BEANS “ALL’UCCELLETTO” WITH SAUSAGE

In the trattorie of Florence I have heard shelled beans cooked in this way called “fagiouli all’uccelletto”.
(Pellegrino Artusi, Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well)

This recipe is a typical Florentine way to eat their beloved cannellini beans which have replaced meat for centuries. The name originates from the way small game birds were cooked in Tuscany, seasoned with a generous amount of sage.
The bean’s abundance in vegetable proteins and fibre has nourished Mediterranean populations for centuries. In these times of abundance, they are still quite appreciated.
Beans are an excellent side dish, but you can add sausages to the basic recipe and create an excellent traditional Tuscan main course.
There are many versions of this recipe, some include onion and seasoning. The recipe reported by our Romagna gentleman consists of sage and tomato, I personally love adding garlic.
The first recipe we find in the original cookbook of Italian cuisine is the one which considers beans as a side dish, excellent for accompanying stewed meats. In it, the beans are browned in a substantial amount of oil and sage, and later enriched with tomato sauce. I prefer to use a milder temperature and less oil.

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cooking Time: 35 minutes | Total Time: 40 minutes | Yield: Makes 4  servings.

Ingredients

 

  • 500 g beans, already cooked in water with a poached garlic clove, a sprig of rosemary and 3 sage leaves. Reserve the cooking liquid.
  • 4 sausages
  • 2 garlic cloves, peeled
  • 1 tin of crushed tomato
  • 3 tablespoons olive oil
  • Sea salt
  • 10 sage leaves
  • A sprig of rosemary

 

Instructions

Put a pan on the stove with the oil, sage leaves and garlic. When the oil starts to sizzle, toss in the sausages and brown them, piercing them with the prongs of a fork in order to make them lose their juices.

When the sausages are golden, toss in the beans and season with salt and pepper. Add the tomato sauce to the beans with 2-3 tablespoons of their cooking liquid. Let them simmer for 15-20 minutes without a lid, take them off the stove and serve.




STUFFED CAPON

Capon is a traditional Christmas bird in Europe. It is used either to make a very tasty but fat stock to accompany minestre, such as tortellini, or as a main course, usually stuffed. This stuffing is very simple. I had some cured meats leftover and I thought of giving them a second life. It is a very simple dish, and although there are other ways to cook it, for an Italian Christmas lunch, where there are also children who do not love exotic tastes and spices, this is the ideal cooking method.

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cooking Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 30 minutes | Yield: Makes 4 servings.

Ingredients

  • 1 4lb (1.8 kg) capon, cleaned and trimmed
  • Fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the stuffing

  • 12.5 oz (350 g) ground pork and beef
  • 3 oz (90 g) Emmental cheese
  • 3 oz (90 g) rolled pancetta
  • 3 eggs
  • 2 potatoes, boiled and peeled

For cooking

  • 2 garlic cloves
  • ½ cup (125 ml) dry white wine
  • 30 g butter
  • 4 tbsps. olive oil
  • 4 sage leaves
  • A sprig of rosemary
  • 2 ladles of chicken broth.

Instructions

Remove the giblets from the capon. Rinse out the cavity with cold water and pat it dry. Season it with salt and pepper.

Add all the ingredients to a food processor and mix. If you like the giblets, coarsely chop them and add to the stuffing.

Stuff the capon and sew the cavity. Put the capon in a big saucepan, brown the capon in butter and olive oil, with the aromatic herbs. Roast it for 20 minutes, then turn it on the other side and roast it for another 20 minutes. Add the wine and season with salt and black pepper to taste. Cook for two hours, basting and turning very carefully, to avoid the skin from breaking, adding some broth and cooking on a medium-low temperature.

To serve the capon, present it at the table whole, then carve it. Remove the stuffing in one piece if possible and slice it.




MARCHIGIANA RABBIT STEW

This rabbit stew (the rabbit can be substituted with chicken) is a vintage dish. I found it in a 1970s collection of recipes from an elementary school project in Pergola. Each child was asked to bring one of their grandmother’s recipes to school to assemble a traditional regional cookbook.

Pergola is a tiny hillside village in the heart of the Marche region, a beautiful area that is unfortunately or fortunately out of the tourist mainstream, where a local first-class cuisine still thrives.

In an age where there was no intensive livestock farming in Italy, we followed the seasons for meat consumption so, the end of summer was the best moment to eat rabbit, since those born during the spring had fully grown.

