Cosa Bolle in Pentola?
Summer Heat, Tourist Food, The Chianti
DOC, Cooking with Grace & More
Being the 88th issue of Cosa Bolle in Pentola, your Italian Cuisine newsletter.
To begin with, the latest issue of the Italian Wine Review, my wine newsletter, is out. This time we look at the Northeast, with the Valpolicella, Lugana, Friuli, and Moscato Rosa. If you'd like more information or are interested in subscribing, see http://www.italianwinereview.com. The latest feature on this site is dedicated to sformati, which are fairly close cousins of soufflés. And finally, the pic of the week is a sunset over the Canal Grande.
Returning to matters at hand, last time it was house painters that delayed Cosa Bolle. This time we simply took some time off; my apologies. On the other hand, it was tremendously hot; at the end of a solid week in the high 90s (37-38 C) the paper mentioned a family that spent the night tossing and turning in a furnace-like house (air conditioning is still relatively rare in Italy), finally falling asleep at dawn, and then attacked the farmer who began rototilling the field outside their windows at 7 AM. The farmer fought back with a club and everyone ended up in the hospital; though the reporter did say that the family was in the wrong he was distinctly sympathetic to them, and I think I might have been too. It was that bad. So we decided to head north, to Venice and Lake Garda.
The Perils of Eating in A Tourist Town
My feelings about Venice are mixed. On the
one hand, it's a unique and beautiful city. On the other, it's even more packed
with tourists than Florence. Or at least it seems that way; the actual number
may not be higher, but in Venice they're constrained by the city's being built
on islands separated by canals, and everything's being out in the middle of a
lagoon. To get around one can either take the vaporetti, the watery version of
a city bus system, or one can walk, and if one walks one must cross bridges,
which perforce become bottlenecks where people rub shoulders.
And as you're inching forward, hoping nobody steps on your toe, you'll suddenly realize that you're not hearing much, if any, Italian. German, Japanese, lots of English, but not much Italian, and much of the Italian you do hear is not local, but rather spoken by Italians from elsewhere. Tourists, in short. Nor do you see much in the way of food shops -- we found one supermarket, where most of the customers were tourists like us, buying fruit and stuff to drink -- or people lugging shopping bags. For that matter, most of the people who were lugging their shopping were middle aged to elderly, and we saw few Venetian children (by comparison with the number of Florentine children one sees at this time of year).
What this all means is that not that many people actually live in Venice -- the majority finds it more convenient to live in Mestre, the city on the mainland, and commute into town to work. Why? Housing is more convenient, and if one decides to restructure the work is cheaper (in Venice materials are brought by barge and ported by hand). It's easier to shop -- most of the stores in Venice that we saw cater to tourists. There's no winter flooding to deal with. And finally, it's much easier to have a car in Mestre, where one can park on the street, than it is to have one in Venice, where there are two parking garages served by the vaporetti.
The surrender of the city to
tourists and office workers has had a dreadful effect on eating in Venice,
alas. Though I did give some restaurant suggestions a
couple of years ago, this time we picked and chose depending upon where we
happened to be, rather than going to the restaurants I knew of, and the results
were uniformly disappointing. Venice has glorious culinary traditions, but the
menus all featured humdrum pan-Italian cuisine, with pizza everywhere, followed by
pesto, cotoletta
alla Milanese, stewed mussels, and fish risotto,
among other things. There were a few nods to local tradition, in particular
sarde in saòr (sardines in a sweet and sour sauce; see below) and
seppie nere alla veneziana (cuttlefish stewed
in their ink), but the classic risi e bisi
with which the Doges greeted spring was harder to come by.
Had the food been well cooked, it would have been all right, but with one exception in Piazza Santo Stefano it was merely adequate; obviously the owners figure there's no need to go to great lengths, because with most of the Venetians off on the mainland the chances of a repeat customer are nil -- by tomorrow today's customers will be gone and there will be a new set to take their place. To make matters worse, the customers are captive -- what tourist is going waste hours venturing into Mestre to eat -- and therefore the hostlers can provide uninspired food at exorbitant prices because theirs is the only game in town. In short, meals in Venice were the low point of our trip, and I suggest that when you go you either plan your day to be near one of the few really good restaurants come mealtime, or drop into one of the few supermarkets and buy yourself sandwich fixings, and save your money for a good dinner on the mainland.
If you are on the mainland, say Florence or Rome, try venturing out of the tourist zone and into the residential areas to select a place to eat. Since they do depend upon repeat customers, the food will likely be much better.
