You might think he's doing something else. But in reality, he's learning how to sit/stay, and not doing a very good job of it (he eventually learned how to do so beautifully ... sort of ).

domenica 26 settembre 2010

The Scallion Speaks


Fridays used to be fish-only days for practicing Roman Catholics. And though most Italians don’t practice, they continue the fish thing on Fridays. You are sure to find a fish primo and/or a fish secondo on many menus where fish normally doesn’t play much of a role, if any.

This habit extends into our very own kitchen. The Scallion is the Fish Guy, so Friday nights are my night off. He consults a variety of cookbooks, but always goes first to Alan Davidson’s magnificent Mediterranean Seafood (egregiously out of print; he uses the Italian translation il Mare in Pentola
[1]). And then he makes things up.

We’re eating a lot of this, lately. (We have a dear Florentine friend, a lawyer and a buona forchetta (literally, good fork; i.e., gourmand). His idea of diet food is hake with mayonnaise. Perhaps he should try the green sauce?)

At any rate, Fridays are my night off; what follows comes from the Italian Scallion himself.

Hake with green sauce
Maledictus piscis in secunda aqua pronounced Alberto Denti di Pirajno in Italy’s first post-World War II cookbook , Il Gastronomo Educato (“The Polite/Educated Gourmet,” Vicenza, 1951).[2] The Romans, he informs us, damned water-swigging diners who allowed boiled fish to return to “third” water, in their stomachs, where it should find only wine: maledictus piscis in terza aqua. This worldly gastronome insists that having once been removed from its natural habitat, fish should never be cooked in unadulterated water (secunda aqua). To avoid this culinary solecism, Denti di Pirajno included recipes for five liquids to cook fish in, and he used the French term court-bouillon for lack of an appropriate Italian word. He added two caveats: a court-bouillon should never encounter a high flame but must always merely simmer slowly on low flame; (before simmering) the fish should be wrapped in muslin or in cheesecloth as otherwise it might fall apart when removing it from the liquid.

Hake, meanwhile, boils nicely. It is easy to prepare as it needs no scaling. Once cooked, it is easy to skin and to fillet; its bones are relatively few and easy to spot.

Gut the hake and rinse the fish and its orifice thoroughly. Place in the simmering broth.
I cooked the hake in Denti di Pirajno’s court-bouillon #2: “Bring to gentlest boil for one hour two liters of water, a glass of vinegar, two carrots and two onions sliced, a stalk of celery chopped, oregano, thyme, basil, two leaves of sage, two of bay, and a clove of garlic crushed.”

Twenty minutes is a few too many for a 1.5 lb. hake. (My wife thought it fine.) I am sorry I cannot provide fuller cooking advice than this. Once again, maintaining a mere simmer extends the margins of safe cooking time. Do not hesitate to press an object against the fish while it cooks so as to learn from repeated experiment what degree of softness indicates doneness. For this purpose, Denti di Pirajno recommended a thin skewer; I prefer the back of the same wooden spoon as it avoids a tear in the skin of the fish.

A Green Sauce

One cup of loosely-packed parsley leaves will make about 1/3 cup of green sauce which is about enough for three people, four at a stretch. This should not take more than ten minutes to make if you are not using a blender and you are doing nothing else…

The idea is to adapt this recipe to your liking as you go along & eventually come up with your own. I recommend the inclusion of vinegar-soaked bread for its contribution to consistency and flavor.

1 c. loosely-packed flat parsley leaves
1 T. chopped capers (if salt-packed, rinse and allow to soak for 10 minutes, then squeeze before chopping)
1 t. anchovy paste or one anchovy fillet (if salt-packed, treat as capers)
2 T. crustless bread soaked in vinegar (I prefer wine vinegar, but that’s just me)
2.5 T. extra-virgin olive oil
5 black peppercorns mortar’d and pestle’d or milled pepper to taste

Yields about 1/3 cup

Either place all ingredients except pepper corns in a blender, pulse to saucy consistency, then mix in the crushed pepper when you transfer the sauce to its serving vessel;

Or chop the parsley, move it to a mortar, squeeze the bread then place it in the mortar, add the capers and the anchovy paste and pound away until you get a paste. Add the oil one tablespoon at a time and mix in with pestle or spoon. Make room in the mortar for the peppercorns. Pound them, then mix them in.

Some add lemon zest or a chopped hard-boiled egg. You may also wish to include or substitute some parsley with fresh basil, thyme, mint, or tarragon.


