Zuppa inglese, literally "English soup", is actually neither English nor a soup. It is a classic Italian dessert, but the name is apt nevertheless. Its texture is very reminiscent of the bread-thickened soups so typical of the cookery of central Italy, only sweet and cool rather than savory and hot—a kind of cousin to the more familiar tiramisù and an even closer cousin to the much less known Tuscan zuccotto. And while the origins of this dish are disputed, it bears a strong resemblance to the English trifle.


It is actually quite simple to make, but makes a great impression, especially when served in a large glass trifle bowl. In its classic incarnation, it consists of layers of pan di Spagna (sponge cake) moistened with a red liqueur called Alchermes (also spelled Alkermes) alternating with crema pasticcera, pastry cream. It can be served just as is or topped with fruit or sliced almonds or other decorative foods (see Notes). Let it chill for a few hours and serve. It is sure to be a big hit—I love it and I don't even care that much for sweets—perfect for a dinner party for a crowd.


Ingredients (makes enough for a crowd)


For the crema pasticcera:


8 egg yolks
750g (3 cups) sugar
75g (1/2 cup) flour
1 liter (4 cups) milk
Grated zest of 1/2 a lemon


75g (1/2 cup) unsweetened cocoa (or equivalent in chocolate, broken up)
2-3 spoonfuls of sugar (optional)
Milk, q.b.


1 kilo (2 lbs.) sponge cake or pound cake (or ladyfingers)
Alchermes or other liqueur(s), q.b.  (see Notes)


For the topping (optional):
Berries
Sour cherries (amarene)
Sliced almonds

Directions


Step 1: Make the crema pasticcera:  In a standing mixer bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar until smooth and the mixture forms 'ribbons' as the whisk rotates. Then add the flour slowly, bit by bit, into the mixture until fully incorporated.


Meanwhile, heat the milk over moderate heat until hot, almost but not quite at the boil—you will see little bubbles just beginning to form around the edge of the pot. Take the milk off the heat and drizzle it, little by little, into the mixer bowl.


Now pour the whole thing from the bowl into the pot and put it over very gentle heat, mixing continuously with a whisk or wooden spoon. After a while, it should begin to thicken. Keep stirring until the mixture thickens to the point where it coats a spoon nicely. Remove from the heat, stir in the grated lemon zest, and let the mixture cool.

Step 2: Melt the chocolate: Add the cocoa to a small pot with the sugar. Over the moderate flame, add milk, bit by bit, until the mixture turns to a thick but pourable paste.

Step 3: Mise en place: It is now time to arrange all the elements of the dish so you can assemble your dessert. Pour the crema pasticcera into two bowls, with a bit more in one of the bowls. In the bowl containing the lesser half of the crema, whisk in the chocolate paste until fully incorporated. In a small bowl, pour a good bit of your liqueur(s). Now take your sponge cake or pound cake and slice it into 1 cm (1/2 inch) slices. Now you are ready to put things all together. Prepare whatever topping you have it mind.


Step 4: Assemble the dish: Take trifle bowl or other serving container large enough to hold all the ingredients and cover the bottom with a thin layer of the plain crema. Make a layer of cake slices, breaking them up as needed to make a complete layer, like so:

Now drizzle over a bit of the liqueur. No need to drown it. In fact, it helps to use a pastry brush so the slices don't get too soaked. Then add a layer of the chocolate crema.


Repeat making layers in this way until you have run out of ingredients or filled your bowl. End with a layer of the plain crema. Arrange your topping if you want one: sliced strawberries, as pictured above, or sliced almonds or sour cherries or other sorts of berries are all very nice.


Step 4: Rest: Place the bowl in the fridge and let the zuppa inglese rest for a good few hours. Some recipes call for as little as an hour and as much as a whole day. To my mind, 2-3 hours is probably the minimum to allow the flavors to meld and the crema and cake layers to adhere properly. Like a tiramisù, the dish will change in texture the longer it rests, getting softer over time. It's a matter of taste, really, at what point it is at its best.

Step 5: Serving: It is best not to serve this dish right out of the fridge. Take it about 30-60 minutes before you want to serve it, to let it return almost to room temperature so you can better appreciate its flavors.


NOTES: As mentioned, this is a pretty simple dessert anyone can make, assuming you use store-bought sponge cake or pound cake. The only tricky part really is thickening the crema; you need to heat it slowly enough that you cook the flour, while making sure that the eggs don't curdle. Stir constantly, scraping the bottom of the pot all over, and keep the mixture below the boil. If at any point you sense that things might be getting out of hand, remove the pot from the heat and add a bit of cold milk or cream to cool things off.


