Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking

by Marcella Hazan

  If you are keeping the cheese a long while, check it from time to time. If you find that the color has begun to lose its amber hue and is becoming chalkier, moisten a piece of cheesecloth with water, wring it until it is just damp, then fold it around the cheese. Wrap the cheese in foil and refrigerate for a day or two. Unwrap the Parmesan, discard the cheesecloth, rewrap the cheese in wax paper and aluminum foil, and return it to the refrigerator.

  Note As a product of cow’s milk, parmigiano-reggiano usually makes a more harmonious contribution to those preparations, and particularly to pasta sauces, that have a butter rather than an olive oil base. It is hardly ever grated on pasta or risotto that contain seafood, because seafood in Italy is nearly always cooked in olive oil. Like all rules, this one is meant to supply guidance rather than impose dogma. It should be applied with discrimination, taking account of exceptions, a notable one being pesto, which requires the use of both Parmesan and olive oil.

  FLAT-LEAF PARSLEY

  Prezzemolo

  Italian parsley is the variety with flat, rather than curly, leaves. Italians are likely to say of someone whom they are always running into, “He—or she—is just like parsley.” It is the fundamental herb of Italian cooking. It is found nearly everywhere, and there are comparatively few sauces for pasta, few soups, and few meat dishes that don’t begin by sautéing chopped parsley with other ingredients. On many occasions, it is added again, raw, sprinkled over a finished dish that, without the fresh parsley fragrance hovering over it, might seem incomplete.

  Curly parsley is not a satisfactory substitute, although it is better than no parsley at all. If you have difficulty finding Italian parsley, when you do come across it you might try buying a substantial quantity and freezing some of it. When the fall-out over Italy from Chernobyl made it impossible for a time to use any leaf vegetable or herb, I cooked with frozen parsley. It was not equivalent to the fresh, but it was acceptable. Indeed, we were thankful for it.

  Note Do not get coriander—also known as cilantro—and Italian parsley mixed up. The leaves of the former are rounded at their tips, whereas parsley’s come to sharp points. The aroma of coriander, which harmonizes so agreeably with Oriental and Mexican cooking, is jarring to the palate when forced into an Italian context.

  PASTA

  The shapes Italian pasta takes are varied beyond counting, but the categories an Italian cook works with are basically two: Factory-made, dried, flour and water macaroni pasta, and homemade, so-called “fresh,” egg and flour pasta. There is not the slightest justification for preferring homemade pasta to the factory-made. Those who do deprive themselves of some of the most flavorful dishes in the Italian repertory. One pasta is not better than the other, they are simply different; different in the way they are made, in their texture and consistency, in the shapes to which they lend themselves, in the sauces with which they are most compatible. They are seldom interchangeable, but in terms of absolute quality, they are fully equal.

  Factory-made macaroni pasta That most familiar of all pasta shapes, spaghetti, is in this category, along with fusilli, penne, conchiglie, rigatoni, and a few dozen others. The dough for factory pasta is composed of semolina—the golden yellow flour of hard wheat—and water. The shapes the dough is made into are obtained by extruding the dough through perforated dies. Once shaped, the pasta must be fully dried before it can be packaged. Aside from the quality of both the flour and the water, which is critically important to that of the finished product, the general factor that sets off exceptionally fine factory-made pasta from more common varieties is the speed at which it is produced. Great factory pasta is made slowly: The dough is kneaded at length; once kneaded, it is extruded through slow bronze dies rather than slippery, fast Teflon-coated ones. It is then dried gradually at an unforced pace. Such pasta is necessarily limited to small quantities; it is made only by a few artisan pasta makers in Italy, and it costs more than the industrial product of major brands.

  Good-quality factory pasta should have a faintly rough surface, and an exceptionally compact body that maintains its firmness in cooking while swelling considerably in size. By and large, it is better suited than homemade “fresh” pasta to those sauces that have olive oil as their vehicle, such as seafood sauces and the broad variety of light, vegetable sauces. But, as some of the recipes bear out, there are also several butter-based sauces that marry well with factory pasta.

