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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 5th and 6th 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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Reflecting on the Growing Season: Basil, Pesto, San Marzano Tomatoes, and Seed Saving

Clockwise from the top: Roma, San Marzano, and cherry tomatoes

1000 Foods (pgs. 220, 223 – 224, 235 – 236)

            This last summer, after removing part of the deck that was in disrepair, I had a small garden bed to use. For my birthday back in March one of my aunts gave me a gift card for a seed savers catalog, which had some particularly interesting selections, including two types of sunflowers, giant zinnias, arugula, and cress. After buying more herb plants than necessary and planting them in pots, I had a plan for the new garden bed. The larger type of sunflowers would go in the back row. Three tomato plants would get half of the middle row instead of their usual 5-gallon buckets. On the other side I had a bean plant given to me by a student after an experiment to determine where plants get their mass from as they grow. (Answer: it’s mostly the carbon and oxygen in the air.) I planted a few leftover seeds in the row to keep it company. In the corner was an unknown plant from a different student (turned out to be mustard greens). The front row was half arugula, almost half cress. Marigolds on the sides would hopefully keep rabbits away. It sounded tidy and organized.

            Plants don’t necessarily do tidy and organized. With plenty of space, the tomato plants spread out and covered much of the arugula. The bean plants, which I was not aware were pole beans (it didn’t say on the package) grew in every direction. By the time I got the stakes in it was too late to manage the chaos. They didn’t produce many beans and those few were tough, but the plants themselves may have had an additional benefit. The sunflowers on that side of the garden were taller than those on the side with the tomatoes. Since the change was gradual it may have had as much to do with drainage patterns, but the nitrogen-fixing bacteria that live on bean roots may well have enriched the soil and given them a boost. Finally, the marigolds ended up about two feet tall. Whether they or the fence was more effective at rabbit control is an open question.

            Along with Roma and cherry tomatoes, I planted a San Marzano plant. Technically, to be 100% authentic, the tomatoes would need to be grown in the rich volcanic soil near Naples, but this was a way to taste them fresh. The plants are scraggly-looking with long, thin, pointy fruits, but they are said to be one of the best tomatoes for canning. In fact, the use of tomatoes in Italian cuisine increased significantly once the canning industry developed. I couldn’t taste much difference in the three types of fresh tomatoes, but I’m not normally a fresh tomato fan. They seemed to work well in the various soups and salsas over the course of the season. It will be interesting to compare canned San Marzanos with other varieties at some point in the future.

            I probably could have managed with one basil plant instead of two. They were small when I got them, and so had me fooled. Each in their own pot, with lots of sunshine and daily watering, they thrived to the point of my not knowing what to do with all the basil. With a potent, distinctive aroma, basil is widespread around the world. In its homeland of South and Southeast Asia, it has religious as well as culinary significance. Pesto is perhaps basil’s most popular use in the West, but it can also be used in sauces, salads, and even lemonade and sorbet. It actually works as well with strawberries as it does with tomatoes.

            What’s interesting about pesto is that while pesto-type sauces have existed since Ancient Rome and basil was introduced to the Mediterranean in the Medieval era, the two were not combined until well into the Early Modern period. Perhaps the speed at which basil oxidizes once cut made people suspicious of it. (The darkening/browning is oxidation. The same process happens with guacamole.) Or maybe Medieval cooks were underwhelmed, since they didn’t like to serve raw ingredients and basil loses much of its flavor when cooked. Fortunately for us, the Italians eventually figured out the best way to use it, and many other cuisines followed.

            Like most popular foods, pesto has a number of variations. The classic form has basil, salt, garlic, olive oil, and pine nuts. Usually a hard cheese such as Parmesan or Romano is included, but not always. Some or all of the basil might be replaced with parsley or arugula, reducing the discoloration on the surface but changing the flavor. One modification that does not affect the flavor much is to substitute almonds or especially walnuts for the pine nuts. With all the garlic and basil, it’s hard to tell the difference, and walnuts are a lot more affordable. They thicken and enrich the mixture just as well. Some versions, like the one in the book, even replace part of the olive oil with butter. Garlic is a constant, as is salt. In addition to adding flavor, the salt is *supposed* to reduce discoloration, but that was not my experience. A reliable solution is to scrape off the discolored part. The pesto below will be as green and aromatic as ever.

            In the meantime, winter is here. For next year, I’ve embarked on some seed saving of my own, gathering hundreds of sunflower seeds, along with a few small bags of marigold and one of zinnia seeds. I’m not sure where the petunias that appeared in the garden bed with the small sunflowers and zinnias came from. Most likely, some petunia seeds got mixed in with the other seeds by mistake, or some seeds blew over from another plant. However it happened, they grew so well and lasted so long into the fall that I saved some of their seeds too. Planting slightly earlier and starting some of the sunflowers inside should ensure an even better display next summer. Just not a tidy one.

