Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking

by Marcella Hazan

  Buying ricotta One should look for ricotta in the same place one looks for other good cheese, in a cheese shop, in a food store with a specialized cheese department, or in a good Italian grocery. In any place, that is, that sells it loose, cutting it from a piece that looks as though it had been unmolded from a basket. Usually, it is not only fresher than the supermarket variety packed in plastic tumblers, but it is less watery, an important consideration when baking with ricotta.

  Note If the only ricotta available to you is the plastic tumbler variety, and you intend to bake with it, the method described below will help you eliminate most of the excess liquid that would make the pastry crust soggy:

  • Put the ricotta in a skillet and turn on the heat to very low. When the ricotta has shed its excess liquid, pour the liquid out of the pan, wrap the ricotta in cheesecloth, and hang it over a bowl or deep dish. The ricotta is ready to work with when it has stopped dripping.

  ROMANO CHEESE

  Pecorino Romano

  The Italian for sheep is pecora, hence all cheese made from sheep’s milk, such as romano, is called pecorino. The sheep antedates the cow in the domestic culture of Mediterranean peoples, and the first cheeses to be made were produced from ewe’s milk. Today there are dozens of pecorino cheese of which romano is but one example. Some are soft and fresh, like a farmer’s cheese, and there are others that mark every stage of a cheese’s development, from the tenderness of a few weeks of age to the crumbliness and sharpness of a year and a half or more. The most stirring flavor and consistency of any table cheese may be that of a four-month-old pecorino from the Val d’Orcia, south of Siena, served with a few drops of olive oil and a coarse grating of black pepper.

  Romano, on the other hand, is so sharp and pungent that only a singular palate is likely to find it agreeable as a table cheese. Its place is in the grater, and its use is with a limited group of pasta sauces that benefit from its piquancy. It is indispensable in amatriciana sauce, a little of it ought to be combined with Parmesan in pesto, and it is often the cheese to use in sauces for macaroni and other factory-made pasta that are made with such vegetables as broccoli, rapini, cauliflower, and olive oil.

  In most instances where one would use romano, a better choice, if available, is another ewe’s milk cheese, fiore sardo, a pecorino from Sardinia that has been aged twelve months or more. Fiore, while it delivers all the tanginess one looks for in romano, has none of its harshness.

  ROSEMARY

  Rosmarino

  Next to parsley, rosemary is the most commonly used herb in Italy. Its aroma, which can quicken the most torpid appetites, is usually associated with roasts. In Italian cooking, a sprig of rosemary is indispensable to the fully realized flavor of a roast chicken or rabbit. It is exceptionally good with pan-roasted potatoes, in some emphatically fragrant pasta sauces, in frittate, and in various breads, particularly flat breads like focaccia.

  Using rosemary If at all possible, cook only with fresh rosemary. Grow your own, if you have a garden or terrace. It does particularly well with a sun-warmed wall at its back, putting out beautiful violet blue flowers twice a year. Some varieties have pink or white blooms. For the kitchen, snip off the tips of the younger, more fragrant branches.

  If you have absolutely no access to fresh rosemary, use the dried whole leaves, a tolerable, if not entirely satisfactory, alternative. Powdered rosemary, however, is to be shunned.

  SAGE

  Salvia

  A medicinal herb in antiquity, sage has been, since the Renaissance, one of Italy’s favorite kitchen herbs. It is virtually inseparable from the cooking of game birds and, by logical extension, necessary to those preparations patterned after game dishes, such as uccelli scappati, “flown birds,” sautéed veal or pork rolls with bacon. It is often paired with beans, as in the Tuscan fagioli all’uccelletto, cannellini beans with garlic and tomatoes, or, in Northern Italian cooking, in certain risotti with cranberry beans or soups with rice, beans, and cabbage. One of the most beguiling sauces for pasta or gnocchi is done simply by sautéing fresh sage leaves in butter.

