1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (64 page)

Especially favored at Christmas and Easter, the cake is subjected to an extra-special dose of celebratory treatment during the latter holiday—a week after Lent’s fasting period. Neapolitan bakers make an especially eggy version called
pastiera Napoletana
, in which farro’s whole wheat kernels are added to the cake. The torta may also be studded with any number of traditional enhancements, from candied fruit peels to rum-soaked raisins or currants and toasted pignolis.

Where:
In New York
, Pasticceria Bruno, tel 212-982-5854,
pasticceriabruno.com
;
in Baltimore
, Piedigrotta Bakery of Baltimore, tel 410-522-6900,
piedigrottabakery.com
;
in Portland, OR
, Nostrana, tel 503-234-2427,
nostrana.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Dolce Italiano: Desserts from the Babbo Kitchen
by Gina DePalma (2007);
More Classic Italian Cooking
by Marcella Hazan (1982);
bonappetit.com
(search ricotta cheesecake).

Rare is the modern-day gourmet who would be caught praising veal parmigiana. That’s too bad, as this easy-to-love dish has been emerging from its cloud of gastronomic disrepute and moving toward foodie it-list status, albeit in loftier stylings and at higher prices. A case in point: The restaurant Carbone in New York’s Greenwich Village now offers a gigantic portion of the dish for upwards of $50, a comparatively gigantic price.

A creation of the Italian American red-sauce kitchen, in its original heyday veal parmigiana was often served (to the horror of Italian food purists) right alongside a portion of spaghetti, providing a satisfying meal at a moderate price.
Basically a thin, carefully pounded, breaded, and fried veal scallop, it is topped with thin slices or dicings of mozzarella and an oregano-and garlic-scented tomato sauce and then baked to succulent, melting glory. While the name of the dish suggests veal that is cooked “Parma-style,” there’s really nothing in Parma that resembles it; instead, food scholars believe the name refers to Parma’s most significant product, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.

Though poorly prepared versions of this classic have abounded, when prepared correctly it is utterly addictive, especially to children. Because veal is a delicately flavored and soft-textured meat, not overcooking it is key. So is using the right cut—a boneless chop or “scallop” (or, to be fair,
scaloppine
in Italian or
paillard
in French) cut from the leg—which must be treated as carefully as if it were being prepared for an elegant, stylish meal. The veal should be pounded between sheets of wax paper to a uniform thickness of about ½ inch, dredged in an egg and very good breading, then fried in olive oil until crisp and lacy-edged. It should be covered lightly with a marinara sauce and thin slices or dicings of mozzarella and a sprinkling of grated Parmesan (so it doesn’t devolve into a watery mess), baked until bubbly, and then served immediately before the sauce cools and the cheese hardens. Obviously, real imported Parmigiano-Reggiano rather than overly salty pregrated jarred Parmesan is key.

Instead of that sad heap of plain spaghetti alongside the dish, try an accompaniment of chopped broccoli, either regular or rabe, sautéed in garlic and olive oil. As a bonus, room-temperature leftovers make luscious sandwiches the next day.

Where:
Throughout the U.S.
, The Palm Restaurant,
thepalm.com
;
in New York
, Carbone, tel 212-933-0707,
carbonenewyork.com
.
Further information and recipes:
The James Beard Cookbook
by James Beard (2002);
Rao’s Cookbook
by Frank Pellegrino (1998);
saveur.com
(search veal parmesan);
parmesan.com
(search veal parmesan).

The flavors of veal and smooth tuna sauce blend harmoniously.

One of the most sumptuous of Italy’s cold summertime dishes, and a creation worthy of the most demanding cognoscenti,
vitello tonnato
can be served as an appetizer or as a light luncheon or late-supper main course.

Unsurprisingly, the preparation of those paper-thin slices of rose-pink veal and that tangy, silky sauce is subject to the differences of opinion that surround so many revered dishes. Many agree that the veal rump or loin should be poached with bay leaves, vegetables, and garlic prior to being chilled and very thinly sliced. The veal is then napped with a sauce based on tuna, a little anchovy, and capers—and here is where roads most commonly diverge.

Traditionalists insist that the sauce should contain no mayonnaise; instead, the tuna must be worked with olive oil and trickles of the poaching stock until it becomes a mayonnaise-like emulsion. Of course, whipping the tuna into mayonnaise with some olive oil added as a
thinner is an easier way to achieve that silky consistency, so this method has become increasingly common among cooks. In either case, the tuna must be of the oil-packed, jarred variety, so as to be intensely salty and mashingly soft. Fresh tuna simply doesn’t cut it.

