Posts filed under 'cucina'
This is something different from the usual. This is a recipe from an Italian magazine called Sale e Pepe, and comes from an article all about different ricottas and what to d with them. This is not prettiest thing in the article, but that is a torte that cooks for an hour and my voices told me “Forget that!”
I didn’t even know what ricotta was for several decades. I certainly didn’t know there were many different kinds and from many different places so that each had its best use and was better avoided for some other uses. Now I do. I’ll recover.
This recipe called for ricotta from Lombardia made of goat’s milk. I still have never seen such a thing. I used sheep’s milk ricotta instead, the kind they scoop up fresh rather than from a plastic bin. I thought maybe it would be goatier that way. It’s very nicely sheepy, I must say. I also got tired of grating Parmigiano, so I used some pecorino and some provolone as well. I still ended up with 70 grams, which is quite a lot. You may want to try this pasta using a ricotta from the supermarket which would almost always be cow’s milk, but more and more there are small cheesemakers who make goat and sheep cheese and they may also be using the whey to make ricotta. Ask around. The more we support those kinds of small efforts, the more of them we will have at hand when we need them.
It’s called gnocchetti, or little gnocchi, but I think it is just as much a form of gnudi, which is ravioli filling without the pasta. Since I think that way, I will be showing you some other ways to use this filling in future posts. I have made three things of it already.
Gnocchetti di Spinaci for 4 people
500 g or a pound of spinach, washed , boiled 5 minutes, drained, squeezed and chopped fine
350 g or 12 ounces of ricotta from some domestic animal
3 eggs
4 tablespoons flour
70 g or 2.5 ounces of grated Parmigiano Reggiano or a mix of grated hard cheeses
nutmeg
salt and pepper
60 g or 2 ounces of cold butter
fresh herb sprigs or leaves
more grated cheese for garnish, if you please
Do cook the spinach as stated, even if you use blanched or frozen spinach, or it may be tough when done. These cook very fast and the leaves may not have time to get done if they are not pre-cooked well. I wrung it out in a clean towel to get it very dry.
Even so, the recipe has you cook it a bit after all this attention in a non-stick pan to dry it out even more. Do not add oil or anything to it at that point.
Put the spinach in a big bowl and add the ricotta, the eggs, the flour and the 70 g of grated cheese, season it with some nutmeg and some black pepper. The recipe says to add salt, but mine became to salty when I did. All that cheese has salt in it, of course. I say taste before adding salt, and that will also be helpful in deciding how much nutmeg. They don’t say and I won’t, because freshly grated it took only a bit, but from a bottle it needed quite a lot more. I also found that grinding black pepper over the finished gnocchetti was much nicer than putting it inside.
Mix all this up really well, then put it into the fridge for an hour or more.
Bring a big pot of slightly salted water to a boil, then reduce it to a simmer. These are soft and delicate and a hard boil will shatter them. Even at a simmer the water soon looks like soup.
The original recipe tells you to fill a pastry bag with the mixture and using a large holed tip, express it into the simmering water, cutting it every 2-3 cm. I say the goat is going to come back for her ricotta before you will ever get all this into the water. Oh, and they also say to take them out when they rise to the surface. Three hands, anyone?
What worked for me was taking small teaspoonsful of the cold mixture and forming little balls with it. I tossed in as many as equaled the area of the pot and while they cooked formed some more of them. For a different recipe I did use the pastry bag, but with no tip, because otherwise the spinach clogged it and I had to cut it with scissors and then poke it to make the next dose come out. I reckon pick your fights. It was worth it for the other recipe, it isn’t worth it if you are going to boil them. Simmer them. Anyway, I also thought they needed a few seconds more cooking after they came to the surface, because this is refrigerated dough and may still be cold in the center when the outside is properly cooked. I liked it better that way, anyway.
Before they come off the cooker– here is where you could use a fourth hand– arrange a pat of butter and fresh herb leaves in pasta bowls. Sage is the go-to but I used basil because it is full summer. Time enough to use sage when the basil is all blackened and dead from frost. Sob. Ladle hot and freshly cooked gnocchetti over the butter and herbs. Eat immediately while still smoking hot. You may allow extra cheese, I did not want it.
