Tag Archives: bologna

Tagliatelle baked with two cheeses
food history, italian cuisine, pasta

Cook’s Tour of Italy Menu 54 (Pgs. 170 – 171): Tagliatelle Baked with Two Cheeses

Two cheese baked tagliatelle

Region: Emilia-Romagna

            As mentioned before, Emilia-Romagna is known for its fresh pasta and dairy products. Fettuccine-like tagliatelle is frequently served with Bolognese ragu, which is never served with spaghetti. Wider pasta strands hold the sauce better. Tagliatelle can also be baked with cheese, as it is here. In this case, the two cheeses are Emilia-Romagna’s native parmesan, as well as fontina. More dairy is supplied by butter and cream.

            Parmesan and fontina are both cow’s milk cheeses, which predominate in northern Italy. Here, the cheese is front and center. The only contrast comes from breadcrumbs lining the baking dish and a mix of scallions and parsley minced together. Interestingly, instead of sprinkling the breadcrumbs over the top, the baking pan is buttered, coated in a layer of crumbs, then a layer of egg, then another layer of crumbs. After baking, the whole pan is inverted onto a serving platter.

            I had an issue with the crumb layer sticking to the pan. It was easy to peel off, but the presentation wasn’t as pretty as it could be. And the texture wasn’t what I expected. It was more of an eggy film than the crisp crust I anticipated. Maybe it was supposed to be this way, maybe the extra egg I added because one didn’t fully coat the pan affected the texture. It was good, but in the future, I would just sprinkle the bread crumbs over the top. It’s easier and ensures that they stay crisp.

            This dish reminded me of alfredo pasta, but lighter and with a stronger flavor. The scallions and parsley added a pleasant fresh contrast, and a salad would balance things out nicely. So would a cooked vegetable like green beans, and/or a bowl of fruit for dessert.

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Cook’s Tour of Italy Menu 51 (Pgs. 166 – 168): Lasagna, Bologna-Style

Menu 51 (Pgs. 166 – 168): Lasagna, Bologna-Style

Region: Emilia-Romagna

Menu: Lasagna Baked with Meat Sauce, Bologna-Style (also mentioned in 1000 Foods)

            Let’s revisit ragu. In a previous menu, I discussed the Neapolitan/southern style, where tomatoes play a central role. In Bolognese/northern style ragu, the meat predominates, while the tomatoes are just a flavoring. The meat is ground, rather than in big pieces, and is eaten in the sauce with the pasta, rather than as a separate course. Bologna-style ragu is frequently eaten with tagliatelle (but not spaghetti), as well as in lasagna.

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            Different types of lasagna are eaten all across Italy and have spread around the world. The type most familiar in the US features dried pasta, tomato sauce, ricotta and mozzarella cheeses, and usually ground beef or sausage. In the Naples region, recipes sometimes include slices of meatballs and hard-boiled eggs. In Bologna, fresh pasta, tinted green with spinach, Bolognese ragu, and bechamel sauce are used. Grated parmesan is the only cheese.

Side view, showing the layers

            I didn’t have fresh spinach pasta or the time to make it, so I used store-bought fresh pasta sheets, pre-cooked before layering in the dish. Since the pasta and both sauces are already cooked, the lasagna only needs to be baked until it’s heated through and the parmesan is browned. With more meat, less tomato, and bechamel in place of most of the cheese, it was a tasty change of pace from my usual “Midwest potluck” recipe.

            That said, I still prefer the Italian-American “red sauce” version. The pasta has more of an “al dente” texture, and having two cheeses is better than having just one. It does take at least an hour to bake, but this isn’t active time. But that’s just my personal preference, and the Bologna variation was good. And like all varieties of lasagna, it reheats well. The leftovers provided several enjoyable lunches.

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Cook’s Tour of Italy Menu 50 (Pgs. 163 – 166): Dinner at a Friend’s House, Parma

Region: Emilia-Romagna

Menu: Cured Meats and Pickled Vegetables, Tagliatelle with Buttery Tomato Sauce, Salad with Herb Dressing, Pears Baked in “Wine” with Mascarpone

Recommended Wine: Sparkling Lambrusco or Lambrusca di Sobara

            In Parma, as in the rest of Emilia-Romagna, fresh egg pasta is a specialty. As mentioned in a previous post, eggs used to be a bit of a luxury. While the common people couldn’t eat them in pasta on a daily basis, it was more affordable in historically richer Emilia-Romagna than in much of the South, where poverty and social inequality were more extreme. Thus, fresh pasta, made with eggs and often stuffed, is associated with Northern Italy, while dried, eggless pasta is more common in Southern Italy. This menu includes not only a fresh pasta, but other regional specialties like Parma ham, mortadella, a buttery sauce, orchard fruit, and cow’s milk cheese.

            The first course is a selection of preserved items, an essential part of the diet in the days before refrigeration. Salting, drying, and pickling are all featured here. For thousands of years, people have salted and air-dried meats, especially pork, all over Italy. The variety of hams and sausages are endless, and in Emilia-Romagna, the most famous are prosciutto ham and mortadella, a lightly-spiced sausage often studded with pistachios. Vegetables are often preserved in vinegar, which tends to be plentiful in areas with a lot of wine production. Salt and vinegar both inhibit bacterial growth, while drying removes the water that bacteria need to survive.

            I had some trouble finding mortadella. The closest thing I could find was ring bologna, which while based on the original and probably of very good quality was not quite the same. I ended up replacing the mortadella with mozzarella cheese, which was a nice contrast to the stronger-flavored prosciutto and pickled vegetables.

            Normally, tomato-based sauces are bright and zesty while white sauces are rich, but this sauce bridged the gap in a remarkable way. Flavored with onion, carrot, and a lot of butter, it’s filling but not heavy and has a nice depth of flavor. With a sprinkling of parmesan cheese and parsley, this dish is simple and delicious, with an interesting history. Pasta has been eaten with butter and parmesan cheese since at least the Renaissance, but at that time adding sugar and spices was as common as adding herbs like parsley or basil. Heavy spices and sugar became less popular in the 16th and 17th Centuries, but tomato sauce did not become popular until the late 18th or early 19th Century. All of this means that until about 200 years ago, this seemingly classic dish would not have been found.

            The salad was better than I expected. Even though I don’t usually like anything with a strong licorice flavor (like fennel), here it’s sweetness and aroma balanced the bitter chicory and sour dressing really well. In fact, given how bitter and sour the mix was, it probably could have used more fennel. Another option would be to add in another green with the chicory and dilute the lemon juice a bit.

            Whether raw or cooked, pears have been a dessert favorite for over 2000 years. The Ancient Romans ate them plain or baked them in a sort of custard. Baking or stewing them in wine with spices has been common since the Middle Ages. Here, they are baked with white wine, sugar, cinnamon, and cloves, then served with a bit of mascarpone cheese. The recipe calls for white wine to keep the color from “competing with the mascarpone” (Text, pg. 165). That wasn’t an option here, since I wanted a non-alcoholic dish and red grape juice was easier to find. And personally, I think the red exterior and beige interior, with a little bit of white cheese in the center, is just so pretty. The pears tasted as good as they looked, though I must admit that I liked the dessert even better when replacing the mascarpone with a scoop of ice cream. Still, the fabled cuisine of Emilia-Romagna didn’t disappoint.

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Cook’s Tour of Italy Menu 46 (Pgs. 143 – 145): Specialty Food Shop Tart Menu for 6 (Bologna)

Menu: Parmesan Custard Tart, Sliced Cucumbers with Mint, Baked Peaches Stuffed with Amaretti and AlmondsIMG_2543

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 3rd 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 16th 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?

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