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Cook’s Tour of Italy Menu 6 (Pgs. 31 – 36): Easter Dinner in Rome

Menu: Asparagus Soup with Amaretti and Crisped Leeks, Lasagna Squares with Braised Broccoli Rabe, Butterflied Roasted Leg of Lamb, Slow-Cooked Plum Tomatoes, Spring Greens with Mint, Ricotta Cheesecake

Recommended Wine: Dry Castelli White (like Frascati), Campanian Taurasi (ruby-red with plum, berry, spice and vanilla flavors)

            Of all the menus I have tackled, this is perhaps the most ambitious yet. Previous posts cover a combination of ordinary and Sunday dishes. This is a holiday feast. We are invited to imagine Easter in Rome, with bright decorations and flowers everywhere. In Rome, spring lamb is the typical Easter roast, heavily seasoned with rosemary. The menu also includes other spring classics like asparagus and fresh greens, along with a unique lasagna dish, slow-roasted tomatoes with garlic and herbs, and a ricotta cheesecake with a few different flavoring options. If you prefer, artichokes, another Roman favorite, can replace the soup or salad.

            As a whole, this menu is a taste of Roman food history. As mentioned in a previous post a while back, the Ancient Romans were fond of their produce. Among other vegetables, they loved asparagus, leeks, and lettuce. Asparagus and early lettuce are typically some of the first vegetables available in the spring, which is also the time for lambs and suckling pigs. Historically, milk and egg production dropped during the winter months before rising again, which is probably how eggs came to be associated with Easter. Even in ancient times, before Christianity, Romans could enjoy lamb with fresh herbs, asparagus, salad, and ricotta cheesecake in the spring.

            There is some debate on whether or not the ancients had a form of pasta, but if they did, its widespread use was a Medieval innovation. Trade with various Muslim states, especially in Sicily, brought rosemary, increased almond cultivation, lemons, bitter oranges, and sugar to Italy. Medieval Europeans loved almonds and used them extensively, especially during Lent, when almond milk frequently replaced dairy. As sugar became more widespread (though still a huge luxury) during the Late Middle Ages, it was incorporated into the variety of cookies and confections being developed.

            The Columbian Exchange changed everything. Maize, chocolate, vanilla, turkeys, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers and zucchini all arrived from the Americas, though not all were accepted right away. Peppers and tomatoes in particular took a long time to become widespread, but by the late 19th century, they were ubiquitous in Southern Italian cuisine, along with zucchini. Meanwhile, dramatically increased sugar supplies made the proliferation of new pastries and confections possible. These soon became linked to another new introduction, coffee, from the Middle East and East Africa.

            What is essentially a cream of asparagus soup, flavored with leeks and thickened with potatoes, is served with two interesting garnishes. First is crushed amaretti; crunchy almond cookies with a slightly meringue-like texture. The other is sliced leeks, fried until lightly browned and crispy. This combination might sound strange, but the sweet, crunchy cookie crumbs are a nice contrast to the soup and the crisped leeks were quite addictive. The flavor was a balance of asparagus and leeks, with neither overpowering the other, accented by a bit of almond. The only thing I would change is to maybe use a bit less liquid, as the soup was fairly thin, but that’s a matter of personal preference.

            For the pasta course, we have an interesting spin on lasagna. Rather than layered and baked in a single pan, fresh pasta squares and broccoli rabe (here replaced with mustard greens) are cooked separately, then layered with ricotta on each individual plate. While this method did free up oven space for the other dishes, it involved more work at mealtime. Only a few of the pasta squares can cook at a time, and they cook in about a minute. Once finished, each batch is placed in a bowl with a bit of butter to stay hot and hopefully avoid sticking. This was still a bit of an issue, and the ricotta, which was not heated, cooled down the finished dish. It was still pretty good, but more warm/lukewarm than hot.

