Il Forno

What does "authentic" mean?

In the last two months I seem to be stumbling upon posts, magazine articles and discussion that make me think consider what authentic food is. In my case the question is mainly concerned with Italian cooking bit probably the same applies to other cuisines which have a strong classic tradition. This thought is always at the back of my mind, as it is inevitable, me living abroad in a country (Germany) which seems to love Italian food but where real Italian food is a very rare find. Still I really started to think about the "problem" after I read Maki's very well written post on Fusion, on which I strongly agree. Recently two other posts on bruschetta, from Clotilde and Renee (great comment BTW Renee, I intended to reply but it sort of became this post), got me going at it again.

Very often I happen to come across supposedly Italian recipes which have little or no connection to what people in Italy eat: There are various reason for this I believe, the first one is probably the desire of chefs nowadays to show off how inventive they are.
I don't necessarily despise "imaginative" cooking: new recipes have to develop and they wouldn't without new combinations being tried out. So creativity in itself is not what, to use a cooking expression, spoils the soup. After all Italian cuisine would not be what it is today without it: it is not a coincidence that one of the first places in Europe where tomato became a cooking ingredient was Southern Italy.
What I believe is fundamental to cooking, and being creative about it, in a certain "ethnic" (here in the widest meaning possible) cuisine is to have absorbed the cooking bases of that culture (something everyone can learn) and the "philosophy" behind this cooking, something much harder to achieve. I can cook (and I like doing it) Indian, Chinese or Mexican dishes but I know my knowledge is limited to the recipes I use and the story behind them, as far as I can get through books, web pages and so on. But I don't claim to make Indian, et-cetera cuisine as some chefs do. I might modify those recipes to fit my taste but I'm well aware I'm mucking about. To get a real understanding of a certain cuisine one would ideally have to live years in the country/region in question and then mingle with the locals, getting to know people who are good cooks. One can also learn from a good teacher or from studying multiple sources, but also in that cases I think a first hand experience is needed. The point is one's not only learning to cook some dishes but rather absorbing a culture that isn't yours. This is IMO hard but far from impossible: after all some of the best Italian cookbooks are in English, they do contain the occasional mistake but they're still more in-depth than most Italian ones.
Sometimes authentic and traditional have two different meanings: Italian cooking by immigrants in the USA or South America is not authentic but is certainly traditional. It isn't authentic because their cooking represents on one hand a sort of time capsule (what Italians used to eat as those families moved abroad) which does not reflect Italian cooking today, this on the other hand makes their cooking traditional. Also, their cooking had to be changed to match the ingredients available (bringing me to the next topic).
Another important factor in authentic cooking is the ingredients, and how easy it is to find them. Sometimes the lack of some of them makes cooking certain dishes impossible. I haven't cooked any of the recipes I love containing ricotta since I moved from Italy since I just can't find fresh sheep ricotta here. Other times the ingredients are there but they taste so different that they change one dish inevitably. For example, one of my favourite comfort foods is pasta e zucchine, pasta with pan fried zucchini (in olive oil and onion) with their cooking fat and plenty of parmesan. I can find zucchini here all right but they just lack that sweet-bitter taste they have when grown near Naples. Wine lovers talk about terrior for grapes (and wines clearly) but I believe the same applies to vegetables, fruit and indirectly cheeses. On the other hand other dishes are perfectly replicable anywhere since the basic ingredients are widespread. Take Bolognese fro example, or as it s called in Italian Ragu' di carne alla Bolognese (meat ragout Bolognese style). Funny that the name itself contains a foreign element, the French "ragout" bastardised to the Italian "ragu'". This is one of the most loved and at the same time more often murderously butchered Italian dishes. I intended to write a post about it, since a few days ago I made some of this sauce to go with some fresh fettuccine I had made (pasta machines are a great temptation!). Then I remembered that Pieman had posted an absolutely authentic recipe on the very nice group blog "The Daily Bread". The only difference in my recipe is that it cooks 2 to three hours. Such a dish can be made almost anywhere ( OK, you might have problems finding beef in India or pork in the Muslim countries) and will always taste good. This kind of recipes are the ones one should take up if one intends to cook (at home or even in a restaurant) authentic Italian food. After having "understood" them one can try to imrove them according to one's taste: no one family in Italy has the same recipe for dishes like Bolognese, as for every "classic" dish everywhere in the world. You should try to ask for a paella recipe in Spain (do and then run away fast) :-))).
Wow, I notice the topic has turned more complicated than I even thought. Just one closing word. For from me from stopping anyone playing with food: inventing new pasta dishes, weird pizza toppings and so on. Playing is part of the fun, although there is a limit to good taste (no caviar topped pizza please, that's just kitsch!). Just don't call it traditional Italian cooking!