Alchermes is a liqueur prepared by infusing neutral spirits with sugar, spices, herbs and flavoring agents. Its most striking characteristic is its scarlet color, obtained by the addition of a small parasitic insect called "kermes" from which the drink derives its name. It gives this dish its characteristic color and a special flavor, but it is rarely found outside Italy, as far as I know, but it can apparently be ordered from this online site. Recipes vary on the substitutes they recommend. If color does not matter to you, I rather like amaretto mixed with a bit of rum. Rum alone would also do well. La cucina italiana website calls for vin santo, a typical Tuscan sweet fortified wine. I imagine sweet Marsala, while not typical, would also be nice. Mario Batali recommends sassolino or mandorla amara liqueurs, while Marcella Hazan recommends a mixture of rum, cognac, Drambuie and Cherry Herring. Kyle Philips of About Italian Food recommends any aromatic liqueur such as Strega or amaretto. And for the ambitious, in his classic The Fine Art of Italian Cooking, Giuliano Bugialli provides a recipe to make your own Alchermes (alas, sans insect).


In some versions, the zuppa inglese in made in bowl that you line entirely with liqueur-laced cake. To serve, the bowl is inverted onto a serving plate, creating a 'dome' that is very similar in appearance to the Tuscan zuccotto. Personally, I prefer this version, which is much easier—no risk of accidents!—and, to my mind, even prettier if you use a glass trifle bowl as pictured above. And for an even more elegant presentation, you can also prepare individual portions of zuppa inglese in fluted ice cream tulip bowls.


The origins of this dish, as mentioned, are in some dispute but according to both of the most common stories it is a recreation of the English trifle. One story has it that the dish originated in 19th century Tuscany which, perhaps not by coincidence, was the period when the "Grand Tour" was at its height. (Think Room With A View.) It was the attempt by the Italian cook of one English ex pat family living in Fiesole, outside Florence, at recreating the English trifle. Another story has it that the 16th century Duke of Este, having visited the Elizabethan court, had his cooks recreate the English trifle he had tasted there. Giuliano Bugialli contests both accounts and says that the name is a reference to the red color of Alchermes, which reminded people of the red in the English flag. I tend to believe the first story—or something like it—is the most likely to be true, in part because the trifle did not come to have its current form until at least the 17th century.

One of the things that make Italian cuisine so fascinating is its vast variety of flavors and cooking styles.  Going from one region of Italy to another, in culinary terms (and not only) is something like going from one country to another—not surprising, I suppose, if you consider that the unification of Italy is only 150 years old and, in some senses, is still a work in progress. And ever since the barbarian invasions of late antiquity, Italy has been the object of repeated invasions and foreign domination, along with the more peaceful interactions of commerce, with each foreign group bringing its culinary traditions to the table, so to speak. Think of the French influences in the cooking of val d'Aosta or the Moorish ones in Sicily. 


The northeastern part of Italy, from Milan all the way to the northeastern borders with Austria and Slovenia, was once part of the Austrian Empire. Nowhere is the influence of this history felt more strongly than in the city of Trieste, which today sits on a small tongue of Italian territory reaching out eastwards from the Veneto around along the shores of a part of the Adriatic called, appropriately enough, the Gulf of Trieste. 


This post is about the best known and most emblematic dish of Trieste, la jota—a hearty soup of sauerkraut, beans, potato and pork that veritably sings the flavors and textures of the cooking of Mitteleuropa. There are many versions of this dish. Here is one that appeals to me and, by omitting some harder to find ingredients, is practical for cooks in the US and elsewhere outside Trieste. Although not hard to make, ideally it requires a number of steps, and you'll need three days to make the dish: one for soaking the beans, one to make the soup and one to 'rest' before you eat it.


Ingredients (makes enough for 8 or more people)


For the beans:
500g (1 lb.) dried beans (see Notes), soaked overnight
250g (1/2 lb.) potatoes, cubed
A bay leaf
Salt, q.b.


For the sauerkraut:
500g (1 lb.) sauerkraut, rinsed
1/2 medium sized onion, minced
250g (1/2 lb.) slab bacon (pancetta affumicata), cut into cubes
A pinch of caraway seeds
Salt, q.b.
Oil


For the pestà or brown roux:
Oil or lard or minced salt pork
1 clove of garlic, slightly crushed
2 spoonfuls of flour


Directions


Step 1: Soak the beans: Soak the beans in abundant water overnight. (If you're pressed for time, you can use the 'quick soak' method—see Notes below.)


Step 2: Cook the beans and potatoes: The next day, in a large pot, simmer them with water to cover them amply with a bay leaf for an hour, or until tender. After about 30 minutes, add the potatoes to cook along with the beans. And when the beans are just about cooked, season them with salt.


Step 3: Cook the bacon and sauerkraut: After you have the beans on the simmer, you can turn to the sauerkraut. Rinse it well and, if like me you like your sauerkraut rather mild, let is soak for a few minutes in water. Now gently sauté the bacon in oil until it begins to render its fat, not letting it brown too much. Then add the onion and let it continue to sauté until the onion is translucent. Drain the sauerkraut, rinse it once more and then, squeezing handfuls of it with your hands, add it to the bacon and onion soffritto. Mix well, sprinkle with caraway seeds and a bit of salt, then add enough water to almost cover the sauerkraut. Cover and let simmer over very gentle heat until the water has almost evaporated. It should be done at about the same time as the beans.


Step 4: Assemble and simmer: Take one or two ladlefuls of the beans and potatoes and pass them through a food mill back into the pot. Then add the sauerkraut and mix everything together well. Simmer it all, over the gentlest possible heat, for another 30-60 minutes to let the flavors meld. (Recipes vary enormously on how long this final simmer should take—see Notes.) Make sure to stir from time to time to avoid scorching the by-now thick mixture. Add water to loosen the mixture to your taste.


