Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (47 page)

Serve warm with its own concentrated juice; but first remove the twine and thread. If it has turned out right, you should be able to slice the veal, which will look quite handsome with the layers of prosciutto and mortadella. You can serve it with fresh peas cooked in the meat sauce, or with sections of fennel that you have boiled in advance.

Prepare this dish with loin of milk-fed veal (remove the gristle but do not bone), cut into thin chops. Using a saucepan or a copper skillet, sauté some whole sage leaves in an appropriate amount of butter. Once the sage has fried a little, toss in the chops, and while
they are browning over a high flame, salt on both sides and then sprinkle with a little flour; then finish cooking with Marsala wine. The chops should remain a little moist.

With 500 grams (about 1 pound) of veal loin, weighed after the gristle has been cut away, you will make about six chops. For this amount of meat, less than a finger of Marsala wine will suffice, and if necessary a little tomato sauce. As to flour, a teaspoon will do.

Use a piece of pork loin from the part without ribs.

1 kilogram (about 2 pounds) of pork loin

100 grams (about 3-1/2 ounces) of pork caul
⁶²

100 grams (about 3-1/2 ounces) of lean milk-fed veal

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

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

30 grams (about 1 ounce) of bone marrow

30 grams (about 1 ounce) of grated Parmesan cheese

1 egg yolk

a dash of nutmeg, if you like it

Brown the pork in butter and then chop it with a knife, along with the prosciutto and mortadella; then grind them in a mortar until very fine. Pour this mixture onto a cutting board, add the marrow, Parmesan cheese, and egg yolk, and season lightly with salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Using the blade of a knife, reduce the mixture to a smooth paste. Now remove the surface fat from the pork loin, bone it, and then cut it into seven or eight cutlets; but make sure that they all remain joined at the base, so that they can be opened like the pages of a book. Spread a tablespoon of the veal mixture on each cutlet, and then put them together to form a roll, which you will sprinkle with salt and pepper and tie tightly with twine. This done, cover the loin with the caul, tying it in place with a piece of thread so that it adheres to the meat, and cook over a slow fire in a saucepan, all by itself. It should be done in three hours, and serves eight people.

This dish is good hot or cold, and does not lie heavy on the stomach. If you serve it hot, you can accompany it with some greens warmed in the drippings from the pan. To slice, cut in the opposite direction from the way you sliced the cutlets, which makes for a nice appearance.

By “beef” here I mean meat from a large animal, either cow or calf.

Take a nice cut of lean meat from the leg or the rump, pound it, and put it in a marinade of wine the evening before you intend to cook it. If the meat weighs about 1 kilogram (about 2 pounds), stud it with lardoons and four cloves, tie it, and place on the fire with half an onion cut into thin slices, butter and oil in equal amounts, and salt. Brown all over. When the onion has dissolved, pour in a glass of water, cover the saucepan with a sheet of paper folded in half two or three times and held in place by the lid, and simmer until done. Remove the thread and serve in its own sauce, which you have strained and skimmed. As I have told you before, it is good to make the lardoons about one finger thick, and to season them with salt and pepper.

This is not, in my opinion, a dish for people with delicate stomachs.

While lamb sweetbreads do not need any prior preparation, sweetbreads from larger animals must first be cooked halfway in water, and skinned if necessary. Leave the former whole but cut the latter into pieces. Dredge well in flour, brown in butter, and season with salt and pepper. Then moisten with Marsala or Madeira wine, and bring to a boil. You can also make a sauce separately with a pinch of flour, a bit of butter, and the wine.

If you enhance them with brown stock, instead of being just good, they will become delicious.

No matter how it is cooked or seasoned, tripe remains just an ordinary dish. To my mind, it is not a dish for weak, delicate stomachs, except perhaps when cooked by the Milanese, who have found a way to make it tender and light, or in the Corsican manner, which I will describe below. In some cities tripe is sold boiled, which is convenient. If you cannot find it already boiled, boil it at home, and try to use the large, ridged variety. After boiling it, cut it into strips half a finger wide and dry between the folds of a kitchen towel. Then put it in a saucepan and saute it in butter, and when it has absorbed the butter add brown stock, or tomato sauce (recipe 6) if you do not have any stock. Season with salt and pepper, let it cook at long as possible, and when you are about to remove it from the pan, toss in a pinch of grated Parmesan cheese.

Boil and cut the tripe as in the preceding recipe. Then put it on the fire with butter and chopped garlic and parsley; season with salt and pepper, and when you think it is cooked, bind it with beaten eggs, lemon juice, and grated Parmesan cheese.

This a unique tripe dish in its way, pleasant to the taste and easy to digest, superior to all other tripe dishes I know. But the secret lies in preparing it with brown stock, well made and in great abundance, because the tripe absorbs a great deal of stock. Moreover, it is a dish that can only be made in countries where they normally sell the feet of bovine animals with the hide left on, though shaved. The reason for this is that the gluey hide is needed to bind the sauce.