Toss the wonderful fresh home-made noodles with the stew’s sauce in a bowl adding a few tablespoons of the pasta cooking water.

Prep Time: 30 minutes | Cooking Time: 90 minutes | Total Time: 2 hours | Yield: Makes 8-10 servings.

Ingredients

 

  • 2 rabbits, chopped into small pieces
  • 2 cans of tomato purée
  • 2 onions, finely minced
  • 2 carrots, finely minced
  • 1 celery stalk, finely minced
  • Rabbit liver, finely chopped
  • 1 tbsp parsley, finely minced
  • 2 slices pancetta or prosciutto, finely chopped
  • ½ cup (125 ml) olive oil
  • 3 cups (750 ml) water
  • Salt and pepper
  • Fresh tagliatelle (noodles) 800 grams

 

Instructions

Place the rabbit pieces in a non-stick saucepan and sauté them until their water content evaporates, about 15 to 20 minutes.

When they are cooked, add all the other ingredients except for the water and tomato, and sauté for 25 to 30 minutes at medium-low heat. Season with salt and pepper and when the vegetables and pancetta are browned, add the water and cook for an hour, then add the tomato and cook for 30 minutes.




ROMAN-STYLE CHICKEN WITH BELL PEPPERS

This chicken with bell pepper recipe is truly a typical summer one. The lively colours of the peppers and tomato create a unique blend that you can really appreciate only if you can find fresh sun ripened vegetables.

It is a typical Roman dish, and there is a whole generation of Roman’s who are in their sixties that can still remember meals eaten on the beach, with their mums bringing this pot wrapped in a dish-cloth.

Nowadays, modern recipes add more ingredients, rosemary, sage and garlic in the chicken, and later bell peppers are added in the same pot.

I preferred following an “old school one”, I do not like the idea of adding rosemary and sage to peppers, I think that my recipe is simpler but better.

If you are interested in watching a short video shot in the 1960s, you’ll find some scenes interesting to watch. Do not even make the effort to try to understand it, the cook speaks with a “Roman dialect”, and do not even think of touching or biting vegetables and fruits in the market, or the police will fine you and the vendor… hygienic rules have changed a lot since then.

I love the idea of cooking the meat and the vegetables apart, and joining them in the last 10 minutes of cooking.

 

Prep Time: 30 minutes | Cooking Time: 2 hours | Total Time:  2 hours and 30 minutes | Yield: Makes 4 servings.

Ingredients

  • 1 medium-size chicken, chopped into pieces
  • ½ medium onion, finely chopped
  • 3 bell peppers, red or yellow, chopped.
  • ½ glass of white wine
  • 7 tbsps. EVO oil
  • 1 tin  finely chopped tomatoes

Instructions

Brown the chicken pieces in a heavy pot with 4 tablespoons of olive oil. Once the meat is golden brown, add the wine and season the meat with salt and black pepper. Allow the wine to evaporate. It is important to add salt and pepper with the wine because it enhances the flavour and you use less salt. Wait until the wine has completely evaporated before adding the chopped tomatoes. Cook over medium low heat for a couple of hours with the lid on, and add some water or stock if needed.

In another pot sauté the onion with the remaining  oil, and when it becomes golden add the peppers. Season with salt and black pepper. Cover with the lid and let it cook for half an hour. Remove the lid and let it cook for another 20 minutes, then add them to the pot with the chicken and cook meat and peppers together for 15 minutes.




CHICKPEA FLATBREAD: THE CONQUEST OF THE TYRRENIAN SEA

Chickpea flatbread is a humble but delicious dish, with its origins dating back to ancient Greek and Roman times.   On the Tuscan coasts it is called Cecina, Farinata in Liguria, and is a common dish on the coasts of the Mediterranean, where it was spread by Ligurian sailors.

Porridges and legumes were commonly in use in the Ancient Mediterranean, and it is now common knowledge that this recipe was introduced during the Middle Ages by the Maritime Republics of Pisa and Genoa. The legends which recount the birth of this recipe are fascinating: the first narration recalls the siege of Pisa in 1005, when the Pisan fleet was in Calabria to help its inhabitants, which had been attacked by Saracens. Some Arabic vessels pointed North and assaulted Pisa. Its desperate citizens reacted to the attack, hurling anything they could grab on the attackers. Almost anything was hurled on the heads of the Saracens, furniture and food too; sacks of chickpeas, which were stepped on and mixed with boiling olive oil, among other things.

