⅓ cup fresh, ripe, firm tomatoes, skinned raw, seeded, and cut into strips about ½ inch wide and 1½ inches long
2 tablespoons capers, rinsed if packed in salt, drained if in vinegar, chopped unless very small
10 flat anchovy fillets (preferably the ones prepared at home as described), cut in two
CHEESE FILLING FOR 20 DUMPLINGS
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
3 ounces mild cheese and 2 ounces savory cheese, cut into very thin strips, or slivers, or grated, or crumbled, depending on the cheese
Suggested Cheese Combinations
• Mozzarella and Parmesan
• Ricotta and Gorgonzola
• Smoked Mozzarella and Fontina
• Gruyère and Taleggio
Note When using either the tomato or the cheese filling, keep all the ingredients separate in individual small bowls or saucers.
THE DOUGH FOR ABOUT 20 DUMPLINGS
1½ cups unbleached flour
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
⅓ cup lukewarm water
PLUS
Vegetable oil for frying
1. For the dough: Pour the flour onto a work surface, shape it into a mound, and push down its center to form a hollow. Into the hollow put the salt, baking powder, olive oil, and lukewarm water. Draw the sides of the mound together, mixing all ingredients well with your hands. Knead for 10 minutes, until the dough loses its stickiness and is smooth and elastic.
2. Flatten the dough into a not too thin sheet with a rolling pin or, if you prefer, you can thin it through the rollers of a pasta machine, stopping at the setting that produces dough 1/16 inch thick. Trim the sheet of dough along the edges to give it a regular, rectangular shape. Briefly knead the trimmings into a small ball, and roll it out or thin it in the pasta machine. Trim it to give it the same rectangular shape as the rest of the dough.
3. Cut the dough into 3-inch squares, or as close to it as you can. Take a little bit of each of the components of the filling you are using from the individual bowls or plates and place it in the center of each square. Try to judge how much you are going to have to put into each square to make the filling come out evenly distributed. Fold the squares over on the diagonal, forming triangles. Seal the edges securely tight, pressing them with your fingers or with a pastry crimper. It is essential to stuff and seal the dumplings as soon as the dough has been rolled out, otherwise it will dry out. If it has begun to do so and you are having difficulty sealing the edges, moisten them very lightly with water.
4. As you finish filling and sealing each dumpling, lay it on a clean, dry cloth towel spread out on the counter. If you are not ready to fry them, turn them from time to time to keep them from sticking to the towel. Do not overlap them or stack them.
5. Pour enough oil into the frying pan to come ½ inch up its sides, and turn on the heat to high. When the oil is very hot, slip in as many dumplings at one time as will fit loosely without crowding the pan. Fry them to a golden color on one side, then turn them and do the other side. Often the dumplings will puff up and parts of them may jut above the oil level. Use a long-handled wooden spoon to tip them over and dunk them under the hot oil so that they fry as evenly as possible all over.
6. With a slotted spoon or spatula, transfer them to a cooling rack to drain or to a platter lined with paper towels. If there are more left to fry, repeat the procedure until all the dumplings are done. Serve while hot, but not scalding.
AT TABLE
The Italian Art of Eating
A PERFECT DISH of pasta or an impeccable risotto or a succulent chicken can, by itself, be so powerfully satisfying that we may reasonably ask, what else does one need? Just add a salad on the side, a slice of good bread, finish with a ripe fruit to sweeten one’s mouth, and we have a complete Italian meal. Or do we?
Having Italian food may often amount to no more than that, or to a pizza, or a platter of cold cuts, or a rice and chicken salad. There are times we simply do not want more. Yet, food has many ways of nourishing us, and there is more to a well-planned Italian meal than a single satiating dish.
In an Italian meal, there is no main course. With some rare exceptions—such as ossobuco e risotto, which is served as one dish, in the Milanese style—a single dominant course goes against eating in the Italian way, which consists of working one’s way through an interesting and balanced succession of small courses. Of these, two are principal courses that are never served side by side.
The first course may be pasta served either sauced or in broth, or it can be a risotto, or a soup. The Italian word for soup, minestra, is also the word often used in naming the first course, because even if it is a sauced pasta or risotto, it is served in a soup dish and, like any soup, always precedes and never accompanies the meat, fowl, or fish course.
When there has been time to relish and consume the first course, to salute its passing with some wine and to regroup the taste buds, the second course comes to the table. If one is ordering in a restaurant, a restaurant that caters to Italians, not to tourists, the choice of a second course is made after one has had the first course. This doesn’t mean that one has made no plans, but that one waits to confirm them to make sure that one’s original intentions and present inclinations coincide.
At home, of course, the entire meal will have been planned in advance by whoever makes such decisions. Here, the second course is usually a development of the theme established by the first. The reverse may also be true, when the first course is chosen in relation to the second. If the second course is going to be beef braised in wine, you will not preface it with spaghetti in clam sauce or with a dish of lasagne thickly laced with meat. You might prefer a risotto with asparagus, with zucchini, or plain, with Parmesan cheese. Or a dish of green gnocchi. Or a light potato soup.
