Biscotti book review

Biscotti is a book on how a cookie can save your life. Baked and written by Mona Talbott and Mirella Misenti

I had never been to the American Academy in Rome. I missed the Alice Waters visit in spring and never followed up on the insisting advice of friends, fellows and bloggers to sit down at the AAR table and and enjoy the fruits of its collaborative dining program. I'd been putting off savoring the delightful fares prepared by Executive Chef Mona Talbott and her busy staff of assistants, interns and supporters of the Rome Sustainable Food Project for too long.

So yesterday I broke the spell. I walked through the heavy gates of the Academy's monumental main entrance, and timidly followed my steps as they echoed in the stunning courtyard lined with marble busts and bas reliefs.

Memories of teenhood naturally occupied my mind as I noticed the house next door. A beautiful two-storey townhouse nestled in a corner of the Janiculum Hill, where my mates Claudia and Joana once lived with their parents Celeste Maia and Robert during their stay in Rome. Growing up here, and living in apartment buildings, it's rare to experience a "house" in the middle of the city. Sloped roof, wooden floors, personal handrail on the stairs, children's height measurements etched in a door frame, back door, garden... a house. I loved that house. Most of all I loved the olfactory impact it had on me each time I first walked in: the aromas of Maia's Mozambique/Portuguese fusion cuisine mixed with the adorable smell of oil paint oozing from small metal tubes and unfinished canvases in her studio.

Peeking through the hedge as I neared the Academy's main building, I took a moment to observe the house. Not so big as I remembered it (funny how size and scale invert as you grow up). It's undergone a little renovating, gotten a fresh hand of paint and a lazy gardener has let the surrounding lush forest slack a bit. But it still exercises its fascinating charm on me. I continue straight ahead.

End of digression.

Light drizzle of rain. Warm lighting invades the cold winter from the cozy salone to the right of the main staircase. I catch a glimpse of Mona Talbott tending last minute tweaks to the buffet table laden with trays of spiced and nutty cookies, turning a perfect salver of minuscule fig-newtons clockwise by 2 degrees, brushing a crumb from the white linen tablecloth...

Downstairs, the panel is ready. The room is packed, interns proudly occupy the front rows. Kids high on sugar and beauty, giggle behind door jambs. The room falls silent. Mona Talbott introduces the book BISCOTTI, written and baked a quattro mani–four hands for a magic duo. Fifty recipes. Fifty love letters to the palate. Each memorable little cookie infused with the history and conviviality of la cucina romana, rich Sicilian confectionery art, Chez Panisse, American childhoods, tall glasses of milk, and solid international friendships. All coconut kisses, pistachio morsels and sesame Reginas aside, the best part of the afternoon tea and book presentation, is meeting Mona's co-author, Mirella. A shy and graceful donna del sud.

Sicilian-born Mirella Misenti worked in the Academy's kitchen as dishwasher. As told beautifully in Mona's introduction of BISCOTTI, Mirella was never a professional cook. But like many of us Italians, grew up cooking and baking alongside her mother, nonna, aunts, etc. Possessing the passion, pride, and perfectionism necessary to qualify as pastry chef, she was "promoted" in the field by Mona. Happily wearing a different apron, Mirella began making her native island's biscotti, and not just for fun, or for staff snacks. Mona describes Mirella's Sicilian pastry knowledge and cookie contributions as elegant and inspired. They took their rightful place in the American Academy's daily production.

As I drive back home, the rain has subsided. I smile at the pleasant irony of having bumped into many friends, made new ones and worked out extraordinary coincidental acquaintances and schoolmates from my academic past in a setting like the Rome American Academy.
Signed copy of the book and stash of biscotti tucked in my handbag, I linger on Mona's kind words, "Without Mirella there would be no Rome Sustainable Food Project Biscotti book––she was the key ingredient."

That's why I believe this is not only a committed and socially involved recipe compendium. It's a book about friendship, love, and how a cookie can indeed save your life.

Image © Annie Schlechter

Pasta alle noci recipe

A couple of weeks ago I posted a recipe for a Ligurian specialty, focaccia stuffed with cheese, a sinfully tasty delight. Today I want to tell you about another typical recipe from that blessed region: salsa alle noci.