When the attackers left, the hungry citizens tried to salvage their properties, and the chickpea flour, which had been mixed with olive oil. At the time, wasting food was not an option, and the citizens tried to recover the slop, which had dried in the sun. The citizens called it “Pisa gold” referring sneeringly to the attempts of the Arabs to seize the city’s riches.

Another legend refers to an ensuing battle, the one in Meloria in 1248. Genoa won over Pisa and took the Tuscan sailors as hostages. The Ligurian galleys were involved in a storm, and the sacks of chickpeas and vases of olive oil were thrashed in the hold and mixed with sea water, making a slop which was served to the sailors in wooden bowls. Some of them refused to eat it, but the bowls were left in the sun, which dried and cooked the gruel, making a delicious dish.

Another version tells of the effort to spread the slop on sea rocks, in order to dry it, but the result was still the same; the following and decisive result is added by the cooking the mixture  in a wood burning oven, which is the real secret of its excellence.

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cooking Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 30 minutes + 5 hours standing | Yield: Makes 4 servings.

Ingredients

 

  • 1 1/3 cups (150 g.) chickpea flour
  • 1 teaspoon sea salt
  • 4 tablespoons olive oil, 2 for the batter and 2 for the pans
  • 2 cups water, room temperature
  • black pepper
  • 1 baking pan, in steel or copper, diameter 13 inches (32 cm)

 

Instructions

 

In a bowl, gradually mix the flour with water, cover with a film and let it sit for 4-5 hours, mixing it every half hour.

The flour will produce impurities which make a kind of foam and must be discarded, using a slotted spoon.

This procedure is used in Liguria, the Tuscans are much quicker and mix all the ingredients together almost immediately and bake them, without the sitting time.

After the resting time, add salt and olive oil to the mixture and pour it into a baking pan, and put into a pre-heated oven at 425 F (220 C) for 10 minutes in the lower part of the oven, then move it to the upper part and cook for 10 to 15 minutes, until it is light brown.

An excellent addition can be spring onion, fresh parsley, Italian sausage, or aromatic herbs like rosemary, mixed to the batter before baking them, together with salt and oil.




RED MULLETS BETWEEN LIVORNO AND MOSES

This way of cooking red mullets is typical of Livorno, nevertheless, I discovered that the within the Italian Jewish community, it is also called “à la Moses”. I guess it’s due to the presence of a substantial Jewish community in the town of Livorno.

Livorno was turned into the official access to the Mediterranean Sea for the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Under the Medici rule, Livorno was declared a free port, which meant that the goods traded here were duty-free within the area of the town’s control. It was a very common strategy, applied to all ports of recent foundation, where the ruling classes wanted to attract trade; you can find it in a lot of Italian place names, where you find the particle “franco”, like the many “Francavillas” in different regions of Italy prove.

The Medici family also took care to protect merchant activities from crime and racketeering, and instituted laws regarding international trade. Expanding Christian tolerance, the laws offered the right of public freedom of religion and amnesty to people having to gain penance given by clergy in order to conduct civil business. The Grand Duchy attracted numerous Turks, Persians, Moors, Greeks, and Armenians, along with Jewish immigrants. The latter group arrived mainly in the late sixteenth century with the expulsion of Jews from Spain and Portugal – while Livorno extended rights and privileges to them; they contributed to the mercantile wealth and scholarship in the city.

It seems that the contribution of Italian Jews to Italian cuisine was more significant than what it seems: the oldest community of Jews out of Israel was in Rome before the diaspora, since the II century C.E. Two millenniums of cohabitation with the Italians created an extremely rich and varied cuisine. Jewish bakeries were famous, and Christians clients bought their products, in spite of the condemnations of the Catholic clergy.

Many dishes, now considered typically Italian, were deeply influenced by Jewish creativity, like stuffed pastas, sources of pride of Jewish communities during the Renaissance.

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cooking Time: 10 minutes | Total Time: 30 minutes | Yield: Makes 6 servings.

Ingredients

 

  • 2 lbs (1 kg) – about 8 red mullets, cleaned*
  • 14 oz (400 g) canned peeled plum tomatoes (fresh if it is summer)
  • 4 tbsp olive oil
  • 2 garlic cloves, finely minced
  • 1 tbsp fresh parsley, finely minced
  • Salt and pepper to season

 

Instructions

 

*CLEANING THE RED MULLETS:

Scale the fish gently, cut the fins, and open the belly using a sharp knife. Gut and discard. Wash carefully and dry, using kitchen paper.

