1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (55 page)

One of Italy’s fabled celebratory sweet breads, the sunny, cakelike panettone is eaten throughout the year but is a vital part of the Christmas and Easter tables. Based on a rich and buttery yeast dough, golden with egg yolks and dotted with raisins and bits of candied fruit, the panettone is a festive, fragrant delight. Known for its cylindrical form topped with a big brown-gold dome, the bread is a specialty of Milan, its origins shrouded in apocrypha.

Supposedly, around the fifteenth century, a Milanese baker named Toni had a daughter whose aristocratic suitor worked alongside them in the bakery (who knows why—perhaps to get closer to his beloved?) where he created the cake that eventually became known as
pan di Toni.
Another version of the tale suggests that the daughter was to marry the aristocrat, and that the baker created this golden edible because he could not afford to give her gold as a dowry.

The sweet bread is sold everywhere in Italy and in Italian markets around the globe, often beautifully packaged in a ribbon-wrapped box. It’s delicious fresh or toasted, spread with butter or (more decadently) mascarpone. It can also be served as toasted fingers that diners dip into zabaglione. For festive occasions, it is often accompanied by a light sparkling wine like Moscato d’Asti or the still, sweet Vin Santo.

Where:
In Milan
, Peck, tel 39/2-87-6774,
peck.it
;
in New York
, Pasticceria Bruno Bakery, tel 212-982-5854,
pasticceriabruno.com
;
in Seattle
, Gelatiamo, tel 206-467-9563,
gelatiamo.com
;
in Larkspur, CA
, Emporio Rulli, in the bakery and by mail order, tel 415-924-7478,
rulli.com
.
Further information and recipes:
The Art of Fine Baking
by Paula Peck (1961);
The Italian Baker, Revised: The Classic Tastes of the Italian Countryside
by Carol Field (2011);
The Food of Italy
by Waverley Root (1992);
epicurious.com
(search panettone batali).
Special event:
Panettone and Pandoro Festival, Rome, November,
panettonepandoro.com
.
Tip:
Panettone keeps very well, but it should be sliced only just before it is to be eaten.

Sweet and chewy, crunchy with nuts and fruits candied in a gentle, honeylike gel,
panforte
—strong bread—is the medieval holiday specialty of the colorful city of Siena. Revered for its art and culture, its museums, and a spirited biannual horse race called the
palio
, the ancient city also wins international acclaim for its flat rounds of panforte, papered with a sugary white coating reminiscent of communion wafers.

With a history that dates back to the thirteenth century, the dessert is almost a cross between cake and candy. Loaded with dried fruits (figs, prunes, plums, apples), nuts (hazelnuts and almonds), orange zest, citron, and spices such as cinnamon, anise, clove, and nutmeg, the round, flat cake is most likely a direct descendant of medieval honey cake. With its rich caramel overtones and warming spices and flavors, panforte is typically baked only from October to December and is traditionally associated with Christmas.

Specially wrapped in bakery paper folded into a precise octagonal shape, panforte di Siena makes for a long-lasting treat. There are several versions, one made with chocolate, but the most popular is the panforte Margherita, named for the queen credited with uniting Italy, who preferred a light, delicate version with an abundance of honey and almonds. Panforte is best cut into tiny pieces and savored with a glass of the sweet wine Vin Santo or, for greater punch, meady grappa brandy, preferably in full view of the magnificent Gothic cathedral, the Duomo di Siena.

Mail order:
Chef Shop, tel 800-596-0885,
chefshop.com
;
pastacheese.com
, tel 800-386-9198.
Further information and recipes:
The Italian Baker
by Carol Field (1985);
Visions of Sugarplums
by Mimi Sheraton (1981);
tuscanrecipes.com
(click Recipes, then, under Desserts, Panforte di Siena).

Leftover bread was never so stylish.

Among the many wonderful dishes that can be realized from stale bread, none is more soigné or coolly satisfying than the Italian summer salad
panzanella.
Chunks of bread that have become stale, or have been laid out at room temperature to dry slowly (but are never toasted), are tossed with pieces of ruby-ripe tomato, slivers of sweet red onion, icy jade cuts of cucumber, and crushed basil leaves. A bath of olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt, and pepper serves as the binding agent and flavoring. Once mixed, the
salad chills for several hours and, after a light retossing, is served as an appetizer.

Basically a Tuscan dish, panzanella (sometimes called
pan molle
) is also favored in the provinces of Lazio, where chopped parsley stands in for basil. Feel free to add both if the idea appeals, or toss in some celery and capers as they do in Umbria. At the smart celebrity magnet Da Silvano, in New York’s Greenwich Village, an inspired panzanella is made not with bread but with cooked kernels of the nutty whole wheat known as farro. Some of the more creative iterations have incorporated touches like anchovies mashed with capers, garlic, and a few dried flakes of hot
peperoncino
chiles—but these additions tend to be heavy-handed detractors from the pristine simplicity of this dish.

Where:
In New York
, Da Silvano, tel 212-982-2343,
dasilvano.com
.
Further information and recipe:
food.com
(search biba’s panzanella).

