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Not My Mother's Kitchen
Rediscovering Italian-American Cooking Through Stories and Recipes
By Rob Chirico Charlesbridge Publishing, Inc
Copyright © 2016 Rob Chirico
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-63289-200-3
CHAPTER 1
Ingredients
Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.
— MICHAEL POLLAN
Aside from the tomatoes Nanny grew in summer, those that insulted our table the rest of the year were the uniform orange spheroids that came in a cellophane-wrapped package — as did our puny little heads of garlic. Pre-packaging was the way to go for modern America — and the way it almost always went in our home. About the only vegetables (apart from the orange spheroids) that were common to our household were iceberg lettuce and fennel, the latter of which my father had a penchant for. He loved his salads. Since cheese was already grated and arrived in a cylindrical container, I had no inkling that you should buy your own and grate it yourself. For the most part, my brief comments about foodstuffs will partly be about what it was like growing up on a desert island mostly devoid of quality ingredients.
On a brief but more serious note, with the ever-increasing domination of the commercial food industry over local purveyors, the consumer must become more and more of a supermarket sleuth. Ask questions and read labels, because you may not be getting what you think. The federal government is not helping us on this. In March of 2013, the Monsanto Protection Act was signed into law, by President Obama, no less. This effectively bars federal courts from being able to halt the sale or planting of GMO crops and seeds, no matter what health consequences from the consumption of these products may come to light in the future. Even if crops are found to be dangerous or to cause a runaway crop plague, the U.S. government now has no judicial power to stop them from being planted or harvested. It lost its funding due to public outcry, but there are attempts to revitalize it. Before you buy those ears of genetically modified corn, be aware that not only are they severely lacking in vitamins and nutrition compared to non-GMO corn; they also pose numerous health risks due to pesticides and toxic chemicals found in GMO corn. Would you care for a dollop of something like "Golly, Gee! I Know Darned Well This Isn't Butter!" with that? So is the question we should ask, "Who's running whom?" Or is it "Who's killing whom?"
Cheese
The French claim that they have one cheese for every day of the year, although they do not specify which cheese for each day. Italians are no less generous in their cheese production. This being the case, save for some of the nearly omnipresent mozzarella and hard grating cheeses discussed here, I will address specific cheeses such as Gorgonzola and provolone in their respective recipes.
The cheese most commonly found in our fridge when I was growing up was either a slab of Velveeta or a jar of Cheez Whiz. When my father began collecting Social Security, he was eligible to bring home "government cheese" (pronounced guv-mint). This was a solid block of unspecified yellow dairy matter that was purported by the government to "slice and melt well." Nothing was said about taste or nutritional value. Naturally we had "Parmesan" cheese in our household — if you can count the ground-up likes of a cue ball in a cardboard shaker as cheese. I do recall that we had a four-sided cheese grater. This was exclusively reserved for mozzarella, since no one had come up with the dubious idea for packaged shredded mozzarella yet. What the other three sides of the grater were for remained an enigma. Things have not changed much for my mom. The last time I made dinner for her, I brought a chunk of Parmigiano-Reggiano (never having acquired a taste for cue ball). No grater was to be found. I believe that Microplanes are the best for harder cheese, and what started out as a carpenter's tool now comes in a multitude of shapes and grating sizes. The old-fashioned box style that has two sandpaper-like sides is mostly worthless. It is indeed the lesser of two graters.
Most of the mozzarella that one finds in stores is fairly lifeless. The best that can be said about the majority of commercial brands is that the cheese melts well (like government cheese?). Artisanal cheesemakers are now producing excellent fresh mozzarella from cow's milk. In the opinion of many, the finest cheeses, mozzarella di bufala, are still produced in southern Italy from a special breed of water buffalo. The Nazis killed off most of the herds during the retreat from Italy in World War II, but the herds have since been restocked from animals imported from India. Buffalo mozzarella is again common, although the buffalo milk is often blended with a large percentage of cow's milk. So far the attempts to raise this curious breed of animal in the United States have yet to yield a comparable cheese. Italian buffalo mozzarella, packed in water, is rather expensive because it has a shelf life of only a few days, and must therefore be flown in from Italy daily.
If you are only able to procure commercial mozzarella, shred it and blend it with a good olive oil to enhance the flavor. I have found that Polly-O and Trader Joe's have fared best among packaged block (not pre-shredded) cheeses for melting. I emphasize "for melting" because they are otherwise still rather bland if eaten raw. I would also still encourage adding olive oil to your freshly grated cheese and letting it sit for about an hour before you plan on using it. Lastly, since whole milk mozzarella really only has a gram or two of extra fat per serving versus part-skim mozzarella, why bother with the latter? Also you could try making your own mozzarella. It's actually fairly simple to prepare from scratch, but even simpler if you can buy fresh cheese curds. The process can take less than 30 minutes using the latter, and not much more with the former. Videos for making your own mozzarella abound online.
