1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (59 page)

Retail and mail order:
In New York and Chicago
, Eataly,
eataly.com
.
Further information and recipes:
The Splendid Table
by Lynne Rossetto Kasper (1992);
prosciuttosandaniele.it
;
www.prosciuttodiparma.com
.
Special event:
Aria di Festa: La Festa del Prosciutto, San Daniele, Italy, July,
ariadifesta.it
.
See also:
York Ham
;
Yunnan Ham
.

Dried meats on display at a shop in Orvieto.

High up in the ominously beautiful, misty Apennine mountains of Italy’s Abruzzo region sits a rustic inn and restaurant called Il Rifugio del Cinghiale, meaning the refuge of the boar. It is a fitting name, as one of the house’s most prized specialties is its
salumi
—preserved meats and sausages—made of the meat of the semiwild boars that inhabit the surrounding woodlands. Of those products, the most sophisticated and delectable is the mahogany-dark, firm but still silky, air-dried prosciutto.

With an earthier, meatier, and understandably gamier flavor than the usual prosciutto (from the legs of domestic pigs), this is just one of the irresistible game dishes offered in the simplest preparation in these unadorned but charming surroundings.

The legs of the boar are much smaller than those of domestic pigs, and when air-cured, pressed, and somewhat shrunken, resemble small, polished violins. Lean and firm-textured, they make ethereal treats when thinly sliced and served with dabs of unsalted butter and hearty local bread—treats well worth the harrowing drive up hairpin cliffside roads that wind to the mountaintop, just across from the forbidding wall of mountains that is the famed Maiale.

Where:
In Marino, Italy
, Il Rifugio del Cinghiale, tel 39/0873-975044,
rifugiodelcinghiale.it
;
in Baltimore
, intermittently, Cinghiale, tel 410-547-8282,
cgeno.com
.
Retail and mail order:
In New York and Chicago
, Eataly,
eataly.com
.

A particular favorite in Rome, spiky, bittersweet
puntarelle
(also known as Catalogna de Galatina) is perhaps the most sophisticated of all salad greens. At first glance it suggests the dandelion green, but its flavor is more upper-crust—at once teasing and satisfying, like a combination of dandelion, arugula, and licorice-scented fennel. Lacy and pretty, with its variegated jades and whites, puntarelle’s complex texture combines the refreshing crunch of its delicate stems with the nurturing softness of its serrated leaves. And like many of the dark green chicories, puntarelle delivers valuable nutrients such as iron, potassium, and antioxidants.

Were it more widely available and less time-consuming to prepare, it might well have displaced arugula as the Italian salad green of choice. But the season for this wild-looking member of the chicory family is limited to November through January, and because its stems are tougher than its leaves, the most careful cooks like to strip its stalks apart and sliver the stems to make them more easily edible. It is an annoying process, but happily many Italian markets, Rome’s beautiful Campo dei Fiori among them, offer the green ready-stripped. It is also sometimes presoaked in an ice-water bath that relaxes the stems and leaves so they can absorb a dressing instead of resisting it. Such limitations make puntarelle less attractive to American home cooks and a costly proposition for restaurants, so it is sold only in the most upscale markets.

Serious Italian restaurants in the U.S. often offer it in season, and nowhere is it more meticulously and deliciously realized than at Sandro’s in New York, where the Roman chef-
patrone
Sandro Fioriti soaks the greens for twelve to eighteen hours. He also glosses them with the most traditional and efficacious dressing, a combination of olive oil, red wine vinegar, and a tangy pounded puree of garlic and anchovies, the sweet saltiness of which cushions the bitter bite of the greens.

Where:
In Rome
, Ristorante Matricianella, tel 39/06-683-2100,
matricianella.it
;
in New York
, Sandro’s, tel 212-288-7374,
sandrosnyc.com
.
Further information and recipes:
saveur.com
(search puntarelle in salsa di alici).

The small, unprepossessing trattoria that is the original Rao’s, in New York’s Spanish Harlem, is quite possibly more difficult to get into than any other restaurant in the United States. Not only has its somewhat rakish reputation
made it inordinately popular, but it amplifies the longing diner’s challenge by having only ten tables and being closed on Saturdays and Sundays. Add to that the fact that a handful of local movers and shakers virtually own time shares on those tables and you begin to understand the long wait for reservations.

What makes all this understandable is the very special food that is strictly Rao’s style: a kind of American red-sauce Italian, but done with finesse and a distinctly robust character. It’s a winning formula that was established by founders Vincent Rao and his wife, Anna, who presided over the kitchen until their deaths. It is currently carefully guarded by two nephews. (There are now also Rao’s restaurants in Los Angeles and Las Vegas.)

In addition to all of the classic pastas, Rao’s serves a dynamite shellfish salad, tender meatballs, juicy pork chops, and sausages zapped with vinegar and chile-fired peppers. But perhaps the most iconic dish is the seductive lemon chicken. This culinary marvel is achieved by heating a broiler to volcanic intensity and introducing a small, halved chicken to its flames. Once it has cooked through and acquired a lightly charred, brassy patina, the bird is chopped into serving pieces and basted with a pungent sauce of fresh lemon juice, winey red vinegar, olive oil, garlic, oregano, and salt and pepper before being returned to the seething broiler to be recharred on all sides.

