1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (46 page)

While delicious brain specialties are enjoyed in many areas of the world, Italy’s ultimate version of the heady meat is one of a kind—surpassing even the breaded and golden-fried brains popular in many countries.

Where you are lucky enough to find it,
cervello arreganata
(or oreganata) will be a star attraction. The dish should arrive at the table sizzling hot and creamy under a mantle of crisp golden crumbs, perfumed with garlic, oregano, parsley, olive oil, and the slight salty needling of capers. The result is a mouthwatering main course defined by the contrast of crisp crumbs and pungent garlic with the brains’ satiny softness and slightly acidic pinch of flavor. Only a small, sprightly green salad and a glass of light red wine are needed to complete the feast.

Calves’ brains are the standard for most Italian cooks, but the smaller lambs’ brains, with an even more interestingly complex flavor, lend
themselves beautifully to this preparation in Italy’s Abruzzo region. Whatever the animal of origin, the elimination of brains from menus can hardly be counted as gastronomic progress—let’s hope for at least small signs of their resurgence before too long.

Serves 2 as main course, 4 as appetizer

For the most attractive presentation, bake and serve the brains in individual copper or enameled cast-iron gratin pans or shallow ovenproof baking dishes like small pie pans. For two main course servings, each dish should be 6 to 7 inches in diameter and 1 1/2 to 2 inches deep. For an appetizer, the brains can be baked in a 9-inch gratin or pie pan.

2 pounds fresh whole calves’ brains Ice

½ cup distilled white vinegar

Salt

8 whole black peppercorns

6 tablespoons (¾ stick) unsalted butter

2 medium-size cloves garlic, peeled

1 cup fine unseasoned bread crumbs

1 tablespoon dried oregano leaves

Freshly ground black pepper

2 to 4 lemon wedges sliced lengthwise

1.
Place the brains in a large bowl of ice water with ¼ cup of the vinegar and a pinch of salt to remove the blood. Let the brains soak in the refrigerator until they look white to very pale pink and the water has turned deep pink, about 3 hours. Drain the brains.

2.
Bring water to boil in a 2-to 3-quart pot with a pinch of salt, the peppercorns, and the remaining ¼ cup of vinegar. Turn off the heat, add the brains, and cover the pot. Let the brains stand for about 20 minutes.

3.
Remove the brains from the pot and rinse them under cold running water until they are cool enough to be comfortably handled. Discard the cooking water.

4.
Using your fingers, gently pull off bits of the thin, filmy membranes and the thickest white tubes that are visible around the brain mass. Try not to break up the lobes any more than necessary but clumps can be massed together when the brains are placed in the baking dish(es). The brains can be prepared in advance up to this point and refrigerated for about 4 hours. Let them come to room temperature, about 30 minutes, before continuing.

5.
About 30 minutes before serving time, place a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat the oven to 400°F.

6.
Melt the butter in a 7-to 8-inch sauté pan over very low heat. Using a garlic press, crush the garlic into the melted butter. Stir and let the garlic simmer over very low heat until it loses its raw smell but does not turn darker than a pale yellow, about 3 minutes.

7.
Stir in the bread crumbs, adding about 2 tablespoons at a time. Cook over low heat, stirring gently but constantly, until the butter is absorbed. Continue adding bread crumbs until the overall texture looks like slightly damp sand but is a bit fluffy. Stir in the oregano, crushing it slightly between your fingers as you do so. Taste for seasoning, adding salt and ground black pepper to taste (see
Note
).

8.
Butter the inside of the baking dish(es). Place half of the brains in each dish for individual portions or all of them in a single baking dish. Push together any clumps of brains that have separated so there is a solid mass filling the dish.

9.
Cover the brains completely with a sprinkling of the seasoned bread crumbs. Do not tamp the crumbs down or they will absorb moisture and become mushy.

10.
Bake the brains until the bread crumbs become a bright golden brown, 15 to 20 minutes. Serve the brains at once with the lemon wedges on the side.

Note:
The seasoned arreganata bread crumbs can be prepared 4 or 5 hours ahead and kept covered at room temperature.

Tip:
Order calves’ brains from a butcher several days in advance, preferably fresh, not frozen.
See also:
Hirn mit Ei
;
Cervelles au Beurre Noir
.

Chestnuts really do roast on open fires, as an autumnal street food that warms hands and hearts and brings teasing twitches to noses inhaling the scents of hot charcoal and toasting shells. Among the most quintessential of seasonal harbingers wherever they are enjoyed (a connection so entrenched in Italy that fall there is known as
la tempa de castagne
, the season of chestnuts), chestnuts are velvety soft inside with a light outer glazing of smoke.

The word
chestnut
refers primarily to the fruit of the European sweet castanea or Spanish chestnut tree, wonderful when foraged wild but also prized when cultivated. Called
marron
in French, the nut is mainly grown around Lyon, where it is also candied to become the famed
marron glacé.
As
kuri
, chestnuts are also considered autumn treats in Japan.

