Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (65 page)

Milk-fed veal is butchered year-round, but in the spring and summer you will find it fatter, better fed, and better tasting. The cuts that are best for roasting on the spit are the loin and the rump, and they need only oil and salt for seasoning.

The same cuts, lightly studded with garlic and rosemary, can be cooked in a pan with oil, butter, a little minced bacon, salt, and pepper, and some tomato sauce (recipe 6) in which you can cook fresh peas. This is a dish that many people like.

If I knew who invented the oven, I should like to erect a monument to him at my own expense. In this age of monument mania, I think he would deserve it more than anyone else.

Since this is a family dish, leave the cut of meat as is with all the bones in it, and if it doesn’t weigh more than between 600 and 700 grams (between about 1-1/3 and 1-1/2 pounds) you can cook it in the Dutch oven. Stud the meat with between 50 and 60 grams (between about 1-2/3 and 2 ounces) of lean partly trimmed pro-sciutto cut into small strips, tie it securely, baste generously with lard, and salt it. Place in a baking pan, and about ten minutes before you remove it from the oven add some parboiled potatoes, which will turn out very tasty cooked in the pan drippings.

Instead of lard you can use butter and olive oil, and instead of prosciutto you can salt the meat generously.

You can make any kind of meat this way, but in my opinion the best suited to this cooking method is milk-fed veal. Take a good-sized cut from the loin, with the kidney still attached. Roll it up and tie it with
a string to keep it together and place on the fire in a saucepan with fine olive oil and butter, both in small amounts. Brown on all sides, salt at the midway point, and finish cooking with broth until little or no juice is left.

What you will taste is a roast that does not have the fragrance and flavor of spit-roasted meat, but makes up for it in tenderness and delicacy. If you do not have any broth, use tomato sauce (recipe 6) or tomato paste diluted with water. If you like your meat more flavorful, add some finely chopped bacon.

If you like these seasonings but do not like the aftertaste they can have, do not stud chicken, fillet of beef, or any other meat with pieces of garlic and rosemary. Instead, make a pot roast as in the preceding recipe, and toss a whole clove of garlic and two sprigs of rosemary into the saucepan. When you are ready to send the roast to the table, strain the concentrated juice (but do not press hard against the mesh), and if you like, accompany the meat with potatoes or vegetables reheated separately. If you want, you can also enhance the flavor of the meat with a very small amount of tomato sauce (recipe 6) or tomato paste.

Leg of lamb comes out very well this way, when cooked in a Dutch oven with fire above and below.

Birds must be fresh and fat, but above all fresh. In places where they are sold already plucked, you have to be very careful not to be fooled. If the birds look green, or their bellies are dark, walk away. Nevertheless, if on some occasion you find you have been cheated, you should cook them like the stewed pigeons in recipe 276. Otherwise, if you cook them on the spit they will not only burst open during cooking, they will also give off (much more than if you stew them)
that foul odor of meat gone bad, or
faisandée
as the French call it— a stench that is intolerable to people of good taste, but unfortunately is not disdained in some Italian provinces where over time people’s tastes have become jaded, perhaps to the detriment of their health as well as their palates.

An exception could be made for the meat of pheasants and woodcocks, which seem not only to become more tender, but also to acquire a particular fragrance when they are very ripe. This is especially true of pheasant when it is allowed to ripen unplucked.

But let’s try not to let them go beyond the first sign of ripeness; otherwise what happened to me on one occasion might happen to you. A gentleman had invited mc to dine in a very famous trattoria, and to honor me, he ordered among other things a woodcock with toasted bread slices. Well, that woodcock gave off such a stench from the middle of the table that it turned my stomach to the point that I could not even bring it to my mouth. My friend was mortified, and I was sorry that I had not been able to appreciate his kindness.

Birds, in any case, whether thrushes, larks, or smaller species, should never be gutted. Before you put them on the spit, prepare them as follows. Fold their wings over their back so that each wing holds one or two sage leaves in place. Cut the feet at the ends, then cross them by pulling each stump over the knee joint opposite and punching a hole in the tendon. Place a little bunch of sage where the legs cross. Then put them on the spit, placing the larger birds in the middle and separating them with a slice of day-old bread about 1-1/2 centimeters (about 1/2 an inch) thick placed between one bird and the other; alternatively, if you can find them, you can keep the birds apart with little sticks cut on the slant.

Take paper-thin slices of larding fat, salt them, and wrap them around the bird’s breast so that it can be put on the spit along with the bread slices.

Cook over a high flame, and if you have not tucked the birds’ beaks into their sternums, hold them still on the spit for a while with their heads hanging down so that their necks will stretch out. Baste once only with olive oil when they start to brown, using a brush or a feather so that you do not touch the bread slices (which are already seasoned enough with the larding fat), and salt once only. Put them on the fire at the last minute, because they should cook fast, and
might cook too soon and then dry out. When you send them to the table, remove them carefully from the spit and arrange in a row on a platter, which will make a nice presentation.