            The lamb was the most technically challenging dish on the menu. Originally, I planned to get a few lamb chops and marinate them rather than use a leg of lamb, but since the latter was on sale for a really good price I decided to try it. (I’m a few months behind on posting, this was around Easter). The recipe says to ask the butcher to butterfly and trim it, but since I bought it frozen and shrink-wrapped that wasn’t an option. After letting it thaw for a few days, I would have to try and hope for the best. To be honest, I think I did a pretty good job, at least as far as getting it to lay flatter in the roasting pan, which was the point. After marinating overnight in a mix of vinegar, oil, garlic and herbs, it was broiled and occasionally basted with the marinade. The seasonings gave the meat a great flavor, and the sweet, acidic tomatoes worked really well alongside the rich, distinctive flavor of the lamb.

Lamb before and after the oven, roasted tomatoes

            The salad, a mix of spring greens and arugula with a bit of mint, had a vinegar and oil dressing with a bit of garlic and anchovy. Since the amount of anchovy was small, it did not taste fishy, rather, it just added another layer of flavor. I wouldn’t have thought of putting mint in a salad, but it worked really well with the other flavors.

            I did have a few difficulties with the cheesecake. The recipe instructs the cook to line the bottom of a springform pan with a piece of buttered parchment paper and serve the cheesecake while still slightly warm. A few different flavoring options are available; chopped candied peel, vanilla bean, or fruit-flavored brandy. I chose candied lemon peel, which seemed perfect for spring. For some reason, after the designated amount of time, it was nowhere near done. Even after some extra time at a low temperature to try and firm it up, there was still a lot of liquid in the center, but at that point we decided that maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be and had some anyway. It was still pretty good, but the middle part was still pretty soupy and the lemon flavor seemed somewhat weak.

            A night in the refrigerator transformed the cheesecake. Chilling firmed it up and made it easier to slice, while the extra time gave the homemade candied lemon peel a chance to infuse its flavor. Though not a requirement, I would recommend making this a day beforehand and serving it cold. If making this again, I would probably reduce the sugar slightly and add a tablespoon of flour to help bind it together. Still, the whole menu was a thoroughly enjoyable taste of spring.

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Cook’s Tour of Italy Menu 3 (Pgs. 21 – 25): Special Dinner in Rome, Trastevere

Menu: Arugula Salad with Bacon and Hazelnuts, Roman-Style Gnocchi, Fig, Walnut, and Almond Tart

Recommended Wine: Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, Purplish-Ruby with Berry and Spice Aromas

            We are now invited to imagine dinner with a friend of Mr. Famularo’s at her home in Rome’s Trastevere district, across the Tiber from the historical city center. Though space is limited inside her apartment, it has a balcony overlooking a courtyard garden. For most of the year, it is warm enough to eat and socialize there, where the air is perfumed with roses and jasmine. (Text, page 22) Imagine that the pandemic is finally over and you can socialize without worry.

            The original menu is one of indulgence for a small group, featuring foie gras, a favorite since ancient times. There are two options for how to serve this, both on an arugula salad garnished with toasted hazelnuts. The recipe has the foie gras sauteed in butter, then served on top the salad. Another option in the recipe header, for those who aren’t able to obtain or don’t want to work with pieces of foie gras, is to use slices of foie gras terrine. I found the statement that the slices of terrine “of course are not to be sauteed” somewhat amusing. This would not have been obvious to me, though I’m not an award-winning cookbook author whose taken multiple trips abroad with a career spanning decades. Or maybe I’m just an unsophisticated barbarian. Supposedly, the pieces of foie gras are frequently sold in convenient 2-ounce serving size containers and the terrine is available in most supermarket delis.

            Maybe that’s true in New York City, but I have never seen either of those things at any supermarket or deli. Granted, I have never actually looked for them, but before the pandemic I browsed a number of grocery stores and meat markets to see what sort of interesting things they had. I’ve seen beef liver, chicken livers, beef tongue, whole Christmas geese, and even pigs’ feet, but no foie gras anything. At any rate, with the price and method of production, I wouldn’t buy it anyway. Thus, I needed to find a substitute ingredient.

