Evolution of foods

Some scientist have analysed the evolution of recipes through time in four different cookbooks, and concluded that traditional cuisine evolve quite slowly, mosty because special ingredient are difficult to replace.

I wonder if some sort of tree of cooking could be built from gastronomic traditions of various populations and how it would relate to migrations, either known or presumed to have happened before historical records began...

update: in fact, since recipes are memes, as in the original definition of Dawkins, it may really turn out to be an interesting exercise...

Michael Pollan has a blog, too!

One of my favourite writers/journalists has a blog, about good agriculture and good food.

Check it out: On The Table

and make sure you read how agricultural policies of developed states influence the things we eat.

It's a pity he does not update it more often...

Do supermarkets make our lives better?

The BBC radio program "World Have Your Say" points to an opinion piece by food critic Jay Rayner discussing whether or not supermaret are a good or evil force in our fight for better, affordable food.

I have to admit that I quite like his position, founding it well reasoned and far from the anti-supermarket crowd rants...

Yes, supermarket "are bloody convenient", as he points out. But they are not the "the dismal and anonymous places" they are made out to be... The people working in there are just, well, people, and they are as likely to behave nicely or badly with their customers as any other "small-retailer" who has been put out of business by them.

Also, I may add, from my personal experience, in Italy the small distribution is suffering now the revenge of customers who until now were forced to pay extortion prices for goods often 1/3rd cheaper in the supermarket.

And as Jay thoughtfully points out, all those chef recommending exotic ingredients would not be able to offer recipes for less than 5 pounds if it weren't for the big scale economies that allow big chain to sell these foods at a lower price.

There certainly is a lot to be done to force supermarket to pay an honest price to farmers... But as long as people pushes them to have cheaper and cheaper food, they're going to attempt anything they can to provide them with it. Once people will start demanding high quality food, we will see a shift in the chains' modus operandi. Not one second before.

Yesterday's TV

Been spending the last couple of evenings watching my new favourite TV show, 3rd rock from the Sun, alongside the old favourites Scrubs and Ally McBeal.

So funny!!! And it looks like he keeps going strong for most of its six seasons.

On the culinary side, I cooked two sausages in a pirex ovenplate, added vegetables and pasta "al dente" and that was it! The day before instead, the same vegetables, stir-fried in a wok, ricotta fresca, and pasta.

But do you care?

Pasta with Bottarga

first, a link to it.

then, the way I make it:

first off, these are ingredients for 4 hungry italian boys, so scale them accordingly:

- 5-600 gr of pasta (yes, that's 125-150 gr each: I did say we were hungry)
- a bunch of parsley, flat leaf if possible 'cause it's softer and it cuts better...
- 50-80 gr of butter, if you really have to substitute it with margarine, but believe me it's not healthier :-)
- two cloves of garlic, as fresh as possible if you can.
- one strong chili pepper dry or fresh.
- and yes, some 50 gr of bottarga, freshly grated/ground.

ok, start putting the water on the fire. some 4 liters should be fine, plus a fistful of salt.
in the meanwhile it gets hot, you finely chop the garlic and the chili, melt the butter in a sauce pan (a wok is perfect, if you have one, 'cause you'll need to mix the pasta in it afterwards) and put them in. leave like that for two to three minutes, make sure that the butter is on the verge of boiling but do not burn the garlic. in those three minutes, you finely chop the bunch of parsley, and you add them to the pan. leave one minutes and then shut the fire off.

now, your water should almost done, when it's happily boiling pour in your spaghetti, barilla number 3 if you can find them or any other kind of dry pasta you like. it'll cook itself just stir it from time to time.

don't keep your thumbs idle, though, you grind/grate the bottarga and pour it in the wok, mix it with the rest until it adsorbs the butter and creates a kind of sauce. if it's too dry, add a little bit of butter or olive oil or else some water from the pasta (diet choice).

roughly drain the pasta before it's "al dente", and turn on the fire behind the wok/saucepan. pour the pasta in with a lil bit of cooking water (a few spoonful, or what's left if you drain it quickly), and stir vigorously, until the sauce has spread more or less evenly. then divide it in portion and serve. enjoy! (keep the dishes slightly warm, so that the pasta will stay warmer while you eat it)

variation:

- chives instead of parsley, black pepper instead of chili, and so on. just experiment!!!

luca




other recipe with pictures (that's where I took them from - mine looks much more different, with lots of parsley and ground garlic all over the place

Silly me, you may need to buy it. (never tried it, though)

Amarone, californian wines..

The NY Times has a piece regarding the Amarone, a wine made from dired grapes which has a very strpng alcohol content - in italian, we call them 'passiti'. The article boasts about californian wines having 17 degrees, but they're just weak if compared to other passiti, italian and not.

Anghelu Ruju, from Sardinia, for example, or Mavrodaphne from Greece, although this last one isn't technically a passito.

Eat Less, Live More

Why does the world have to go against me? Ok, I love cooking, and as a consequence I love eating...

and I've always lived in the illusion that, supposed that I do enough exercise, i will not suffer any adverse effect from this... But no, some scientist confirmed (it was known since long time) that eating a low-calorie diet can dramatically increase your age-expectancy...

mouse fed 30% less, live 40% longer... not only, they tend to suffer less from old-age diseases... same apply to animals all across the spectrum...