700 grams (about 1-1/2 pounds) of raw tripe

100 grams (about 3-1/2 ounces) of boned calf foot

80 grams (about 2-2/3 ounces) of butter

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

1/2 a large onion

2 small cloves of garlic

a dash of nutmeg and spices

brown stock, as needed

a handful of grated Parmesan cheese

1 specify
raw
tripe, because in many places it is sold boiled.

After washing the tripe thoroughly, cut it into strips no wider than half a finger; do the same to the calf’s foot. Once this is done, finely chop the onion and put it on the fire; when the onion starts to brown, add the lardoon and garlic, chopped together finely with a mezzaluna. When the lardoon and garlic have began to turn nut brown, toss in the tripe and the calf’s foot, seasoning with salt, pepper, and the spices indicated, but use the latter sparingly. Boil until dry, then moisten with the brown stock and finish cooking over a slow fire until the tripe is tender, which should take between 7 and 8 hours in all. If you do not have enough brown stock, you can substitute broth. When you are ready to serve the tripe, give it more flavor with the grated Parmesan cheese, and pour it over sliced, toasted bread, which should be well drenched with the sauce. Serves five people.

This dish, taken from a treatise on cooking dating from 1694, might seem strange to you, and the mere mention of tripe will probably make you reluctant to try it. But in spite of its homely character, when prepared with the proper seasonings it turns out quite pleasant and does not lie heavy on the stomach.

350 grams (about 12-1/3 ounces) of boiled tripe

100 grams (about 3-1/2 ounces) of partly trimmed prosciutto

30 grams (about 1 ounce) of grated Parmesan cheese

20 grams (about 2/3 of an ounce) of beef marrow

2 eggs

a generous pinch of parsley

a dash of spices or of nutmeg

2 tablespoons of a mash (not too runny) made with bread soaked in broth or milk

Chop the tripe as fine as you can with a mezzaluna. Do the same with the prosciutto, marrow, and parsley; then add the eggs and other ingredients, a little salt, and blend. With this mixture, make 12 or 13 balls, which should serve four people; roll well in flour and fry in oil or lard.

Now finely chop a 1/4 or less of a medium-sized onion and put it in an appropriately sized pan with 60 grams (about 2 ounces) of butter; when the onion has browned, put in the meatballs. After a little while moisten the meatballs with tomato sauce (recipe 6) or tomato paste diluted with water; cover, and simmer for about ten minutes. Remember to turn the meatballs. Send to the table with a little of their sauce, and sprinkled with Parmesan cheese. The seventeenth-century author adds raisins and pine nuts to the tripe mixture, but one can do without them.

Because of its similar cooking method and appearance, tripe brings to mind buttered calf’s foot, which is a typically Florentine dish both in character and preparation. This dish is worthy of praise because it is nutritious and easy to digest. Since in Florence it is customary to butcher young cattle, the Florentines take advantage of this to use as food what in other places is left attached to the hide to make leather— I am referring to calves’ feet, which are shaved of their hair from the knee down, and sold, all nice and white, in pieces or whole.

So take a nice piece of calf’s foot and boil it, remove the bones, cut into small pieces and put on the fire with butter, salt and pepper, and a little brown stock, adding Parmesan cheese when you remove it from the fire. If you do not have brown stock, you can make do with tomato sauce (recipe 6) or tomato paste.

Once in my home an elderly lady suffered a serious case of indigestion from this dish, perhaps because she ate too much of it, and it had not been cooked long enough to make it sufficiently soft.

Take a beef tongue weighing about a kilogram without the root. Boil it just enough so that you can skin it, and then prepare it in the following manner.

Make a generous battuto with 50 grams (about 1-2/3 ounces) of untrimmed prosciutto, half a medium-sized onion, celery, carrot, and parsley. Put on the fire with 50 grams (about 1-2/3 ounces) of butter and the peeled tongue, seasoned with salt and pepper. When the tongue has browned, finish cooking with broth, added a little at a time, and tomato sauce (recipe 6) or tomato paste; then strain the sauce. In a separate pan, make a roux with 20 grams (about 2/3 of an ounce) of butter and a level tablespoon of flour. When the roux has turned golden brown, pour the sauce from the tongue into it and then add the tongue. Keep the tongue on the fire a while longer, and then serve cut into slices one centimeter thick, with a side dish of celery or some other vegetable reheated in the tongue’s sauce.

This dish serves seven to eight people.

Finely chop a shallot or a spring onion, sauté in oil and butter, and when it has turned dark brown, toss in the calf’s liver, cut into thin slices. When the liver is halfway done, season with salt, pepper, and a pinch of chopped parsley. Simmer slowly so that it stays juicy. Serve in its own sauce, adding lemon juice just before sending it to the table.