            My first thought was to use chicken livers. Many large supermarkets have them, they aren’t expensive, and while not the same as fat-engorged duck or goose liver, they are still livers and still from poultry. If I could get over my squeamishness about eating liver, I could sauté them with extra butter to bring the fat level closer to that of actual foie gras. As it turns out, I’m not quite ready to go that far. As detailed in the previous post, I’ve eaten oxtail and loved it. I don’t think beef tongue would be an issue (it’s just another muscle). I’d even be willing to try pigs’ feet if they were cooked in a way to get the skin nice and crispy. Liver is still another story, though, especially knowing what the liver does. Besides, chicken livers look really unappetizing. In the end, I settled on bacon pieces. While not remotely the same thing as foie gras, it’s a good choice on almost any salad. All of the other salad ingredients were unchanged. Unsurprisingly, the blend of peppery arugula, salty bacon, and crunchy, toasty hazelnuts, accented with a vinaigrette, was delicious.

            The next course was Roman-style gnocchi. Gnocchi are Italy’s version of the dumpling, the starchy filler to soak up the flavor of whatever it’s cooked with, found in various forms around the world. In most parts of Italy they are potato-based. What makes the Roman kind special is that they are made with semolina flour cooked in milk with nutmeg. Parmesan cheese and eggs are added to bind the mixture before it is cooled and cut into rounds. These are then topped with butter and more parmesan cheese and baked. I had some difficulty with these. The mixture didn’t firm up as much as I expected during cooling, which made cutting the circles out (with a glass) difficult. I ultimately resorted to forming them manually and layering them on the baking pan. My hands were a mess after this, but it worked pretty well. The end result was slightly crispy on the outside, soft and almost custardy on the inside, and delightfully rich.

            Dessert was a pastry tart, this time with a layer of fig jam and another of ground almonds and walnuts, held together with eggs and sweetened. If you own the book, you might notice that the recipe calls for pine nuts, not walnuts. The thing is, pine nuts are really expensive. The recipe calls for over a cup, the little packets and bottles of them only contain around a third of that, and they each cost around four dollars. This would add up to at least twelve dollars just for pine nuts, and walnuts are a fraction of the cost. Plus, I’ve come to realize that most pine nuts, even from Italian brands, come from China. With recent aggression in the South China Sea, the broken treaty with Hong Kong, and the worst genocide since the Holocaust being conducted against Turkic-speaking Muslims in the western Xinjiang province, I would prefer to avoid buying Chinese goods whenever possible. It can’t be avoided entirely, but the more people forego Chinese goods in favor of alternatives, the more economic pressure will be put on the government. If enough people are committed, maybe they will be forced to reconsider their policies. Now, I wouldn’t normally get into politics on a food blog. However, this is more than politics. It is an issue of basic decency and treating other people like human beings. While no one can solve the issue on their own, everyone can do something. One easy way to start is to use American-grown California walnuts. Their flavor and texture makes for excellent pesto, and according to several episodes of The Great British Baking Show, figs and walnuts are a winning combination.

            And they are. The fig jam and almond mixture are both pretty sweet, with the former being even sweeter than most other jams. Unlike almonds and pecans, walnuts don’t have much of a sweet flavor, making them an excellent choice to provide contrast. The tart was still a bit sweeter than I would have preferred, but the optional unsweetened whipped cream helped with this. Overall, it was really good. I opted to make the pastry rather than use a prepared pie shell. Called pasta frolla, it baked up nice and crispy. The crunch from the pastry and walnuts contrasted with the soft jam and almond mixture, and everything worked well together. I might reduce the sugar slightly if I were to make this again, but that’s just a matter of personal preference. A cup of coffee or tea adds further contrast.

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Cook’s Tour of Italy Menu 7 (Pgs. 36 – 37): Braised Oxtail Stew

            So-called “variety meats” are often disregarded today, but in the past, when animal protein was more expensive relative to income, they were widely consumed. Some parts, like tripe, were poverty food even then, while others, like sweetbreads, were considered delicacies. Yet others, like liver, seem to have been viewed in a similar way to tougher, more inexpensive cuts of meat: not fine banquet fare, but perfectly good for informal and everyday meals.

            This appears to have been the case with oxtail. It turns up again and again in old recipes, almost always in soups and stews, which makes perfect sense. It contains a lot of collagen, so it is not very tender initially. As it cooks, the collagen breaks down, imparting an incredible body to the broth. Plus, soup and stew are excellent ways to stretch a small or modest amount of meat to feed more people. Oxtail was made for economical ingenuity.

