Italian cuisine

“ When the vegetables are very brown (great care must be taken not to burn the onion, which scorches very easily) add 1⁄2 lb. round steak ground coarsely or cut up in little cubes. When the meat is a good brown color, add some fresh or canned tomatoes or half a tablespoonful of tomato paste and simmer slowly until all has cooked down to a thick creamy sauce. It will probably take 3⁄4 hour. The sauce may be bound together with a little flour if it shows a tendency to separate, This sauce is used to dress all kinds of macaroni and spaghetti, also for boiled rice (see Risotto) . ”

“ Take some good lean beef, clean it well, removing all little skins and tendons, then first chop and after grind the meat fine in the grinder. Season with salt, pepper and a pinch of grated cheese. Mix well and give the meat the form of a ball then with bread crumbs over and beneath flatten it with the rolling pin on the bread board making a sheet of meat as thick as a silver dollar. Cut it in square pieces, as large as the palm of the hand and cook in a saucepan with butter. When these cutlets are browned, pour over some tomato sauce and serve. ”

“ The macaroni or spaghetti should be left unbroken when cooked. If they are too long to fit in the kettle immerse one end in the boiling salted water and in a very few minutes the ends of the spaghetti under the water will become softened so that the rest can be pushed down into the kettle. ”

“ The turkey has been imported to Europe from America, but it is nevertheless a well known dish in Italian families, although not enjoying the popularity that it has on this side of the ocean. When roasted it is generally larded moderately with little pieces of garlic and bay-leaf or rosemary and seasoned with a hash of corned beef or bacon, a little butter, salt and pepper, tomato sauce or tomato paste diluted in water. ”

“ Cut an onion in very thin slices and put it on the fire in a saucepan with a little butter. When it is well browned add a pinch of flour, mix and then add according to the quantity, a cup or two of soup stock or water with bouillon cubes and allow the flour to cook. Put in the peas, season with salt and pepper and add, when they are half cooked, one or two whole hearts of lettuce. Let it simmer, seeing that the gravy is not too thick. ”

“ When the onion is browned put in the string beans and complete the cooking with a little water if necessary.
Prepare a Balsamella sauce (No. 54) with a small piece of butter, half a teaspoonful of flour and half a cup of milk. With this, a tablespoonful of grated cheese and four beaten eggs bind the string beans when they are cold, mix and put in a mold, evenly greased with butter and the bottom covered with paper. Cook in a double boiler and serve hot. ”

“ To-day the Lido is a part of united Italy and has been made the victim of villainous improvements. A little cockney village has sprung up on its rural bosom and a third-rate boulevard leads from Santa Elisabetta to the Adriatic. There are bitumen walks and gas-lamps, lodging-houses, shops and a teatro diurno. The bathing-establishment is bigger than before, and the restaurant as well; but it is a compensation perhaps that the cuisine is no better. ”

“ The stuffing can be made with milk veal stewed alone, or with sweetbread or chicken liver, all chopped fine. To make it more delicate, add some balsamella (No 54) a pinch of grated cheese, one yolk of egg and a taste of nutmeg. Complete the cooking of the cabbage in the sauce of this stew, adding a little butter, on a low fire or in the oven kept low.
Instead of filling the whole cabbage, the larger leaves may be filled one by one, rolling and tying them. ”

“ Spread over it a hash of garlic and parsley and season with a pinch of pepper, oil and little pieces of butter. Cook on a good fire and turn it with care, because, not being sprinkled with flour, it breaks easily. When it is cooked, squeeze a lemon over and serve. ”

“ All these ingredients are to be rubbed to a very smooth paste and hot broth is to be added to them. If you wish the soup to be richer and have a more milky consistency, use the yolk of an egg, which should be beaten, and have a few tablespoonfuls of hot broth stirred into it before adding to the soup. Do not let the soup boil after the egg is added or it will curdle.
One slice of stale bread may be cut into cubes, fried in deep fat, and the croutons put in the soup. Send it to the table with a dish of grated cheese. ”

“ Though now playing second fiddle to France, the Italians are still holding their own among the leading gastronomic nations. They have plenty of reasons for liking their own cooking, nor are they alone in enjoying it. In New York and other American cities Italian restaurants are always well patronized and not only by Italians, and the same is true in London, and to some extent in Paris. ”