This is an intensely cheesy dish. The goatier or sheepier your ricotta, the more interesting the flavor will be. I loved it once I whipped the problems in making it, and my next door neighbors did, too. The herbs and butter are just the best with this– I would never sauce it. It’s meant to be the first course of an Italian dinner, but with all that cheese protein, I would have no problem at all serving it as the center to a meal, and it’s vegetarian, too.
The magazine article recommends a white wine from Franciacorta with this dish. I drank a rosé from Sardegna. It was here, it was good, I am way too practical.
I am now sending this off to Ruth for Presto Pasta Night which is this week at Ruth’s Once Upon A Feast. I’m tickled to say that I will be hosting in October!
The reality of cooking this dish this week is this: it is hot here. I did a small part of the cooking and went and took a rest. I did a bit more and watched some Olympics. I even washed up all the tools at some point. I did make several things with the dough, but I made them day by day, because who could eat all that? As soon as I photographed that smokin’ bowl of pasta, I ate half and I went to bed for a nap. Take it easy. Enjoy summer. Today is a big holiday here and I hope you are having some Ferragosto fun wherever you are. Mangiate!
August 15th, 2008
I just clicked on that revolving photo presentation in the margin a moment ago. I couldn’t figure out what I was looking at. It was a portion of spoonbread! I haven’t even thought of spoonbread since I posted that article and recipe. It was just delicious. Why haven’t I even thought of it?
What food occupies the top layer of the mind right now?
Tomatoes. I bought a book yesterday that is just different recipes using tomatoes. They are late this year, so they are just beginning to ripen and should stay with us until November, when we will take advantage of Puglia’s longer summer and buy from the Pugliese farmers every Saturday. I’ve already Post-It marked several pages to try, and have started wondering if any of the newly discovered regional dishes will make up readily for twenty.
Lamb. I still have half the lamb I bought this spring. I am pondering slow-cooking a leg in the fireplace for lunch in the garden. Or I could invite just one person and flash cook the rack.
Green beans, or fagionlini. I helped Amelia pick hers this morning right after I picked mine. Mine provided two fists full, hers a whole basin full. We discussed various recipes in which the bigger and more mature beans are good. Amelia went in to prepare Fagiolini alla Greca for lunch! I decided to make a puree one day and a sformato another day. Mine, who live under a walnut tree, are never going to provide that many, but this time of year you can pick anyone’s beans and they’ll thank you for it. If they are not completely stripped they stop making new beans.
Pickles. The cucumbers are really coming on and the dill is almost heading. If the plums don’t hurry up and riped, I may make some pickles from them, too. There are too many to just eat, even if you made plum cake everyday until they were over.
Suppers. When the heat recedes and you can take pleasure in making food just-so for happy people who are happy to eat what you make. Here below is a supper from a few weeks ago. What pleasant people they were! Think what size that table must be to hold fifteen and still have room for another fifteen. What a gorgeous villa that is, and what a terrific kitchen it has! If you ever need eight bedrooms, just ask.
What makes you think of food, and what food are you thinking of this season?
July 22nd, 2008
I promised someone in a food group to publish pictures of my oven. It’s not at its best because the entry has been used to quickly get garden supplies out of the rain, but the oven itself isn’t going to change much, so here it is, with explanations.
This is how it sits in the garden, attached on one side to my garage and what was once the granary. I wonder if they kept the milled flour in the granary and this was the most convenient place for an oven? There is another one at the other end of the borgo, but it is built below the house, which makes me think that either there was no danger from fire or they didn’t think there was. Since all these villas were part of one family complex, I thought it was interesting that there were two ovens.
This is what can be seen from the door. The long pieces of wood are about 4 feet long and that’s so you can heat the whole oven at once, evenly, by burning these sticks. These happen to be Bay Laurel that I kept when I pruned to flavor the smoke when I cook meat in this oven. The wood used to heat it will be a mixture of those that burn very hot and those that burn a long time. All that remains to be done now is repairs to the shelf in front of the oven opening, which seems more cosmetic than anything else. I waited to find out whether that plaster also needed to be heatproof or not, and the answer I got was, “Couldn’t hurt.”