Ligurians dress their pansotti (herb-stuffed ravioli) with this creamy walnut sauce. It is however also excellent daubed over spaghetti, ribbed penne, mafalde or linguine (or any other pasta type that "grabs" the condiment).

Traditionally salsa di noci was called tocco de nux and prepared with walnuts harvested during the autumn months. To make your own nutty concoction, assemble:

150 g (3/4 cups) husked walnut meats (you can blanch them to make peeling easier)
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 garlic clove, minced
1 pinch of dried marjoram
100 g (1/2 cup) fresh ricotta cheese
Salt and pepper

Using a mortar and pestle (or thrown in a blender), reduce the walnuts, garlic, marjoram and a pinch of salt to a fine powder, diluting with a thread of olive oil. Work in the ricotta with a fork, and blend well.

Use 2-3 tablespoons of the obtained sauce to dress your pasta. Always remember to save a small amount of starchy pasta cooking water for a creamier effect.

The completed dish can be dusted with finely grated Parmigiano Reggiano, a spin of the pepper mill, and garnished with a fistful of coarsley ground walnut meats. Serve lava-like hot in contrast with the chilled bottle of stand-by white wine...

Note: For those who have trouble with garlic, in this dish, it can be substituted with less pungent chives.

How to buy fresh fish

The one weak spot in seafood is its perishable nature. Already after few hours from being caught, the heinous action of enzymes and microorganisms begins to attack fish. This more so during torrid summer months, when the high temperatures hasten the alteration process. It is however not impossible to identify truly fresh fish.

As handed down by expert fisherman, old family friend and Positano sea authority Salvatore Capraro, here is a checklist of what you should always consider when buying your beautiful fresh pesce.

• Rigidity: when holding a fish horizontally by the head, the body should never fall limp, rather maintain a somewhat stiff condition. 

• Firmness: flesh should appear solid yet elastic to the touch. A good trick is to press a finger gently on the fleshy part: the trademark of freshness is if the dent disappears almost immediately.

• Eyes: fish eyes must be alive, shiny, convex and rounded to the outside. An eye that is sunken or flat, opaque and dull looking means the fish has been dead for a long time.

• Skin: must appear lustrous and well taut. Scales, if present, should remain well attached to the body, even when lightly stroked in opposite growth direction. Furthermore, in extremely fresh fish, the entire body is usually shrouded by a thin and translucent organic film.

• Gills: should always be pinkish-red, intact, clasped shut and laced with transparent mucus. If the fish has a blowhole or nostrils, they should always be found tightly closed too.

• Belly: the abdomen of the fish is the part that contains all the entrails, and which is the easiest to alter. If that should happen in a fish, the belly would result flaccid or swollen. A fresh fish's belly is instead turgid and flexible.

• Smell: Extremely fresh fish smells like the sea. A salty, marine fragrance. The aroma should be subtle and never unpleasant.

• Fins & Tail: must be in perfect condition, never frayed.

When buying squid, octopus or calamari, the best way to judge the tentacled creature's freshness is by closely examining its appearance.

• Color: It should always be bright and clear. After a few days, colors fade and become opaque, and in the central "belly" areas, the flesh acquires a yellowish-gray tone. Three to four days from the catch, cephalopode skin begins to form new colors, initially in small specks, then extending to larger body areas in various shades of pink, all the way to a burgundy wine color. At this point, the mollusk is no longer edible.

The role of seafood in the Italian diet has always been very important. Devoted Catholics eat fish on Fridays and all days of penitence, for example all during Lent.

Most large cities in the past had fishmongers to meet this demand, but there were also traveling fish merchants who, on their itinerary, covered those towns too small to support a specialized fish store. Globalization has wiped out this custom almost completely.

Many local pescivendoli and pescivendole – Italian for fishmongers and fishwives – are trained at selecting and purchasing, handling, gutting, boning, filleting and selling their marine product.

You can read more about surviving neighborhood fishmongers like Signor Mastroianni pictured above, in the article I contributed to The Travel Belles.

Spaghetti al limone recipe

The welcome freshness of the lemons brings a whiff of spring in the bleakness of this rainy mid winter. If you decide to make homemade pasta from scratch for this recipe, your guests will have an extra reason to feel pampered.