Sogliole in Saòr
Having said all this, Dino Coltri doesn't mention Sarde in Saòr in his La Cucina Tradizionale Veneta, but he does give a recipe for Sogliole in Saòr, sole with a sweet and sour sauce. He begins by warning that the dish should be prepared at least 48 hours in advance, and can be served either as an antipasto or as a main course. You'll need 3 whole soles weighing 3/4 pound (325 g) each; score the skin just above their tales. Grip the flap of skin through a cloth to keep it from slipping and pull sharply and steadily to skin the fish. Use a thin-bladed knife to trim the filets from the spine, and flatten them gently with the smooth face of a moistened meat pounder, then pat them dry and season them with salt and a little pepper.
Heat a third of a cup of olive oil and cook the filets for 5 minutes per side, or until they're golden, then drain them well and put them in a cool bowl.
Discard the oil you cooked the fish in and heat another third of a cup of oil. Add to it 2 carrots, sliced into rounds, a sliced onion, a sliced celery heart, and two bay leaves. Season all with salt and cook until the onion is pleasingly golden. Sprinkle the vegetables over the filets, sprinkle an ounce (30 g) each pine nuts and of raisins that you have rehydrated somewhat by soaking in warm water.
Next, combine a half pint of dry white wine and a half pint of white wine vinegar and reduce their volume by more than half in the same pot that you cooked the vegetables in. Pour the mixture over the fish and their garnish, let it all sit covered in the refrigerator for a couple of days, and it's ready.
A printer-friendly version of this recipe.
A Setback for the Toscana DOC
Moving in a very different direction, many wine enthusiasts cringed when the Langhe DOC was established last year to cover wines that do not fall into the established categories of wines made around Alba (Barolo, Barbaresco, Roero, Dolcetto, and Barbera, to name a few), because they feared other regions would follow suit. Indeed a group of Tuscan producers, cooperative cellars, and local authorities did, proposing a DOC Toscana for all the wines that aren't already covered by existing DOCs and DOCGs (which include Chianti Classico, Brunello di Montalcino, Vernaccia di San Gimignano, Carmgnano, and many more). Wines from all of Tuscany would qualify, and the list of kinds of wine covered ranges from sparkling and still white to rosé, through a variety of reds, to close with vinsanto. In short, just about everything. But is it necessary? "Doing so will let us give the Supertuscans the recognition they deserve," was one of the main arguments.
However, one wonders why Supertuscans, which have achieved tremendous renown and often command better prices than DOC or DOCG wines despite being classified IGT (Indicazione Geografica Tipica, the step below DOC) or VDT (Vino da Tavola, table wine, bottom of the heap) need further recognition. They're doing quite well as is, and many producers are sold out of their Supertuscans even before they've released them. Then you look at the promoters and the opponents of the DOC, and things become clearer. Promoting it are some of Tuscany's largest wineries, wine coops, and towns in marginal areas whose wines aren't good enough to achieve DOC status. Opposing it are all the major Consorzi (Gallo Nero, Brunello, Vernaccia and so on), and most of the high quality producers.
In looking at the promoters, one can understand the towns whose wines aren't very good wanting to get a DOC for their wine any way they can, and the same holds true for the wine cooperatives, most of which produce high volumes of plonk that, as things stand now, aren't good enough to be considered DOC. The rules for the proposed Toscana DOC are instead lax enough that most would qualify. The large wineries? In particular, there are Frescobaldi and Antinori, both of whom make relatively small amounts of a number of good to superb wines from specific estates, on the one hand, and huge amounts of humdrum wine from grapes that come from a variety of areas on the other. Millions of bottles of DOC wine are worth much more than the same volume of IGT or VDT wine, so for them it's a matter of simple economics. In other words, they see the Toscana DOC as a marketing tool with which to get higher prices.
The opposition, established wine producing areas and quality producers, of course see the Toscana DOC as a threat, because it would elevate a vast amount of mediocre wine to DOC status, which is supposed to be superior. This flood of wine would, they contend, damage the reputation of the region, and I think they're right. Fortunately, Ruffino, another major winery that had promoted the Toscana DOC, announced that it has changed its mind and is opposing it. At this point the whole thing may founder, and if it does it will be very good for Tuscan wines. We don't need an all-encompassing DOC whose major function is to grant DOC status to wines that otherwise wouldn't deserve it, thus allowing producers to raise their prices.
The other important bit of wine-related news is that the courts have recently ruled that Chianti must be bottled within the production zone. This is a major step forward, because until now bottlers could truck the wine elsewhere to bottle it, and while this did allow them to save on shipping costs, it also provided those who were dishonest with a golden opportunity to doctor the wine. There'll be less really bad Chianti out there from now on.
