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 ).

martedì 30 novembre 2010

Spaghetti Carbonara

For totally banal reasons, we were unable to celebrate Thanksgiving on the proper day. Dreary tasks kept us in Florence too too-late-to-put-in-any bird unless, of course, we wanted to eat at 3 a.m.

Incredibly dispiriting. Time to beat one’s breast like one of those professional female mourners on an ancient Roman sarcophagus, pull out one’s hair, and wail (I pretty much did both of those things).

Fortunately, Calvin Trillin sprang to mind. Calvin Trillin is one of our Household Gods. Should we ever have to depart in haste due to anything, we would take his books with us. Every year, we read aloud two of his Thanksgiving-related pieces. In one, he controversially suggests abolishing eating turkey on Thanksgiving and replacing it with carbonara. The essay is called “Spaghetti Carbonara Day” and the first sentence is a call to arms: “I have been campaigning to have the national Thanksgiving dish changed from turkey to spaghetti carbonara.” He then bravely continues: “It does not require much historical research to uncover the fact that nobody knows if the Pilgrims really ate turkey at the first Thanksgiving dinner. The only thing we know for sure about what the Pilgrims ate is that it couldn’t have tasted very good.”

We decided spaghetti carbonara was just the thing.

When properly done, it’s a gift from the gods. When not properly done, it can be a mess (you never, ever want to scramble the eggs). The basic recipe is simple: spaghetti, eggs, cheese, pancetta. But then polemiche (as they say in these parts; we’d say controversy/argument/nit-picking) arises over the exact approach: Should I use the whole egg, or merely the yolk? Should I use a couple of egg yolks and a whole egg? Ought I to add a little cream? Or should I add a little milk?

The late, great bard who was Alan Davidson weighs in: “[it] is made with spaghetti which, when still as hot as possible from cooking, is liberally dressed with hot fried PANCETTA (the sort called guanciale), which resembles bacon, raw beaten egg, and grated cheese. The heat cooks the eggs to some extent [not really, I don’t think]. Additions often made are a little wine [yum!], heated with the bacon, or cream.” He then discourses about the dish’s origins, dismissing the idea that it was a favorite of the carbonari (charcoal burners). More likely, he says, “A more credible explanation is that it was invented in 1944 as a result of the American occupation troops having their lavish rations of eggs and bacon prepared by local cooks. The name would then be from a Rome restaurant, the “Carbonara,” which makes a specialty of the dish.”

EGAD! Might we -- that is, we Americans? -- be responsible for this Italian classic? It would make perfect sense – us, the Land of Plenty in a country reeling from the deprivations of war?

Samantha, who makes the best plate of carbonara on the planet, uses a little milk and egg yolks. Stig in London has been known to throw in Cheddar cheese (if you haven’t tried it, do: it’s divine, and if you have the first Greens cookbook, check out Deborah Madison’s version with smoked cheese and green olives). Ada Boni, the Irma Rombauer of Italy, does an egg/100 grams of spaghetti, and uses both cheeses. Calvin Trillin makes his with pancetta and prosciutto. Crustily beloved Elizabeth David made hers with maccheroni (though she’s one of my heroes, she would), pork product lightly fried in butter (hm …), whole eggs, and only Parmesan. The River Café Green book has an asparagus carbonara which, when it’s the season for, is beyond wonderful. Though it appears that black pepper’s not a vital ingredient, it is for all of us who make it. We like ours particularly peppery, hence the excess.

Spaghetti alla carbonara con porri /spaghetti carbonara with leeks

1/3 lb. spaghetti
¼ lb. pancetta, diced
1 T. olive oil (extravirgin not necessary)
2 leeks
3 egg yolks
¼ c. light cream
¼ c. Parmesan, grated
¼ c. Pecorino Romano, grated
3 T. (at least) black peppercorns, mortar’d and pestle’d

Bring a pot filled with water to a boil.

Trim the leeks: you want the part where the white fades into the green; clean them carefully and julienne them as finely as you possibly can. (Reserve the white part for future use, compost the upper part; or give the white part to Lulu, who adores raw leeks.)(Yes.)

Put the olive oil in a saucepan, heat, and throw in the pancetta. Cook ‘til crisp, remove, and drain on paper towels. Pour off all but 1 T. of the pan’s fat. Throw in the leeks, and cook ‘til just about golden brown.