  Homemade pasta Italians have fascinating ways of manipulating pasta dough at home: In Apulia, pinching it with the thumb to make orecchiette; on the Riviera, rolling it in the palm of the hand to make trofie; in Sicily, twisting it around a knitting needle to make fusilli. And there are many others. But the homemade pasta that enjoys uncontested recognition as Italy’s finest is that of Emilia-Romagna, the birthplace of tagliatelle, tagliolini—also known as capelli d’angelo or angel hair, cappelletti, tortellini, tortelli, tortelloni, and lasagne.

  The basic dough for homemade pasta in the Bolognese style consists of eggs and soft-wheat flour. The only other ingredient used is spinach or Swiss chard, required for making green pasta. No salt, no olive oil, no water are added. Salt does nothing for the dough, since it will be present in the sauce; olive oil imparts slickness, flawing its texture; water makes it gummy.

  In the home kitchens of Emilia-Romagna, the dough is rolled out into a transparently thin circular sheet by hand, using a long, narrow hardwood pin. Girls used to begin to try their hand at it at the age of six or seven. Now that many have grown up without mastering their mothers’ skill, they use the hand-cranked machine to reach comparable, if not equivalent, results. Instructions for both the rolling pin and the machine method appear later on in these pages.

  Good homemade pasta is not as chewy as good factory pasta. It has a delicate consistency, and feels light and buoyant in the mouth. It has the capacity of absorbing sauces deeply, particularly the ones based on butter and those containing cream.

  BLACK PEPPER

  Pepe Nero

  If a dish calls for ground or cracked pepper, black peppercorn berries are the only ones to use. White pepper is the same berry, but it is stripped of its skin, where much of the aroma and liveliness that makes pepper desirable resides. Although white pepper is actually feebler, it seems to taste sharper because it lacks the full, round aroma of the black. Once ground, that aroma fades rapidly, so it is imperative to grind pepper only when you need to use it, as the recipes in this book direct throughout. The variety of black pepper I have used is Tellicherry, whose warm, sweetly spiced flavor I find the most appealing.

  DRIED PORCINI MUSHROOMS

  Funghi Porcini Secchi

  Even when fresh porcini—wild boletus edulis mushrooms—are available, the dried version compels consideration on its own terms not as a substitute, but as a separate, valid ingredient. Dehydration concentrates the musky, earthy fragrance of porcini to a degree the fresh mushroom can never equal. In risotto, in lasagne, in sauces for pasta, in stuffings for some vegetables, for birds, or for squid, the intensity of the aroma of dried porcini can be thrilling.

  How to buy Dried porcini are usually marketed in small transparent packets, generally weighing slightly less than one ounce, one of which is sufficient for a risotto or a pasta sauce for four to six persons. They keep indefinitely, particularly if kept in a tightly sealed container in the refrigerator, so it pays to have a supply at hand that one can turn to on the inspiration of the moment. The dried porcini with the most flavor are the ones whose color is predominantly creamy. Choose the packet containing the largest, palest pieces and—unless you have no alternative—stay away from brown-black, dark mushrooms that appear to be all crumbs or little pieces. Dried morels, chanterelles, or shiitake, while they may be very good on their own terms, do not remotely recall the flavor of porcini, and are not a satisfactory substitute.

  Note If you are traveling in Italy, particularly in the fall or spring, there is no more advantageous food purchase you can make than a bag of high-quality dried por
cini. It is legal to bring them into the country and, if you refrigerate them in a tightly closed container, you can keep them for as long as you like.

  How to prepare for cooking Before you can cook dried mushrooms, they must be reconstituted according to the following procedure:

  • For ¾ to 1 ounce dried porcini: 2 cups barely warm water. Soak the mushrooms in the water for at least 30 minutes.

  • Lift out the mushrooms by hand, squeezing as much water as possible out of them, letting it flow back into the container in which they had been soaking. Rinse the reconstituted mushrooms in several changes of fresh water. Scrape clean any places where soil may still be embedded. Pat dry with paper towels. Chop them or leave them whole as the recipe may direct.

