Advanced Cooking Day 4 & 5

Day 4: Pesce (fish)

     Fish is very important in Italy due to the Mediterranean Sea and the rivers that are within Italy. During Roman times, there were fights on the sea because everyone wanted the fish in it, therefore it became dangerous and limited to get. The people of Italy decided to turn to the rivers within their nation for their fish. In Roman paintings and mosaics, you can see fish depicted in them. In recipe books dating back to the 1300 and 1400s, you can see the expansion of fish within their diet because of the diversity of the fish and cooking techniques they used. 

Eels were often looked upon as pets or gods during Roman times as well. The male eels are called amguilla and can be as big as 500 grams. The female eels are called capitone and they can get as large as 5- 6 kilograms in size. The common way to cook them are by grilling or pickling. 

Back in the day, they had a dish called spaghetti alla scoguo (rock) which was where they boiled a piece of rock with all of the shellfish and seaweed still attached to it. The water had a very strong fish taste to it and then they would boil the pasta right in the same water. 

Today, my group made orata al sale, which is a dish made with either bronzino or sea bream (we used sea bream) that is baked in a salt crust. I was able to clean the sea bream which was very cool for me as a baker! The fish was stuffed with lemon, rosemary, and garlic. 

I have had bronzino before that was baked in a merigue crust at school and when comparing the 2, the salt crusted one is definitely not as flavorful. The fish though here is very fresh, therefore not a lot is added to it because it is already very flavorful on its own.

I know very little about sea bream and decided to look into the history:
Sea bream is a species of Sparidae fish (a family of fish that are in the order of Perciformes, referring to sea breams and porgies). They stick out from other fish by their oval thinner body and their jaws have about 6 rows of small teeth. They are silver and have a blue tinge to their skin. They can reach a maximum of 60 cm in length and life in northern Europe and the Mediterranean. They are often found in schools and eat seaweed and invertebrates. 

We also made zuppa di pesce, which is a fish soup made with mussels, squid, sea bream, red mullet, basically any fish you have! the broth is made very simply and poured over the fish and then baked. This was extremely flavorful and very simple to make. I really liked the simplicity to this dish because it did have such a bold flavor. 

The final dish we prepared was eels with bay leave and we just skewered them and grilled them with a little oil and then brushed with balsamic vinegar. This was very simple also, but to prepare the eel was very difficult. The eels we had were very small, therefore we could not remove the skin. The bones in the eels added a crunch when eating them which was not my favorite. I wonder if we could remove the spine next time? 

Day 5: Carne (meat) 

Today we worked with traditional Italian meat dishes! In Italy, very little meat is eaten and even during Roman times, they tended to eat more fish than meat. Back then, people who worked with meat were not considered equal to a pastry or executive chef, often looked down upon. When the Barbaric people came to Italy, they brought with them the use of a lot of butter and fat, which was very different from Italian's diet. Italians can be linked to Christianity and within that religion, meat was regulated and may only be eaten about one third of the year because they were not allowed  to eat it before Christmas, Easter, or on Fridays. Meat began more of a dish to be served at celebration of big festivities, but definitely not a daily meal. 

Throughout the years, the evolution of the meat that was eaten changed as well. Around the years 800-900, Romans were eating mainly birds; then they changed to veal, then to more beef. Sheep was very easy to farm, where cows were used mainly for work, transportation, and pulling machinery. Pigs became influentially important because the Germans used a lot of pork meat and when the barbaric people came to Italy, they brought pig with them. They became so important that the size of fields were measured in how many pigs they could fit! When pigs were wild, the profit on them was extremely hig h because they were not fed by a farmer, but when stabled pigs became the norm, farmers were losing money. This created salumi because if they hadn't, they would have not made any money.

Since we have not talked much about salumi, therefore I wanted to look up a little history on it:
Salumi has been a very important part to Italian cuisine especially in the North. It is often served there as an appetizer, where in the south, we barely see salumi "courses." The word salumi comes from the Italian world "salume" which means salted meats. This word came from the Latin word sal or salt. The cured meats maturing process has 3 phases: spreading salt, evaporation of water, and variation of acidity. The different types of preparations and flavors comes from diversions of these 3 basic phases. There are 2 different types of matured meat products: the whole piece and minced meat. The whole pieces are meats like proscuitto, culatello, coppa, pnacetta, and speck. A minced meat product would be something like salami.

In class today, my group prepared Ossobucco, a traditional meat dish made with veal shank that is rubbed on the inside with garlic, salt, pepper, and rosemary. It is then braised for about one hour per pound, then rubbed with a garmelata rub of lemon peel, rosemary, and garlic. We were not able to eat it today as it took too long to cook, but we are very eager to try it tomorrow! 

Tomorrow is risotto day, probably my favorite dish in the world! 

Fun Facts of the Day:
~ What are the three most prominent civilizations influencing Italian Cuisine and in which regions is their influence most visible?
~ Describe the impact of their influence. 
In class, we have learned a lot about 2 groups of people that really influenced Italian Cuisine: the barbaric people and the Arabs. Furthermore, the French also played a role in the Italian cuisine as well. When the barbaric people first came to Italy, they brought with them the cooking of meat and also pork. Before them, meat was not used much in Italy before then because it was not very popular. The Arabs brought with the chickpeas and different rices with them to Italy. They brought back rice after centuries of it flying under the radar of people. With rice, risotto was eventually born, more in the North and very little in the south. 

With Love,

Baylee