While the leeks cook, throw the spaghetti into the boiling water.

Mix the egg yolks, light cream, and cheeses in a small bowl. Add the black pepper.
Drain the spaghetti, and toss it with the egg mixture. Add reserved pancetta and eat immediately.

Serves two. It always gets eaten up, hence nothing left for the dogs.

If a good plate of carbonara exists in Tuscany, I have yet to find it. It always tastes best in Rome; here are two places to have it the next time you’re in town.

La Carbonara, (birthplace of?) Campo dei Fiori 23, Rome, 06/686 4783.

Maccheroni, Piazza delle Coppelle 44, Rome, 06/68307895. Reservations a must, as is their carbonara.

Oh, what has happened to my footnotes? On eating late-night fowl: This reminds me of the first Thanksgiving dinner I ever cooked for 12 or so unwitting Brits, a Scot, and a Dane. After securing a turkey at Harrod’s (I had to return an hour later to pick it up, as they had to pluck it), turkey and I repaired to friend’s flat in Chelsea, where the meal was to take place. A mid-afternoon (lengthy) power failure translated into the turkey emerging from the oven at around 11 p.m. Dane and I whiled away the hours with a bottle of dry vermouth.

Calvin Trillin's other marvelous piece: “Doing it the Lard Way” – about deep frying turkeys – appeared in the November 27, 1995 issue of the New Yorker. This was a most novel idea at the time (of course, Calvin Trillin’s always been on the crest of the wave). This reminds me of another Thanksgiving-related story. Once upon a time, John and Todd deep-fried a turkey on their driveway outside Ithaca, New York. Todd thought (incorrectly as it turned out) that he’d successfully disposed of the fat underneath the gravel of their driveway. In fact, he hadn’t, and Gizmo, their lovely but somewhat dimwitted Lab mix, ate it. This led to highly expensive emergency surgery at, fortunately, one of the best vet schools in the States (Cornell).

Quote from "Spaghetti Carbonara Day" from Third Helpings, New Haven and New York, 1983.

martedì 23 novembre 2010

Dieta Bianca


When Italians are feeling poorly, they frequently revert to dieta bianca – white diet. (Dieta Bianca can also successfully be employed after a grueling appointment with one’s dentist.) This basically means soft, unchallenging food that removes hunger pains but doesn’t necessarily satisfy the soul. Dieta bianca includes pastina in brodo (little bits of pasta in broth), spaghetti simply sauced with butter and maybe a little Parmesan (this also doubles as nursery food which indeed most of these dishes are), and myriad pale-faced dishes involving rice.

Riso al burro is popular with Italians at any time. In fact, you don’t even have to be feeling poorly to have it. Mario Sconcerti tells us that the Italian national football team usually eats about four hours before a match, and they often start with riso in bianco (boiled white rice) and then have a steak filet.

You don’t have to chew a lot. In fact, you could take your dentures out – if you had them – and fare quite well.

The Scallion, in Typical Contrarian Mode, sniffed over lunch (recipe, below): “Well, you could call anything dieta bianca then … including white truffles.” Hm. Yes, one could. If you’ve ever been unlucky enough to have had a hospital stay in Italy, and the cause of your incarceration was not gastrointestinal (or maybe even if it was), don’t you think that riso al Parmigiano (boiled white rice with Parmesan) would be elevated by a generous shaving of white truffle? What better way to lift the spirits? What aroma to help one get out of bed! Che gioia to mask the boringness of boiled white rice with cheese.

We rotisserie’d a guinea fowl for Sunday lunch, and half a side remained. It got turned into today’s risotto. Surprisingly tasty for food not meant to challenge the palate. You probably won’t have any leftover guinea fowl after Thanksgiving, but you will probably have leftover turkey, which would work just fine as a substitute (and, to my mind, would be a welcome change from hot turkey sandwiches, cold turkey sandwiches, turkey hash, turkey tetrazzini, turkey croquettes …) The fresh herbs really lift this dish, so try to use them. Dried simply won't do.

