Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (64 page)

This recipe serves four people, if they are not big eaters. To garnish, surround it with wedges of hard-boiled egg.

500 grams (about 1 pound) of softened stockfish, divided as follows: back, 300 grams (about 10-1/2 ounces) and belly, 200 grams (about 7 ounces
)

Remove the skin and all the bones, then cut the back part into thin slices and the belly into squares two fingers wide. Make a soffritto with a generous amount of oil, one large or two small cloves of garlic, and a good pinch of parsley. When the garlic has browned, toss in the stockfish, season with salt and pepper, and stir so that it absorbs the flavor. After a little while, pour in six or seven tablespoons of tomato sauce (recipe 125), or chopped fresh tomatoes (peeled and seeded); boil slowly for at least three hours, adding hot water a little at a time, and after two hours add a potato cut into thick pieces. This amount is sufficient for three or four people. It is an appetizing dish, but not for weak stomachs.

A friend of mine, certain that he will please his company, does not hesitate to serve this dish for lunch to distinguished guests.

See the eel recipe 490.

Wash the eels several times, and when they have stopped foaming pour them into a colander to drain.

Put on the fire oil, one or two slightly crushed whole cloves of garlic, and a few fresh sage leaves. When the garlic has browned, toss in the eels. If they are still alive, cover the pan with a lid so that they do not jump out. Season with salt and pepper, stirring frequently with a wooden spoon, and moisten with a little water if they start to dry out. When they are cooked, bind with egg you have beaten separately, and then mix in Parmesan cheese, bread crumbs, and lemon juice.

If you have between 300 and 350 grams (between about 10-1/2 and 12-1/3 ounces) of baby eels, which is enough for four people, you can bind them with:

2 eggs

2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

1 tablespoon bread crumbs

the juice of “2 a lemon

a little water

If you serve them in the pan in which you have cooked them, place it to broil at the last minute in a Dutch oven with fire above and below until a light crust forms on top.

The illustrious Professor Renato Fucini (also known as the delightful
Neri Tanfucio)
⁸⁷
who apparently is a great lover of eels with sage, was good enough to inform me that it would be a desecration and a sacrilege to cook baby eels—even if they do look like tender little fish—for less than at least twenty minutes or so.

Cook with oil, whole garlic cloves, and sage, as in the previous recipe. Then discard the garlic and chop the eels very fine. Beat some eggs in proportion to the amount of eels, add salt and grated Parmesan cheese and a small amount of bread crumbs, and mix with the eels. Drop by the tablespoon into oil to make little fritters, which you will serve with lemon wedges. Upon eating them, few people will realize that this is a fish dish.

I have seen in Viareggio that baby eels can be fried like other fish, simply dredged in flour or cornmeal and tossed in a pan. They are simpler this way, but much less tasty than those described in the preceding recipe.

The tench said to the pike: “My head is worth more than your body.” Then there is the proverb: “Tench in May and pike in September.”

Finely chop the usual flavorings, that is, some onion, garlic, parsley, celery, and carrot, and place on the fire with oil. When this begins to brown toss in some tench heads cut into small pieces and seasoned with salt and pepper. Cook well, moistening with tomato sauce (recipe 6) or tomato paste diluted in water; then strain the sauce and set aside. Clean the tench, cut off the fins and tail, and put them on the fire, dropping them whole in sizzling oil. Season with salt and pepper and finish cooking with the sauce you have already prepared, adding it a little at a time. You can eat them just like this, and they are excellent; but to give the “zimino” its true character, you need a side dish of beet greens or spinach, which should first be boiled and then reheated in the tench sauce. Peas also go well with zimino.

Salt cod in zimino should be cooked the same way.

Pike, a common freshwater fish in Italy, is noted for certain peculiarities. It is a very voracious animal, and since it feeds exclusively on fish, its flesh is very delicate to the taste. But since it has many bones, it is necessary always to select pike that weigh between 600 and 700 grams (between about 1-1/3 and 1-1/2 pounds). Also, pike that live in running water are preferable; they are distinguished by their greenish back and silvery white belly, while those from still waters can be recognized by their dark skin. Some pike reach a weight of up to 10, 15, or even 30 kilograms (about”, 33 or 66 pounds), and reach quite an advanced age. Some are believed to be more than 200 years old. The female’s eggs and the male’s milky sperm sacs should not be eaten, because they have a highly purgative effect.

Let’s say you have a pike of the weight I have suggested. Scrape off the scales, gut it, cut off the head and tail and divide into four or five pieces, which should serve four or five people. Stud each piece lengthwise with two lardoons seasoned with salt and pepper. Then make an appropriate amount of battuto with an onion the size of a large walnut, a small clove of garlic, a celery rib, a small piece of carrot, and a pinch of parsley, all finely chopped so that you do not need to strain the sauce. Place on the fire in oil, and when it has browned add tomato sauce (recipe 6) or tomato paste diluted with water; season with salt and pepper. Then thicken this sauce with a piece of butter dredged in flour, stir well, and put in the fish, which you will simmer slowly and turn regularly. Finally, pour in a tablespoon of Marsala wine, or lacking that, a drop of regular wine, and let boil a little longer before sending to the table in its own sauce.