This is a closer view of the oven itself. I realize now that I have neglected to take a picture of the two iron doors that can be put in place to keep it closed. I have no idea why I have two identical doors and one opening. Maybe whoever stole the oven tools left the extra door in payment? The little pile of ashes remains from the fire we lit to sterilize the oven. We all suspected that spiders, which are the curse of central Italy, would have built nests and webs inside the various passages, but in reality, nothing left any traces inside the oven or anything that connects to it. Inside the little building, yes. In the wood storage area, yes. All over the roof structure and beams was covered with dirt and webs that fell into my eyes and gave me allergic attacks I thought would fell me, but the oven itself was pristine. There must be something about wood ashes.
This is looking into the hemispherical oven itself. It’s really big in there! It’s all coated with heatproof cement, quite smooth. The temperature of the surface, I am told, can reach 1750° F, which is hot enough to destroy even Mad Cow virus– although the meat it was in would have disappeared long before the virus died. This is only the surface of an enormous mass of masonry which takes about eight hours to heat. Once it is hot you stop feeding the fire and begin to use the heat by cooking first things that want high heat, like pizza and bread, then flasks of beans, various casseroles and chunks of meat. We have flip-over stainless steel grilling grates on little legs that allow us to pull some of the coals out for grilling things, too.
If summer really comes this year, I’m planning on a big oven day when the friendly neighbors will invite family and others to come and we’ll cook all day just like the old timers used to. It will be a day that starts at 4:30 in the morning with cooking beginning about 12:30 and continuing into the evening. That’s just like it used to be once a week, every week, for hundreds of years.
June 19th, 2008
This is an experiment in presenting a new recipe for a new dish. Throughout the recipe I will place photos of the dish, and at the end we can decide which of the photos is most likely to make someone want to cook it or eat it.
The dish is yummy, and it could easily have been made another way, but I’ve been pondering on how to make a first course that could be plated in the kitchen and made to look quite special. If I baked it in flat layers it would just look like another lasagna. If I just casseroled it, it would look like baked ziti. I wanted something arranged, orderly, presented, in short. I had in mind to make individual ramekins, but mine are all too small and besides 15 of them would be too much for most ovens when I cook for larger groups. I will make this only when I am cooking with an assistant who can run them to the table, because they’d all get cold if I were doing it all on my own.
I haven’t really named it, either. It’s paccheri, of course, and it’s stuffed, and the filling is Sicilian inspired, but it’s not from Sicily, it’s from the nutty cook in Umbria. Have a look at the ingredients and see what you think about a name. Paccheri may not be easy to find where you are, but if you make manicotti and cut them in half it will look about the same, if a bit larger mouthed. You’d reduce the number because each would hold more stuffing.
When buying a sausage for this dish, look for the leanest ones possible. You can use salted capers if you like, but rinse them and soak them in milk before using them if you do. The ones I used are just pickled in brine and I did nothing to them. The cheese to use can be any decently mature cheese that is still soft enough to melt. It might be Fontina, Bel Paese, or another you like. I used Pecorino because it is universally available in Italy and it’s really, really good. Sometimes Pecorino in other countries is not.
Paccheri (senza nome) 
For two people
Preheat the oven to 175°C or 350° F
24 paccheri, boiled to al dente in salted water, rinsed in cold water and drained
Stuffing:
2 Italian sausages, split and meat removed
a piece of fresh bread, a cube 3 cm X3cm X 5cm or 1” X 1” X 2”, torn in pieces
1 tablespoon or less of milk to soak the bread
¼ teaspoon minced dried chili (peperoncino)
1 tablespoon drained capers, chopped
2 heaped tablespoons of pine nuts, dry toasted in a pan
½ a beaten egg (beat it in a little bowl and take half)
about 1 cup (250 ml) simplest homemade tomato sauce
a tablespoon or so of fresh oregano, marjoram or basil
about 1 ounce (30 g) semi-soft Pecorino, grated coarsely
Mix all of the Stuffing ingredients together, squishing thoroughly with your hands. Find a shallow ovenproof dish that is just about the size of all your paccheri stood up on end. Drizzle a little olive oil over the bottom, spreading it around, then a little of the tomato sauce, tipping to spread that as well.