(Italians don't have a day such as this. Perhaps they should? They could celebrate the unification and ostensible concord of/in Italy by sharing regional dishes -- grissini and affettati misti to start (Piedmont), risotto alla milanese to follow (Lombardy), tortellini in brodo (Emilia-Romagna), bistecca fiorentina (Tuscany), cannellini beans (Tuscany), artichokes cooked in the Jewish way (Lazio), tiramisù (arguably, the Veneto), panna cotta (Piedmont), cantucci with vin santo (Tuscany), and cannoli (Sicily). And wines from everywhere, particularly Piedmont, Tuscany, and Puglia. If they did it at this time of year, they could (white) truffle practically everything. Oh, the possible combinations!)

Thanksgiving Day is a day like any other here, though increasingly Florentine restaurants offer their version of Thanksgiving; unfortunately, these offers are mostly at dinner time which is when most of us Americans are sitting in front of the television, groaning, and watching (American) football.

Risotto alla faraona e porri /Guinea fowl and leek risotto

¾ c. Arborio rice
2 T. butter
1 T. extravirgin olive oil
2 leeks, white part only, finely chopped
1 hefty cup leftover cooked guinea fowl (turkey if immediately after Tgiving)
1 c. white wine
4 c. chicken or vegetable broth, heated
A bunch of chives, scissor-snipped
1 T. fresh thyme
1 T. flat-leaf parsley
½ c.(or more) Parmesan cheese, grated and at the ready

Melt the butter and olive oil in a heavy saucepan. Add the leeks, stir, and cook through. When soft but not brown, add the rice, stirring to coat with the butter.
Add one cup of good white wine (make sure it’s good, since you’re going to drink the rest of the bottle when you eat the risotto), stir ‘til it evaporates. Then start adding in ladlefuls the chicken or vegetable broth.

About 10 minutes into the proceedings, add the guinea fowl (or turkey), and continue to stir. Just before the rice is done (usually in about 20 minutes), add the grated Parmesan and the chopped/snipped fresh herbs. If the risotto seems a little dry before you add the cheese, give it another glug or two of white wine.

Generously serves two. Remember to drink the rest of the wine.

Re: riso al bianco and the Azzurri: Not dishes for champions, apparently, given the Azzurri’s dismal 2010 World Cup performance. See Mario Sconcerti, “Di Rigore gli Spaghetti,” in Corriere della Sera, Sette, 18 November 2010, numero 46.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING/BUON GIORNO DEL RINGRAZIAMENTO

giovedì 18 novembre 2010

Soft Bright Golden Rolls


Rosie seemed a little down last night. None of her frantic energy scratching at the Whelping Room door, none of her bounding out, submitting immediately (you have to wonder who taught her how to do that, or why she learned that behavior), and then prowling the kitchen for ingots of dropped food. Or scurrying to the terrace, leaping over the wall (Waldo lives!) or inserting herself between the little fence and the terrace gate to prowl the garden looking for lizards.

She also didn’t seem particularly interested in her combination high-digestibility milk/water combo, and she had absolutely zero interest in her Science Diet food for Pregnant and Lactating Females. A call to the Splendid Vet this morning at 4 proved inconclusive. We should keep an eye on her. (We could have saved ourselves a phone call, as we already were.)

Having puppies for the first (and last) time has been exhilarating and scary, since all sorts of questions come up, and you don’t know the answers. And unlike friends with children, there’s a whole lot less people to ask for help. Like: How long will a mother dog be protective of her puppies? (This at http://answers.yahoo.com.) A particularly unsettling response: “If she’s anything like my dog, she’ll be protective of them forever.” (One wonders when Lulu and Harry will meet these pups.) The Animal Defense League of Texas (www.adltexas.org) provided invaluable information under such rubrics as “Pet Resources,” “Lost & Found,” “Newborn Care,” and the inexplicable “Fireworks Safety for Your Pets.”

Perhaps Rosie’s fatigue came from yesterday afternoon’s vigorous romp in the woods with Lulu and Harry. Perhaps it was due to the fact that Yip, Yap, and Yup basically attached themselves to her all day. Usually, the Whelping Room has an audio soundtrack of Yip yapping, mighty lungs has she, or Yup yipping (Ibid.). (Yap pretty much keeps her own counsel.) No noise yesterday/today because they were the Three Little Pigs.