            Versions of oxtail stew are found across the globe, but the Roman variation features wine, tomatoes, and celery. If you don’t have or don’t want to use wine, a viable replacement is grape juice with a tablespoon of vinegar per cup. It’s still a little sweeter than it would be if dry wine were used, but I used this substitution and it worked well.

            The dish started with the common flavor base of vegetables and pancetta/bacon. A bit of celery was added now, most was set aside to be separately cooked and added later. After browning, the oxtails are added to the pot, along with the tomatoes and wine. This all simmers for a few hours, with some of the broth being added periodically. Near the end of the cooking time, the rest of the celery is added. I’m not sure why the celery needs to be cooked separately rather than added directly to the pot, but I followed the recipe as closely as possible.

            The taste and texture of this stew were both remarkable. The combination of broth, grape juice, tomatoes, and aromatics lent a pleasant, slightly sweet-tart flavor, while the collagen from the oxtail created a rich, almost sticky body. It was definitely messy to eat, though, since the meat stuck to the bones despite its tenderness and could not easily be removed with a fork and knife. Fingers and a lot of patience were required. That’s not to say I wouldn’t make it again. Add some bread and maybe a salad, and it’s clear why this dish remains so popular. Just make sure you have plenty of napkins.

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Cook’s Tour of Italy Menu 2 (Pgs. 18 – 21): Meal at Home, Monteporzio (Just Outside Rome)

Menu: Roman Minestrone, “Sole” Fillets Wrapped in Leeks with Brussels Sprouts, Orange Panna Cotta with Blueberry Sauce

Recommended Wine: Verdicchio from near Rome or Virtu Romane

            Returning to the Eternal City, we have a menu enjoyed at the home of two of Mr. Famularo’s friends, who both happen to be chefs. The first course is a minestrone typical of the Rome/Lazio region, with beef broth, chopped cooked beef, red beans, red wine, assorted vegetables, and a small pasta called pastina. The friends’ restaurant, which features updated and reinvented Roman cuisine, provides the inspiration for the second course: pieces of sole filet, wrapped in leek leaves and tied with string, braised and served with buttery sauce and brussels sprouts. Dessert is a classic originally from the Piedmont region and now found all over Italy: panna cotta, in this case lightly flavored with orange and served with a blueberry-orange sauce.

            The really nice thing about this menu is that the soup, panna cotta, and blueberry sauce can be made ahead. In fact, as is often the case with soups, it is best to make the minestrone ahead by a day or two to allow time for the flavors to meld. This is especially useful here, since the process of assembling the fish dish is somewhat time-consuming. The leeks need to be cleaned and blanched, the fish cut into pieces that can be wrapped by the leek leaves, and the fish and leeks assembled and tied into “packets,” that can then be braised in the skillet. The final effect is really pretty, but it does take time.

            The soup was another excellent one. While it was good immediately after cooking, it really came into its own upon reheating the next day. I had been a bit worried about the pastina getting mushy, but it maintained a good texture while soaking up the flavor of the broth. As discussed on Pages 18 – 19, each region has its own typical style of minestrone and each cook has their own variation. They all have a variety of vegetables, a starch and/or legume to add substance (which could be rice, pasta, or a few different types of beans), and various flavoring agents. Sometimes meat is added, particularly leftover. Regardless of the particular variation, minestrone is a great historical example of peasant ingenuity in the kitchen. The other ingredients allowed the cook to stretch the more expensive meat, while providing a nutritious, satisfying meal.

Roman minestrone

            Sea fish was not particularly important in Early Rome. The city is located about 15 miles inland, so providing fresh seafood was a bit of a logistical challenge. Shipping it up the Tiber from the port at Ostia, presumably kept alive in tanks of water, was possible but expensive. During the Early Republic, even the rich ate a largely vegetarian diet. Much of the limited animal protein came from eggs, cheese, freshwater fish, and a variety of pork products. During the Late Republic, saltwater fish and especially shellfish became fashionable. Sources from the era describe banquets featuring mountains of oysters and sea urchins as starters, and aristocrats were known to spend fortunes on a single particularly fine red mullet. While some of these accounts were probably exaggerated for comic or shock value, parody often has at least some basis in reality.

