1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (58 page)

Well drained, pasta and vegetables are put into a casserole that has been rubbed with a cut clove of garlic, then layered with ruby dicings of red onion, silver-green leaves of sage, butter, the region’s special, white, soft-melting
bitto
cheese (somewhat like a dry fontina), and sprinklings of grated Parmesan. Heated for a few minutes, the pizzoccheri
emerges in a luscious steaming mass given a crackling contrast by the fruity, bright Sassella wine of this region.

Where:
In Forcola, Italy
, La Brace, tel 39/0342-660-408,
labrace.it
;
in Queens, NY
, Ornella Trattoria, tel 718-777-9477,
ornellatrattoria.com
.
Retail and mail order:
In New York and Chicago
, Eataly,
eataly.com
.
Further information and recipes:
More Classic Italian Cooking
by Marcella Hazan (1982);
Italian Regional Cooking
by Ada Boni (1994);
foodnetwork.com
(search how to make pizzoccheri).

Polenta, Italy’s creamy yet rustic way with cornmeal, really means porridge, and could thus be applied to any grain cooked as morning cereal. But the word characteristically belongs to the popular cornmeal dish typical of northern Italy, especially Lombardy and parts of the Veneto.

Properly stone-ground to a fine grain that still maintains texture and bite, the cornmeal is slowly cooked in water to a very soft, mashed-potato consistency. Always nurturing and restorative, it can be served as a simple meal on its own—with a lump of butter or a grating of Parmesan for breakfast—or as a luxurious bedding for sauce-enriched dishes such as osso buco, braised oxtail, beefy stews, and calf’s liver
alla veneziana
(see
listing
).

Given polenta’s ubiquity throughout Italy, it’s hard to believe cornmeal was a New World food before it found its way to Europe—in this case in the mid-seventeenth century, when maize was first introduced to the Venetians by the Americans. The Italians knew just what to do with the stone-ground grain, boiling it in water and stirring constantly until the meal became thick enough to support a freestanding spoon.

Some prefer it just this way, spooned into a bowl and topped with butter and cheese (Gorgonzola and Parmesan being favorites), sometimes enhanced by a soft poached egg. But an equally traditional way to prepare polenta is to pour the cooked meal into a baking dish and allow it to cool into a firm layer before cutting it into squares to be baked, grilled, or fried.

Although similar to the cornmeal or grits of the American South, polenta is based on a different variety of corn. In the U.S., dent corn is by far the most common, known for the soft center of its kernels. In Italy, the much grittier flint corn is the kernel of choice, most authentically cooked in an unlined copper pot called a
paiolo
that hangs suspended over a family’s hearth when not in use.

Where:
In New York and Chicago
, Eataly,
eataly.com
.
Mail order:
amazon.com (search de la estancia polenta; valsugana polenta); for authentic polenta pots, Creative Cookware,
creativecookware.com
; Williams-Sonoma, tel
877-812-6235,
williams-sonoma.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking
by Marcella Hazan (1992);
The Food of Italy
by Waverley Root (1992);
lacucinaitalianamagazine.com
(search grilled polenta; polenta and game bird; polenta with salt cod and onions; polenta taragna with stewed pork);
food52.com
(search Carlo Middione’s polenta facile).
Tip:
Avoid instant or quick-cooking varieties of polenta. To prevent lumping, let the meal trickle through your fingers as you pour it into the simmering water or whisk the polenta into a little bit of cold water, bring that to a boil, then whisk in boiling water.

Top with berries for dessert.

Although better known for its rich and creamy pastries, Italy also deserves kudos for this nicely gritty, fragrant golden pound cake, a much-lauded specialty of the bygone Manhattan restaurant Coco Pazzo. Firm but moist, perfumed with essences of vanilla and almond, the cake relies on polenta, Italy’s cornmeal, for its golden glow and its palate-engaging texture. Non-instant American cornmeal can be used, but the Italian meal is slightly coarser (though not as coarse as Southern grits), with an earthier, cornier flavor.

Like all pound cakes, this one is delicious lightly toasted and buttered for breakfast or topped with ice cream and fresh berries as a dessert.

Makes 1 loaf, about 10 slices

1½ cups cake flour, plus a little for dusting the pan

¾ cup Italian polenta (not instant)

1 teaspoon baking powder

Pinch of salt

¾ cup (1½ sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus a little for greasing the pan

½ cup almond paste

1¼ cups sugar

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

½ teaspoon pure almond extract

6 extra-large eggs, separated

1 cup heavy (whipping) cream

1.
Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 375°F. Butter and lightly flour a 9½-by 5½-by 3-inch loaf pan, preferably metal. Invert the pan and tap out any excess flour.

2.
In a medium-size bowl, sift together the cake flour, polenta, baking powder, and salt. Set the dry ingredients aside.

3.
Place the butter in a large mixing bowl and, using an electric mixer, beat it until it is smooth and creamy. Add the almond paste and beat until the mixture is fluffy. Add 1 cup of the sugar and beat until the butter mixture is very pale and light. Beat in the vanilla and almond extracts. Beat the egg yolks into the batter one at a time, mixing thoroughly before adding the next. Add the dry ingredients and the cream in small amounts, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients and beating each addition until combined.

4.
Place the egg whites in a separate, medium-size bowl and, using an electric mixer, beat
them until foamy. Add the remaining ¼ cup of sugar and beat until the whites form soft, shiny peaks. Using a spatula, fold the egg whites into the batter gently but thoroughly. Spoon the batter into the prepared loaf pan; it should be about ⅞ full.