Some people squeeze a lemon over roast duck or mallard (which have a gamey flavor) just as they start to brown, and baste them with the lemon juice and oil from the dripping pan.

Lamb starts to be good in December, and by Easter it has begun or is about to begin its decline.

Take a lamb leg or quarter, season it with salt, pepper, olive oil, and a drop of vinegar. Prick it here and there with the point of a knife and let it rest in the oil and vinegar mixture for several hours. Put it on a spit and using a little rosemary branch, baste it often with the same liquid until it is cooked. The oil and vinegar mixture will remove the smell of the stable, if you are afraid there is one, and will give the meat a pleasant taste. If you like a more pronounced aroma of rosemary, you can stud the meat with several sprigs of it, removing them before serving.

The season for mutton is from October to May. They say that a short leg, with dark brownish-red meat, is the best. Roast leg of mutton is healthful and nutritious, and is specially recommended for anyone who has a tendency to corpulence.

Before cooking, let the meat ripen for several days; the exact number will depend on the temperature at the time. Before skewering it on the spit, pound well with a wooden mallet; then skin it and remove the bone from the center, trying not to tear the meat. Then tie it, so that it stays together, and cook over a high flame at first; when it is
half cooked, reduce the heat. When it begins to drip, baste with the sauce from the dripping pan and some skimmed broth, nothing else. Salt when it is nearly done. Make sure that it is neither overcooked nor undercooked, and serve with its own juice in a gravy dish. For a nicer presentation, wrap the end of the leg bone in ruffled white paper.

The parts of the hare (
Lepus timidus
) that are best for cooking on a spit are the hindquarters; but the legs of this animal arc covered with membranes that must be carefully removed before cooking, without injuring the muscles too much.

Before roasting, marinate the hare for twelve or fourteen hours in the following liquid. Put three glasses of water on the fire in a saucepan with half a glass of vinegar, or even less depending on the amount of meat; add three or four minced shallots, one or two bay leaves, a small bunch of parsley, a little salt, and a dash of pepper. Boil for five or six minutes, let cool completely, and pour over the hare. When you remove the hare from the marinade, dry it and stud it all over with thinly sliced high-quality lardoons, using a larding needle. Cook over a slow fire, salt to taste and moisten with heavy cream and nothing else.

They say that you should not eat hare liver because it is bad for your health.

If the hare has hung for quite a while, and is therefore quite tender, you can roast the hindquarters without marinating them first. Remove the thickest membranes from the outer muscles and stud the entire piece of meat with lardoons that you have salted in advance. Skewer the meat on the spit and wrap it in buttered paper sprinkled with salt. When it is done, remove the paper and baste with a little rosemary branch dipped in melted butter until it browns, then lightly salt again.

For spit-roasted rabbit as well, the hindquarters are the best part. Stud it with lardoons, baste with olive oil, or better with butter, and salt when it is almost completely cooked.

Take a short, thick, lean and ripe cut of veal or beef from the leg or rump, weighing 1 kilogram or so (about 2 pounds); stud it with 30 grams (about 1 ounce) of thinly sliced untrimmed prosciutto. Tie it with twine to keep it together and place it in a saucepan with 30 grams (about 1 ounce) of butter, a quarter of an onion cut into two pieces, three or four pieces of celery less than a finger long, and three or four strips of carrot. Season with salt and pepper, and brown the meat, turning it often; then moisten with two small ladles of water and finish cooking over a slow fire, until most of the liquid has boiled off. But take care that the meat does not dry out and turn dark. When you are ready to send it to the table, strain the small amount of juice remaining and pour it over the meat, which you can accompany with potato wedges browned in butter or oil.

You can also make a pot roast with just butter, cooking until done with the saucepan covered with a shallow bowl filled with water.

No surprise here. Still, it is a good recipe to know because it is a dish not to be scoffed at.

If you have a squab to roast on the spit and want to serve it to more than one person, stuff it with a veal or milk-fed veal cutlet. Obviously, this cutlet should be of proportionate size to the squab. Pound the cutlet well to make it thinner and more tender, season it with salt, pepper, a pinch of spices and a few bits of butter; roll it and place it inside the squab, sewing up the opening. If you add some thinly sliced truffles to the seasonings, it will be even better. You can
also cook the gizzard and the liver of the squab separately in brown stock or butter, then grind them and spread the mixture on the cutlet. In this way the different fragrances of the two types of meat blend to create a better taste. You can cook a cockerel in the same way.

Use the stuffed veal cutlets from recipe 307 (you can also use milk-fed veal) to stuff the birds. Once stuffed, wrap the quails with a very thin slice of lardoon, and tie each of them crosswise with twine. Put on the fire on a spit, placing slices of toasted bread and a few sage leaves in between each bird. Baste with olive oil, salt them, moisten with a few tablespoons of broth, and remove the twine before serving.

Beef fillet also makes an excellent spit-roast when cut into pieces, wrapped in lardoon with sage, and cooked on the spit between slices of toasted bread.