Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (50 page)

The preparation of this dish should be left to the Milanese, since it is a specialty of Lombardy. I will describe it in the most straightforward manner possible, lest I should be ridiculed.

The “osso buco” is a meaty piece of bone with a hole in it, taken from the end of the shank or shoulder of a milk-fed calf. It is stewed in such a way that it becomes delicate and tasty. Using as many pieces as there are people to be fed, place the veal shanks on top of a mixture of chopped onion, celery, carrot, and a bit of butter; season with salt and pepper. When the veal has absorbed the flavors of the seasonings, add another bit of butter rolled in flour to give it color and to thicken the sauce, and finish cooking with water and tomato sauce or tomato paste. Strain the sauce, skim the fat, and put the shanks back on the fire. Season with lemon peel cut into tiny pieces and a pinch of chopped parsley before you remove it from the fire.

The name is pretentious, but this dish is fine for a family luncheon. The amounts given here serve five people.

500 grams (about 1 pound) of lean beef taken from the rump

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

3 heaping tablespoons of grated Parmesan cheese

2 eggs

If you do not have a meat grinder, use a knife and a mortar to chop both the meat and the prosciutto very finely. Add the Parmesan cheese and the eggs, season the mixture with salt and pepper, and blend well. Then, using your wet hands, form a flat loaf two fingers high.

Put 30 grams (about 1 ounce) of butter and two tablespoons of oil in a pan or a skillet. When the fat begins to sizzle, place the loaf of meat in the pan and sprinkle over it a clove of thinly sliced garlic and a few rosemary leaves. Cook, and when the meat starts to dry out, moisten it with tomato sauce or tomato paste diluted with water. Send to the table with its sauce all around.

We call this “alia scarlatta” (scarlet style) because it turns a nice red color. And it is a very fine dish, both in its appearance and its taste.

This talk of tongues brings to mind the following lines by Leopardi:
⁶⁴

Il cor di tutte
Cose alfin sente sazietà, del sonno,
Delia danza, del canto e dell’amore,
Piacer più cari che il parlar di lingua,
Ma sazietà di lingua il cor non sente
.

(Of all things the heart grows sated;—of sleep, of love, of sweet song, and merry dance—things which give more pleasure than the tongue does in speech, and yet of the tongue the heart is never sated.)

It is true that the itch of loquacity is not satisfied as one ages; indeed, it grows in proportion as we grow older, as does the desire for good food, sole comfort of the aged who, however, ruled as they are by the inexorable dictates of nature, cannot abuse the comforts of the table, under penalty of grave discomforts. In old age, man consumes less; his organs become less and less active, his secretions imperfect, thus generating in the human body superfluous, harmful humors that cause rheumatism, gout, apoplectic fits, and similar offspring of Lady Pandora’s box.

To return to the subject of tongue, take one from a large animal, (veal or beef) and rub it all over with between 20 and 30 grams (about 2/3 and 1 ounce) of saltpeter, depending on the size of the tongue, until it is thoroughly absorbed. After 24 hours, wash the tongue several times with cold water, and while still wet rub it with a great deal of salt; then leave it for eight days. Be sure to turn it every morning in its brine, which is produced as the salt draws the water out of the tongue. Since the best way to cook it is to boil it, put the tongue on the fire in cold water, with its natural brine, a
bouquet garni
, and half an onion studded with two cloves; boil for three to four hours. Skin the tongue while it is still steaming hot, let it cool, and then send to the table. It makes an excellent, elegant cold dish if you accompany it with the aspic in recipe 3.

Tongue can also be served hot, either by itself, or accompanied by potatoes or spinach.

Do not try this dish during the hot summer months, because the salt might not be sufficient to preserve it.

Take a whole tongue of milk-fed veal and boil it in salted water, which should take about two hours. Finely chop some celery and carrot, and place on the fire with a generous amount of oil for five minutes, then set aside. Chop two salted anchovies, washed and with the spine removed, along with 50 grams (about 1-2/3 ounces) of capers drained of brine, a good pinch of parsley, a piece of crustless bread about the size of an egg, slightly moistened with vinegar, very little onion, and less than half a clove of garlic. When all of this has been thoroughly chopped, work it with the blade of a knife and a drop of oil until you have reduced it to a paste. Then blend this
mixture with the battuto of chopped celery and carrots. Dilute it with more oil and the juice of half a lemon; season with pepper and salt, if necessary. This is the sauce.

Skin the tongue while it is still hot, discard the root with its little bones (this part is good eaten boiled), and cut the rest of the tongue into thin slices. Cover with the sauce, and serve cold.

This is an appetizing dish, good for hot summer days when the stomach does not feel hungry.

This is one of the best—and best looking—cold dishes.

Have your pork butcher cut you ten slices from the thickest part of a salted tongue; the total weight should be about 130 grams (about 4-1/2 ounces). Also have him cut 100 grams (about 3-1/2 ounces) of untrimmed cooked ham, sliced very thinly. Trim the edges of the tongue slices all around to give them an elegant shape, and put the scraps aside. Then take ten slices of the ham and trim them so that they are the same size and shape as the tongue slices. Toss the scraps of ham and tongue into a mortar with 70 grams (about 2-1/3 ounces) of butter and 20 grams (about 2/3 of an ounce) of fragrant white truffles. Grind these ingredients together to reduce them to the consistency of a paste, which you will spread onto the slices of tongue on one side only. Then press the slices of ham on top.