A fair share

I guess most of us have been in the situation: you're the one cutting and giving out the cake and inevitably someone is unhappy. Some mathematicians claim they've found the solution to the problem. But only for two or three people sharing... you can't expect me to eat all that cake!

Dough stretching

This post is the first of four on the dishes I prepared for our New Year's Eve dinner. I decided to have a bit of fun and, for the occasion, try to put together a nice menu for us and our friends. So I took the chance to try a few recipes that were waiting in my "to try when you feel fit for them" list and also to try and develop my plating a bit inspired by Blue's tips. Following the order in which the dishes were served I will start with our appetiser: grissini stirati con prosciutto e tuiles di Parmigiano Reggiano, i.e. "stretched" bread sticks with dry cured ham and Parmesan chips.

Grissini are quite easy to make. The very important thing is to get a quite dry but very stretchy dough in the kneading phase. For the dough I took:

500 g. Flour (3 and 3/4 cup)
1 1/2 tsp. Salt
2 tsp. Malt syrup
2 Tbs. Olive oil
Enough water to get a firm non-sticky dough (slightly less than a cup)
1 tsp. Active dried yeast

Once the dough was kneaded properly I left it to rise covered till about doubled (ca. 1 1/2 hours). At this point I patted it gently to form a rectangle about 20x30 cm (8x12 in). I cut the rectangle into four pieces (10x15 cm) and each piece in 5 or 6 stripes. Each strip was stretched to become as wide as my oven sheets. Some strips resisted a bit so I moved on to the next ones before continuing to stretch them. Others stretched much more than needed so I had to cut them to size. Unfortunately these bits and pieces can't be kneaded and stretched again so I used them to make a little roll I ate as a snack... baking makes me hungry :-)!!!
I stretched the strips and placed them with about 1 cm distance from each other till my oven sheets (sprinkled with cornmeal) were full and covered the remaining dough to prevent it from drying out. The stretched grissini were brushed with oil and dusted with poppy seeds: next time I'll use some other topping as poppy seeds don't seem to be very "sticky" even when pressed into the dough. I baked the grissini for 20 minutes at about 200C (400F).

I made the grissini the day before the dinner which was maybe not a too good idea as they lost part of their crunch after one day. Therefore I had to "toast" them briefly in the oven before serving. Not a problem as such but the thinnest sections of the grissini became quite crunchy. Well I always learn something new.
The Parmesan tuiles are very easy and quick to make. I took the recipe from a book I got for Christmas, La cucina di Nadia e Antonio Santini, a recipe book from a quite famous restaurant in Italy, "dal Pescatore". You just need some grated Parmesan and a slightly buttered non-stick pan. Take about a tablespoon Parmesan per chip and spread it in the pan. Quickly the parmesan will melt and start to "bubble". Take the pan from the fire, wait just a few seconds and then pick up the chip. I found a toothpick works very well. Put the Parmesan chip on a rolling pin, wooden spoon handle, or similar to give it a curved shape (actually one could play quite a bit with shapes) and to cool it down.
To serve I wrapped some dry cured ham (Spanish Serrano as I could not find Parma ham) on the tips of two grissini and placed them across the plate. On the lower part of the plate I put three Parmesan tuiles and dropped some real 18 year old Balsamico around them.
Apart the few "crunchy" spots in the grissini the dish was well received, at least judging from the speed at which it disappeared :-). I was also quite pleased as afterwards I had to recognise that the dish is a good re-interpretation of a classical Italian style appetiser: the grissini and ham in a classical paring and the Parmesan chips a modern touch. Plus Parmesan and Balsamico are just great together... mmhh.... :-)

A happy, sweet, new year to everyone.

First of all may your wishes , hopes and dreams become real in 2004. I know it never happens... I still try every year. Have a nice evening tonight. Before I disappear in my kitchen to prepare tonight's dinner (it will take some time) I wanted to post my first Neapolitan entry. I wanted to post it yesterday but the time somehow seemed to escape me. So here it is, my post on Christmas sweets in Naples. Sweets play a big role in the Neapolitan Christmas Eve dinner. There are almost as many sweets as there are savoury courses. Most of these sweets are not prepared at home. They used to be made and sold by nuns, each monastery had a speciality. Naples used to have many monasteries and abbeys inside the city walls, some of which still exist as such, others sold to the city/university/etc . Nowadays most pastry shops make the whole range although few manage to produce everyone of these sweet in high quality. Therefore many Neapolitan families buy around, waiting, no sorry :-), fighting to be served. Below you'll find a few (quite a few more exist!).

