To begin, a number of people have thanked me for the Veal and Chicken Francese recipes in the last issue of Cosa Bolle in Pentola. The credit is entirely Kaye Noble's, as she was kind enough to share the recipes with us.

And Jay Pulli, who has many beautiful Italian travel photos on his site, writes: "Having just returned from 3 weeks in Italy, I'd vote for a rental car if you want to explore. It is not cheap by US standards, but time is money on vacation, why waste time. I arranged for a rental car using the web site http://www.europebycar.com/ and it cost me about $850 for 3 weeks. This site provided much better deals than those obtained by my traveling companions through travel agents."

On Attitudes Towards Alcohol

Returning to Italian Cuisine, Beth recently sent me a request for a Calzone recipe; I replied by sending her most of the Calzone page on the site. The feature ends with a few wine recommendations, and she commented"I had to laugh when you said that I should try all those different drinks with it since I'm only 16! I would still love to try them though."

North Americans (Beth's email address ends with .ca, or Canada) and Italians have amazingly different attitudes towards alcohol. My father was an archaeologist, and brought me to Italy for the first time in the summer of 1961, when I was about a year old. I may not have had any alcohol then, but by the time I was 4 the water I drank with meals in Italy was laced with a little wine, and when we went out to eat in restaurants in Siena the Italian friends we stayed with usually ordered me a small (6 ounce, or 15 cl) bottle of beer. My parents didn't approve, but they didn't object either -- they simply accepted that Italian kids are exposed to alcohol early on.

Was this harmful? I don't think so; until I was about 14 I preferred watered wine to wine, and then I switched over. Like my Italian friends I accepted it as a part of the meal, to be enjoyed, but that was about it. Though it did occasionally happen, there was nothing glamorous, or even attractive about drinking too much -- quite the contrary. Though alcohol is readily available in Italy public drunkenness is not accepted, and people expect their friends to know when to stop.

This contrasts strongly with the situation in North America, where alcohol is forbidden to minors. Like all forbidden fruits it's fascinating, or at least it was to me and my high school peers in Massachusetts. We devoted tremendous effort to procuring and consuming it, and drunkenness was (and still is) much more readily accepted by my American friends than by my Italian ones.

Of the two systems, I think that the Italian one is perhaps better: People learn at an early age that alcohol exists, and that there's nothing special about it. Nor about consuming too much. Does the Italian system mean there's no alcohol abuse? No, there are winos, and -- sadly -- many lonely housewives finish the jug of wine set out at lunchtime as they do the dishes. But there isn't the "go out and drink"mentality that one encounters among North Americans or Northern Europeans. This is reflected in Italian bars, which serve as neighborhood social centers and make more money from selling coffee and ice cream than they do from anything else. They do of course sell wine and hard liquor well, but one rarely sees someone enter, sit, and drink. Even in the evening most Italian bars sell more coffee than they do after dinner drinks.

Pollo Alla Marengo

Moving on to other things, Mary recently requested a recipe for Chicken Murphy, something she has encountered several different versions of in Italian restaurants in the US. It's new to me, and I replied the only chicken recipe beginning with M I could think of off hand is Chicken Marengo, the dish Napoleon's chef cobbled together from a farmer's chickens and whatever else he could find following the Napoleon's great victory at Marengo (in 1800). To be honest it's a simple stewed chicken, but Napoleon is said to have loved it because of the memories it inspired, and it is nice if carefully made. Like anything popular there are a number of versions on the Web. Some call for packets of spaghetti sauce and other such that may hasten the cooking process but leave the taste of the dish in the hands of some manufacturer. This does not:

Chicken Marengo, a simple, direct recipe.

As a final observation on the subject, most Chicken Marengo recipes call for onions. One of the recipes I chose not to list suggests you use boiling onions.

Sfogliatelle Napoletane

Elizabeth, on the other hand, writes"My sister, having recently returned from a visit to our Italian relatives in New York, is fired up to make her own sfogliatelle. She hasn't been able to find a decent recipe and has enlisted my aid (in return for tasting privileges, of course)."I had gotten as far as finding a recipe when I came across an interesting, thought provoking site on Italian immigrant cooking traditions put together by Cassandra Vivian. She has some recipes and will be adding more; among those present now is one for classic Neapolitan sfogliatelle, clam-shell shaped ricotta-filled breakfast pastries (you have one with a cappuccino at a bar). The recipe calls for ricotta and canditi (candied fruit), and should be quite good. Should you find it overly rich, Italian pastry chefs also fill sfogliatelle with pastry cream or chocolate mousse. Not exactly light but not as rib-sticking as ricotta, which I would find a bit heavy were I to start out with one every day. As another observation, Cassandra's recipe makes a number of smaller sfogliatelle. Florentine pastry chefs also make larger sfogliatelle (shaped like a clam shell and about 9 inches across at the widest) filled with cream, chocolate or ricotta, and dusted with powdered sugar. They look quite nice and are extremely tasty -- in other words, the perfect thing to bring if you're invited to a friend's for dinner. Do hold a test baking before you sally forth with one, however.

Winding down, I recently had a request for penne all'arrabbiata, a classic Roman pasta sauce that is the signature dish of many restaurants in Trastevere. Leonard Bibbo has kindly shared one that is based on his marinara sauce (scroll to the bottom of the recipe). Here's another, drawn from an Italian cookbook:

Penneall'Arrabbiata

Arrabbiata means angry, and if made right these are spicy. Though the versions offered by the really cheap eateries in Rome rely primarily on garlic and hot pepper for their punch, the versions printed in cookbooks generally also call for pancetta (cured, unsmoked salt pork) and onions.

To serve 4 you'll need:

• 1 pound penne (or spaghetti if you prefer)
• 3/4 pound peeled, seeded, and chopped plum tomatoes or a drained 1-pound can of tomatoes
• 1 finely minced medium sized onion
• 1 minced clove of garlic, or more, to taste
• 1/4 pound pancetta, diced
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper, or more, to taste
• Salt
• 1 1/4 cups grated pecorino Romano, or, if you find it too sharp, 2/3 cup each of grated Parmigiano and pecorino, mixed

Sauté the onion and the garlic in half the oil, and when the mixture is lightly browned, add the pancetta. Continue cooking the mixture for five more minutes, then add the tomatoes and the pepper. In the meantime, cook the pasta in salted water. Check the seasoning of the sauce, stir the remaining oil into it, pour it over the pasta, and serve the pasta with the cheese on the side.

Serve with a white wine from the Colli Albani, such as Fontana di Papa, and follow it with Saltimbocca alla Romana. Here are three versions:

• Saltimbocca alla Romana
  A very simple Roman recipe.
• Veal Saltimbocca
  Leonard Bibbo uses veal rib chops for his saltimbooca, and completes them with a tasty wine sauce.
• Saltimbocca alla GianLeonardo
  Caught short one day, Leonard developed another saltimbocca variation, with a red wine and tomato based sauce.

A printer-friendly version of this recipe.

Thanks for visiting, and have a wonderful day!
Kyle Phillips

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