This morning, Rosie had great interest in accompanying the Large Dogs out on their morning constitutional, but returned home – wet and sopping, just the L.D.s – and turned her nose up on her food.

This was worrying. A somewhat soothing conversation with Bobo, my Wine Consultant, ensued. “Give her an egg yolk,” she suggested, “We always gave one every morning to our dogs when they were feeding.”

The egg yolk was met with great enthusiasm. I decided to take the white, add it to the other four egg whites in the refrigerator (Sunday’s pasta for ravioli called for four yolks) and make an egg-white omelette/omelet.

Is the egg-white omelet/omelette, once faddish, an idea that could only have been created in the United States of America? Seems like everyone was eating them in Hollywood in the 90s, and now you can find them twenty plus years later in dive-ish diners around Washington Square. (They entered the mainstream ages ago.) Years ago, I remember reading an article about Demi Moore, in some trendoid restaurant, jumping up and cooking herself her own egg-white omelette somewhere in Los Angeles (made me wonder why bother going out to a restaurant if you do it yourself? Isn't one of the reasons that they cook for you?) In the more than usually health-conscious 80s, Jane Brody was an advocate of the equal amount of egg whites to whole eggs: so if you’re using four eggs, you use four whites.

Egg-White Omelette/Omelet (actually, Egg-White Scramble) or For the Love of Rosie

5 egg whites
1 T. safflower or other mild vegetable oil
1 small onion, minced
1 small potato, minced, about 1/3 c.
2 button mushrooms, trimmed and peeled (if necessary), cut into fine dice
2 generous T. soft goat cheese
2 T. chopped coriander, for garnish
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Heat the oil in a non-stick pan, preferably one designed to cook omelettes. Add the onion and stir for a moment or two, then add the potatoes and mushrooms. Stir to keep the potatoes from sticking. (You might want to add a pinch of salt and freshly ground black pepper at this point.) When they are soft, toss in the egg whites and scramble with a wooden spoon. After about a minute or two, add the goat cheese, and stir to combine.

If you are at all like me, you will feel virtuous, and perhaps a big smug after eating this (especially if you have not laced it with Frank’s Hot Sauce, which is more necessary in this household than salt and pepper). You might also feel hungry; Peggy Lee singing “Is that all there is?” might come to mind, and rightfully so.

Elizabeth David would have scorned that recipe. According to her, “What one wants [in an omelette] is the taste of the fresh eggs and the fresh butter and, visually, a soft bright golden roll plump and spilling out a little at the edges. It should not be a busy, important urban dish but something gentle and pastoral … And although there are those who maintain that wine and egg dishes don’t go together I must say I do regard a glass or two of wine as not, obviously, essential but at least as an enormous enhancement of the enjoyment of a well-cooked omelette.”

Amen.

This is an omelette (well, ok, a scramble) which is as decadent as the one above is austere.

2 T. minced shallots
2 T. butter
2 heaping T. pancetta (or bacon), minced
2 T. grana padana (or Parmesan)
2 whole eggs
1 egg white
2 T. heavy cream
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Melt the butter in an omelette plan, and add the shallots. After a minute or two, add the pancetta. In a small bowl, adding a pinch of salt and freshly ground black pepper, mix up the eggs and the egg white. Add the cream.

Pour into the omelette pan as the edges cook, roll the pan with your wrist to move the uncooked egg. When it’s crisping on the sides, flip it by using an inverted plate, or a deft flip with a spatula … or say to hell with it, and scramble the thing.

Serves one and a morsel each for the dogs.

Inexplicable problem with footnotes remains. Quote from Elizabeth David in "An Omelette and a Glass of Wine," in An Omelette and a Glass of Wine (New York, 1985). Jane Brody's Good Food Book came out in the same town in the same year. The controversy over the spelling of omelet/omelette can be found in my post of October 12. Have yet to encounter egg white omelettes here in Italy. Of course, Italians don't do eggs for breakfast, so it's hardly surprising. My guess is that 5-star hotels have them on their breakfast menus since they cater to many Americans.

giovedì 11 novembre 2010

the 11th of November


In 1918, on the 11th day of the 11th month on the 11th hour, World War I came to an end. Statistics vary, depending upon the source, but an estimated 650,000 Italian troops died during the course of the (Italian) conflagration from 1915-1918, 947,000 were wounded, Missing/POWs numbered 600,000. Wikipedia’s numbers more or less agree with what was just cited, but also add civilian deaths, which totaled 589,000 souls.

