Soda & Soda, Bottarga & More: Being the 171st issue of Cosa Bolle in Pentola

Greetings! I trust all had the happiest of holidays and apologize for not having posted an issue during the break, but between kids and family things were hectic. The latest on the Italian Wine Review are a look at Chianti Rufina, which also includes a comparison between Chianti Rufina and Burgundy -- the Rufina folks invited several Burgundy producers to their vintage presentation this year -- a pair of Caparzo Verticals, and a Tedeschi Vertical, while the latest major thing on Italian food is an image gallery that groups all of my Almost Wordless Wednesday posts together. Pretty pictures, and if you like the AWW posts I think you'll like flipping though them. I've also added a quick thing dedicated to bombette Pugliesi, one of the finest street foods I know of.

Soda & Soda

Turning to Cosa Bolle, Torino's Salone del Gusto has a great many Laboratori del Gusto, or Taste Workshops, and if you flip through the catalog you'll likely be attracted to things such as a comparison between great Burgundy and great Barolo, the discovery of rare age-worthy Alpine cheeses, or old Champagnes (including the degorgement of a bottle during the workshop, using a saber). You might not think to look at soda. But if you had -- like I did -- you'd have made out very well.

By soda I mean a fizzy bottled drink, and most modern soda is industrially produced and frankly banal. However, there are artisinal productions, which hearken back to the early days of the drink, and they can be quite interesting.

Soda shares, we were told, a common origin with ice creams and sorbets, while the name Selz derives from Selters, a German town known for its naturally carbonated spring water. In addition to this naturally carbonated spring water, we were told, the people living in the region made carbonated the water by adding to it under pressure the CO2 that is a natural byproduct of the fermentation of beer.

The carbonated water thus obtained was distributed to druggists who would add syrups to it and sell it, either as a refreshing tonic or as a curative -- The folks in Atlanta added cocaine and cola to theirs, giving it an uplifting zing, and called it Coca Cola, whereas the people behind Pepsi were initially aiming for a cure for Dyspepsia.

In 1892 the crown cap was invented, and industrial production of carbonated drinks took off in Great Britain and the United states.

But not in Italy, where local chemists and druggists continued to make syrups and flavor fizzy water with them until the end of the teens. The first Italian bottled sparkling drink was Gazzosa, which is lemon flavored. It was introduced between the wars, as was Chinotto, which is made with a small, green bitter citrus fruit called the Chinotto (it's bitter enough that you might think quinine, though there is none involved). Chinotto didn't catch on until after WWII, when a number of other drinks were introduced as well, including something called Ginger that didn't contain ginger, but rather bitter oranges: it was named after Ginger Rogers, and made by a factory called Copacabana that opened outside of Milano.

To be honest, the future looked rosy for Italian soft drink makers; the products were good and had considerable character. However, to gain market share the industrialists cut prices (and costs, by reducing the amount of flavoring). Since their products were cheap they did sell, but came to be viewed as second rate by consumers, who much preferred the more flavorful American soft drinks that were introduced in the 50s and 60s. Nor has the situation changed much since then; if you visit an Italian supermarket today most of the soft drink section will be colas, with some orange soda, tonic water, and so on. Very little Gazzosa, a few bottles of Chinotto, and I have never seen Ginger. In short, Italian soft drink manufacturers shot themselves in their collective foot and have never really recovered.

But there are still artisinal producers of both Chinotto and Gazzosa, and with them things can get quite interesting, primarily because they don't stint on the flavorings -- Italian law requires that a fruit-flavored drink contain a minimum of 12% of the given fruit juice, and they are adding more;

We began the workshop with a comparison of several different artisinal Chinotto bottles. Taken as a group, they were varying shades of pale slightly orangish brown, a color that derives from caramel, or even simple burnt sugar in the paler bottles. In terms of flavor and aroma, chinotto is a little unusual and takes some getting used to; it has citrus notes with candied bitter orange and fairly intense, almost pugnacious bitterness as well that comes though strongly on the palate too.