            The fish dish here was very tasty, though dealing with the tied packets on the plate was a bit of a hassle. Due to the price and difficulty finding sole, I used farmed catfish, which is apparently a reasonable substitute. It cooked up mild and flaky but tender, enhanced by the leeks and buttery, shallot-flavored sauce. The brussels sprouts were a great accompaniment, their flavor boosted by being cooked in the water the leeks were braised in.

Panna cotta and sauce

            Panna cotta is in the same family of desserts as pudding and custard. What makes it unique is that it is set with gelatin rather than thickened with egg or cornstarch. As a result, despite the name meaning “cooked cream,” the ingredients don’t have to be cooked for long. The cream or half-and-half just needs to be heated enough to dissolve the gelatin and sugar. At its simplest, panna cotta consists of just half-and-half or milk and cream, sugar, and gelatin. Vanilla is usually included as well, and fresh fruit or fruit-based sauce are the most common toppings. Here, the custard includes sour cream, cream cheese, and a touch of orange, giving it a cheesecake-like quality. The desserts are served topped with a blueberry-orange sauce. The combined flavors were very good, and there was a fair amount of extra sauce left over. Fortunately, these kinds of sauces freeze and thaw well. The leftovers would be worth trying over pancakes, waffles, or ice cream.

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Cook’s Tour of Italy Menu 5 (Pgs. 27 – 31): Al Fresco Meal for 6 (Rome)

Menu: Eggplant with Capers and Anchovies, Roasted Chicken Salad in a Loaf of Italian Bread, Country Style Fava Beans, Fresh Seasonal Fruit and Italian Cheeses

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Recommended Wine: Frascati (Fragrant, Dry, Semisweet)

Returning to Rome, we are invited to imagine a picnic on the outskirts of the city. For a major metropolitan area, Rome has a surprising amount of green space, even within the city itself. Part of the reason for this, according to the tour guides, was that over the centuries Popes and influential families dedicated a number of parks and gardens. Combined with potted plants and flowerbeds in piazzas and a profusion of flowers and greenery on apartment windowsills and balconies, the urban oasis feeling is rarely far away.

With eggplant marinated in a vinaigrette-type sauce, a chicken salad full of greens, sautéed fava beans, cheese, and lots of fresh fruit, this produce-heavy picnic provides another great insight into history. As a society that took pride in its agricultural roots, the Ancient Romans enjoyed and valued a variety of fresh produce. Incidentally, by the time of Julius Caesar and his contemporaries, the small family farms that society idealized had largely fallen victim to the circumstances of the times.

To *very* briefly summarize this aside, what basically happened is as follows. In the 3rd Century BC, wars with Celtic peoples in Northern Italy and Carthage in Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia and Spain led to the acquisition of several new provinces and a massive influx of slaves. After some of the recently conquered land was given out to reward veterans, wealthy Romans bought large estates, worked by the surge in slave labor. These profit-driven latifundias could produce goods more cheaply than the smaller farms, many of which were either damaged during Hannibal’s campaign in Italy or had fallen into disrepair when their owners were in the army on campaign, pushing many small farmers out of business. Worsening this problem was a surge in cheap grain from Sicily and later from North Africa and Egypt. As massive slave-run estates swallowed up many family farms, landless poor surged into the cities, unrest rose, and yearning for an older, simpler way of life captured the popular imagination. Fun fact: the Gracchi brothers, who spearheaded a reform movement and were assassinated for their troubles, were the grandsons of Scipio Africanus, who ultimately defeated Hannibal. Their mother Cornelia was seen by many as the ideal Roman matron and was one of their greatest supporters.

As mentioned before, due to lack of meat in the diet, pre-modern Romans historically ate substantial quantities of legumes. Even Apicius, more focused on upper- and middle-class Imperial Era cookery, includes several recipes for fava beans, chickpeas, and lentils. (Cannellini, navy, and kidney beans and their relatives only arrived after Columbus.) Given that olive oil, oregano, salt and pepper were widely available, it is entirely conceivable that dishes like the fava beans here were eaten 2000 or 2500 years ago. Fava beans were quite hard to find, but I managed to find both canned and frozen at a local Mediterranean/Middle Eastern grocery.