5.
Bake the cake until a cake tester or toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 1 hour. Do not test or move this cake before it has baked for 45 minutes, as it will be fragile and might fall.

6.
Transfer the cake to a wire rack to cool before removing it from the loaf pan. The cake will keep for a week wrapped well in plastic wrap and stored in a cool place.

Where:
In New York
, Freds at Barneys, tel 212-833-2202,
barneys.com
.
Mail order:
amazon.com (search de la estancia polenta; valsugana polenta).

Although when we think “Italian” and “flat-pressed,” paninis may spring to mind, the flattened and pan-grilled
pollo al mattone
—chicken under a brick—deserves that honor. The dish is a Tuscan triumph, producing a chicken that is peppery and crusty on the outside but succulently juicy within. (The concept of flattening a chicken so all parts cook evenly and the skin takes on a parchment crispness is not Italy’s alone; for a pungent and more rustic version, see the
Georgian Chicken Tabaka
; for a spicier version, see
Pigeons en Crapaudine
.)

In this case, the flattening is most traditionally accomplished with the aid of a cooking utensil made of red terra-cotta and known as a
mattone
, or brick. Ideally the small chicken (broiler size) should be butterflied—split at the backbone but not separated into pieces—before being pounded flatter with a mallet or heavy skillet, then sprinkled with olive oil, coarse sea salt, plenty of crushed black peppercorns, and fresh rosemary leaves. Placed on a thick terra-cotta plate on a stovetop burner, it is covered with a heavy matching round lid that keeps the chicken flat as it fries. The bird is turned several times during the 40 to 45 minutes of cooking, and the pan juices are drizzled over all.

A similar version was devised by food writer Mark Bittman in
The New York Times
. Using two skillets—one inside the other, to do the flattening—he sears the chicken on the stovetop, then finishes it in the oven, still sandwiched between the two pans.

Either way, the resulting dish cries out for a sprinkle of fresh lemon juice, a healthy heap of crisply fried shoestring potatoes, and a nice big clump of watercress or baby arugula, for which the chicken’s rich juices will provide a savory dressing.

Where:
In New York
, Sandro’s, tel 212-288-7374,
sandrosnyc.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Giuliano Bugialli’s Foods of Tuscany
by Giuliano Bugialli (1992);
nytimes.com
(search bittman chicken under a brick).

Some contend that the world’s finest preserved ham is Spain’s Jabugo Ham (see
listing
). Others grant that honor to Italian prosciutto, though further contention can be aroused by weighing the choice specimens from Parma or San Daniele.

It would be difficult to imagine a more thoroughly delicious project than a comparative taste-off. Sampling one superbly rich, complex, silky, and gently saline aircured product after another, knowing that even the least of these will be superb … There are worse comparisons.

Preserving pork, and especially the hind legs, is a craft that dates back some two thousand years. Early on, Romans became skilled at preserving ham, or what Italians named prosciutto. Gradually they devised the craft of packing each leg heavily with sea salt and hanging it to air-dry anywhere from six months to two years—the longer it dried, the more exquisitely intense the flavor and the higher the price. The result is firm but supple meat, teasingly salty but with buttery overtones and without any smokiness to compromise the flavor.

In the town of Parma, in Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region, the process is an art form. Butchers take raw hams, dry-salt them with sea salt, and leave them to cure for as long as a month. Then they hang the hams and air-dry them for at least eight months and sometimes, depending on weather and temperature conditions, as long as eighteen months. This process yields
prosciutto di Parma
, the elegant, thinly sliced ham that is prized the world over for its exquisite combination of richness of flavor and lightness of texture.

Its biggest competition comes from the town of San Daniele, in the Friuli–Venezia Giulia region equally famed for its prosciutto: Although it is otherwise treated quite similarly, this ham’s center bone is removed before it is cured and pressed into a fairly even, flat shape. It is aged for about a year, resulting in a richer, parchmentlike patina and a more even and intense flavor. As with the Parma method, no preservatives of any kind, other than salt, are permitted.

No matter its provenance, the prosciutto produced by small artisanal manufacturers is far superior to the big factory versions. The latter standardize production and do not take into account the subtle effects of proper climate and drying time on the meat. Aging is a subjective and inexact science, as well as a costly process that ties up much capital in inventory, requires space for the aging rooms, and entails a loss of weight through dehydration, meaning that the producer buys more meat than he ultimately has left to sell.

Well-aged prosciutto should be sliced very, very thin—a 1/16-inch thickness being the preference of cognoscenti. Traditionally offered as a salty accent to sweet, ripe fruits such as figs, honeydew, or cantaloupe, it pairs excellently with ripe pears as well. It can also replace more plebeian hams as the centerpiece of a simple sandwich on a butter-dabbed baguette or dress up a crunchy snack when wrapped around really good
grissini
(the distinctive thin breadsticks served in many Italian cafés and bakeries).

When buying prosciutto, always ask for a sample slice so that you can judge the color of the meat (you want light, rosy reddish-pink, not brownish or dark), the degree of saltiness,
and the texture (ideally tender but with a satisfying, meaty bite). Avoid presliced versions, which dry out quickly and are not worth the high price. Cooking prosciutto is a mistake, as exposure to heat makes it leathery. However, the big, unsliceably thick ends or chunks of bone can be added to stewing beans or lusty soups for an extra belt of flavor.