Fun way to increase your cooking repertoire

I thought about this brilliant idea a while ago, but I'm just now getting around to posting it.

Here it is: you choose an ingredient. Not a main ingredient like rice, pasta, bread, vegetables, meat, fish. But an accessory ingredient, so to speak. Garlic, onion, different kinds of oil, different vinegars, different kinds of pepper, herbs (preferably fresh), spices, fresh lemon, fresh ginger, truffles (yum) and so on. You get the idea. Then you acquire said ingredient (not a token amount) and use it up over a shortish period of time, like two weeks or one month. This will force you to get inventive and out of your rut and comfort zone. Do not be indiscriminate and put ingredient x anywhere- that will not improve your cooking skills or expand your repertoire (is that a pretentious word in cooking? sorry). You probably will also lose money and time.

Here's an easy example. What is the most used herb in Italian cooking? Basil? Origano? No- it's parsley. The Italians say "e' come il prezzemolo, e' dappertutto". He's like parsley, he's everywhere. Start out by acquiring the fresh parsley. Try both Italian flat leaf and curly types. Compare and contrast (I only use the former). You might want to get a parsley plant or two. You might want to grow your own, and then start a herb garden. Try making salsa verde (both Italian and Latin American). Try making omelette aux fines herbes. Tabbouleh.  Experiment (it won't be too risky with parsley). Look up its nutritional value. Look up recipes and try them. If you know foreign languages, look up foreign recipes with parsley.

If you follow this over a period of months, or years (why not?), you should significantly improve your cooking skills and food knowledge, and have fun doing it.

Trader Joe's frozen porcini chunks

There are some ingredients of Italian cuisine that are hard to come by in the States. Radicchio tardivo di Treviso, seen below, is one of them.

NOT porcini

Another one is porcini mushrooms. I've come upon the dried variety, of course, but there are obvious limitations. Next best would be frozen (also a compromise, but still.) So last week I was at my local Trader Joe's when I came upon their frozen porcini mushroom chunks. And bought them, naturally. Net weight 8 oz., price $3.69. Not bad. Imported from France. It must be a new item, since I haven't found anything on the Internet about them.

My first use was from frozen in a simple pasta dish. Pretty good. The second was even better. I sauteed fresh onions in olive oil, added riced cauliflower, stirred, added the flavorful water from bag, added the porcini (cut into smaller pieces). Bit of grated parmigiano. Very good. An herb or two would make it even better. I'm thinking thyme.

Obviously not a substitute for fresh porcini picked while hiking in the woods of Tuscany, but better than being porciniless.

Zucchini ideas

I love zucchini (courgettes for you furriners.) Despite urban legends of peeps doing their best to get rid of the fast-growing little green ones by such means as unloading them on neighbors' porches in the dead of night, they are yummy. Make 'em alone, make 'em with pasta, put 'em in rice salad, frittata, as roll-ups, in zucchini parm, stuffed (easy in the microwave), in vegetarian lasagna, as carpaccio (very fresh, very thinly sliced), in baking, on pizza, with other grilled veggies in a sammich... Do not however commit the common American mistake of growing or buying large zucchini. Have you ever noticed that the word "zucchini" includes the suffix -ino (denoting smallness)? Oh, and do not neglect the flowers.

Here is a small but tasty compendium of my recipes over the years featuring zucchini:

Pasta with zucchini, fresh tomato and fresh mint Zucchini and mint, uhmmm

Pasta salad with peppers, zucchini and eggplant

Spaghetti with zucchini and shrimp A classic combination in Italy

Zucchine alla scapece More mint, my favorite zucchini recipe

Pasta with vegetarian ragu' Mediterranean flavors

An excellent Italian food blog- Memorie di Angelina

There are so many excellent online resources regarding food and recipes that it isn't really necessary anymore to acquire cookbooks or food magazines. Unless of course it's your thing.

The problem arises (especially with a foreign cuisine) in assessing the value and authenticity of stuff online. Well I'm here to tell you that the well-established blog Memorie di Angelina is the real deal when it comes to Italian cooking. The author (an American) writes in honor of his nonna Angelina who inspired him to great culinary feats. There's an adorable picture of the future lawyer/cook as a baby in the arms of nonna on his About page.

Believe me, I vetted this site, and it was not found lacking. The proof of the budino was not in the eating (alas), but in thoroughly inspecting his post and recipe on carne alla pizzaiola, our favorite at home back in the day as made by my mother (Angelina!), born in Naples. Dude passed with flying colors.