Using a teaspoon, one by one, pick up the paccheri and stuff some of the meat mixture into each one. Alternatively and probably easier, pick up a little of the mixture and roll it into a small sausage shape between your palms, then slip it into a pacchero. As each is filled, stand it up in the pan until you have run out of filling. I ran out after 18 paccheri. Pour the rest of the tomato sauce over the standing pasta, then scatter the fresh herb, then add the grated Pecorino over that.
Put it into the heated oven and bake about 40 minutes until the sausage centers are done. I measured the temperature at 160°F, and left it to finish the climb from reserved heat.
Garnish with sprigs of whichever herb you used. Optionally you may wish to add a few drops of olive oil for gleam. Eat immediately, really hot.
Notice that I did not add any salt. Umbrian sausages are extremely salty. Capers are salty. I did not need a single grain of salt. If you live somewhere else, your sausages may not be so salty and you may need to add a little to the stuffing.
If you click on the photos, they’ll pop up on a dark background and be easier to judge. Which one do you think would tempt you to eat this?
If none look good to you, I want to know that, too, but I’d also like to know the reason why!
And now, having figured out exactly where it is this week, I am proposing this dish to Presto Pasta Night, hosted this week by Closet Cooking. When you look at that blog, you can see what is possible in countries that have closets.
June 9th, 2008
NB: I had to change the name of the dessert because I copied myself.
What did we eat? I’ve not forgotten! Yummy foods from the South — or in Italian il Meridionale.
Antipasto was burrata, which may be the single most luxurious cheese made in any country. A firm exterior of mozzarella di bufala surrounds a center packed with fresh cream. How could that be bad? It was sliced and drizzled with a little oil and sprinkled with fine chiffonade of fresh basil leaves.
The primo was Pepata di Cozze con tagliatelle
, and this is when I discover that Alberta does not eat mussels. But you should because they are delicious, cheap and good for you. Buy farmed ones if you aren’t positive that the wild ones come from clean waters.
The secondo was Agnello con Piselli, or lamb with peas. I promise you that unless you have eaten this in southern Italy, it is nothing like you expect. It’s very good, too. Unfortunately for Alberta, she also doesn’t eat lamb.
Dolce was Crostata della stagione, named by me to reflect that the torte is made the same every time, but then you pile on the fruit of the season. This time it was strawberries, and quite nice ones, in spite of the cool and cloudy days we’re experiencing.
Agnello con piselli
Lamb with peas
Ingredients for 4
I onion
80 g pancetta in small cubes
800 g pieces of lamb, cubes
500 g frozen or shelled fresh peas
salt
1 coffee cup of hot broth– about 3 ounces
a large handful of grated Pecorino (or Parmigiano Reggiano) cheese, about 1 ounce
2 eggs
1 tablespoon grated Pecorino cheese
pepper
Method:
Thinly slice the onion and gently brown it with the little cubes of pancetta. When it is well browned, add the lamb and continue to brown well. Add the peas and the cup of boiling broth, correcting the salt and pepper. Cover it and leave it to cook. When it is cooked to your taste, which for us took about 35 minutes, add the two beaten eggs, which will have been beaten with a tablespoon of grated pecorino. Stir it in to thicken the sauce and then serve immediately.
To make it easier to time the courses of the meal, we cooked this to almost done then removed it from the heat. When the first course was over, we brought it back to a simmer, stirred in the cheese and then the eggs and finished it. It would easily have served six of us in this multi course meal.
Corstata della Stagione
for six people
Pasta Brisee for one torta
80 - 100 g of fresh, soft goat cheese
the finely grated rind of a lemon
1 tablespoon sugar
about 400 g of prepared fresh fruit
2 tablespoons sugar
First, make pasta brisee using any recipe you like. Here is a good recipe which you can half if you are making this crostata.
