Made in America: Cole Slaw
My Italian friends don’t see the point to it, but Barb has delighted her friends just a few miles south with this recipe for cole slaw. Mangiate!
Add comment June 20th, 2008
Posts filed under 'economical'
Made in America: macaroni and cheese
Whether it was the crusty-topped, oozy goodness of homemade or a slick bowl from the blue box, macaroni and cheese probably made a part of your diet as a kid. I might even say that it probably made up a cheddary part of your diet. But there is no cheddar throughout almost all of Italy. Cheddar sightings are reported like alien encounters in New Mexico.
Join Michelle, of Bleeding Espresso, and her mother to discover how an expatriate makes it work in Calabria.
Add comment June 13th, 2008
Paccheri from the oven
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.
9 comments June 9th, 2008
Made in America: Buffalo Wings
Slurp! I am right behind Judy Witts’ every word in this post.
Yes, that’s a different picture. Those are my Buffalo Wings that I ate fpr Sunday dinner! They were really good, too.
Add comment May 23rd, 2008
Purea di Fave — puree of favas
This is another dish from last Monday’s dinner. It’s an antipasto/appetizer from Puglia. Although recipes I found when I first tried to make it called for using vegetable broth to cook it, I soon discovered that I could make the vegetable broth and cook it all at the same time. It is a very healthy dish in the highest level of Mediterranean attention to vitamins, fiber and animal fat completely replaced with healthy olive oil. I cannot tell you where to buy dried fave in your country, but I know people have bought them in every country I know. If all you can find are fave with their skins, you can use them, but it will have to cook longer and you will need to use a food mill to remove the skins which I am told cause really dramatic intestinal gas.
I was served this garnished or plain in Puglia several times, but this version is my favorite one so far. I ate this by itself for supper yesterday. Jump to the recipe:
Purea di Fave
1 carrot cleaned and diced
1 leg of celery cleaned and diced
1 onion cleaned and diced
1 small dried red pepper crushed
1 teaspoon salt
water to cover
1 large or 2 medium potatoes peeled and diced
250 g or 1/2 pound dried fave/favas/broadbeans without skins
water as needed
salt to taste
Garnish:
red sweet pepper/peperone/capsicum, cleaned and cut in thin slivers
good olive oil
salt to taste
In a tall pot, put the first list of vegetables and salt, then cover with water and bring to a boil. When it is boiling, add the diced potato and water to keep it covered. When it comes back to a boil, add the dried fave and more water to cover.
Cook this at a simmer for about 45 minutes, adding water periodically so that there is always about 1/2″ or one finger’s thickness of water over the top of the vegetables. At 45 minutes, take a fava out and bite it. It should be soft throughout. If it isn’t cook a bit more until it is. Check for salt at this point and stir in more until it tastes right to you.
You can use a stick blender to puree this in the pot, or you can cool it a bit and put it through a medium-fine plate on a food mill. If you do that, you will need to rewarm it before serving.
Before serving, heat the olive oil in a frying pan and quickly fry the pepper slivers with a bit of salt. Scatter them over the purea, drizzle the pink oil as well, and then add a thread of raw oil. Serve warm.
Leftovers will need a bit of added water to become semi-liquid again. You can, however, make this quite a while ahead and keep it in the refrigerator, then warm the amount you want to serve.
7 comments April 16th, 2008
Menu 7 April 2008
I wrote this yesterday and it went poof!
Some of the dishes on this menu are already on the blog as recipes. Those that are not are being written and will be published over time. Everyone seemed to really enjoy all of it, and all but one eater were Italian. I consider that a yea vote, right?
Antipasto:
purea di fave secche con peperoni fritti (puree of dried fava beans/broadbeans with fried sweet red peppers)
piccole patate arroste sotto sale con formagino di capra (tiny potatoes roasted under salt with goat cheese)
Primo:
tagliatelle ai carciofi con pecorino sardo affumicato (egg pasta with artichokes and shards of smoked Sardegnan pecorino cheese)
Contorno:
sformato di asparagi (puffy custard of asparagus)
Secondo:
Costolette di maiale ripiene di formaggi (double rib pork chops stuffed with a cheese stuffing)
Dolce:
palline di cocco con due cioccolati (coconut balls with two chocolate ganaches)
jump to recipe
Palline di cocco (coconut balls or cocopuffs to me)
Makes enough for at least 8 people
Preheat oven to 170°C or 350°F (yes, the F temp is higher than reality, but these droop and spread if the temp is too low.)