La pizzaiola is a simple dish made with thin steak and tomato and oregano sauce. At home we would mop up the delicious sauce with crusty bread (la scarpetta). No pasta needed. You can find the recipe here.

The Italians and breakfast

Just reading an unexpected article in the New York Times that debunks the idea that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. The article is written by a prominent medical specialist, Aaron Carroll. It caught my eye because I have long believed that breakfast is relatively unimportant.

My opinion regarding the breakfast question comes from a long-standing observation of the fact that Italians have little or no breakfast. At any rate, their having breakfast is irregular, and often consists of a coffee beverage and a pastry or cookies (the latter mostly for children.) Some just have coffee. The French have similar habits. Both the Italians and the French have relatively little obesity and live long lives. The Americans and Brits, known for their more abundant breakfasts, have greater health problems.

It's hard to tease out the various factors that go into better health and zero in on just one variable, such as breakfast consumption. But my own experience in Italy bears out Dr. Carroll's advice.

Apericena

Apericena is a portmanteau word made up of aperitivo and cena, and this relatively new custom in fact is a combination of a drink (usually alcoholic) and a buffet dinner, with an affordable all inclusive price tag.

The aperitivo has been around a long time, and the word refers both to the drink before the meal and the custom itself, which involves having a drink with perhaps a very light snack before a major meal.  The difference between aperitivo and apericena is that the latter does not precede the meal, but replaces the meal. And the meal is not the usual sit down affair with two or more courses, but a buffet. So that the apericena is a way to save both money and time and have some fun, too. In practice, there is often overlap in the usage of the two words.

It will be fairly obvious that this is similar to our happy hour. Music and (alas) karaoke are often featured. But, being in Italy, you can be sure that the drinks and food will be better. I'd definitely give it a try.

Nepetella, che confusione!

I'm a great lover of herbs, so when I was reading La Repubblica this morning and a certain Chef Rubio named nepetella as one of his favorite ingredients, I immediately sought to clarify its identity. I ended up doing major research- confusion reigns supreme, even among Italians. In these cases, I always think that the botanical name is your friend. But there is still no consensus on this weighty matter.

Many Italians seem to think that nepetella is a synonym of the more common word mentuccia (and some think mentuccia is a generic name for mint.) But mentuccia should be Mentha pulegium (English pennyroyal),whereas nepetella is not in the genus Mentha L., but in the genus Calamintha (but both are in the Lamiaceae family.)  In fact the botanical name for nepetella is Calamintha nepeta, possibly from the Etruscan city Nepete. This would translate to lesser calamint in English, although this term is not used for culinary purposes. Nepetella now seems to be standard in English for culinary uses. The authoritative Treccani dictionary states that mentuccia is used for both M. pulegium (pulegio) and Calamintha nepeta, but especially the latter. Some people have even gone so far as to mix nepetella up with catnip (Nepete cataria.)

As if this weren't bad enough, there are all sorts of regional names for these herbs. The confusion continues with the terms menta romana or mentuccia romana. Nepetella is in fact associated with Roman cooking, as in the recipe for Roman-style artichokes (not to be confused with artichokes alla giudia, also from Rome- its Jewish tradition). It is also good with mushrooms, especially porcini.

However you call it, nepetella is not easy to find in the States, although seeds can be obtained. The herb is said to be a cross between oregano and mint, and English-language recipes will often substitute other herbs for it. Even many Italian recipes do this.

Eager to try nepetella in a recipe? Here is Williams-Sonoma's take on Roman-style artichokes. And below you will find a photo of what is (probably) nepetella. I'm sure it's not catnip.

The mysterious pionono

Here's an interesting puzzle in food history and etymology for you.

How does one go from this:

 

To this?

Let me backtrack. I was talking to a man from Puerto Rico recently when the conversation turned to food, as it will. I had him give me a complete rundown on his native cuisine, and the word pionono popped up. I asked him to repeat it, then spell it. It was indeed pionono. I informed him that this was a famous Italian pope, Pius IX, in Italian Pio Nono. We both pondered the link between a Pope and a scrumptious roll of ripe plantain and seasoned ground beef.

I did some sleuthing, of course. Some version of the pionono is found in a number of Spanish-speaking countries and even the Philippines. What they all have in common is that they are all roll-like, with a stuffing that can be sweet or savory. But the grandpa of them all is the Santa Fe (Spain) pionono, shown in the illustration above. How did this happen?