[1] Trans. Isa Ciapetti, Milano, 2005.
[2] He was born in Genoa in 1886 to a Sicilian navy officer, studied medicine at the University of Florence, then worked in Rome and Milan. He was the Duke of Aosta’s personal physician while in Africa in 1924; that part of his life ended when he handed over Tripoli to General Montgomery in 1943. He then experienced his “second English education” as a British prisoner of war in North Africa, returned to Rome in 1946, where he died in 1968. He was, as his publisher Neri Pozza, writes on the book jacket flap, “[un] vero signore e vero scrittore, è autore di romanzi, libri di memorie e trattati di gastronomia …” (a true gentleman and authentic writer, the author of novels, memoirs, and gastronomic treatises).

lunedì 20 settembre 2010

Meat Loaf (in this case): you took the words right out of my mouth


“In the kingdom of comfort food, meatloaf is royalty.” So say the folks at Good Housekeeping.[1] In a 2007 poll they conducted at the magazine, meat loaf was number seven on top favorite foods in the U.S. (I was unable to find out what the first six were.) At any rate, meatloaf makes for a tasty Sunday lunch on a semi-warm, semi-wettish day in Tuscany. (It’s sometimes one word, sometimes two, meat loaf, and today inconsistency prevails.)

Meat loaf has a long history in the western world: Apicius provides a recipe for it.[2] They call meatloaf/meat loaf “polpettone” in Italy. Fifteenth-century Italians may have availed themselves of a variation on this recipe from Maestro Martino: take good-quality veal thigh, cut it in long thin pieces, and pound it, add mortar’d and pestle’d fennel seed scattered on top of the pounded meat, add parsley, marjoram, buon lardo (good lard; white prosciutto as it's euphemistically called in the United States), add uno pocho di bono spetie (a pinch of good spices; unspecified – perhaps this is the genesis of cooks withholding a key ingredient when giving out recipes?), roll them up, and put them in a pan making sure that they do not dry out. (This sounds much more like involtini, but Maestro Martino referred to this as Polpette di carne vitello.)[3]

Bartolomeo Stefani, celebrated chef to the Gonzaga (sonnets were written praising his food), published his recipes and strategies for dining in 1662 .[4] One recipe calls for strips of veal thigh, dusted with dried basil and salt, stuffed with fresh ricotta, grated cheese, pounded lardo, parsley, pine nuts, raisins, various spices (see above), marrow from two or three veal bones, two fresh eggs; when it’s halfway cooked, you add a lemon/cream sauce. Doesn’t it sound terribly good and quite a business?[5]

He also provides an entertainment menu for a meal to be consumed on meat-eating days in August, September, or October “che si potrà fare in giorno di grasso nelli mesi d’Agosto, Settembre, & Ottobre”: polpettone appears midway through the “Primo servito di Cucina.” Sandwiched between minestra di granelli (a soup made from seeds?), goose liver (prepared with an equally improbable list of ingredients), a soup made with Spanish bread, calli vitello (?), it’s the ante-penultimate course. Pigeon follows the loaf, and the grand finale (at least, of this part of the meal) is un pasticcio brodoso fatto in forma di Castello (a pastry number stuffed with minced veal, latticini (dairy products of some sort), little birds (perhaps of the type being shot at this morning as I write), veal marrow, pistacchi, vaghi d’agesto mondi (?), chicken wattle (not as disgusting as you might think), other ingredients, shaped in the form of a castle (presumably, one belonging to the Gonzaga) and il pasticcio agghiacciato di spora con ghiaccio di zuccaro (this is some sort of sugar icing, but even the Scallion – who claims Italian as one of his native languages – is stumped). Two other serviti, equally lengthy, followed.

Laurie Colwin writes warmly about meatloaf: “I myself love meat loaf and find even ones that have been lying around on a steam table palatable.” She continues, “Meat loaf ranges from the sublime (the one in Marcella Hazan’s first volume that contains funghi porcini and is cooked in white wine) to the pedestrian …” [6] Even The King (Elvis Presley) loved it – a straight ground-beef concoction served with mushroom gravy.[7]

So, too, do Jane and Michael Stern. They have quite a few recipes for meatloaf, including Ann Landers’. They write: “We are told that Ann Landers runs the recipe in her column every year, presumably because its very goodness can miraculously cure almost any sick marriage.”[8]

As usual, the late, great Alan Davidson nails meat loaf brilliantly: “[its] visibility is considerable higher in real life, especially in N. America and Britain, than in cookery books. This situation might be changed if it had a French name (paté chaud de viande hachée, préalablement mariné dans du vin de pays et des aromatiques), but it does not.”[9] His statement is borne out: www.epicurious.com curiously lists only 62 meat loaf recipes.

