Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (39 page)

Instead of a baking dish, you may also use a skillet. But in that case you will get an omelette that will have a rather different and inferior flavor.

Those who frequently dine in restaurants can get a pretty good idea how varied people’s tastes are. Leaving aside the gluttons who, like wolves, cannot distinguish, say a marzipan cake from a bowl of thistles, at times you will hear a dish praised to the skies by some, but which others judge mediocre, and still others consider dreadful and downright inedible. At such moments you might recall the great truth of that proverb that says:
De gustibus non est disputandum
(there is no arguing about tastes).

Writing about this topic in his
Del vitto e delle cene degli antichi (The Foods and Meals of the Ancients
), Giuseppe Averani says: “Taste is more varied and fickle than all the other senses. This is due to the fact that taste buds, through which we experience flavor, differ among people and across climates. They also often change through age or sickness or some other even more compelling reason. This is why many of the foods that delight children do not please adults. And those dishes and beverages that healthy people’s palates find tasty and refined, often disgust the sick, who find those dishes displeasing to the taste. It also happens quite often that a certain fantastic perception makes dishes taste more or less delectable and luscious, depending on how our twisted imagination presents them to us. Rare and exotic foods and viands please our taste better than ordinary and local dishes do. Famine and plenty, costliness and cheapness add to and subtract from the flavor of our food: and the universal approbation of gluttons makes all food flavorful and delightful. Thus, at all times and among all nations, it generally happens that the same dishes are not universally held in the same esteem, and they are simultaneously judged both good and bad.”

For example, I do not share Brillat-Savarin’s opinion about
fondue
(cacimperio) which receives high praise in his
Physiologie du gout
, where he gives the following recipe for it:

“Weigh the eggs, and use a third of their weight in Gruyere cheese, and a sixth of their weight in butter, plus a little salt and a good measure of pepper.”

Unlike Savarin, I do not consider fondue an important dish, as it seems to me it may only be served as an appetizer for lunch or as a last resort, when nothing better can be prepared.

In Italy, fondue is a specialty of the people of Turin. The general opinion being that they prepare it to perfection, I went to the trouble of getting the following recipe from Turin. Having personally tried it out with good results, I pass it on to you. These amounts serve six people.

400 grams (about 14 ounces) of rindless Fontina cheese

80 grams (about 2-2/3 ounces) of butter

4 egg yolks

milk, as much as needed

Fontina is a cheese not unlike Gruyère, but somewhat fattier.

Cut the Fontina into little cubes and soak in milk for two hours. Put the butter in a saucepan on the fire, and when it has began to color, add the Fontina, but only two tablespoons of the milk in which it has been soaking. Stirring constantly with a mixing spoon, do not allow it to come to a boil. When the cheese has completely melted, remove from the burner and add the egg yolks. Put back on the burner for a short while, still stirring. In winter, pour the cacimperio into a hot bowl.

If it has turned out well, it should be neither grainy or stringy. Instead it should look like heavy cream.

In Turin, I have seen fondue served with a top layer of paper-thin slices of raw white truffles.

Simmer some chopped tomatoes in a soffritto of garlic, parsley and olive oil. Salt and pepper to taste. When they have cooked to the point of forming a dense sauce, purée them, and then put back on the fire, adding a sufficient amount of beaten egg. Season with a pinch of Parmesan cheese, stir, and when the egg has firmed up,
pour onto a platter and surround the dish with diamond-shape croutons fried in butter or lard.

A few calamint leaves or a pinch of wild marjoram, added after you purée the sauce, will give the pie a pleasant aroma.

200 grams (about 7 ounces) of ricotta cheese

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

30 grams (about 1 ounce) of flour

2 eggs

a pinch of chopped parsley

a dash of spices

salt, to taste

Make a dough with the above ingredients, and place on a pastry board sprinkled with flour. Keeping all the while your hands well coated with flour, knead enough flour into the dough to make 12 soft croquettes, which you should flatten a little. Put on the fire with butter in a skillet or baking pan. When the croquettes have browned on both sides, add tomato sauce (recipe 6) or tomato paste diluted with water.

They may be served as an
entremets
or as an accompaniment to a steak or hot roast beef.

Take two
kipfels,
⁵⁵
cut them into little rounds 1 centimeter (about 1/2 an inch) thick and fry in butter or olive oil. Take some spinach cooked in brown stock or in butter and Parmesan cheese, mince finely, and cover the
kipfel
slices with a layer of this. Take two hard-boiled eggs, peel them, cut in half lengthwise and separate out the yolks. From the whites make several concentric rings which you will place over the layer of spinach. Cut the yolks into many little pieces or cubes and position them inside the rings of egg white. In this way you will have crostini that can accompany a roast, and which, consisting of a base of fried bread a green layer of spinach covered and with the white and yellowish-red of the eggs will give you the three colors of the Italian flag. But they look better than they taste.