 

For the tomato sauce: if you have very ripe tomatoes, you can blanch them for 3 to 4 minutes, then transfer to a bowl with cold water and peel. Discard the seeds and cut them into small pieces. Otherwise, you can use the canned peeled tomatoes, and crush them with a fork.

 

In a pan, sauté the garlic in the olive oil. After one minute, add the parsley and tomatoes almost immediately. Season with salt and pepper, stir and let it simmer for 5 to 6 minutes, stirring sometimes.

Add the red mullets, laying them down very gently, making them sink into the sauce.

They must simmer over a low flame with no lid and NEVER BE MOVED OR TURNED OVER, just shake the pan gently in order to prevent them from sticking to the pot. With a spoon, take some sauce and cover the fish. After 10 minutes they are cooked, serve directly from the pan, without moving them, or they will break.




STUFFED CALAMARI: A COASTAL DELICE

This stuffed calamari recipe is simple and incredibly good. Quite unusually, compared to traditional fish recipes, we add cheese which confers creaminess.

I added the technique for cleaning calamari, but you can usually find them already cleaned at the fish vendor’s, so you just need to separate the tentacles from the mantle.

Calamari are very easy to cook, and the main thing to remember is that the squid flesh is kept tender by a short cooking time. It can be prepared and kept in the fridge in advance and cooked at the very last moment.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cooking Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 35 minutes | Yield: Makes 4 servings.

Ingredients

 

  • 4 calamari
  • 40 g breadcrumbs
  • 1 egg
  • 3 tbsps. grated Pecorino or Caciocavallo cheese
  • 2 small garlic cloves, deprived of the green germ
  • Parsley
  • 3 tbsps. olive oil
  • Salt
  • Pepper
  • 2 tbsps. dry white wine

 

Instructions

 

Hold the tentacles and detach the from the body pulling delicately: the guts will follow too. Remove the thin transparent bone from inside the body. Rinse inside and out, discarding the skin. Also discard the eyes, the guts, the beak at the centre of the tentacles, and all the cartilaginous parts.

Cut up the tentacles and sauté them in a non-stick frying pan with 1 tablespoon olive oil, season with salt and a bit of freshly milled black pepper. Put them in a bowl and add the other ingredients with the parsley and garlic chopped together. Mix and stuff the calamari. Close each calamaro with a toothpick.

Pour the rest of the olive oil in the pan previously used to cook the tentacles, and sauté the calamari. When they are lightly browned, pour in the wine and finish cooking for 15-20 minutes. Add some water if the liquid dries up. Check with a fork; if they are tender, they are ready.




ROASTED LAMB SHOULDER: AN EASTER DELICACY

This way of roasting lamb is incredibly simple but involves some degree of organisation, since you need to calculate the time needed for marinating and cooking.

This a very traditional Tuscan recipe, celebrated in Pellegrino Artusi’s Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well. In those days, preparation snd cooking times, and ingredient quantities were rarely indicated, so I am trying to give more precise indications.

This Arezzo style roasted lamb is usually cooked on the BBQ, and is frequently basted with the marinade: in Italy we use a rosemary sprig as a brush.

This recipe’s ideal side dish is an oven dish full of golden potatoes, roasted with olive oil, garlic and sage.

Cook them apart, not in the same baking dish as the lamb, since the sharpness of the vinegar would give the potatoes an acidic taste.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cooking Time: 1 hour | Total Time: 1 hour + 10 minutes ( + 2 hours for marinading) | Yield: Makes 4 servings.

Ingredients

 

  • 2.5 lb (1 kg) lamb shoulder
  • 1 sprig rosemary
  • 3 sage leaves
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 2 garlic cloves, peeled
  • 4 tbsp olive oil
  • 2 tbsp white wine vinegar
  • Freshly ground black pepper
  • Sea salt

 

Instructions

Coarsely chop the herbs and add the olive oil and vinegar. Poke holes in the meat with a fork to absorb the marinade and let it sit for 2 hours.

Bake in a convection oven at 375° F (190° C) for an hour, turning and brushing it with the marinade (using a rosemary sprig).

Serve with sage and garlic roasted potatoes.