Il troppo stroppia, would say my mum... it's true for spices, but most of all for the food we spice it with...

click on the link (or the title) for the full NY Times story...

note: written while emptying a vase of yogurth...

Lasagne

Last saturday some girl-friends willfully offered their hands to me, just to taste once again my wonderful pastalforno, also known as Lasagne(sorry, no piccies of them)... being my pretty lady there, I could not accept any of these offer (I'm glad for receiving them though!), but I nonetheless promised that I'd let them know how to prepare their own...

and here I am.

let's start. You need three things, other than slab-shaped pasta, to make a good dishful: ragu', a.k.a. Bolognese, Besciamella's sauce, which sounds italian but it's french in origins, and some more fillings.

First, the ragu': my mum makes it light, so get away from pre-made bolognese sauce you can buy in the market, they're just choke-full of meat and waaay too heavy. just get some minced meat, beef but also pork or turkey are good choices, let's say 200gr. that should be enough to make a lot of sauce. last time, I stir fried 200gr of turkey with some oil, finely chopped onion, a leaf of laurel and a garlic clove until the meat was cooked. then i poured in a big can of tomatoes (800gr). after that, you're pretty much done. add salt as you like, and may be some nut-meg powder. add whatever spice you like 'cause the more, the merrier the sauce. do not exagerate with quantities, though. spices are there to enhance flavour, not to cover everything else. this is particularly true for chilli. I dropped a whole dry chilli in the sauce. let it simmer until the tomato is cooked, and the sauce is not too thick... I'd give you a viscocity number but have no viscosimeter in my kitchen (yet)...

Then the besciamella/bechamelle... you can buy it, sure, but it's not worth a dime compared to the one you can make yourself: you just need butter, milk, flour and nutmeg (again!)... melt the butter and make a slurry (chemical term for paste) with the flour... let's say 50gr of butter, one spponful of flour... once the slurry is homogeneous, add the milk slowly, keeping the whole thing warm, but not boiling.
always stirring to avoid the flour to aggregate, add some nutmeg powder, then a pince of salt. stir and stir and stir while the milk evaporates, until the sauce reaches the correct viscosity... now you're in business!

oh, you need the filling, I'd go for cooked/roasted ham slices, and some more cheese - emmenthal is a good choice, or some grated mozzarella for pizza.

and the pasta, of course, emiliane barilla or whatever brand you favour...

just layer them down raw, or pre-cook them if you think one of your sauces is a bit too thick and may not have enough water to cook them once in the oven...

anyway, now layer down in a square oven pan, alternating them, ragu''n'besciamella (mix them with a spoon, pasta, ham'n'cheese, and again and again... after four or five layer, you should have enough...

layer some pasta on the top, and cover the whole thing with the leftover ragu'n'bechamelle... don't exagerate...

now, you can keep it in the fridge for half a day or some more, to let the sauces permeate the pasta...

or if you're in a hurry, just pre-heat the oven at 180, and stick the pan inside for, like, 45 minutes...

check half way through, the sauces should start to boil away, and the pasta on top should not burn, but get colored...

then the bell rings, take it out and enjoy!!! ciao!

Wild Rabbit with Wild Mushrooms and Red Wine

This artistic picture shows the back of a wild rabbit (ventral side, you can see the kidneys if you squint)... I grabbed it on my way home from the pool. Grabbed from the market, I didn't stop hunting in the common park, thank you...

Anyway, it was already clean... I just dropped the chopped courgettes and wild mushrooms in the same wok, some oil and a liberal sprinkle of salt and pepper, and started the fire...

once the vegetables (and the fungi) were softened, i did add some red wine and cooked until the meat would detach itself easily from the bones... still some juice frm the wine and the cooking water...

as a final touch, coarsely chopped parsley, rosemary and basil, and a spoonful of moutarde de dijon...

it did taste wonderful, believe me!!!

had I had more time (and more rabbit too), I'd have stewed it in casserole with some juicy cream...

yesterday's recipe...

Yesterday I tried to cook something new... Kind of veggie+fish-flavoured risotto, but didn't have any rice, so I went for pre-cooked, dry wheat. I did like it, so here it is... sorry for the crap piccie, it was taken with my phone's camera...

and here comes the recipe:

put one nugget of butter in the wok, with some chopped courgette, spinachs, mushrooms. some chilly too, and a pince of salt. stir-fry them, while you prepare some fish stock (it: brodo, fr: bouillon).

drop in the bouillon some pre-cooked wheat (grano, ble`)... boil it for some minutes, then throw away most of the bouillon, keeping enough to finish off the wheat cooking. I keep it in a bowl, you never know if you need some more.

pour the wheat together with its bouillon in the wok, and finish them off... once cooked, sprinkle with fish-mix dry herbs (or better the fresh equivalent), and a nugget of gorgonzola if you like... that's it. enjoy! and let me know if you liked it...

You are what you eat...

And this may explain why belgian are so weird-looking :-P

look what I have been served for lunch today:

yes, you see correctly, in the upper right corner there's actually a cluster of four fried meatballs, surrounded by an army of... caramellised cherries, of the kind we italians would only dream of putting on ice creams (we call them amarene)

now, it was, surprisingly, good. the contrast betwee the sweet/sour of cherries and the fried meatballss was pleasant... if you like that kind of thing.

now, i don't know what piint I actually want to make, just wanted to bring to your knowledge that diversity in cuisines is even larger than in chemistry! ugh!