Molto Gusto: Easy Italian Cooking
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Molto Gusto Easy Italian Cooking at Home Mario Batali and Mark Ladner Photography by Quentin Bacon Art Direction by Douglas Riccardi and Lisa Eaton THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO SUSI, BENNO & LEO for whom gusto is a way of life—MARIO I WOULD LIKE TO THANK MY FAMILY, CHRISTINE, RILEY & JASPER, for their support and patience—MARK Contents Introduction 1. Vegetable Antipasti 2· Seafood & Meat Antipasti 3. Bruschetta & Cheese 4· Insalata 5· Pasta 6· Pizza 7· Gelato & Sorbetto Glossary Sources Searchable Terms Acknowledgments About the Author Other Books by Mario Batali Credits Copyright About the Publisher Introduction I have written and spoken perhaps too many words about Italian food and how and why I translate its inherent excellence and deliciousness to the American table. I have been on and in several thousand television shows and explained to a very large audience the philosophy of the Italian family, the importance of the table in daily life, and the significance of regional variations and the fierce respect and love for these regional differences from town to town—and even from home to home on the same street. I have and will continue to espouse this Italian strategy, and I love to interpret it and illuminate it for the many of us who are Italians, whether or not we were born there—that is, we have ancestral roots there—and for the many of us who merely want to be Italians, at least at the dinner table. Us is a big word these days, and I do not use it lightly. Who are we? By we, I mean those like-minded individuals who seek out the delicious, the traditional, the innovative, the unique, and the geo-specific in the world of nutrition and pleasure at the table, almost always in the company of others like us or of the same mind. We like to shop for food and prepare it, we like to braise, roast, poach, and steam. We have some but not all of the equipment we have seen on the cooking shows, and we have access to many great regional ingredients in our own towns. We lust after the first asparagus of the season, we anxiously await the first local strawberries or cherries, and we are not afraid of either simple or many-step recipes. We love the change from merely slicing tomatoes and adding salt to complex braising as summer fades and autumn slides in. We sometimes plan menus for get-togethers weeks, or even a month or two, in advance. We are the cooks the houseware companies want to sell to. We are the readers of Food & Wine and Bon Appétit and of the local newspaper food pages, and we are the core audience of anything written by Michael Pollan, Mark Bittman, and Alice Waters. But we are not snobs or elitists, and we love it when other people cook for us. We like simple food. In the last few years, the idea that there are social costs associated with the decisions we make at the grocery store and at the table has become quite compelling. At all of the restaurants I own, we have spent significant time thinking these decision-based costs through, and we have taken many steps to prove our pro-planet resolve, never at the loss of flavor and pleasure, but often in the face of seemingly significant profit motives. Among other things, we no longer sell imported bottled water, a reflection of our thoughts on the use of limited resources in energy and other raw materials we consider important. We have become “green-certified” at nearly every location, installing efficient lighting, composting our carbon-based waste, and recycling all plastic and glass. We are buying hormone-free meat and poultry products, and in many cases we have driven our menus to a place with less and less protein as the main event. At no place is this drive toward less protein more evident than at Otto Pizzeria Enoteca. The idea that our protein-heavy diet has far-reaching implications, including energy and resource management as well as global warming, may seem new, but the traditional agrarian European diet is actually anything but “hot off the press.” What seems to be all the rage in the smart world of foodies is simply an extension of the traditional Italian table… We created Otto Pizzeria for one basic reason, to give us a place to go with our kids that made sense in the “big three” for families: (1) to have fun; (2) to be able to find something the kids want to eat at the same place where the adults want to eat; and (3) to serve both adults and kids something that is good for them but, at the same time, delicious—without having to resort to the didacticism and sloganeering language that “health food” restaurants are trapped by. In the true world of Italian meal ideology, this is not as hard as it might seem when you look at that list: we simply created a menu that doesn’t require a huge commitment to any particular or specific course. The typical meals may change from day to day, but most people have some vegetable antipasti and a leafy salad or two, maybe some cheeses or salumi, and then split a few pastas and a few pizzas and share a couple of gelati and coppette. I do not think that after our first year anyone even noticed that there are no standard meat- or fish-based main courses served in the restaurant. And if you have been paying attention to the current food brain-trust literati, it seems that our customers were ahead of the curve. Not really vegetarian, they’ve nonetheless been eating a diet heavy on vegetables, mostly leafy, with some grains thrown in, in the form of pasta and pizza, plus farro and legumes in salads, and very little protein from animals. What you will certainly notice quite quickly is that this cookbook is radically different from all of the others I have written in its complete lack of traditional main courses. We do not serve any “meat and potatoes” plates at Otto, and we never have. What seems to be all the rage in the smart world of foodies is simply an extension of the traditional Italian table, where farming, foraging, and gardening have always yielded the bulk of the food in the daily diet, and where the occasional pig, chicken, or cow has been the exception to the rule. The health implications of this style of diet are no new shakes either, but I think that what you will note when dining on the following group of recipes is a kind of happy passing sense of content and fullness not associated with the consumption of a huge steak or chop. Most of the protein comes from small portions of cured meats, cheeses, and grains, with any animal protein as the flavoring and the bulk of the actual comestibles plant-based, whether leaf, stalk, flower, seed, or drupe. An ideal meal for several people from this book might consist of two or three vegetable antipasti, and a salad, followed by a pasta or two and a cheese course. Or maybe a plate of salumi and then some pizzas, with a couple of gelati and a coppetta or two. The real trick is to let the market inspire you to buy and forage for the right things, then take them home and prepare them—and spend at least that amount of time enjoying them. You will notice that many of the recipes in this book are less than half a page long. This reflects the fact that they are indeed simple and a real part of the daily lives of many Italian people, who base a lot of their cooking and eating more on great products that they merely adorn. But I do not want to weigh you down with a lot of political rigamarole. What is most important about food is the pleasure and nourishment it gives us. The sourcing is as significant a component of the process as the cooking, but let’s not forget that the main event is not just to care for ourselves, but also to create energy for our constantly moving lives and our brains, and our laughing and singing and dancing and playing. So look at these recipes and ideas and think about smaller plates of food in a meal much less reliant on a big main course, yet still involving big beautiful flavors, and, most important, variation with the seasons. Many of the recipes are, in fact, organized by seasonal availability. 1 VEGETABLE ANTIPASTI There is nothing that inspires me more, no matter where I am in the world, than a visit to a local farmers’ market. To see what the sweet earth is giving up to those who care enough to coax it into fruition is my main gauge of the greatness of a town or city in any society. From London’s Borough Market to the Boqueria in Barcelona and Rome’s Campo dei Fiori to Pike Place Market in Seattle and the Union Square Greenmarket near my home in NYC, there is the constant source of inspiration driven by the fact that the general constituency of both purveyor and customer represents everything I love about great food and its potential. The single most exciting word in food for me is geo-specificity. If I can find something that is grown close to where I buy it (and plan on eating it), and it tastes like the smell of the wind on a rainy day in May or July or September, I have found something unique.