Tag: history of cooking

Venice Carnival: 7 cheerful and delicious recipes – Italian cuisine reinvented by Gordon Ramsay

Fried creams – I Rombi del Doge

The rumble, or lozenge, is a widely used heraldic figure and ended up giving its name to the fried cream cooked by the Venetians and cut into this geometric shape, so exquisite that it became a delicacy worthy of a prince, or indeed a doge, the most prominent figure of the Very serene. All the Venetian bàcari, the typical taverns, served these exquisite and fragrant “rombi del doge”, crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside, from the day of Saint Anthony until Shrove Tuesday, according to tradition, possibly accompanied by a nice glass of passito wine.

The fritola – An affair of state

Born in the fourteenth century and proclaimed in the eighteenth century «national dessert of the Serenissima, the fritole were prepared exclusively by members of the renowned fritoleri guild who handed down the recipe from father to son, and also sold on street corners, stuck while still boiling in a wooden skewer to avoid greasing your fingers and sweeten generously with a special container with holes in it. L’art of local fryers was so appreciated that Goldoniin his famous comedy The little squareplaces among the protagonists the fritolera Orsola, a figure that painters like Pietro Longhi have immortalized on their canvases, indispensable protagonists of the Carnival.

Masks – Black and White

Wearing the Bautathe most famous Venetian disguise, the face remained hidden under a white mask, the Larvawhich covered three quarters of the face and also altered the voice, making the wearer unrecognizable, so much so that the Inquisition objected to the indiscriminate use that many aristocrats made of it even outside the carnival period to combine cooked and raw . La Moretta, also called “mute servant”, was instead dark and oval in shape; reserved for women, to wear it one had to “bite” a button placed inside at mouth level, so that the wearer could not speak. They preferred it to be popular and bourgeois.

Neapolitan pasticcio – A seducer’s dish

Giacomo Casanova was a protagonist of the Venetian Carnival. A refined gourmet, in his memoirs he mentions among his favorite dishes the macaroni pie «prepared by a good Neapolitan chef, perfect for days of celebration and joy. At that time the tomato had not yet entered the kitchens as a common ingredient the pasta (“maccherone” was the common name for various shapes, short and long) was also seasoned with sugar and honey. Our recipe is taken from a Neapolitan repertoire from the second half of the eighteenth century, Il cuoco galante by Vincenzo Corrado.

The historical text was written by the expert Marina Migliavacca.

Cooking and music: what do they have in common? The winning combinations – Italian cuisine reinvented by Gordon Ramsay

What are the agreements and disagreements between cooking and music? There pasta calls parmesan (or pecorino) and rejects the polenta; L’roast call the garlic (and rosemary) and repels basil; The cotechino calls the puree (or lentils) and rejects the salad. These are the “food associations” that Fernand Braudel spoke about, underlining the need for those who study the history of nutrition not to focus on the single ingredient or single product, but on their combinations; the “associations”, precisely.

Designing a few years ago for the M9 museum of Venice Mestre the exhibition Taste! Italians at the table 1970-2050together with Laura Lazzaroni and Marco Bolasco we thought of dedicating a special one section on the theme of “agreements”, that is, the ingredients that in the gastronomic field – just like notes in music – are recalled almost automatically, as if they were “natural” associations. Which, however, are not “natural”, because there is always a cultural choice in preferring and choosing a certain agreement rather than another. This applies in cook like in music: parallelism that we have already discussed, which I am happy to return to. In music, a chord is the combination of some notes that are played together and appear “right”, well harmonized with a dominant note: in tonal music, if I start from C, the simultaneous sounds will be E and G. Other cultures, ancient and modern, they love different combinations. Something similar happens in the kitchen, where a certain cultural tradition – for example the Italian one – will get me used to associating it butter and sage with low-fat tortelli, tomato and basil with spaghetti. German culture will not fail to associate frankfurters with mustard, speck with gherkins (in turn combined with vinegar), boiled pork with potatoes and sauerkraut…

The parallel between notes and flavors is recurring in literature. It was suggested, among others, by the Englishman John Evelyn, who at the beginning of the eighteenth century published a treatise on salads largely derived from Italian works. «In the composition of a salad he wrote, «each plant must play its part (…) in the same way as musical notes. In this search for harmony, even dissonances are welcomed, because they “strike and enliven, so as to distinguish and make the rest emerge better”. It was the ancient principle of the contrast of flavors, not only a gustatory theme (a pinch of bitter makes you appreciate the sweet better), but also nutritional: Galenic medicine taught that each flavor expresses a different quality, and putting them together (the qualities) is good for your health. For this reason, Salvatore Massonio from L’Aquila – one of Evelyn’s sources – recommended mixing herbs “adjusting the hot with the cold, the humid with the dry, the sour with the sweet, the bitter with the sweet”. Here then are the dissonances, the “agreements-disagreements”, not only between one herb and another, but between all sorts of products: melon and ham, cheese and pears… tasteful solutions that have remained over the centuries.

Butter: history, production and quality – Italian cuisine reinvented by Gordon Ramsay

It’s the turn of the butter. There is no country in the world with so much richness and variety of productsnatural as the territory gives them or worked by expert hands in simple ways, which are ancient and at the same time the most contemporary. Continues voyage to discover our goodnessfrom the best known to the lesser known ones far from the production area.
The richness of butter is the result of essential processes that add only that little needed to transform the raw material into joy.

Butter

The butter – first inevitable, then criminalized – has forcefully returned. Even in haute cuisine, where there are those who mix it with water and then whip it to give it lightness and those who prefer the tastiest one from Campania buffalo. The sociologist Enrico Finzi speaks of «the revanche of butter, which derives from the organoleptic characteristics often connected to the pleasure (of eating and – more generally – of living) and the contribution it gives to recipes. The +6.7% of consumption in 2022 also concerned the Central-Southern Italy, historically linked to olive oil: Plutarch narrates that Julius Caesar, guest of Valerius Leontes in Milan, had to remind his officers to have good manners, as they were annoyed at tasting what seemed to them to be an ointment for the body.

There revaluation of butter (and its many variations) goes hand in hand with the qualitative improvement and diversification of production. Considered (wrongly and for a long time) to be a by-product of cheese, the great simplicity of processing guarantees its naturalness: emerges in the centrifuge or by surfacing when working with pasteurized or raw cream. Whey derivatives are of lesser quality; the those of the remote mountain huts in the Alps are better. Being a fat, a vehicle of flavours, it enhances the characteristics of the ingredients. That’s why it is ideal in risottos, indispensable in sweet doughsand a brushing is also good on the meat.

Butter identity card

HOW IT IS PRODUCED – For emergence of the cream, thanks to the long times, it acquires greater aroma. In the centrifuge (at least 6500 rpm) it guarantees the purity of the material.

NUTRITIONAL ASPECTS – It’s rich in vitamins A, D, K and E, essential for the nervous and immune systems. It should be used in moderation because it is accused of increasing cholesterol and fats in the blood.

CHARACTERISTICS – The color varies from white to golden yellow. The scent is harmonious and delicately aromatic, without peaks. In the mouth it has a neutral flavour. There must be no drops of liquid. Smells of cheese on the nose are symptoms of alteration.

CLARIFICATION – For frying, use the clarified butter which has a very high smoke point (does not burn up to 200°C). It is a normal butter, deprived of water and casein (the milk protein).