What follows will make too much for two people, which is exactly the point, as you’ll have leftovers to see you through rest of the week and/or trying times still ahead. It’s best to start the tomato sauce first thing, as the longer it sits on a low flame, the more flavorfully thick the sauce will be.

We have been making meatloaf in bain-marie for ages; memory does not serve who gave us this idea, unfortunately.

Salsa di pomodoro (tomato sauce)

1 small red onion, minced
1 small carrot, minced
1 small celery rib, minced
2 T. extra-virgin olive oil
3 c. pomarola (your own homemade, in an ideal world: if not, best-quality bottled tomato sauce)
¾ c. black olives, minced
Generous handful each of flat-leaf parsley and basil, parsley chopped, basil chiffonade’d
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.

Heat the olive oil in a saucepan, and add the battuto ingredients (onion, carrot, celery). Cook until well softened. Add the pomarola, olives, salt, and pepper. Cook on a decidedly low flame for at least two hours, stirring from time to time. About halfway through the proceedings, add the herbs.

Polpettone di pollo (chicken meatloaf)

1 lb. ground organic chicken breast
1 lb. ground organic chicken thigh
1 t. fennel seeds, mortar’d and pestle’d
1 c. fine dried breadcrumbs
½ c. fresh ricotta, preferably sheep’s milk
2 T. butter
1 T. extra-virgin olive oil
1 small red onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
Shot of hot sauce
2 T. fresh marjoram, chopped (use thyme if m. unavailable)
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Place the first five ingredients in a mixing bowl.

Preheat the oven to 425° F/230°C. Heat the butter and olive oil in a saucepan, add the onions, and cook ‘til completely softened (this meatloaf should not crunch). Let cool, add to the mix in the bowl, add the shot of hot sauce, herbs, salt and pepper to taste. Mix gently and shape into a loaf.

Place the meatloaf in a pan large enough to contain it, and place that in another, larger pan. Fill the containing pan with water halfway up the sides of contained. Cook for about 45 minutes.

You will have leftover tomato sauce and, undoubtedly, leftover ricotta. These can be combined, perhaps tossed with some hot pepper (either fresh or dried), and used to sauce polenta or pasta on a Monday evening when you’ve just gotten off a hot, crowded train jam-packed with talkative Italians nattering loudly on their cell phones when you really couldn’t be bothered.

[1] www.goodhousekeeping.com
[2] Book II, called “Minces,” lists seafood minces (seasoned with sea-onion, either lobster, crab, cuttlefish, scallops, or oysters, with lovage, pepper, cumin, and laser root added; a “kromeskis” of minced/pulped pork ground with winter wheat diluted with wine, peppered, crushed myrtle berries and nuts. The mixture’s then shaped into small rolls, wrapped in caul, and fried. He suggests serving it with a wine gravy. (Apicius, Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome, trans. Joseph Dommers Vehling, Chicago, 1936.) Several Apicii were noted cooks, but it’s probably the one who lived during the times of Augustus and Tiberius (80 b.c. to 40 a.d.) who authored these recipes.
[3] He provides two versions, (Rub. 18 and Vat. 18) but both are just about the same. You can find these recipes in Claudio Benporat, Cucina Italiana del Quattrocento, Firenze, 1996.
[4] l’Arte di ben cucinare (La cucina ai tempi di Gonzaga, Milano, 2002).
[5] He then provides a recipe for polpettone nella maniera Romana: lardo beaten with odiferous herbs, like persa (untranslatable; no idea), mentuccia (mint), fagrizzola (this is apparently the same word in English; who knows what it means?), garlic, veal marrow, marzapane (imagine! -- and his translator's spelling, too), pomo d’Adamo tagliato in boccoccini (we really have no idea) , pine nuts, raisins, cloves, pepper, grated cheese, two eggs, cooking it, and adding a sugo di naranci (which were probably bitter oranges -- think marmalade -- as they were all the rage in 15th century Italy). He provides other recipes as well, all equally teeming with to our 21st-taste sensations seemingly improbable combinations .
[6] “The Same Old Thing,” in Home Cooking, New York, 1988. She is 100% right about that recipe; the loaf is slowly stove-top cooked. You can find it in The Classic Italian Cookbook, London, 1973.
[7] Are You Hungry Tonight? Elvis’s Favorite Recipes, compiled by Brenda Arlene Butler, Bluewood Books, printed, inexplicably, in Singapore in 1992. A highly questionable source, but source nonetheless (the author saw him at least 30 times in Las Vegas and, as far as I know, never lunched/dined with him).
[8] Square Meals, New York, 1984. The recipe’s the standard beef-veal-pork combination, with a package of dry onion soup mix.)
[9] The Oxford Companion to Food, New York, 1999. His point's made clear by the equally-late, great, francophile Richard Olney, who provides a recipe for Caillettes or, to our ears, Pork and Herb Meatballs. Makes me wonder what the difference is between a paté and a terrine and a meatloaf given that, according to Olney, if the caillettes mixture is poured into a fat-lined terrine dish it becomes a terrine aux herbes. Hmm. (Richard Olney, Simple French Food, New York, 1974.) Epicurious lists 62 recipes for meatloaf (as noted above); 46 for terrine; 53 for pate. Terrines and pates are terribly similar, so let’s say 62 meatloaf recipes bested by 99 very similar creations with French names. (The Scallion's most savvy brother once ate our caillettes and remarked something to the effect of "Nice meatballs." At the time, I was appalled: so much work! To be reduced to the mere appellation of meatballs! (Meat balls?) Rectitude prevailed: they were, in fact, nice meatballs. Nothing more, nothing less.)
Photo of Waldo en couch/divan thanks to treasured pal Heather Souvlaki.

