Rabbit Pie

So, as I mentioned earlier, our friend Katie has been visiting for the month of December.  Anyway, her first reaction to the butchers in Mercato Sant Ambrogio went something along the lines of "Bunnies!  Must make rabbit pie!"  Which we put off doing for a while, for various reasons involving bistecca, pheasant and small, tied up packages of meat.  And impending Christmas dinner.  Christmas being past (and her flight back to California imminent) we finally got around to the rabbit pie.

Adventures with panettone

While we're in Italy, I have been on a mission to attempt making all sorts of traditional Italian dishes--especially baked goods. Most of our experiments have actually ended up involving pasta (as you may have gathered from previous posts), but there has been some branching out to things like schiacciata con uva. Naturally last year at Christmas time we had to attempt panettone (in spite of the small size of our kitchen). The first task, of course, was to find a recipe. Google will pop up all kinds of things when you search for Panettone, but I wanted to make sure I used a good and "authentic" recipe, so I asked Antonella at Buca del vino for advice (as we usually do when experimenting with Italian food). Marco said making panettone would be impossible (obviously, I had to interpret this response as a challenge), but Antonella sent me to A casa di ross, an Italian food blog full of many excellent recipes--both traditional and non.

The once and future ravioli

The best ravioli we have made so far, out of many good raviolis, started with leftovers.  You see, we had some friends over on the spur of the moment a few days ago after singing (because we wanted to hang out but felt rather too broke to go out) which lead to cooking more or less everything in the fridge.  Which wasn't much.

The upshot was that the next afternoon we had a yogurt container full of cold sauteed random stuff which needed to feel useful.  Specifically; kale, radicchio, fennel bulb, and onion that had been cooked with some chiang kai vinigar and a little bit of sesame oil.  If you haven't tried it (which I sort of assume is the case) the mixture is somewhat sweet, lightly bitter, fruity and has a faint oxidative character (from the vinegar).  For its insertion in the ravioli it was minced and then mixed with ricotta.  To make it work I felt it needed fairly agressivly savory sauce to balance the fruitiness of the filling.  We actually made this two times in a row, this is the second version of the sauce:

Take a small handful of dried porcinis and put them in a cup of hot water for at least 20-30 min.  Mince three or so shallots and cube 3 slices of salami toscano (I had wanted to use pancetta or guanciale at first, but we hadn't been to the market again since clearing out the fridge for our impromptu dinner, so the salami got used.  Then it got used again because it worked well).  When the porcinis are getting soft start the shallots sauteing.  Add the salami after a min. or two, then mince the porcini and add them, along with some of the liquid they have been soaking in.  Keep on adding a bit of the porcini broth every couple of minuets to form a lightly thick brown sauce.  While all this has been going on cook the ravioli, erring a little on the underdone side.  Once drained, add them to the sauce with a bit more porcini broth and cook for another min. or two before serving.

Bistecca!

Florence is currently covered by a thick blanket of snow, but before it started falling and after the months of pouring rain that made up most of this fall we had a few beautiful, cold, clear days which we used to introduce our friend Katie to Bistecca alla Fiorentina.

Bistecca is a huge steak, usually a kilo or more, cut something like a T-bone or porterhouse from  Chianina oxen.  Which is probably important, because three out of three of the best steaks I have ever had have been Bistecca alla Fiorentina.  My opinion may not be that significant, given my level of steak consumption, but it can be a seriously amazing piece of meat.

The preparation is exceedingly simple:  Take your thick to very thick steak (ideally 3 fingers, but it depends on the spacing of the ribs, so it can vary quite a bit.  These ones were closer to 2 fingers thick) and rub it with a split garlic clove and a bit of fresh rosemary.  Let it get up to room temperature on the counter.  It tastes best cooked over charcoal, but can be done in a pan too.  If you're using charcoal get your coals white hot, spread them and move your rack to an inch or two above the coals -- you want the steak to cook fast and hot.  Cook for 3-5 min. on each side, until browned.  After each side has cooked sprinkle liberally with sea salt and cracked pepper (fresh rosemary optional).  If you are cooking it on the stove use a heavy (cast iron) frying pan, a little bit of butter and get it very hot.  It should end up completely raw in the middle, browned on the outside and cooked through the first 1/4 of its width or so on each side.  If rare meat bothers you, this is not the steak for you.  We had this for lunch with some sauteed broccoli rabe and a good Chianti Classico.