SWEET AND SOUR BORETTANE ONION

This side dish was created in Emilia, and it is the perfect complement to a vast variety of roasted meats, such as beef braised in Barolo wine.

It is a unique side dish, rich in fibre without the boring stigma associated with “healthy” foods.

In order to peel the onions, I found an American recipe that blanches them in a pot of boiling water followed by immersing them in a bowl of cold water to stop them from cooking. The temperature shift makes them easier to peel. In Italy, I usually find them peeled.

Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cooking Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 30 minutes | Yield: Makes 4 servings.

Ingredients

 

  • 1 kg – 2.2 lbs Borettane onions, peeled
  • 60 g – 1/3 cup sugar
  • 300 g – 1½ cups water
  • 150 g – ¾ cup balsamic vinegar
  • 3 tbsp olive oil

 

Instructions

 

In a non-stick pan, heat the olive oil and add the onions. Brown the onions and add the sugar. Stir to melt the sugar, and when onions are caramelized add the vinegar and cook for a few minutes, until most of it evaporates. Add the water, stir gently and cook for 10 minutes, then cover with a lid and cook for 10 more minutes.

Test with a fork; the onions are ready when they are soft.




ORVIETO, ITS CLIFF AND PIGEON BREEDING.

Orvieto is a beautiful Etruscan town built on a sheer cliff that is mainly composed of tuff and pozzolana, a soft material easy to excavate.

The Orvieto cliff was apt to being easily defendable thanks to its structure; meanwhile its inhabitants started to excavate its underground in order to obtain factories, storehouses and plants without distancing themselves from the powerful walls which defended the town.

Over the three thousand years of its history, the inhabitants bored more than one thousand cavities: I visited the widest, where there are the remnants of an oil mill and some millstones. Toward the interior of the cliff, the cavity is articulated in a series of rooms: among them, three Etruscan wells with their characteristic notches were workers who were excavating put their feet (pedarole in Italian). Another cavity, bordering with it, overlooks the cliff sides, and it is characterized by a great quantity of columbaria or dovecotes. These are rooms with a great quantity of recesses where pigeon could nest. This function is validated by the presence of water tanks and openings in the cliff edge to allow the pigeon keeper to give his animals liberty for purposes of exercise while allowing them to re-enter the house without special assistance from the keeper. At the same time, these houses are constructed to keep the pigeons safe from predators and inclement weather and give them nesting places in which to raise their squabs.

Pigeons were especially prized because they would produce fresh meat during the winter months when larger animals were unavailable as a food source. In the past wealthy landowners often had pigeon houses and there are still remnants of them in some European manor houses. Orvieto dovecots were especially useful in case the town were under siege and deprived of supplies of fresh food from the country nearby.

 

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cooking Time: 1 hour + 35 minutes | Total Time: 1 hour + 50 minutes | Yield: Makes 4  servings.

Ingredients

  • 2 pigeons about 10-14 oz. (300-400 g.) each.

For the stuffing

  • 2 fresh Italian sausages, peeled OR 9 oz. (250 g.) ground pork generously seasoned with salt and freshly milled black pepper
  • 2 tablespoons fresh Pecorino cheese, grated
  • 1,5 oz. (40 g.) stale bread (Ciabatta-like), deprived of crust
  • 1 egg
  • ¼ cup milk
  • 1 tablespoon fresh parsley, finely minced

For the cooking

  • 3 garlic cloves
  • ½ cup dry white wine
  • 3 sage leaves
  • 4 Juniper berries
  • 2 sprigs of rosemary
  • 3 tablespoons olive oil
  • 2 slices pancetta

Instructions

In a small bowl, pour the milk and soak the bread in it. Squeeze the milk out of it, put it in a bowl with the meat, and mix it with all the other ingredients, using your hands.

Season the pigeons with salt and pepper and the Juniper berries lightly crushed, and then stuff them but not completely, since the stuffing will swell when cooking. Close the pigeon with a toothpick or needle and thread.

Pour the oil in a heavy saucepan and add garlic, rosemary and sage. Place the pigeons in it and pancetta on the pigeons. Pigeons tend to dry, so choose a saucepan that fits them perfectly, not too large.

Roast the pigeons in all their sides and simmer with the wine until reduced.

Make the pigeons simmer for about 1 hour, covered with the lid, and add some tablespoons of water if necessary.

Serve them still warm, cut in two halves. Great with mashed potatoes.