The pionono was invented in 1897 by pastry chef Ceferino Isla in Santa Fe (Granada), who as a devout Catholic decided to name it after the pope of his time. The resemblance is apparently in the top that looks like a mitre, and some impertinently say in the pudgy consistency of the body. Others maintain that the Pope himself partook of the pastry. Ironically, it is believed that the confection has Arab origins.

From its original home in Spain it morphed into various versions in Latin America, some sweet, some savory. A search of the term (as one word) in Google Images will show you the variety of dishes derived from Ceferino's creation.

WHO doesn't like prosciutto?

Who doesn't like prosciutto? The WHO, that's who.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has just issued a statement maintaining that "processed meats" are in Group 1 (same group as cigarettes and asbestos) as a carcinogen.

Processed meats are a big part of the Italian culinary traditions as salumi. Prosciutto cotto, prosciutto crudo, bresaola, mortadella, salame ... I certainly don't intend to give up a moderate consumption of these delicious products which have centuries of history and know-how behind them. I am also perplexed that WHO apparently did not distinguish between the different forms of processing in terms of health risk. They also fail to point out that our entire food chain has been compromised, making it difficult to understand exactly where the problem is.

WHO knows? I'm not so sure.

New York Times article on herbs

The Times has a delightful article today on one of my very favorite things, herbs. It impishly alludes to an Italian gentleman in Amalfi who is horrified when he is served a plate of pasta, cooked by Americans, where the pasta includes mint, among other ingredients. He becomes almost distraught in his opposition to this accostamento (pairing).

I have seen this attitude countless times in Italy. Non si fa! (it isn't done). One does not include fish and cheese in the same dish. One does not even put fresh lemon on fresh fish. All this culinary Calvinism is especially amusing when you think of the quasi-anarchic nature of Italian society.

The author, one Tamar Adler, calls such people provincial, and I do too. Although the opposite extreme- anything goes (in which my fellow Americans often indulge) is probably even worse. As for me, I know that one of my favorite summertime recipes has zucchini and mint. You can find it here.

To further corroborate my view, I did a quick Google search of "pasta con menta." Results(s): 525,000, from standard Italian magazines and websites. Just on the first page there was quick pasta with lemon and mint, spaghetti with capers, tuna and mint (in the picture, from Barilla website), farfalle with mint, spaghetti with zucchini and mint, pasta with swordfish and mint, spaghetti with zucchini, guanciale and mint... Poor Signor Cavaliere!

3D pasta. Yes, 3D pasta.

Maybe I'm a little slow on the draw, but I just now became aware of the existence of 3D pasta. If you do not know what 3D printing is, get up to speed by reading this page.

Barilla, the giant pasta and pastry manufacturer, commissioned a 3D pasta shape contest. The winners can be seen at this page. My initial reaction is that this is a gimmick, but one of them did strike my fancy. It's called lune (moons), shown below.

What I ask myself, of course, is how well these computer-generated shapes will hold up in actual cooking e.g. take to sauce, lend themselves to various cooking techniques etc. I also think that it might be a good idea if someone were to catalogue the enormous variety of pasta shapes that have been generated by humans over the centuries. And preserve the rapidly-disappearing oral tradition of Italian regional home cooking.

Barilla actually is looking into the possibility of equipping restaurants with 3D printers. Should be interesting.

Italians unhappy about Happy Meal

McDonald's has come out with an ad showing an Italian family eating at a pizzeria. The waiter asks the bambino what pizza he wants. The wee one answers: Eppy meel! (happy meal) Then the parents whisk the spoiled brat to a Mickey Dees where he beams eppily.

Well, this caused something of an uproar in Italy, and you know something? They're right. This is wrong on so many levels. You let your kid order before you. Although you have already chosen the pizzeria, you immediately leave as soon as your only child expresses his gastronomically-challenged opinion. What they should have said: "You, signorino, will have a pizza margherita and you will like it. After that, we are going straight home where you will study English to prevent further outrages upon the English language such as "eppy"."

Il toast

Il toast is one of our insidious false friends, words that look alike but have a different meaning in a foreign language. Toast in Italian does not mean "toast" (which is pane tostato) but basically a grilled ham and cheese. I can tell that you are distinctly underwhelmed and even doubtful that Italians would dedicate an English word to such a mundane little thing.

But as you know, Italians do it better, and that includes grilled ham and cheese. Today's Corriere della Sera provides step by step illustrated instructions on how to prepare this at home, because it is almost always eaten out (at a bar).