Step 5: Add the pestà: About 15 minutes before the final simmer is over, sauté the garlic in the oil (or lard) until just lightly golden brown, then discard it. Add the flour to the oil and let it cook until it turns a light brown as well. Then add this mixture to the soup pot and mix well. (NB: If using minced salt pork, cook it first until the fat is well rendered before proceeding.)


Step 6: Resting: Although la jota can be eaten right away, it is much better when made ahead and reheated. It you have time, eat it the next day. But it benefits from even a few hours' rest, if you make it in the morning for lunch or supper.


NOTES: Borlotti are the classic beans for this dish. In the US, you could also use cranberry beans or even good old pinto beans, which are far easier to find. White beans can be used in a pinch, although they are not typical. I would avoid ked kidney beans, which have a very strong and uncharacteristic flavor. If you can find fresh beans, that would be fantastic—in which case skip Step 1 of course—but dried beans are really the most common. You may be tempted to use canned beans to save time. I actually use canned beans all the time, but not for this dish: the 'liquor' that comes from simmering the beans is an important part of the flavor profile. (And you definitely don't want to use the liquid from your canned beans.) But if you want to save some time, you can use the 'quick soak' method: place the beans in a large pot, cover them amply with water and bring the beans to the boil. Immediately turn off the flame and cover the pot. After an hour, the beans will have softened in a way similar to having soaked them in cold water overnight.


Like so many traditional dishes, here are  many variations, mostly having to do with the ingredients or the way in which the ingredients are put together. Some recipes call for cooking the potatoes in a separate pot, then passing them through a food mill or cubing them and adding them to the already cooked beans. In other recipes, the bacon is added to simmer with the beans rather than with the sauerkraut. And some recipes have you add the pestà to the sauerkraut (or vice versa) before it is all added to the soup pot. The pestà can also be added to the pot along with the sauerkraut at the beginning of its final simmer rather than towards the end. I rather doubt that these variations make an enormous difference is the final result, but it would be fun to experiment.


One variation that does make a big difference: I have seen recipes that call for adding the sauerkraut, without prior rinsing or cooking, directly into the soup pot right before serving. If you like sour tastes, this is your ticket. Personally, I don't care for overly sour dishes, especially hot ones, which is why I not only rinse, but soak my sauerkraut before braising it. (The soaking is my personal variation by the way—you won't find that in the traditional recipes.) Some recipes call for much less potato than I've suggested here.


You can make the soup thicker and thinner, smoother or more chunky, by adjusting the amount of water and/or puréeing more or less of the beans and potatoes, or none at all. One variation calls for adding a few spoonfuls of polenta for the final simmer, which thickens the soup even more, although I find the soup is quite thick enough without polenta, especially if you mill the potatoes and beans.

I bought this 'gypsy bacon' at a local Russian food store

But perhaps the most important variations have to do with the pork: This recipe calls for bacon, which is easy to find in the US and elsewhere. You really should use slab bacon—ie, bacon in a big chunk that you can cut into cubes. It is getting harder and harder to find slab bacon in supermarkets, but if you have an Eastern European food store in your area you should be able to find quite a variety of different bacons that they will sell you in a single chunk. In a pinch, of course, good-quality pre-sliced bacon will also do the trick.


Besides bacon, traditional recipes call for other cuts of cured or fresh pork to be added to cook along with the beans. The most characteristic perhaps is pork rind, which provides a pleasantly unctuous texture to the soup. I haven't included it in the master recipe above because it is so hard to find these days, but if you can find it, I'd recommend using it. You will need to parboil it and cut it into strips or cubes, as described in our post on fagioli con le cotiche, before using it. Other cuts of pork include cubes of pork shoulder or pork ribs.


You can also make this dish entirely without meat if you like, a nice variation for vegetarians or those observing the Lenten fast. Just omit the meat but otherwise you proceed exactly as indicated in the recipe. You may need to season the soup a bit more aggressively.


Trieste is a city with a fascinating history. It was Austrian for much of its history, starting in 1382 when it petitioned to join Austrian domains for protection against the Venetians to the west, although until the 17th century it enjoyed a measure of autonomy. It became an important trading port for the Austrian and then Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was briefly annexed to France during the Napoleonic era. It became part of Italy only quite recently, after the First World War, in 1920. It remains Italian today, although its hinterland, which included the Istrian peninsula (where celebrity chef Lydia Bastianich comes from) was ceded to Yugoslavia after the Second World War and is part of Slovenia and Croatia today.


This complex history has made for an interesting local culture that mixes Germanic with Slavic and Italian influences. You can see it in the architecture, in the coffeeshops reminiscent of those of Vienna and, of course, in the local cuisine. One of my favorite food blogs, La voglia matta ("Crazy Desire") is written by a gal named Chiara from Trieste. If you can read Italian, do check out her version of la jota (made with fresh sausages and pork ribs) and other dishes from here native city there.