“ Of course in the small Italian hotels the cooking is different, but they tell me it is good. The restaurants where the poorer people eat are full of garlicky smells which can be heard for a block. The staple articles of food for Italians are soup, macaroni and vegetables, all flavored with garlic. The ordinary Italian does not eat meat. There are probably several reasons why, but the first one is that he has not the price, and that is enough. When a man is working for 30 cents a day he is a stranger to roast beef, for meat is as high as it is in America. ”

“ Nowhere in the larger Italian cities, except by the exercise of a most tremendous determination, can you get any real Italian cooking or any real Italian dishes. At the hotels they feed you on a pale, sad table-d'hote imitation of French cooking, invariably buttressed with the everlasting veal and the eternal poulet roti. At the finish of a meal the waiter brings you, on one plate, two small withered apples and a bunch of fly-specked sour grapes ”

“ THE hotels of Italy are dear or not, according to whether one patronizes a certain class of establishment. At Trouville, at Aix-les-Bains in France, at Cernobbio in the Italian Lake region, or on the Quai Parthenope at Naples, there is little difference in price or quality, and the cuisine is always French.
The automobilist who demands garage accommodation as well will not always find it in the big city hotel in Italy. He may patronize the F. I. A. T. Garages in Rome, Naples, Genoa, Milan, Florence, Venice, Turin and Padua and find the best of accommodation and fair prices. ”

“ Then stir for half an hour the sugar with the egg-yolks and the taste of lemon peel. Beat well the white of the eggs and pour them on the sugar and yolks. Add the flour and potato meal letting them fall from a sieve and stir slowly until everything is well mixed together. Add the currants and the pieces of candied fruits and pour the mixing in a smooth mold or in a high and round cake-dish. Grease the mold or the dish with butter and sprinkle with powdered sugar or flour. Put at once in the oven to avoid that the currants and the candied fruits fall in the oven. ”

“ In an Italian palace, if you have the good luck to be asked, the dinner is handsome. It is served in twelve courses in the Russian manner, and if national dishes are offered they are disguised as inelegant. But at an ordinary farmhouse in the hills near Florence, or at the ordinary hotels, there will be a good soup, trout fresh from the brooks, fresh butter, macaroni with cheese, a fat capon, and a delicious omelette, enriched with morsels of kidney or fat bacon, a frittala, a bunch of grapes, a bottle of Pogio secco, or the sweet Italian straw wine. ”

“ The best Italian restaurant in the world—and I wish to say, after personal experience, that Sunny Italy itself is not barred—is a little place on the fringe of the Barbary Coast.
There is another place not far away where, for a dollar, you get a bottle of good domestic wine and a selection from the following range of dishes: Celery, ripe olives, green olives, radishes, onions, lettuce, sliced tomatoes, combination salad [Pg 162] or crab-meat salad ”

“ The Italian peasantry are better fed than the French. In the poor osterias above referred to, not only the Friday salt fish, but all the other viands, were incomparably better cooked than in corresponding places in England, and the variety was greater than is common in many middle-class houses. The ordinary supper of the ‘roughs’ above-named was of three courses: first, a ‘minestra,’ i.e. a soup of some kind, continually varied, or a savoury dish of macaroni; then a ragoût or savoury stew of vegetables and meat, followed by an excellent salad; the beverage, a flask of thin but genuine wine. ”

“ One cup of dried beans, kidney, navy or lima is to be soaked over night. Then boil until tender. It is preferable to put the beans to cook in cold water with a pinch of soda. When they come to boil, pour off this water and add fresh. Chop fine 1⁄4 onion, one clove of garlic, one sprig of parsley and one piece of celery and put them to fry in 1⁄4 cup of oil with salt and a generous amount of pepper. When the vegetables are a delicate brown add to them two cups of the broth from the beans and 1 cup of tomatoes (canned or fresh) . ”