2 eggs
175 g sugar (6 ounces or about 7/8 cup)
240 g dried coconut (8-1/2 ounces or about 3 cups)
I have been fussing for years about how to use the coconut one can buy here, which is dried and not shredded, sugared or any of the things that are done to coconut in America. I checked, and you can buy dried or dessicated coconut in US health food stores and perhaps the nicer grocery stores. Check out Indian groceries, too, for lower prices. Anyway, at last I found a recipe for using it. I misread one of the directions in a way that made it intriguing to me, so away I went. When I discovered my error, I decided to go for it anyway and I really like the result. If you don’t try this you’re nuts, because it is just about the easiest way I know to please some diners.
In a large mixing bowl, break the eggs and toss in the sugar. Using an electric mixer, beat them on high speed until they become thick and almost white. Add the coconut and at low speed, stir it in until it is blended.
Here’s the tricky, cute part. Line a baking sheet (placca) with baking paper. Using an espresso cup, scoop up this coco-dough, about 2/3 full, and press slightly with your fingers, then turn it upside down on the paper, rapping sharply to release the little form. You can place them fairly closely because they should not spread. When they are all on the paper, put them into the pre-heated oven and cook 15 minutes.
If they spread or are not that lovely golden color, your oven is running cool and you should probably get it calibrated. Cook them a little longer this time.
These are delicious. Crunchy on the outside and chewy, damp and slightly sweet inside.
For the two chocolates, choose a good dark chocolate and a good white chocolate. In two very tiny pans put the chocolate and add an equal weight of heavy cream. Over the lowest achievable heat stir the two chocolates and when each is melted and blended with the cream — you can take them off the heat when almost melted and they’ll safely finish melting with no chance of overheating disasters — use a spoon to drizzle streaks and drops on a plate and dip the bottom of each pallina into the dark before placing it on the dessert plate.
Try it. It’s really good and dessert doesn’t get any easier unless you buy it.
9 comments April 9th, 2008
The easiest cake you’ve never yet made
This is a recipe that came together so fast and was eaten so instantly I could almost forget I made it up. The very first version was everything I wanted or expected it to be. That’s something of a record for me in baking. My worst grade in high school was chemistry. This, however, is a success. Not too sweet, fluffy, not overly rich or fatty—in fact most of the weight is in fruit. It should serve six easily or eight with cheese or ice cream and any Italian would like it for breakfast, too.
I took it around to seven various neighbors and they all agree: this is really good. The fact that it is really easy and designed to be made by anyone with an oven, even if they have never made a cake before, is just garnish. It started with yellow plums I froze last summer when they were so good and so everywhere you hardly knew what to do. I made a bit of syrup for them, so they’d come out as nice as they went in. I usually don’t, but they do stay prettier if you do. I thawed them about half way so I could taste them and see what I had to work with. They were firm, tart and very juicy, all good characteristics to work with.
Here’s what you need:
An 8” or 20 cm round shallow pan that can go into the oven—I used a cake tin
A moderate sized bowl
A 1/3 cup measure
A liquid measuring cup
Two table knives
A fork
A teaspoon
An oven set at 425°F or 220°C
Here are the ingredients:
1 cup of plain flour (3 scoops with that 1/3 cup measure)
1/3 cup sugar
1 pinch salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
a pinch of ground nutmeg
1/3 cup butter
½ cup of the juices of the plums
1 egg
About 14 plum halves
A little sugar
Butter really well the bottom and sides of the baking dish you plan to cook this in.
Put the flour, sugar, spices, baking powder and salt into the bowl and mix them up a bit. Add the butter, cut into pieces, and using the two knives, cut the butter into the dry stuff until it’s incorporated and looks mealy. You can also do that in the food processor, but it’s not in my list above.
Break the egg into the liquid measure and add the plum juice. Use the fork to mix it up well. Dump it onto the dry stuff and use the fork to stir it just enough so that it’s wet. It may still look lumpy and that’s okay. Then scrape it all into the baking dish and arrange the plums on top so that they look nice. Sprinkle a little sugar over the plums. Put it into the oven and cook it for about 30 minutes. Stick a toothpick in the center and if it comes out clean, it’s done, if not, give it another 5 minutes.
Let this sit 10 minutes before turning it onto a cooling rack. The juice cooks into a syrup and clings at first, but after a few minutes it releases the bottom. You can make this, wash the dishes, cool it a bit and serve it all in such a short time…
This is nice warm and I would have loved some Fior di Latte gelato or some vanilla ice cream with it. I thought of sieving powdered sugar over it, but the plums were so jewel-like I couldn’t bear to do it.
If you make it with fresh plums, use milk in the place of the juices. Or try it with any fruit that’s hanging around, fresh or frozen. Maybe cherries? Peaches?