  • Do not throw out the water in which the mushrooms soaked because it is rich with porcini flavor. Filter it through a strainer lined with paper toweling, collecting it in a bowl or beaked pouring cup. Set aside to use as the recipe will subsequently instruct.

  PROSCIUTTO

  Prosciutto is a hog’s hind thigh or ham that has been salted and air cured. Salt draws off the meat’s excess moisture, a process the Italian word for which is prosciugare, hence the name prosciutto. A true prosciutto is never smoked. Depending on the size of the ham and other factors, the curing process may take from a few weeks to a year or more. Slow, unforced, wholly natural air-curing produces the delicate, complex aromas and sweet flavor that distinguish the finest prosciuttos. Parma ham, by which all others are judged, is aged a minimum of ten months, and particularly large examples may be aged one and a half years.

  Slicing prosciutto Skillfully cured prosciutto balances savoriness with sweetness, firmness with moistness. To maintain that balance, each slice ought to maintain the same proportions of fat and lean meat that characterized the ham when it left the curing house. The regrettable practice of stripping away the fat from prosciutto subverts a carefully achieved balance of flavors and textures and elevates the salty over the sweet, the dry over the moist.

  Sliced prosciutto ought to be consumed as soon as possible because, once cut, it quickly loses much of its alluring fragrance. If it must be kept for a length of time, each slice or each single layer of slices must be covered with wax paper or plastic wrap and the whole then tightly wrapped in aluminum foil. Plan on using it within the following twenty-four hours, if possible, and remove from the refrigerator at least a full hour before serving.

  Cooking with prosciutto Prosciutto contributes huskier flavor to pasta sauces, vegetables, and meat dishes than any other ham. It also contributes salt, and one must be very judicious with what salt one adds when cooking with prosciutto. Sometimes none is needed. What is true when serving sliced prosciutto is even more pertinent when cooking with it: Do not discard any of the sweet, moist fat.

  RADICCHIO

  The crisp, bright-red vegetable responsible for adding the word radicchio to Americans’ salad vocabulary is a part of the large chicory family, among whose many members are Belgian endive, escarole, and that bitter cooking green with long, loose saw-toothed leaves that resembles dandelion, catalogna or Catalonia. The familiar tight, round, colorful head vaguely resembling a cabbage, known in Italy as radicchio rosso di Verona, or rosa di Chioggia, is one of several varieties of red radicchio from the Veneto region. Another variety similar in shape, but with looser leaves of a mottled, marbleized pink hue is called radicchio di Castelfranco. Both the above are usually consumed raw, in salads. Those whose palate finds the bitterness of chicory that cooking brings out agreeably bracing, may also use them in soups, sauces, or as braised vegetables. A third radicchio is quite different in shape, somewhat resembling a Romaine lettuce, with loosely clustered, long, tapering, mottled red leaves. It is known as radicchio di Treviso or variegato di Treviso. It matures later than the previous two, usually in November; it is far less bitter than they are when cooked, hence, although it is frequently served as salad, it is also used in risotto, or in pasta sauces, or it is served on its own, either grilled or baked, basted liberally with olive oil. Another version is commonly known as tardivo di Treviso, “late-maturing” Treviso radicchio, and its season is end of November through January. Its long leaves are loosely spread and exceptionally narrow, more like slender stalks than leaves, with sharply pointed tips curled inwards. The stalk-like ribs are a dazzling white, their leafy fringes deep purple, and they spring away from the root like tongues of fire. It is an exceedingly beautiful vegetable. Tardivo di Treviso is the sweetest radicchio of all, a highly prized—and steeply priced—delicacy used either to make a luxuriously delicious salad or, best of all, cooked like radicchio di Treviso as described above.

  Note If you cannot find either of the Treviso varieties, in any recipe that calls for cooking them you can satisfactorily substitute Belgian endive.

  The striking red hues of Venetian radicchios are achieved by blanching in the field. If left to grow naturally, radicchio would be green with rust-brown spots and it would be very bitter. Midway through its development, however, it is covered with loose soil, or straw, or dried leaves, or even sheets of black plastic. As it continues to grow in the absence of light, the lighter portions of the leaves become white and the darker, red.