“ The presence in our midst of Italian warehouses, adds an infinite resource to the housewife. Those stimulants to the appetite called hors d'œuvres, we call them relishes, are much increased by studying the list of 193 Italian delicacies. Anchovy or caviar, potted meat, grated tongue, potted cheese, herring salad, the inevitable olive, and many other delicacies could be mentioned which aid digestion, and make the plainest table inexpensively luxurious. The Italians have all sorts of delicate vegetables preserved in bottles, mixed and ready for use in a jardinière dressing ”

“ PASTE FOR FRYING
(Pastella per fritto)
Dilute three teaspoonfuls of flour with two teaspoonfuls of oil. Add two eggs, a pinch of salt, and mix well. This mixture will take on the aspect of a smooth cream and is used to glaze fried brains, sweetbreads and the like. All these things are first to be scalded in boiling salt water. Add a pinch of salt and one of pepper when taking from the water. ”

“ The innate love of change in man is visible even in the kitchen. Not so very long ago soup was an exception in English houses—almost a luxury. A dish of vegetables—as a dish and not an adjunct to meat—was a still greater rarity; and even now plain-boiled potatoes, peas, cabbages, etc., are the rule. When we read of the dishes, fearfully and wonderfully made, in the old Italian novelle, we wonder whence the present Italians got their love of vegetables and maccaroni. ”

“ The particular truth I have now in mind is the fact that Italian cookery is the cookery of a poor nation, of people who have scant means wherewith to purchase the very inferior materials they must needs work with; and that they produce palatable food at all is, I maintain, a proof that they bring high intelligence to the task. ”

“ Italian culinary methods have been developed in the struggle when the cook, working with an allowance upon which an English cook would resign at once, has succeeded by careful manipulation and the study of flavouring in turning out excellent dishes made of fish and meat confessedly inferior. ”

“ France is, undoubtedly, the land of good cooks par excellence, but the Italian of all ranks is more of a gourmet than he is usually accounted. There may be some of his tribe that live on bread and cheese, but if he isn’t outrageously poor he usually eats well, devotes much time to the preparing and cooking of his meals, and considerably more to the eating of them. The Italian’s cooking utensils are many and varied and above all picturesque, and his table ware invariably well conditioned and cleanly. ”

“ There is no cookery in Europe so often maligned without cause as that of Italy. People who are not sure of their facts often dismiss it contemptuously as being "all garlic and oil," whereas very little oil is used except at Genoa, where oil, and very good oil as a rule, takes the place of butter, and no more garlic than is necessary to give a slight flavour to the dishes in which it plays a part. An Italian cook frys better than one of any other nationality. In the north very good meat is obtainable, the boiled beef of Turin being almost equal to our own Silverside. ”

“ It seems to me, just from a cursory study of the exhibit, that the secret of Italian gusto for food is that they take it closer to nature, and also that they are less keen than we about meat. They do not buy their food already prepared in cardboard boxes. ”

“ Still we might often observe that by all these the real thing itself is only regarded as a secondary affair, that the roast is not worth so much as the gravy, and that here taste, grace, and elegance are the principal and principle.
Does not the yellow fat, passionately spiced and flavoured, humorously garnished and yet yearning ideal cookery of Italy, express to the life the whole character of Italian beauties? ”

“ French peas with butter; roast chicken with chiffon salad; ice cream or fried cream; assorted fruits and cakes; demi tasse. Wine with this dinner is extra.
Now going a step up in the scale we come to the $1.50 dinner as follows:
Anchovies, salami (note that it is the same as above) ; combination salad; tortellini di Bologna soup; striped bass a la Livornaise; ravioli a la Genoese and spaghetti with mushrooms; chicken saute, Italian style, with green peas; squab with lettuce; zabaione; fruit; cheese; coffee. Wine is extra. ”

“ May I be grateful for it, and take no unfriendly notice of the fleas, though they are crawling up my legs from the straw and the drugget already!
What do I see next? Dinner on table. Drab-coloured soup, which will take a great deal of thickening 255 with grated Parmesan cheese, and five dishes all round it. Trout fried in oil, rolled beef steeped in succulent brown gravy, roast chicken with water-cresses, square pastry cakes with mince-meat inside them, fried potatoes—all excellent. This is really good Italian cookery: it is more fanciful than the English and more solid than the French. ”