Thanksgiving in December

As Lauren previously mentioned, we were out of town for Thanksgiving itself, but felt the need to make The Dinner anyway.  We did this last year at a friends' house and, well, there were challenges.  Not with the friends, they were great, but with acquiring the more American ingredients.  Cranberries are not only not to be found here, but are also completely unknown and, when introduced, are usually taken for some other frutti di bosco (wild berry) unless their origin and general way of life is explained in exhaustive detail.  Turkey isn't a problem (the butchers seem like they've all figured out the whole thanksgiving thing) but sweet potatoes are.  As in, we couldn't find them at all last year and we really looked.

So, having just been in the states, we bought cranberries and Lauren made and canned 8 pints of sauce which we packed into our checked luggage, being unsure about it's import legality but fairly confident that the immigration folks in the Florence airport wouldn't much care.  We also brought back some Alaskan smoked salmon and Tillamook Cheddar (sharp) that my mother brought us from Seattle to start things off with.  I wanted to showcase those partially out of regional pride and partially because Italians really appreciate regional cuisine.  We had been planning to make rosemary crackers but, due to a lack of oven space coupled with a certain degree of forgetfulness, instead had the antipasta with some of Lauren's herb bread (made the day before in full accordance with the plan).  We also had chicken liver crostini (which are very fiorentini) brought by our next door neighbors/landlords and some peperoncino jam which they went to get immediately after tasting the cheddar.

Pre-post Thanksgiving leftovers

What, you ask, are pre-post Thanksgiving leftovers? Having decided that we didn't get quite enough turkey and cranberries while in the States for real Thanksgiving, and being of the general opinion that non-Americans should experience the tastiness that is Thanksgiving, we decided to invite some friends over for a post-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving dinner when we got back to Italy. And as often happens when one goes to the market, we ended up with a bit too much food--including a rather large piece of zucca (unspecified form of winter squash).

The plan for this lovely piece of squash was pumpkin pie, so I stuck it in the oven to roast. But when I pulled it out and mashed it up, I had way more than the required 2 cups of pumpkin. What to do with the extra? The obvious solution was clearly to make zucca ravioli, and so after removing the amount for the pie, I mixed in spices and a pinch of salt to create the ravioli filling and went back to making the pie.

The pie pan we had available for use wasn't all that big though, and so not surprisingly, when I went to pour the "pumpkin" custard into the crust there was a not-insignificant bit that wouldn't fit. Being short on pie tins, we decided the best use for this bit of extra squash was to turn it into a sort of pumpkin creme brule.

For the ravioli, I didn't bother to follow any sort of

precise recipe. Really, they can be a fairly flexible sort of thing, so here's a gist that can be used as a point of departure:

Roast or steam a piece of winter squash. When soft, remove the skin (if you didn't peal it before cooking) and pureè until smooth. To the squash mixture add salt and spices to taste (pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, a bit of ground cloves, or whatever else suits your fancy). Roll out pasta dough (which I made using my usual eggless recipe), fill and form ravioli accordingly. Cook and serve with brown butter and sage sauce.

The pumpkin pie I made using a combination of two recipes from Gourmet magazine. The first, for a carmel pumpkin pie, was what I used to make the filling. The second, for pumpkin tart with anise seed crust was what I used for the crust (irrelevant for the creme brule

but tasty nonetheless). To turn the extra filling into creme brule, I buttered a baking dish (well, in this case, pot with metal handles) and filled with with the custard. I then placed the dish in a water bath and baked it until it was firm. Once firm, we pulled it out of the oven, sprinkled it with brown sugar, and put it back in the oven on broil to crisp up the top. The end result wasn't quite like creme brule done the proper way (with a blow torch), but it was quite good anyway and certainly an acceptable jury-rigging method for when flame throwers are unavailable.