Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (29 page)

Prepare a battuto with a quarter of an onion, a clove of garlic, a finger-length stalk of celery, a few basil leaves and a sufficient amount of parsley. Season with a little olive oil, salt and pepper. Mash 7 or 8 tomatoes and put everything on the fire, stirring occasionally. Once you see the sauce thickening to the consistency of a runny cream, pass it through a sieve and it is ready to use.

This sauce lends itself to innumerable uses, as I shall indicate in due course. It is good with boiled meat, and excellent when served with cheese and butter on pasta, as well as when used to make the risotto described in recipe 77.

This is one of the best sauces, particularly to flavor poached fish. In a china bowl break the raw yolks of two fresh eggs. After you have whisked them a little, add 6 or 7 tablespoons of olive oil, pouring it very slowly, drop by drop as it were, particularly at first. Then add the juice of one lemon and, if the eggs can absorb it, add a little more oil. A mayonnaise that has turned out well should look like a thick cream, but to obtain this consistency you will have to work it for more than twenty minutes. Lastly, season with a good pinch of salt and white pepper.

Adding a hard-boiled egg yolk to the two raw yolks makes it easier to prepare this sauce successfully.

Take two tablespoons of pickled capers, two anchovies and a pinch of parsley. Mince everything together until very fine, and place in a gravy dish with a generous pinch of pepper and plenty of olive oil. If the sauce is not sufficiently acidic, add vinegar or lemon juice. Serve over poached fish.

Finely chop one small onion, parsley, a few basil leaves, prosciutto trimmed of fat, and capers drained of brine. Sauté in good olive oil. Allow to simmer slowly and when the onion begins to brown, cool with a little broth. Bring to a boil and simmer again for a short while. Then remove from the heat, adding one or two minced anchovies and lemon juice.

This sauce can be served on poached eggs, on steak (which in this case need not be salted), and also on cutlets.

The following amounts will make a sauce for a fish fillet or a whole fish weighing between 300 and 400 grams (between 10-1/2 and 14 ounces).

Put a small saucepan on the fire with 20 grams (about 2/3 of an ounce) of butter and a heaping tablespoon of flour. When the flour begins to brown, pour in (a little at a time) two ladles of broth made with the fish you are preparing. When you see that the flour no longer rises as the sauce simmers, remove from the fire and add two tablespoons of olive oil and an egg yolk, stirring well. Lastly add the juice of half a lemon. Salt and pepper to taste. Allow to cool and pour over the fish, which should be served garnished all around by whole parsley sprigs.

This sauce should have the consistency of a cream that is not too liquid, so that it will coat the fish. You will see how fine and delicate it is. You can serve it hot for those not fond of cold fish.

70 grams (about 2-1/3 ounces) of butter

2 egg yolks

1 tablespoon of lemon juice

1/2 an eggshell of water

salt and pepper

Melt the butter separately, without overheating it.

Put the egg yolks and the water in a bowl which you will put over a light flame or at the edge of the stove. Start beating the mixture with a whisk. Then add the butter carefully a little at a time. When the mixture has thickened, add the lemon and lastly the salt and pepper.

This sauce should be prepared just before serving. It is a very delicate sauce for poached fish or any similar dish. These amounts are sufficient for about 500 grams (about 1 pound) of fish.

This sauce, simple but tasty and healthy, is made with egg yolks, salted anchovies, fine olive oil and lemon juice. Boil the eggs for 10 minutes, and for every egg yolk hard boiled in this way use either one large or two small anchovies. Clean the anchovies, remove the spines and pass through a sieve together with the egg yolks. Then dilute the mixture with olive oil and lemon juice until it becomes creamy. Cover the grilled fish with this sauce before sending it to the table, or serve on the side in a gravy dish.

50 grams (about 1 -2/3 ounces) of butter

50 grams (about 1 -2/3 ounces) of capers, drained of brine

1 heaping tablespoon of flour

salt, pepper and vinegar

These amounts are enough for a fish weighing about 500 grams (about 1 pound).

Not everyone can easily digest butter, which, being a fatty substance, is by its very nature hard on the stomach, especially when fried. When it is combined with acids, as in this and in similar instances, this is even more the case, and then butter often proves difficult to digest even by the strongest stomachs.

Cook the fish and, leaving it to stay warm in its broth, prepare the sauce. Put the flour on the fire with half the butter. Stir, and, when it starts to brown, add the remaining butter.

Allow to simmer for a while, then add a ladleful of fish broth. Season generously with salt and pepper, and remove the saucepan from the stove. Add the capers, half whole and half chopped, and then a droplet of vinegar. Taste for flavor and texture—the sauce should have the consistency of a light cream.