Another variation, this one a smart innovation recommended by the English food writer Elizabeth David, is to roast the veal to a medium-rare state, rather than poaching it, so the meat remains firm and does not become waterlogged.

A look at the dish’s origins, by way of the Livornese cookbook
Il Cuciniere Italiano Moderno
(1842), sheds some light on the reasoning behind its unusual flavor dichotomy. At the time, veal was much less expensive than tuna, and was often seasoned to taste like a substitute, such as mock tuna. Tuna itself never touched the dish. Rather, cuts of veal were boiled with anchovies to impart a fishy flavor to the meat, and the simmered-down stock—anchovies and all—was beaten with olive oil into a thickened sauce. Fishy veal was the result.

Surely modern versions are more sublime, especially when served with some good hearty bread and a glass of dry white wine.

Where:
In New York
, Da Silvano, tel 212-982-2343,
dasilvano.com
.
Further information and recipes:
Italian Food
by Elizabeth David (1999).

A striking presentation.

If you’re a bit startled to see a pig’s foot hanging from a hook in your local Italian delicatessen, rest easy. That foot is merely the casing for
zampone
—one of the most dramatic and rustically satisfying specialties of the pork-savvy city of Modena.

Made of a mixture of head, neck, and shoulder meat, zampone derives its teasingly sensuous stickiness, also common in head cheeses, from the gelatin imparted by those boney, cartilaginous cuts. Fragrant nutmeg, a spice popular in Emilia-Romagna, is joined by pepper, cinnamon, and cloves, along with the requisite salt (still copious but used in smaller quantities today than it once was). Poaching the sausage is a lengthy process because it must be done gently, lest the casing split.

Filled with its aromatic, coarsely ground
blend of pink pork, spices, and just enough fat to keep things succulently moist, zampone is a winter favorite. Modenese purists elect potatoes or spinach as top-choice accompaniments, but gastronomic rebels are free to stray to their palate’s content. Zampone is delicious served hot, carved into thick slices nested on stewed lentils or laid atop a golden cloud of polenta, chopped spinach, or
broccoli di rapa.
(see
listing
). Zampone also makes an appearance in the province’s famed mixed boil of meats,
bollito misto.
Less dramatically, but no less deliciously, the same pork mixture can be used to fill the smaller, more conventionally shaped
cotechino
sausage, always served hot.

A well-known product around Modena since the seventeenth century, zampone is generally believed to have existed a hundred years earlier, harking back to the time when the sixteenth-century Italian poet Ortensio Lando dubbed the city of Modena “the fecund mother of sausages.”

Where:
In New York
, by advance order, Faicco’s Pork Store, tel 212-243-1794; Salumeria Biellese, tel 212-736-7376,
salumeriabiellese.com
.
Further information and recipes:
The Food of Italy
by Waverley Root (1992);
The Splendid Table
by Lynne Rossetto Kasper (1992);
foodnetwork.com
(search zampone fagioli; zampone with potatoes and balsamic mustard).
See also:
Ciauscolo
.

A tiny, slippery Basque treat.

Pasta with eyes only for you? That might be your impression after a first look at the silky, ivory-white layer of teeny baby eels, or elvers, whose glowing translucence inspires their other name, glass eels. Served in small, individual, round earthenware or iron cocottes, seething in a bath of hot olive oil fragrant with lightly browned garlic and spicy red pepper flakes, they suggest a thread-slim Italian pasta such as
capelli d’angelo
(angel’s hair) in the classic
aglioolio
sauce. But look closer and you will note the tiny pinpoints of gray-black eyes staring up at you (accusingly?). And when you twirl a few of those tempting specimens onto a special miniature, two-pronged fork made of wood, you find they are no more than four inches long, with a tenderly meaty texture and a subtle deep-sea flavor akin to that of delicate shellfish.

The eels are rare and expensive, netted during a short season that runs from early November to mid-February. They’re popular in France and Italy—but the most enthusiastic elver lovers of all are found in Spain. The price of this delicacy can reach $200 a pound, which puts these infant swimmers among the world’s luxury foods. Favorites in Spain’s Basque region, they are known in the local language as
txitxardin
, meaning worms (much like the thin Italian pasta called vermicelli, for “little worms”).