Pasta Brisee
2 1/2 cups (350 grams) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon (4 grams) salt
1 tablespoon (14 grams) granulated white sugar
1 cup (2 sticks) (226 grams) unsalted butter, chilled, and cut into 1 inch (2.54 cm) pieces
1/4 to 1/2 cup (60 - 120 ml) ice water
In a food processor, place the flour, salt, and sugar and process until combined. Add the butter and process until the mixture resembles coarse meal (about 15 seconds). Pour 1/4 cup (60 ml) water in a slow, steady stream, through the feed tube until the dough just holds together when pinched. Add remaining water, if necessary. Do not process more than 30 seconds.
Alternately, you can make a pile of the flour, salt and sugar on a work surface, then put the cut up butter in the center and using your fingers, mix it until it looks like coarse meal. Then add some of the water, kneading it in, adding only as much as it takes to form a ball, which you should wrap and chill for a few minutes before rolling it out to make the crostata shell.
Turn the dough out onto your work surface and gather it into a ball. Divide the dough into *two equal pieces, flatten each portion into a disk, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 30 minutes to one hour before using. This will chill the butter and allow the gluten in the flour to relax. At this point you can also freeze the dough for later use.
*unless you have halved the recipe as mentioned above.
For each disk of pastry, on a lightly floured surface, roll out the pastry to fit into a 8 or 9 inch (20 to 23 cm) tart pan. To prevent the pastry from sticking to the counter and to ensure uniform thickness, keep lifting up and turning the pastry a quarter turn as you roll (always roll from the center of the pastry outwards to get uniform thickness). To make sure it is the right size, take your tart pan, flip it over, and place it on the rolled out pastry. The pastry should be about an inch larger than your pan.
When the pastry is rolled to the desired size, lightly roll pastry around your rolling pin, dusting off any excess flour as you roll. Unroll onto the top of your tart pan. Never pull the pastry or you will get shrinkage (shrinkage is caused by too much pulling of the pastry when placing it in the pan). Gently lay in pan and with a small floured piece of pastry, lightly press pastry into bottom and up sides of pan. Roll your rolling pin over top of pan to get rid of excess pastry. With a thumb up movement, again press dough into pan. Roll rolling pin over top again to get rid of any extra pastry. Prick bottom of dough (this will prevent the dough from puffing up as it bakes). Cover and refrigerate for 20 minutes to chill the butter and to rest the gluten.
To pre-bake the shell: Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (205 degrees C) and place rack in center of oven. Line the unbaked pastry shell with parchment paper or aluminum foil. Fill tart pan with pie weights or beans. I use beans and I keep them in the pantry wrapped in the foil I re-use many times. Bake crust for 20 to 25 minutes or until the crust is dry and lightly browned. Remove weights and cool crust on wire rack.
While the crust is still warm, spread the goat cheese over the bottom of it with a silicon spatula, being gentle, then grate the lemon rind over it, and then sprinkle the first tablespoon of sugar over that.
Arrange the clean and prepared fruit to cover the crostata completely. That means pit and half plums, peel, pit and slice peaches, etc. Berries just need to be clean and possibly hulled. Sprinkle the 2 tablespoons of sugar over the fruit.
You may want to serve this with lightly whipped and lightly sweetened cream, or you can make a pool of cream or sour cream on the plate and serve the slice of crostata on top of that. We garnished it with mint sprigs from my garden.
I personally could have eaten this entire crostata by myself. Only the fact that I liked the student and I need to lose weight prevented that happening. It is a very good thing that I have no fresh fruit in the house at the moment, because I could otherwise whip this up again in no time flat!
June 2nd, 2008
When people come to visit from Australia, they are getting something like an endless summer. Right now it’s more like endless spring, however. May continues cool and wet. The roses are hanging back and the peonies have become so heavy with water that they’ve hit the ground. A thirty foot tall plum tree has bowed completely over in the kitchen garden, which will make it very easy to pick the plums should there come enough sun to ripen them.
Thursday’s cookery included:
Crostini of summer truffle
Risotto with porcini mushrooms
Scallops of turkey with asparagus and mozzarella
Fried zucchini blossoms led with mozzarella
Layered pudding of vanilla cream, chocolate and alkermes.
The recipes which are not already published here follow.
