Menu: Parmesan Custard Tart, Sliced Cucumbers with Mint, Baked Peaches Stuffed with Amaretti and Almonds

Recommended Wine: Cinque Terre Bianco (Liguria), Dry and Full-Flavored

We now travel to Emilia-Romagna, a region a distance northeast of Rome, centered on the fertile Po River Valley. According to the tour guides again, olive trees do not grow north of Tuscany except along the coast, hence butter is more commonly used here. Though the tour didn’t stop in any of the cities there, we traveled through the region on our way from Florence to Venice. The land is a fairly flat, fertile plain, with numerous vineyards, orchards and, interestingly enough, fields of sunflowers. Said sunflowers were pretty dried out by the time we passed through in mid-September, but their heavy tops, bending from their abundance of oily seeds, were nonetheless distinctive. We were told when I asked about them that sunflower oil is often used as a replacement or supplement to the more expensive olive oil in applications like frying where a more neutral flavor is acceptable. Despite the massive number of olive trees, Italy does not produce enough for even its own use.

Major cities here include Bologna, Parma, Modena and Ravenna. The region was conquered by the Romans in the 3^rd Century BC from various Celtic peoples, known to have a diet richer in meat and dairy than the newcomers. This influence lingers to this day, with an abundance of butter, cheeses, veal, and pork, both fresh and cured. (text, pg. 142) The most famous are parmesan cheese and prosciutto. There is also fresh pasta, often stuffed, balsamic vinegar, and a variety of tree fruits and vegetables. To be sure, historically few people would have enjoyed these things on a regular basis, at least in large quantities, but they do tell us about the region’s tastes and preferences.

This menu was both rich and balanced. It is based around a quiche-like tart available for take-out at a specialty food shop in Bologna. Omelets and custards have been eaten in Italy at least since Apicius, the famous Roman gourmet, was published in the early centuries AD, but the crumbly, buttery pastry is a more recent invention. The ancient Romans considered butter a barbarian food and made what pastry they had (which according to the recipes of Apicius was surprisingly little) with oil or lard, while medieval pastry was usually a thick, inedible pie crust used to cook, serve and preserve the filling.

This pastry was strong enough to stand up on its own without a tin or baking dish and supposedly, as long as it stayed dry and didn’t crack, could preserve the fillings for months. (On a side note, that is one food history experiment I have no intention of trying. I wonder how often people got food poisoning in the past from pastry that wasn’t as dry or airtight as they thought.) Until edible “short crust” pastry was introduced during the 16^th Century, it was the normal practice to remove the pastry lid, eat the filling, and either discard the bottom crust or feed it to the dogs or pigs. Man’s best friend or nature’s delicious garbage disposals, respectively.

Thankfully, that was not the pastry featured today. With more than four times the amount of butter as water (icy to help keep the butter from melting during mixing), the crust was so crumbly I couldn’t lay it in the pan without it falling apart. (In retrospect, I probably should have added an extra tablespoon of water.) Eventually I managed to patch the pieces together in the bottom of the pan before adding the filling, a rich, creamy custard spiked with parmesan cheese and white pepper with little pieces of pancetta on the bottom. Since I didn’t have a tart pan with a removeable bottom, I had to use an ordinary 9-inch round cake pan, resulting in the crust crumbling as each piece was removed. They were delicious crumbs, though, with a delicious filling, even if the serving presentation was lacking.

The cucumbers and baked peaches provided a nice contrast. Cucumbers and mint go well together, and mixing them with ice and salt and leaving them for some time both flavors and sort of pickles the cucumbers. They ended up a little salty, but were still enjoyable. The peaches were another surprise, stuffed with a mix of crushed amaretti, almonds, and cocoa, topped with a little mascarpone cheese. I would not have thought of peaches as one of the fruits that go with chocolate, but this mixture really worked. I suppose that just goes to show that sometimes what we think of as “what goes together” is surprisingly arbitrary. Why do strawberries, bananas or oranges go with chocolate, but not pears or peaches?