If you are going to start with tagliatelle alla bolognese, homemade noodles with meat sauce, you might want to give your palate some relief by following it with a simple roast of veal or chicken. On the other hand, you would not choose a second course so bland, such as poached fish, that it could not sustain the impact of the first.
An Italian meal is a lively sequence of sensations, alternating the crisp with the soft and yielding, the pungent with the bland, the variable with the staple, the elaborate with the simple. It may take for its theme “fish,” and announce it very gently with a simple antipasto of tiny, boiled shrimp, delicately seasoned with olive oil, parsley, and lemon juice, and served still warm. Subsequently, a squid and clam risotto can make peppery comments on the theme, which might then be resoundingly proclaimed by a magnificent turbot baked with potatoes and garlic. All will subside in a brisk, slightly bitter salad of radicchio and field greens, to close on the sweet, liquid note of fresh sliced fruit in wine.
The second course is often accompanied by one or two vegetable side dishes, which sometimes develop into an independent course of their own. The pleasures of the Italian table are never keener than when the vegetables come on the scene. The word for a vegetable dish is contorno, whose literal translation is “contour.” It’s a good description of the role vegetables play because it is the choice of vegetables that defines an Italian meal, that gives it shape, that circles it with the flavors, texture, and colors of the season.
In planning an Italian menu, choosing the vegetables is often the most critical decision you will have to make. It will probably determine what kind of a pasta sauce or risotto you are going to make, which in turn affects plans for the second course, the vegetable contorno, and the all-important salad. It’s not a choice you should make abstractly, if you can help it. The most successful Italian menu plan is one that takes shape in the market, when you come face to face with your materials.
Salad is always served after the second course and its contorno are cleared away. It is the meal’s next to last act, gently letting the palate recoup its freshness, allowing it to deal with dessert and come away from the t
able without fatigue.
A baked dessert is rarely served at home after a meal of two or more courses. The traditional and sensible preference is for a bowl of fruit, sometimes substituted by marinated fruit slices.
It is not expected that every Italian meal one takes or makes will be full scale. Nor should we feel guilty when all we have the time or capacity to handle is pasta, or even just a seafood salad. But we ought not to be quite ready yet to dismiss the established practices of Italians at table.
In the relationships of its parts, the pattern of a complete Italian meal is very like that of a civilized life. No dish overwhelms another, either in quantity or in flavor, each leaves room for new appeals to the eye and palate, each fresh sensation of taste, color, and texture interlaces a lingering recollection of the last. To make time to eat as Italians still do is to share in their inexhaustible gift of making art out of life.
Composing an Italian Menu: Principles and Examples
WHEN DEVISING A MENU, we can chart the basic guidelines we need to follow by drawing on plain good sense. Courses served side by side ought not to have sauces whose flavors and consistencies are repetitive or at odds with each other: If the second course is a fricassee or a stew with a tomato base, obviously tomato should not be a large presence in the accompanying vegetable course, or vice versa; if one is boldly flavored with garlic and olive oil, we’ll think twice before matching it with a subtle dish whose base might be cream or butter. Nor are we likely to enjoy a sequence of courses that are equally runny, or dense, or starchy, or spicy, or that are strongly accented with the same herb, unless we are deliberately restating and developing a theme.
If the flavors and aromas of one course are exuberant, we shan’t want to follow it with one whose gentle, soft-spoken approach would, by comparison, become imperceptible. Whenever two or more courses precede the salad or dessert, their progress must move upward, climbing toward more prominent sensations of weight, of richness, of pungency if any, of palate-gripping flavor. It is the same principle people follow when serving more than one wine.
From the practical point of view of organizing time, space, and equipment to pull together the components of a meal, clearly we must avoid an assemblage of dishes whose preparation can become mutually obstructive, nor can we fail to take into account the last-minute attention each may require to reach the table at its peak of flavor.
Once the general and commonsensical principles of menu planning become apparent, the choices remaining before us provide an infinite number of agreeable and workable combinations. A representative selection that encompasses different occasions for an Italian meal is illustrated by the specimen menus that follow, of which all but a few are based on the classic Italian sequence of courses. I am aware that, judged by contemporary usage, some of them will appear to be rather densely packed. Actually, if you keep the portions small, you might find that a full-scale Italian meal is a less stultifying, more interesting event at table than one based on a sufficiently filling single course. If you feel you absolutely must simplify, you can always drop either the first or the second course. Moreover, even when you cannot reproduce the menus in full, you should find their examples a helpful guide to choosing dishes that go well together.
The role of bread One of the Italian words for a meal is companatico—that which you eat with bread. At an Italian table, food and bread are inseparable. In Italy, you will notice people begin to nibble on bread the moment they sit down to eat, just bread alone, without butter. No bread is eaten with pasta, but it will be used to wipe the dish clean of any sauce that might be left over. Morsels of bread punctuate the consumption of the second course, sop up the juices of a stew, or of a vegetable gratin. The bread is removed from the table only after you have finished the salad, whose most delectable part many claim are the tiny puddles of lightly salted and vinegary olive oil that, at the end, you soak up with bread.
