Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (95 page)

They are delicious even without any flavoring, but if you like you can use vanilla sugar to add the aroma of vanilla, or 30 grams (about 1 ounce) of grated chocolate. But either flavoring is best added at the very last moment.

There may be more modern and better recipes for making pickled olives, but the one I am about to give you comes from Romagna and is used there with excellent results.

Here are the amounts for each kilogram (about 2 pounds) of olives:

1 kilogram (about 2 pounds) of ashes

80 grams (about 2-2/3 ounces) of quicklime

80 grams (about 2-2/3 ounces) of salt

8 deciliters (about 3-1/3 cups) of water for pickling

Lime is called “quick” when adding water to it triggers a chemical reaction that produces heat, smoke, and bubbles that burst and fall into dust. It is once the reaction is over that you must use it, mixing it with the ashes. Then add water to make a mud-like mixture, which you will keep neither too thick nor too runny. Soak the olives in this mixture, using a weight to keep them submerged. Keep them like this for twelve to fourteen hours, that is until they become quite tender. Watch them closely and test their consistency frequently. Some people wait until the flesh pulls away from the pit, but this is not always a reliable guide.

Remove the olives from the mixture, wash them thoroughly and then keep them soaking in fresh water for four or five days, changing the water three times a day, until they no longer cloud the water and lose their bitterness. At this point, put on the fire the 8 deciliters (about 3-1/3 cups) of water with the salt, and add several pieces of thick stalks of wild fennel, which you will boil for a few minutes. Once this brine has cooled completely, pour it over the olives, storing them in a glass jar or a glass-lined earthenware container.

The best way to wet the lime is to dip it with one hand for a moment (five or six seconds are enough) in water and then place it on a sheet of paper.

Choose porcini mushrooms, also called “morecci,” the smallest you can find, and if some are the size of walnuts, slice these in half. Clean and wash the mushrooms, then boil them in white vinegar for twenty-five minutes; if the vinegar seems too strong you can dilute it with a little water. Remove the mushrooms from the fire, dry them well with a kitchen towel, and then leave them exposed to the air until the next day. Then place them in a glass jar or glass-lined earthenware container, covering them with oil and any herbs or flavoring you like. Some people use a clove or two of peeled garlic, others use cloves, and still others use bay leaves, which you can boil with the vinegar.

They are usually eaten with boiled meats.

For this recipe you need 2 kilograms (about 4 pounds) of sweet grapes, 1/3 red and 2/3 white grapes, or all white.

Press the grapes as if you were making wine, and after a day or two, when the dregs have come to the surface, drain off the must.
¹⁴⁶

1 kilogram (about 2 pounds) of red or reinette apples

2 large pears

240 grams (about 1 cup) of white wine or better vin santo
¹⁴⁷

120 grams (about 4-1/4 ounces) of candied citron

40 grams (about 1-1/3 ounces) of white mustard powder

Peel the apples and the pears, slice them thinly, then put on the fire in the wine and, when they have absorbed it completely, pour in the must. Stir often and when the mixture has reached a firmer consistency than for fruit preserves, let it cool and add the powdered mustard, which you will have dissolved in advance in a little hot wine, and the candied fruit, diced in tiny pieces. Keep in small jars covered with a thin film of ground cinnamon.

Mustard can also be used at the table to stimulate the appetite and facilitate digestion.

I take the liberty to translate in this way the two gallicisms commonly used in Italian, namely, “glassa” and “glassare,” leaving to others the task to find more technical and appropriate Italian terms. I am talking about that white, black or otherwise colored glaze used on several of the cakes described in the preceding pages, such as the Lady Cake (recipes 584 and 585), sweet English salami (recipe 618), and the German cakes.

To make a black glaze, use 50 grams (about 1-2/3 ounces) of chocolate and 100 grams (about 3-1/2 ounces) of powdered sugar. Grate the chocolate and put it on the fire in a small saucepan with three tablespoons of water. Once the chocolate has melted, add the sugar and simmer, stirring often. The key to the whole operation is to cook the glaze just right. The way to know when you have reached this exact point is to test the mixture between your thumb and index finger: if the mixture makes a thread, it is done. But don’t wait until you can make a thread longer than 1 centimeter (about 1/2 an inch), otherwise you will overcook it. Then remove the saucepan from the fire and put it in cool water. Keep stirring and when you see that the surface of the liquid tends to cloud over as if it were forming a veil, spread it on the pastry. Then put the pastry back in the oven or under an iron lid, with fire above. After two or three minutes you will find that the glaze becomes smooth, shiny and hard.

To make a white glaze, use egg whites, confectioners’ sugar, lemon juice and rosolio. If you want a pink glaze use alkermes rather than rosolio. The following are the approximate amounts for the desserts described earlier.

One egg white, 130 grams (about 4-1/2 ounces) of sugar, a quarter of a lemon, 1 tablespoon of rosolio or enough alkermes to obtain the color you want. Beat all the ingredients together well and when the mixture is nice and firm, though it still runs a little, spread it over the dessert. It will dry on its own, and there is no need to bake it.

If instead of spreading the white glaze in a single sheet, you would like to decorate the dessert with some pattern, you should go to one of those shops that sell what you need to make this type of decoration and buy those tiny tin attachments for a pastry tube or a pastry bag; these are the kind of cooking tools we must import from France, much to our shame. Lacking these implements, you can try to make do with paper funnels, which you can put together yourself. Put in the mixture and then squeeze it out of the small hole at the bottom, forming a thin thread. If the glaze is too runny, add sugar.

