I've been reading Piero Camporesi's The Magic Harvest, which is essentially a history of food and food culture in Italy. It's alternately appalling and alluring, but it's gotten me hooked on Italian foods that one normally does not encounter in American or Lebanese restaurants.
Like with Mexican food, which encompasses a mind bogglingly broad range of cooking styles, the Italian food that we most associate with Italy is actually a rather limited part of the Italian food culture. No, I don't mean the Olive Garden. But also that. I'm talking about spaghetti in marinara sauce, which was essentially a product of the mid-19th century. As in the Middle East (which received its first tomatoes around 1830), Europe was rather leery of many of the foods from the New World until either government intervention or cultural catalysts pushed them to adopt the new items. Tomatoes were considered suspiciously voluptuous for some time until they were popularized in a ubiquitous cookbook that dominated the food publishing scene in the late 19th century. Potatoes were fed to pigs, in spite of the fact they made all sorts of sense for the inhabitants of the barren central Apennine mountains of the Italian peninsula, who had barely subsisted for centuries on primarily chestnut flour.
Speaking of pigs... I always feel bad about posting pork recipes or recipes with booze in them (albeit cooked off booze) since one of the only people who actually seems to read these posts (hi Tricia) does not eat either. But if you really wanted to you could swap the pork for a fatty cut of beef and add more broth/drippings to the sauce in lieu of wine.
Corn, also an American import to Italy, rapidly took off and supplanted millet and even wheat in some areas in the northern regions in importance. This led to a boom of pellagra in the late 19th century, but also the delicious corn polenta which we know and love. Northern Italian cooking had an interesting practice of using leftovers as parts of the next meal. Leftover polenta would either be remelted and made again, pan fried, crumbled up to use as a crust, or whatever the enterprising Italian lady in the kitchen decided on.
Pigs were always great peasant food since, unlike cows, they didn't require huge plots of land to feed, they didn't destroy your environment like goats and sheep, and they could sleep in the house with you if needed (his happened a lot in premodern society). Although they stank terribly, they did eat garbage, and, when fattened and slaughtered properly, had the flesh of angels.
This recipe will take about as long to write as it took to cook, so bear with me.
The Pig Part
1 pound of pork shoulder, as fatty as you can get it
olive oil
chunky sea salt
3 garlic cloves
pepper
allspice
thyme
rosemary
Step 1:
Preheat the oven to 475. Take your shoulder and slice it in 1 inch slabs that will lay flat onto each other. Lightly oil the bottom of a pan (this will be floating in oil by the end, so I'm not sure this is even necessary) and reassemble the chunks to form a roast.
Step 2:
Cut the garlic cloves into paper thin slivers and place them and a helping of sea salt between each of the meat slices.
Step 3:
Generously salt the top of the meat with sea salt, gently sprinkle on a touch of allspice and thyme and a good amount of rosemary. Crack some fresh pepper on top and put it in the oven. Make your sauce and polenta now.
Step 4:
After 15 minutes of high heat, turn the oven down to 350 and cook for another 45 minutes covered in tinfoil. The meat is done when it's shrunk and sitting in a puddle of pig fat.
To Serve:
Slice paper thin pieces against the grain of the meat at a 45 degree angle. If you don't know what that looks like... well. Keep the fat attached to the meat, it's the flavor and also should have crisped up nicely and will broadcast the flavors well.
The Sauce:
6 -8 crimini mushrooms or whatever
2 tbsp butter
2 shallots minced
3/4 cup red wine
1/2 cup pork drippings or broth
1/4 cup cream
salt
1 tsp sugar
three pieces of fresh thyme
This is a pretty standard recipe for a mushroom wine reduction. I add sugar because it makes everything taste better and cuts the sharpness of the wine.
Step 1: Prep
Mince the shallots finely (look up how to cut them if you need to) and put aside. Slice the mushrooms in half and then in half again and chop them as thinly as possible.
Mince the shallots finely (look up how to cut them if you need to) and put aside. Slice the mushrooms in half and then in half again and chop them as thinly as possible.
Step 2:
Heat the butter on medium heat in the pan and throw in the shallots, cooking them until they're soft, then add the mushrooms and the thyme sprigs and cook for about 5 minutes until the mushrooms are cooked.
Step 3:
Add the wine and cook on medium heat until almost completely reduced, then add the drippings/broth and sugar and continue to cook down. Salt to taste at this point.
Step 4:
When the liquid is largely evaporated and there's a nice goo in the bottom of the pan, turn off the heat and add the cream to the pan, stir, and cover.
The Polenta
1 cup polenta/corn meal
4 cups water
1 tbsp butter
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup cream
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
1/8 cup honey
salt, lots of salt
Polenta is a pain in the ass.
Step 1:
Boil the water. Whisk in the polenta slowly to keep it from clumping. Add the milk, then turn down to very low and cover.
Step 2:
Continue stirring every 5 minutes to so to keep it from burning to the bottom of the pan or creating horrid clumps.
Step 3:
After about 30 minutes, uncover and stir until the consistency is what you'd like. Mix in the cream, cheese, honey, butter, and salt until it tastes good. Remember, this is not a standalone, but will be the starch to help carry the other flavors.
Step 4: SERVE IT.
It will harden quickly, so make sure it's dished out IMMEDIATELY or you'll have polenta clods on plates.
To Plate:
Dish out Polenta on small plates, Remove one slice of the pork and shave thin slices of it and artistically arrange on the plate (see above). Spread the sauce over the top and you're done.
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