Here are some tips: use thinly sliced ham (cooked ham, not what we call prosciutto). In theory any melting cheese will do, but they suggest fontina. Some Italians will use sottilette Kraft, which are (gasp) slices of Kraft processed cheese. Mozzarella is not used. Use white bread which is not too thick or thin- your usual American bread will be too thick. You may butter the slices. Then grill until cheese is melted but not oozing out of the bread.

Now the Corriere was most remiss in ignoring the more refined (and tasty) toast farcito, one of my favorites when I'm in Italy. This is stuffed toast, and what it is stuffed with is finely chopped mixed pickled vegetables, which the Italians call giardiniera. I have seen this in American supermarkets and grocery stores, so you could also prepare this yummy version at home. Highly recommended.

Italian words for cooking and eating objects

Il cucchiaio- spoon

La forchetta- fork

Il coltello- knife

Il piatto- plate (also means dish in figurative sense e.g. my favorite dish is gnocchi)

Il bicchiere- glass

La tazza- cup

La scodella- bowl

Il mestolo- ladle

La spatola- spatula

Lo scolapasta- colander

Il colino- strainer

La pentola- pot

Il pentolone- big pot, Dutch oven

Il coperchio- lid

Il tegame, la padella- pan, frying pan

Il tegamino- small pan

Il tagliere- chopping board

La grattugia- grater

Il cavatappi- corkscrew

Lo schiaccianoci- nutcracker

La frusta- whisk/whip

L'apriscatole- can opener

Il forno- oven

Il freezer/congelatore- freezer

Il (forno a) microonde- microwave

La cucina- kitchen, range/stove

Il frigo(rifero)- refrigerator

Il lavello- sink

La tovaglia- tablecloth

Il tovagliolo- napkin

Le americane- place mats (I am mildly offended by this)

Il frullatore- blender

Il tritatutto- chopper, sometimes garbage disposal (uncommon in Italy)

Pesto for champions

Many of us have a lot of basil on hand, so now might be the time to make pesto from scratch or reconsider how you make it.

First of all, the recipe should properly be called pesto all genovese, as it comes from the Genoa area and there are other kinds of pesto. While the recipe is forgiving, like most Italian cuisine, and there are many versions, there are some indications. Due to its simplicity, the quality of ingredients should be good and they should all be fresh. This means freshly peeled garlic, good olive oil, real parmigiano-reggiano and preferably Italian pine-nuts, which are more difficult to find than Chinese pine-nuts. The basil should be Genoa basil (there are wide differences in basils). Don't use the basil stems and remove the anima (green core) of the garlic. Another suggestion: try making it with the old-fashioned mortar and pestle (the word "pestle" is related to the word pesto).

You can find the recipe for an authentic pesto here, straight from the yearly Pesto Championship. Click on the little flag to translate the Italian. Personally, I have never heard of the inclusion of pecorino sardo in pesto alla genovese, and I wouldn't put any pecorino in my pesto. Pasta formats: either short or long pasta (I always use long); trofie and trenette are a classic. There doesn't seem to be a consensus on a wine pairing, with some suggesting (improbably) reds. I would go with a fairly dry white or rose'.

Italy without gluten

Doesn't that sound like a horrifying, not to mention senseless, prospect? Italy without crusty bread ... bruschetta ... pasta ... pizza ... pastries.

According to the New York Times, not only is it possible to traverse Italy unscathed with celiac disease or gluten intolerance, it may even be enjoyable. Precisely because of their glutenful environment, Italians are aware of the problem and have made modifications for the unfortunate peeps who cannot indulge in all these goodies. Read about it here.

Bertolli makes desserts! Who knew?

We all know Bertolli 'cause of their olive oil and savory stuff. But desserts?

Well, I was in my supermarket last week and espied an enticing package: New! Bertolli tiramisu!


Was it good? Yes it was; you may think they wimped out and didn't go the authentic route, with the alcohol- well, they did. The ingredients include Marsala wine. So there. And you can taste it, too. The only thing is that the portions were small for me, so I partook of both little packages. What can I say. They have produced other probably bodacious desserts, which I will be reviewing on this site. These are cappuccino, chocolate and limoncello goodies. Nom nom nom.
Rest assured that I have no relation with Bertolli, and there is no conflict of interest in my post. This is objectively yummy, but on the small side.