True Parmigiano-Reggiano is unique in that its distinctive flavor is due to the specific environment in which the cows graze: a small area in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy. The fermentation process, which lasts eighteen months, has gone on unchanged for over seven hundred years, producing one of the finest cheeses on earth. With that kind of history, why would anyone want to waste money by buying a gritty, grated sack of fluff? Whereas almost all Parms are created equal, they frequently don't end up that way. A buttery, amber chunk cut fresh from the wheel bears no comparison to the chalky, dehydrated lump that has languished for days on end in the supermarket cheese bin.
If I say that "almost" all true Parms are created equal, there are at least two exceptions. One is a Parmigiano made by a farmhouse dairy in the remote mountains outside of Modena: Vacche Rosse, or Red Cow Parmigiano. Using only the raw, untreated rich cow's milk from the original, now rare, Red Cow breed of cattle, only a few farmers have taken the care and attention needed to raise these special cows. The aging process can take up to twice as long as with regular Parm. As you might expect, the price is consequently at least twice that of regular Parmigiano — if you can even find it (see the Mail-Order Sources).
Then there is the Parmigiano-Reggiano Stravecchio, which is aged a full thirty-six months. At this age, it has a deeper golden color and has even more crunchy crystals. Full and fruity with a slightly salty tang, this cheese should be served in chunks with fine balsamic vinegar, figs, or pears as an appetizer with an aperitif or after a meal. To keep the cheese as fresh as possible, never grate it until you are ready to use it; and store it in wax paper wrapped with foil, since plastic film will suffocate the cheese over long periods of time. And never throw away the rind! It is a marvelous addition to soups and stocks.
Grana is the catchall term for any hard grating cheese, but Grana Padano, like Parmigiano-Reggiano, is governed by strict regulations and must pass quality tests before its rind is fire-branded with the Grana Padano trademark. The younger Grana Padano is aged for only a year and is less crumbly, milder, and not as complex in flavor as Parmigiano-Reggiano, or even its own Grana Padano Riserva, which is aged for twenty months. Seeing that Grana Padano is Italy's most popular (and most consumed) hard cheese, it is certainly a satisfactory substitute for Parm when the coffers are running low or when you need copious amounts for a recipe. At the other end of the taste spectrum of popular grating cheeses, Pecorino Romano (from the Italian pecora for "sheep") is a saltier, more piquant cheese made from ewe's milk. Romano should be used for its own unique flavor or in dishes where Parmigiano-Reggiano would otherwise be overwhelmed.
One other use of cheese in Italy unknown to Americans is its place in name-calling. If you happen to play a particularly bad hand in cards, you may just get the word provola hurled at you. Being classified as a mozzarella is not very different from being termed more generically a cheesehead.
Cured Meats
As far as good cured meats go, our house decidedly went in the opposite direction. This could be said of the nation at large. The extent of our knowledge of salumi was salami and pepperoni, the latter not even being an Italian immigrant but an American-born article. Moreover, the term "pepperoni" is not even properly Italian, as it is a corruption of peperoni, the plural of peperone, the Italian word for "bell pepper." The true Italian salumi repertoire includes such meats as guanciale, coppa (or capicola), spalla, 'nduja, lardo, lonza, pancetta, prosciutto, and, of course, salami, but in the 1960s you were at a loss to find any but the last two. And even they were exclusively made in the United States. It was not until 1990 that Italian prosciutto was allowed into the country. When Ada Boni's important Italian Regional Cooking appeared on our shores in 1969, it boasted more than six hundred "authentic" recipes. True, there is a dish titled in Italian Spaghetti al Guanciale, but its translation beneath is "Spaghetti with Bacon." The recipe itself does not call for guanciale or even pancetta but — you guessed it — bacon. Regarding pancetta, it is customarily found sliced or in chunks in supermarkets. If you can get hold of slab pancetta, which is usually artisanal, I not only find it more flavorful, it is much easier to work with. Older cookbooks will tell you what to substitute for pancetta: There is no substitute.