Ernest Hemingway became a man in Italy while serving as an ambulance driver in the Italian campaign; he was seriously injured by an Austrian mortar shell while handing out chocolate and cigarettes to entrenched Italian soldiers. He would turn nineteen in three days’ time.

He was later given the Italian Silver Medal for Valor, which said, "Gravely wounded by numerous pieces of shrapnel from an enemy shell, with an admirable spirit of brotherhood, before taking care of himself, he rendered generous assistance to the Italian soldiers more seriously wounded by the same explosion and did not allow himself to be carried elsewhere until after they had been evacuated." (And he of course wrote a great book about the experience afterwards.)

Italy’s version of Arlington Cemetery, “one of the biggest in the world,” according to Wikipedia.org, has more than 100,000 bodies of men who died in the war (and one woman). It “opened” in 1938, when Mussolini was at the height of his power.

This is also a big day on the Roman Catholic church calendar, as it’s the feast day of San Martino. Or at least it used to be a big day.

Martin of Tours (c. 315--397) was born in Hungary, became bishop in Tours, founded monasteries in France, trashed pagan shrines, and died a non-martyr’s death (not a bad run for a Christian in those days). From an invaluable dictionary: “A goose at his feet may allude indirectly to the season of his feast-day ... which is said to coincide with the migration of geese (or the season of their killing and eating)."

Carol Shields writes that Martin is the patron saint of, among others, “grape growers, and wine makers, and in some places he is also the protector of drinkers.” Shields also notes that he’s credited with transforming a river into wine (wouldn’t you like to dip into that?). She continues: “It is mostly old people who continue to roast turkey and chestnuts in Apulia and Abruzzo and in Sicily …” (You have to figure that just about no one’s doing that now, as those old people were old when she wrote the book 20 years ago.) In the Abruzzo – at least back in the day -- turkey fed on walnut shells is served on November 11th. Called tacchino alla porchetta (herb-scented roast turkey from Nereto), Shields provides a marvelous recipe in which you cook the turkey sort of the way you’d cook young pig.

In Italy, you don’t say “Indian Summer.” You say l’estate di San Martino (“St. Martin's summer"). Despite the torrential downpours of late, accompanied by gusty winds, today was truly, in every way, the feast day of San Martino. Lulu, Harry, and I took a long walk in the woods, and the sun beat down upon our backs. Rosie managed to extricate herself from her pups innumerable times today, and joined Lulu on the sun-filled terrace chasing and nosing for lizards (neither was successful in today’s hunt; Waldo too often was. Once they stopped moving (i.e., dead or practically so) he moved on, allowing me to deal with the recently-dead or still twitching creature).

“The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."

Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms, 1929.

Recipe next time.

Footnotes in strange form due to problems with blogspot.com:

www.worldwar1.com. According to this site, 126,000 Americans died, 234,000 were wounded, 4,526 went missing.

You’ll find a big discrepancy here re: American deaths, which is significantly lower than worldwar1.com: Wiki says 116,708.

www.lostgeneration.com

A Farewell to Arms appeared in 1929.

“It is a limestone landscape in itself: a geometrised model of the Carso, complete with its fatal gradient. Beyond a deep drop of stone, the Duke of Aosta lies at the foot of the slope within a 75-tonne block of porphyry: a tomb worthy of Achilles … From below, visitors look like fleas on a Fascist stairway to heaven.” This on the Sacrificio Militare di Redipuglia; Mark Thompson, The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915-1919, London, 2008.

Hall’s Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, London, 1974. St. Martin is frequently shown on horseback, a beggar at his side, cutting off half his coat to give to the shivering guy.

Most of the rest about San Martino, and the allusion to the recipe, comes from Celebrating Italy, a triumph by Carol Fields (New York, 1990).