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Ancient-style fava beans?

Chickens may not have been available in the early Roman Republic (they are believed to have reached Greece during Classical times, c. 5th century BC), but certainly were plentiful in Rome by Imperial times. I am not sure when arugula became available, but most of the other ingredients in the salad, including celery (based on Apicius’ references to celery seed), Pecorino Romano cheese, cured ham (if not prosciutto), vinegar, oil, and eggs, were available as well at this time.

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The ultimate chicken salad

The dessert has similar antiquity. Pears, plums, the pecorino cheese again, and the ricotta were all present in ancient times. Adding cinnamon, sugar and coffee granules to the ricotta would be a more recent innovation, since evidence suggests that before medieval times, cinnamon was an incense or perfume and sugar was medicinal. Coffee was not introduced until the 16th of 17th century (sources disagree). The watermelon is even more recent. Another medieval introduction is the eggplant, introduced to Sicily when the island was under Arab control between the 9th and 11th centuries, though the anchovies seem to harken back to the ancient tradition of garum.

The best part of this menu was definitely the chicken salad. Ordinarily I don’t like chicken/egg/tuna salad because of the mayonnaise, but with a vinaigrette dressing it is really good. The mix of chicken, arugula, cheese and a bit of prosciutto blended really well together and turned out to be great on sandwiches made from the hollowed-out bread serving bowl. I did skip the hard-boiled eggs the recipe called for as a garnish since when it comes to eggs, I prefer them either mixed into a recipe, scrambled, or in an omelet. This salad was different than what Americans might imagine when we think of chicken salad, with plenty of arugula and celery mixed in and flavored with cheese and ham, but personally I think it’s a tasty way to eat more vegetables. The only thing I would change is to replace the pecorino Romano with fresh or firm mozzarella. After making the salad again at a later date (with bacon pieces instead of ham because that’s what I had on hand), this was confirmed as a perfecting improvement.

The eggplant was also good, though in the future, rather than eating it on its own, I’d try Mr. Famularo’s alternative suggestion of putting pieces on toasted bread, topping with cheese, and heating in the oven. I was admittedly underwhelmed by the beans, but they were decent hot. The issue was more being weirded out, for lack of a better term, by eating beans cold. For the dessert, the fresh ricotta with cinnamon sugar was rather enjoyable, though it took a little getting used to eating sweetened cheese that wasn’t cheesecake. I wasn’t quite so keen on the pecorino Romano, which again, is great grated and cooked, but not what I’d want to eat for dessert. In the reverse of the Italian custom, I tend to think of sweets for dessert and fruits like pears and plums for a snack, but the watermelon, the ultimate healthy summer dessert, was a fine ending to a summer picnic.

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Eggplant is under the herbs

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Dessert

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Cook’s Tour of Italy Menu 1 (pg. 14-17): Lunch for 6 “On a Rooftop Overlooking the Spanish Steps” (Rome)

Menu: Artichokes Cooked in a Saucepan, Sweet Macaroni and Cheese, Sour Cherry Jam TartIMG_2540

Featuring some of Rome’s classic dishes, this menu of artichokes, pasta and a jam tart is, according to the text, relatively simple to prepare. Matters were somewhat complicated for me by a lack of experience with artichokes, lack of access to fresh ricotta, and somewhat dull knives (that have since been sharpened). While many Italian cheeses are available at the larger supermarkets, I have been unable to find a store that sells fresh ricotta and the nearest Italian grocery is 2 hours away, so I decided to make my own. I still haven’t mastered it, but if I make it a day or two ahead I can make a new batch if one doesn’t work out. Vinegar and salt are a negligible cost, and milk has been on sale at the nearest grocery store for $1.99/gallon for the last several months.

If you’re wondering about this last point, Wisconsin is having a crisis in the dairy industry at the moment and prices are down as a result. In theory, you can make about 2 pounds or 4 cups of soft cheese from a gallon of milk. I haven’t gotten to that level of yield quite yet and my results are inconsistent, but nevertheless, it seemed like this would be more like fresh ricotta than the ricotta in tubs.