domenica 12 settembre 2010

Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few


Today’s the perfect day, in between playing old Dylan, to play equally old Lou Reed singing Brecht/Weill’s “September Song.” It’s cool here, but the sun’s out, and surely it will heat up enough to have Sunday lunch in the Great Outdoors.

Lunch will be pollo tonnato, a riff on the classic vitello tonnato. It’s a perfect summer dish, and a perfect dish for a waning summer, reminding you that it’s still warm, and you could be at the beach, even though you aren’t. Vitello tonnato is cold poached veal (usually shoulder) with a tuna mayonnaise. You can make it much more cheaply with chicken or even cheaply-er-ish with turkey. And it tastes swell. This recipe has been in the Scallion’s family for longer than I’ve been in the Scallion’s family (which is some good while now).

Il Cucchiaio d’Argento (Milan, 8th ed., 2005) presents two versions of this – one hot, one cold. The ingredients are more complicated, as it involves tossing the veal in butter/olive oil, and ultimately garnishing it with pickles (which sounds really good, actually). The cold version suggests adding egg yolks to the mayonnaise. Elizabeth David (Italian Food, Middlesex, 1954) provides two recipes for this dish, including Artusi’s.

Artusi’s recipe is more complicated; you stud the veal with anchovies, and he says use the broth for a risotto (perhaps he did not have dogs). David’s “Tunny Fish Mayonnaise” (maionese tonnata) pairs with hardboiled eggs, sandwiches, or stuffing for ripe tomatoes.
You could make your own mayonnaise, but if you have Hellman’s on hand, why bother?

(The tuna mayonnaise works equally well as a potato salad dressing, and is just as tasty with cold sliced roast beef.)

Pollo tonnato (chicken with tuna mayonnaise)

For the chicken:

¾ lb. chicken breast, organic desirable, sliced about ½ inch thick
Slice of lemon
Half a red onion, peeled
5 peppercorns
2 garlic cloves, peeled
1 bay leaf
Pinch of sea salt

For the mayonnaise:

1 c. Hellman’s mayonnaise
8 oz. canned tuna, preferably Italian, preferably packed in olive oil
¼ c. poached chicken broth
¼ c. capers plus 3 T. for garnish
2 T. lemon juice
1 lemon, sliced, for garnish
3 anchovy filets
Handful of flat-leaf parsley, for garnish
Sea salt and (freshly ground) white pepper, to taste

Put all the “For the chicken” ingredients into a broad saucepan, and cover with water. Cook on a very low flame; when it comes to a gentle boil, flip the chicken slices, cover, turn the heat off, and let chicken continue to cook for at least five minutes. Remove from the pan, reserve the broth (excess broth will be happily lapped up by canines), and let cool.

To make the tuna mayonnaise: throw the mayonnaise into a blender, the loosely-drained tuna, reserved chicken broth, anchovies, ¼ c. capers, lemon juice, salt, pepper. Whirl. If it’s too thick, add a bit more broth.

Place the chicken slices on a platter. Gently ice with the tuna mayonnaise. Dot with capers, lemon slices, and chopped parsley. Eat right away.

