Ragu

On the English Forum this week there was a thread on Pasta sauce and Bolognese sauce, etc. I have read several things and would not comment on that. I just want to add this post, complimentary to last week one on Tagliatelle, where I would like to share with you the hits and tricks to make a proper Ragu. Before I start please let me make a few comments on this topic:

1. There is no such thing as Bolognese Sauce in Italy. What you mean with this term is Ragu or Sugo in Italy. Stay away from a restaurant that in Italy serves Spaghetti Bolognese, it is a tourist trap for sure.
2. There is no such thing as the real recipe for the Ragu, every cook and every person has his/her own way of cooking it and his/her own secret ingredient
3. The best match for Sugo are Tagliatelle or Penne. Spaghetti with Ragu is not a perfect match in Italy.
4. The basics of Ragu is Battuto, i.e. a mixture of finely chopped vegetables, plus Beef minced meat and tomatoes.
5. No spices are added to the Ragu, i.e. Basil, Rosemary, etc.

So let’s start from the very beginning, i.e. Battuto. This word in Italian literally means “Beaten” but in culinary terms its is a mixture of finely chopped mixture of vegetables and herbs that are a base for a recipe. In case of Ragu the Battuto is prepared with what we call “Odori”, i.e. onion, celery, carrot and parsley. Odori literally means Smells and I guess that this word is used because they provide aroma to the dish you are cooking.
In the vegetables section of main supermarkets in Italy you will find bags of “Odori”, ready to be used for your ragu. The same are used also for Lesso .
So going back to our Ragu, consider for 500g of minced meat 1 large onion, 2 carrots, 2 sticks of celery and a handful of parsley. Ideally you should use a chopping knife and lots of patience. I use the food processor, being careful not to overdo with it as it might get pulp like, but you want it to preserve its texture. Once ready transfer everything in a large pan (ideally a terracotta pan) and add plenty of extra virgin olive oil. Cook gently until very very very soften. This might take around 30 min, and you have to carefully check that the battuto cooks without sticking to the bottom or burning.
Once cooked raise the heat and add the salted minced meat and let the meat fry for 10-15 until the meat is thoroughly cooked. The meat should release all the juices into the pan. To enhance the flavor of your ragu you can add some finely chopped dry porcini mushrooms (previously wetted) together with the water using for wetting or a sausage, or a finely chopped chicken or rabbit liver. I do not like wine, but I know of people that add a glass of red Tuscan wine as well.
Once the meat is cooked add a can of chopped tomatoes and leave it to cook for 1h at least. Check that it does not burn or sticks to the bottom. Adjust with salt and pepper and it’s done!
Enjoy with tagliatelle and plenty of Parmigiano Reggiano!

Tagliatelle, Pappardelle, etc. Make your own pasta

Although not proper Tuscan, fresh hand-made pasta is thoroughly available in Tuscan restaurants. I am lucky. My grandma comes from Emilia region, the homeland of fresh pasta and I had an excellent teacher. I do not have much time, but I love making pasta for guests. It tastes differently, it is fun and it is not that effort at the end. The recipe is 1 egg every 100 g of flour. That’s it. So for 4 people make at least 6 eggs and 600 g of flour. My grandma adds also one spoon of extravirgin olive oil. I usually do but do not really know whenever it is fundamental! Have flour available as you need during the process! I will describe you first the proper way of doing and the way I do. Probably not orthodox, but definitively time saving! In both cases you need clean hands, a wooden top surface, plenty of flour (in addition to the recipe one) and a noodle machine.

Proper way

Put the flour on the wooden surface making a mountain like shape. Create a volcano by making a crater in the middle of that. Put one after the other the eggs in the volcano (open of course) and then with a fork beat the eggs by scraping some flour from the walls of the volcano but being careful not to create an opening as the egg lava will start to flow like hell and will make your kitchen look a little messy. If you do it properly you will get a dough of soft consistency that you have to further work with the flour in order to get it very hard. This process can be very energetic as the dough will get harder and harder. Be aware that when the dough is too soft it will be very difficult for you to handle your pasta afterwards, as it will stick to everything. Do not try to make the dough too smooth. A trick is to leave it for one hour in the fridge and it will get better and better.

My way.

Take a food processor and put the flour and the eggs in it. For a 2L container, make slots of 300g and 3 eggs. Switch on at the maximum speed until you have a brittle mixture. Pour in a wooden surface and work into a dough. It will be very easy and the results will be perfect!