  Using sage If available, sage should be used fresh, as it always is in Italy. Otherwise, the same principle holds that applies to rosemary: Dried whole leaves are acceptable, powdered sage is not. Sage grows well if not subjected to extremes of cold or humidity and a mature plant will produce enough leaves from spring to fall to fill most kitchen requirements. It puts out beautiful purple blooms, but it is advisable to trim the flower-bearing tips of the branches to promote denser foliage.

  Note When using either dried rosemary or dried sage leaves, chop the first or crumble the second to release flavor and use about half the quantity you would if they were fresh.

  TOMATOES

  Pomodori

  The essential quality tomatoes must have is ripeness, achieved on the vine. Lacking it, all they have to contribute to cooking is acid. When truly ripe and fresh, they endow the dishes of many cuisines with dense, fruit-sweet, mouth-filling flavor. The flavor of fresh tomatoes is livelier, less cloying than that of the canned, but fully ripened fresh tomatoes for cooking are still not a common feature of North American markets, except for the six or eight weeks during the summer when they are brought in from nearby farms. When you are unable to get good fresh tomatoes, rather than cook with watery, tasteless ones, it’s best to turn to the dependable canned variety.

  What to look for in fresh tomatoes If there is a choice, the most desirable tomato for cooking is the narrow, elongated plum variety. It has fewer seeds than any other, more firm flesh and less watery juice. Because it has less liquid to boil down, it cooks faster, yielding that fresh, clear flavor that is characteristic of so many Italian sauces. If there are no plum tomatoes, measure the ones you have to choose from by the same standards. It doesn’t matter whether they are large or small, if they are smoothly rounded or furrowed. What matters is that they be densely fleshed and ripe and that, in the pot, they produce tomato sauce, not tomato juice.

  In Italy, there are other varieties of tomatoes, besides the plum, that are used for sauce. In Rome there is a marvelous, deeply wrinkled, small, round variety, locally called casalini. There are also perfectly smooth, round tomatoes, one kind about 2 inches in diameter that comes from Sicily, and then marvelous tiny ones, slightly bigger than cherry tomatoes, that come from Campania and are known as pomodorini napoletani. At the end of the season, both of the latter kind are detached from the plant together with part of the vine’s branches and hung up in any cool part of the house. It’s a practice that provides a source of ripe cooking tomatoes through most of the winter. There is no reason why it can’t be adopted elsewhere. One important point to be aware of is that the variety should be of the kind that hangs firmly by its stem, that does not drop off. Air must circulate around the tomato, which must not sit on any surface or it will develop mold at the place of contact.

  What to look for in canned tomatoes When buying canned tomatoes, if one has a choice one should look for whole, peeled plum tomatoes of the San Marzano variety imported from Italy. They are the best kind to use and, if possible, settle for no other. If your markets do not carry them, try any of the other whole peeled tomatoes, buying one can at a time until you find a brand that satisfies the following criteria: There should be no pieces, no sauce in the can, nothing but whole, firm-fleshed tomatoes, with a little of their juice. When cooked, there should be depth to their flavor, a satisfying fruity quality that is not too cloyingly sweet.

  TRUFFLES

  Tartufi

  Italy produces excellent black truffles, just as France does, but unlike the French, Italians don’t make much of a fuss over them. What they are capable of losing their heads over, and a substantial portion of their pocketbook, is the white truffle, which is found in no other country, or at least not with the characteristics of the Italian variety. The supremacy of the white truffle over the black, and—in terms of price by the ounce—over virtually every other food, is owed entirely to its aroma. One ma
y describe it as related to that of garlic laid over a penetrating earthiness and combined with a pungent sensation that is like a whiff of some strong wine. But describing it cannot communicate its potency, the excitement it can bring to the plainest dish. In fact, only the most understated preparations are an appropriate foil for the commanding fragrance of white truffles.

