This past New Year's Eve was the chance to have a few friends over and have an almost entirely Italian dinner. The "almost only" refers to the sweet, delicious Czech milk rolls filled with plum compote, called Buchteln in German (and probably in Czech too) served with warm vanilla custard. Let's go back to the start though. We began with a platter with assorted salumi, a winter risotto with endive, Gorgonzola, walnuts and pear and the Italian New Year's Eve classic: Cotechino.
Festive dishes in Italy are often as varied as the different cuisines are and yet there are a few specialties which are common throughout the nation: Panettone for Christmas and Colomba for Easter for example. And Cotechino (and Zampone) as the main course of the New Year's eve dinner, to be served almost inevitably with lentils. Lentils are traditionally seen as a symbol for coins and therefore money; eating these pulses during New Year's Eve is supposed to be auspicious for an economically successful year. I hope so, I've eaten my fair share this time.
Cotechino is a traditional sausage of Emilia Romagna; depending on who you listen to you might hear it comes from Parma or more probably Modena, where it acquires the certified IGP origin denomination. It originates in the Middle ages as a peasant's sausage, being made with the rests from the newly butchered pig, mainly form the head. From the XIX century onwards cotechino, and its more porky relative zampone (the same stuffing encased in the trotter's skin), started gaining popularity, counting gourmet and composer Rossini among its fans. It did not win everybody's approval though: Pellegrino Artusi, author of Italy's first popular cooking book in 1891, describes it as "not being a refined dish" fit to be served only to very good friends or family who'd not mind a rustic dish as this one. What marked cotechino's rise into the table of the higher classes was, among others, a change in its recipe. With the introduction of Large White pigs in Italy a new ingredient was added to the sausage mixture, the pig 's skin: the light skin of these pigs was definitely more apt to be used in cooking than the dark bristly one of the mediterranean pigs. The finely chopped skin, slowly releasing gelatin during the cooking process, gives cotechino its incredible silky texture. Aren't pigs delicious?
Today most of the cotechino sold and eaten in Italy is produced by big food industries as precooked, vacuum packed product, which only needs to be warmed up. The industrial product is not bad, but it simply pales next to artisan cotechino. Having been lucky enough to receive one of these as a gift, I took the time to prepare it with the care it deserves.
Cooking cotechino from scratch requires some patience. It has to be first soaked in cold water for at least four hours, better overnight. This step is necessary to remove some of the salt added to the stuffing to prevent the sausage from spoiling. I did not remember to, but it is probably better to change the soaking water at least once to remove even more salt. I soaked mine for six hours and ended with a slightly salty cotechino.
Once the cotechino is nicely soaked its skin has to be punctured all over, using a fork, toothpick or similar. This prevents the skin from bursting during cooking and also has the function of allowing excess fat to flow out. Following this step the cotechino is either wrapped in cheesecloth and tied firm with some string or enclosed in a special elastic net available nowadays, to keep its shape during cooking.
As soon as the cotechino is safely tied up like a . . . sausage, it goes into a big enough pot submerged in cold water and is ready to be cooked. When the water starts boiling the heat should be reduced enough to keep just a slow boil for the next three hours. Once cooked the cotechino is left in its warm poaching liquid till serving time.
It is best to plan the times with some care so that the cotechino will have rested between half and one hour, and should still be warm when serving time comes. Remove it from the pot, roll the net or cheesecloth away, cutting any string off, and slice into 1 cm thick slices. Serve two slices per person
with mashed potatoes, lentils or both.
P.S. If you have any rests you can use them to make a delicious chicken stuffing. Take two slices of cotechino, some dry crustless white bread soaked in milk, a few dried procini soaked in warm water till soft, and whatever herbs you fancy. Finger licking good ;-).
I do love cotechino! One of the main places I can get it here in Melbourne is at the "Veneto Club" - a social club for immigrants from the Veneto region, from where my father's family come. It's certainly not found on many Italian restaurant menus!
It is such a rich, gelatinous dish that not everybody can cop with it; I know my mother looks at it with horror and won't go near it! It certainly needs something served with it to cut through the richness. It really is wonderful!
Posted by: Niki | January 03, 2005 at 03:09 AM
I would just like to add that these milk rolls you're talking about, the "Buchteln", are not a Czech dish originally, but a traditional Austrian one. Very tasty indeed.
Posted by: Different | January 04, 2005 at 10:47 AM
Niki, I used to hate cotechino as a kid too. Way too rich for me back then. Lucky for me I grew out of it!
Different, thanks for the information. I had been trying to find where the dish originates before writing the post and I ended up with a bunch of different claims: Tyrol and Bohemia seemed the two places with the most solid ones. Now I only wait for someone from the Czech republic to claim the opposite ;-).
Posted by: Alberto | January 04, 2005 at 11:02 AM
Hey Alberto,
I have a friend from Milan and he and his wife always invite us to their house for cotechino around New Year's. I absolutely love it. It's decadent. It's actually making me hungry reading this.
Posted by: dave | January 10, 2005 at 05:19 PM
Decadent is a great description Dave. I'm almost glad it's only a once-a-year tradition, at least as far as my weight goes :-D.
Posted by: Alberto | January 11, 2005 at 09:52 AM
Niki,
in Veneto we have "musetto", not cotechino.
It is quite similar, but not the same.
Posted by: piera | January 14, 2005 at 09:28 PM
Piera, I'd be curious to know what side dishes go with musetto in Veneto. I've only eaten it in Friuli, where it is usually served with brovade (macerated and fermented turnips).
Posted by: Alberto | January 16, 2005 at 12:57 PM
Concerning the origin of "Buchteln" an Austrian linguist (http://www.inst.at/trans/15Nr/06_1/pohl15.htm) says the following:
Die Wiener Küche hat aus allen Sprachen der Österreichisch-Ungarischen Monarchie Wörter aufgenommen (wie u.a. die böhmischen Buchteln, den Powidl 'Zwetschkenmus', auch der beliebte Zwetschkenschnaps Sliwowitz kommt aus dem Tschechischen
Vienna's kitchen took in words from all languages of the Austrian-Hungarian monarchy (like the Bohemian Buchteln, Powidl 'plum jam', the popular plum schnaps Slimowitz is Czech too.
So, as the word is of Czech/Bohemian origin I guess the Buchteln are originally Czech as well.
Posted by: Juliane | February 04, 2005 at 06:22 AM
Hello,
Can anyone tell me where I can find uncooked Cotechino... even the butcher shops here in the North End of Boston don't have it. If anyone knows of a place that offers overnight shipping, please let me no.
thanks !
Matt
Posted by: Matthew Tromba | December 22, 2005 at 12:02 AM