  Buying radicchio Radicchio is sweetest late in the year, most bitter in the summer. The stunted, small heads one sometimes sees in the market are of warm weather radicchio, and likely to be very astringent.

  Note Although the whole, bright red leaf looks very attractive in a salad, radicchio can be made to taste sweeter by splitting the head in half, then shredding it fine on the diagonal. This is a secret learned from the radicchio growers of Chioggia. Do not discard the tender, upper part of the root just below the base of the leaves, because it is very tasty.

  Radicchietto

  Many varieties of small, green radicchio, some wild, some cultivated, are served in salads in Italy. Of the cultivated, the most popular is radicchietto, whose leaves slightly resemble mâche (in Italian, dolcetta or gallinella), but they are thinner, more elongated. The best radicchietto is that cultivated under the salty breezes that sweep through the farm islands in Venice’s lagoon.

  RICE

  Riso

  Choosing the correct rice variety is the first step in making one of the greatest dishes of the Northern Italian cuisine, risotto. What a grain of good risotto rice must be able to do are two essentially divergent things. It must partly dissolve to achieve the clinging, creamy texture that characterizes risotto but, at the same time, it must deliver firmness to the bite.

  Of the several varieties of rice for risotto that Italy produces, three are exceptional: Arborio, Vialone Nano, Carnaroli. Arborio and Vialone Nano offer qualities at opposite ends of the scale.

  Arborio It is a large, plump grain that is rich in amylopectin, the starch that dissolves in cooking, thus producing a stickier risotto. It is the rice of preference for the more compact styles of risotto that are popular in Lombardy, Piedmont, and Emilia-Romagna, such as risotto with saffron, or with Parmesan and white truffles, or with meat sauce.

  Vialone Nano A stubby, small grain with more of another kind of starch, amylose, that does not soften easily in cooking, although Vialone Nano has enough amylopectin to qualify it as a suitable variety for risotto. It is the nearly unanimous choice in the Veneto, where the consistency of risotto is looser—all’onda, as they say in Venice, or wavy—and where people are partial to a kernel that offers pronounced resistance to the bite.

  Carnaroli It is a new variety, developed in 1945 by a Milanese rice grower who crossed Vialone with a Japanese strain. There is far less of it produced than either Arborio or Vialone Nano, and it is more expensive, but it is unquestionably the most excellent of the three. Its kernel is sheathed in enough soft starch to dissolve deliciously in cooking, but it also contains more of the tough starch than any other risotto variety so that it cooks to an exceptionally satisfying firm consistency.

  RICOTTA

  The word ricotta literally means “re
cooked,” and it names, as it describes, the cheese made when whey, the watery residue from the making of another cheese, is cooked again. The resulting product is milk white, very soft, granular, and mild tasting. It is a most resourceful ingredient in the kitchen: It can be used as part of a spread for canapés; it is combined with sautéed Swiss chard or spinach to make a meatless stuffing for ravioli and tortelli; again combined with Swiss chard or spinach, it can be used to make green gnocchi; it can be part of a pasta sauce; it is the key component of the batter for ricotta fritters, a marvelously light dessert; and, of course, there is ricotta cake, versions of which are beyond numbering.

  Ricotta romana This is the archetypal ricotta from Latium, Rome’s own home region. Originally, it was made solely from the whey remaining after making pecorino, ewe’s milk cheese. Although some of it is still made that way, these days, in Latium as elsewhere, nearly all ricotta is made from whole or skimmed cow’s milk. It is undeniably a richer product than the traditional one, but ricotta was not really intended to be rich. It was born as a poor byproduct of cheesemaking, lean of texture, slightly tart in flavor, and it is those qualities that make it—and the dishes it is used for—uniquely appealing.

  Ricotta salata This is ricotta to which salt has been added as a preservative. Since it is kept longer, it is not as moist as fresh ricotta. It can also be air cured or dried in an oven to render it a sharp-tasting grating cheese, somewhat reminiscent of the flavor of romano.