Lombard Meats

"Anyone can make a veal cutlet," says Artusi, who proposes a tasty variation.

Boiled beef, sliced, fried or sauteed in butter, and served with risotto. Quite satisfying.

A simple, tasty braised beef recipe that will also provide a nice sauce for pasta, and would be a good bet for making meatballs too.

Chickpeas with Pork Temple, or Ceci e Tempia di Maiale: Politics sometimes has funny effects in the kitchen. The Spaniards who occupied Milano in the 1600s were great lovers of chickpeas, and this is something the Milanese developed to do with the food of their overlords. When the overlords left the dish remained, and is now traditionally served in Milano on November 2, the day of the Dead.

Fritto di Lesso alla Milanese, or Fried Boiled Meat, Milanese Style: One of the delights and drawbacks of making broth at home is having to deal with the boiled meat you also get from the process. While it is quite nice served as is with a variety of sauces and boiled vegetables, one can only do this so often before it becomes tiring. Here's a traditional Milanese option.

One wouldn't expect fried meatballs to work with a sparkling wine, but Franciacorta Satèn can match them.

Ossobuco, veal or beef shank, is an extraordinarily sensual meat, with a texture that verges on the libidinous. It does take a while to cook, but if you make this recipe, you won't have to watch it at all for most of the time. In short, a perfect dish for when you're busy doing other things!

The cotoletta alla Milanese, a breaded fried cutlet, is one of the quickest and easiest (and most popular) meat dishes in Italy. It's just a step further to fry up a burger, but here we have an added twist: it's stuffed with cheese and ham that melt delightfully. Very tasty at lunch, especially with a tossed salad.

A Svizzera is a pan-cooked Milanese hamburger, and they are generally served with a sauce of one kind or another. In this case a creamy sauce with some mustard, and they will be quite nice in the spring.

A Svizzera is a pan-cooked Milanese hamburger. In this case the ground beef is combined with ground ham and chopped spinach, and will be a nice alternative to more standard burgers. In addition to pan-frying them per the recipe, you could grill them.

Spit-roasted game birds is Brescia's signature dish, and rightly so. They're very good, and bring joy to the table.

Milanese Stew, or Stufato Milanese: Almost every region of Italy has a stew it calls its own. This variation is Milanese, and it will also work well with lamb or pork; the important thing is that the pieces of meat not be too small, because if they're small then the dish is a spezzatino as opposed to a stufato. He goes on to say that the quality of the red wine is important for the success of the marinating, and warns not to overcook it. To serve 4:

Surfing the net the other night, I came across a recipe for Wienerschnitzel and realized how closely it resembles the Cotoletta alla Milanese: Both are breaded veal cutlets; the Viennese bone theirs and dredge them in both flour and bread crumbs, whereas the Milanese just use bread crumbs, and the Viennese fry in lard whereas the Milanese use butter. To prepare this you should use veal, though you can, if you prefer, substitute thinly sliced beef.

Milano is known for a number of dishes, including cotoletta alla milanese, ossobuco, and risotto alla milanese. The former, which is quite easy and very tasty if properly done, has spread throughout the rest of the Peninsula. The other two haven't -- people often refer to them in hushed tones, as if there were great secrets involved in their preparation. It's a pity, because they're both very good, and neither is particularly difficult.

People don't often eat pork skins any more, but back in the days when famine was always lurking nothing was allowed to go to waste. And as is often the case with so-called lesser meats, the ingenuity people used in preparing them led to very tasty dishes. Pork and beans are an old standby, and as you might guess, you can also use pork skins. This recipe is from Lombardia, and will be a very nice way of keeping winter at bay.

When I was little I horrified a playmate in the US by asking her when her pet rabbit would be ready for butchering -- it never occurred to me that one would keep a rabbit for any other purpose, since I'd seen dozens of rabbits butchered in the kitchen of the villa that hosted my father's excavation south of Siena. This is a Lombard recipe, from...

Surprisingly refreshing boiled beef in a tasty vegetable sauce.

Rovato Beef with Olive Oil, Manzo di Rovato all'Olio: This is a classic dish from Rovato, one of the towns in the Franciacorta production area.

Stuffed Turkey Hen, or Tacchinella Ripiena: This is the traditional centerpiece of the Christmas dinner in Lombardia, but will also work nicely for Thanksgiving. As is the case with Ada Boni's recipe, this one calls for a small bird. If yours is larger, adjust the proportions accordingly.

Piccata is a Milanese specialty. The term derives from picchiare, to hit or pound, and refers to the pounding of thin slices of meat to further flatten them out. The meat traditionally used in preparing piccata is veal scallops, while the liquid traditionally added at the end of the cooking just before serving the meat, is Marsala. There are many variations, however, and here we have turkey, with string beans instead of the more usual parsley.

And finally, I've gotten a number of requests for Chicken Française this summer. I'm sorry to say I've drawn a complete blank. Pollo alla francese (or variations thereof) isn't mentioned in any of my Italian cookbooks, so I checked my English-language cookbooks as well. Nothing there either. I did find veal piccata, however, which has also been requested. It's a Milanese specialty that calls for thinly sliced veal, but can also be made with chicken or turkey breast.

This is a Lombard recipe. The combination of meat and fish may strike you as strange, but is common in Lombard cooking -- vitello tonnato comes to mind -- and extremely nice in the summer months.

A classic summer dish, and an indispensable part of the Ascension Day feast in Milano.