Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (67 page)

The domestic goose, compared to the wild species, has grown larger in size, more fecund, and fatter. For this reason, it takes the place of pork in Jewish cooking. I do not cook with it much, because it is not sold in the markets in Florence, and its meat is used little or not at all in Tuscany; but I have tasted it boiled and I liked it. By itself, goose would make too sweet a broth, but mixed with beef it enhances the flavor of the broth, provided that the fat is carefully skimmed off.

They tell me that you can roast or stew goose as you would a domestic duck, and that when you grill a breast of goose it is usually studded with prosciutto (or with salted anchovies, for those who cannot eat pork), and seasoned with oil, pepper, and salt.

In Germany, goose is stuffed with apples and roasted. This dish is not suited to us Italians, because we cannot trifle with fatty foods that are heavy on the stomach. The following anecdote illustrates this point.

One year one of the farmers on my country estate, who always celebrated the feast of St. Anthony Abbot, wanted to celebrate that day more lavishly than usual by putting on a fine dinner for his friends, including the bailiff of the estate.

Everything went well, because things were done properly. But one of the guests, a well-to-do farmer, feeling expansive because he had eaten and drunk his fill, said to the assembled company: “By St. Joseph, who is the patron saint of my parish, I want to invite you all to my home on St. Joseph’s day, and we shall make merry.” The invitation was gladly accepted, and no one failed to appear on the appointed day.

When they got to the moment most anticipated at such festivities—the moment of sitting down to eat—the fun truly began, because the first course was broth—goose broth. This was followed by fried goose, boiled goose, stewed goose, and what do you think the roast was? It was goose! I do not know what became of the others, but toward evening the bailiff began to feel so poorly that he could not
eat supper, and during the night such a hurricane burst inside him— complete with thunder, wind, rain, and hail—that to see him the next day, so downcast and defeated in spirit, you wondered whether he had not become a goose himself.

The pastries made with goose liver in Strasbourg are renowned. The liver is enlarged by means of a special treatment, long and cruel, that is inflicted on the poor creatures.

À propos
of goose liver, I was once given one from the Veneto; with its abundance of fat and along with the heart, it weighed 600 grams (about 1-1/3 pounds). Following the instructions I had been given, 1 cooked it simply in the following way. First I put on the fire the fat, cut into thick slices; then the heart, cut into sections; and finally the liver, cut into thick slices, seasoning with salt and pepper only. I served it with lemon wedges, after draining the excess fat. I must admit it is a very delicate morsel.

See also recipe 274 for goose liver.

The turkey belongs to the order of the
Rasores
, or gallinaceous birds, to the family
Phasanidae
, and to the genus
Meleagris
. It is originally from North America, its habitat extending from the Northwest of the United States to the Panama Canal. It is called “chicken of India” because Columbus, believing that he could open a route to the East Indies by sailing West, discovered lands that were later called the West Indies. It seems certain that the Spaniards brought this bird to Europe at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and they say that the first turkeys introduced into France cost a gold sovereign.

Since this animal feeds on every kind of filth it comes across, its meat may acquire a sickening taste if it is not properly fed. But it can be excellent and very flavorful if it eats corn and warm bran mash. It can be cooked virtually any way you wish: boiled, stewed, grilled, or roasted; the meat of the hen is more delicate than that of the torn. They say that turkey broth makes you hot; that may be so, but it is very tasty and lends itself well to soup with malfattini, rice with cabbage or turnips, spelt
⁹⁰
or cornmeal made more flavorful with two sausages crumbled up in it. The best parts for boiling are the forequarters, including the wing, which is the most delicate piece; the hindquarters are better for pot roast or roasting on the spit. It is a good idea to stud the breast lightly with garlic and rosemary and flavor it with some chopped bacon or lardoons, a little butter, salt and pepper, and tomato sauce (recipe 6) or tomato paste diluted in water. Then you can cook potatoes in the sauce to accompany the turkey. To roast on the spit, baste with olive oil and, if you like, you can serve it with fried polenta. The breast, pounded to about the thickness of a finger and seasoned several hours ahead of time with a generous amount of oil, salt and pepper, is excellent grilled. Indeed, it is a dish that is loved by drinkers, who add the liver and the gizzard seasoned in the same way but finely minced, the better to absorb the seasoning.

A young turkey weighing about 2 kilograms (about 4 pounds), cooked whole on the spit like the guinea hen, makes a fine showing at any dinner party, especially if it is early in the season.

Now that I have mentioned several birds of exotic origin, I realize that I have not yet spoken of the peacock,
Pavo cristatus
, whose meat I remember as being excellent for young people.

The most splendid of the gallinaceous birds, for its magnificent display of colors, the peacock inhabits the forests of the East Indies and can be found in its wild state in Gursarai in Hindustan, in Cambodia on the coasts of Malabar, in the kingdom of Siam, and on the island of Java. When Alexander the Great invaded Asia Minor and saw these birds for the first time, they say that he was so struck by their beauty that he forbade them to be killed, under pain of severe punishment. It was that monarch who introduced them into Greece, where they were the object of such curiosity that everyone ran to see them. But later, when they were taken to Rome during the decline of the Republic, the first to eat them was the orator Quintus Hortensius, the follower of Cicero. The Romans loved the taste of these birds, which came to be highly prized after Aufidius Lurco taught his countrymen how to fatten them. He kept his peacocks in a poultry pen
that apparently earned him an income of one thousand five hundred crowns. This is probably not far from the truth, if they were sold at a rate of five crowns each.