Cut the dogfish into rounds that are not too thick and let it sit in salted egg for several hours. A half hour before frying it, coat it with a mixture of bread crumbs, Parmesan cheese, chopped garlic and parsley, salt, and pepper. A small clove of garlic will be enough for 500 grams (about 1 pound) of fish. Surround with lemon wedges.

Cut into rather large pieces and then finely chop some garlic, parsley, and a very small amount of onion. Place on the fire in oil, and when it has sautéed enough, put in the dogfish and season with salt and pepper. When the fish has browned, pour in a little dry red or white wine and tomato sauce (recipe 6) or tomato paste and simmer until done.

With the exception of birds and squabs, with which whole sage leaves go well, it is no longer customary to lard or baste spit-roasted meats, or to stud them with garlic, rosemary, or other aromatic herbs that tend to leave an aftertaste. If you have some good olive oil, baste them with that; otherwise, use lard or butter, depending on local preference.

      People generally prefer roasted meats savory, so be generous with salt when you prepare milk-fed veal, lamb, kid, poultry, and pork. Be more sparing with meat from larger or older animals and with birds, because these meats are already quite flavorful in themselves. But always salt meat halfway or even two-thirds of the way through the cooking. People who salt any kind of meat before putting it on the spit are making a serious mistake, because the fire will dry it out and make it tough.

      Pork and the meat of nursing animals such as veal, lamb, kid, and the like, should be cooked well in order to dry out their excessive moisture. Cook beef and mutton much less; being dry meats, you want them to remain juicy. Cook birds over a flame, but be careful not to overdo them, for they would lose a great deal of their fragrance. But take care that birds are not undercooked when you want to remove them from the fire; you can test for this by pricking them under the wing to check whether any blood still runs out. You can tell whether chickens are done by pricking them in the same way.

      Poultry will come out more tender and with a better color if
you roast it wrapped in paper that has been buttered on the side touching the meat; to prevent the paper from burning, baste it frequently on the outside. Halfway through the cooking, remove the paper and finish cooking the chicken, turkey, or what have you, salting and basting it. If you use this method, it is also a good idea to put a little salt inside the bird before putting it on the spit, and to stud the breast of turkeys and guinea fowl with lardoons. I should point out here that squab and fattened capon, whether roasted or boiled, are better eaten cold than hot; they also have less of an aftertaste when eaten cold.

More than any other way of preparing meats, roasting preserves their nourishing properties, and makes them easier to digest.

This English word has come into Italian as “rosbiffe” and it means exactly what it says. A good roast beef is a very satisfying dish at a meal where the male gender predominates, since men are not satisfied with trifles the way women are. They want to sink their teeth into something solid and substantial.

The best cut for roast beef is the loin, as indicated in recipe 556 for steak Florentine style. In order to turn out tender, it should be from a young animal. It should weigh more than 1 kilogram (about 2 pounds) so that the fire will not dry it out, for the beauty and succulence of this dish depend on it being cooked just right, as is shown by a pink color on the inside and the copious juice that runs out when you slice it. Cook over a very hot fire from the start, so that the outer surface cooks quickly; baste with oil, which you will later drain from the dripping pan, and at the end pour a ladleful of broth over it; this, along with the fat that has dripped from the meat, will provide the sauce that you serve with the roast. At the halfway point, salt sparingly, because this type of meat is savory by itself, as I have already said. Always remember that salt, which is good in itself, is the worst enemy of good cooking when used to excess.

Put the meat on the spit half an hour before you serve the first course; this should be sufficient if the piece is not too large. To test for doneness, prick it at the thickest part with a thin larding needle,
but do not make too many holes in it, or it will dry out. The juice that runs out should not be blood colored, nor too dark. Pan fry some raw, peeled potatoes in oil to serve as a side dish. If they are small, leave them whole; if large, cut into quarters.

Roast beef can also be made in the oven, but it doesn’t come out as well as when cooked on a spit. If you make it in the oven, season with salt, oil, and a bit of butter, surround it with raw, peeled potatoes, and pour a glassful of water into the roasting pan.

If you do not like leftover roast beef cold, slice it and saute in butter and brown stock or tomato sauce (recipe 6).

I think that this second way to cook roast beef is preferable to the first, because the meat stays juicier and more fragrant.

After putting the meat on the spit, wrap it in a fairly thick sheet of paper well greased with cold butter. Tie the two ends so that it stays tightly closed and put it over a hot charcoal fire. Turn, and when it is almost cooked tear off the paper, salt the meat and brown it. Then remove it from the fire, place between two plates and let it rest for ten minutes before serving.

Florence butchers call beef or veal loin from which the fillet has been removed “sfilettato” (“without fillet”).

Take a large piece of loin of beef without the fillet and stud it all over with truffles (better white than black) cut into slivers about 3 centimeters (about 1 inch) long. Also put with each piece of truffle a little bit of butter to fill the hole that you have made with the point of the knife to insert them. Make several slits in the rind so that the meat does not curl, tie the ends, and put on the spit. When it is two-thirds done, baste lightly with olive oil and salt sparingly, because this type of meat from large animals is quite flavorful and does not need a great deal of seasoning.