Florentine Canine Monument Update from the Queen of Kansas: “ The next time you are in Florence, stop in at the church of S. Paolino near S.M. Novella. In the first chapel on the right is the tomb of Maso degli Albizi (too lazy to look up the date, c. 1418) which originally was in S. Pier Maggiore but later was moved to S. Paolino, cut in half lengthwise, and incorporated into an (I think) 18th- century tomb. My point here is that on the end of the tomb there is a marvelous relief image of a dog, nose to the ground. Not a monument for a canine, but certainly a touching monument to one and, presumably, his owner.”

A Query:

Dear Tillie's Tuscan Table,

My partner, in a fit of enthusiasm, bought a large bagful of purple figs from a street market. Whilst beautiful to look at, they are not all that flavoursome.

I've been looking for recipes of how to use them, since in their virgin state they are not all that interesting. Is baking them a good idea?

What is your advice?

Best wishes,
An avid blog reader and dog lover

Dear Avid Blog Reader and Dog Lover:

Why not make jam? You can convert them from their virgin state into a seasoned and experienced taste sensation.

The Venerable Marion Cunningham provides an easy recipe – 4 c. prepared fruit, 3 cups sugar. Take those flavorless figs of yours, peel them, chop them coarsely, throw them in a pot, stir constantly, add water as needed. Then add the sugar, continuing to stir (constantly), and cook ‘til thick (The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, New York, 1979). She, Cunningham, then suggests jarring/sterilizing the fruit concoction, but I say don’t bother and just eat it fast. It ought to taste really, really good with cured Italian pork products or a semi-stagionato’d Pecorino (or, in your case, with a nice Vinny Blue or Stilton). Fig jam also tastes divine on toast with butter (preferably from Cornwall).

You might also want to check out Nigel Slater’s just released Tender (2), where he delves into the mysteries of cooking with fruit. His book might be the perfect solution for the next time your overly-enthusiastic partner returns from a street market with, say, 15 pounds of quince.

Thanks for reading but, more importantly, thanks for being a dog lover.

Today's subject quotes Brecht/Weill. The end is "September, November/And these few precious days I'll spend with you/These precious days I'll spend with you."

lunedì 6 settembre 2010

Waldo, again, sort of


The internet is a mixed blessing, as anyone who uses it well knows. Now it’s possible to get hired (and fired) electronically[1]; it’s also possible to send messages that, a generation or so ago, would have dictated a handwritten note on lovely, Crane stationery (or its equivalent). One would write, with a ballpoint pen, “Congratulations on the birth of your son!” Or, “Heckuva promotion – way to go!”

Or, indeed, the condolence note, which always had to be handwritten, and written right away, mailed right away. Whereupon, on receipt, the bereaved would make a point of thanking each and every person who had troubled him/herself to do so.

Those days are gone. Now we have virtual Funeral Guest Books, where you don’t even have to bother to either go to the funeral, or put tongue to stamp to affix to envelope; you can write your words of condolence/empathy/sadness on the web, there for all to see. Ought grieving to be a public or a private thing? I am clueless.[2] If you want, you can go to http://www.legacy.com/, and write on guest books of people you’ve never even met. You can even click a button that sends “Sympathy Flowers Now.” (Oh, would that Jessica Mitford were still with us to muckrake this.)

If you read obituaries in most newspapers in the States (that is, if you’re lucky enough to still have a local newspaper), you might note that almost everyone these days – or so it seems – dies surrounded by family and, if they are even luckier, with friends as well. If they are Christian, they always go happily to Jesus (or so, at least, the obit writer alleges).

Guess it means you’re a loser if you die alone.[3] Maybe we’ll be lucky enough to be Ilaria del Carretto, and have a marvelous pup at our feet, sculpted into eternity.[4]

This got me thinking about canine monuments, a few of which I know, like the statue of Balto in Central Park.[5] Then there’s the lovely bronze statue in Torre del Lago dedicated to Pippo, who didn’t do really very much of anything except make a whole lot of people happy.[6] Wikipedia lists plenty more monuments dedicated to amazing canines. There’s Fala, FDR’s faithful Scottish terrier who is actually buried beside him (apparently the only presidential canine so honored). Other notables include George Tirebiter (a USC mascot), and Greyfriar Bobby, who’s honored with a statue in Edinburgh. There’s St. Guinefort unknown human martyr superimposed on a canine martyr venerated in the Dombes, north of Lyon until the mid 13th century when a Dominican preacher had the site of the cult destroyed. Wikipedia writes that although he was “never recognized officially by the Catholic Church” his cult persisted into the 1930s.[7]