Much of the preparation time was spent wrestling with the artichokes, although the result was most satisfying. Stuffing the insides with a mixture of chopped mint and parsley, minced garlic, salt and pepper and braising in water and olive oil yielded a well-flavored vegetable with a buttery texture and almost meaty taste. These were even better the next day, after the flavors had had time to meld. Just make sure to have plenty of napkins on hand, since these are messy to eat.

The pasta was yet another pleasant surprise. The mix of fresh ricotta, sugar, cinnamon and chives sounded a bit strange, but it tasted kind of like a sweet alfredo sauce and was surprisingly good. A little extra salt helped it make more “sense,” for lack of a better term, and bring the flavors together. It wasn’t as good as the other pasta dishes from the book, but it still made some nice leftovers for lunch the next day.

The star of the show, if you will, was the tart. There is an option to use a prepared pie crust rather than the homemade pastry provided in the recipe, but I would not do so. Said pastry, slightly sweetened with powdered sugar and flavored with a bit of lemon zest, was the best part, even if it did keep melting between my fingers as I was trying to weave the thin pieces of dough into a lattice top. It was about 90 degrees that day, so I ultimately rolled the top pieces into ropes and laid the horizontal strips across the vertical ones and it turned out fine. Jam fills in for fruit or pie filling here, I used a jar of Door County Cherry Jam and it worked beautifully. Though the recipe did not include this, a scoop of vanilla ice cream was a nice addition.

If you wish, Mr. Famularo again suggested serving this menu with Frascati, a white wine for which Rome is famous. Supposedly fresh-tasting, easy to drink and affordable, it is recommended for several menus in the Rome/Lazio chapter. According to the tour guides on a trip to Italy, this region tends to produce and drink more white wines, as does the area around Venice. I’m not sure if I actually had any Frascati in Rome but it is supposedly fairly typical of the area, so I’d imagine a lot of the table wine blends (which I think is what the tour gave us each night at dinner) are somewhat similar. If that’s the case, they are quite enjoyable, not too strong or too dry.

 

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Cook’s Tour of Italy Menu 4 (pg. 25-27): Lunch for 4, Grottaferrata (Rome/Lazio)

Menu: Roasted Beet Salad with Red Onions and Dried Fennel, Spaghetti with Lemon Sauce, Cantaloupe Melon Balls in Honeydew Puree, Bread

IMG_2525Still around Rome (maybe it’s just my imagination, but the menus and recipes seem, in many cases, to become more complicated as the book progresses), Mr. Famularo invites us to imagine lunch at a café after visiting a little-known gem in Grottaferrata, a town not far from Rome. There are numerous beautiful settings to imagine throughout the book, all wonderfully descriptive. Here, after being shown around a monastery museum by one of the monks, we can sit down to a lunch of a roasted beet salad, spaghetti with a lemon cream sauce, and a unique take on fruit salad for dessert.

To cook the beets, they are washed and scrubbed, rubbed with olive oil, sprinkled with salt, pepper and fennel seeds, and roasted in the oven in their own individual foil packets. I’ll admit, I cheated on this part a little bit by putting them all in one packet to save time and energy. After cooling enough to touch, they are peeled, sliced, and mixed with red onions, vinegar, oil and more fennel seeds. The salad is served on a few radicchio leaves. Except for this garnish, the beet salad can be prepared ahead of time. So can the fruit dessert, though again, assembly should be last minute. Cantaloupe melon balls, sprinkled with lemon juice and salt, are served in a honeydew puree and garnished with strawberries.

The spaghetti comes together fairly quickly. Essentially, garlic is sautéed in a bit of butter with grated lemon zest, then adding half and half as the pasta is cooking to al dente. Once the pasta is cooked, it is added to the pan with the sauce, followed by lemon juice. The acid slightly curdles the half and half, thickening the sauce without any flour, starch or eggs. Incidentally, that is also why it is uncommon to add both milk and lemon to tea, as the acid curdles the milk and essentially makes a hot sludge of homemade ricotta. Not what you want in tea, but the concept is used to great effect here.