I love fennel. It may, in fact, be my favorite winter vegetable. Personally, I mostly like fennel eaten raw, either dipped in bagna cauda or in some seasoned olive oil as part of a pinzimonio, or—best of all—just as is, as 'dessert'. Its refreshing anise taste and crisp texture seems to act as a kind of natural digestivo after a heavy meal.

But fennel also makes a delightful contorno or vegetarian secondo. Cooking brings out its mellow sweetness and intensifies its flavorm and turns its crispness into velvety tenderness. Fennel can cook along with a main ingredient, as in our recent post on pesce al forno con finocchi, or it can be made on its own. One classic method is to braise it first and then gratinée it in a hot oven or under the broiler until golden brown, either with or without béchamel sauce. While it is probably more common to see this dish made with béchamel, I prefer to top the fennel just with abundant grated parmesan cheese and perhaps a few dabs of butter. It's a bit lighter and, to my mind, brings out the taste of the fennel more assertively. Made with béchamel, on the other hand, it's rich enough to serve as a vegetarian second course.

Ingredients (to serve 4 as a contorno or 2 as a vegetarian main course)

For the braising:

4 fennel bulbs

Enough water (or broth), or enough to come about 1 cm (1/2 inch) up the side of your pan

50g (2 oz.) butter, cut into pieces

Salt, q.b.

For the gratinée:

100g (4 oz.) parmesan cheese

A few dabs of butter (optional)

Breadcrumbs (optional)

250ml (1 cup) (or more) of béchamel sauce (optional)

Directions

Cut the stalks and fronds off the fennel bulbs, then cut the trimmed bulbs in slices or, if you prefer, into thinnish wedges. Add the fennel to a large sauté pan, large enough to hold them in one or two layers, and then add the water (or broth) and butter.

Cover the pan and simmer the fennel for 15-20 minutes (a bit more if cut into wedges) until the fennel is very tender and reduced in size, and the liquid has almost evaporated. If the fennel cooks before the liquid has evaporated, uncover and cook off the excess over a high flame. Let the fennel cool.

Arrange the fennel neatly in a greased gratin dish, in alternating layers of fennel and grated cheese (and bechamel if using), ending with cheese. (Add any remaining liquid in the pan to the dish just before adding the final layer of béchamel and cheese.) Top with dabs of butter and a dusting of breadcrumbs, if you like.

Ready for the oven—just cheese for me, please. 

Bake the dish in a hot oven (200°C/400°F) for about 15-20 minutes, until the top has formed a nice golden crust. (If you like a crustier top, you can run the dish under the broiler briefly until it has reached the stage you like, but be careful not to let it burn!)

Let the dish cool for a few minutes, then serve.

NOTES: There are two types of fennel: one that is round and bulbous, sometimes referred to as the 'male' and a type that is more slender and oval, sometime called the 'female'. I've also heard them called the opposite—but it does not really matter as, in fact, the distinction has no biological basis.

A 'female' fennel at top, a 'male' below

Personally, I prefer the bulbous kind, which some people say has better texture for eating raw, but both are fine for cooking. (For some reason, my local supermarket stocks the slender kind almost exclusively, with the odd bulbous fennel thrown in for good measure...)

By the way, I don't throw out the stems and fronds. The fronds can be chopped and added to soups or salads, to lend a pleasant, slightly anice-y flavor akin to dill. They are also essential in making pasta con le sarde if you can't find wild fennel (ie, most of us outside Italy). The stalks are quite fibrous, but, hardcore fennel lover that I am, I like to chew on them while I'm cooking as a kind of snack and spit out any inedible fibers. Sort of gross, I know, but don't think the less of me, please...

When I was living in Rome, there was a great little roadside restaurant close by called "Il Cantuccio". They made a number of dishes well, but one of our standbys was sautè di cozze, literally "mussel sauté". They are, in fact, an Italian version of that near universal dish: steamed mussels.


I like the conviviality of this dish—serve your large pot of mussels in the center of the table and let each diner serve themselves a nice portion of mussels and liquor. You can eat it by grabbing a mussel shell gingerly with your left hand while removing the mussel with a fork or a spoon. (I prefer a spoon, because you can immerse the mussel in some of the sauce before you eat it for maximum flavor.) Make sure to have an extra bowl at table for discarded shells. 


Ingredients (serves 4 as a secondo, 6 as an antipasto)


To pre-cook the mussels:
1 bag of mussels
A splash of white wine (say about 1/2 cup)


For the soffritto and final cooking:
2-3 cloves of garlic, chopped
1-2 peperoncini, chopped and seeds removed(or a dash of red pepper flakes)
A handful of fresh parsley, chopped
Olive oil
Salt, q.b.


Directions


You wash the mussels under cold water and, if you have any doubts they might have sediment in them (see Notes), soak them in water to cover for at least an hour. Throw them into a pot, add a generous splash of wine, cover and cook over medium-high heat until all the mussels have opened. This should take only a couple of minutes. Then take them immediately off the heat, fish out the mussels with a slotted spoon, leaving their liquor in the bottom of the pot. (NB: Mollusks will get tough if you overcook them.) 


