Cook’s Tour of Italy Menu 63 (Pgs. 197 – 203): Christmas Eve Dinner in Naples

Region: Naples/Adriatic South

Menu: Seasoned Fresh Mozzarella, Peppery Shrimp 1-2-3, Neapolitan Cauliflower Salad, Spaghettini with Clams, Carrots, and Wine, Fish Filets Neapolitan Fishermen’s Style, Spinach with Oil and Lemon, Hearts of Escarole with Red Pepper Confetti, Panettone Bread Pudding

Recommended Wine: Capri or Sicilian dry white

Anywhere Christmas is celebrated, it is an occasion for feasting. Medieval Europeans loved a whole roasted boar with an apple in its mouth and hot spiced beer and wine. Gingerbread and other sweets were banquet treats in Elizabethan England, especially at Christmastime. Victorians liked roast beef, goose, or turkey, with plum pudding, mince pies, oranges, and nuts. In modern Australia, where Christmas is in the summer, holding a barbecue is popular. Exactly what people eat depends on personal preferences and cultural traditions, but the important thing is sharing it with loved ones.

In many places, including parts of Italy, the biggest feast is on Christmas Eve. This is interesting, because at one time, people fasted during Advent. There would be a simple meatless meal on Christmas Eve, people would go to midnight mass, then on Christmas Day enjoy eating lots of meat after a month of abstaining. Over time, the Christmas Eve meal became more elaborate. Eventually, in the area around Naples, it became the Feast of the Seven Fishes, supposedly for the seven sacraments. In some cases, it would even be twelve, for the twelve Apostles. To make things more complicated, the seven (or twelve) types of fish had to be in different dishes. A soup or salad with multiple varieties could only count as one dish.

To make everything easier to cook and eat, Mr. Famularo reduces the number of seafood dishes to three. This could be for the Trinity (text, pg. 198), but regardless, three “fishes,” plus all the other dishes in the menu, were a big enough challenge. The cauliflower salad could be made ahead of time, ingredients could be prepared, and the bread pudding assembled and left to soak up the custard, but a lot of last-minute prep was unavoidable. To make things easier, I split things up and made the fish filets and escarole salad on a second night.

The first dish was composed of fresh mozzarella slices, sprinkled with olive oil and black pepper. Ideally, the cheese would be provolone burrinos, which have a piece of butter in the center. Since there is no Italian deli or food store near me that stocks them, I used the suggested alternative. The best fresh mozzarella in Italy is made from water buffalo milk (mozzarella di bufala), though cow’s milk varieties seem to have always been common. Some historians think the water buffalo was introduced to Italy by the Goths in the 5^th and 6^th Centuries AD. The technique of stretching the curds in hot water to produce mozzarella’s characteristic chewy texture appears to have been developed at some point after that. A few factories near me produce high quality fresh mozzarella, and you can even buy it ready-sliced in a log. The oil and pepper added some extra flavor, but even on its own, it was delicious.

Success continued with the shrimp. What was unusual was that red pepper flakes were only sprinkled over it after it was sauteed. The oil was kept on the stove to briefly cook the garlic, just enough to add color before the garlic oil was sprinkled over the dish. It was interesting to add the seasonings after the shrimp was finished cooking, but it kept the pepper and garlic from scorching or darkening. A sprinkle of green parsley contrasted nicely with the red pepper.

The cauliflower salad was definitely different, but tasted great. Another great thing about it is that it can, and for the best flavor should, be made a day ahead. Cauliflower is firm enough not to get soggy when marinating and soaking up the flavor from the dressing. I wouldn’t have thought of cauliflower as a salad vegetable, but it worked beautifully.

The second fish, the thin spaghetti with clams and carrots, was not such a success. While I hadn’t cared for the steamed clams in the Liguria/Portofino seaside menu, I had enjoyed chopped clams in a tomato-clam sauce in one of the Venetian menus, so I expected this would be similar. It wasn’t bad, but I still didn’t enjoy its strong fishy flavor. Tomato sauce had helped balance it, but there was no tomato in this recipe. Fortunately, Mr. Famularo does not follow a strict “no combining seafood and dairy” rule common in Italian cuisine, since some extra parmesan cheese made the pasta almost good. Good enough to eat the leftovers, in fact, but not good enough to make again.

The spinach was less edible. Part of the issue was that I was too cheap to buy fresh spinach in December and used frozen instead. That one was on me. But there was another issue. After cooking, the spinach got its addition of lemon juice. The problem is that the color and texture of some foods are affected by the pH of the dish, or how acidic it is. Bases are the opposite of acids. When green vegetables are cooked with a base, usually baking soda, their color stays especially green. Cooking them with an acid turns them an unappealing brown color, though their texture is unaffected. Lemon juice is highly acidic, and adding it after cooking didn’t help. The spinach immediately changed color, and using frozen instead of fresh did affect the texture, creating a gross-looking brown sludge. Maybe using fresh spinach is the key, since this is supposedly one of the favorite ways to cook spinach in Italy (text, pg. 202). The taste was ok, but the texture and appearance of this dish made it hard to eat.

I had better luck with the fish filets and salad. Due to time constraints, those were made on a second night. The fish was eaten with a tomato-garlic-herb sauce. I wouldn’t have thought of using it with seafood, but the flavors worked together well. The escarole in the salad was a little bitter, but balanced with diced red pepper “confetti,” golden raisins, walnuts (replacement for pine nuts), and capers.

People have been making bread pudding for hundreds of years. Along with toasting, soaking stale bread with eggs is a great way to revive it. This particular variety, made with sweet, eggy panettone, soaked in a honey syrup and a creamy custard, was particularly rich. Panettone was originally from Milan, and is now a Christmas staple across Italy. Making a bread pudding was a unique way to include it in the menu. The cooking time was a lot longer than the recipe said, but dessert was worth the wait.