It is the contrast of the glazed skin, the succulent meat, and the sunshine sparkle of the sauce—reduced and brightened with chopped parsley—that makes this chicken incomparable. Devout Rao’s fans know to have chunks of bread at the ready to sop up any leftover sauce, and the smartest of the bunch order crisp fried potatoes and chopped broccoli rabe on the side.

Where:
Rao’s,
in New York
, tel 212-722-6709;
in Las Vegas
, tel 877-346-4642;
in Los Angeles
, tel 323-962-7267,
raosrestaurants.com
.
Further information and recipe:
Rao’s Cookbook
by Frank Pellegrino (1998);
saveur.com
(search raos famous lemon chicken).

Creamy yet enticingly grainy, sweet but with an alluring tang, ricotta is Italy’s elegant version of cottage cheese—though it’s so luxurious and delightful that the comparison seems inapt. Mixed with cut raw cucumbers and radishes or, better yet, with ripe pears, berries, or peaches, ricotta can begin or end a meal. It can also be found adding a soothing richness to pasta dishes and lending a firm but airy texture to the Italian cheesecake Torta di Ricotta (see
listing
).

To get technical, ricotta is not actually a cheese but rather a cheese by-product made from whey that is left over from other cheese making. Once this whey is collected, it is reheated (giving the word
ricotta
its Italian meaning, recooked) until curds form and a soft white mass emerges. The original ricotta was made by Roman cheese makers, who used the whey left after making Romano cheese.

In Italy, ricotta is usually made with sheep whey or water buffalo whey, whereas in the United States it is almost always made from cow’s milk, resulting in a finished product that is both smoother and blander than its Italian
counterpart. A dried, salty, and distinctly Sicilian version of the cheese is ricotta salata, made from sheep’s milk that is pressed and dried before being aged for at least three months; the result is a hard cheese with a mild, milky flavor that’s just right for grating and excellent shaved atop pastas and salads.

Good-quality ricotta is moist and snowy white, and emits a clean dairy aroma. As with any irresistibly tempting, ready-to-eat ingredient, buy more than you think you’ll need, knowing you will be dipping in as you go.

Further information and recipes:
Home Cheese Making
by Ricki Carroll (2002);
The Cheese Lover’s Cookbook and Guide
by Paula Lambert (2000);
More Classic Italian Cooking
by Marcella Hazan (1982);
saveur.com
(search one ingredient many ways ricotta).

The most richly luxurious of all rice dishes, a perfectly made risotto may surpass even the sparkling allure of gold-leaf-flecked Indian
biryanis
(see
listing
), the Turkish pilafs that beguiled the harem hour, or the soothing Japanese stewed rice called
kamameshi
(see
listing
).

To qualify as perfectly made, the risotto must start with Arborio rice imported from the Po Valley. The comparatively short, wide grain contains a visible white inner kernel that should remain a bit firm when cooked; in order to absorb the liquid that enables it to swell up softly and gently, it requires longer, slower cooking than American long-grain rice.

Prior to cooking, the raw, unrinsed rice grains should be rubbed between two layers of clean cotton towel so that any loose starch is removed. Briefly sautéed in butter or olive oil until glassily parched and translucent, they are then gradually moistened with boiling stock—vegetable, meat, poultry, or seafood—added in increments while the rice is continuously stirred. The finished stage leaves the rice looking somewhat like a liquid, at the consistency known as
all’onda
, or moving in subtle waves when the pot is gently shaken. A swath of butter and possibly cheese and herbs is the final anointment.

The most tradition-bound Milanesi eat their risotti with spoons, emphasizing its liquidy appeal. Anyone preparing this dish must commit to anywhere from 25 to 30 minutes at the stove, stirring constantly and adding the boiling liquid in small quantities. And the last rule of thumb? Guests wait for the risotto; the risotto waits for no one.

Risotto Milanese.
The golden classic: The grains are sautéed in butter with bits of onion or shallots and bone marrow, then doused with white wine and saffron-infused chicken stock. The oldest recipes for this dish call for crumbles of the firm sausage
cervellato
, which is no longer available; marrow is the stand-in of choice.

Risotto Piemontese.
Piedmont’s favorite risotto is a creamy white affair, based on white wine, butter, chicken stock, Parmesan, and a lavish layering of shaved white truffles from Alba (see
listing
).

Risotto verde.
This green risotto is a springtime favorite, verdant with parsley and tiny new peas
or spears of young green asparagus added during the last ten minutes of cooking, and perhaps dotted with bits of pancetta.

Risotto bianco.
As simple as it gets, this risotto relies only on butter, white wine, stock, and grated Parmesan.

Risotto Certosina.
Probably the most complex risotto, this seafood triumph incorporates frogs’ legs, shrimp, bits of fish fillets, tomatoes, peas, mushrooms, carrots, onions, celery, olive oil, white wine, and fish stock. (No cheese, please!)