Facciamo Cuocere.....Let's Cook.......fish!

My husband has never been very fond of tomatoes, removing tomatoes from his salad, not really enjoying food cooked in tomatoes, and preferring pesto or cream based sauces for his pasta. And like most Chinese, eats only rice or noodles with lunch and dinner, reserving bread for breakfast...maybe. But after over three months in Rome, I find that I am serving more and more baguette or dinner roles with our meals. He has also developed a taste for tomatoes, and all sorts of tomato based dishes. His favourites are tripe and bacalao.

Bacalao:

Bacalao stall Termini

Bacalao or salted cod is plentiful here in Rome. We first saw this in the market at Termini and we continue to buy our bacalao from this same vendor. Bacalao is sold in slabs that are about ½ - 1 inch thick, 3 – 6 inches wide and about 12 – 18 inches long. The first thing to do before cooking is to wash all the salt off and then soak it in water for 24-48 hours, remembering to change the water at least three times. The time I cooked this for my brother's family, when they came to visit, I forgot to do this and the cooked bacalao turned out quite salty! If it is very hot in your kitchen, you will need to refrigerate while it soaks. Once it’s ready to cook, remove the skin and the bones and cut them against the grain into cubes and dredge them in flour. I like simple recipes and here’s one way to cook bacalao Florentine style. You will need:

soaking bacalao

3 cloves crushed garlic

1 small onion minced

Pepper

White wine

¾ lb. canned or fresh tomatoes
chilli powder or chilli flakes



a slab of bacalao

 Saute the garlic and onions and then add the bacalao cubes turning them to cook on the other side as well. Put in the white wine and continue cooking until almost all the wine has evaporated, add the tomatoes, crushing them against the pan, add chilli powder and pepper to taste. And that’s it! This is delicious served with baguette! It is a dish that keeps really well and tastes better the next day. So don't worry about leftovers.... that is if there is any. 

Spigola baked in salt:

The first time I tried fish baked in salt was in Sestri Levanti almost 14 years ago during my parents' golden wedding anniversary celebration. It was delicious and not easily forgotten! Then just last month, I had turbot baked in salt at the Casina Veladier, a restaurant atop the Pincio Hill here in Rome. I really liked this and was determined to try doing this at home myself.

My husband loves steamed fish, the way the Chinese do it, which to him is the way fish should be cooked. He believes and I think he is right that this is healthier than frying and brings out the real flavor of the fish. My mother-in-law always steamed her fish and insisted on it's freshness. I remember her pointers: look at the eyes, they need to be clear and luminous, pinch the fish, it has to be firm to the touch and then sniff at it, it should have the smell of the sea! If the fish had a slight smell (a big no no) or was bought in the afternoon, she would say "no good" but would proceed to make a curry or fry the fish with chili so as "not to waste it". So when I decided to try the salt baking way, I knew I had to find the freshest fish possible.

Spigola or sea bass is one of the more popular fish sold in our supermarket. When I first tried this, I went to my friendly supermarket fish monger who advised me not to scale the fish. So he cleaned the inside of the spigola for me and left the scales on. Another time, I had forgotten to tell him that it was for salt baking so he scaled it before I could stop him. Either way it was ok. However, the unscaled fish came out looking nicer. The skin came out in a whole strip, so serving the meat was easier and made me look like an experienced maitre 'd.



spigola is in there somewhere

 The salt that I use is of the coarse variety. I use about a kilo mixed with 1 egg and some water until it resembled wet sand, the consistency resembling what one would use to build sand castles on the beach. The subsequent times I did this, I used only the egg white as the yolk gave the salt a yellowish color which was not very attractive.

First time I tried doing this, I was a bit uncertain, but found that it was really simple. First, stuff the cavity of the fish with some parsley and then on a baking dish, spread some of the salt, enough to hold the bottom of the fish securely. Encase the whole fish with the remaining salt and then put it in the oven (350 degrees F) for around 25 - 30 minutes.



yummy!

 When you remove this from the oven, the salt cover would have hardened. Using a wooden spoon or the flat side of a cleaver, crack the salt and free the fish. I simply bring the entire fish to the table with some sliced lemon. I skin the fish right at the table. Adding a bit of olive oil and or lemon is all that's needed. Tastes fantastic! Even my husband agreed, so he no longer keeps asking me to steam fish for dinner (I always had to say, we have no steamer or no pan big enough), salt baking has become a very good substitute. And to tell you frankly, I actually prefer this.

After having eaten fish this way a couple of times, I found out that cooking fish this way originated in Sicily. What do I know of Sicily? Well right now as I sit here writing this, I hear the theme song of the Godfather in the background! But this notoriety may only be scratching the surface. Goethe reputedly said, "To have seen Italy and not to have seen Sicily is not to have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the clue to everything". Need to follow that clue...another side-trip to dream about!

Mangiamo! Let's Eat!

I love Italian food...and nothing beats eating italian food in Italy, right? Well.......maybe eating french food in France? Hmm...that's something I need to think about. But that's for another time. Right now let's talk about food....Italian food, specifically eating italian food in italian restaurants in Rome!

There are things one needs to know about eating out in Italy. The most important being that meals are served and eaten leisurely. For Italians, meals are not only about consumption, it is more of a social event, when with friends or a family event, when with family. As such time is set aside, forgotten. So when you sit at a table in the restaurant, a waiter comes along and brings you a menu and then you're given time (a lot of time, for one used to fast food service) to look at the menu, then you order and your drinks are brought and then you wait..... and so on. When you're done, 2 hours could have gone by.