In both cases leave the dough for 1h minimum in the fridge in a metal or ceramic container covered with a dish Make sure that the dough is not loose in the container, so that the latter just fits right. I do not know why it should be like that, my grandma said. One thing that you have to be careful about is that the dough does not dry out. It has to be always moist. In Florence the air is humid, so this is not a big issue. But here in Switzerland it can be a race against time to make your tagliatelle.

The noodle machine:

Don’t be scared, it does not bite. Follow the instructions and firmly fix it at the table. Make sure that you have plenty of flour and clean kitchen towels around you to go through the pasta production. Get familiar with the rolling sizes

Cut a bit of dough (around the size of a mobile phone) and roll it at the thicker size. Fold it and pass it again. Repeat this step until you have a smooth dough. Once this is done pass it at a thinner size until you reach the thinnest. You do not have to go through one measure at the time, just make a couple of steps from the thickest to the thinner. If it gets too long cut in two and process one at the time. When ready place the rolled dough on a kitchen towel and leave it to dry out a bit.

If the dough was properly done, you will not have problems in these steps. If it is too dry it will get brittle and it will separate during the rolling. Work it again with a bit of water and leave it to rest for 10 min before trying again. If it is too soft (wet) then it sticks everywhere. Once you have rolled it, smear plenty of flour on both sides before going to the next step.

Your noodle machine will have a tagliatelle cutting tool. Use it to create your own tagliatelle.

Cook your tagliatelle in plenty of salted hot water and… enjoy with your favourite sauce.

The recipe for the ragu (i.e. Bolognese sauce) will follow.

Baccalà alla Livornese (Leghourn-style cod)

Nowadays you can eat fish everywhere. Probably you do not know that, but the best place to have some fresh fish in Italy is Milan, even if it is far away from the sea. The reason is that it hosts one of the biggest fish markets in Europe, and here is where all the fish is collected and handled before it reaches your table.
But it was not like this in the past. As it was impossible to keep fresh the fish during transportation from the coast to the internal areas, someone living in Florence had to rely on fresh water fish or processed (salted or dried) fish. Going back to the Renaissance period, many villas of that time had huge tanks to store fish. Villa la Petraia and Villa di Castello in Florence are an example of this as you can see from the picture that I enclose here and that reproduces Villa di Castello as it was in the past.
Salted anchovies were a good example of the kind of fish that was consumed in Florence in the past. You can find them as ingredient in many dishes, crostini and salsa verde for example. I have already given a recipe for these in this blog. However a cheap source of protein in the past were for sure the products coming from North Atlantic, in particular Herrings and Cod. Funny enough, nowadays they are a very expensive alternative to the fresh and cheap Sea Basses that come from the fish farms.
So coming to cod there are two kinds, the Baccala’ (salted) and Stoccafisso (dry). In both case their name comes from German and means fish in a stick. The meaning that I have given to the two words is how we use it in Florence, but I might be wrong. In Florence we typically have Baccala’, the salted version. Local food shops (good old times when there was one in every corner… now they have disappeared!) used to sell it on Fridays, when the Catholic tradition prohibits the consumption of meat. I have never understood why if you are not supposed to eat meat you can have fish instead, but this is my personal consideration.  The shops used to start preparing it on Thursday. The preparation involves wetting (re-hydrating) and removing the excess salt. For this reason they put the baccala’ in a special tank with continous flow of water. If you buy the salted version, just put it in water and change the water every 30 min. That should do the job. It might take one day before the fish is ready.
Remove the bones, the skin , and cut the fish in stripes. Cover with plenty of flour and fry the cod in oil (peanuts oil would do the job). In a separate pan fry some garlic, capers and chilli peppers in some olive oil. Once the garlic turns golden, add the tomato sauce and leave it cooking for a few minutes. Before serving briefly cook the cod in the sauce and serve hot with plenty of chopped parsley on top of the fish. It is delicious. In this way you can prepare also red mullets, which are a typical fish of Leghourn. In this case clean the fish (remove the inside and grate off the sloughs), cover in flour, fry and then put in the sauce. They are delicious!!!!

Arista

This is one of the most classical dishes (roasts) in Tuscan cooking and I must admit that it is one of my favourite. It is basically a pork roast taking the pork sirloin cut. Better would be to have it with the bones, far from Tuscany however this is a meat cut not easy to find. The name dates back to the Renaissance period, when Florence was a melting pot. The legend says that the Medici family organized an ecumenical council with the Roman and Greek churches (sort of G8 of that time). As usually happens in Italy, no problem how harsh the discussion might have been during the day, once at sharing a meal everyone agrees on it. So the Greek cardinal, tried the pork roast and after the first taste simply said “aristos”, the best, and from then onwards the dish got the name of Arista.