Here you see a quite standard mix of sweets. I'll try to describe them at best. All these pastries have a quite strong sugary taste, as most in Southern Italy.
In the centre frutti di pasta reale, marzipan fruits. These are skilfully shaped and painted and in the best cases each one is flavoured to taste like the fruit it is shaped like. Above right are or Sapienze (from the homonymous monastery), honey pastries dotted with almond and candied orange peel. Below Raffioli simple sponge cake dough, flavoured with an apricot glazing and covered with icing. The little brown cubes on their side are soft Mostaccioli, dried fruit pastries (heavy on figs) covered in chocolate. The name indicates that these sweets were originally made from mosto, i.e. new, hardly fermented, wine. The pinkish rounds are Divino Amore (also from the homonymous monastery), rose water flavoured marzipan covered with an orange chocolate glaze. Above are hard Mostaccioli

Another must is Raffioli a cassata, these are simple raffioli (see above) split open, filled with ricotta, flavoured with various ingredients and mixed with chocolate chips, topped with a strip of pistachio marzipan and covered with icing. Quite sweet and a calorie bomb, but soooo nice!

Rococo' are real jaw breakers. These donut shaped biscuits are slightly spicy and full of almonds. But most of all they're rock hard. There eaten dunked in Strega liqueur but that only softens them very little. I like them but maybe that's because my teeth are in good shape. More then one person had to visit a dentist after trying to eat one of them.

Finally Struffoli the king of the Neapolitan Christmas sweets. Some people buy them but any proud family will make their own. Their kitsch appearance reflects IMO a certain baroque feeling Naples has. Struffoli are little dough pieces, fried, mixed with honey and then decorated with candied fruit and sugar confetti. Sometimes they're even served in an almond brittle basket. The honey- fried dough theme is very widespread in southern and central Italy. For example purceddruzzi from Lecce, and cicerchiata from Umbira are quite similar. Some people believe these sweets go back to the ancient Greek colonies of Italy.
Apart from the sweets you've seen Neapolitans might eat other pastries too, Cassata in particulare is very often on the table. Also nuts, dried fruits and torrone are always there. No wonder the sweets part of the meal can be even longer than the rest. And no wonder I put on weight!

If it's good it ain't healthy!

Every food-loving person I know has a "dark" passion they would rather not talk about. It's either something other people find disgusting (a friend loves marmalade and mustard sandwiches), totally unhealthy or something other food lovers would strongly disapprove of. One of my "dark passions" is fried bread dough, possibly on the oily side. I recently discovered, at our local Christmas market, a stand selling Hungarian langosh, potato enriched dough disks fired and topped with garlic, sour-cream and eventually cheese.... mmhhh de-licious! In Naples similar street food exists: little balls of fried dough are eaten as snacks from friggitoria stalls and are called paste cresciute (risen dough). Fried pizzas are also quite common. The original fried pizza is actually a calzone filled with ricotta, pepper and pork cracklings. It's slowly disappearing but it once was much easier to find than the baked pizzas. After all all one needs to make them is some fire, dough and a pot full of oil. Such a pizza plays a role on one of my favourite films about Naples, L'oro di Napoli. Tomato topped pizzas are also quite common and usually loved by children. In a bout of nostalgia I decided to make these pizzas at home.

The procedure is very easy. I made a softish bread dough and let it rise twice. As topping I made some tomato sauce with some good canned tomatoes: just oil, salt, pepper and some basil as flavouring. To finish I prepared two containers, one with grated parmesan and the other with basil leaves. I divided the dough into small balls, flattened them out and fried them. It's important to press the centre of the disks with a slotted spoon while they fry so to obtain a little depression which will contain the sauce. When one side was golden I turned them around to finish cooking the other side. Once done I patted them quickly with kitchen towels to get rid of the excess oil and topped them with sauce, a generous sprinkling of parmesan and a basil leaf. I find they look beautiful, just love the colours.
Other toppings are often used, starting from a simple sprinkling of salt. If the pizzas are fried in olive oil one could sprinkle some parmesan on top and add very little hot oil on top to melt it (for oil lovers only). An enriched sauce with olives and capers can also be used. a few toppings I've read of but never tried are: anchovies, with or without sauce, ricotta and pepper, small steamed fishes or mussels.
If you top with tomato sauce it is important to have a tasty and possibly not too sweet one. This is what gives the main flavour contrast to the oily-fried dough. I would also avoid using any fresh cheese like mozzarella as it would only make the pizzas soggy.
The size and thickness of the pizzas can be varied to taste: small thin one for parties, a single big one as lunch and so on. The ones I made were as big as a CD and 2 were enough for a very filling dinner.

