Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (58 page)

1) just with butter, salt, and pepper, adding a little brown stock, if you have any, or a few tablespoons of broth or even of heavy cream;

2) with a little bit of onion chopped very fine and sauteed in butter;

3) just with butter, salt, and pepper as above, adding a little Parmesan cheese;

4) with butter, a tiny bit of olive oil, and tomato sauce (recipe 6) or tomato paste.

Cook with just the water that drips off the spinach after it has been soaked and strained, then squeeze well, and saute in olive oil with garlic, parsley, salt, and pepper. Leave the leaves whole, and sweeten with a pinch of sugar and a few seedless raisins.

To make asparagus look better, before cooking scrape the white part with a knife and cut off the end of the stem; then tie the stalks in bunches—not too large—with a string. To keep them green, drop them into salted water when it is boiling hard, and fan the fire so that the water boils up again immediately. When the spears start to bend, they are cooked just right; still you should check from time to time, testing them with your fingers to see if they give a little when you exert some pressure—it is better to undercook them a little than to overcook them. After you have strained the asparagus spears, drop them in cold water, and then strain them again immediately so that you can serve them warm, the way most people like them.

This vegetable, which is prized not only for its diuretic and digestive qualities, but also for the high price it commands, can be prepared in various ways once it is blanched. The simplest and best is the most common way, which is to season with the very finest olive oil and vinegar or lemon juice. Nevertheless, for variety, here are some other ways to prepare asparagus after it has been parboiled. Place the stalks whole in a pan and saute lightly in butter. After seasoning with salt, pepper, and a tiny pinch of Parmesan cheese, remove the stalks from the pan and pour the browned butter over them. Or, separate the green part from the white part and, taking an ovenproof dish, arrange them like this: sprinkle the bottom of the dish with grated Parmesan cheese and arrange the asparagus spears next to one another, season with salt, pepper, grated Parmesan, and dabs of butter; make another layer of asparagus and season in the same way, continuing until you have used them all. Be spare with the other ingredients, however, so that the dish does not turn out excessively rich. Crisscross the layers of asparagus like a tight lattice, place under the lid of a Dutch oven to melt the butter, and serve hot. If you have some brown stock, parboil the asparagus and finish cooking in the stock, adding a little butter and a light sprinkling of Parmesan cheese.

You can also serve asparagus spears in a mixed fry, dipping them in the batter described in recipe 156.

There are other ways to prepare asparagus given in cookbooks; but most frequently these turn out to be concoctions that are not
pleasing to connoisseurs of good food. Nevertheless, I should point out that the sauce in recipe 124 can go well with asparagus, if served hot in a separate gravy dish, from where it can be poured over asparagus, as well as over artichokes cut in quarters and boiled.

The bad smell that results from eating asparagus can be turned into the pleasant fragrance of violets by pouring a few drops of turpentine into the chamber pot.

600 grams (about 1-1/3 pounds) of zucchini

40 grams (about 1-1/3 ounces) of Parmesan cheese

4 eggs

Make a battuto with 1/4 of an onion, celery, carrots, and parsley. Put on the fire with some oil, and when it starts to brown add the zucchini, cut into small pieces, and season with salt and pepper. When the zucchini has browned, finish cooking with water, pass through a sieve, and add the Parmesan cheese and eggs.

Make a bechamel sauce with 60 grams (about 2 ounces) of butter, two tablespoons of flour, and 4 deciliters (about 1-2/3 cups) of milk. Mix all the ingredients together, and bake in
bain-marie
in a smooth mold with a hole in the middle. Remove while still hot, fill the hole in the center with a delicate meat stew, and serve.

This recipe serves eight to ten people.

Any kind of mushroom can be used for this recipe; I think that porcini mushrooms are the best, but not really large ones. Carefully remove all the dirt from the mushrooms, wash them, then chop into pieces about the size of a chickpea or even smaller. Put on the fire with butter, salt, and pepper, and when the mushrooms have sauteed a good while, finish cooking with brown stock. Remove from the fire, bind with béchamel, egg, and grated Parmesan cheese. Bake in a mold in
bain-marie
until firm.

600 grams (about 1-1/3 pounds) of fresh mushrooms with five eggs will make a sformato that serves ten people.

Serve warm as an
entremets
.

Parboil the cabbage, squeeze out the water, chop with a mezzaluna, put on the fire with butter and milk, add salt, and cook until done. When it is well cooked, add a rather thick béchamel sauce and stir over the fire until well blended; add grated Parmesan cheese. Taste for seasoning; if it’s right, then serve as a side dish with boiled or stewed meat; you will see that people will like it for its delicate flavor.

Cooks make so-called Russian salad, which is now fashionable for dinner parties, by using the basic recipe and adding whatever concoctions they like. This recipe, invented in my kitchen, may seem complicated, but it is one of the simpler versions:

120 grams (about 4-1/4 ounces) of salad greens

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

70 grams (about 2-1/3 ounces) of fresh baby green beans

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

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

20 grams (about 2/3 of an ounce) of pickled capers

20 grams (about 2/3 of an ounce) of pickled gherkins

3 salted anchovies

2 hard-boiled eggs

You can use two or three kinds of salad greens, such as romaine, radicchio, or other lettuce, cut into thin strips. Weigh the beets, green beans, potatoes, and carrots after they have been boiled, and cut into cubes smaller than a chickpea; dice in the same way the two whites and one of the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs. Leave the capers whole, and cut the pickles into pieces about the size of the capers.
Clean and bone the anchovies, cut them into small pieces, then mix everything together thoroughly.

