Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (43 page)

I will describe to you later how to make hare pie, and I will also tell you about roasting hare. For now I will add that, if you want to cook it sweet-and-sour, you can use the recipe for boar, 285. This is the way to stew hare.

Let’s take, for example, half a hare. First cut it into pieces, then finely chop a medium-sized onion, two cloves of garlic, a piece of celery as long as the palm of your hand, and a few sprigs of rosemary. Put on the fire with a bit of butter, two tablespoons of oil, and four of five strips of prosciutto as wide as a finger. Let this fry for five minutes, then toss in the hare and season with salt, pepper, and spices. When the hare has browned, add half a glass of white wine or Marsala and then throw in a handful of fresh mushrooms or reconstituted dry mushrooms. Cook until done with broth and tomato sauce (recipe 6) or tomato paste diluted with water. Before serving, taste to check whether you need to add a little more butter.

I think that when you prepare sweet-and-sour wild boar you should leave a layer of fat about the thickness of a finger inside the skin, because when cooked the fat of this wild pig remains firm, is not sickeningly greasy, and has a very pleasant, crispy texture.

Supposing that you have a piece of boar meat weighing roughly 1 kilogram (about 2 pounds), these are the proportions for the flavorings.

Take half an onion, half a large carrot, two stalks of white celery the length of the palm of your hand, a pinch of parsley and 30 grams (about 1 ounce) of untrimmed prosciutto. Chop finely with a mezzaluna and put the mixture at the bottom of a saucepan with olive oil, salt, and pepper, placing the wild boar on top to cook. When the meat has browned all over, pour out most of the fat, sprinkle a pinch of flour over it, and add hot water from time to time to finish cooking. In the meantime, prepare the sweet-and-sour sauce in a glass with the following ingredients—you will add it to the meat but only after straining the liquid already in the pan.

40 grams (about 1-1/3 ounces) of raisins

30 grams (about 1 ounce) of chocolate

30 grams (about 1 ounce) of pine nuts

20 grams (about 2/3 of an ounce) of diced candied fruit

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

Add vinegar to taste, but not too much, because you can always add more later. Before sending it to the table, simmer for a while so that all the seasonings blend well. In fact, I should tell you that sweet-and-sour sauce turns out better if you make it a day ahead. If you like it simpler, you can make the sweet-and-sour sauce with just sugar and vinegar.

You can cook hare the same way.

Keep the boar in a marinade (like the one for hare described in recipe 531) for 12 to 14 hours. Remove from the marinade, dry with a cloth, and then prepare as follows.

Place three or four paper-thin slices of lardoon in the bottom of a saucepan, place the piece of boar meat on top and season with salt and pepper, adding a whole onion, a
bouquet garni
, a bit of butter and, for a piece of meat weighing about 1 kilogram (about 2 pounds), half a glass of white wine. Lay another three or four slices of lardoon
on top of the meat, and cover snugly with a sheet of paper greased with butter. Roast in the oven with embers all around, and if it looks like it is starting to dry out, moisten with broth. When the meat is cooked, strain the sauce, skimming the fat, and add it to the boar meat when you send the dish to the table.

The meat of fallow and roe deer and similar game is dry and tough, so it is necessary to let it ripen for some time before it can be properly enjoyed.

For this dish, use the loin, from which you will cut the cutlets, making sure to keep them thin. Place on the fire the amount of butter and oil you need to cook the meat, a whole clove of garlic, and several sage leaves. When the garlic has browned, put the cutlets in the pan, season with salt and pepper, and cook quickly over high heat, moistening them with Marsala wine.

To prepare this dish, see recipe 94 for pappardelle with rabbit sauce.

Take a whole tongue of a milk-fed calf, including the root, which is the most delicate part. Skin the tongue and boil it until half done. For the rest of the dish, follow the directions for wild boar in recipe 285, using the water in which you have boiled the tongue to finish cooking it. To skin the tongue, take a red-hot spatula and place it on the tongue, repeating the operation several times if necessary.

Here’s another way to cook a beef tongue that weighs, without the root, more than 1 kilogram (about 2 pounds).

Skin the tongue as indicated in recipe 289 and stud it with 60 grams (about 2 ounces) of lardoons seasoned with salt and pepper. Truss the tongue so that it will stay flat and put it on the fire with 30 grams (about 1 ounce) of butter. Season with salt and pepper and brown for quite a while. Then finish cooking with brown stock, which you will add a little at a time. When it is done, strain the sauce and reduce it over the fire with a bit of butter and less than half a tablespoon of flour. Serve over the tongue, which you will send to the table cut into slices with a side dish of boiled greens re-heated with butter and with some of the sauce.

Take a “pietra” (stone), as it is called in Florence—that is, the kidney of a large animal or several kidneys of small animals—open it and remove all the fat, which has an unpleasant odor. Cut it crosswise into thin slices, place it in a bowl, salt it and pour in enough hot water to cover it. When the water has cooled, drain it and put it in a pan to make it sweat out whatever water is left, which you will then pour out. Sprinkle a pinch of flour over it, toss in a bit of butter and let it sizzle for just five minutes, stirring often. Season with salt, pepper, and less than half a glass of white wine. Leave it on the fire for a little while longer, and when you are about to remove it add another bit of butter, a pinch of chopped parsley, and a little broth, if necessary.