I agree with the Greek cardinal, arista is for sure one of the best dishes of Tuscan cooking. It is not very common in restaurants, but it is one of the most popular Sunday lunches in Florence.

So here are the ingredients for 4 people

Pork sirloin (whole) 800g
Rosemary
1 Teaspoon of Fennel seeds
2 cloves garlic
Salt, Pepper
Extra virgin olive oil

For the best results I would suggest that you prepare the meat a few hours or the night before cooking. In this way it will be tasteful.
Finely chop the garlic and the rosemary with the fennel seeds, add the pepper (1/2 teaspoon should be enough) and cover the arista with this mixture.

DO NOT:
Add salt at this point, it will recall all the liquids from the meat resulting in a chunky shoe sole
Punch the meat, it has to be as integral as possible
Add the mixture to the sides.

Depending on the size of the meat the cooking will take around 40-90 min. And it is better eaten if left for 15 min to rest after the cooking. So consider your timing accordingly. Before the cooking add plenty of salt to the arista (again on the top and bottom, not to the sides), and cover with olive oil, Place in the oven (using a suitable tray of course) at maximum heat for 15 min. Then cool the oven at around 200° and continue to cook. You can check the cooking by punching the meat and once you feel it is soft inside it is ready. Also during this checks you can collect some of the juices that form on the bottom and you pour over the meat. For a 800 g piece 60 min are usually required.
Collect the juices in a bowl and cut the meat into ½ cm slices. Serve with the juices on the side.

As a side dish you can prepare some roast potatoes. Cut the potatoes in cubes around 2 cm long. Place in a metal tray with plenty of salt, rosemary (you can prepare also some extra herbs mixture that you used for the meat) and olive oil and cook with the meat.

Frittelle di San Giuseppe

19th of March is the day of St. Joseph. Being the main paternal character of the Christian tradition, this day is considered father’s day in Italy. And in the best of Italian tradition we do not do cards, or give presents such as chocolate golf balls and so on. We eat! San Giuseppe is the day of “Frittelle” . Again all the main bakeries will sell them during this period of time, but being far away from Florence I will have to prepare them myself. It takes some time but the result is worth the effort. I do not know how to translate Frittelle into English. If you prepare them and find a suitable English name, please send it to me.

Also a key point about Frittelle is that they are one of the few dishes in Florentine tradition with rice. Rice is traditional a northern Italy dish, and risotto is something that you better eat in Milan or in Piedmont. In the south of Italy rice is used in preparations such as stuffed tomatoes and peppers and arancini. However rice is almost unexistant in Tuscan cooking. Frittelle are an exception…. And a very good one.



1 liter of Milk

250g Rice

2 Eggs

Sugar

2 tablespoons Ron

50 g Raisins

100g Flour

1 untreated lemon

1 table spoon of sodium carbonate

1 vanilla bean

50 g of butter

Cook the rice in the milk with the butter and the vanilla bean until all the milk is absorbed (if it dryes out before the rice is cooked, add some water). Remove the vanilla bean and leave the rice to cool down (Practical tip, prepare the night before).
Separate the eggs and add the yolk to the rice. Beat the egg whites until stiff.
Add the rehydrated raisin, the ron,the flour, the grated lemon zest and at the very last moment the egg whites, being careful when mixing in order to keep the air bubbles in the mixture.
Prepare a large pan with plenty of peanuts oil to fry the frittelle. Heat the oil.
Add spoons of the mixture in the oil and fry turning occasionally.
Once brown remove from the pan, dry the excess oil and cover with sugar (crystal sugar). Frittelle are best enjoyed cold!

Occasionally the Italian maid will fill one frittella with a piece of cotton wool before frying. This is a sort of joke in order to laugh at whoever gets it. Once in my family all the frittelle were gone and the cotton had not appeared!!!! Someone had something hard to digest!

pinzimonio

To prepare this dish you need as many small bowls (ideally 10 cm in diameter and 10 cm tall) as your guests and a large basket of fresh vegetables.

This can include:

Fennels - Wash in plenty of water and remove the hard outer leaves. Cut in quarters.

Spring onions - wash in plenty of water and remove the hard outer layers.

Celery - Use only the heart and wash in plenty of water

Artichokes - Only the Tuscan variety, skinny, purple in color. Simply wash in plenty of water and then I will explain how to eat them!

