Tuscany, Sediment & More: Being the 173rd issue of Cosa Bolle in Pentola

Greetings! To begin at the beginning, I have been doing administrative work on About Italian Food -- splitting up overly long categories of recipes and whatnot. Not exciting, but with thousands of pages on the site I do have to manage things or they will be impossible to find. The latest on the Italian Wine review is a new feature, the weekly photo (click on the image and you will see a larger version), while the latest IGP post is a look at a fine restaurant in Livigno, from Stefano Tesi.

A Culinary Traveller in Tuscany

A while ago -- longer than it should be, and I apologize -- Beth Elon sent me a copy of her book, A Culinary Traveller in Tuscany. She, like me, was bit by the Italy bug, though differently: She and her husband chanced upon an abandoned farmhouse in the foothills of the Appennini towards Pistoia, bought it, and gradually and casually restored it (too casually, she says in the introduction: "when you don't add a fireplace to the living room it never gets done.") And in time discovered the village just above their house, which had been a tenant farmer's podere in the midst of his lands, and became part of the village, learning to do things the traditional way -- canning by the phase of the moon, for example. Eventually the house stopped being a summer home, and became their permanent residence.

She is blessed with a beautiful way of stringing words together and a keen eye for detail, and her book, which is subtitled "Exploring & Eating off the Beaten Track," is a great deal of fun. And apt; she avoids the parts of Tuscany in which one is most likely to meet a foreigner (Chianti, for example), rather going up into the Casentino (the craggy highlands between Florence and Arezzo) and the Alta Valle Teverina, or to the Valle Del Serchio (behind Lucca), which is as wild and steep-sided as any valley you'll find in the Alps. The closest she comes to Florence is Montelupo, a town once known for its spectacular ceramics, but that many modern Florentines associate primarily with the Manicomio criminale, or Home for the Criminally Insane.

Of course Beth doesn't discuss the Home; rather, she starts out by noting that Montelupo is still a hotbed of ceramicists, and says it's her favorite place to buy wedding gifts, and after discussing several artisans, takes us along the winding back roads to San Miniato, a town whose stature as a white truffle capital rivals Alba's, and whose history is simply fascinating. From there we go to Montopoli Val D'Arno, which is now much sleepier than it once was, though there are flashes of elegance, and on to Palaia, another one of those pretty towns of the kind most people stumble upon (with joy) when they make a wrong turn and follow the road to see where it goes.

But there's more to the book; each itinerary is followed by a section dedicated to local specialties, and since San Miniato is a truffle capital we get to tag along as she accompanies a truffle hunter who is training a young dog to find the elusive tubers. And then there are notes on restaurants, and the dishes most noteworthy, with... Recipes.

All sorts of things, from mushrooms packed in oil to gnocchi with hazelnut sauce to risotto with apples and shrimp. And this is just one of the ten itineraries!

It's a beautiful book to read, and even if you're not planning to get into a car and drive (public transportation is not an option here) you will very much enjoy it. And, who knows? You may find yourself planning an unexpected trip...

Practical things:
A Culinary Traveller in Tuscany
Exploring and Eating off the Beaten Track
By Beth Elon, © 2006
The Little Bookroom
1755 Broadway, Fifth Floor
NY NY 10019
http://www.littlebookroom.com
ISBN-10 1-892145-36-7

On Amazon



Thoughts about Sediment in Wine

A few years ago I visited a winery near the eastern boarder of the Chianti Classico region, and, since it was near Christmas, I asked the cellermaster if he had any Riserva left. He said no, then hesitated. "Well, I do have last year's, but I don't know if you'd like it - we've had lots of people return it to us."

It turns out that he doesn't filter his wines, and for some reason that vintage gave off more sediment than usual. He must have seen something in my expression, because he ventured, "I can let you have it at 5 Euros per bottle - all sales final, you understand."

I tasted it and bought a case.

The sediment? Well, to be honest I'd almost rather that a well-aged red wine have some - it's a natural byproduct of the aging process, a mix of tartaric acid crystals and other chemicals that settle out as the wine matures. An old wine with no sediment at all would make me wonder what has happened to it that has kept it from developing in the bottle.

Has it been filtered, perhaps? Filtration will improve clarity, but at the expense of body, color and bouquet. Or has it received some other insult - a shot of sulfur dioxide? The compound works as a preservative, but can make the wine smell like a burnt match. Better to have a little bit of sediment, which indicates that the wine is still alive.

Note the word little - if there's a lot, there may well be something amiss. Also, the wine above the sediment should be crystal clear, not cloudy.

Returning to sediment, it is true that finding a dark deposit in the bottom of your goblet (we are talking about an aged wine here) is a bit off-putting. To avoid this, simply decant the wine.

Though the procedure looks complicated, it's easy to do: A day or two before you plan to open the bottle, stand it upright to give the sediment a chance to settle to the bottom. At opening time you will need a decanter (crystal or clear glass is best, because it reveals the color of the wine, but you could even use a pitcher if you had to) and a candle.

Remove the metal capsule and uncork the bottle gently. Light the candle and slowly pour the wine into the decanter, holding the bottle in front of (not over) the candle, and watching the candle flame through the neck of the bottle. When the sediment reaches the neck of the bottle it will appear as a dark stream silhouetted against the flame; at this point stop pouring. With practice, you will be able to pour all but the last half-inch or so before the sediment gets there. The trick is to be gentle. And then, enjoy!

Tartino al Cioccolato e Arance

Valentine's Day is nearing, and one of my favorite sweet combinations is orange and chocolate. Chocolate covered orange peel immediately comes to mind, but orangy chocolate tart will also be quite nice.

• 1 5/6 cups (220 g) flour
• 1/2 cup (100 g) unsalted butter
• 1cup (100 g) powdered sugar
• 3 eggs and 4 yolks
• 2/3 pound (300 g) baking chocolate
• The zest (orange part only) of 2 oranges, organically grown if possible -- that from one grated, and from the other cut into thin strips
• 2/5 cup (1 dl) heavy cream
• A pinch of salt
• 1/2 pound dried beans or chickpeas

Dice the butter and whir it briefly in a blender with the flour, half the sugar, the grated zest of one of the oranges, and a pinch of salt. Add the egg and continue whirring until the dough forms a ball. Wrap it in plastic wrap and chill it in the refrigerator for a half hour.

Preheat your oven to 360 F (180 C).

Roll the chilled dough out to a thickness of 1/4 inch (1/2 cm) and use it to line a round 9-inch (22 cm) cake pan or crostata pan (they're a little lower sided than cake pans). Cover the dough with oven parchment and fill the pan with the dried legumes. Bake the dough for 15 minutes, remove the legumes and the paper, and bake it for 10 more.

In the meantime, melt 3/4 of the chocolate over a double boiler. While it's melting beat the remaining eggs and the yolks with the remaining powdered sugar, to obtain a sweet frothy mixture. Add the cream and the melted chocolate and mix gently. Turn the mixture out into the pie shell and bake for 30 minutes at 320 F (160 C).

Let the tart cool. Decorate it with thin strips of orange zest and chocolate shavings made from the bitter chocolate you did not melt.

Happy Valentine's Day!

This time's proverb is Tuscan: Ama chi t'ama, e chi non t'ama lascia - love those who love you, and leave those who do not.


Kyle Phillips
Editor, The Italian Wine Review
http://www.italianwinereview.com
Guide to 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.

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.