Cooking from Italian recipes

Many of us are lovers of Italian cuisine, and some of us actually cook it, or try to. But if you want to take it to the next level- and believe me, it will be a quantum jump- seek out and follow recipes in the original Italian, from Italian sources. Here's how to start:

You should have some knowledge of Italian, but not necessarily advanced. The hardest part of Italian is the verb, and the verbs in recipes are generally imperatives ("beat two eggs," "place in oven"), indicative tense ("I beat two eggs," I place in the oven"), or the easiest, infinitives. You're not going to get too many subjunctives, imperfects or passati remoti. Although it would be amusing if you did. The vocab, while extensive, is limited, especially for the simpler fare. Get a decent online bilingual Italian dictionary.

Now. You can of course collect Italian cookbooks, old and new, but the way to go is the Internet. Specifically, Google. No, but not google.com, or other non-Italian Googles. Go to google.it. The results from the various country versions of Google are not the same. Try this experiment: in google.com, input "spaghetti carbonara"; in google.it, input "spaghetti carbonara." See? Do you want Americans (or even worse, Brits) telling you how to make Italian food? I don't. For a fast recipe, while you are still in your default Google, input the name of the dish plus the word ricetta, which should take you to Italian resources. For example, "spaghetti carbonara ricetta" should weed out non-Italian versions of same. Other great sources are Italian food blogs, Italian food forums, and the Italian version of Italian food producers.

So, if you are American, you will now notice that these Europeans are measuring things metrically. Of all the nerve. Naw, don't do all the calculations, are you kidding me? You can of course have your little set of measuring cups and such in fluent metric. But once again, Google is your amico. Input any pesky metric units in google.com and out will come the extremely rational and user-friendly American units! Try these: 1.5 kilos in pounds, 600 ml in ounces, 180 degrees Celsius in Fahrenheit. How cool (or hot) is that?

Now we're cooking' with gas (literally, I hope). Don't just stop at the written recipes. Go to the video recipes. This should make it easier because you'll actually be seeing what they're doing as they're prattling along; but you can get into a lot of trouble if the video ricetta doesn't come with a written list of ingredients and quantities. Here's an example of one that does, a pasta with tuna recipe from the top food blog Giallo Zafferano. If you are advanced in Italian and already a proficient cook, go straight for the video recipes you'll find on You Tube, once again using the "ricetta" tag to weed out non-Italian stuff.

One last note. Italians tend to be less precise in their recipes, probably because they assume that you know a lot of this stuff already. You're not likely to find things like "pre-heat oven to 375 degrees F, lower to 325, and bake for 22-26 minutes until knife comes out clean when inserted in middle and edges are a deep golden brown." Deal with it- it's all worth it.

Words of the week: astice and aragosta

This gets a little complicated because both words are translated by the word "lobster." But they're different species.

First, l'astice (m.) (AHS-tee-cheh) is closer to what we as Americans think of as lobster, the Maine lobster i.e. the one with claws. Here is an astice (Homarus gammarus):

But this European lobster is not exactly the same as the Maine, or American lobster, which has the scientific name of Homarus americanus. But they are quite similar.

Now for what the Italians refer to as aragosta (Palinurus elephas). This unfortunate-looking critter is the European spiny lobster. Here it is.

We of course have spiny lobsters in the US, too, but I never see them because I live in New England.

The takeaway from this is that you have two entirely different animals here. There is disagreement about which one tastes better, but in Italy the aragosta will cost more than the astice.

Artusi's cookbook for $1.64!

This definitely made my day. I discovered the major historical classic of Italian cooking, Pellegrino Artusi's La Scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiare bene (1891), for $1.64 as a Kindle download from Amazon. It's true that this book was already available online, as it has long been out of copyright. But the convenience of having it on Kindle makes all the difference. (Note that even if you don't have a Kindle device, you can read Kindle downloads with just a free Kindle app.) (No, I am not on the take from Amazon.)

It has oodles and oodles of recipes, basic and not so basic. It also has an engaging, chatty style. For example, as noted earlier in this blog, he personally enjoins the humble meatloaf (polpettone) to come forward and take its rightful place among the more elegant dishes. The Italian used is old-fashioned, of course, but accessible if you have a good mastery of the language. It is invaluable for getting a handle on the difficult task of establishing what is and what isn't Italian cuisine. Do note, if you're actually going to try out the recipes here (and you probably should- I am), that in typical Italian style, they assume that you already know what you're doing. The instructions are consequently vague and imprecise.

I look forward to perusing this for pleasure and reading it for historical insight. Above all, I'll try my hand at many recipes, adapting and experimenting along the way. Of course, I'll report back on my blog about my discoveries in the next few weeks or months.