A Welsh version of the St. Guinefort story with a brave wolf-hound named Gelert—unjustly killed by its owner, Prince Llywelyn, who thought the dog had killed his infant son when in fact Gelert had killed a wolf intent on eating the baby whose overturned cradle momentarily hid the child from view—is probably better known. (http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/Wales-History/Beddgelert.htm suggests it’s a late 18th-century adaptation by an enterprising inn-keeper who had just moved to Beddgelert, Wales. Plenty of other heroic mutts have had monuments erected to them. Some of the more colorful include Red Dog (1971-1979) who had his own bank account with Wales Bank in Australia, and two U.S. standouts: Sergeant Stubby (c. 1916-1926) who, as Wikipedia notes, “was the most decorated war dog of World War I and the only dog to be promoted to sergeant through combat;” and Smoky, a Yorkshire terrier who served in the South Pacific. She was “credited with 12 combat missions and awarded 8 battle stars.”[8]

But back to the Internet and an end to this long parenthesis, here’s where the internet can be wonderful, especially when death comes knocking: people can get in touch with you immediately. And this is especially invaluable when you’re talking about a dog, who should never, ever be confused with a human being (even though your dog might have been nicer than most of the people you’ve ever tripped across).

After Waldo died, we got a lot of email messages from friends in Europe and in North America. Some of them were not Dog People, let alone Animal People. But write they did, anyway. And we found this really soothing.

Since dead people get funeral pages on the web, I thought: “Why not Waldo?” We got a lot of wonderful stuff, all heartfelt, some of it inscrutable (see Canadienne Red, below: it makes sense, alas, only to us, but we thought wtf and included it). Many friends telephoned, and others simply were geographically proximate.

Molly from Pistoia: “For now here’s to Waldo and all the dancing dogs in the clouds!!!!!”

Body-Surfing Susie from San Diego: “ … he looked so sweet in those picture you have …”

Heather Souvlaki from Toronto: “I am absolutely stunned, and very saddened, and am sitting here thinking about all the wonderful times we had at night with mini-dog [Waldo] … I know that anyone who met him isn’t going to forget him soon … but please remember that he had five years of being one of the happiest dogs I have ever met …”

Aunt Bets from Toronto (and, at present, Virginia): “ … I was/am sorry about what happened to wee Waldo … [he] was a really great little button of a spunky pup and in the short time I got to know him, he really endeared himself to me. And me to him, I like to think, given the way he let me pick him up and tote him around during the last visit I made.”

Cousin Susie from Bethlehem, PA: “I am so sorry … dogs are so much more than our best friends. I am crying with you.”

Canadienne Red from Chicago: “ … And I am remembering that Bad Dog Waldito J He is gone to The Doggy Dog World outside of The Doggy Dog World J And I am thinking, too, of Lulu – she has lost a companion. And Zoe has lost her brother.”

Bell Guy from Chicago: “I loved that devilish Waldo, and will miss him lounging on my lap and wiggling when he meets me. I know he was happy … Rest in Peace you little Canine Terror.”

Josie from Seattle: "We who choose to surround ourselves with lives even more temporary than our own live within a fragile circle, easily and often breached. Unable to accept its awful gaps, we still would live no other way. We cherish memory as the only certain immortality, never fully understanding the necessary plan..." The Once Again Prince, Separate Lifetimes, by Irving Townsend.

Marion from Brooklyn: “I've always enjoyed getting Waldo stories from Kerry, particularly how in his tender youth he thought his name was "No Waldo"! It's so sad when we first lose our beloved pups, but it's a relief when over time you can laugh at those stories; just getting to speak their names to all those who loved them feels comforting. “

Treasured High School Pal from New York: “My grief and sadness for you run river deep. I am so very, very sorry for your terrible loss, and I know it's even worse because you were not there to hold his paws and comfort him. I know there is nothing I can say to take away the deep heart break. You have my love and hugs from far away, and I mourn with you … Sending all the love in my heart to you. Holding your hand, cross oceans.”

Daisy Pugh (from the Happy Hunting Ground): “Oh, Waldo, I’ve been thinking about you all the time these past two days. You were a great dog. I’ll miss everything about you, especially Patti’s cooing, “no, Waldo, no” as we spoke most mornings. You are breaking our hearts.”

This last needs some explication. Poisoning dogs in Italy is, sadly, somewhat commonplace. Truffle dogs are routinely taken out this way (we met a marvelous truffle dog last fall who was trained not to take food from anyone’s hand except Her Person’s); a number of dogs in and around Florence have died this summer due to poisoning. In the next (and last) condolence, “polpettone” refers to meatloaf … either meatloaf, or meat balls, a not unusual way to poison a dog.