There was also a surprising amount of variation, with some Chinotto more delicate and others, in particular a Sicilian Chinotto called Polara much, much bitterer than the rest.

After the Chinotto, the organizers distributed bottles of Gazzosa, which is essentially fizzy lemonade, and is actually -- provided the fruit juice concentration is high enough -- extremely refreshing, leaving the palate crisp and clean, much as a good lemon sherbet does. In this case the fruit used was of high quality -- Lurisia uses lemons from Amalfi, the same lemons used to make Limoncello, while Polara's lemons are Sicilian and just as flavorful if not more.

Very nice, and all I could think as I sipped -- I finished most of the Gazzosa samples, which were easier to drink than the Chinotto -- is that it is very sad that Italian legislators relaxed the standards in the 1950s to allow soft drink makers to increase their profits by weakening their drinks. Had they not, Gazzosa would likely be as popular today as the -Cola family of soft drinks is.

The final thing to note about Gazzosa is that it is more versatile at table than some of the other soft drinks; it is a good option for those who want some sparkle, and a drink that won't overwhelm the food the way a cola can, but don't want alcohol, and can also be served between courses much the way a lemon sorbetto is. Some people also enjoy it after richly flavored fish such as salmon, again because it leaves the palate crisp and clean.

On Bottarga

Moving in a very different direction, if you visit Sardegna, you're certain to find bottarga for sale. What is it? Salted fish roe, and as such it might not seem much to get excited over. However, it is very tasty, and I quote Hank Shaw, from his article on how to make bottarga: "Bottarga's flavor is the essence of the sea: Fishy, but not in a bad way, and very briny from the salt." It also has a very long history.

Traces of fish processing have been found in the Sardegna's insediamenti Nuragici, the prehistoric (1000+ BC) settlements with buildings made from huge stones that one can find scattered across the island, and the Phoenicians are known to have smoked the tuna they caught along the Sardinian coast. They also explored the Cabras Lagoon, on the western side of the island near what is now Oristano. It's quite large, extending over 2000 hectares (about 7500 acres), and teeming with muggine, or gray mullet. Which they eagerly caught, and when they realized that the hens were replete with roe, began to salt it to preserve it. Production of bottarga has continued since then, and is still a major local industry.

As I said, bottarga can be made with any fish roe, and Hank Shaw gives excellent illustrated instructions.

The major Sardinian kinds of bottarga are bottarga tonno, tuna bottarga (the shot to the left), and bottarga di muggine, gray mullet bottarga (the shot above). Since the first bottarga to be produced in Sardegna -- we were told -- was bottarga di tonno, we will start with it: bottarga is made by salting and preserving the hen fish's egg sack, and since the egg sacks of tuna fish are quite large, so is a whole piece of tuna bottarga -- it can be as large as a barrel slat, and weigh up to 5 k, or more than 10 pounds. With respect to mullet bottarga, tuna bottarga has a much sharper (almost bitter), more fishy flavor, and is also saltier.

Bottarga di muggine is again made from the hen fishes' egg sacks, and since the fish are considerably smaller, so are the pieces of bottarga -- they range from 3-8 or so inches, or 7-20 cm, and if you purchase a piece, we were told that the best will have a white rim on one end that resembles a fingernail. In terms of flavor, bottarga di muggine is more delicate than bottarga di tonno, and has more of that essence of the sea to it.

Either kind should be consumed shortly after purchase; though bottarga is of necessity packaged in plastic to keep it from drying out in transit, it suffers being wrapped up. So upon getting it home, unwrap it and enjoy it. At the presentation we were given bottarga with finely sliced raw artichoke hearts, which provided a very interesting taste combination, with the bitterness of the artichokes making the bottarga seem sweet, and quite complex.

Another very tasty option would be to butter slices of toasted bread with unsalted butter, and sprinkle them with finely shaved bottarga.

The most common way to enjoy bottarga however is in pasta sauce: Cook your pasta, and while it is cooking shave the bottarga into a bowl and stir in some good quality extra virgin olive oil. Turn the drained pasta into the bowl and mix well. That's it; cooking bottarga makes it bitter, and that's something you don't want.