10 comments March 29th, 2008
la buona cucina americana: Pasticcio di Pollo Americano
Once upon a time there were only a few Europeans scattered along the eastern coast of the United States and Canada, and those few were all British or French. There was no pasta, there was no pizza, for that matter there were no stoves. Everything they ate had to be cooked over an open fire and made from the few things they’d carried across the Atlantic and what they could find where they were. Slowly, slowly, the toughest among them survived and were joined by more adventurers from back home, and slowly, slowly what they ate became something not quite like home but not at all like the food of the native population, either. Something in between. That is still true today. Italian food is not quite the same as it is in Italy, nor is Chinese nor French and after almost 400 years, even the original American food is very changed from what it was. The advent of the stove, the oven, the refrigerator and the microwave has widened the possibilities. Modern science has brought new techniques and chemicals into the mix. It’s not all bad, but it equally is not all the kind of progress we were promised.
The foods that our early settler ancestors made were easy to cook, cheap and practical. As more ethnic groups came, their foods came with them, and more flavors, more spices, more herbs became ordinary. American food marched across the centuries farther and farther from those early British and French peasant roots, so that even the oldest New England family ate things that would have puzzled its antecedents. As Americans grew richer, they ate more meat and sauces and separate vegetable courses, but the backbone of the kitchen was still the one dish meal made of ingredients that were cheap and easily available. The potpie is only one of those dishes and it represents the idea very well.
By now there are a couple of generations who might think that Chicken Potpie comes from the freezer, mostly in single serving size, nestled in an aluminum dish. In truth, pot pies of all kinds are one of the more successful frozen foods. If they are made with good ingredients and if the manufacturer doesn’t rely on monosodium glutamate and high fructose corn syrup for flavor instead of meat and vegetables and herbs, it’s a product that it would be safe to rely on. I can’t tell you whether there remains a single brand that has a clean label, but don’t buy one without checking.
Even better, make your own at least once so that you know what potpie should be. Certainly any Italian readers will have to do that, because potpie, frozen or otherwise, is rarer than caviar in Italy.
When I made this potpie, it was at least thirty-five years since the last time. I really don’t remember when I last made it. I do remember making lobster potpie for Christmas Eve one year, quite another kind of thing with puff pastry and sherry and cream involved. Potpie originally was a way to use leftovers. Mum would make chicken stew or chicken fricasee and then the leftovers some days later would become potpie. The crust on top made the meat stretch farther so that half a chicken could serve five or even six. The crust might be pastry, like mine, or it might be biscuits baked on top of the bubbling casserole. I like both. As a matter of fact, I discovered that I love potpie. As soon as I finished eating this one, I started to remember beef potpies, meatball potpies, pork potpies and fish ones. I quickly put that out of my mind and photographed a serving for posterity. The calorie load in potpie is ideal for a teenager who is just in from practicing football.
Why is it so good? It’s the gravy. If you go to the trouble to get the stock reduced enough and seasoned enough, you will make a splendid gravy and your potpie can’t fail. So how does that happen? Pick the right fowl and cook it long enough. That’s it.
You may be surmising that you can buy cooked chicken and use instant broth—cubes, powder, canned or “Better than Bouillon”. Wrong. To get the depth of flavor that really pays off, you must really reduce the broth. All those purchased broths are too salty to reduce much. In the end it would taste way too salty.
The right fowl is a stewing hen or an old rooster. A mature fowl has many times the flavor of a young one. I don’t know what happens to old roosters in the United States. There are not so many of them as there are hens, and the hens aren’t so easy to find either. In Italy I can walk into any supermarket and find a whole or a half hen. She has spent her life making eggs and will finish it making soup. When I was in the US I used sometimes to find them frozen, but even more often I had to use a roasting chicken, which isn’t right, but is better than those juvenile fryers. They also run about 5-7 pounds, so you only need half to make this potpie, and you can roast the other half if you like. Ask the service man at the meat counter to cut it in two for you.
Potpie isn’t something I make all in one day, but like the generations before me, I make the meat and broth one day and the pie another day. It does cook for a long time, but almost all of that time you are ignoring it as you go about your day. I even went grocery shopping while the chicken simmered away on the cooker, and she didn’t mind a bit.
Chicken Potpie
For 6 servings
.
Stewed chicken
2-3 pounds of stewing hen or roasting chicken
1 leek, cleaned and sliced or one onion with 2 cloves tuck into it (if you use a yellow one, leave the papery skin on)
1 leg of celery chunked
1 carrot chunked
1 teaspoon dried thyme leaves or 3 teaspoons fresh
1 teaspoon salt
3 peppercorns
water to cover
Put all of those ingredients into a large pot and bring to a simmer. Lower the heat so that the surface moves gently, but does not bubble or boil. Simmer gently for at least two hours, checking to be sure the water covers the chicken, until the meat is tender, then remove the meat from the broth and allow to cool a bit. I use surgical gloves so that I can handle the meat quicker, but you don’t have to.
