Dairy Free

The foothills of the Apennines line the eastern part of the Maremma and provide a congenial habitat for many species of wildlife, notably wild boar. As they range the hills, foraging at different altitudes, their diet varies, from rough vegetation to earthy treasures like acorns, chestnuts, and hazelnuts. Boar is prepared in infinite ways, from curing it and making sausages, prosciutto, and salami, to braising and roasting it. As with domestic pigs, the flavor of boar meat varies according to what the animal has consumed. Part of the luck of the hunt is bagging a boar that has feasted on acorns or chestnuts rather than meager plant foods—you can taste the difference. Here in the States, boar are domestically raised, though often allowed free range like true wild boar. The meat is generally excellent, complex in flavor and surprisingly tender. It is also easily purchased, over the Internet, right from the producers or through specialty-food merchants (see Sources, page 340) but it is expensive and you can use pork tenderloins instead in this recipe (but marinate them for only half the time). If you’ve not tried boar, this recipe for tenderloins will be a tasty and easy introduction. After marinating for several hours in wine and aromatics, the filets need only brief cooking on the stovetop. Most of the work here is transforming the marinade into a beautiful, savory-sweet condiment with plump apple wedges and prunes. It is a memorable special-occasion dish.

Like Antico Peposo, page 195, this is a rugged, spicy, Maremma-style meat stew—chunks of pork marinated in wine, then browned and braised with ground fennel, peperoncino, and black olives. Traditionally, secondary cuts of pork were used for this dish, but if you prefer, pork chops can be substituted for the pork shoulder. Just keep in mind not to overcook them—use less stock, and cook for a shorter time. Serve with Braised Swiss Chard and Cannellini Beans, page 175, or polenta.

Pollo alla cacciatora is served in many regions of Italy, but when you see lots of fresh rosemary and tomatoes it is a dead giveaway—you know it is from Tuscany. And in this case the dish is typical of Maremma, straightforward and elementary, with nothing more than good chicken, good tomatoes, and fresh rosemary to make it delicious. This dish ought to be done in advance, as it gets better as it sits. Though it is delicious served as is with just some crusty bread, I especially love it with polenta. And when it is too hot to cook polenta, some tubular pasta, like rigatoni, will do just fine. If you have some left over, just pluck the meat off the bones and save it for another meal, to dress pasta or make a risotto with it.

As with the preceding duck recipe, either a whole rabbit or rabbit pieces can be used for this sauce. If you’re getting a whole rabbit, ask the butcher to cut it into eight or ten pieces, or do it yourself, just cutting between the joints. (If you have my book Lidia’s Family Table, look at the photos on page 321 to see how to cut up a rabbit.) If you can find rabbit legs, hind and/or front, they would be even better for this recipe. As with the duck, the legs have more meat, are easier to handle, and cost less. Serve this sauce with pappardelle, following the procedures in the duck recipe, or with gnocchi, polenta, or dry pasta.

Swiss chard is a vegetable that is much appreciated in Maremma. Even though it is readily available in most supermarkets, it is not much used in the States. I love it, and suggest that whenever you are thinking spinach you should think of substituting Swiss chard. It usually comes in a bunch tied around the stalks. Look for young, tender bright-green leaves and thin stalks. This recipe, cooked with cannellini beans, makes almost a complete meal. In Maremma, this dish is served with grilled meats. I love grilled sausages with it, but I also like it topped with a poached egg, a slab of grilled crusty Tuscan bread, and a drizzle of olive oil—it makes a great lunch. This dish is good just off the stove, but it gets better when it rests a bit and is reheated. It will keep in the refrigerator for a few days, and also freezes very well.

This is one of the simplest recipes in this book, and it is one of the most sublime. Yes, truffles add a mystique—but even without them this is my favorite way to cook eggs. Essential to this procedure is never to allow the olive oil to reach temperatures at which heat alters and degrades the flavors. Hence, you will ultimately have the full presence of fresh olive oil in a natural state intermingled with the egg and truffle flavors. Thus, the quality of the olive oil is paramount here, more than in most cooked dishes. I like using lighter and more vegetal olive oils from the Lago di Garda district, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, or Istria. Another important point is to keep the curd of the egg large and soft. The steady but gentle dragging of the curds—strapazzati means “dragged”—and controlled heat prevents any part from cooking solid, and in this moist state all the natural flavor of the egg comes through. As with olive oil, the best quality eggs are essential—as fresh as can be, and organic if possible. There is a basic lesson to be learned in this recipe that applies to Italian cooking—for that matter, to all cooking—get the best ingredients, do not overcrowd the flavors, and work the food as little as possible. Along with this lesson, I am sure, you’ll get some of the best scrambled eggs you’ve ever tasted—even without truffles.

I love chutneys, for both their concentrated flavor and the convenience. You make them and store them, and whenever you want that special treat you can just pull them from the fridge or pantry. All you need is a spoonful to enjoy the essence of whatever ingredients you put into them. Cunja is just such a treasured condiment from Piemonte. Quince is a primary ingredient (as it is in cotognata, another traditional Italian chutney), but cunja incorporates the indigenous flavors of late autumn in Piemonte: the local San Martino pears, the mosto of pressed Nebbiolo grapes, and its famed hazelnuts. Though these particular ingredients will probably not be in your market, my recipe produces a thoroughly delicious and long-lasting chutney with much of the layered complexity of cunja. In place of cotto mosto, the cooking liquid here is bottled Concord-grape juice (always made from concentrate); organic juice is highly recommended. Unfortunately, we can’t get small sweet San Martino pears in the United States. These are the last pears to be harvested, in early November, at the same time as the Feast of San Martino—hence their name. Our Seckel pears are an excellent alternative, and Granny Smith apples will also work well. Packed in jars and refrigerated, this will keep for a couple of months. As I explain, cunja is meant to be enjoyed with a creamy Piedmontese cheese, but I serve it with pork roast and other meats. I am sure you will find many delicious uses for it.