Recipe 586 for Neapolitan cake describes a white glaze that can be used as an alternative. Also see the dessert recipes 644 and 645.

If you really want to use fine good quality spices in your cooking, here is the recipe.

2 nutmeg kernels

50 grams (about 1 -2/3 ounces) of Ceylon cinnamon, also known as “queen” cinnamon

30 grams (about 1 ounce) of clove-flavored pepper

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

20 grams (about 2/3 of an ounce) of sweet almonds

You will not improve on this mixture by adding other spices (except for mace, which is the ground outer covering of the nutmeg seed, and is excellent). Also, do not imitate the grocers who use cinnamon from Goa instead of Ceylon cinnamon and throw in handfuls of coriander seeds to increase the volume with a cheap ingredient.

Crush everything together in a bronze mortar, pass the spices through a small strainer with a very fine silk mesh and keep them in a glass jar with a scalloped cap, or in a small bottle with a cork. In this way they keep for years and remain as fragrant as when you first prepared them.

Spices are stimulants, but used in moderation they aid digestion.

Nowadays you often hear talk of foods for weak stomachs. It seems that this type of cooking has come into fashion.

It is necessary therefore to say a few words on this subject without claiming that with my principles I can strengthen or satisfy these paper stomachs. It is not easy to identify with scientific precision which foods are more suitable to an individual weakened by the passing of years, illnesses, excesses, or weak by nature, since the stomach is a fickle, unpredictable organ; moreover, there are those who digest easily what is indigestible to others.

Nevertheless, I will try to point out those foods which, in my opinion, are more suitable to a weak stomach that finds digestion difficult, beginning with the first and only food that nature administers to newborn mammals: milk. I believe that you can use and abuse milk as much as you want, and as long as it does not cause you any gastric disturbance.

Next I will mention broth, which should be de-fatted, the most suitable being broths of chicken, mutton, and veal; but before mentioning the most suitable solid foods, I might remind you what I said about chewing in my opening comments on health. Chewing well stimulates salivation, which makes food easier to digest and assimilate; those who chew quickly and swallow foods that are poorly minced, force the stomach to do more work, and thus digestion becomes more difficult and laborious.

It also helps to set regular hours for breakfast and lunch. The
most healthy time to have lunch is noon or one o’clock, because then you have the opportunity to take a walk and a little nap in the summer, a season during which food should be lighter and less rich than in winter. I would also warn against snacking during the day, and advise the ladies not to weaken their stomachs with a constant diet of sweets. In fact, one should eat only when the stomach begs for food, which is more likely to happen after physical exercise. Indeed, exercise and temperance are the two pillars upon which good health rests.

As for firsts courses, let’s begin with angel hair or tiny pasta. Never use those that have been dyed yellow artificially; rather, use only pastas made with durum wheat which do not need dyes since they naturally possess a wax-yellow color. They hold up better when cooked and retain a pleasantly firm consistency when done.

Perhaps a weak stomach can also tolerate egg noodles, taglierini for example, since they are very fine, and bread crumb dumplings. Make simple soups or use vegetables; tapioca (which I hate on account of its gelatinous consistency), rice bound with egg yolks and Parmesan cheese.

Spanish soup (recipe 40), pumpkin soup (recipe 34), sorrel soup (recipe 37), egg-bread soup (recipe 41), the queen of soups (recipe 39), soup with meat stuffing (recipe 32), healthy soup (recipe 36), bread soup (recipe “), bread crumb soup (recipe 12), thin semolina noodles (recipe 13), semolina soup (recipes 15 and 16), paradise soup (recipe 18), pureed meat soup (recipe 19), soup with semolina dumplings (recipe 23), thousand foot soldiers soup (recipe 26), passatelli noodles made with semolina (recipe 48), passatelli noodle soup (recipe 20), where you can replace the crustless bread with 20 grams (about 2/3 of an ounce) of butter.

For meatless soups I can only recommend those with angel hair or extra-thin capellini seasoned with cheese and butter or with sauce, rice cooked in milk, and porridge made with yellow cornmeal flour in milk, as long it does not give you acid, two fish soups (recipe 65 and
66
), frog soup (recipe 64) but without the eggs, which make a mess.

All spices must also be banished when cooking in this way, (keeping at best a few traces here and there), since they are not appreciated by our delicate ladies or by those whose palate is too sensitive.

Sandwiches (recipe “4). Canapés with butter and anchovies (recipe “3), canapés with chicken livers and anchovies (recipe “5), fancy canapes (recipe “7). Cooked ham and Nantes sardines served with butter.

Sauce
maître d’ôotel
style (recipe 123), white sauce (recipe 124), mayonnaise (recipe 126), tangy sauce I (recipe 127), yellow sauce for poached fish (recipe 129), Hollandaise sauce (recipe 130), sauce for grilled fish (recipe 131).

Fresh eggs are nutritious and are easily digested if eaten neither raw nor overcooked. If you serve omelettes, choose those mixed with vegetables and kept thin, and do not turn them so that they remain soft. The asparagus omelette (recipe 145) is also quite healthy, as are egg-yolk canapés (recipe 142).