Remove the meat from the bones, fat and skin. Put the bones, fat and skin back into the simmering broth. Cut the meat into bite-sized pieces and chill.
Continue to cook the broth until it is reduced by at least half. Taste the broth to see if it is strongly enough flavored of chicken, and if it is, salt it to your taste, then strain all the pieces out using a fine mesh strainer. You can now put it into a container and chill it.
Pastry
1 cup regular flour
.5 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup lard or 1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon vegetable shortening
2 tablespoons ice water
Cut the fat into the flour and salt until it looks like peas, then sprinkle the water over and using a fork, mix until it gathers together. Pull it into a ball shape using your hands, then press it firmly together. Wrap in plastic and chill until ready to roll it out.
To make the pie
If you made a stew, you will already have what goes into the potpie. If you did not, you must now cook the vegetables that go into it.
For 6 people, pare and chunk 6 medium potatoes, pare and slice 4-6 carrots, clean and slice 2 legs of celery and clean and quarter 2 medium onions. Cover them all in water in a pot of the right size and bring them to a boil. Add 1.5 teaspoons of salt to the water and cover, allowing it to simmer until the potatoes are tender. Drain, then toss in the pieces of meat that you saved after the stewing. Add a handful of fresh or frozen peas.
The gravy
In a frying pan, melt 2 tablespoons of the fat that rose to the top of the broth you chilled. Add 4 tablespoons (1/4 cup) of flour, stirring it in as it foams and bubbles. Remove the pan from the heat and slowly, slowly, whisk in 2.5 cups of the reserved broth, making it smooth. Cook for a minute or so over low heat. Taste and correct for salt and pepper. It should need little because you reduced the broth considerably. If your other ingredients are not already hot, you can heat them now in the gravy. If you’ve just cooked them, they should already be hot.
Heat the oven to 425° F. (220° C)
Choose a deep casserole that will hold 3 –4 quarts/liters. Measure the top diameter. Remove the pastry from the fridge and roll it out to that size. Unlike dessert pies, it doesn’t need to be very thin and is nice thickish. At this point I also cut vent holes into the pastry—this time I made them shaped like leaves, reserving the shapes that I remove from them.
Put the mixed meat and vegetables into the casserole, then pour the gravy over it. Add the pastry over the top, trimming to fit, then add the decorative shapes as you like.
Put it into the oven and cook for 25 to 35 minutes, until golden and bubbling hot. It will fill six mouths with flavors not often tasted in the last 40 years.
In Italiano
Di solito quest’ é un piatto fatto dei resti di un altro piatto di pollo in umido o stufato. La vera cucina americana era da secoli una cucina povera, e questo piatto pratico conteneva le calorie e le vitamine che ci vuole per il lavoro duro che hanno fatto tutti, dal bambino al papà. Ha tutto il gusto ricco che domanda un giorno tempestoso. Provatelo!
Pasticcio di pollo americano
Serve 6 persone
Un piatto unico
La gallina
1 gallina di circa 1.5 chili
1 porro pulito e tagliato a fette
1 gamba di sedano in pezzi
1 carota in pezzi
3 file di zafferano
circa 1 cucchiaino di sale
2 chicchi di pepe nero
1 cucchiaino di foglie secche di timo (o 3 di fresche)
acqua di coprire tutto
Mettete tutto in una tegame grande a portatelo a prebolle. Abassate il fuoco e lasciarelo cuoce molto lentamente almeno 2 ore, controllando che rimane abbastanze acqua per coprire la carne. Quando é cotta la carne, toglietela a una ciottola e seperate la carne dagli ossi e la pelle. Tornate la pelle e gli ossi al brodo. Continuate la cottura del brodo fino a é ristretto almeno la metà. Assagiatelo e coreggiate il sale. Passatelo tra una rete fine in un contenitore e mettetelo in frigo per rinfrescare.
La pasta
130 g farina 00
75 g strutto
.5 cucchiaino sale
circa 2 cucchiai di acqua ghiacciata
Tagliate lo strutto nella farina con due coltelli da tavola, e quando somiglia piselli, aggiungete l’acqua, qb per fare una pasta abbastanza compatta. Fatela in pellicola e mettetela in frigo per almeno 30 minuti.