Horse radishes – Washed and peeled.

Other vegetables you can use but are not traditional : indive , carrots.

Each person is assigned a small bowl with some olive oil (extra virgin, etc... as usual), salt and pepper and you leave the vegetables in the middle of the table.

The meal consists on picking the vegetables, dipping in the sauce and eating the tip. After doing so you dip again and eat, etc.

An international kitchen cookbook would call this crudite, but in Tuscany we call it pinzimonio. This is really a strange word, and I guess that only a few people know its meaning outside Tuscany.I made a brief research on its etimology and the word comes from "pizzo", tip.

Probably due to the fact that you only eat the tip...

So let's come to the artichokes, this odd vegetable that resembles a flower. You remove the outer leaves, the ones that are all of dark colour. Then you will see that the leaves will start to have a whitish (pale green) bottom. That part is soft and edible. Dip it in the sauce and eat.

The pale green part will become bigger and bigger as you go inside the artichoke. At a certain point you will see that the leaves are all pale green and soft. You reached the heart of the artichoke.

At this point cut the top bit (1-2 cm) of the artichoke to remove the spines, reduce the stem to 3-4 cm length and peel of the outer layer of the stem. Cut in quarters, remove the hairy bit in the middle (if it is a good artichoke no hairs will be inside) and eat it.

Don't be afraid, it is more complicated to say than to do. Try and enjoy your first carciofo in pinzimonio.
Don’t try to prepare the artichoke in advance as it will get dark very soon.

You can eat some Tuscan bread with the vegetables.

The key of success of this dish is the quality of the oil and the quality of the vegetables. It is usually eaten as a second course. Spring onions can be a challenging experience…

crespelle alla fiorentina

Alla fiorentina is often used outside of Italy to indicate a dish which contains some sort of cheesy spinaches on top. An example of that is the most unflorentine of all dishes: pizza alla fiorentina. No one would ever dream of eating such pizza in Florence…

I wonder where this could come from… and I started thinking of the most “alla fiorentina” dish that you can find in a real Tuscan menu. The only dish I could think of is Crespelle alla fiorentina. This is a first course made of crepes filled with ricotta and spinaches and topped with besciamella sauce. The master of this dish in my family is the grandma of my husband. Now she is approaching her 90s and does not cook elaborate dishes anymore. However I was lucky enough to meet her a few years ago, and I must admit that she used to make memorable crespelle.

So if you want to prepare a proper “Crespelle alla fiorentina you need)



For 4 persons:



For the crepes:

4 eggs

6 tablespoons of flour (white, 00)

100 g of butter

A pinch of salt

Milk



For the filling



5000g of fresh spinaches

300g of ricotta cheese (better if you can get your hands of sheep milk one)

Grated Parmigiano reggiano (no Parmesan!)

Grated nutmeg

Salt and Pepper



For the sauce



100 g of flour

100 g of butter

500 ml of milk



A can of chopped tomatoes



The best way to proceed is to prepare the filling then the crepes and then the sauce.



Filling preparation

So for the filling boil the spinaches and rinse the excess water. Finely chop them and slightly fry with a clove of garlic and some butter to dry them. Remove the garlic, add the ricotta and the parmesan, grate some nutmeg on top (not too much) and adjust salt and pepper to your taste.



Crepes preparation

Have and antiadherent pan ready around 25 cm in diameter. Beat the eggs with the flour and add some milk until you have reached a creamy although fluid mixture. In case you have lumps of flour I suggest that you use a blender to remove them. Gently warm the butter in the pan until melted and then add the butter to the dough. Add some salt and pepper to your taste. Do not clean the pan! Make sure that the bottom of the pan is covered with butter and heat the pan. Transfer one ladle of the dough to the pan and move the liquid so that it forms a thin layer on the pan. Cook on both sides (I usually use a dish to turn it around) until ready. Proceed in this way for all the crepes adding butter in case it runs out. You should have at the end around 12 crepes.



Put one spoon of the ricotta and spinaches filling on one crepe and roll it. Place the crepes in a buttered baking pan, put some chopped tomatoes on top of each (1 spoon should be enough) and prepare the sauce.



In a cooking pan melt the butter and add the flour. Slightly fry the flour and then add the milk in small batches until you get a creamy mixture. Are you getting a lumpy milky mixture. Use the minipimer and you will get fantastic results! Add the parmesan and adjust the salt. Cover the crepes with the sauce and add some grated parmigiano reggiano on top. Bake in the oven at 200 deg. For around 20 min and serve hot!