In terms of proportions, figure, for a healthy pound (500 g) pasta 60 g (2 ounces) bottarga and 1/3 cup olive oil; this will serve about 4. One could do much, much worse.

This time's proverb is Ligurian: L'é megio ciammâ I osti in terra, che i Santi per mâ - It's better to call for the hostler on land than for the Saints at sea

Kyle Phillips
Editor, The Italian Wine Review
http://www.italianwinereview.com
About Italian Food, http://italianfood.about.com

PS -- Please forward this to anyone you think would enjoy it! If you would like to read past issues (nothing in them really gets stale), you'll find them on the IWR site, through http://www.cosabolle.com.

American Ingredients & More: Being the 168th issue of Cosa Bolle in Pentola

Greetings! This has been a busy week, though it will be a little while before I have much to show for it (other than an illustrated recipe for Pettole, Apulian Christmas bread fritters, and my impressions of the 2006 Barolo: I spent a couple of days tasting wines approved by the Tuscan regional wine tasting commission, and then, when I saw blue skies on Monday, grabbed the opportunity to go take pictures of olive presses in action: Capezzana's which is quite modern, and Francesco Nardi's, which is older than he thought -- he recently found documents authorizing it dating to 1919, and a picture of the press proper dating to 1901. I'll be adding pictures of Capezzana's press, and its orciaia, a hall with the huge terracotta urns called orce that were traditionally used to store oil, which is by now one of the few left in Tuscany, while you can already see photos of Francesco's press in operation here.

Actually, the reason there is still an orciaia at Capezzana is quite interesting:

Growing olives and making oil is extremely labor-intensive: the trees must be pruned after the harvest and fertilized, and then come spring and into the summer months the ground cover must be kept from running wild, while the trees must be treated to prevent outbreaks of various parasites, and if it's damp or worse yet rainy the treatments have to be repeated more frequently. Then comes the harvest, which must be done quickly and by hand, followed by the pressing, which must again happen as quickly as possible, because the olives begin to deteriorate from the moment they are picked. Considering the returns, which are 10-15% by weight -- 100 kilos of olives will yield 10-15 kilos, or about 10-15 liters of oil -- it's a great deal of work for not that much return, even at the prices quality oil can fetch.

As a result, the Contini Bonacossi family considered olive oil to be a secondary crop, and while the harvest was done following the rules to the letter, also because it takes place after the grape harvest, when the field hands are free, pruning and such came after tending the vines. In other words, grass did grow up around the trees between mowings, and though the trees did all get pruned, not every tree got pruned every year.

Then the family had a brilliant idea: Why not establish a cooperative to make the oil? They would supply the trees, and the press, while those who joined, initially mostly retired farm hands, would tend the trees and harvest the olives, and they would split production 50-50. It has worked out better than anyone expected, with the trees responding to the considerably better care they now get (Filippo Bonacossi tells me that people stop by at all hours to tend the trees entrusted them) by producing more, and better quality olives than they ever had before. Production is up, Filippo is planting more trees, and the children of those who initially signed up are signing up too.

And where do the orce come in? While they were originally used to store the estate's olive oil, they now are used to store the shares of the individual members of the cooperative -- it is easier from an administrative standpoint to keep people's shares separate than it is to put them into tanks and tell the members they have x% of tank y. Quality, you wonder? Steel, with an inert atmosphere is much better that terracotta urns with wooden lids, but the members of the cooperative pick up their oil quickly.

And where does the Contini Bonacossi family's share go? Into steel tanks, and then, quickly, into bottle and on to the shippers, because their olive oil is in hot demand.

The Americas in Sardegna

This year at the Salone del Gusto the Regione Sardegna organized a conference on the influence of the Americas on Sardinian cooking, and I attended, expecting to hear about peppers and tomatoes, and perhaps potatoes and corn. Instead they talked primarily about prickly pears and beans, and it was quite interesting.

For me a bit of a surprise, too, because the Italian term for prickly pear is Fico D'India, or Indian Fig, and I had always assumed the India mentioned was the Asian Subcontinent, not Columbus's Indies, i.e. Central America.

