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

Being an on again, off again “dependent spouse” has had it’s ups and downs. Accompanying a husband who has dedicated a major portion of his career to working for non-profit organizations has had it’s challenges, mainly a personal career path with lots of detours and stops (when forced into “hibernation” during those “dependent spouse” phases). On the other hand, it has given me extraordinary experiences. Living and working in third world countries like Bangladesh and Cote’dvoire, rich Arab countries like Dubai, developing tigers, India and South Korea, South East Asian countries like Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines, and now right here in the heart of Europe, Rome, has given me an uncommon view of the world! My children have had major challenges too, undoubtedly they have had a very rich growing-up experience, but were definitely not immune to all the problems attached to being part of the “cultural nomad” generation.

One of the things that we have all taken with us from these experiences is the appreciation for different types of food. We all love to eat and one of the things we tried to do, wherever we were was to look for local restaurants to enjoy and more importantly, learn how to cook local food. As a family, you can say we are adventurous “food afficionados”.

In Rome, it is only my husband and I, my son and his wife live in Vancouver, my daughter in Boston and our cook of 23 years is not with us, but I continue the tradition. I have tried to cook Italian and I think, making a success of it.

One thing I have learned is that Italians, like the Chinese put great emphasis on the freshness of ingredients. My grandfather-in-law, a tai-chi master in his youth went to the market daily to buy the food they were going to have for that day. He did this until the day of his death, when he went to the market as usual in the morning and sat in his porch, where they found him when they went to call him for lunch. He was 95. Come to think of it, my husband's penchant for going to the market and or grocery must have been inherited! Here in Rome, I am trying to follow grandfather's way, I try to buy whatever (at least the main ingredient) we will eat for dinner on the same day.

So what have I cooked?

Osso Bucco!

The first thing I tried was osso bucco. I tried cooking this in two ways: I tried a recipe by Guida de Laurentiis, which I found on the internet. The important ingredients, the veal shanks and the white wine, but the recipe also called for onions, garlic, carrots, celery, a bouquet garni of rosemary, thyme, bay leaves and cloves, the dredging with flour.... you get the idea This involved a lot of work and ingredients, I’m not too fond of chopping, dicing mincing etc. which adds to the clean up after, which is also tedious and boring. My complaints aside, it was pretty good and my husband enjoyed it. But it was too labour-intensive for me.



floured veal shanks

 I was given a simpler recipe, Milanese style which I decided to try. The veal shanks are cut to about an inch thick and around 6 to 7 inches across. The recipe is as follows:

1 small onion chopped

Some butter

Olive oil

½ cup or so white wine

2/3 cup water ( I used broth the second time I made this)

Some tomato paste

And for the gremolada:

2 or so cloves garlic

A sprig of rosemary

2 or so leaves of sage

Zest of 1 lemon grated

Chop all of this together

My Osso Bucco Milanese

Dredge the shanks with flour and set it aside. In a dutch oven sauté the chopped onion in butter and olive oil until transparent. Remove these from the pan and brown the shanks in the butter, olive oil mixture, sprinkling the white wine over these. When the shanks are brown, return the onions to the pan, add the tomato paste and the hot broth (you may need a bit more of this) simmer till the shanks are tender. When the shanks are tender, remove them from the pan and add the gremolada to the sauce. Season and pour over shanks and serve with Arborio rice. I have cooked this twice already, very good and the amount of work involved...not too much.

Fried zucchini flower!



fresh zucchini flowers

 From the first time I tried it, I loved it, talking about fried zucchini flowers. I tried it stuffed and plain. I loved them both. I knew I was going to try this at home. Sticking to my belief that kitchen duties need not take over your entire life, I decided to do a plain version. The first thing is to remove the stamen of the flower. You do this by sticking your hand into the delicate blossoms and pinching the stamen to remove them. Wash them very gently and then leave them to dry.



fried zucchini flowers

 I found several recipes for the batter, in which these blossoms are first immersed in and then deep fried. I tried one with egg and I found it too heavy. I tried another that simply called for flour and water, which was ok but I decided to use beer instead of just water. That turned out very well and that’s how I’ve cooked my zucchini flower ever since.

Tripe!

My mother has this fantastic spanish recipe for tripe, Callos Madrilena, which has been a family favorite from my childhood. Here it is so much easier to do as the tripe comes cleaned and already partially boiled. I tried cooking this in Korea, failed miserably, basically because of the fact that the tripe was still in it's natural state and cleaning it stunk up my whole house!

I cooked Callos once since I came to Rome and even if my husband really likes it, I find it hard doing it again, basically because of the preparation involved. But I was given a recipe for tripe, Trippa Genovese which I will cook again and often.

Here is the recipe:

First boil the tripe in water with a little white wine vinegar for about an hour. Then let it cool and slice it.

About a pound of tripe
3 bay leaves
extra vigin olive oil
1 onion chopped finely
2 clove garlic chopped
chilli flakes
3-4 large ripe plum tomatoes diced
fresh basil chopped
fresh parley chopped
oregano flakes
mixture of pecorino and parmiggiano cheese




Trippa Genovese

  Saute onions and garlic in olive oil until transparent then add the tripe and chili flakes stirring around until coated with the oil, add the wine and simmer until half the wine has evaporated, then add all the other ingredients and bring to a boil and then lower the fire and allow to simmer for 30 or so minutes. After thirty minutes add a mixture of pecorino and parmiggiano cheese and simmer for an additional 15 minutes. Then taste and adjust seasoning. Serve with Italian bread or baguette. This recipe is even better the next day.

Horse, anyone?

As for my failures, there have been some but nothing as spectacular as when I tried cooking Cavallo (horse meat). There is a small space in the meat chiller counter of our supermarket reserved for horse meat, which has a deeper almost dark red color as compared to beef. I've seen them thinly sliced and in cubes. I decided one day to try the cubed one in a stew. Was told that cooking cavallo is like cooking beef, except that overcooking would toughen it. Boy were they right! Ever hear that expression "it's like eating leather"? Well that was exactly how it was. But undeterred, I will try again, this time will use the thinly sliced meat and cook it very briefly. Maybe the Japanese have it right, they reputedly eat horse meat raw! 

I have tried cooking some other dishes, which I will write about eventually, but one thing I haven't tried cooking is the dolce part of the meal. Next time my sister visits me, we might just do that!

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!