Terracotta Sculptress from near Arezzo: “My deepest condolences to you for the loss of Waldo. I’m assuming it was a poisoned polpettone, and I hope the bastard’s balls fall off.”

Yup, us too.

Recipes of something next time, I swear. Happy Labor Day, all.

[1] A favorite pastime in the Republic of Letters. We have many friends who have both been hired/fired using this method.
[2] Perhaps we should have had this upon the death of Pope John Paul II? Future fodder for Benedict XVI?
[3] Insert Paul McCartney singing “Eleanor Rigby” here.
[4] Some of us know this, but for those of you who don’t: the dog is a symbol of fidelity, especially in Renaissance art. Ilaria’s tomb can be found in Lucca’s Duomo, sculpted by Jacopo della Quercia. I hope either he or Ilaria herself had a small dog in his/her life
[5] According to Wikipedia, he lived from 1919-1933, and was the lead Siberian husky who ran diptheria serum to Nome (Alaska). His trip – who knew – gave rise to the Iditarod.
[6] “Pippo, cane senza padrone, dal mantello marrone e dagli occhi dorati colori da dolori antichi e di un pace ritrovata, visse circa 20 anni sul belvedere Puccini. Comparso nel 1977 con un profonda ferita da arma da fuoco sulla schiena, seppe perdonare e conservare fiducia negli uomini. Adottato dagli abitanti del lago neon compi gesta straordinaria ma insegui a tutti il vero significato di bontà, perdona, amicizia e libertà …” See http://www.luoghimisteriorsi.it/)
[7] Here might be a cult worth reviving. For more on St. Guinefort, see Jacques Dubois, “Saint Guinefort Vénéré des Dombes. Comment un martyr inconnu fut substitué à un chien-martyr ,” Journal des savants 1980, Volume1, Numéro 1-2, pp. 141-155. (Accessed at http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/jds_0021-8103_1980_num_1_1_1408) Guinefort’s feast day was August 22, the first “dog day” of summer.
[8] She has a monument in Lakewood, Ohio.
Photo of Canadienne Red and Waldo tripping the light fantastic many moons ago.

mercoledì 1 settembre 2010

Pomarola


It’s that time of year here in Tuscany when people are making tomato sauce (called, inexplicably, pomarola), and whipping out their guns. Hunting season officially started today (September 1st) and runs through the end of January. This morning, the sounds from the screeching owl just outside our window segued into the crisp sounds of guns firing.[1]

(Italians are crazy about hunting, and like to shoot at just about anything, it seems.[2])

Tomatoes, that staple of Italian cuisine, probably arrived in Italy, according to Waverly Root, at least by 1544, “when a description of it was published under the name of pomo d’oro (it is pomodoro today, golden apple).” But he then goes on to say that it took Italians about 200 hundred years to get around to eating them. Alan Davidson elaborates, and says that they were mentioned in a treatise, by an herbalist called Mattioli in that year.[3] The English were certainly eating tomato sauce shortly thereafter, as the inestimable Eliza Acton provides a recipe for said.[4] Many moons later, Elizabeth David provides five variations on the theme.[5]

Last year, we picked the tomatoes, 200 plus pounds of ripe San Marzano, mid-morning one hot summer day in August. The Fruit Ladies, as we call them, have a fruit and vegetable farm near us; if we picked the tomatoes ourselves, we saved even more money.

We were aiming to pick only about 70 pounds, but filled the containers they’d given us in just 45 minutes. Four of us on the job – the Scallion, Sam, Bobo, me. Sam’s almost-four-year old son started out helping, but quickly got the stumpings, and took himself to the car.

Why go to this trouble when you can buy it so cheaply in the stores? Is there a better joy in a drab winter kitchen than opening a jar in mid-January and inhaling the aromas of a hot summer day?

We set up shop outdoors, in the shade. First we washed the tomatoes. We took half of them (about 100 pounds), and cut them in half. Then we put them in a large cauldron on a gas ring, and brought it to a boil. We took turns stirring, and the three witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth quickly sprang to mind (though they were mixing up more esoteric ingredients like eye of newt, tongue of frog, and lizard’s leg). The tomatoes melted rather quickly; the Scallion added red wine vinegar.

They then went through a specially-designed-to-make-tomato sauce contraption: the liquid/pulp went one direction, the skins and seeds another. Then we passed the skins/seed mixture through a second time (this year, indeed, a third).