The next thing to be aware of is that italians eat late, lunch is usually between 1 and 3 or 4 in the afternoon and dinner may start at around 8 or 8:30 and go on until 11 or later. Most restaurants open at 12:30pm to 1:00pm for lunch and 7:30pm to 8:00pm for dinner.

A note of caution, when you receive an invitation for dinner or are going out for dinner, have a really light lunch, because there are four parts to a typical Italian meal:

The first is the antipasti which is made up of hot or cold appetizers, like melon wrapped with prosciutto, beef carpaccio, olives, parma ham with figs, marinated vegetables and many more delicious items like these.

This is followed by the primi piatti which most often will be a pasta with a sauce, or a risotto, sometimes gnocchi (dumpling), or polenta or maybe even soup.

The secondo piatti is the main course, either meat, fish or seafood. Side dishes of potatoes or a salad or some other vegetable can be ordered or are served with this course.

Then, the not to be missed part, the dolce or dessert, which can be a fruit, cheese, ice cream, and countless sweet concoctions. This is followed by coffee and then a digestivi, a liquor which as the name suggests, supposedly aids digestion.

The meal is accompanied by wine and lots of it. ( I am amazed by how relatively inexpensive wine is here!) You are of course free to skip the antipasti and the primi piatti and go straight to the main course, but you would be missing what may at times be the better part of the meal.

What we have tried doing here is to eat the "chinese way", which essentially means "sharing" a dish. On one occasion, there were four of us, so we had three orders of each course. The waiters kindly provided extra plates and utensils which made the sharing easier.

We have eaten in a lot of restaurants since we've arrived. Many of them memorable, some others, mainly tourist traps. Here are some of the more memorable ones, with a recollection of our experiences and reactions while eating there.

The Casina Valadier on the Pincio Hill

The Casina Veladier

We were invited by an Italian friend from Sienna to eat at this restaurant. We took Metro Line A from Termini, and got off at the Flaminio stop right at Piazza del Popolo. We had a drink at Rosati, a bar on the Piazza, and then walked up a long flight of steps to the Pincio terrace which afforded us a fantastic view of Rome, including St. Peter's Basilica.

Piazza del Popolo from the Pincio Hill

The Casina Veladier is a very upscale place, very close to the Pincio Terrace and is considered a watering hole by politicians, rock stars and the rich and powerful, or so we were told.

Our table by the window

The service was definitely impeccable. Thinly sliced zucchini stuffed with ricotta and zucchini blossoms stuffed with tomatoes was my antipasti. Decided to skip the primi piatti and and went directly to the main course, turbot baked in salt and served with spinach (this was very good!). Dessert was a chocolate dome with coffee mousse and a vanila bean at the center. We had a Montepulciano L'Abruzzo with the meal and finished it off with an espresso. Overall a good meal but rather expensive. What was most memorable was the view from the restaurant.

The view at dusk

Later that night

Would we go back to this restaurant? Yes.....if only for the view.

Alfredo y Ada

On the other end of the restaurant scale is a very charming mom and pop operation. At this place there is no menu, you simply eat what they have for the day and their house wine is literally made in-house. Cooking responsibilities have been passed from Ada to her grandaughter, a very attractive, young lady.

First time we ate there was for dinner. It's a small restaurant on Via Banchi Nuovo, a small road adjoining the Via B. S. Spirito which is directly connected to the Ponte Sant' Angelo, the bridge leading straight to the Castel Sant' Angelo.

Castel Sant'Angelo seen from Da Alfredo y Ada

 Our waiter, a rotund man with a ponytail and a sense of humor (his response to our statement that we didn't speak Italian: "Me too I speak Roman"), comes around to the table and asks, "red or white?" My husband responds, "Huh?" "Wine, what wine?" "Ah!", my husband enlightened answers, "Red". "Cream sauce or tomato sauce?" My reply, "ah?" "What sauce do you want for your pasta?", he clarifies. And so it went on.

Inside Da Alfredo y Ada

Our Roman speaking waiter

My very reasonably priced meal was spaghetti with a spicy tomato sauce, followed by veal scallopini (choice of veal or beef) and finished with some italian biscuits for dessert. This was accompanied by a carafe of red wine dispensed from a cask on a niche in the wall.

Since then, we have gone back for lunch and we'll be bringing our girls there when they come to visit.

Trattoria da Giggetto

This restaurant is located in the Jewish quarter, on Via del Portico D'Otavio, which ends at the ruins of Teatro di Marcello. One sees the ruins of the Portico d'Ottavia, a gate built by Augustus to honor his sister, Ottavia, whom he married to Mark Anthony in hopes of cementing an alliance between them after Julius Caesar was assasinated. And of course we all know what happened after, Mark Anthony left her in Rome and joined Cleopatra in Egypt.

 Giggetto's menu focuses on traditional Roman dishes. It's signature dish is fried artichokes (carciofi alla guida). On the day we ate there, they had fried filet of cod (filetti di baccala), carciofi della guida and fried zucchini flower as antipaste. We ordered one of each.

Carciofi, Baccala, Zucchini flower

The zucchini flower was stuffed with ricotta cheese and anchovies. It was delicious and so was the cod. I love artichokes and was very excited to try the fried carciofi. But I was dissapointed, to me it was like eating dried leaves. I prefer boiled artichokes, where you scrape the bottom of each petal with your teeth and work towards the heart.

For our main dish, we ordered 2 other "specialities of the house", fried lamb's brain and osso buco.

Fried lamb's brain

Osso Bucco

The osso bucco was very good, as for the lamb's brain.. ...? So would I return to this restaurant? For the baccala and the zucchini flowers? Definitely!