Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (78 page)

This recipe serves twelve or more people.

This cake is made in autumn or winter, when greengrocers have pumpkins for sale.

1 kilogram (about 2 pounds) of pumpkin

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

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

30 grams (about 1 ounce) of butter

30 grams (about 1 ounce) of bread crumbs

1/2 liter (about 1/2 a quart) of milk

3 eggs

a pinch of salt

a dash of ground cinnamon

Peel the pumpkin, remove the tough filaments on the surface and grate over a kitchen towel. Pick up the towel by the four corners and squeeze tightly until you have removed most of the water in the pumpkin. The kilogram of pumpkin should be reduced to about 300 grams (about 10-1/2 ounces) in weight. Empty the contents into a pot and boil in the milk until done. This should take about 25 to 40 minutes, depending on the type of pumpkin you are using. In the meantime, crush the almonds (blanched) in a mortar together with the sugar until very fine. When the pumpkin is cooked, combine all the ingredients, except the eggs, which you will add later when the mixture has thoroughly cooled. As for the rest, follow the instructions for the ricotta cake described in the preceding recipe.

Although we are dealing with the humble potato here, do not scoff at this cake, which is worth making. And if your dinner guests
cannot detect the plebeian origins of this cake when they taste it, conceal it from them, for they would only scoff.

Many people eat more with their imagination than with their palate. Accordingly, never mention, at least until your guests have finished eating and digesting what you have served them, foods that are considered inferior for the sole reason that they are inexpensive or because they evoke associations that some people might find distasteful. Yet these very foods, when used well and handled correctly, make for good, tasty dishes. Let me now tell you a story on the subject. Once I found myself invited to dine with some close friends. Our host, to impress us, made a little joke about the roast he was serving, for he remarked: “None of you can complain about the way I am treating you today: we have three different varieties of roast meat: milk-fed veal, chicken and rabbit.” At the word “rabbit” some of the guests turned up their noses, others seemed dumbfounded, and someone, a close friend of the family, said: “What on earth did you decide to feed us! At least you could have kept quiet. you’ve made me lose my appetite.”

At another dinner party, when by chance the conversation turned to “porchetta”—a suckling pig of 50 to 60 kilograms (about “0 to 132 pounds), stuffed with spices and roasted whole on a spit—one lady cried out, “If I were offered such filth to eat, I could not possibly do it!” The host, stung by the aspersion she had cast on a dish that was held in high esteem in his part of the country, invited the woman a second time to his house, when he prepared a lovely cut of lean porchetta. She not only ate it but, believing it was milk-fed veal, thought that the roast tasted delicious. I could tell you many similar tales; but I cannot pass over in silence the case of a certain gentleman who, finding a particular pie quite delicious, ate enough for two days. But when he discovered that the pie was made of pumpkin, not only did he never eat it again, but he would also give it such a sinister look you would have thought the pie had seriously offended him.

Now here is the recipe for potato cake.

700 grams (about 1-1/2 pounds) of big starchy potatoes

150 grams (about 5-1/4 ounces) of sugar

70 grams (about 2-1/3 ounces) of sweet almonds and 3 bitter almonds

5 eggs

30 grams (about 1 ounce) of butter

a pinch of salt

a dash of lemon peel

Boil the potatoes (or better yet, steam them). Peel and puree, passing them through a strainer while they are still hot. Blanch the almonds and crush in a mortar together with the sugar, until you have a very fine paste. Then add this mixture and all the other ingredients to the potatoes, stirring everything with a wooden spoon for a whole hour, breaking in the eggs one at a time, and then pouring in the melted butter. Place the mixture in a baking pan greased with butter or lard and dusted with bread crumbs. Bake in the oven and serve cold.

Due to the strange combination of ingredients in this pie, for a long time I was uncertain as to whether I should offer this recipe to the public, for it is not of sufficient caliber to appear at distinguished tables, and it is a little too expensive for family-style meals. In other respects, it is really not to be sneered at, and since some people may find it to their taste—I know that a family I am well acquainted with likes it because they make it very often—I shall describe it for you.

200 grams (about 7 ounces) of completely lean meat, stewed or roasted, either beef or veal, free of membranes and gristle

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

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

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

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

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

25 grams (about 4/5 of an ounce) of candied citron, finely chopped

Mince the meat very finely with a mezzaluna. Roast the pine nuts. Soak the sultanas in Marsala and strain when you are about to use them.

Sauté the meat in the butter, stirring all the while so that it does not stick to the skillet. When it has turned a reddish color, remove from the fire and allow to cool.

Heat the chocolate, grated or finely chopped, in 3 tablespoons of water until it melts. Then add the sugar and pour the liquid over the meat, adding the pine nuts, the sultanas, and the candied citron, stirring well.