  What are truffles? They are underground fungi that develop, in a way no one has yet wholly understood, close to the roots of oaks, poplars, hazelnut trees, and certain pines. White truffles are found in Northern and Central Italy, in Piedmont, in Romagna, in the Marches, and in Tuscany. The most intensely aromatic and highly prized are the Piedmontese variety, from the hills near the town of Alba whose slopes also produce grapes for Italy’s most majestic red wines, Barolo and Barbaresco. A great many of those truffles that claim the Alba name, however, actually come from the Marches, whose market town of Acqualagna advertises itself as the capital of the truffle.

  White truffles begin to form in early summer and achieve maturity by the end of September, their season lasting until mid-January. There must be copious rain during late summer and early fall for truffles to achieve optimum quality, weather that could seriously compromise the grape harvest. Hence the saying, “tartufo buono, vino cattivo,” good truffles, poor wine.

  The locations where truffles are likely to be found are a secret that truffle hunters guard tenaciously. Trained dogs help them unearth their prize, and a well-trained dog with a talented nose is held to be nearly priceless, never to be sold except in direst need. Night, when odors travel clearly, is the best time to hunt. In the fall, in the dark woods of truffle territory, what appear to be the tremblings of solitary fireflies are the flashlights of the truffle hunters.

  Buying truffles Fresh white truffles should be very firm, with no trace of sponginess, and powerfully, inescapably fragrant. Buy them the same day you intend to use them because, from the moment they are dug out of the ground, truffles start to lose their precious aroma at an accelerating pace. If for any reason you must store them overnight, or longer, wrap them tightly in several layers of newspaper overlaid with aluminum foil, and keep them in a cool place, but preferably not the refrigerator. Some hold that the best way to keep a truffle is to bury it in rice in a jar. It certainly improves the rice, but it’s uncertain how much good it does the truffle. The rice does protect it, absorbing undesirable moisture, but it also draws away very desirable aroma.

  Preserved truffles are available in jars or cans. Jars have the advantage that they permit you to see what you are getting. Although they are never quite as scented as the fresh, some preserved truffles can be quite good. There is also paste made from white truffle fragments, packaged both in jars and tubes. I have always found the tube to be better. It can be used in sauce for pasta or over veal scaloppine. It is delicious spread over buttered toast, so much better than peanut butter.

  How to clean Truffles exported to America have already been cleaned, but if you should buy them in Italy they will still be coated with dirt that must be carefully scraped away with a stiff brush. The most deeply embedded soil must be dislodged with a paring knife and a light touch. Finish cleaning by rubbing with a barely moistened cloth. Do not ever rinse in water.

  How to use A whole white truffle, whether fresh or preserved, is sliced paper thin, using a tool that looks like a pocket mandoline. Lacking such a tool, one can use a potato peeler. The slices can be distributed, as generously as one’s means will allow, over homemade fettuccine tossed with butter and Parmesan, over risotto also made with butter and Parmesan, over veal scaloppine sautéed in butter, on a traditional Piedmontese fontina cheese fondue, or over fried or scrambled eggs. Although one generally uses truffles thus, without cooking them, on the principle that there isn’t anything cooking could do that could make them even better, an extraordinary expansion of flavor takes place when truffles are baked with slivers of parmigiano-reggiano cheese, particularly in a tortino or gratin consisting of layers of cheese, truffle, and sliced potatoes interspersed with dabs of butter.

  TUNA

  Tonno

  In towns along both coasts of Italy, people used to buy the plentiful, cheap fresh tuna, boil it in water, vinegar, and bay leaves, drain it, and put it up, submerged in good olive oil, in large glass jars. It was one of the tastiest things one could eat. Acceptable canned tuna has long been universally available, and few cooks now bother to make their own.

  Good canned Italian tuna packed in olive oil is delicious in sauces, both for pasta and for meats, and in salads, particularly when matched with beans. It used to be quite common on supermarket shelves, but it has been crowded off now by cheaper products packed in water. None of these is of any use in Italian dishes, least of all the wholly tasteless kind called light meat tuna.

  Buying canned tuna For Italian cooking, only tuna packed in olive oil has the required flavor. The most advantageous way to buy it, is loose from a large can: It is juicier, more savory, and less expensive. Some ethnic grocers sell it thus, by weight. The alternative is buying smaller, individual cans of imported tuna packed in olive oil.