Risotto with Porcini mushrooms
45 minutes prep which includes soaking the dried mushrooms
45 minutes cooking
Ingredients for 4
350 g fresh white mushrooms, sliced very thinly or cut into thin spears
100 g of dried porcini mushrooms
350 g carnaroli rice (or vialone nero or arborio)
2.5 deciliters broth, either chicken or vegetable
I medium white onion, peeled and chopped fine
1 wineglass of dry white wine
parsley, minced very finely
150 g grated hard cheese
2 slices of meltable process cheese (we used Bel Paese, but the recipe actually asks for something like Kraft Singles)
1 piece of butter the size of a walnut
1 pinch of mint
salt
Prepare the broth ahead of time, your choice whether your risotto will be vegetarian or not. Put the dried porcini in a little hot water for 45 minutes.
Once those two items which take a bit of time are done, you are ready to prepare the risotto. Make sure your broth is simmering by the time you need it in about 15 minutes.
In a pan, non-stick is suggested (?) heat a piece of butter the size of a walnut and an equal amount of oil together. Cook the onion and the fresh mushroom slices as well as the re-hydrated mushrooms with a little of their water, until lightly golden.
Add the rice and cook it, stirring, until it is toasted, for 3-4 minutes on medium heat. The rice starts to look chalky. Then add the wine and raise the heat to maximum to evaporate the wine. Once the wine is evaporated, turn off the flame and let the rice rest for about 10 minutes. Relight the flame to medium, and start cooking the rice, adding a ladle of boiling broth, stirring until it is almost absorbed and then adding more. Stir frequently.
When the rice is cooked but al dente, remove it from the flame and add the grated cheese and the two slices of processed cheese, stirring in, then cover the pan and leave it to rest 5-7 minutes, then serve the risotto dusted with the chopped parsley.
Scaloppe di tacchino agli asparagi
Turkey scallops with asparagus
This takes about 15 minutes to prepare and 15 minutes to cook, but you can partially prepare it and then finish it at the last moment so that you aren’t separated from your guests.
Ingredients for 4
4 slices of turkey breast
4 slices of mozzarella (if you use the highest quality of mozzarella, the cheese is smaller so you need more slices.)
24 asparagus tips freshly cooked
40 g butter
½ wineglass of dry white wine
flour as needed
broth as needed
Beat the turkey slices until flat, then flour them lightly and fry them until lightly golden on both sides in the butter (or oil.)
Add the white wine and let it evaporate, Salt and pepper the dish and add a little broth.
A few minutes before serving, add a slice of mozzarella to each turkey scallop and 6 asparagus tips. Cover and hold it on a low heat until the cheese is melted, or you can run it under a grill.
Plate the scallops and serve them immediately with some of the pan juices over them.
Crema dolce ai savoiardi
Alkermes is a liqueur which is widely used in Italy, largely for its ruby red color. I have never heard of anyone drinking it, although it’s possible. Savoiardi are elongated dry cookies that are used in making Tiramisu, sort of the Italian version of a ladyfinger, except crunchy.
Make a vanilla pudding. Make a thick mixture by mixing cocoa into leftover espresso coffee. It should be almost spreadable. Make a small amount of fresh Italian coffee.
Use glass dishes to show the colored layers. Place a layer of the vanilla cream in it, then layer on the cocoa/coffee cream, then drizzle with Alkermes. Break a Savoiardo in half and dip the halves into the fresh coffee, then press them onto pudding. Repeat the layers, using a spoon to drizzle on the cocoa cream artistically this time. Stand a Savoiardo up in the layered pudding. Chill in the fridge until wanted.
May 31st, 2008
This recipe is just a lovely thing, but I have been having a hard time sitting myself down to write it. It is the meat course from the menu of April 7, 2008. I’ve cooked it four times, photographed it once and still I haven’t typed it up and published it. I’m not sure why.
