Is There a Nutmeg in the House? by Elizabeth David, Jill Norman Page A
Authors: Elizabeth David, Jill Norman
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whenhot put in a few gooseberries ( uva spina ), a glass of cream, two ounces (60 g) of pine nuts steeped in rosewater, crushed in the mortar, and thicken the sauce with four egg yolks beaten with lemon juice, and under the fennel in the dish put slices of bread fried in butter; thus you may make a most delicate minestra, serving it hot, powdered with cinnamon.
MINESTRA D’ERBA BRUSCA E DI BORAGGIO E CIME DI FINOCCHIO E CIME DI BIETA
(minestra of sorrel, borage, fennel shoots and beet shoots)
Take these four varieties of herbs well cleaned and washed in plenty of water; you mince them all very small, in quantities which you must judge by your own eye, knowing how much minestra you need to make, and when they are minced you put them in a two-handled soup pot ( pignatta ), adding capon broth, or else beef broth, enough to cover the herbs by half, not to rise above them; put the pignatta over a charcoal fire and as soon as it boils the broth reaches perfection.
To season the minestra you take fresh eggs, grated cheese in proportion, and cook as already instructed; if you like to add asparagus tips in the season, you may put them in, but first having cooked them in water, then plunged them in fresh cold water, so that they lose that particular odour which they give the water. There are many cooks who first cook the fresh herbs in the same way, thereby throwing away the best part, for they throw away the first juices given out by the herbs, leaving them with less aroma and less goodness.
ZUCCHI TENERE, O ZUCCOLI DA FRIGGERE
( young tender marrows, or small marrows for frying)
Take the marrows, free of skin and cut in slices, steeped and softened with salt, and well drained, arrange the slices one on top of the other, put a weight on them so that the moisture is pressed out, and carefully flour them. Put these slices in a frying pan with clarified butter, when they are cooked take them from the pan and prepare the following sauce.
Take a little basil, a leaf or two of sage ( erba amara ), a few fennel seeds, all well pounded in the mortar, and for every pound of zucchi , take four ounces (125 g) of soft cheese, pound it wellin the mortar with the other ingredients, then allay it with the juice of verjuice grapes, the juice to be first diluted with water; add nothing else, but if the juice has not been diluted you may add two ounces (60 g) of sugar with four yolks of fresh eggs well beaten, put all in a cazzetta (a water bath) on the fire with three ounces (90 g) of butter, stirring with a wooden spoon, and when you perceive that it has cooked into a thickened broth, then cover the dish of marrows with this sauce and serve it cold with powdered cinnamon.
If the marrows are fried in oil, make the sauce in this fashion. Instead of soft cheese take crumb of bread steeped in verjuice, with the same aromatic herbs, and instead of eggs use almond milk, and cook the sauce in the same way. But when the marrows are larger, you may cut them in the fashion of lardoons. They may also be stuffed, as I have told you. Patty cases may be made from them, and in fine they make such a diversity of dishes that they could constitute an entire course.
VIVANDA D’AVENTANI
(a dish of eggplants)
Providing a rare variant on the Italian name of the eggplant – so rare indeed that it appears not to have been known to R. Arveiller when he wrote his nineteen-page article on Les noms français de l’aubergine , necessarily covering numerous Italian and Catalan variations, published in the Revue de Linguistique romane , Vol. 33, 1969 1 – this recipe of Stefani’s is both original and easily
adaptable. It also tells us that this fruit was at that time, in northern Italy at any rate, cultivated in monastery gardens and was still unfamiliar enough for the readers to need a description. The name used by Stefani which derived, I think, not from the now obsolete avelenoso meaning something injurious, harmful, poisonous, but from aventare , to wind,
MINESTRA D’ERBA BRUSCA E DI BORAGGIO E CIME DI FINOCCHIO E CIME DI BIETA
(minestra of sorrel, borage, fennel shoots and beet shoots)
Take these four varieties of herbs well cleaned and washed in plenty of water; you mince them all very small, in quantities which you must judge by your own eye, knowing how much minestra you need to make, and when they are minced you put them in a two-handled soup pot ( pignatta ), adding capon broth, or else beef broth, enough to cover the herbs by half, not to rise above them; put the pignatta over a charcoal fire and as soon as it boils the broth reaches perfection.
To season the minestra you take fresh eggs, grated cheese in proportion, and cook as already instructed; if you like to add asparagus tips in the season, you may put them in, but first having cooked them in water, then plunged them in fresh cold water, so that they lose that particular odour which they give the water. There are many cooks who first cook the fresh herbs in the same way, thereby throwing away the best part, for they throw away the first juices given out by the herbs, leaving them with less aroma and less goodness.
ZUCCHI TENERE, O ZUCCOLI DA FRIGGERE
( young tender marrows, or small marrows for frying)
Take the marrows, free of skin and cut in slices, steeped and softened with salt, and well drained, arrange the slices one on top of the other, put a weight on them so that the moisture is pressed out, and carefully flour them. Put these slices in a frying pan with clarified butter, when they are cooked take them from the pan and prepare the following sauce.
Take a little basil, a leaf or two of sage ( erba amara ), a few fennel seeds, all well pounded in the mortar, and for every pound of zucchi , take four ounces (125 g) of soft cheese, pound it wellin the mortar with the other ingredients, then allay it with the juice of verjuice grapes, the juice to be first diluted with water; add nothing else, but if the juice has not been diluted you may add two ounces (60 g) of sugar with four yolks of fresh eggs well beaten, put all in a cazzetta (a water bath) on the fire with three ounces (90 g) of butter, stirring with a wooden spoon, and when you perceive that it has cooked into a thickened broth, then cover the dish of marrows with this sauce and serve it cold with powdered cinnamon.
If the marrows are fried in oil, make the sauce in this fashion. Instead of soft cheese take crumb of bread steeped in verjuice, with the same aromatic herbs, and instead of eggs use almond milk, and cook the sauce in the same way. But when the marrows are larger, you may cut them in the fashion of lardoons. They may also be stuffed, as I have told you. Patty cases may be made from them, and in fine they make such a diversity of dishes that they could constitute an entire course.
VIVANDA D’AVENTANI
(a dish of eggplants)
Providing a rare variant on the Italian name of the eggplant – so rare indeed that it appears not to have been known to R. Arveiller when he wrote his nineteen-page article on Les noms français de l’aubergine , necessarily covering numerous Italian and Catalan variations, published in the Revue de Linguistique romane , Vol. 33, 1969 1 – this recipe of Stefani’s is both original and easily
adaptable. It also tells us that this fruit was at that time, in northern Italy at any rate, cultivated in monastery gardens and was still unfamiliar enough for the readers to need a description. The name used by Stefani which derived, I think, not from the now obsolete avelenoso meaning something injurious, harmful, poisonous, but from aventare , to wind,
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