Certain cooks with poor taste will prepare this salad with so many strange concoctions that the following day you will have to resort to castor oil or Hungary water.
⁵⁶

Some make it with boiled chicken, others with leftover roast meat of any kind. But fish is always to be preferred, particularly if it is of high quality, such as the sea bream, umber, weaver, sturgeon, or shelled prawns, Mediterranean lobster, and lastly dogfish. I will give you here the simplest recipe for this salad, which is also the best.

Take romaine or plain lettuce, cut into finger-wide strips, toss with slices of chard and boiled potatoes. Wash well some anchovies, bone them, cut them into four or five pieces, and add them to the vegetables. Lastly, add the poached fish chopped in small pieces. You may also add some capers and the flesh of two or three sweet pickled olives. Season with salt, olive oil and a little vinegar. Toss well so that the condiments are evenly distributed and then mound it in a bowl.

Prepare a mayonnaise according to recipe 126, which, using the quantities indicated there, will make enough to serve seven or eight people. However, to give it some tang use a teaspoon of mustard rather than pepper, and add a droplet of vinegar to the lemon, which you may use to dissolve the mustard. Coat the top of the salad with this sauce and then embellish it with more slices of chard and potatoes, interleaved, which will give the dish a handsome appearance. If you have an appropriate mold handy, make a little flower out of butter and place it on top of the salad, not for eating, but just for show.

On the subject of salads, it seems to me that cooked radicchio, with its bitter juice, goes very well with beets, which are sweet.

A woman wrote to me: “I want to teach you, as I had promised myself to do, how to make a tasty and elegant fried pastry. But heaven help you if you call it flat, because it should turn out quite otherwise. Call it “accordion cake,” which would be a fair description.”

Obediently carrying out the lady’s orders, I tried out this accordion cake twice, and both times it turned out well. Now I will describe it to you.

Roll out a sheet of dough that is not too firm and as thin as possible by mixing together some flour, two eggs, a pinch of salt, three tablespoons of cognac or spirits, or better yet fumetto (see note to recipe 212). Grease the dough with 20 grams (about 2/3 ounces) of melted butter and roll it up, that is fold it upon itself so that it is 10 to 11 centimeters (about 4 to 4-1/4 inches) wide. Make sure that the inner side is the greased side. Now cut the roll in half lengthwise and then slice crosswise at regular intervals to obtain a number of rectangles. Now press firmly with your fingers on the outer edge of each rectangle, that is, the uncut spine of the rolls. Fry in a skillet with a lot of oil, and before serving, sprinkle confectioners’ sugar on top. If they have turned out well, you will see the accordions pop open and stay open.

These amounts serve four people.

Generally speaking, stews are very appetizing dishes; it is a good idea, therefore, to take special care when preparing them, so that they turn out delicate, tasty and easily digestible. They are sometimes rumored to be harmful to one’s health, but I do not share that opinion. This ill-conceived notion arises more than anything else from not knowing how to prepare them well. People do not think, for example, to skim off the fat, or else they are too liberal with herbs and soffritti, or what is worse, they use them inappropriately.

In great kitchens, where brown stock is never lacking, many stews may be cooked with brown stock and butter. This way they turn out simple and light. But if no brown stock is available, you must resort to soffritti; but use them sparingly, prepare just the right amount, and cook them just right.

Veal stew is generally used by middle-class Florentine families to season macaroni or to make risotto with brown stock. This is not a bad idea, especially if you consider that the stew then serves a double purpose; it provides an ingredient for the first course and is also eaten separately. Take care, however, not to drain off too much of the juice from
the meat, simply because you want to make a lot of brown stock. And do not use only olive oil, but rather replace it wholly or in part with bacon as the Tuscans do, which gives it a stronger and more agreeable flavor. Here are the amounts for seasoning between 250 and 300 grams (about 8-4/5 and 12-1/3 ounces) of macaroni.

500 grams (about 1 pound) of lean veal, including the bone or the joint

50 grams (about 1-2/3 ounces) of bacon

50 grams (about 1 -2/3 ounces) of butter

1/4 of a large onion

1 carrot

2 pieces of celery

Chop the last three items coarsely, and dice the bacon into little cubes.

Put everything together on the fire and season with salt and pepper. Turn the meat often, and when browned, sprinkle a pinch of flour over it. Then moisten with tomato sauce (recipe 6) or tomato paste. Cook until done, adding water a little at a time. The flour serves to bind the sauce and to give it a little color. Take care, however, that it does not burn, as that would give the sauce an unpleasant taste and a nearly black color, something sauce should never have. Pass through a sieve, and then it would certainly do no harm to season the mixture with some pieces of dried mushroom reconstituted in warm water and stewed a little in the sauce.

Cook the macaroni in salted water, drain well and, before serving, steep them in the sauce, keeping them near the fire. Season with butter and Parmesan cheese, not much of the latter since people can add more cheese at the table.

If you are making rice, cook it in water, which you will add a little at a time. When half done, add the sauce and a little butter. Before removing from the fire, mix in a little Parmesan cheese.

It is a good idea to serve the stewed veal with a side dish of vegetables or legumes. Round of veal is the best cut to use. If you prepare it in olive oil, about 20 grams (about 2/3 of an ounce) of bacon should suffice.