My suspicions lie with the fact that although it’s easy, it’s also easy to screw up. It depends very much on good meat. The first and third times I made it I used ordinary supermarket meat and it was a fine dish if you hadn’t had it the other way. When I used local hand-reared pork from this area that I bought and had prepared at the butcher shop for euro 13 per kilo, it was fabulous. My local Coop now offers the same service at half the price, and it was good, but not nearly as good as the pampered pork
The recipe here was inspired by a recipe I found in an Italian culinary magazine. I actually made their recipe, but I found the stuffing mixture of sausage meat, two cheeses and three salamis too heavy, although it might be great in January. I wanted something springy, and something in which I could use all the fresh herbs jumping up out of the ground these days.
The stuffing looks, even to me, unnecessarily complicated in terms of ingredients, but I found out the hard way that you really do need two different kinds of breadcrumbs and two different kinds of cheese.
The amount it makes is awkward. A whole one of these double chops is too much meat for one person, especially in an Italian meal. On the other hand, I found it impossible to cook less than one per person, because it thought it looked chintzy not to have one bony piece per person, just in case. On the plus side, the leftovers are terrific either cold or gently heated. Oh, and by the way, there is a reason why these are rib chops and not loin chops. By the time these thick stuffed chops were cooked through, the tenderloin bit of the loin chop would have become sawdust. Use the cheaper rib chop.
So how come if I like this dish so well, well enough to have cooked it four times, have fed it to clients and again to friends, how come I haven’t splashed it out onto this page? Never mind, it’s making it today.
Costellette di Maiale Ripiene or stuffed rib pork chops
Four pieces, which I think should serve six people
4 rib chops one rib wide, or about 2 centimeters thick, with a pocket cut in them to the bone
6 to 12 toothpicks
the stuffing:
soft breadcrumbs from one slice of Italian or other real bread
½ cup of dry bread crumbs (a couple of handfuls or 2 espresso cups full)
one medium onion, minced fine
2 teaspoons of fresh thyme leaves
2 teaspoons of minced chives
2 teaspoons of fresh oregano leaves
salt to taste
half of one beaten egg
enough white wine to moisten the mixture
3 ounces of coarsely grated relatively unaged pecorino cheese or another very tasty not very hard cheese
another stuffing:
4 ounces of Rambol herbed cheese in Italy and Boursin in other countries
the cooking:
olive oil for frying
about 2 teaspoons of salt
sprigs of all the herbs used in the stuffing
three or four whole garlic cloves
a couple of espresso cups of white wine
Preheat the oven to 375°F or 165°C
If you have not talked your meat seller into making the pockets for you, then you will need to use a sharp knife and carefully cut pockets from the fatty edge toward the bone, being careful not to let the knife wander and cut through the meat. I recommend using your charm on the meat person of your choice!
Mix up the stuffing. It should be moist and cling together when you gather it in your hand, but not wet.
Using your hands, (I use surgical gloves when cooking professionally and touching raw meat) open the pocket in the chop and stuff in a good spoonful of the herbed cheese. Then gather up a fistful of the stuffing and push it in after the cheese. Add another good spoonful of the cheese and then close the pocket up using one or two toothpicks, depending on how wide the meat person made the pocket opening. You can pretend you are a plastic surgeon when doing this part of the operation.
Heat a quite large frying pan, or two of them, if you don’t have one that fits all four chops. Pour in about 2 tablespoons of oil, and then brown the chops on both sides. Be patient so that you will get a lovely golden brown without chancing a scorching. When they are all nicely browned, toss in the garlic and the herb sprigs, toss the salt over the chops, then pour the wine into the sizzling pan.
Put the pan into the oven and cook about 40 minutes, or until the internal temperature reaches 160°F or 72°C. Remove the chops to a board and allow them to rest 10 minutes while you reduce the sauce in the pan over a fairly high heat.
Using a sharp knife, cut 1 cm (fat ¼ inch) slices off the chops until you almost reach the bone. Arrange the chops on a serving dish and garnish with some of the fresh herbs you used in the dish. Drizzle some of the reduced pan juices over the meat.
You know what’s really nice about this dish? That soft herby cheese melts and coats the inside of the pocket and the outside of the stuffing, making both things extraordinarily creamy and herbalicious. The meat is tender and gently seasoned. The stuffing is springlike with its herbs. I consider it a four-star meat course.