Thanks to the Internet, we live in a time when we can finally begin to cook Italian food the way it was meant to be. Recently the USDA lifted the long-standing ban on the importation of many more Italian cured meats, as long as the producers follow (the often archaic) USDA regulations and bear the expense of full-time, on-site USDA inspectors. There is some irony in this. Cured meats such as prosciutto are forbidden by Italian law to include sugar, water, nitrites, or any additives except a minimum of salt (all of which are quite common in many American products). In fact, the word "salami" is derived from the Latin sal (salt), which was the earliest preservative used in curing sausages. Do you crave coppa made from Cinta Senese pigs? It is just a click away. In the meantime, La Quercia of Norwalk, Iowa, makes an outstanding array of cured and specialty meats.
A curious war made San Francisco the salami capital of America. From 1967 until 1970, a band of six determined Bay Area sausage makers argued to the U.S. Department of Agriculture that they deserved the right not only to use Italian methods, but to call their product "Italian salami." They were direct descendants of salami makers of Milan, Lucca, Parma, and Modena. Around the turn of the last century, they had settled in a city whose temperate climate might be the only one in the United States perfectly suited for dry-curing salami. They even had the right strain of penicillin mold to give the links a classic white bloom. I would highly recommend any of San Francisco's Molinari cured meats. Their salami, Finocchiona salami, Toscano salami, hot salami, and coppa have been slaking cravings for over a hundred years.
Garlic
That versatile, indispensable knobby cluster of happiness was almost entirely ornamental for my family, and it was not a pretty sight at that. Our heads of garlic did not have teeth; they had dentures. Rather than succumb to the mythic prowess of garlic, vampires would have died laughing if confronted by our miserable specimens. The only garlic I remember seeing in our home came two to a package. The measly heads would sit there beneath their plastic wrapper shield until they shriveled into oblivion, leaving their dusty empty skins for one to ponder what the purpose of their contents had been in the first place.
The word "garlic" comes from the Old English garleac, meaning "spear leek." Dating back over six thousand years, the plant is native to Central Asia. Over the centuries garlic was mostly demeaned as unpleasant peasant food: It "maketh a man wynke, drynke, and stynke." American journalist and humorist Arthur Baer warned, "There is no such thing as a little garlic." Contrary to the stereotype, however, Italians are not great consumers of the "stinking rose." One finds it mostly in southern Italian cooking and almost not at all in traditional northern Italian cooking, although it's hard to imagine a classic dish like ossobuco alla Milanese without a hint of garlic. Continuing down the leg of the boot, we can see that Roman cooking is something of a middle ground. Classics such as the Amatriciana (actually from the Abruzzo region but made famous in Rome) and Cacio e Pepe sauces are garlic-free, but garlic is the soul of Spaghetti con Aglio, Olio, e Peperoncino. Our association of Italy with garlic is probably due to the southern Italians who immigrated to different countries and brought their use of garlic with them. While garlic has unshackled itself from the onus of peasant food in the north, it is yet an unreservedly welcome guest.
Moreover, some Italian critics adamantly complain that the bulbous herb reeks and overwhelms more delicate flavors. Filippo La Mantia, a chef who worked at La Trattoria in Rome, shunned garlic saying that it was a leftover from when Italians were poor and used it to flavor their meager victuals. To the contrary, garlic aficionados say that in the right amount, it enhances and embellishes otherwise bland dishes. While that could be said of almost anything, the thousands of people who flock to garlic festivals across the country would agree when it comes to that pungent little bulb. Proponents now advocate for garlic's influence in strengthening our immune system, among other health benefits.
Garlic abounds in summer. I may have eight varieties to work with from local farmers, but for our purpose here, I would recommend the larger, readily available, compact purple-skinned bulbs that have a pungent yet sweet flavor. Young garlic still has its scallion-like green stem that may be cooked like a scallion. As the season goes on, garlic is only thinking of itself. It will naturally want to flower, and it begins to grow from within. At this point the clove, or "tooth," will begin to develop a greenish "stinger" that can be bitter. I suggest that you slice the clove in half lengthwise and cut out the little bugger.
In any season, whether it is simmered in braises or sautéed in oil, garlic has a limitless role in cooking. Since garlic cloves vary dramatically in size, I could never accept why almost all recipes specify garlic by the number of cloves alone. Certainly you can use your judgment, but for the sake of consistency I have given a specific measurement as a guide. I do this as well for onions. And if you thought that it was impressive that Heinz had "57 Varieties" (although they did have a few more, but Mr. Heinz just happened to like that number), there are more than six hundred varieties of garlic, and still counting.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Not My Mother's Kitchen by Rob Chirico. Copyright © 2016 Rob Chirico. Excerpted by permission of Charlesbridge Publishing, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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