Now make a pie shell of shortcrust pastry, with the following ingredients:

170 grams (about 6 ounces) of wheat flour

80 grams (about 2-2/3 ounces) of com flour

80 grams (about 2-2/3 ounces) of confectioners’ sugar

70 grams (about 2-1/3 ounces) of butter

25 grams (about 4/5 of an ounce) of virgin lard

1 egg

white wine or Marsala, enough to blend the dough

Take an appropriately sized baking pan, so the mixture won’t be more than a finger deep. Grease the pan with butter or lard and line it with a thin sheet of dough, pour in the mixture, then cover with another sheet of dough rolled out with a ridged rolling pin.

Gild the surface with egg yolk, bake in the oven or a Dutch oven, and serve cold.

1 liter (about 1 quart) of milk

130 grams (about 4-1/2 ounces) of fine-grain semolina

130 grams (about 4-1/2 ounces) of sugar

100 grams (about 3-1/2 ounces) of sweet almonds and 3 bitter almonds

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

4 eggs

scrapings from 1 lemon

a pinch of salt

Blanch the almonds in hot water and then crush them very fine in a mortar with all the sugar, added a tablespoon at a time.

Cook the semolina in the milk. Before removing it from the fire, add the butter and almonds which, having been crushed with the sugar, will quickly dissolve. Then salt the mixture and wait until it has cooled to lukewarm before folding in the eggs, beaten separately. Place the mixture in a baking pan greased with butter and dusted with bread crumbs. Note that the baking pan should be of such a size that the cake will be one and a half fingers deep, or two at the most. Bake in the oven or a Dutch oven. Remove from the pan when cool and serve whole or cut into lozenge shapes.

This is a cake well worth the effort. I advise you try it.

125 grams (about 4-1/2 ounces) of sweet almonds

125 grams (about 4-1/2 ounces) of sugar

4 tablespoons of cognac

3 heaping tablespoons of grated rye bread crust

5 eggs

First mix the sugar and two of the eggs, whole, then add the almonds, which you have blanched and crushed very fine in a mortar with a tablespoon of the sugar. Stir the mixture, then add the rye bread crumbs, three egg yolks, and lastly the cognac. Beat the three remaining egg whites until stiff and fold them in. Prepare a baking pan of the appropriate size, grease it with butter and dust it with confectioners’ sugar and flour. Pour the mixture in the baking pan and bake in the oven or a Dutch oven. When done, cover with a thin icing prepared like the one described in recipe 645, or with a chocolate frosting prepared as follows.

Put on the fire 30 grams (about 1 ounce) of butter and 100 grams (about 3-1/2 ounces) of finely chopped chocolate. When nicely dissolved, add 30 grams (about 1 ounce) of confectioners’ sugar. Allow the mixture to cool a little, and then spread evenly over the cake.

If I were not afraid of annoying the reader, here would be an opportune moment for another digression on German cooking.
¹¹⁸

As long as I live, I will never forget the array of foods spread out on a big hotel’s buffet at the spa town of Levico.
¹¹⁹
From the fried foods and the boiled dishes, all the way to the roasts, all swam in gallons of the same sauce, that always tasted and smelled alike, with what delight to the stomach you can just imagine. And just to add to the torture, very often these dishes were served accompanied by a timbale
¹²⁰
of angel hair pasta—angel hair, you understand, the thinnest pasta on the planet!—which when prepared in this way must suffer a doubly long cooking time: a bloody mess.

How utterly at odds with our Italian way of doing things! My cook has standing orders to remove angel hair from the water when it has barely begun to boil, and I am already waiting at the table.

Italian cuisine can rival the French, and in some respects actually surpasses it. However, due to the hordes of invading foreigners who bring us, apparently, about 300 million lire annually and, according to rough calculations, an extra 200 million lire in gold during the Jubilee Year of 1900, our cuisine is slowly beginning to lose its special character in the swirl of wandering nations. These unfortunate changes to our diet have already begun to appear, particularly in the large cities and in those areas heavily frequented by foreigners. I recently became convinced of this on a trip to Pompeii, where my traveling companion and I were preceded into a restaurant by a group of German tourists, both male and female, and were served in the same fashion as they were. When the proprietor later came up and courteously asked how we liked our dinners, I took the liberty of commenting on the nauseating slop of seasonings we had just been served. He replied, “Our cooking has to please these foreigners, since this is how we make our living.” Perhaps this is the same reason Bolognese cuisine has begun to change, as I have heard, and no longer deserves the reputation it once had.

Here is another cake from Germany, as tasty as the one described in the preceding recipe; indeed, it’s excellent.

Our grandfathers used to tell how toward the end of the 17’s, when the Germans invaded our country, there was still something uncivilized in their customs. For example, they used to provoke everyone’s horror by preparing broth with tallow candles that they plunged in a pot of boiling water, then squeezing out the wicks. But when, unfortunately, they descended on us again in 1849, they appeared much more civilized. Then tallow could only be seen on Croat militiamen’s long mustachios, which were smeared with it so that they could be twisted and their tips rolled to finger-length points that stood up straight and stiff. Nonetheless, from what visitors to that country tell me, tallow has kept a place in German cooking, a cuisine which Italians find in the worst possible taste and positively nauseating, as it uses all manner of fat and makes slop-like soups utterly lacking in flavor.