While the mussels are steaming, sauté the garlic in a second pot, big enough to contain the mussels later. When the garlic just starts to brown a bit, add the chopped peperoncini or some red pepper flakes (to taste) and some chopped parsley, let this soffritto sauté very gently for a moment, until the garlic gives off a nice aroma. 


Then immediately but gently pour the mussel liquor into second pot, making sure to leave the sediment you sometimes find at the bottom of the pot. Allow the liquor to reduce until it is very flavorful. If you think it needs salt, add some now, but the mussels are usually quite briny, so you may need none at all. 


Then add the reserved mussels to the second pot, then some chopped parsley, stir well to coat the mussels with the 'sauce'. Sprinkle a bit of additional chopped parsley on top and bring the pot to the table. Serve with crusty bread—a baguette is ideal—to sop up that delicious sauce!


We followed our sautè di cozze with a mixed green salad and a hunk of bucheron cheese (yum!), followed by mango sorbet topped with blackberries and laced with Cointreau. After dinner, a limoncello helped it all gone down nicely as we watched Slumdog Millionaire.

NOTES: If you want to make a slightly fancier dish, you can remove one side of the shell from each mussel (the one that the mussel meat is not clinging to, of course) while the sauce is reducing. That also allows you to serve more mussels in a somewhat smaller pot.


As always, there are any number of variations you can use to keep the dish interesting. Most notably, clams be mixed with, or substituted for the mussels, which case you will have either a sautè di cozze e vongole or a sautè di vongole. Add spaghetti (or linguine) to a saute di vongole and you will have the classic spaghetti alle vongole, pasta with clam sauce.


You can also vary the seasonings. Most commonly, you can make a 'red sauce' by adding some chopped or pureed tomato to the flavored oil and allow it to simmer for a minute or two before adding the mussel and/or clam liquor. Or you can make a more delicate sauce by substituting shallots for the garlic and red pepper, in which case you might want to add a tad of butter to the oil. And, of course, if you want to branch out of Italian cuisine, other possibilities open up: cream, beer or, as featured in another post, curry....


This dish is pretty easy, but if you want to make it even easier, you can add the raw mussels directly to the flavored oil, let them steam and serve. The resulting dish will be less intensely flavorful, but there will be more abundant liquor for dipping. (In fact, this is often called zuppa di cozze, or mussel soup.) But be careful, as there may be sediment in the bottom of the pot.


Speaking of sediment, some recipes call for soaking mussels and clams in water for some time (usually about an hour) before cooking, to purge them of their sediment. I usually find this step to be unnecessary, these days mussels are often 'farmed' in such a way that they never gather sediment. In any event, if you steam them separately, you can leave any sediment traces at the bottom of the pot. (And if you are really fastidious, you can filter the liquor through some cheesecloth.) But if you have any doubts about your mussels—especially if they are very large—do soak them. Mussels also sometimes come with a 'beard'—the filaments that the mussel used to attach itself to the rocks on which it used to live. If you find a beard on any of your mussels, you'll need to pull or cut it off—but most mussels these days are sold pre-trimmed.


One final word to the wise: look for smaller mussels for this dish. Larger mussels (or clams) may seem like a better deal, but they tend to have flabbier texture and are less sweet than the small ones. And because of their size they do not marry as well with the sauce.

Not everyone associates hamburgers with Italian cooking, but Italians have a long tradition of using ground beef in imaginative ways, for meatballs (polpette) and meatloaf (polpettone), as well as as a basis for the classic ragù alla bolognese. So it should really come as no surprise that they've also applied their culinary creativity those patties of ground beef, which are called svizzere (Swiss) in Italian but these days are just as likely to be called by their English/German name. In fact, the tradition goes back to long before McDonald's came to Italy. 

Made in the Italian manner, the hamburger becomes a kind of secondo. The beef is generally seasoned with aromatics and cheese, and mixed with bread to give it a softer texture, then browned in a skillet and served with a sauce. Some classic meat dishes —like carne alla pizzaiola or costolette alla valdostana—have been adapted for the hamburger with delicious results. Of course, beef goes incredibly well with cream, and here is my favorite 'classy' hamburger.

Ingredients (serves 4 persons)

For the patties: 

500g (1 lb.) ground beef (or 4 beef patties)

1 slice of best-quality bread (better if homemade) crust removed, cut into cubes, soaked in milk to cover and squeezed dry 

1 medium onion or 2 shallots, minced and sautéed in butter until soft

100g grated parmesan cheese

1 egg

A handful of chopped parsley

A scrape or two of nutmeg

Salt and pepper, q.b.

For the browning and sauce: 

Olive oil and/or butter

1 spoonful of flour

1 cup of rich beef broth

2 cups of cream

For finishing the dish:

A splash of sherry

More chopped parsley

Directions

Mix all the ingredients for the patties in a large bowl and mix them thoroughly with wooden spoon or spatula until smooth and uniform. (If you find the mixture a bit too soft or wet to handle easily, you can add a bit more cheese or bread to stiffen it a bit.) Form the mixture into four round, flat patties. 

Sauté the patties in a sauté pan in a combination of oil and butter until they are nicely browned on both sides. Remove the patties from the pan.