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Cook’s Tour of Italy Menu 64 (Pgs. 204 – 207): Neapolitan Macaroni Menu

Region: Naples/Adriatic Coast

Menu: Penne with Pork Tomato Sauce, Sliced Pork, Carrots with Marsala, Romaine Watercress and Snow Peas with Lemon, Almond-Orange Meringue Cookies

Recommended Wine: Gragnano

            Ragu, a rich sauce with tomatoes and meat, is popular all over Italy, but two main styles are most famous. The first, Bologna-style, is more of a meat sauce flavored with tomatoes and is popular across the North. The second, Neapolitan-style, is a tomato sauce flavored with meat, which is then served as a separate course. Variations of this second style are prevalent across the South, and here we have a basic version, flavored with pork shoulder. The difference in the two styles probably has to do with the fact that in the historically less affluent South, there was more incentive for diners to fill up on pasta before serving the meat.

            This brings up an important point about typical Italian meal structure. The number of courses included depends on if it is an everyday or celebratory meal, but they usually follow a specific sequence: antipasti (appetizers), primi (pasta, risotto, polenta, or another starch or soup), secondi (meat or fish) with contorni (vegetable sides), salad, fruit and cheese (the most typical dessert), and dolci (sweets). If meat or fish is included (it may or may not be), it is always served after the starch. Here we have pasta with the tomato sauce as a first course, sliced pork for the second with carrots as a side, followed by salad, then cookies.

            Humans and pigs have a fascinating history. First domesticated around 8000 BC, pigs quickly proved their value to early farming peoples. While they didn’t provide wool, surplus milk for human use, or pull plows, pigs mature quickly and breed much faster than sheep, goats, or cattle. This made them the most efficient source of meat, making up for their shortcomings in other regards. Plus, they could eat almost anything. Despite all this, pork taboos have been widespread across the Middle East for thousands of years.

            At first glance, this is baffling. After all, this is where pigs were first domesticated. People in the earliest Mesopotamian civilizations ate pork without issue. Evidence suggests it was fed to workers building the pyramids. But over time, more and more taboos appeared, particularly after 1000 BC. There were some complete prohibitions like in the Hebrew Bible. In other cases, pork was seen as an inferior food for those who couldn’t afford meat otherwise, or an unclean food that was fine for the common people but unfit for priests and nobles. At the same time in Europe, where pigs had been introduced, and in China, where they were domesticated independently, no such problems arose and pork continued to be eaten widely.

            There are a number of theories for this. One is that centuries of environmental damage in the Middle East reduced the area suitable for raising pigs. Another is that the introduction of chickens, which eat similar food, are small enough to eat at a single meal, and also produce eggs, made pigs unnecessary. Regardless, pigs remained essential in Europe, where they had plenty of woodland to forage in. Plus, in the cooler climate, preserving the meat as bacon, ham, or sausage was easier to do.

            In cuisines where meat is limited, pork often acts as much as a flavoring as a source of protein. Cured pork products are frequently used for this, but here fresh pork shoulder or butt is used. After the meat is cooked, it is kept warm while the sauce is eaten with the pasta. If serving pasta first is to encourage people to fill up before having any meat, this dish did its job. The pork flavor was clearly present and provided an incredible richness to the sauce. Saving room for the other courses took substantial willpower. As expected, the sliced pork that followed was excellent; very tender and flavorful.

            Carrots might seem surprising in an Italian menu, but they were eaten as far back as Ancient Rome, though they might not have been orange. New varieties were introduced from the east in the Middle Ages, though the story about the orange carrot being created by the Dutch to honor their ruling family in the 17th Century seems unlikely to be true. A drawing in a 6th Century manuscript clearly shows an orange carrot, though during the Renaissance white, yellow, red and purple carrots were also common. These other colors have recently regained popularity in a big way, even becoming trendy. Hopefully this particular trend sticks, as each of the varieties has a slightly different flavor, and they are just so pretty. But for this menu, we have regular orange carrots, cooked with a bit of sugar and marsala, and topped with minced scallions.

            Every now and then, there is a dish that makes me think “Whoa, I made this?” This was one of those dishes. The marsala worked a lot better with carrots than with oranges, and the sugar produced a lightly browned glaze, and everything worked together for an incredible depth of flavor. A sprinkling of scallions on top added a nice contrast in taste and color. Though made with affordable ingredients, these would fit right in on a fancy restaurant menu. The advantage of making them at home is that you can have a normal portion size, leftovers, and avoid the restaurant markup in cost.

            Watercress and snow peas provided interesting contrasts for the salad; peppery for the watercress, sweet and crunchy for the snow peas. The dressing was a bit too sour, but in small quantities worked fine.