This menu demonstrates two important features of many Italian regional cuisines: citrus fruits and the abundance of fruits and vegetables. Fitting into the ancient tradition of sweet and sour sauces (in Imperial times usually based on vinegar and honey), lemon and orange juice and the fruits’ aromatic peels were quickly adopted upon their introduction in the Medieval era, along with sugar. Though the taste for sweet and sour declined somewhat during the Early Modern era, particularly in the North, lemons and oranges remain ubiquitous throughout the peninsula.

The other notable feature is the attention given to produce. In the English-speaking world, vegetables in particular were historically an afterthought, often boiled and served with butter as a side dish or thrown into a soup or stew. In many parts of Italy, particularly the South, people have historically eaten less meat, providing extra incentive to make vegetables enjoyable. As far as I can tell, many Italians do enjoy them, judging by the number and diversity of recipes in Italian cookbooks. In addition, fruit and cheese are the most common everyday dessert, with many of the desserts we know (gelato, tiramisu, cannoli, etc.) eaten more commonly as afternoon snacks with coffee or on holidays. (Text, pg. 17)

The pasta was great, as I expected, as was the rest of the food. With both “salads,” I was admittedly skeptical but pleasantly surprised. I didn’t think I liked beets and maybe I still wouldn’t like the canned variety from the grocery store, but roasted with fennel seeds they are remarkable. If I make the salad again I would let the onions marinate in the vinegary dressing for a while before serving to reduce their potency, but I would just as soon just peel and slice the beets and roast them on their own with the mentioned seasonings in a foil packet. As a “sauce” for the cantaloupe and strawberries, the honeydew puree was good as well. I had a little trouble with the melon baller for the cantaloupe, but it did help provide a striking visual. I might skip the salt on the cantaloupe next time. If the cook wishes, a Frascati wine, classic and typical of the Rome/Lazio region, is recommended.

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Cooks Tour of Italy Menu 8 (pg. 37-38): Spaghetti with Pecorino Cheese and Black Pepper (Rome)

Again focusing on Rome, Mr. Famularo presents us with a one-dish favorite in and around the Eternal City, both in homes and restaurants. Enhanced by the recommended bread and salad, a common theme throughout the book, this pasta dish is perhaps the simplest one I’ve come across so far. It contains only three ingredients (five if you include the salted cooking water); spaghetti, grated pecorino Romano cheese, and freshly ground black pepper. All of these ingredients have a long history in Rome. Spaghetti has been eaten in the Lazio region for hundreds of years (possibly a custom imported from Naples), while pepper and sheep’s milk cheese have an even longer history.

In ancient times, sheep and goat’s milk cheeses were preferred to those from cow’s milk (possibly due to the former being better adapted to the rugged terrain that covers much of Italy). Even today, Rome’s favorite cheeses are, according to the text, pecorino Romano and fresh sheep’s milk ricotta. During the Pax Romana (traditionally 27 BC to 180 AD) the empire imported so much pepper from India that multiple emperors tried to restrict imports to stem the outflow of silver from the Roman economy. Incidentally, they tried to ban silk for the same reason, with no more success. As pepper became more available and its price dropped, it became more popular than ever, even as it lost its place as an exclusive status symbol.

This was all as simple to put together as promised. If the cheese is grated beforehand and the lettuce washed and dried, everything elsecan be done while the water is boiling and the pasta is cooking. The bread can be warmed, table set, tomatoes and basil washed and dried, and salad assembled. Once the pasta is finished cooking, all that has to be done is sprinkle cheese over it, add pepper (as the only seasoning a good amount should be used), pour over some reserved cooking water, and toss to melt the cheese.

IMG_2515Overall, this was simple but really good. Ordinarily I’m not a big fan of Romano cheese (it has a bit of a funky taste to it), but grated and used in moderate amounts with pepper, it produced a pasta dish with a good flavor but not too strong. The one thing I would change is that I would not put salt in the salad, even though it was recommended. Though I only added it, along with the vinegar and oil, at the last minute, it quickly made the lettuce soggy and gave it a strange texture, though it was fine on the tomatoes. Maybe a different type of lettuce wouldn’t soften as fast, but personally I would skip it in the future since the salad had plenty of flavor without it. Still, the pasta was great and I would definitely make this menu again.

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