500 g (1.1 lb) spaghetti
The juice of 2 unwaxed lemons
80 g (1/4 cup) cold, unsalted butter
Parmigiano Reggiano, finely grated

This dish will take 20 minutes to make. While you wait for the pasta water to boil with a fistful of coarse sea salt, cube the cold butter in small pieces, halve the lemons and finely grate the Parmigiano. No microplane for this, please use the classic cheese grater surface.

You'll be emulsifying the sauce in a large warmed bowl, so pour 1-2 ladles of starchy pasta water in the bowl to break the chill. Prep everything in advance because you'll be working quickly once the spaghetti is cooked.

Drain the spaghetti al dente with a pair of tongs (to retain pasta cooking water) and toss them into the bowl. Throw in the butter. Squeeze le lemons through a strainer to catch the seeds, tossing the squeezed halves in the bowl as you go. These will end up in the individual plates, too 

Work quickly: stir briskly using a wooden spoon to blend and coat the pasta, beating up the lemon halves as you do. This emulsifying phase will render a glossy, lemony, buttery coat to the spaghetti strands.

Plate quickly and pile a lot of finely grated Parmigiano Reggiano in each plate.

You can pair your lemony pasta with fruit-forward white wine and a veal second course, or a rich arugula salad with seasonal fruits, steamed prawns and flowers thrown in among the greens.

Buon appetito!

Focaccia al formaggio recipe

Much of the cuisine of Liguria has origins in the historical port of Genoa and the many nearby businesses that offered quick meals for the camalli, the local dock workers. Liguria street food devotees flock to the sciamadde, which were typical streetside shops with wood-fired ovens in back, where you can still sample the local fainà, a slang twist of the word farinata, a pancake-type flatbread made with chickpea flour (regional shift on Cecina).

Tasty deep-fried treats served in a paper cone include frisceu, tasty sage, borage, and lettuce fritters (depending on the season), fried battered fish, strips of panissa (fried codfish), zucchini blossoms and sgabei (fried bread pieces). Other portable foods that are easy to eat on the go are Liguria's traditional vegetable pies: in Genoa there's pasqualina–a paper-thin crust stuffed with collard greens, eggs and local prescinseua cheese; with a variety of different fillings, from seasonal artichokes, zucchini, pumpkin, and onions to mention a few.

But the flagbearer of Ligurian street food is focaccia. Here this delightful flatbread – and don't call it pizza, for heaven's sake! – is eaten at all hours: with espresso or cappuccino for breakfast, or as an aperitivo snack, along side frosted glasses of Sciacchetrà or Pigato wine. A number of tasty variations on the original focaccia can be found all along the Ligurian eastern and western rivieras: in the province of Imperia there's pissallandrea, made from bread dough and topped with sautéed onions, Taggiasche olives and anchovies; in Sanremo there's sardenaira, made with tomatoes, basil, marjoram and thyme, garlic and onions, and the punchy machetto, a paste made with salted sardines and local olive oil. Another wood-fired speciality typical of Ligurian portable food is fugassa, a soft foccaccia made from wheat flour, left to rise for many hours and then served hot from the oven, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with grains of sea salt.

It is the town of Recco however that claims paternal origin of the most decadent, messy and flavorful of Liguria's focaccias: the unique Focaccia al Formaggio.

500 g (2 1/2 cups) all purpose flour
400 g (2 cups) soft cheese, like Crescenza or Stracchino (or any mild and creamy cheese that will melt)
5 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
Lukewarm water
Salt

Preheat oven at 200° C (390° F).

Add a pinch of salt to a hollow mound of flour, and slowly add the oil and small amounts of lukewarm water to obtain a firm, satiny dough. Shape it into a small loaf, wrap it in a clean cloth, and let it rest for an hour.

Divide the loaf in 2 equal parts and roll out the dough in 2 flat disks, about 1/8-inch thick.

Grease a cake pan and lay one of the disks. Sprinkle the surface with the cheese, and blanket with the second layer of dough. Jab the entire surface with the tines of a fork, but don’t pierce it through. Baste with a little olive oil and season with (very little) salt.

Bake in the hot oven for 40 minutes and apply to face.