Cooking with Grace
Moving in yet another direction, this winter I posted a recipe for making ricotta. It was by Grace Pilato, and was drawn from a soon-to-be-released cookbook. Well, This summer I met Grace, and now have a copy of Cooking with Grace (St. Martin's Press, ISBN 0-312-26138-1), which is very nice. Grace was born in Sicily and then moved to the US, where she married and settled down, working in ceramics and teaching how to cook in Central Pennsylvania. As one might expect, her lessons drew heavily from her Sicilian heritage, and her experiences as a teacher have had a profound influence on her book. Put simply, she doesn't take things for granted, but rather explains clearly, leaving nothing to chance. Therefore, even if you have no experience with the dish you've decided to make, you can be fairly certain of achieving the proper results. For example, Marinated Sun-Dried Tomatoes (Page 18):
Preparation Time 10 minutes -- Cooking Time 1 to 5 minutes
I have vivid memories of watching the ladies in my native village in Sicily slicing whole tomatoes in half, generously slating them, and placing them on screen-covered racks. Magic would happen when the rays from the sun and the gentle breezes danced over and around them. The smells were glorious. A dried tomato is filled with concentrated aroma and flavor. Tomatoes are dried at the peak of the growing season when they are in abundance and very sweet. Preserving them in this manner, we were always assured of having a supply that could be used in a variety of dishes throughout the year.
Years ago, before we were able to purchase sin-dried tomatoes in the U.S., my relatives from Sicily would send us care packages. Now sun-dried tomatoes are widely available in Italian specialty shops, natural food stores, vegetarian markets, and even in supermarkets. The recipe that follows is the one my mother learned when she was a young girl in Sicily -- simple, flavorful, and elegant.
- 1 1/2 quarts [1.5 l] water
- 1/2 pound [225 g] sun-dried tomatoes
- 2 tablespoons chopped garlic
- 1/2 cup loosely packed fresh basil, coarsely chopped (about 20 leaves)
- 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1 1/2 cups [375 ml] extra-virgin olive oil (more if needed)
Procedure
- In a medium nonreactive saucepan, bring the water to a boil. Drop the dried tomatoes in the boiling water for 30 to 60 seconds, rejuvenating them. With a slotted spoon, remove a tomato from the water and check it to see how it feels; it should feel plumper and softer. If the tomatoes are still brittle, remove the saucepan from the heat and let them stand in the hot water until they soften, about 5 minutes. Drain well and pat dry with paper towels.
- In a large bowl, mix the garlic, basil, pepper, and olive oil. Add the tomatoes and toss with your fingers, making sure you incorporate the marinade throughout.
- Place the tomatoes and marinade in pre-washed glass quart jars, packing the tomatoes tightly into the jars along with the marinade. The tomatoes should always be submerged in the olive oil by 1/2 inch [1 cm]. Add extra olive oil if needed.
Notes
These tomatoes will keep in the refrigerator for up to a year; take out whatever you need, making sure the tomatoes are always submerged in ol; add more oil if necessary. If you happen to have any extra oil left after you have eaten the tomatoes, use it to flavor soups, vegetables, salad greens, or bread.
Use this recipe to make:
- White kidney bean soup, page 159
- Stuffed turkey breast, page 216
- Baby peas with sun-dried tomatoes and toasted pine nuts, page 241.
Engagingly written, and nothing left to chance. The book begins with notes on organizing one's pantry, followed by a set of what Gail calls "stepping stone recipes" (of which this is one, and the ricotta another), recipes that stand on their own -- these would be quite nice in a platter of mixed antipasti -- but also provide ingredients that go into other recipes. These are followed by about 150 recipes that cover all the basic categories one associates with Italian food; I found the breads, pizza, and focaccia section especially interesting because most Italian authors don't say much about breads. The emphasis is more on southern dishes than northern, though the north does weigh in, for example with ossibuchi with gremolata, a Milanese specialty. To be frank, this southern emphasis is refreshing; the South, especially Sicily and Campania, have glorious culinary traditions that are all too unappreciated.
The book's appeal is further increased by nice layout that's easy on the eyes, and by a pretty section of color photos that feature both the foods and Grace's ceramics. Cooking with Grace is a pleasure to read, and will also make a nice gift.
A printer-friendly version of all this.
This week's proverb is Ligurian: L'é megio ciammâ i osti in taera, che i Santi per mâ -- It's better to call for the innkeeper on land than call for Saints at sea.
A presto,
Kyle Phillips
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