The singularly salty-sweet, nutty bite. The unmistakable aroma. The addictively crystalline, crumbly texture that lends itself so well to grating and melting in a variety of well-loved dishes, but also stands up to the most minimalist of treatments.

Parmigiano-Reggiano’s incredible versatility and singular flavor have made the noble cheese a cornerstone of Italian cuisine—one that has won its way into the hearts of cooks and nibblers around the world. The hard, aged cheese, which takes its name from its birthplace city of Parma in the province of Reggio-Emilia, is a
grana
(grainy) style variety, so called because its texture includes those delectably crunchy crystal proteins. The authentic product is protected by Italian law and must be made in Parma, Reggio-Emilia, or Modena, as well as select parts of Bologna and Mantua—the cheese’s
zona-tipica.

Parmigiano-Reggiano is created using partially skimmed raw cow’s milk from those regions only, between mid-April and mid-November each year, a timeline that ensures the cattle have grazed on the freshest grasses possible. The cheese is made with two batches of milk: One is delivered in the evening, laid out in great troughs, and skimmed. The second batch arrives at dawn on the day of the cheese making and is used whole. Both are combined in gigantic heated copper vats until curd forms. The curd is then placed within large wooden molds (
fascera
) that hold a minimum of sixty-six pounds of cheese. The rinds of the cheese are proudly imprinted all around with the name Parmigiano-Reggiano, along with information
about the location and season in which each cheese was made. The large wheels are then repeatedly brushed with sea salt over a period of multiple weeks and left to age for a minimum of fourteen months. Most Parmigiano ages from eighteen months to three years, two years being the average. (
Stravecchio
refers to Parmigiano-Reggiano that has aged for three years, and
stravecchione
, four.) The older the cheese, the more golden its yellow-white interior becomes and the grainier the crunch.

It takes three to five specially made tools to crack open and portion a sixty-six-pound (or heavier) round of cheese, and most of the people who know how to wield these tools come from families who have been schooled in them for centuries. Parmigiano’s popularity, of course, means that there are plenty of imitators: The insulting, clumpy, powdered stuff sold as Parmesan (the French term for the cheese, which has been adopted in America and elsewhere) in most U.S. supermarkets bears no resemblance to the distinct and intense pleasure of the real thing.

For full appreciation, try chunks of Parmigiano with sliced pears and shelled walnut meats as an elegant dessert or even a light lunch. For an extra-special belt of complex flavor and a softly appealing winey edge, look for Vacche Rosse (red cow) Parmigiano, a premium version made from the milk of red cows.

Where:
In New York and Chicago
, Eataly,
eataly.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Cheese Primer
by Steven Jenkins (1996);
The Splendid Table
by Lynne Rossetto Kasper (1992).
Tip:
Avoid buying even the best quality Parmigiano-Reggiano already grated. The cheese undergoes a drastic loss of flavor when cut. Ideally, it should be freshly grated over whatever food it is to grace.

“Pasta is such a brilliant invention that it would be nice to set up a monument to the man responsible, but the origins of all flour and water combinations are as remote as prehistoric man himself.” That perceptive and sensible opening to
Pasta
, by the much-respected Italian food journalist Vincenzo Buonassisi, should help supplant the oft-told story about Marco Polo bringing the first pasta over from China. And the
real
first pasta? Who knows? Even more, who cares?

What we do know is that no food matches it in popularity. A few years ago, Oxfam, the international antipoverty organization based in Oxford, England, conducted a survey that asked respondents in seventeen countries to name their single favorite food. The hands-down winner? Pasta. (To be clear, Italian pasta was differentiated from all other noodles, including those of Germany, Eastern Europe, and Asia.)

What makes pasta so widely preferred over almost all other comfort foods is a fortunate confluence of science and aesthetics. All starches supply the carbohydrates that encourage the brain’s production of serotonin, the feel-good substance that soothes us and lulls us to sleep. Added to that is the seductive texture of pasta, or what sensory scientists call its organoleptic qualities—what is more commonly known as “mouthfeel.” Properly cooked pasta has a
satisfyingly chewy yet gently soft consistency that varies depending on its shape, yet is always delightfully toothsome. That correct consistency is a matter of minor dispute; one man’s al dente (meaning “to the tooth”) is another’s underdone. But within the appropriate range, and whatever the herbs, garlic, vegetables, meats, or seafood that make up its sauce, pasta just has a way of sliding down easily and reassuringly.

Joining the almost infinite variety of shapes in the pasta arsenal is a set of traditional rules related to both etiquette and serving. These rules may be broken, but they should be broken consciously.

First, there are rules concerning the way pasta is meant to be eaten: The long forms, with a hole or without—spaghetti, linguine, bucatini, perciatelli, cappellini, fettuccine, and so forth—should not be twirled on a fork against a spoon. At least not in northern Italy. Spoon-assisted twirling may still be countenanced in the South, especially around Naples, where, long ago, eating pasta by the handful was considered good form and remains a special-occasion pleasure. The “correct” method is to twirl strands of long pasta against the side of the plate, a technique that requires much greater skill and may result in much messier shirt fronts, especially if the sauce is abundant with tomatoes and the pasta is thick. Above all, long pasta should never be cut with a knife; to do so would be declared as gauche as audibly slurping from a soup spoon anywhere in the Western world.