Add a heaping spoonful of flour to the pan and let it cook int the fat for a minute or two. You can let it turn a light brown if you like. Then add the broth, whisking vigorously so it incorporates the flour well. Let the broth come to the simmer; it will thicken up a bit. Then add the cream, mix well, and add back the patties. Let the whole dish simmer for 10-15 minutes, until the sauce has reduced considerably and the patties are done through. 

A few minutes before serving, add a splash of sherry and some chopped parsley to the sauce. 

Serve the 'hamburgers' immediately, with the sauce napped on top  and some nice crusty bread or a few steamed baby potatoes on the side. 

NOTES: I am a big fan of using ground chuck for hamburgers. Not only is it inexpensive, it provides great flavor and has enough fat to keep the patties nice and juicy. If you use a leaner cut such as sirloin, you may want to mix a bit of softened butter into the mixture. 

As I mentioned at the top of the post, the combination of beef and cream is a classic. You may have noticed more than a passing resemblance between this dish and Swedish meatballs, for example. I remember eating some similar in Austria as well (the name of the dish escapes me) and, of course, in a different guise, there's the ever-popular Beef Stroganoff. 

You can add vegetables—mushrooms for example—to this dish to add more interest. Add the sliced or chopped vegetables to the fat after removing the beef patties and sauté until they are nicely softened and brown, the proceed to add the flour and continue the recipe from there. 

Of course, this is not a dietetic meal, but, in the Italian style, you will be eating just one patty and a bit of sauce as part of a larger multi-course meal. Keep the other courses light, say a chicory and rice soup to start and a piece of fruit as dessert, and you should have a balanced and not too heavy meal. 


For more background on Italian hamburgers, Kyle Phillips has an excellent article on About.com that is well worth a read. 

I was so very pleased to read in the paper the other day that frying need not to be bad for you, especially if you fry in olive oil. The news didn't come as a surprise—I had always figured if Angelina managed to live to be 98 eating fried foods all the time, it couldn't be nearly as toxic as modern-day health nuts made out. Still, it was nice to see folk wisdom, once again, confirmed by empirical evidence.


Fried foods are a mainstay of Italian cookery. There's an old saying that "even a shoe tastes good when it's fried"—as true a sentiment as I can imagine. In our family, one of Angelina's signature dishes was fried mixed vegetables, usually including asparagus, cauliflower, artichokes, which appeared as an antipasto at many a Sunday dinner.


Another vegetable that lends itself wonderfully to frying is the mushroom. But given their irregular shape and small size, frying whole, individual mushrooms—while possible—is not very practical for the time-pressed home cook. In this recipe from Puglia, mushrooms are chopped and sautéed, then folded into a thick batter to be deep-fried. The resulting fritters make for a great (and addictive!) snack, an antipasto, a part of a fritto misto or even a light vegetarian second course. 


Ingredients (to serve 4)


For the mushrooms:
1 lb. mushrooms, roughly chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 handful of parsley, chopped
Salt and pepper
Olive oil


For the batter:
1 egg
3/4 cup water
1-1/2 cups flour
Salt and pepper


Optional:
A few spoonfuls of grated parmesan cheese


For deep frying:
Olive oil (or a mixture of olive and canola oils)


Directions


Sauté the mushrooms in a bit of olive oil with the garlic and parsley, and seasoning lightly with salt and pepper, as if you were making funghi trifolati. (Be sparing with the oil.) Let cool.


Beat the egg and water together, and whisk in the flour little by little until you have a homogenous batter.


Add the mushrooms to the batter. Season the batter with a bit more salt and pepper—not too much as the mushrooms are already seasoned and, if using the grated cheese. As you add ingredients, fold everything together well with a spatula until the mushroom and batter mixture is quite uniform.


Now heat abundant oil in a pan, at least one inch (3 cm) deep. When the oil is hot (but not boiling) drop spoonfuls of the mushroom batter into abundant hot oil, keeping them well spaced. Deep fry until golden brown, proceeding in batches if need be, and transferring the fritters as they are done to a tray lined with paper towels or (my preference) a cooling rack placed over a baking sheet.


Serve hot, sprinkled with some additional salt if you like.


NOTES: This recipe will work with just about any type of mushroom, but of course the more interesting the mushroom, the better the fritters will taste. A mushroom mix of the kind often sold in better supermarkets is a nice choice. The traditional recipe calls for adding raw chopped mushrooms into the batter—if you take that approach, then I'd suggest limiting yourself to tender-fleshed mushrooms like chanterelles or oysters.

Salmoriglio is a typically Sicilian sauce that adds great flavor to fish, particularly that most typical of Sicilian fishes, swordfish. The fish is grilled or otherwise simply prepared and napped with sauce before serving. Salmoriglio looks like and plays a culinary role similar to the salsa verde that goes so well with bollito (boiled meats), adding zest to an otherwise 'plain' dish. But salmoriglio uses lemon (and lemon zest) rather than vinegar and some fresh oregano for a distinctly southern taste.


Swordfish is a great choice for folks who may not be too partial to fish. It has a mild taste and firm texture that really reminds me (almost) of a kind of white meat. Add some tasty sauce on top and even the most  hardcore piscisceptic might fall in love. 