With it I served a good old American carrot and raisin salad which was new to my guests and they liked it!
May 7th, 2008
My first dinner is next week and I am very happy. The calendar has rolled around again, tourists arrive, there were tour buses in the parking lots this morning when I went to market. The biggest thing, however, was combing through the lists of dishes in my mind and in my magic purple book to make menus again.
A tramp through the market shows me what’s in season for sure– the strawberries are still from Spain– but I found things like duck and goose eggs, more artichokes than most people will ever have seen in one place, and the first of the tiny baking potatoes for antipasto. I can’t bring myself to buy the live hens and pigeons that the vendor will kill to order. If I were rich I might buy them all and set them free. I’d be arrested because Città di Castello may have a swan park, but they do not encourage poultry in the streets.
Inside the wall my herb lady sold me not only a gorgeous oregano plant but perhaps the most glamorous cauliflower ever. I shall make a portrait of her when the sun is shining.
A trip to my butcher proved that in her opinion, at least, pork is better than veal still a while. She tried to talk me into turkey and again I had to explain how mundane turkey usually seems to Americans, even though at €13 per kilo it wouldn’t seem mundane to me. That’s about $10 or £5 per pound — although the British are used to horrific prices and may not find this shocking in the least.
Now begins a time when most of my cookery posts depend on classes or chef jobs and I don’t have to eat everything. Time to diet off the pounds gained from quitting smoking. Time to wander the specialty shops and come up with new ways to use the old things and invent dishes with new things. Time to ask about wines and honeys and time to toast nuts and snip herbs and prune the rosemary and the sages.
I think the Romans had it right when they made the year begin with spring. What wrong-headed power monger changed that?
Here is a hint at things to come. 
April 5th, 2008
Starting this Friday, the 21st of March, one of the American cooks will post a genuine and traditional American dish on her own blog. All the other bloggers in the ring will post and point you at whose turn it is.
This Friday Mary of Abruzzo Flavors will inject a little American flavor into your day and in your language, whether it is English or Italian.
March 18th, 2008
Here it is Monday and no ready to wear clothes! Why? How can that be? Are there no more things to wear in 2008? The answer is there is more to come, but this is my 400th post and so I am announcing something new and sharing a tiny gift with you.
I know I have complained before about the way American food is dismissed as terrible, accused of being unhealthy and generally viewed by many Italians as poisonous. They are told this on the government supported TV cookery and food shows, programs which I am forced to pay for with my annual TV tax. You know it burns me up!
Most recently the termagant who is just the worst American hater said that we do make good sweets because that’s about all we eat.
Basta! Enough! I’m not taking it any more.
Some friends and I are going to begin publishing weekly recipes for old fashioned American food, food like grandma used to cook and perhaps like you still cook, if you happen to be American. So what’s new about that? There are innumerable food bloggers in the USA pouring out magnificent food of every description as made in the USA. Yes, that is so, but they don’t do it from Italy and in Italian!
Every dish we make and publish will be made with ingredients you can actually buy in Italy and the recipe will be written twice– once in English with US measurements and again in Italian with metric measurements.
No excuses, no lies, no obfuscations. If you know some Italians who cook, send them to us and they’ll know what we eat besides brownies and McDonald’s plus they’ll be able to make it and try it. They won’t love everything we do, because they didn’t grow up with it, but it’s a beginning, yes? Downhome cooking is a thing no one can sneer at. When expatriates are asked “What do you miss?” it almost always starts with food, the familiar food of home. If you know the awful Beppe Bigazzi, 
send him over too, the ignorant jingoist! (Folks, I think Italian products and Italian food are wonderful, but you don’t have to speak disparagingly of all other cuisines to make that so.)
We are starting out with Barb of Barb and Art Live In Italy, Michele of Bleeding Espresso, Mary of Abruzzo Flavors, Sara of MsAdventures in Italy and me. There may very well be more padella packing expatriates as we go along, but these are the Fabulous Five for takeoff. Tune in for time and place “tra pochissimo” as we say over here.
And now the little gift. Have a look at Wanhart blog and look at the incredible work of British photographer, Carl Warner. You will be glad you visited.
March 17th, 2008
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