Prep Time: 30 minutes
Cook Time: 30 minutes
Ingredients:
- Boiled Beef (see below for proportions)
- Flour
- An Egg
- 7/8 cup milk
- Unsalted butter
- Grated Parmigiano
Preparation:
Continuing with the introduction,Though boiled meat with sauces is quite good, it's not the sort of thing one would want to eat every day, and many 19th century cookbooks contain recipes to help people deal with it.
Now that we have entered the bouillon era and people are better off, boiled meats are less common than they once were. However, lesso rifatto, recooked boiled meat, is still popular, and you will find it on the menus of trattorie in working class neighborhoods throughout Italy.
And now, Artusi's recipe:
"Cookery could also be called the art of giving dishes strange and arbitrary names. This boiled meat is called Toad in the Hole, which translates to rospo nella tana; as you will note from the recipe and discover upon trying it, it may not be superb, but does not deserve to be called a toad.
"In Florence, a half pound of meat for boiling, which will be sufficient for three people, will weigh about 3/4 of a pound before the bone is removed and the gristle trimmed away. For this amount of meat, whip an egg in a pot with 2 tablespoons of flour and 7/8 of a cup of milk. Cut the meat into thin slices. Melt 1/4 cup of unsalted butter in a pot elegant enough to double as a serving dish, lay the meat slices over it, and season them with salt, pepper, and a touch of ground spices, if you like them. Turn the meat so as to brown it on both sides, then sprinkle it with a heaping tablespoon of grated Parmigiano and pour the milk mixture over it. Simmer till the liquid has thickened, and serve."
Note:The method of this recipe, from Pellegrino Artusi's Scienza in Cucina e L'Arte di Mangiar Bene, closely follows that given for Lesso alla Straniera, Foreign Style Recooked Boiled Meat, in Salani's anonymously authored cookbook of 1885 -- Artusi may well have lifted it.
(Serves 4.)
The wine? Barco Reale, a light red from Carmignano.