Ingredients (makes enough sauce for a dinner serving 4-6 people)

For the sauce:

A handful of fresh parsley

2 sprigs of fresh oregano

1 garlic clove

A spoonful of capers

2 or 3 strips of lemon zest

Salt and pepper

The juice of one lemon

Olive oil, q.b.

For the fish:

Swordfish steaks

Olive oil

Salt

Directions

Add all the dry ingredients to a food processor. 

Use the pulse function to chop the ingredients until they are fairly finely minced. Add the lemon juice and a good pour of olive oil, enough to submerge all the other ingredients.

Now whiz all the ingredients together until you have a fairly smooth sauce. Check the sauce for taste and consistency and see what it needs: if it's a bit too thick or too tart, add some more olive oil. If it's a bit too bland, add some more salt. If you want it tarter, add a bit more lemon juice. And so on. You can play with it until you reach a balance that appeals to you. The sauce should, in all events, be very flavorful.

Set the sauce aside in a bowl and turn to your swordfish. Rub a bit of olive oil on your steaks, just enough so it glistens, and sprinkle them with salt. To cook them, you typically grill them, but if it's winter outside (as it is where I live) you can run them under a hot broiler or sear them in a skillet. Make sure they are nice and browned on at least one side. Be aware: having very firm flesh, swordfish takes a bit longer to cook than other kinds of fish and, at least to my taste, is not all that pleasant to eat when underdone. On the other hand, it can dry out so don't overdo it; 3 or 4 minutes per side for thin steak (see below) should do the trick. 

Plate your swordfish steaks and drizzle some sauce on top. Serve any extra sauce in a bowl for those who want more. Make sure to have some crusty bread at the ready to soak up any leftover sauce. 

NOTES: Of course, if you want to make this sauce the old fashioned way, you will finely chop all the dry ingredients with a knife or a mezzaluna (half-moon chopper), then whisk them together in a bowl. The look will be a bit different, since a food processor homogenizes and emulsifies the sauce, making it rather 'creamy' in look and mouth-feel, while a whisked sauce will be clearer and less smooth. Some recipes call for simmering salmoriglio over gentle heat for 5 minutes or so, including the one included in La Cucina Sicilian di Gangivecchio, a lovely regional cookbook by Wanda and Giovanna Tornabene. They describe the sauce as being used on cold leftover fish and call it salmoigiano (which is a closer Italian approximation of the dialect name for this sauce, sammurigghiu.)


The use of fresh oregano is really pretty important for this dish, in my humble opinion, even if you will see many recipes that call for dried oregano, either as a substitute or as the ingredient. It may surprise some readers, but I'm actually not a big fan of oregano in general. I find it too pungent for my tastes. But if I do use it, I like to use it with discretion, and fresh oregano lends a much 'softer' oregano taste than dried. And in a raw sauce like this, a dried herb is not particularly appealing. Still in a 'pinch'... 

I would recommend you ask your fishmonger to cut the steaks fairly thin, no thicker than a finger. This will let you cook the fish fairly quickly and ensure a proper fish-to-sauce ratio. If you have rather thick steaks on your hands (which is very common if you buy them pre-cut) then you can either cut them into thinner slices (a bit tricky but doable) or just cook them longer. 

While swordfish is perhaps the most typical fish to serve with salmoriglio sauce, at the price of swordfish steaks these days ($25/lb. when I bought them yesterday!) it's a good thing that it really goes well with almost any simply prepared fish. And it can do double service as a sauce for grilled lamb, chicken or veal. 

I am not a baker. Never have been. I have always found stove-top cooking fun and easy but baking is a very different art. Cooking lets you stir and taste and adjust as you go along to get things to come out just right. But with baking—once you close that oven door, your success is in the hands of fate. I've always found that nerve-racking. 

But I've recently changed my mind, at least when it comes to bread. I was forced into it, in a way, by the indifferent quality of the bread that I can find where I am now living. Even at the 'fancy' supermarkets around, and even at the few remaining bakeries in my area, the bread is almost always disappointing—the crust isn't crusty enough, the crumb too soft and bland and too 'tight' as well. What I have been looking for is that bread that I remember appearing on Angelina's table, large round loaves that she would hold close to her chest and cut with a large knife. That bread was crusty and chewy and delicious, with big holes that were perfect for catching sauce when wiping up sauce on your plate ('facendo la scarpetta' as the they say in Italian). I rediscovered that kind of bread  when I moved to Italy, where it is variously called pane casereccio or pane di casa or (especially in and around Naples) pane cafone. It was cheap and good and ubiquitous, one of the small but wonderful pleasures of Italian life.

When I moved back to the States, I was desperate to find something comparable. After looking around for at least a year, I realized that I might as well be looking for unicorns. The obvious solution was to do what more and more people are doing: make my own. Not being a natural baker, I was amazed that I could do it in the first place. In fact, turns out it is not all that hard to do, especially with the help of a standing mixer. 

