I've also been thinking more about my reply (last time) to the question regarding vegetarian cuisines in Italy. While it is true that there were (and are) no regions with strictly vegetarian cuisines, it's also true that there are a great many Italian dishes that qualify as vegetarian, and some regions did in the past display a fondness for greens that left those from other regions nonplussed. For example, before the widespread availability of commercially produced dry pasta (mid-late 1800s), Neapolitans were referred to by their neighbors as "mangia foglie," which means leaf-eaters, because of the leafy vegetable soups they consumed in great quantity. The wealthy also included meat in their versions, making things like the Neapolitan Easter soup, but for many it was just the leaves, and one can be quite certain the soups were good. Things were similar further north; writing in the 1890s Artusi says, " Tuscans, and in particular Florentines, whose love of vegetables is such that they'd willingly stuff them into everything, put beet greens into this dish, where they seem to me to go as well as baked bread goes with the Creed (Artusi's variation on a Tuscan saying, that something "goes as well as Pilate with the Creed"). This excessive use of greens is no doubt one of the reasons, and certainly not the least, behind the flaccid constitutions of some groups of people who bear up poorly under the stress of illness, and fall as thick as the leaves in late autumn."

Back in Artusi's day people firmly believed in the restorative powers of meats, and even now Elisabetta (who's an MD) occasionally encounters elderly people, especially out in the country, whose first response to a debilitating illness is to buy the victim a steak. Returning to the problem of Italian vegetarian cuisine, you will find a great deal of it, primarily in first course dishes -- either meatless pasta sauces, which are especially nice in summer, when a rich meat sauce would be way too much, or vegetable based soups of one sort or another. There are also lots of vegetarian antipasti, and if you are looking for a slightly different vegetarian main course, why not grilled vegetables, with some fried vegetables on the side (or a good Roman-style salad)? For the more traditionally inclined, there are stuffed vegetables too. You'll find lots of recipes in the onsite recipe index, at http://italianfood.about.com/blfeat.htm.

Torta Pasqualina

Turning to recipes, a long while back Anna requested a Ligurian Torta Pasqualina. Pasqua means Easter, which means we're out of season, but the recipe does offer an excuse for an interesting digression: it calls for a dozen eggs. While this might strike a modern reader as reason to wonder about cholesterol levels, if we think in terms of the past it is instead a hallmark of spring, because eggs, like most other things, were seasonal commodities. Elisabetta's great uncle Dino managed farms for absentee landlords, and once told me that when he started out back before industrial improvements egg laying was almost all concentrated in the spring. Moreover, production was much lower; a hen in its prime produced only 80 eggs per year (not much compared with the 300 plus eggs produced by hens in modern hatcheries). So here is the recipe, drawn from Alessandro Molinari Pradelli's La Cucina Ligure. He begins by observing that the recipe provides sad proof of the declining standards in food preparation: Tradition dictates that the puff pastry of the crust contain 33 very fine, almost transparent layers, one to mark each year of Christ's life. Modern cookbooks generally call for 8, and some reduce the number to 6. The traditional recipe also calls for prescinseua, a soft cheese made by gathering curds (I believe) and that modern cookbooks call for ricotta instead. Again, quite a difference.

In any case, the recipe can be traced back to the 1500s and calls for:

For the dough:

10 cups (1 k) flour

4 tablespoons extravirgin olive oil

Salt

Warm water

For the filling:

3 pounds (1.5 k) collard greens (beet greens)

1 3/4 cups freshly grated Parmigiano

1 tablespoon fresh marjoram, minced

1 1/8 pounds (500 g) prescinseua (use ricotta if need be)

2 tablespoons flour

2 tablespoons extravirgin olive oil

For the preparation:

Oil, for greasing the pan and the sheets

12 eggs

2/3 cup unsalted butter

Salt & freshly ground pepper

Make a mound of the flour on your work surface and scoop a well into it. Pour in the oil; add 2 pinches of salt, and enough warm water to obtain a soft smooth dough. Divide it into 33 balls and let them rest on a well-floured surface, covered by a damp cloth. Wash the collard greens well, strip away the tough ribs, slice them into thin strips, and blanch the leaves in lightly salted water. Drain them well and put them in a bowl. Stir in 1 1/2 cups of the grated cheese and the minced marjoram.

In the meantime, put the cheese in a finely woven muslin sack and hang it up to drain, or press it with a weight to remove the serum. When it has dried, mix into it the 2 tablespoons of oil and flour, the remaining Parmigiano, and check seasoning.

Next, take 13 of the dough balls and roll them out paper thin one at time. Grease a pie pan sufficient to contain the filling (I'd go with a 10-inch, or 25 cm round pan), and lay down the 13 sheets, brushing all except for the last one with a sprig of parsley dipped in oil. Spread the collard green mixture over the dough, drizzle it with a little oil, and then spread the cheese mixture over the collard greens. Use the back of a spoon to press out 12 depressions in the top of the cheese mixture and crack the 12 eggs into them, being careful not to break the yolks. Season them with salt and pepper and drizzle them with a tablespoon of unsalted butter.