Now prepare a mayonnaise (see recipe 126) with two raw egg yolks, the remaining hard-boiled egg yolk and 2 deciliters of extra fine olive oil. Blend until smooth, adding the juice of one lemon and seasoning with salt and pepper. Pour the mayonnaise over the ingredients already combined, stirring to make sure that everything is well coated with dressing.

Soak three sheets of isinglass in cold water for several hours; then dissolve them in two fingers of hot water in a pot on the fire. Once melted, pour a thin layer of the liquid into the bottom of a smooth mold and blend the rest with the other ingredients, which you will later pour into the mold and chill. To remove the chilled mixture easily, dip the mold in hot water. If you want to make the salad prettier and more elegant looking, you can make a colorful decoration with the greens, egg yolks, and egg whites mentioned above, which you will place over the thin layer of gelatin lining the bottom of the mold before adding the other ingredients.

This recipe serves eight to ten people.

Of the common types of fish, the finest are: sturgeon, dentex, sea bass, weever, sole, turbot, John Dory, gilthead sea bream, rock mullet, and fresh-water trout; these are excellent year round, but sole and turbot are especially good in the winter.

The seasons for the other best-known fish are: for hake, eel, and flying squid, year round, while eel is better in winter and flying squid in the summer.

For large gray salt-water mullet, July and August; for small mullet, October and November, and all winter. For gudgeon, whitebait, and cuttlefish, March, April, and May. For octopus, October. For sardines and anchovies, all winter, until April. For red mullet, September and October. For tuna, from March to October. For mackerel, springtime, especially May; this fish, on account of its tough and fibrous flesh, is usually used in stews—if you want to grill it, it is a good idea to put it on the fire on a large sheet of greased cooking paper and season it with oil, salt, pepper, and a few sprigs of rosemary.

Of the crustaceans, one of the most prized is lobster, which is good year round, but better in springtime, and of the shellfish, oysters, which are harvested from October to April in oyster beds.

When a fish is fresh, its eyes are bright and clear; if it is not fresh, the eyes are pale and cloudy. Another indication of freshness is the red
color of the gills; but since these can be artificially colored with blood, touch them and then smell your finger; your nose will tell you whether it is fresh or not. Another characteristic of fresh fish is the firmness of the flesh, because if it is kept on ice too long it begins to decay and becomes soft to the touch.

Sailors say that crustaceans and sea urchins are meatier when gathered during a full moon.

Cacciucco! Let me say just a little bit about this word, which is understood perhaps only in Tuscany and on the shores of the Mediterranean, since on the shores of the Adriatic it is called “brodetto” (literally, “little broth”).
⁷⁵
In Florence, “brodetto” means a soup with bread and broth, bound with beaten eggs and lemon juice. In Italy the confusion between these and other names from province to province is such that it is almost a second Tower of Babel.

After the unification of Italy,
⁷⁶
it seemed logical to me that we should think about unifying the spoken language, and yet few can be bothered with such an undertaking and many are outright hostile to it, perhaps because of false pride and the ingrained habit that Italians have of speaking their own regional dialect.

To return to cacciucco, let me say that, naturally enough, this is a dish prepared in seaside towns more than anywhere else, because it is there that you can find fresh fish of the kind needed to make it. Any fishmonger can tell you the varieties of fish that are best suited to a good cacciucco. Good as it may be, however, it is still quite a heavy dish, so one needs to be careful not to gorge oneself on it.

For 700 grams (about 1-1/2 pounds) of fish, finely chop an onion and sauté it with oil, parsley, and two whole cloves of garlic. The moment the onion starts to brown, add 300 grams (about 10-1/2 ounces) of chopped fresh tomatoes or tomato paste, and season with salt and pepper. When the tomatoes are cooked, pour in one finger of strong vinegar or two fingers of weak vinegar, diluted in a large glass of water. Let boil for a few more minutes, then discard the garlic and strain the rest of the ingredients, pressing hard against the mesh. Put the strained sauce back on the fire along with whatever fish you may have on hand, including sole, red mullet, gurnard, dogfish, gudgeon, mantis shrimp, and other types offish in season, leaving the small fish whole and cutting the big ones into large pieces. Taste for seasoning; but in any case it is not a bad idea to add a little olive oil, since the amount of soffritto was quite small. When the fish is cooked, the cacciucco is usually brought to the table on two separate platters: on one you place the fish, strained from the broth, and on the other you arrange enough finger-thick slices of bread to soak up all the broth. The bread slices should be warmed over the fire but not toasted.

This cacciucco, which I learned to make in Viareggio, is much less tasty than the one in the preceding recipe, but it is lighter and more digestible.

For the same amount of fish as above, crush three large cloves of garlic and some fresh or dried hot red chili peppers in a mortar. Since you are already using a hot spice, no black pepper should be added. Put this mixture on the fire in a pot or an earthenware pan with an appropriate amount of oil, and when it is sautéed, pour in a glass of liquid consisting of 1/3 dry white or red wine and 2/3 water. Place the fish in the pot, salt it, and then add tomato sauce (recipe 6) or tomato paste diluted with a little water. Then boil over a lively flame, keeping it covered; never touch the fish because you do not want it to crumble. You will find that it cooks in a few minutes.