But they are from Central America, and had a profound influence upon the topography and agriculture of Sardinia. Not as food, though Sardinians, like those in other parts of Europe where the prickly pear was introduced, do eat the fruit (unlike Mexicans, they never did think to eat the paddle-like leaves), and also transform it into tasty marmalades and sapa, a sweet fruit concentrate.

Rather, they took advantage of the ease with which prickly pears grow under arid conditions, and replaced the stone fences traditionally used to mark the boundaries of the fields with imposing prickly pear paddle palisades. Which did require pruning, because prickly pears are invasive if not kept in check, but that also captured moisture and returned some of it to the ground during the drier seasons, thereby helping the other crops to grow.

A fence that supplies both food and moisture isn't at all bad, and if you drive through the arid parts of Sardegna you'll still see prickly pear fences. Nor are they obsolete; the same ability to capture moisture that made them important in the days before irrigation is important now that groundwater is becoming scarcer and the costs of pumping water are increasing.

Corn? It was introduced in more humid areas of the island, and used to make popcorn, polenta, and also cornbread. Potatoes were instead introduced late, in the 1700s, and heavily promoted by both the clergy and the functionaries of the Savoy government, though they didn't become popular until people figured out what to do with them (early attempts to use them to make bread were less than successful). Tomatoes? They were introduced in the 1700s, and though we now tend to think of them as being used fresh, or at the most canned, before the development of canning and refrigeration a significant portion of the crop was dried and stored.


After these brief mentions, we came to beans, which are culturally quite interesting. Since commercially raised white and dark beans are readily available and have been for quite some time, one might have expected to find them in people's fields throughout Sardegna. But this is not the case; botanists who did studies of the beans grown in the fields and vegetable patches of small farmers found that most of the beans being grown are genetically quite distinct from those preferred by agribusiness.

And quite diverse; beans are original to a large swath of land extending from Mexico to the Andes, and as one might expect given the size of the source area, there are differences from place to place. Andean beans tend to be larger than Mexican beans, and also have different genetic markers in their proteins. About 70% of the beans found in old Sardinian bean patches can be traced to the Andes, and the remaining 30 to Central America; the researchers suspect, and it would make sense, that the farmers who first planted the fields selected Andean beans because of their larger size.

Of course the beans have not remained unchanged since their arrival in Sardegna; they have to the contrary adapted to the local terroirs, and now present an astonishing variety of shades and hues. To further complicate matters, the researchers told us that in many cases beans that look quite similar are genetically distinct.

And why are we still finding these old cultivars in the fields despite the flood of modern commercial seeds? Because people become attached to them; the plants that were grown by parents and grandparents become a link to them, and therefore modern-day farmers continue to plant them. In other words, the fields become a link to childhood, and to those who have gone before.

And what influence did beans have on the Sardinian diet? While they were and are an extremely important source of protein, and in this sense had a major impact, they had a considerably smaller culinary influence because they simply replaced other legumes the Sardinians had already been using.

Winding down, a couple of recipes

Minestra di Fagioli, Finocchetto e Patate, Bean, wild Fennel and Potato Soup

This is a Sardinian recipe, and will be quite filling. In addition to beans it includes wild fennel, of which one eats the fronts, and in this case I don't think I would substitute bulb fennel, because the result won't be quite right.

• 2/3 pound (300 g) freshly shelled beans
• 2/3 pound (300 g, or two bunches) wild fennel fronds
• Slightly more than a half pound (250 g) potatoes
• 1/2 pound (225 g) plum tomatoes (canned will work)
• 1/3 pound (150 g) dry short pasta (ditalini, and whatever else suits your fancy)
• A ham bone, or a 1/4 pound (100 g) slice of pig rind
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• Freshly grated Pecorino Sardo (in its absence use Pecorino Toscano or a mixture of Pecorino Romano and Parmigiano, as Pecorino Romano on its own would be too salty)
• Salt and pepper to taste

Rinse the fennel fronds, pad them dry, and chop them. Peel and dice the potatoes. Blanch, peel, seed, chop, and drain the tomatoes.