Over the past year or so, I've collected a number of books on bread baking. All of them teach you to make great bread, but just this past Christmas I found gold. Some friends gave me My Bread, by Jim Lahey, founder of the Sullivan Street Bakery in New York. Lahey has developed an excellent, incredibly straight-forward no-knead bread recipe that that turns out a loaf as close to the pane casereccio as anything I've tasted since I left Italy.  It really could hardly be easier to pull off—all you need are the ingredients—flour, water, salt and yeast—a good cast-iron casserole and a bit of patience. Oh yes, and an oven. The 'secret' of this method lies in giving the dough a very slow initial rise, which eliminates the need for kneading, and the use of the cast-iron casserole or 'Dutch oven', which you preheat in a hot oven to recreate conditions inside that Lahey says are similar to a bakery oven. I'm not expert, but I can say that the crust that forms in that environment is just wonderful.

Ingredients (for a medium loaf)

3 cups bread flour (or all purpose flour)

1-1/2 cups cold water

1/4 teaspoon yeast

A pinch of salt

Directions

Mix the dry ingredients in the bowl of a standing mixer, using the paddle. Then add the water in a drizzle until a very stick dough has formed. If the dough seems dry, then add a bit more, a spoonful at a time. Take the bowl from the mixer and cover it with a towel and/or a plate and leave it in a warm (but not hot) place over night. Lahey recommends 18 hours (or at few as 12) but I've found that 24 hours produces an even better loaf. There's no problem as long as you think just a little ahead and make mix the dough the day before and let it rise overnight.

[NB: No worries if you don't have a standing mixer, you can just mix your dough in a normal bowl with a wooden spoon.]

After this initial rise, the dough will have expanded, darkened in color and be spottled with 'pock marks' on its surface. 

Now scrape the dough out of the bowl with a spatula or wooden spoon onto a lightly floured surface. You will notice that it will have a rather stringy consistency, which is just what you want: this shows how the slow rise has allowed gluten to form even without kneading. 

Flour your hands and form the mass of dough into a ball without kneading. Just sort of glance your hands over the surface of the dough, tucking it under itself to round it and smooth its surface. (NB: Use a minimum of flour both on the surface and on your hands, so you don't incorporate too much into the dough. A wet dough is important to the rustic texture of the bread.)

Then gingerly lay the dough on a lightly floured tea towel, then fold the ends of the towel on top of the dough. Let the bread rise again (this step is called 'proofing' by bakers) until it roughly doubles in size, which can take anywhere from 1 to 2 hours. If you have the time, take the whole 2 hours. 

About 30 minutes before the second rise is over, preheat your oven to 400F/200C. Put a 4-1/2 or 5-1/2 quart cast iron casserole (about 10" in diameter) with its cover, in the oven to preheat along with the oven itself. This will act as an oven inside the oven: intensely hot and small enough that it retain the moist atmosphere that really excellent bread needs.

Now you're ready to bake. This is the one tricky part of the recipe, and just a little dangerous as you'll need to handle the very hot cast iron casserole. Make sure you have heavy oven mitts (it'll be too hot for a towel) and proceed with care! 

Take the casserole out of the oven using your oven mitt and lay it on a heat-resistant surface. (I use a a turkey carving board with spikes that hold the pot slightly above the surface.) Then remove the cover and lay it aside. Take the towel with the dough and quickly flip the dough into the casserole (it will go in 'upside down', which is fine). Shake the casserole, if need be, to center the dough and then quick re-cover it. 

Put the casserole back in the oven and bake for 30 minutes. Then take it out of the oven and remove the cover. The bread will be ever so slightly browned.

Now put the casserole back into the oven, uncovered, and bake for another 15-20 minutes, until the bread has developed a beautiful golden brown crust.  Turn the bread out onto a cooling rack and leave it until it has completely cooled. (This cooling period is critical, as the crumb (ie, the 'insides' of the bread) will continue to cook; you may hear it 'crackle' as it does, which means it's doing its job. 

When the bread has cooled completely, after about 45 minutes to an hour, it is ready to enjoy! 

NOTES: The best flour for making bread is, of course, bread flour. Bread flour has a high gluten (protein) content that produces a nice, firm crumb and crusty crust. These days, with so many people making their own bread, it is fairly easy to find in better supermarkets. It can also be ordered online. But if you like, you can also use all purpose flour; it works almost as well. 

As for the casserole, the usual brands, such as Le Creuset, Staub and Lodge, all make the kind of casserole you'll need. Lahey says he likes Staub the best, and that's the brand I use as well, but it's an expensive solution (around $250). Le Creuset has one drawback, which is that the plastic knob on the cover is only guaranteed up to 375F, just under the temperature you need. And since constant baking an empty casserole at high temperatures will, over time, discolor whatever casserole you use, you may just want to opt for the economical choice: the Lodge, which costs only $30. 

This recipe is an only slightly revised version of the basic no-knead bread recipe found in My Bread. I've upped the water content slightly (as I like a 'holey' crumb) and lengthened the initial rise even more, but otherwise this is his recipe. I heartily recommend you buy the book, which is filled with little tips and tricks not mentioned here. And it has many other variations on this basic recipe, including a whole-wheat loaf, that I am anxious to try!