  VEAL SCALOPPINE

  Scaloppine di Vitello

  Some of the most justifiably popular of all Italian dishes are those made with veal scaloppine. The problem is that it is exceptionally rare to find a butcher that knows how to slice and pound veal for scaloppine correctly. Even in Italy, I prefer to bring a solid piece of meat home and do it myself. It is, admittedly, one of the trickiest things to learn: It takes patience, determination, and coordination. If you do master it, however, you’ll probably have better scaloppine at home than you have eaten anywhere.

  The first requirement is not just good veal, but the right cut of veal. What you need is a solid piece of meat cut from the top round and when your relationship with the butcher enables you to obtain that, you are halfway to success.

  Slicing What you must do at home is to cut the meat into thin slices across the grain. The ribbons of muscle in meat are tightly layered one over the other and form a pattern of fine lines. That pattern is the grain. If you take a close look at the cut side of the meat, you can easily see the parallel lines of closely stacked layers of muscle that should appear on each properly cut slice of top round. The blade of the knife must cut across those layers of muscle exactly as though you were sawing a log of wood across. It’s essential to get this right, because if scaloppine are cut along the length of the grain, instead of across it, no matter how perfect they may look, they will curl, shrink, and toughen in the cooking.

  Pounding Once cut, scaloppine must be pounded flat and thin so they will cook quickly and evenly. Pounding is an unfortunate word because it makes one think of pummeling or thumping. Which is exactly what you must not do. If all you do is bring the pounder down hard against the scaloppine, you’ll just be mashing the meat between the pounder and the cutting board, breaking it up or punching holes in it. What you want to do is to stretch out the meat, thus thinning and evening it. Bring the pounder down on the slice so that it meets it flat, not on an edge, and as it comes down on the meat, slide it, in one continuous motion, from the center outward. Repeat the operation, stretching the slice in all directions until it is evenly thin throughout.

  WATER

  Acqua

  Water is at the same time the most precious and most unobtrusive ingredient in Italian cooking, and its value is immense precisely because it is self-effacing. What water gives you is time, time to cook a meat sauce long enough without it drying out or becoming too concentrated, time for a roast to come around when using that superb Italian technique of roasting meat over a burner with the cover slightly askew, time for a stew or a fricassee or a glazed vegetable to develop flavor and tenderness. Water allows you to glean the tasty particles on the bottom of a pan without relying too much on such solvents as wine or stock that might tip the balance of flavor. When it has done its job and has been boiled away, water disappears without a trace, allowing your meats, your vegeta
bles, your sauces to taste forthrightly of themselves.

  Béchamel and Mayonnaise

  Béchamel Sauce

  Salsa Balsamella

  BÉCHAMEL is a white sauce of butter, flour, and milk that helps bind the components of scores of Italian dishes: lasagne, gratins of vegetables, and many a pasticcio and timballo—succulent compounds of meat, cheese, and vegetables.

  A smooth, luxuriantly creamy béchamel is one of the most useful preparations in the repertory of an Italian cook and it is easy to master, if you heed three basic rules. First, never allow the flour to become colored when you cook it with the butter, or it will acquire a burnt, pasty taste. Second, add the milk to the flour and butter mixture gradually and off heat to keep lumps from forming. Third, never stop stirring until the sauce is formed.

  About 1⅔ cups medium-thick béchamel

  2 cups milk

  4 tablespoons (½ stick) butter

  3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

  ¼ teaspoon salt

  1. Put the milk in a saucepan, turn on the heat to medium low, and bring the milk just to the verge of boiling, to the point when it begins to form a ring of small, pearly bubbles.

  2. While heating the milk, put the butter in a heavy-bottomed, 4- to 6-cup saucepan, and turn on the heat to low. When the butter has melted completely, add all the flour, stirring it in with a wooden spoon. Cook, while stirring constantly, for about 2 minutes. Do not allow the flour to become colored. Remove from heat.