Preheat your oven to 400 f (200 C).

Now take the remaining dough balls and roll them out as you did the first. Lay them down over the pie, greasing them lightly top and bottom, and try to keep them separate by blowing a little air between the layers with the help of a straw. Press the edges of the layers together so as to obtain a border for the pie. The thing should be built up like a dome by the time it's done.

Tradition dictates that, to honor the head of the household, his initials be pressed into crust at the rim. In any case, bake it for about 50 minutes. It's good warm but much better when it has cooled. Some use slivered artichoke hearts sautéed in oil with a minced onion rather than collard greens.

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Cima alla Genovese

Anna Also asked for Cima con salsa verde, which I haven't found. I have however found Cima alla Genovese, a classic stuffed breast of veal that's a standard feature of Genovese Christmas menus but also is nice in the summer months, because it's served sliced, cold. Ada Boni notes that it's easy to do; this ingredient list, drawn from a recipe by Alessandro Pradelli, is exhaustive and calls for some thing that are now hard to find but wouldn't have been allowed to go to waste in the past. If you would prefer, you can leave them out, increasing other ingredients proportionately.

To serve 6 you'll need:

• 1 k (2.2 pounds) breast of veal or shoulder, boned
• 1/4 pound (100 g) veal
• 1/4 pound (100 g) cow's udder
• Half a calf's brain
• A sweetbread
• A veal testicle
• 2 pieces of marrow
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 6 eggs, beaten
• 1 tablespoon pine nuts
• A pinch freshly minced marjoram
• A pinch of mixed ground spices (cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, red pepper
• 1 1/2 cups grated Parmigiano
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/4 cup peas
• Day old bread, stripped of crusts, dipped in milk and well drained
• 1/2 cup dried porcini, steeped in warm water
• 2 1/2 quarts vegetable broth
• Salt

The piece of meat should be thick, and Italian butchers will cut a pocket into it if requested. The cut should go parallel to the grain and reach almost thought the meat to produce a sizeable pocket. Be careful not to puncture it.

Melt the butter and brown all the other pieces of meats (except the breast of veal), then drain them well and put them on a cutting board. Finely chop the veal, udder, and sweetbread. Crumble the testicle, marrow and brain. But the meats in a bowl, together with the peas, steeped mushrooms, pine nuts, minced garlic and marjoram, beaten eggs, grated Parmigiano, and moistened bread crumb (a half cup to a cup or so). Gently mix everything together to avoid crushing the various ingredients, check seasoning, and use the mixture to fill the pocket. Sew the pocket shut with cotton thread.

Put the tasca in a pot, add warm broth to cover, and simmer it gently for an hour of so, puncturing the pocket every now and then lest the filling swell and burst the pocket. At this point cover the tasca and simmer it for two hours more. Serve thinly sliced hot or cold. Mr. Pradelli notes that the day after people take the slices, dredge them in beaten egg, then bread crumbs, and fry them in butter or oil.

Still working on the other things she requested.

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More on the Olive Garden: It's in Italy!

Winding down, Rick writes, "I eat regularly in our local Olive Garden (chain) restaurant since I love Italian food and am without anything considered the "real stuff" authentic nearby. I have to drive to Chicago (4 hours away) to get authentic Italian.

"Anyway, I understand that the Olive Garden chain has recently ventured into Italy, opening a restaurant in Tuscany (exact location uncertain). Have you heard anything about it?"

I haven't heard any mention of this in Florence, in either the local news or the specialized food publications. It doesn't mean they haven't opened up a restaurant, but to be quite honest I'm not sure who would go. To appeal to locals they'd have to drastically change their meal plans, which do not follow the standard order in which Italian meals are served in Italy. And they'd also have to revise their recipes, which again don't reflect what's served in Italy. Though Italians are discovering new cuisines with an enthusiastic rush, especially the various Chinese and Indian, they are extremely critical of restaurants featuring Italian cuisine, and expect the food to resemble a recognizable regional cuisine and at least match what one would encounter in a household in said region (which is generally the region where the restaurant is; it's much easier to find Chinese than Lombard in Florence, and the situation is similar elsewhere). I have been to an Olive Garden once (in 1988), and as long-time readers of Cosa Bolle will recall, concluded that it wasn't an Italian restaurant. (Read why).

The only people I can see an Olive Garden restaurant like the one I visited in the US attracting in Italy would be homesick tourists, local office workers out on their lunch break, and perhaps students.

Note: As often happens, a reader came through with a link to an article I was unaware of: It turns out the the Olive Garden has set up an Institute for Culinary Study in association with Rocca Delle Macie (a large, commercial Chianti Classico producer) with the intent of improving the food offered in the restaurants in the US.

A presto,
Kyle Phillips

PS -- Send a card from the Italian Cuisine Post Office!

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