Take a piece of pork loin weighing about 500 grams (about 1 pound), salt it, and place in a saucepan with 2-1/2 deciliters (about 1/2 a cup) of milk. Cover and simmer, until the milk is all gone; then increase the heat to brown the pork. Once the meat has browned, skim off the fat and remove the meat from the pan. Add a droplet of fresh milk to the coagulated milk remaining in the pan, mix well, bring to a boil and then spread this mixture on lightly toasted slices of bread to use as an accompaniment to the pork, which should be served hot.

A total of 3 deciliters (about 1-1/4 cups) of milk should be enough. Cooked this way, pork has a delicate flavor, and does not cause indigestion.

The loin is that oblong muscle on either sides of the spinal column, which the Florentines call “lombo di maiale.” In Florence, they leave the kidney attached to it, and it makes for an excellent roast. Cut into small pieces and put these on a spit, with slices of toasted bread and fresh sage leaves between the pieces of meat, as with roasted birds. Baste, like the birds, with olive oil.

They say that the people of the Orient still consider shoulder of lamb roasted and basted with butter and milk one of the most appetizing delicacies. So I tried it, and I have to agree that both shoulder
and leg of lamb make a spit roast that is tender and delicate. If you are cooking the leg, I would prepare it in this way, which seems the best to me. Using a larding needle, stud it all over with pork lardoons seasoned with salt and pepper, baste with butter and milk or with milk alone, and salt when half done.

Squab meat is very nutritious on account of the large amount of fibrin and albumin it contains; it is prescribed for people who are weak because of illness or any other reason. To prepare himself for a love joust, the old man Nicomaco in Machiavelli’s comedy
Clizia
planned to eat a “uno pippione grosso, arrosto così verdemezzo che sanguigni un poco”
⁹¹
(“a large roast squab so rare that it bleeds a little”).

Take a squab that is large, but young; cut it into two parts lengthwise and press down with your hands until it is nice and flat. Then brown in oil for four or five minutes, just until the meat becomes firm. Season with salt and pepper while it is hot and the complete the preparation as follows.

Melt 40 grams (about 1-1/3 ounces) of butter, but do not let it boil; beat an egg and mix with the butter. Place the sauteed pieces of squab in this mixture and let stand for a while; then coat thoroughly with bread crumbs. Grill over a slow fire and serve with a sauce or a side dish.

Everybody knows how to make pork liver seasoned with oil, pepper, and salt, wrapped in caul
⁹²
and cooked on the grill, on the spit, or in a pan. But many people may not know that pork liver can be preserved for several months. This is how they do it in the countryside around Arezzo and perhaps elsewhere. After the livers are cooked, they are put in a metal receptacle and covered with boiling rendered pork fat. After the fat cools and solidifies, it acts as a preservative, and the pork livers can be taken out one by one as needed and reheated. This is convenient for those who cure their own pork, because there will be fewer scraps to use up.

Some people cook pork liver between two bay leaves or add a few fennel seeds to the seasoning, as they do in Tuscany. But these are strong flavors that many stomachs cannot tolerate, and they have a tendency to repeat on you.

The English word “beefsteak” means rib steak. This is the origin of our word “bistecca,” which is simply a steak with the bone left in,”
⁹³
about a finger or a finger and a half thick, cut from the loin of a young animal. Florentine butchers call both yearlings and any bovine animal about two years old a “calf.” But if these animals could speak, they would tell you not only that they are no longer calves, but that they have already had a mate and a few offspring as well.

This is an excellent dish. It is healthy, tasty, and strengthening. Yet it has not yet spread to the rest of Italy, perhaps because in many Italian provinces they almost exclusively butcher old work animals. In such cases, they use the fillet, which is the tenderest part, and they incorrectly call “beefsteak” rounds of fillet cooked on the grill.

To return to true steak Florentine style: Charcoal grill it over a high flame, just as it comes from the beast, or at the very most after rinsing and drying it. Turn several times, season with salt and pepper when it is cooked, and serve with a pat of butter on top. It should not be too cooked, because the beauty of this dish is that when you cut into it, juice spurts out abundantly onto the plate. If you salt the steak before cooking, the fire will dry it out, and if you season it ahead of time with olive oil or something else, as many people do, it will taste sickeningly like snuffed candles.

If you have a large beefsteak that you doubt will be tender because the animal was not so young, or was not recently butchered, instead of cooking it on the grill, place it in a frying pan with a pat of butter and a drop of oil. Then, as in recipe 527, season with garlic and rosemary. If necessary, add a little stock or water or tomato sauce (recipe 6), and serve with potatoes chopped into large pieces and cooked in the sauce from the pan. If there is not enough sauce, add some more stock, butter, and tomato paste.

Take a veal kidney, remove the fat, open it, and cover with boiling water. When the water has cooled, dry the kidney well with a kitchen towel and insert clean sticks into it lengthwise and crosswise to keep it open (in Paris they use large silver needles). Season with 30 grams (about 1 ounce) of melted butter, salt, and pepper, and let stand for an hour or two.