Il Pasticcio
Riscaldate il forno a 220° C
6 patate spellate e tagliate a pezzi di circa 3-4 cm
4-6 carote sbucciate e tagliate a fette
2 gambe di sedano a pezzi grandi
2 cipolle medie, tagliate a 4 pezzi
1.5 cucchiaino di sale
In una tagame, fate bollire tutti le verdure fino alle patate sono tenere. Sciogliete l’acqua. Aggiungete i pezzi di carne avete preperato prima.
Aggiungete una mancia di piselli freschi o scongelate.
Scieglete una casseruola addata al forno, capacità 3-4 litri e misurate il diametro. Togliete la pasta dal frigo e distendetela alla misura del caseruola. Fate delle bucche per scappare il vapore nella forma di foglie, mettete aparte le foglie.
La salsa
In una padella larga, sciogliete su un fuoco medio 2 cucchiai del grasso di pollo dal brodo freddo. Aggiungete 4 cucchiai di farina, mescolando bene bene. Togliete la padella dal fuoco e aggiungete man mano circa 625 ml del brodo, mescolando in continuo per fare una crema liscia. Tornatela al fuoco basso per circa un minuto. Questa é la salsa, e tutto la bontà di questo piatto dipende della salsa.
Mettete la carne e le verdure nella casseruola, aggiungete la salsa. Aggiungete la pasta sopra e poi le foglie riservate.
Infornatelo per 25 – 35 minute fino é colorato oro biondo ed é bollente. Servitelo caldissimo.
19 comments March 28th, 2008
Zuppa Gallurese: how she longs to be pretty
but she is not and she is also not really a soup.
When something tastes this good and is this easy to make, looks shouldn’t count. I even threw a rosemary sprig at her, but it didn’t help, and I didn’t want to sprinkle something all over that would alter the flavor. This is a traditional dish of Sardinia again, and again it is just the kind of thing you need to know how to make if people come in for meals at intervals or at odd hours. It takes five or ten minutes to put it on the table if the ingredients are at hand.
I hope someone will try making it with lavash, because I think that will work but I can’t buy lavash here.
This is another dish made with Pane Carasau– see below. It sounds a bit unpromising, but once you have the box in the kitchen, you really do have to try all the ways to use it. Don’t you? It turns out that this first course vegetarian main dish is delicious enough to warrant buying the box in the first place. The most difficult part of making it was deciding which cheeses would work the best. The ones I used were terrific and I suspect that anything you choose may be terrific too. Recipe after the
Zuppa Gallurese
Pane Carasau, about 1 to 1-1/2 sheets for 2 portions
formaggio fresco/fresh cheese, anything from Kraft Philadelphia on up, about 2 ounces (60 g) for two
Pecorino not very aged, grated on the big holes of the grater (about 2 ounces for 2)
Pecorino stagionato quite aged and gratable like Parmigiano, or use any grana including Parmigiano– about 1 ounce or 30 g for two
a few leaves and sprigs of herbs, such as bay, rosemary, thyme or sage
boiling hot reduced broth or stock, enough to cover, about one pint for two.
In a pot that will hold the amount you want to make, make a layer of pieces of Pane Carasau on the bottom. Using a spoon, add a few dollops of the fresh cheese on top, then sprinkle with the grated soft cheese, then grate the hard cheese over that. Add a few pieces of herbs. Continue with another layer of everything, in the same order, but you must end up with a layer of the crispy bread.
Now pour boiling hot broth over it until it is just covered. Let it sit for a minute or so until it is moistened, then serve. This is the step that gives her her name. Soaking the dish in broth is to inzuppare, and so it is called zuppa even though as you can see, it is not soup. Black pepper is a very nice addition. You really won’t believe what this tastes like!
I gave you an estimated amount for two portions, but that could change if your pot were wider or narrower. My pot was about 7″ wide and I made 3 cheese layers surrounded with bread layers. By simply layering up more I could have made many more servings. In a 10″ pot I could easily have made servings for 10 people. I could have made it richer by using more cheese. I could have made it less rich by using stronger cheeses but less of them– although you do need the soft cheese to combine with the broth, so don’t alter that one. The broth both melts the cheeses and becomes milky itself, and that is why there are two fairly young cheeses in the dish. If you were to use more aged cheeses, that effect would lessen. It would probably still be mighty good, however. I don’t really see how it could ever fail as long as you use tasty cheeses.
I picked the herb bits out as I ate this. They definitely flavored the dish, so I would never leave them out, but all the herbs mentioned are woody and stemmy and I can’t see eating them. All in all, this is another surprising dish from Sardinia, a place that has a talent for surprising me in the nicest possible ways. Let’s see if we can surprise Ruth at Presto Pasta Night with it. 
7 comments March 16th, 2008