Photo of St. Martin and the Beggar (copy), facade, Duomo, Lucca. Work at the Duomo began at the end of the 12th century. (The original of St. Martin and the Beggar can be found inside, the work of a Lombard-Lucchese sculptor, dating from the beginning of the 13th century.)

lunedì 8 novembre 2010

Olives

We picked olives three days running, ‘til yesterday, when it dumped the proverbial torrential downpour. We shook the proverbial s*** out of the trees with rakes (I thought of Dorothy on the Yellow Brick Road, innocently picking an apple, and the tree turning on her. Kind of hoped the olive trees would do the same to me, but of course they didn’t.) The weather up ‘til yesterday afternoon: Sunny and glorious – another day to thank Whomever/Whatever and be glad to be alive.


The Scallion has taken the first lot of olives to be pressed, and is due back imminently. Nothing like olio nuovo (new oil) … it’ll be fragrantly green, and we’ll toast Tuscan bread, rub it with garlic, sea salt it and black pepper it, and then be overly generous with the oil. It will be bliss.


In the Whelping Pool, four completely conked out dogs digest; the bellies of three youngsters twitch as they do so. (Yip enjoys this process, on her back, in total splay position.) Shortly, they’ll wake up, then eat, then sleep/digest. For those of you who have produced your own spawn, you know exactly what I’m talking about. For those of us who haven’t, all I can say is … well, nothing. Can’t compare human babies with puppies, since often human babies emerge sort of clueless about what to do upon entering the world, and often the mother is equally so. Rosie did exactly what she was supposed to do, thanks to genetic wiring, and her pups did exactly what they were supposed to do, thanks to genetic wiring. (Would that I possessed this skill at all times.) What a truly odd, inexplicable thing, animal instinct (as mother-in-law observed on the birthing day, thank goodness we knew beforehand that eating the placenta is part of canine birthing procedure).


No pups picked olives, unfortunately, nor did they gambol in the orchard or the woods. The two senior statespups, Lulu and Harry, can be fully relied upon to either get into mischief (Lulu) or exit the premises (Harry). Rosie was tending to three noisy pups. Yip now looks like a tiny Cornish game hen (if you flipped her over and pinned her paws to her side, you could bake her, and could serve two people with modest appetites). Hard to tell with the mysterious Yap, as she’s the quietest and darkest of the three. Yup remains scrawny, though he gains slowly but steadily (Jack White singing “Steady as she goes …” comes to mind), even though you can still see all of his little bones under his skin. He eats after the girls, which causes him great distress, about which he is quite vocal. (He doesn’t have a chance in hell bypassing either one of them.)

All of them, when they want food or their mother, whine. And their whining sounds like the sounds junior seagulls make while flying around landfills. Only nicer.


If you live in Italy, and live to eat, after a very short time you’ll find that basically your only options are Italian. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but sometimes it does get a bit tiring, especially when the urge for fire and spice gives your stomach a homesick hunger pain. Thai chilies, coconut milk, pho, Jamaican jerk chicken (Jamaican jerk anything, actually), dim sum, tacos teeming with Scotch bonnet peppers (to name but a few) jolt your culinary memory bank with happy memories of wanting to grab for water while knowing it only makes the fire in your mouth worse. The safest thing to do is to eat more of whatever, immediately.


You can eat ethnic here, but for the most part, these joints aren’t very good.[1] If you want non-Italian, you have to make it yourself.


This past Friday (Fish Night) we craved something decidedly non-Italian. Which we made ourselves, simply because we couldn’t go somewhere and order it.


Persico al vapore con salsa di funghi/Steamed sea bream with mushroom sauce


A generous pound of sea bream or other mild, white-fleshed fish
2 T. canola or sunflower oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 small shallots, minced
¾ inch piece of ginger, peeled, and grated
As many hot peppers as you can bear, seeded and minced
¾ lb. champignons (or button mushrooms), trimmed (peeled if necessary), and chopped into fine dice
2 T. fish sauce (or perhaps more: have the bottle handy)
Juice of one lime (or perhaps more: have another one handy)
6 T. water
3 scallions, chopped
Handful fresh coriander, chopped


Assemble all the ingredients for the sauce before steaming the fish: heat the oil on a low flame, throw in the garlic and shallots, stirring frequently. After a minute or so, add the ginger and minced hot peppers. Another minute or so later, add the mushrooms, let gently brown, then add the water. When the mushrooms have released most of their juices, and the water has burned off, toss in the fish sauce and lime juice. (You might want to fiddle with the fish sauce and lime juice to get the right balance: it should be 50-50.)