Should I worry?

The British Thoracic Society says baking can induce asthma. Seems dusting with flour is the problem. OK, probably I don't bake enough to run the risk, but still, should I get worried? Or maybe the glorious EU bureaucrats will decide to prohibit the use of flour in baking ;-)).

Old fashioned tastes

As promised I'm posting about some traditional Neapolitan cooking, baking actually. The first recipe I made from Jeanne C. Francesconi's book is Pizza di Scarole, or escarole pizza. The name pizza is in this case confusing as this is more a savoury cake. Still the term pizza is used in Naples both for the flat classic pizza and for several savoury cakes. The "modern" version of the recipe calls for escarole flavoured with olives, capers and anchovies as stuffing. I opted for a more old fashioned filling using a mix of pinoli (pine nuts), capers, raisins, black olives (all in the same amount, about a fistful) and a 1 clove of garlic, one anchovy and some hot pepper to flavour the greens. This is an old (probably XVII century or older) and traditional mixture used for a few vegetables (great on pan fried peppers) and for linguini di scammaro, the traditional lent pasta in Naples, in which case green olives and bred crumbs are also added, with or without tomato sauce (in which case no bread crumbs). This mixture probably came from Sicily. It might have arrived there with the Arabs, but since I'm not really strong in middle eastern cooking I could not say.

To start I chopped the garlic and anchovies and pitted and halved the olives. I was lucky enough to have some Gaeta olives, delicious small purple olives with a slight bitter taste, used in Neapolitan cooking whenever black olives are needed. Meanwhile I washed and chopped the escarole. In Naples this is sold as small baby plants, as big as an extended hand. Here in Germany I only found some as big as a salad, meaning that the leaves would be inevitably tougher. In a pan I dissolved the anchovies in some hot olive oil, added hot pepper and garlic, waited till the garlic turned golden in colour and then toasted the pinoli in the mixture for one or two minutes. Before I go on with the recipe let me digress for a second. I would like, one day, to find out why pinoli are called pignoli in the States. I guess it probably comes from north-eastern Italian dialects as in Italian pignoli means stubborn people! Going back to the recipe; once the pinoli looked slightly darker in colour I added the cut escarole and let it cook/braise (I would say stufare in Italian) covered. At first the amount of greens in the pan looks enormous but soon it reduces in volume to a more "normal" size as the leaves become soft. At this point I added olives, capers and raisins (softened in warm water) and salt and uncovered to let the little liquid present evaporate. If too much liquid is there one could simply pour it off the pan, important is that the stuffing is not wet or it will soak the bread dough casing. I really love the colour the escarole has at this point, a beautiful green (hope you can see it in the pic below). Together with the olives, etc. it almost looks like an abstract painting.

Beforehand I prepared some simple bread dough, enriched with a bit of olive oil. I rolled (gently) 2/3 for bottom and sides filled it with the braised escarole and used the remaining dough to make a lid, which i brushed with olive oil. The pizza di scarole baked at 180C/360F for 25-30 minutes. After it cooled a bit it was ready to eat. It tastes good still warm but it is even better if left to cool so that the flavours can blend together.

If you try this and REALLY hate raisins you can leave them out, otherwise, even if the combination sounds weird, try it. It might positively surprise you.

Intermezzo

A short post on chocolate while I finish working on a few new baking posts. Now, since I live in Germany's culinary backwaters (willingly and quite happily, to be honest) I'm happy when I get the chance to travel to Berlin and do some food shopping (as well as some sightseeing). Last time, a few weeks ago, I was there for work for about a week and having some free time in the afternoon I finally managed to visit Kadewe and their famous food hall on the 6th floor. I left with a quite full bag containing, between others, a little box of assorted Valrhona chocolate squares. OK maybe for some of you it's no problem getting hold on these chocolates but I left happy as a kid, and looking forward at finally tasting these famous chocolates.