Heat the oil in a soup pot, sauté the tomatoes for a minute, and as soon as they begin to wilt add the beans, fennel, potatoes, and ham or pig rind. Add a 2 1/2 quarts (2.5 l) of water, cover, and simmer for at least two hours.

When the time is up remove the ham bone or pig rind, check seasoning, stir in the pasta, and continue to simmer, stirring occasionally lest the pasta stick and burn, until the pasta is cooked. Serve at once with grated pecorino on the side.

A wine? White, and perhaps a Vermentino.

A variation: instead of fresh tomatoes, you can use 1/4 pound (100 g) dried tomatoes, plumped in warm water and then finely chopped.

Gallina Farcita di Verza e Grana, Hen Stuffed with Savoy Cabbage and Grana Cheese
Italian bird stuffings tend to be firmer than those I encountered as a child in the US, and in many cases include meat. This is instead cabbage-based, and will be a nice option for a festive meal. It does require a boned bird; you can either bone it yourself, or have your butcher do it for you. If you have the butcher do it, have her give you the bones (especially the neck) too.

• A young chicken weighing about 3 1/3 pounds (1.5 k)
• A head of Savoy cabbage
• 3 garlic cloves, peeled
• 4 fresh sage leaves
• The needles from a 4-inch (10 cm) sprig of rosemary
• A pinch each ground nutmeg, ground cloves, ground cinnamon, and paprika
• An egg
• 2 cups (100g) freshly grated Grana Padana or Parmigiano Reggiano
• A glass (200 ml) dry white wine
• 1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon (60 g) unsalted butter
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• Salt and pepper to taste

Wash the chicken neck and put it and the bones from the carcass in a pot with water to cover. Bring it to a boil, season lightly with salt, and simmer for an hour or more to obtain a concentrated broth. Filter it into a bowl, through a sheet of paper towel put in a strainer to remove the fat.

While the broth is simmering, remove and discard the outer leaves of the cabbage if they are dinged or wilted, bring a pot of water to a boil, salt it, and boil the cabbage for 15 minutes. Drain it, let it cool, squeeze out the moisture, and chop it finely with the garlic.

Heat half the oil in a broad saucepan and sauté the cabbage and garlic mixture for 5 minutes. Let it cool and transfer it to a bowl. Mix into it the cheese, egg, spices, and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Stuff the cavity of the chicken with the mixture and sew the openings shut with needle and thread.

Set your oven to 360 F (180 C). While it's heating, heat the remaining butter and oil in a flame-resistant casserole with the sage and rosemary and brown the bird, turning it carefully to make certain all sides color. Sprinkle the white wine over it and cook over a brisk flame until it has evaporated, and then transfer it to the oven. Roast it for an hour, basting it every now and again with the concentrated broth (what you don't use will be a perfect addition to a soup or stew).

Cut the chicken crosswise into half-inch slices and serve it with a crisp red wine -- I might be tempted by a Chianti Colli Fiorentini.

This time's proverb is Sardinian: Ai ricchezzas accudinti i s'amigusu - Wealth draws friends.


Kyle Phillips
Editor, The Italian Wine Review
http://www.italianwinereview.com
Want to comment? Drop me a line at Kyle@cosabolle.com

PS -- Please forward this to anyone you think would enjoy it! If you would like to read past issues (nothing in them really gets stale), you'll find them on the IWR site, through http://www.cosabolle.com.

Sardegna: Being the 153rd issue of Cosa Bolle in Pentola

Greetings! Got back from spending a week in Sardegna a few days ago, and am still mulling over the trip. But to start off with, the latest on the Italian Wine Review is a quick rundown of some of the wines produced by the Gruppo Italiano Vini and before then I celebrated the birth of Alberto Alessandria with a writeup of the wines his dad Fabio and grandmother Marina Burlotto make at Commendator Burlotto. Superb wines, and I hope they set some aside for when he's a little older. On About I have instead put together a quick collection of recipes with fresh plums and prunes -- desserts and jams, but also some savory dishes.