Though it’s a luxury food today, the chestnut’s distinctive rich starchiness made it a staple food of European peasants for centuries. Chestnuts were also frequently used as feed for swine, fattening and enriching the pork with hints of chestnutty sweetness, but these days the roasted nuts can be seen elevating all sorts of dishes, from creamy soups based on game stock to stuffings, cabbage, risottos, and innumerable desserts, in particular the one called
Monte Bianco
(
Mont Blanc
to the French). This is served as a holiday treat, a rich puree of cooked chestnut meat savory with wine or brandy, sugar, and spices that is piped out in a mountain (
monte
) of squiggles and topped with snowy whipped cream (
bianco
).

But the very best way to experience a chestnut is freshly roasted. To roast chestnuts at home, preheat the oven to 375°F. Use a sharp knife to cut a small cross into the round side of each chestnut. Roast them on a parchment-lined baking sheet for about 40 minutes, or until the cut crosses pop open when lightly pressed to split the skins. Or roast them over a fire, using a special perforated chestnut-roasting pan.

Where:
Roasted chestnuts are sold by outdoor vendors in New York City and throughout much of southern Europe, particularly in Rome, Corsica, southern France, and Spain, and particularly from October to January.
Mail order:
For chestnuts and long-handled chestnut roasting pans, Melissa’s Produce, tel 800-588-0151,
melissas.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Italian Holiday Cooking: A Collection of 150 Treasured Recipes
by Michele Scicolone (2001);
cookstr.com
(search chestnuts bittman);
ehow.com
(search about roasting chestnuts).
Tip:
Chestnuts are generally in season from October through December. When buying fresh chestnuts from green grocers, look for shells that are dark brown and without significant blemishes. If the nuts rattle in the shell, they are too dried out.
Special events:
Kalorama Chestnut Festival, Kalorama, Victoria, Australia, first Sunday in May,
chestnutfestival.com.au
; West Virginia Chestnut Festival, Rowlesburg, WV, October,
wvchestnutfestival.com
.

Christmas Eve—
La Vigilia
in Italy—is indeed a night of vigilance, if not for the eastern star that guided the Wise Men, then perhaps for the odd bone hiding in that plate of fish. In Italy, at least, this would be a wise vigil, for the traditional feast on that mystical evening is a multifish dinner, with the required number of specimens ranging from seven to thirteen. Leave it to the food-wise Italians to end the traditional Catholic day of fasting with a feast highlighting the delectable variety of fish and shellfish that abound in Italian waters.

Now fashionable enough to be featured as a Christmas Eve special in some of the more ambitious Italian restaurants around the United States, the multicourse extravaganza is better realized in homes, where one can eat in relaxed, informal surroundings and take time to gossip and reminisce between courses.

To many, including the celebrated chef Mario Batali, seven is the magic number of fish to be served on this night. But as he notes, no one is truly sure of the proper number: “Some families do seven for the sacraments. Some do ten for the stations of the Cross. And some even do thirteen for the twelve apostles plus Jesus.”

Festa
, Helen Barolini’s book of Italian holiday foods, tells us that seven is variously thought to represent the sacraments, Christ’s seven utterances from the cross, the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, or seven heroes of Christianity—saints Andrew of Scotland, Anthony of Italy, David of Wales, Denis of France, George of England, James of Spain, and Patrick of Ireland.

Whatever the target number, one might assume one could fulfill the numerical requirement with a single opulent dish such as, say, a seafood salad, or the mixed fry that is
fritto misto de pesce
(see
listing
), or
brodetto
fish soup (see
listing
). But that would be cheating, for tradition dictates that each fish be served as a separate course or, if combined, be counted only as one, with other dishes added to make up the required total.

The meal might begin with seafood salad or baked clams and mussels
arreganata
, followed by two pastas, each with a different fish sauce, then by a series of individually prepared fish such as bass, mullet, flounder, and certainly eel, that last being a mandatory symbol of good fortune on Christmas Eve.

Batali’s menu begins with the baked clams in garlic bread crumbs, then moves on to marinated anchovies, linguine with clams, spaghetti with mussels, salt cod (
baccalà
, in Spanish
bacalao
) simmered with tomatoes and capers, jumbo shrimp Marsala, and eel braised with olives, chiles, and capers.

Barolini suggests mussels in white wine sauce, an anchovy-dressed salad, a sardine pâté on crostini, two bowls of spaghettini—one with red clam sauce, the other with white—then broiled shrimp and poached whiting. Neither mentions octopus or calamari, but these cephalopods often join the party.

Where:
In New York
, SD26, tel 212-265-5959,
sd26ny.com
; iTrulli, 212-481-7372,
itrulli.com
;
in New Orleans
, NOLA, tel 504-522-6652,
emerilsrestaurants.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Festa
by Helen Barolini (1988); for Christmas Eve seafood pasta,
Rao’s Recipes from the Neighborhood
by Frank Pellegrino (2004);
thedailymeal.com
(search my italian-american christmas eve).