutto very fine, first using a knife, and then the mezzaluna. Add the Parmesan and the nutmeg, working and blending the mixture with the blade of a knife until it has the consistency of a smooth paste.

To make the tortellini use the disk in recipe 8. Making the dough with three eggs you should get enough disks for 260 tortellini.

You can serve them in broth, as a soup, or plain with just cheese and butter. They work even better in a giblet sauce.

The people of Romagna solemnly celebrate Easter with this soup and call it “tridura,” a word whose meaning has been lost in the Tuscan dialect, but which was in use in the early 14th century. We know this because the word appears in an ancient manuscript, which mentions a ceremonial gift to the friars of Settimo at Cafaggiolo (Florence) which involved sending every year to the monastery a newly made wooden bowl full of tridura and covered by sticks that supported ten pounds of pork decked with laurel. Everything in the world grows old and changes, even languages and words, but not the ingredients of which dishes are made. For this soup, they are:

130 grams (about 4-1/2 ounces) of day-old bread, grated, not crushed

4 eggs

50 grams (about 1-2/3 ounces) of grated Parmesan cheese

a dash of nutmeg

a pinch of salt

Place the ingredients in a large saucepan and mix them together, but do not let the mixture thicken too much. However, if the mixture is too loose, add more bread crumbs. Dilute with hot but not boiling broth, setting some aside to add later. Cook with embers around the pot, but with little or no heat directly under it. When it begins to boil, try to gather it gently with a wooden spoon in the center of the saucepan by pushing it inwards from the sides of the pan, but without breaking it apart. When it has thickened and set, pour it into the soup tureen and send it to the table. These amounts are enough for six people.

If the panata has turned out well, you will see it gathered in small bunches, with the clear broth around it. If you like it with herbs and peas, cook these separately, and stir them into the mixture before you pour broth over it.

Dried out leftover bread pieces are called “seccherelli” in Tuscany. Crushed and sifted, they are used as bread crumbs in cooking, and can also be used to make a soup. Pour the bread crumbs into boiling broth, in the same proportions you would use when making soup with semolina. Depending on the quantity desired, break two or more eggs into the soup tureen, mix with one heaping spoonful of grated Parmesan cheese for each egg, and pour the boiling soup over it a little bit at a time.

These are not much different from those made with flour, though they bear up better when cooked—firmness being a virtue in this dish. In addition, they leave the broth clear, and are apparently lighter on the stomach.

A fine-grain semolina is required. It must be mixed with egg several hours before you are ready to roll it out. If, when you are about to roll it, it is still too soft, add a few pinches of dry semolina to obtain a dough of the right consistency, so that it does not stick to the rolling pin. Neither salt nor other ingredients are necessary.

This is a dish to be proud of. But if you do not wish to use up a chicken or capon just to use the breast, then wait until you have some breast meat left over from another meal.

Cook in water, or better yet, steam 200 grams (about 7 ounces) of large, floury potatoes, and pass them through a sieve. To this add the breast of chicken, boiled and chopped very finely with a mezzaluna, along with 40 grams (about 1-1/3 ounces) of grated Parmesan cheese, two egg yolks, salt to taste and a hint of nutmeg. Mix and pour the mixture onto a pastry board evenly sprinkled with 30 or 40 grams (between 1 and 1-1/3 ounces) of flour, which should be enough to bind it and allow you to roll it out in small cylinders about the size of your little finger. Cut these in sections which you will throw in boiling broth and cook for five to six minutes.

These amounts serve seven to eight people.

If the breast of chicken is large, two egg yolks alone will not be enough.

Cook enough fine-grain semolina in milk to obtain a firm mixture. When you take it from the heat, season it with salt, grated Parmesan cheese, a dollop of butter and a hint of nutmeg. Allow it to cool. Then moisten the mixture with enough eggs to turn it into a creamy liquid. Take a smooth tin mold, butter the bottom of it well, and then place a sheet of paper (also buttered) inside it. Pour the mixture into the mold, and then thicken it by cooking in
bain-marie
.
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When it is cooked and has cooled, run the blade of a knife around the inside of the mold. The paper at the bottom will help you urimold it. Cut the mixture into little bricks or cakes as thick as a heavy coin and between 1 or 2 centimeters wide (about 1/2 inch), which you will cook in broth for a few minutes.

Two eggs and a glass of milk make enough soup for four or five people. With a glass and a half of milk and three eggs, I made soup for eight people.

I like this semolina soup even more than the preceding one. But this is a question of taste.

For each egg:

30 grams (about 1 ounce) of semolina

20 grams (about 2/3 of an ounce) of grated Parmesan cheese

20 grams (about 2/3 of an ounce) of butter

a pinch of salt

a dash of nutmeg

Melt the butter over the fire and, having removed it from the hearth, pour the semolina and cheese over it. Then mix in the eggs, stirring well. To thicken the mixture, pour it into a pan lined with a buttered sheet of paper. Put the pan in the oven with embers on both sides, taking care not to roast it. When cooled and removed from the mold, cut the semolina into small cubes or similar shapes, which you will boil in broth for ten minutes.

With three eggs you will make enough soup for five people.

Except for the sugar, the ingredients are the same as for recipe 182. Here are the amounts for a soup for seven or eight people.

100 grams (about 3-1/2 ounces) of Hungarian flour

20 grams (about 2/3 of an ounce) of butter

a walnut-size dollop of yeast

1 egg

a pinch of salt

Roll out the dough to a thickness of a little less than half a finger; cut it with a tin cookie cutter of the diameter shown here

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to make as many disks as possible. Set aside to rise. You will see them swell into little balls, after which you must fry them in fine oil, or alternatively in lard or butter. When ready to bring the fritters to the table, place them in the soup tureen and pour boiling broth over them.