Returning to Sardegna, it's one of Italy's two major islands (the other is Sicily), extending north-south in the Tyrrhenian Sea below Corsica. For some reason -- perhaps because it sits well out to sea and consequently looks much more distant from continental Italy on maps -- people don't seem to think about it as much as they do about Sicily. Their loss, because it's spectacular.

One can fly, but one must then rent a car, so we drove to Livorno and boarded a night ferry for Golfo degli Aranci, a small port just above Olbia. The passage was uneventful, save for the wakeup call at 5 AM, and after disembarking we slowly drove down the eastern coast of the island towards the Baia Sas Linnas Siccas, a few km north of Orosei. The name may strike you as Spanish and you'd be right; Sardinia was run by the Spaniards for centuries, and though the local argot in many areas predates Spanish (one exception is Alghero, in the Northwest -- the Spanish took it from the Genovesi in 1353, and when the locals, a mixture of Sardinians and Genovesi, tried to rebel in 1354, replaced them with Catalani, whose tongue is still spoken in the area now) many words do reveal influences dating to the period of Spanish rule.

Returning to our trip, we were staying at a place called Alba Dorata, a small resort village that had several things going for it: A large pool, which Daughter Clelia took up residence in (she was already tan and got progressively browner as the week went on), air conditioning, a lifesaver because daytime temperatures climbed up into the 40s (100 plus F), and a beautiful shoreline consisting of rocky points separated by fine sandy beaches, with transparent, crystalline blue water of the sort one generally associates with the tropics.

Our two coves were easily accessible from land, which was good because we only brought sandals, but the Golfo di Orosei is one cove after another for a hundred km, and while they can all be reached from the sea (one can take an excursion, or rent a boat) many are only accessible from land via long hikes on steep, dusty trails. This might strike you as much more effort than one should undertake during a vacation, but the rewards are well worth it: the landscapes are hauntingly beautiful, bringing to mind arid regions of the American Southwest, and once one gets down to the water the diving is fantastic. Indeed, many people simply used the village we were staying at as a base, packing up and driving off (some with masks and fins, and some with tanks too) each morning.

Drawbacks? None with the village, though the sun's intensity was more than we were ready for, and Elisabetta and I both burned. So one morning we drove to Dorgali, the farming village inland that was once the area's major population center, and this offers space for a digression -- Sardinians traditionally viewed the sea with distrust, as it was a source of invaders, and therefore preferred to settle inland and devote themselves to sheepherding. As a result the coastlines were virtually deserted, save for outposts built by non-Sardinians (e.g. Alghero, established by Genova and captured by the Spanish, or Cagliari, established by the Phoenicians in pre-Roman time, and dominated by foreign powers through most of its long history), and until quite recently coastal lands were considered less valuable, and therefore went to the younger heirs (many of whom are now quite rich).

In any case, Dorgali is a one-street town whose houses are made of dark volcanic rock, and look to be quite old. Pretty, and though very touristy -- one crafts shop after another, with nice things -- and we enjoyed visiting it. Unfortunately, a morning out of the sun wasn't enough, so a couple of days later we crossed Sardegna to visit Bosa, a town on near the mouth of the Temo river, about half way between Oristano and Alghero. A beautiful drive, though countryside that became steadily drier and more desolate as we climbed into the inland highlands, where -- if you keep your eyes peeled -- you will see nuraghi, squat round drywall towers built from carefully fitted blocks of stone thousands of years ago. Some are in ruins, while others are still standing, and they confer a sense of haunting otherworldly distance to the landscape.

Bosa boasts a truly ancient and quite beautiful Romanesque cathedral dedicated to Saint Peter, a ways out of town (where one would never think to look, were there not signs), but like much else along the coast the town proper was founded by outsiders who wanted to take advantage of the navigability of the river to build a port: In this case members of the Malaspina family, who built a fortress overlooking the village that gave townspeople a place to withdraw to in time of need. The medieval town flourished, but in 1528 Bosa's leaders dammed the river to keep a French fleet from landing. The ploy worked, but the river mouth rapidly became a malaria-infested swamp, and the fact that the surviving inhabitants of the once-prosperous town fled rather than clear the river mouth again underscores the ambivalence Sardianians felt for the sea. The situation only improved with the arrival of the House of Savoy in the 1700s; the new rulers had the river mouth cleared and set up tanneries on the bank facing the town that are no longer operative, but offer a beautiful example of 18th century industrial architecture. The town itself is quite pretty too, and very enjoyable to walk about.