Once you have assembled these ten pieces, you have all the time you want to prepare the aspic. This is described in recipe 3, and those amounts should be sufficient. But there are two ways to garnish the pieces of tongue with the aspic. The first consists of taking a wide platter or baking pan, pouring in a shallow layer of liquid aspic, and when the aspic starts to stiffen, arrange the pieces of tongue on the platter, then covering with another layer of liquid aspic. When the aspic has hardened, you will then remove the pieces one by one.

The second way is to arrange the pieces of tongue upright in a mold with a little space between them, after pouring a thin layer of liquid aspic on the bottom. Then you would cover them completely with aspic. When the aspic has hardened, you will remove it from the
mold and serve as one piece, which makes a prettier presentation.

In a meal with several courses, I think that these amounts should be enough
to
serve up to ten people, but to be on the safe side it would be better not to serve it to more than eight.

Take 1 kilogram (about 2 pounds) of milk-fed veal from the thigh or the rump, all in single piece and boneless. Remove the membrane (if any) and fat and then stud it with two anchovies which you have cleaned, boned and cut crosswise to make 8 pieces in all. Tie up the meat—not too tightly—and put in enough water to cover it. The water must be boiling hot, well salted and already have in it 1/4 of an onion studded with two cloves, a bay leaf, celery, carrot, and parsley. Cook for 1-1/2 hour. Once the meat is cooked, untie it, dry it, and when it has cooled, cut it into thin slices which you will marinate for a day or two in a tight container. Make enough marinade to cover the meat as follows.

Crush 100 grams (about 3-1/2 ounces) of tuna packed in oil with two anchovies. Mash well with the blade of a knife, or better yet, pass through a sieve, adding a generous amount of fine olive oil, a little at a time, and the juice of one or more lemons, so that the sauce becomes liquid. Then, mix in a handful of capers with the brine squeezed out. Serve the veal with the tuna sauce and lemon wedges.

Save the broth to use for cooking rice.

1 boneless, lean milk-fed veal chop, weighing about 400 grams (about 14 ounces
)

an additional 120 grams (about 4-1/4 ounces) of lean veal

1 thick slice of untrimmed prosciutto weighing 50 grams (about 1-2/3 ounces
)

an additional slice of untrimmed prosciutto weighing 20 grams (about 2/3 of an ounce
)

1 slice of mortadella, weighing 50 grams (about 1-2/3 ounces
)

30 grams (about 1 ounce) of grated Parmesan cheese

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

1 raw chicken breast

1 egg

Moisten the chop with water and pound it with a meat mallet until it is about 1 centimeter (about 1/2 an inch) thick.

Using a mezzaluna, chop the 120 grams (about 4-1/4 ounces) of lean veal along with the 20 grams (about 2/3 of an ounce) of pro-sciutto, and then pound in a mortar, adding the Parmesan cheese, butter, egg, and a little salt and pepper. You will use this the mixture to bind the filling, which is prepared as follows.

Cut the chicken breast and the slices of prosciutto and mortadella into strips a little wider than 1 centimeter (about 1/2 an inch). Spread the veal mixture on one side of the cutlet and arrange a third of the strips over it, alternating between the chicken, prosciutto, and mortadella; then spread more of the mixture on top of this. Repeat this operation twice. When done, roll up the cutlet with the filing inside and tie it in the shape of a salami. Put on the fire with 30 grams (about 1 ounce) of butter, and season sparingly with salt and pepper. When it has browned, pour off the fat, which you can use for some other dish, and cook for about three hours, adding a little broth from time to time. When it has completely cooled, remove the string, slice, and serve.

This can serve 10 or 12 people, especially if you garnish it with aspic, which goes marvelously with it.

Take a whole young chicken—by “whole chicken” I mean one cleaned of its innards, and with the neck and feet removed—and toss it into a pot of boiling water. Half an hour should suffice to cook it. When you take it out of the pot, remove the skin, which is not needed for this dish, remove all the bones, and cut it into pieces which you will season with salt—not too much—pepper, and two tablespoons of olive oil. After letting the chicken pieces sit in a pile on a platter for several hours, cover them with the following sauce. For about 600 grams
(about 1-1/3 pound) of chicken (before cooking and boning), take:

50 grams (about 1 -2/3 ounces) of tuna packed in oil

30 grams (about 1 ounce) of capers with the brine squeezed out

3 anchovies

a handful of parsley, that is, enough to make the sauce green

Remove the scales and spines from the anchovies. Using a mezzaluna, finely chop the parsley and then grind it in a mortar along with the other ingredients until the mixture comes out very soft and smooth. Remove it from the mortar, put it in a bowl, and dilute with four tablespoons of olive oil and half a tablespoon of vinegar. Toss the pieces of chicken with half of this sauce, and pour the other half over them, to give the dish a more pleasant appearance. Nonetheless, it is not a very pretty dish; so you might do well to decorate it before you send it to the table with two hard-boiled eggs cut into wedges and arranged around the chicken. This should be enough to serve six people, and it is an appetizing dish, good for starting off lunch or dinner on hot days when people don’t feel very hungry.