Place the fish well drained and hot on a large platter. Pour the sauce, equally hot, over it. Garnish with whole parsley sprigs, and send to the table.

Here is a sauce that can be served equally well with boiled meat and poached fish.

50 grams (about 1-2/3 ounces) of tuna preserved in olive oil

50 grams (about 1-2/3 ounces) of capers, drained of brine

2 anchovies

2 hard-boiled egg yolks

a good pinch of parsley

the juice of half a lemon

a pinch of pepper

olive oil, as needed

Clean the anchovies and then mince them finely with a mezzaluna, along with the tuna, the capers and the parsley. Then crush the mixture in a mortar with the egg yolks. Add a little olive oil to soften the mixture and then pass it through a sieve. After this is completed, add the lemon juice and enough olive oil to obtain the consistency of a light cream.

40 grams (about 1-1/3 ounces) of pine nuts

15 grams (about 1/2 an ounce) of capers, drained of brine

1 salted anchovy

1 bard-boiled egg yolk

3 pickled olives, pitted

1/2 a garlic clove

a few sprigs of parsley, including the stems

soft crustless bread soaked in vinegar, about the size of an egg

a pinch of salt

a pinch of pepper

With a mezzaluna mince the parsley and the garlic very finely. Then put them in a mortar with all the other ingredients. Pound the mixture into a very smooth mash and then pass through a sieve. Once this is done, dilute the resulting mixture with 60 grams (about 2 ounces) of olive oil and a droplet of vinegar, but taste first to ensure you put in the right amount.

This is an excellent sauce and these amounts should be enough for 600 grams (about 1-1/3 pounds) of fish.

Do not get the idea that this sauce takes its name from the Pope in the Vatican, and is therefore some sort of extravagant delight. All the same it is rather good on fried cutlets.

Take a small handful of capers, squeezing out the brine, and an equal amount of sweetened olives, from which you have removed the pits. Mince both with a mezzaluna. Finely chop a bit of onion and put it on the fire with some butter. When the onion begins to brown, moisten it a little at a time with water until it dissolves. Then add the mixture of capers and olives and allow to simmer for a while, eventually adding a droplet of vinegar, a pinch of flour and a little more butter. Finally, add a minced anchovy, and send to the table without letting the sauce simmer any further.

Prepare a well-minced battuto with a small, nut-size chunk of onion, a half clove of garlic and a little parsley. Put on the fire with 20 grams (about 2/3 of an ounce) of butter and, when the onion begins to brown, add two fingers of Marsala or white wine in which you have first dissolved a heaping teaspoon of flour. Season the sauce with a pinch of salt, pepper and the usual spices, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon.

When the flour has thickened the sauce, add a little broth and then add some truffle shavings. Allow to stand for a moment longer on the fire, and serve as a garnish for fried cutlets of milk-fed veal, steaks or roasted meats.

I warn you that wine as a condiment is hard on some stomachs.

This is the same sauce as the French
béchamel
, except that theirs is more complicated.

Heat in a saucepan a tablespoon of flour and a pat of butter as large as an egg. Use a wooden spoon to dissolve the butter and flour together. When the flour begins to color, add 1 liter (about 4 cups) of good-quality milk a little at a time, stirring constantly until the liquid has thickened to the consistency of milky cream. This is the bechamel. If it appears too thick, add milk; if too watery, reheat with another piece of butter combined with flour. These proportions produce a good amount of sauce, but you can vary them according to your needs.

A good béchamel and a brown stock prepared correctly are the foundations, as well as the principal secret of fine cooking.

Take some large green peppers, cut them open and remove the seeds. Slice them lengthwise into four or five strips. Scorch them a little in a skillet with some olive oil—this makes it easier to peel off the skin. Once the skins have been removed, put a clove of finely chopped garlic on the fire in olive oil and butter. When the garlic begins to brown, add the peppers. Salt and let the peppers absorb the flavor, then add tomato sauce (see recipe 6).

Do not cook too long, otherwise the peppers will lose the tangy flavor that makes them so delicious. Serve with boiled meats.

Eggs come immediately after meat at the top of the scale of nutritional value. During his tenure at the University of Florence, the celebrated physiologist Moritz Schifp
²⁷
used to argue that the egg white is more nourishing than the yolk, which is composed of fatty substances, and that raw or lightly cooked eggs are less readily digested than well cooked eggs, because the stomach has to perform two operations instead of one: first coagulating the egg, then breaking it down to prepare it for assimilation by the body. Therefore it is better to abide by the middle path: eggs should be cooked neither too little nor too much.

Spring is the season in which eggs taste best. Fresh eggs are given to birthing mothers to drink, and are also considered a good food for newlyweds.