Squash is not one of the most popular vegetables, but I love it and love cooking with it. It is nutritious, versatile, and delicious. Northern Italy consumes more zucca—winter squash—than southern Italy, especially in the areas near Modena in Emilia-Romagna, and Padova in the Veneto. This is a great side dish or appetizer. Traditionally, the zucca is fried before it is marinated, as I do here, but the dish is also delicious when made with grilled or boiled zucca. I recommend butternut squash, but acorn, Hubbard, and other varieties will work as well.

This soup is common in all of the regions hugging the Adriatic, where fish trimmings of one sort or another are always available to cook into a light, flavorful broth. We had it often when we lived in Istria, whenever someone in the family was not feeling well, for its supposed restorative powers. And although children sometimes disdain “fishy”-tasting food, I recall vividly savoring this broth, which had the taste of the sea but was sweet and elegant too. In those days, we would take the fish heads and tails out of the soup pot and pluck the hidden morsels of whitefish meat off the bones. In the version that follows, you’ll strain the bones out of the broth and briefly cook some meaty (but boneless) trimmings just before serving the soup.

Turnips play an important role in Friulian cuisine, especially in the form called brovada—turnips that have fermented for several months, as a way to preserve them and to develop a pronounced and appetizing acidity. Brovada is incorporated in many dishes, grated and braised with sausages and other meats, in soups, or just as a tangy and healthful vegetable. This recipe, using fresh turnips, produces a side dish in the same vein as brovada, with distinctive acidity, well suited to accompany all sorts of cured and fresh meats. It is full of typical Friulian flavors, but you do not have to wait months for the turnip to ferment!

Everybody is familiar with lamb chops and leg of lamb—but how about the shoulder? When is that used? Well, here I give you the recipe for a roasted lamb shoulder—and you will see why it is my favorite cut for roasting. The meat is sweeter on the blade bone, and, with lots of cartilage to melt during roasting, the meat is finger-sticking good. You might not get a clean, precise cut of meat from the shoulder, but it will be delicious.

Paprika is found nowhere in Italian cuisine except in the cooking of Trieste and its surroundings. Though the years of domination by the Austro-Hungarian monarchs were resented by the Italian-speaking Triestines, their descendants have not given up the city’s traditional adaptations of Hungarian dishes like this goulash. Serve Middle European style with potatoes (boiled or mashed); Italian style with polenta or fettuccine; or with steamed rice.

Use this versatile dough to make small gnocchi with the familiar ridged shape, or in the following recipes for stuffed offelle and prune gnocchi. This same dough can also be formed into long gnocchi, page 80, cooked and dressed Friuli style with brown butter, smoked ricotta, cinnamon, and sugar. With all dishes using potato dough, keep several time factors in mind to get the best results. First, allow the cooked potatoes to air-dry thoroughly before you mix the dough—2 hours or even longer if possible. The drier the potatoes, the lighter the dough will be when cooked. Second, because potato dough is best when freshly mixed and cannot sit around, plan to shape the dough into gnocchi and cook them right away (or freeze them). If you are making stuffed gnocchi or offelle, have your filling ingredients ready when you mix the dough.

Fried fish steeped in saor, a tangy marinade of onions and vinegar, is enjoyed in all the regions around the northern Adriatic, in the Veneto, Friuli, and Istria. Many fish are suitable for this preparation, including mackerel, monkfish, young trout, even fillet of sole, but I especially love fresh sardines. When I was young and we had fried sardines for dinner, the leftover fried fish went into a crock of saor. It would keep for days and become even more delicious. With this recipe, you can assemble the dish and serve the sardines a few hours later. But if you let them marinate (in the refrigerator) for 1, 2, or even 3 days, the results will be worth the wait.

This is one of those recipes that I am sure you will cook again and again. It takes just minutes, and when you set the mussels on the table, steaming and aromatic, they beckon the whole brood. Give everyone a warm soup bowl, put a ladle in the pan to scoop out the shellfish and luscious sauce, and set a basket of grilled country bread in the middle. Nothing could be better.

In Trieste, every home and every trattoria has a pot of this hearty soup perking on the stove, especially during the winter months, when the bora, a cold north-easterly wind, blows down from the Carso mountains above the city. Bean soups with pasta (pasta e fagioli) or rice are popular here too, as in other parts of Italy, but the combination of beans and sauerkraut is the favorite by far—a perfect example of the Slavic influence on the culinary culture of Trieste.

Roast goose is a festive dish throughout all of northern Italy, but the Istrian tradition of serving goose with mlinzi reflects the culinary customs of Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. And though roast goose by itself is utterly delicious, to have a forkful of mlinzi at the same time, drenched with sauce, is absolute bliss. Mlinzi are a simple form of homemade pasta, with an unusual distinction. After the fresh dough is rolled into thin sheets, it is baked in a low oven until crisp and toasted gold. The stiff sheets are later cracked into jagged shards and cooked like ordinary pasta. As a result, mlinzi are more porous and seem to drink up their dressing—in this dish, the richly flavored sauce made from the goose’s roasting juices. The baking also imparts a lovely nutty flavor to the pasta, which complements the dark meat deliciously. That’s why roast goose and mlinzi are a match made in heaven. This is a large, festive meal and does require considerable time and attention. It is best done in stages, the mlinzi prepared and baked a couple of days in advance (see page 20) so you can focus on roasting the goose and making the sauce.