Remove from the flame, and tent with aluminum foil. Now steam the fish: you will already have, at a steady rumble, a double boiler (with water's depth of about 2-3 inches) lined with parchment paper, upon which you steam the fish. This should take 5-8 minutes.

Put the fish in a serving plate, ladle the mushroom sauce on top, then the chopped scallions coriander.

Eat immediately; serves 2.

Depending upon your appetite, you may well have leftovers. It provides a marvelous base for a delicious fried rice (because of course you just happen to have some perfectly-executed cooked, cold basmati rice lingering in your refrigerator). Take a couple of shallots, mince, heat a tablespoon or two of canola oil in a saucepan, toss in the shallots, stir ‘til golden. Toss in a generous heaping of best-quality curry powder (like Fortnum & Mason’s), an equally generous heaping of cumin seeds, stir. Throw in fish/mush mixture, and heat through. Add a tablespoon of tamari or shoyu while continuing to stir. Throw in the rice, add a couple of tablespoons of water, heat through. Have on hand some chopped roasted peanuts and coriander (chopped, but not roasted), and add to conglomeration before bringing the saucepan to the table and eating immediately.

[1] The only ethnic food that’s spreading like wildfire in Florence is the kabob. A few months ago, a local rag reported that there were 51 shops serving them. Most of them are awful, but a couple – like Turkaz – are not.

mercoledì 3 novembre 2010

WHELP!


Hard to believe that this is November. Today a glorious, sunny day in Tuscany – warm enough to sit outside in the middle of the afternoon and watch three rotten dogs cavort. But now it’s dark, and I’m making pappa al pomodoro and thinking about whelping. Thoughts re: whelping have caused me to nearly burn the pappa.

Pappa al pomodoro is a Tuscan classic, a marvelous way to use up those stale ends of salt-less bread lingering long past their due date.[1] (Because there’s no salt, there’s no mold, which makes this bread reusable in this, as well as in ribollita (a wintry dish), and in panzanella (a summ'ry dish rife with tomatoes grown from your garden which have not been eaten by insects as ours were this year).

Pappa is simple, basic, cheap, and tasty: four adjectives that often describe Tuscan food as long as you’re not talking about bistecca fiorentina, which is simple, basic, and tasty, but decidedly not cheap. “Pappa” sort of translates into English as “mush.” It’s what you call nursery food, oft times, in Italian. So in this case, it’s Mush with Tomatoes. (Sounds scrumptious, no?)

Rosie will be whelping soon.

Last night, I turned to The Complete Dog Book, The Official Publication of the American Kennel Club, 1970 ed. (one of my Bibles), to see what they had to say about whelping:

“Constant restraint and vigilance will be necessary for at least three weeks to prevent a mating undesired by her owner. If it should occur in spite of all precautions, the veterinarian may be able to prevent conception by prompt use of a hormone injection.”

[Hm. Screwed on all counts.]

“If puppies are wanted, a sire should be selected and arrangements made well in advance. For her first mating especially, an experienced stud should be chosen.”

[Here’s hoping he was.]

Whelping is a funny word. Went to wikipedia.org to find more about this weirdo word. They say: “Birth (calving in livestock and some other animals, whelping in carnivorous mammals) is the act or process of bearing or bringing forth offspring.[1] The offspring is brought forth from the mother. Different forms of birth are oviparity, vivipary and ovovivipary.” http://dictionary.reference.com/ relates: “Origin bef. 900; (n.) ME; OE hwelp (c.G. Welf)" ... might I suggest a possible link between whelping and the Guelfs? Linguistically, they’re pretty much on the same page.[2]

(Especially fun that offspring is brought forth from the mother. Could we say that Adam whelped Eve? Zeus whelped Minerva? ... Just wondering.)

I wrote this yesterday, and since then, Rosie has successfully whelped. A temperature check this morning suggested that today would be the day, and so it was. At 10:30 the festivities began, and by around 2:30 she had successfully pushed out three surprisingly-large-(except-for-the-third) pups, who greedily feed as I write. Mother-in-law was around, a soothing and calming presence.