AN ELEGANT MENU WITH HOMEMADE PASTA
The thread connecting the first three courses of this menu is the richness of the cooking based on butter and originating in Italy’s great northern plain.
Baked Zucchini Stuffed with Ham and Cheese
Fettuccine, with Cream and Butter Sauce, blanketed if possible with shaved white truffles
Sautéed Veal Chops with Sage and White Wine
or
Sautéed Sweetbreads with Tomatoes and Peas
or
Asparagus and Prosciutto Bundles
(You can omit vegetable, because it is present elsewhere in the meal, and follow one of the above second courses with a simple, refreshing salad of field greens such as mâche and arugula dressed with olive oil and vinegar as described.)
Macedonia—Macerated Mixed Fresh Fruit
A CLASSIC MENU IN THE BOLOGNESE STYLE
Mushroom, Parmesan Cheese, and White Truffle Salad
or
Prosciutto slices over very ripe melon or figs
Tagliatelle with Bolognese Meat Sauce
or
Any of the lasagne dishes, except the one with pesto
Pork Loin Braised in Milk, Bolognese Style
or
Drunk Roast Pork
or
Pan-Roasted Breast of Veal
ACCOMPANIED BY
Spinach Sautéed with Olive Oil and Garlic
or
Swiss Chard Stalks Gratinéed with Parmesan Cheese
or
Breaded Fried Finocchio
AND
Pan-Roasted Diced Potatoes
Bolognese Rice Cake
or
Egg Custard Gelato
A HOLIDAY MENU WITH ROAST BIRDS
Carciofi alla Romana—Artichokes, Roman Style
Risotto with Porcini Mushrooms
or
Green Tortellini with Meat and Ricotta Stuffing
or
Spaghettini with Black Truffle Sauce
Pan-Roasted Squab Pigeons
or
Roast Duck
ACCOMPANIED BY
Sautéed Shiitake Mushroom Caps, Porcini Style
or
Sweet and Sour Onions
and/or
Sunchoke Gratin
PLUS
Boiled Zucchini Salad all’Agro, with Lemon Juice
Monte Bianco: Puréed Chestnut and Chocolate Mound
A FISH FEAST
Probably no cuisine surpasses the Italian, if indeed any equals it, in the vivacity and ease with which it handles seafood. The following menu draws on just some of the riches to be found in doing fish all’italiana.
Cold Trout in Orange Marinade
or
Gamberetti all’Olio e Limone—Poached Shrimp with Olive Oil and Lemon Juice
Fettuccine and Pink Shrimp Sauce with Cream
or
Fettuccine with Pesto
or
Tortellini with Fish Stuffing
Halibut Sauced with White Wine and Anchovies
or
Baked Sea Bass or Other Whole Fish Stuffed with Shellfish
or
Bass or Other Whole Fish Baked with Artichokes
FOLLOWED BY
Orange and Cucumber Salad
Zuppa Inglese
or
Sgroppino
A WINTER MENU
Acquacotta—Tuscan Peasant Soup with Cabbage and Beans
or
Barley Soup in the Style of Trent
or
Minestrone alla Romagnolla—Vegetable Soup, Romagna Style
or
Spinach or Escarole Soup with Rice
Beef Stew with Red Wine and Vegetables
or
Veal Stew with Sage, White Wine, and Cream, or Mushrooms
or
Cotechino, served with Mashed Potatoes with Milk and Parmesan Cheese, Bolognese Style
FOLLOWED BY
Shredded Savoy Cabbage Salad
or
Romaine Lettuce Salad with Gorgonzola Cheese and Walnuts
&
nbsp; or
Warm Cauliflower Salad
Glazed Bread Pudding
or
A Farm Wife’s Fresh Pear Tart
or
Pisciotta—Olive Oil Cake
A RUSTIC MENU, I
Bagna Caôda
Chicken Fricassee with Red Cabbage
or
Polenta
with
Spareribs with Tomatoes and Vegetables
or with
Sautéed Calf’s Liver and Onions, Venetian Style
Chestnuts Boiled in Red Wine, Romagna Style
A RUSTIC MENU, II
Piadina—Flat Griddle Bread, with Sautéed Mixed Greens with Olive Oil and Garlic
Pork Sausages with Smothered Onions and Tomatoes
FOLLOWED BY
Shredded Carrot Salad
or
Baked Red Beets
Ciambella—Grandmother’s Pastry Ring (served with vin santo or other sweet wine)
or
Polenta Shortcake with Raisins, Dried Figs, and Pine Nuts
A LUNCH MENU FOR SUMMER
Even in summer, lunch in the Italian style can be a complete and leisurely meal, but it needn’t be weighty, as the fresh and sprightly flavors of the dishes in this menu demonstrate.
Panzanella—Bread Salad
Spaghettini with Eggplant Sauce with Tomato and Red Chili Pepper
or with
Sardinian Bottarga Sauce
Vitello Tonnato—Cold Sliced Veal with Tuna Sauce
FOLLOWED BY
Italian Potato Salad (made with new potatoes)
Lemon Ice Cream from the recipe for Sgroppino
Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking Page 72