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Cook’s Tour of Italy Menu 75 (Pgs. 231 – 235): Lunch in Ruoti

Region: South Mainland/Islands (Basilicata)

Menu: Grilled Peppers in Anchovy Sauce with Roasted Olives, Eggs in Purgatory with Grilled Sausages, Fried Zucchini Slices, Chocolate Souffle with Fig Preserves

Recommended Wine: Agliatico (high-alcohol Sicilian red)

Capers also found in 1000 Foods

Like tomatoes and potatoes, peppers originated in the Americas. Europeans distrusted them at first, preferring to use them as decorative plants instead of as food. The reason seems to be that peppers are part of the nightshade family, which has several deadly members, but eventually, either through necessity or curiosity, sweet bell peppers became popular around the Mediterranean. Hot peppers had better luck in Africa and Asia. One popular way of preparing them is by grilling or roasting.

An interesting addition to the roasted peppers is an anchovy sauce. While anchovies are often viewed as “gross” in much of America, they have been popular for over 2000 years. They were a popular flavoring in Ancient Rome, as was garum, a salty fermented fish sauce. There are references to them as bar snacks in Shakespeare’s time, salty nibbles to stimulate thirst. I think it would be funny if, instead of pretzels or salted peanuts, a modern bar set out plates of anchovies. Just to see patrons’ reaction.

I don’t typically care for anchovies or olives, though the preparation methods in this menu did help. Combining the anchovies with oil, garlic, and herbs softened their flavor, and baking the olives with rosemary to infuse them had a similar effect. They were still not my favorite dishes, but that was just a matter of personal taste.

The eggs and tomato sauce with sausage was more successful. I’m not sure how the name “eggs in purgatory” came about, but poaching them in tomato sauce was an interesting experiment. They got a bit more cooked than I meant to, resulting in an unpleasant grainy texture for the yolks, but the whites and sauce were good, as was the bread to soak it up. The sausage used was hot Italian, since chili peppers are a popular flavoring in Basilicata and Calabria.

Among the many ways to cook zucchini is to fry it. Because they are high in water, zucchini slices must be dried before frying or they won’t brown properly. Here a dip in flour with salt and pepper absorbs any excess moisture while providing a bit of extra texture. The surface coating isn’t thick enough to become a breading, but it does produce a very thin, crispy layer.

I had never made a souffle before, but it was fascinating. Here’s how it works. Egg whites are whipped to introduce tiny air bubbles. They are carefully folded into the remaining ingredients to avoid popping the bubbles. Because gases expand when heated, the souffle will rise in the oven. The same principle is used in Genoese sponge cakes to make them rise. The tricky part with souffles is serving them without deflation. As the air bubbles trapped inside cool down, they shrink. I’ve heard somewhere that “guests must wait for the souffle; the souffle will not wait for the guests,” this is why.

When I first pulled it out of the oven, the souffle was puffed up well over the top of the ceramic baking dish. It started to deflate before I could get a picture, but it still had a nice spongy texture and good flavor. The fig jam was a little sweet. In the future, I would probably use strawberry or cherry instead, but that’s a minor thing. The rest comes down to figuring out how much deflation is inevitable, how much can be avoided, and enjoying the experiments along the way.

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Cook’s Tour of Italy Menu 22 (Pgs. 77 – 81): Dining at Sea Level in Portofino

Region: Liguria/Piedmont

Menu: Prosciutto with Roasted Peppers, Fresh Clams with Wine, Green Peas Grandmother Style, Lemony Apple Cake

Recommended Wine: Cinque Terre dry white

Roasted peppers also found in 1000 Foods

Roasted peppers are a popular appetizer all over Italy. The red variety are especially pretty and tend to be the sweetest. A particularly attractive presentation involves a combination of red and yellow, sometimes with orange and/or green added to the mix. The peppers can be served plain, marinated, in salads, in sauces, or on canapes. Here they have a vinegar-based marinade and are served with on buttered white bread with ham. The recipe calls for prosciutto, but since it is kind of expensive and has a stringy texture, I used black forest deli ham instead. The combination worked very well. Side note: In Italy, pepperoni refers to peppers, not the spicy red salami disks found on pizzas.

I’m not usually a fan of clams, but after being pleasantly surprised by the tomato-clam sauce a while back, I had high hopes for this recipe. Frozen clams were steamed/braised in precooked wine (to burn off the alcohol), which seemed like it would counter the “fishy” flavor like tomatoes did. That didn’t work as well as hoped. They were edible, but I didn’t necessarily enjoy them.

People have been eating starchy “field peas” for millennia, but sweet “garden peas” came much later. Most likely, they were developed by Dutch botanists in the early 17^th Century. In France, the court of Louis XIV went crazy for them. Since the French court set fashions for the rest of Europe, sweet peas were soon found across the continent. Presumably the Italians, who had always appreciated vegetables more than most, adopted them quickly. One popular way of cooking them is in the Venetian risotto, risi e bisi.

There are a number of “homestyle,” or “grandmother’s-style,” recipes for peas. In this case, a small amount of pancetta or bacon is used as a flavoring, and a bit of butter, flour, and chicken broth make a light sauce. Some fresh herbs brighten the dish. Everything is balanced; sweet, fat, and salt, but the flavors are mild and easy to enjoy. There’s nothing here that most picky eaters would have an issue with.

The best dish in the menu was the apple cake. A sponge cake batter is flavored with lemon peel and extract, apple slices are folded in, and everything is baked in a springform pan. That was an unusual touch, but made unmolding easy. The lemon flavor was a nice complement to the apple, and adding a bit of lemon zest to some whipped cream made an excellent dessert even better. Minus the clams, everything was delicious.

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