Keep in mind that kidneys become tough if left on the fire too long. It is a good idea to boil the wine and reduce it by 1/3 before using it. If you use Marsala or champagne instead of white wine, so much the better.

The kidneys of milk-fed calves, mutton, pigs, and similar animals are good for a midday meal when prepared in the following way. Before you start to cook the kidneys, have ready some parsley finely chopped with half a clove of garlic, the juice of half a lemon, and five to six slices of crustless bread which you have dried out over the fire.

Open the kidneys, remove the fat, and cut them crosswise into thin slices. If you have a total of between 400 and 500 grams (between about 14 ounces and 1 pound) of kidneys, toss them in a pan with between 50 and 60 grams (about 1-2/3 and 2 ounces) of butter over a high flame. Stir often, and as soon as the kidneys start to sizzle, toss in the parsley and garlic mixture. Season with salt and pepper. As you keep stirring with a wooden spoon, pour in the lemon juice, and at the very end add a ladleful of broth.

This should all take about five minutes. Send the kidneys to the table over the slices of bread.

This recipe serves four people.

Open the kidneys and remove the fat as in recipe 291. Cook them just as they are—that is, cut in half lengthwise—in the following manner. Put a frying pan on the fire with an appropriate amount of butter; as soon as the butter starts to bubble, put the kidneys in the pan for just a little while; then remove them from the fire and season with salt, pepper, and a pinch of chopped parsley. Coat well with the seasonings and after several hours dip in bread crumbs and cook in the same pan, or on the grill.

By association of ideas, the word “castrato” brings to my mind those manservants who shave their mustaches and sideburns so that they look like so many eunuchs, with faces like Franciscan friars. This ridiculous practice is the result of the perverse vanity of their masters.

For the same reason, that is, their mistresses’ vanity, maidservants scowl and complain that they do not want to wear those white caps otherwise known as bonnets. In fact, when they are no longer young or beautiful, they look like Barbary apes with that contraption on their heads. Wet nurses, on the other hand, who come from the country and have little concern for their own dignity, sport their bonnets decorated with colorful bows and ribbons—“indegne pompe, di servitu misere insegne” (unworthy pomp, of servitude the miserable banner)—strutting around unaware that they look like cows being led to market.

To come to the subject at hand, I believe that these two cuts of meat are best when prepared in the following way. Let’s take, for example, a shoulder of mutton, and you can calculate the amounts you will need for a leg accordingly. I do not need to tell you that the animal should be of excellent quality, nice and fat. Let’s suppose that the shoulder weighs between 1 and 1-1/2 kilograms (about 2 to 3 pounds). Bone it, stud it with lardoons, and season inside and out with salt and pepper; then roll it and tie it into a nice shape. Place the meat in a casserole with 40 grams (about 1-1/3 ounces) of butter and brown it. Then add the following ingredients:

several lardoon or prosciutto rinds

1 bouquet garni made of parsley, celery, and carrot

1 whole medium-sized onion

the bones you have removed from the shoulder or leg, cracked

some scraps of raw meat, if you have any

1 glass of broth (1/2 glass will do
)

2 or 3 tablespoons of brandy

Put the mutton in enough cold water to almost cover it. Cover the pan tightly and simmer until the meat is cooked, which should take four or more hours if the meat is tough. Then strain the sauce, discarding what does not go through, skim off the fat, and serve only the mutton meat.

This dish is usually garnished with carrots, turnips, or shelled beans. If you use carrots, put two large whole carrots in with the meat. When they are done remove them and cut into small wheels, which you will add later. If you use turnips, make sure they are not too strong tasting if the weather has not been cold yet. Cut the turnips into four sections, blanch them, dice, brown lightly in butter and add to the sauce, which should be quite abundant. If you use beans, cook them first and then re-heat in the mutton sauce.

This is a simpler recipe, and preferable to the preceding one when you do not intend to accompany it with greens or legumes.

Take a shoulder of mutton, bone it, and stud it with lardoons rolled in salt and pepper. Salt the meat a bit, then roll it and tie tightly, before placing it to brown on the fire with 40 grams (about 1-1/3 ounces) of butter and half an onion studded with a clove. Remove the saucepan from the fire, and pour in a glass of water or, better yet, broth, a tablespoon of brandy, a
bouquet garni
, and a few chopped fresh tomatoes if they are in season. Cover the pan with a double sheet of paper and simmer for around three hours, turning the piece of meat often. When it is cooked, discard the onion, strain the sauce, skim off the fat, and pour the sauce over the meat before you send the dish to the table.

Be careful not to overcook the meat, otherwise you will not be able to slice it.

You can prepare a leg of mutton in the same way, using the appropriate amounts of seasonings. If you find the distinctive smell of mutton sickening, trim the fat while the meat is still raw.