What, ideally, would be the best music to play while whelping? A little Mozart? Or how about a little Laurie Anderson? I read this awhile ago, and thought it entered Theater of the Absurd. Or maybe not: “Soon she [Laurie Anderson] would be off to Iceland for a solo recital, and then to Australia, where she was a curator of the Vivid Live arts festival in Sydney with her husband Lou Reed. In addition to retrospective and work-in-progress performances she would introduce and give a high-frequency outdoor concert composed primarily for an audience of dogs. It was apparently a hit.”[3]

All’s well in the whelping pool.

What follows is not your usual pappa al pomodoro recipe, but a recreation of a marvelous dish enjoyed repeatedly at the wonderful restaurant La Giostra in Florence. Don’t think it’s on the menu anymore. Florentine Sister aka Bobo groused the other day at lunch that, lately, Tillie’s Tuscan Table’s recipes have been decidedly unTuscan. (The addition of raw onions is not part of the classic pappa recipe, although, for what it’s worth, they do put chopped raw onions on their ribollita in the greater Montalcino area.) Trying to find my way back home (Stevie Winwood) ...

Could there be anything more Tuscan than what follows?

Pappa al pomodoro con cavolo nero/Tomato mush soup with Tuscan kale

3 generous Ts of extravirgin olive oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
A just-short-of-one pound Tuscan loaf, as stale as can be
Hot vegetable broth, about 4 c.
Generous pinches of sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 bunch of cavolo nero (Tuscan kale in some parts)
3 T. tomato paste (use triple concentrate if you’re blessed)
1 generous T. fresh thyme
2 peperoncini, minced*
Basil, if it’s still growing in your garden in November
Red onion, peeled and finely diced
Extravirgin olive oil for garnishing repeatedly

Heat the olive oil in a large, deep saucepan over a low to medium flame. Toss in the bread, and immediately add vegetable broth. Using a wooden spoon, break up the bread. Continue to add vegetable broth as needed, and much of it will be.

When all the bread is broken up, add the tomato sauce, stir to combine, and check for seasoning – salt, pepper. Let cook for a couple of minutes.

In the meantime, bring a large pot of water to a boil. Take the cavolo nero/Tuscan kale, remove the leaf from the ribs (the ribs can go in the compost pile). Chop. When the water boils, toss in the kale (if you want to add some kosher salt to the cooking water, do so). Let it cook for about 3 minutes, and drain in a colander. Reserve.

Add the tomato paste to the pappa, the thyme, and the hot peppers. Just before serving, throw in the cavolo nero/Tuscan kale. Check for seasoning, and eat immediately. Liberally garnish with swirls of extravirgin olive oil, and the chopped red onions, if you don’t want to be authentic.

*Tuscans from Livorno, as well as those south of said, refer to hot peppers as “zenzero,” which is actually ginger in Italian.

Variations: Terracotta Sculptress takes her bread, roasts it in the oven, and when it comes out, rubs a peeled garlic clove over all surfaces, and then commences with the recipe. She remarked in a recent telephone conversation that cavolo nero depresses her because, according to experts, it’s only good after the first frost, which means that winter is truly here.

Bobo’s Fine Wine Idea: Pappa al pomodoro is often paired with Vernaccia di San Gimignano, a white wine, but I’d recommend Rosso di Montalcino doc Castello di Romitorio 2008 (NOT to be confused with their Brunello Di Montalcino Riserva 2004, that has recently won the International Wine Challenge award for the best red wine in the world).

La Giostra, Borgo Pinti 12/r, 055/241 341.

[1] Hm. I do have whelping on my mind.
[2] This would make it possible to recast the colorful conflicts between the Guelfs and the Ghibellines: the Guelfs were a dog-loving group, the Ghibellines preferred cats.
[3] Will Hermes, International Herald Tribune, June 25, 2010. “Electronic expressions of loss.” Given that this apparently was about loss (though only the audience could tell us, and they don’t speak our language), and Rosie’s birthing experience about gain, perhaps it wouldn’t have been altogether appropriate.

[Please hum John Lennon while singing "Help!" only do substitute the word WHELP! for HELP!]
Huge thanks to Betsy Bennett Purvis (aka Aunt Bets) who kindly found the image (above) for me when I was too pupped-out to do so: it's the beyond magnificent Piero della Francesca, Madonna del Parto, 1450-44, Monterchi (Arezzo). The Virgin has not yet delivered. Rosie has.