It took us almost an hour to find a place where we could enjoy the picnic lunch the folks at the hotel had packed for us -- Sardinians don't seem to go for public parks -- and then drove up to Alghero; the coast is still rocky, but by comparison with the coast around Orosei is greener and therefore seems gentler. Alghero is bustling and has a delightful Spanish feel to it, and we might have stayed longer, but the kids were wilting, so we drove home, enjoying the stark beauty of the landscape, and the colors, which gradually shifted towards purple as the sun set.

Bottom line: Italy is one of the most visited destinations in the world, but there are parts of the country one might never think to see. Sardinia, for example, but if you do go you'll find yourself eager to return again. I know we are.

Winding down with our trip, the day-to-day meals we had at our hotel were good -- the fish was very good -- but for the most part continental, with entrees one could just as easily have found in other parts of Italy. However, one night we had Porceddu, the roast piglet that is one of the mainstays of Sardinian festive cuisine.

It is, quite simply, a roast sucking piglet, but the roasting technique is masterful enough that it is one of the finest ways to cook pork one could imagine. It does require experience with fire building, and also quite a bit of wood, as the coals must burn for several hours. In terms of wood kinds, Sardinians tend to use aromatic woods along the lines of juniper or olive, though one could make do with hardwood if one had to. They also wrap the cooked piglet in myrtle, which grows wild throughout much of the island.

To make a Porceddu you will need:

• A suckling piglet weighing about 13 pounds (6 k), cleaned
• Salt
• 1 pound (500 g) lard
• Fresh myrtle boughs
• A spit and spit turner

Light your fire.

While coals are accumulating, wash the piglet well, pat it dry, and salt it well inside and out. Spit the piglet -- Sardinians say a wooden stick is best, but a steel spit will also work -- and set it about 3 feet (a meter) in front of the fire.

Set the spit to turning very slowly, and cook the piglet for an hour. Baste the meat occasionally with liquid fat obtained by heating the lard over the flames, and when the piglet begins to drip bring it closer to the fire, -- about 20 inches (50 cm) from the heat. Continue roasting and basting for another two and a half hours; the meat will be done when a knife inserted into thigh emerges hot and unblooded.

At this point salt the piglet to taste for a second time, wrap it tightly in myrtle boughs, and let it rest for 20 minutes. And then carve it, skin and all, and enjoy it with a well-aged Canonau.

As is the case with popular dishes there are many variations.
Another recipe I read says to split the piglet lengthwise, spit both halves, and cook them vertically (starting at a meter and bringing the halves closer after an hour), while another says to keep the whole piglet further from the flames and cook it longer. And yet another recipe says to remove the spit from the rotisserie when the meat is done, fill a braiser with coals, and turn the piglet over it to brown it to perfection.

In other words, doing a Porceddu requires some experience in hearth cooking, and offers a fair amount of leeway in terms of technique. But the results are superb, and you can also roast a whole lamb or kid this way.

I had intended to discuss the latest (interesting though predictable) developments of Italian politics, but they will have to wait until next time.

This time's proverb is Sardinian: Mezus bastonadas de amigu chi non lusingas de inimigu - Better a beating from a friend than flattery from an enemy.

Until next time,

Kyle Phillips
Editor, The Italian Wine Review
http://www.italianwinereview.com
Want to comment? Drop me a line at Kyle@cosabolle.com

PS -- Please forward this to anyone you think would enjoy it! If you would like to read past issues (nothing in them really gets stale), you'll find recent ones at Cosa Bolle.Com, http://www.cosabolle.com, and older ones at http://italianfood.about.com/blbol.htm.