We did the second hundred pounds but added chopped celery, carrots, and red onion to the mix. Thus, we’d done the two schools of thought – one, simply tomatoes, the other with more vegetables.

Various Italian web sites are divided about this. Maria Pellotti adds only 1 chopped onion to every 10 plus pounds of tomatoes; others, a ratio of 2.2 lbs. mature tomatoes, 2 carrots, 1 celery rib, 4 basil ribs, extra-virgin olive oil, salt, and a pinch of sugar.[6]

Then we jarred them. The whole exhausting process took about 12 hours.

Sam and Bobo had heated discussions about the method of jarring, and Sam won out in the end. The jars, which had been rinsed in a hot cycle in the dishwasher, were filled to the brim, lid put on, and then the whole works set upside down to cool down slowly.

The Monsters (Waldo, Lulu, and Zoe, Waldo’s sister) actively participated in the process, which mostly meant that they were often in the way and licking up spillage. (You can see documentation at right.)

We celebrated the conclusion of the day by making Bloody Marys, followed with a simple plate of spaghetti with fresh tomato sauce.

This year, there were far less tomatoes (as well as fewer dogs): Sam and Bobo were only able to pick about 83 pounds. July was too hot, and then it rained a lot, and rot began to set in. So making pomarola became urgent, and they settled down to do it, joined by the Scallion, last week. They opted this year for a simple tomato-salt-red wine vinegar concoction.

Our tomatoes, all infinite varieties of them, suffered greatly. They’ve largely been consumed by obnoxious pests once again making me wonder Why Not Spray? (as I do, inevitably, every year). We did manage to pick a few the other day, and had a nice tomato salad, recipe below.


Fresh Tomato Bloody Mary
4 c. fresh tomato juice
1 c. vodka
1 t. kosher salt
1 t. whole black peppercorns
2 T. preserved lemon liquid (or 2 T. fresh lemon juice)
Ample pinch celery salt
Celery stalks
Tabasco to taste (in our case, lots)

Put the tomato juice and vodka in a large pitcher. Mortar and pestle the kosher salt and black peppercorns; add mixture to pitcher, along with preserved lemon juice, celery salt and hot pepper sauce. Anoint with celery stalks and cracked ice cubes; drink.

Makes 4 hefty drinks.

Insalata di pomodori
Tomato salad
1 lb. just-picked tomatoes, preferably Canastrino, but any will do; chop them in small-ish pieces
2 T. extra-virgin olive oil
2 T. tamari or shoyu
1 small red onion, peeled, and thinly sliced in half diameters
3 T. sesame seeds, toasted and mortar’d and pestle’d
3 T. coriander seeds, ibid
Freshly ground sea salt and black pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients in a bowl, toss, let sit for at least 15 minutes for flavors to develop. This tastes really good with grilled steak.

[1] In Italy, these owls are called civette and they bear some resemblance to the screech owl found in the Americas (at least, they do to my untrained eye). Wikipedia observes that civette have a broad vocal repertoire, that males emit a malincholic hoo-hoo sound, and that their screeching is used in self-defense (to mark territory, presumably). “Le civette hanno un ampio repertorio vocale. Il maschio emette un malinconico “hu – u- u” ripetuto ad intervalli variabili, dopo 3-4 secondi .. [loro] emettono versi striduli e fastidiosi come autodifesa.”
[2] This being Italy, there are, as usual, special rules: for example, on September 1st, 4th, and 5th, the pigeon and the blackbird can be fired upon only between 5:30 and noon; meanwhile, the turtle dove, jay. magpie, and gray crow can only be shot at between 5:30 ‘til 7:30 at night. Clearly, most of this shooting’s for fun, as I have never tripped across any recipes for any those birds: pigeon sometimes appears on the menu in higher-end establishments
[3] Oxford Companion to Food, New York, 1999. He also adds, “The earliest known printed [tomato] recipe, which occurs in a Neapolitan book, Lo scalco alla moderna, by Antonio Latini (1692/4) is for “Tomato sauce, Spanish Style” and calls for adding finely chopped parsley, onion, and garlic – with salt, pepper, oil, and vinegar – to the finely chopped flesh of previously seared and peeled tomatoes.”
[4] She, however, stews them with either gravy, cream, or milk, and then thickens it with flour. More a roux-y tomato sauce than something to top a plate of spaghetti. (The Best of Eliza Acton, London, 1986.)
[5] See her Italian Food, New York, 1954.
[6] Maria Pelletti at http://www.aquabuona.it/, many-more ingredients at http://www.ricettericette.it/.
All photos by Sam and all taken last year.