The box contained 4 chocolate sorts, one milk and three dark chocolates. To my disappointment there were no chuao squares. Should have bought a small bar of that too. The chocolate were the following:

-Jivara: a milk chocolate with a very marked vanilla aroma. Although valrhona publicises it as a "not too sweet" chocolate it still was too sweet for me. But then milk chocolate is not really what I like.

-Manjari: my favourite. A 64% cocoa bar from Madagascar. A very nice fruity and fresh taste. It reminded me of red-currants and citrus.

-Caraibe: as the name says, from the Caribbean. 66% cocoa, lightly sweetened. A chocolate with a quite nutty taste.

-Guanaja: this one, a 70% cocoa bar, is like a great wine. It has a complex, imposing aroma. Fruity, nutty and even a few flower aromas. And a taste that goes on forever. Definitively a great chocolate, maybe even a bit too powerful for my tastes.

Next time I'm in Berlin I know what to buy.

The famous "unknown" cheese

I'm referring above to mozzarella. The cheese that everyone believes to know. When you think about mozzarella what comes to your mind? The pre-grated stuff to put on pizza or those pale gummy cheese balls sold in little bags stored in whey maybe? But how many have tasted the real DOC (controlled denomination) Mozzarella di Bufala Campana? Many things are called Mozzarella out there, but the real one is a different thing altogether. Maybe I should cool down a bit and start all over. It's only that mozzarella, even for a half-Neapolitan as me, is a subject of love, pride, and because the misuse of the name, anger.

So it all started as I ordered some fresh mozzarella from Italy. It is something I do maybe once a year (it is quite expensive to get it sent here) usually because my wife asks me to. She loves the stuff even more than me, although she's German. Yesterday, since we had a guest for dinner, we decide to eat some, simply sliced and flavoured with a few drops of good EV olive oil and a bit of pepper. With that we drank some Falanghina a nice white wine typical of the Campania region, fruity but not overpowering in taste like so many whites today.

The first comment from our guest was: "Oh mozzarella, I don't really like it. It tastes of nothing and its so rubbery." That made me mad, but at the same time, who could blame her? That's what most people get when they eat mozzarella. Luckily after two bites of the real stuff she changed her mind... lucky for her otherwise she would not have left alive... just kidding!! But it made me think how little most people know about mozzarella and so I decided to write this post.
The cheese itself is made entirely of buffalo milk. It comes in many shapes: little mozzarella bites, plaits, cylinders, etc. The two most common ones are round 250 or 500g cheeses. All should always come stored in whey. The cheese skin is smooth and white with only the signs of the piece cutting noticeable (I'll come to that later) and when sliced should release quite a bit of whey from the inside. The inside is usually somehow a bit darker than the outside, slightly ivory in colour. The smell should be slightly acidic (buttermilk) and musky, sometimes (especially in spring) noticeable grassy/floral aromas can be present. It should taste milky, slightly sour and the salt should be noticeable. It is supposed to be a bit springy but not too much, and after a few chews almost melt in your mouth. Mmmh... delicious.
So why does the industrial stuff taste so bad and why can it be called mozzarella?
First about the taste. Buffalo milk has is slightly richer in fats than cow milk, and that gives buffalo mozzarella a more buttery taste. Still very good cow mozzarella (called around Naples Fior di Latte) can be made. The real secret is in the acidification of the curd. Mozzarella is a cheese that melts forming long threads and this property is used for shaping it. To be able to do this the calcium which is naturally bound to casein, the main protein in cheeses, has to be remove and this is obtained by acidifying the curd. To do this you can let lactic bacteria develop in old whey from previous cheeses (artisan method) or use plain citric acid (industry). Citric acid gives no real flavour to the cheese but allows it to keep longer while the live lactic bacteria give a much richer and complex taste but make the shelf life shorter. Traditional mozzarella is, for this reason, best eaten after one to three days after it is made and at most after a week (it will taste quite a bit sour by then). There are also another few reasons but this is the main source of taste difference.
Why can almost anything be called mozzarella then? The story is quite complex, and I'm not totally sure myself. There are loads of economical and political reasons for this but one of the main ones for me is that the traditional producers wasted way too much time bickering before they thought of protecting in some way what they had. At the same time Italian politicians have been for decades unable to protect Italy's gastronomic richness. We Italians might often criticise our loved/hated French cousins but we should learn from them.
So If you come across Mozzarella di Bufala maybe give it a try, otherwise there are today quite a few of local producers (in the States, Germany, even Japan) that produce mozzarella (mainly from cow milk but some also with buffalo milk) the traditional way. Look out for them and you'll maybe discover what all the fuss is about.