            The cookies were based on a meringue, which is a whipped mixture of sugar and egg whites. As pointed out in the book, these were sort of like the ricciarelli from Siena, with almonds and orange peel. They reminded me of macarons, with a crispy outside and chewy inside, though these were supposed to be crunchy. I suspect that humidity may have played a role in the texture not quite matching up, since meringue is known to be touchy on humid days. However they were supposed to turn out, they were delicious. Maybe I’ll tackle actual macarons at some point in the future.

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Cook’s Tour of Italy Menu 71 (Pg. 227): Broccoli Rabe and Goat Cheese Pizza

            This is another interesting, tomato-less pizza. Topped with broccoli rabe and goat cheese, it has notable bitter and tangy flavors. A thick, mild-flavored crust, garlic-infused olive oil, mozzarella, and rosemary help balance them out. One thing to note is that broccoli rabe is not the same as broccoli or broccolini. It is actually an entirely different plant, with a strong, bitter flavor that needs to be tempered by cooking. As broccoli rabe is difficult to find where I live, I used mustard greens, which supposedly have a similar flavor. They ended up a little bland, but I think that could be dealt with by reducing the blanching time. Overall, this was pretty good, but I liked the last pizza better.

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Cook’s Tour of Italy Menu 74 (Pgs. 228 – 229): Mozzarella Meatloaf

            Returning again to the South, we have what is essentially a giant, elongated meatball. The name, polpettone, is even similar to the word for meatballs, polpette. A mix of ground beef, Italian sausage, bread, parsley, eggs, fresh mozzarella, and grated Romano cheese is formed into a loaf shape and baked. The result can apparently be served warm or cold, on a sandwich if desired, with an optional tomato sauce. Since it was a weekend afternoon and I wasn’t exactly busy, I opted to make the tomato sauce on page 175 to go with it. Any left over could be used for pasta.

Ready to bake

            This was fantastic. I never considered the choice of warm or cold, since it was the middle of winter and the idea of cold meatloaf is odd to me. After pulling it out of the oven, I let it rest for a few minutes while the intoxicating aroma saturated the kitchen, then sliced and dished it up, still piping hot. It did fall apart a little bit (it’s usually easier and neater to slice cooled food), but the taste was the important part. The flavors melded together beautifully, fat in the sausage and moisture in the mozzarella kept it from drying out, and the sweet, acidic tomato sauce was the perfect contrast to the rich meatloaf. Ultimately there was just enough sauce for the leftovers the next day. I used up the leftover ground beef and sausage to make another a few days later and we devoured it that one too. This recipe is just that good.

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Cook’s Tour of Italy Menu 73 (Pg. 228): Fresh Angel Hair in Custard Mold (Naples/Adriatic South)

Menu: Fresh Angel Hair in Custard Mold with Herbs

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Now, for the first time in this project, we travel south of Rome. The chapter covers a large swath of Southern Italy, from Naples on the peninsula’s west coast to the region around Bari, Brindisi, and Taranto in the Southeast. Despite regional variations, common themes throughout this region include dried pasta, lots of vegetables, olive oil, citrus fruit, seafood in many parts, and lower levels of meat consumption. Tomatoes are more ubiquitous here, and the sauces tend to “not have the restraint of those in the north for we are now in the land of the Greeks, the Byzantines, the exuberant, the colorful.” (Text, pg. 204)

Time for another history lesson. In the 8th and 7th Centuries BC, large numbers of Greek colonists, driven by population pressure and civil unrest, arrived in Southern Italy. They founded or came to dominate many settlements along the coast, including Naples, Bari, Brindisi, Taranto, and Syracuse, just to name a few. The mainland colonies came to be known collectively as Magna Graecia, though they were never a unified entity. Rather, as in Greece itself, they feuded constantly and alternated between trading and fighting with the Italic peoples that remained dominant further inland. The situation was even more complicated in Sicily, where they competed with Phoenicia and later Carthage for trade and colonies, and Sardinia, where Etruscans were added to the mix.

Despite the constantly shifting alliances between the various Greek, Phoenician, and Etruscan powers, Magna Graecia prospered from the 7th to the 4th Centuries BC. In fact, as discussed by Professor Timothy B. Shutt in his audiobook lecture series “Wars That Made the Western World,” Sicily in the 5th Century BC is believed to have had a Greek population as large as in Greece itself, and Syracuse was an economic and naval power on par with Athens. Even as the Romans conquered Naples at the end of the 4th Century BC and Magna Graecia and Sicily in the 3rd, the Greek influence lingered.

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Unusually for this region, this dish contains fresh pasta, in this case fresh angel hair. After being cooked through, the pasta is mixed with a “custard” of eggs, milk, and fresh ricotta, flavored with rosemary and chives. The whole is then baked in a casserole dish, and each serving is sprinkled with more chives. For some reason the fresh angel hair was a bit gummy and clumped together, but the texture was improved upon being combined with the egg mixture. Overall, this was a pleasant dish with a mild flavor.

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