Veal and Chicken Stew, an Italian Recipe

Mr. A received in the mail the gift Arufa & M got him in Italy.  It was a box set of four cookbooks on Vegetables, Fish, Meat and Desserts, Cakes, Cookies, the “1,000 Recipes From the Cooks and Restaurants in the Slow Food Osterie d’Italia Guide” (edited by Bianca Minerdo and Grazia Novellini).  

He browsed through all four books immediately.  Right away, he found an interesting recipe titled “veal and chicken stew”.  He conjured up an image of a casserole of boiled chicken, chunks of veal breast and shank, root vegetables, all in a rich stock.  As he read on, he knew that he was way off the mark.  

The leading sentence of the recipe set the tone.  It read “Clean and wash the brain, sweetbreads, marrow, testicles, and cock’s crests in cold water.”  For sure this was not for the squeamish eaters, he thought.  

The brief recipe continued: 

“Blanch separately in boiling salted water for 5 minutes.  Allow to cool, and cut into small pieces.  Chop the veal fillet and calf’s liver to pieces of the same size.   Melt a knob of butter in a skillet with bay leaves and, in separate batches, brown the meat and liver, the offal, and diced porcini mushrooms.  Melt more butter in a large pan, and add all the ingredients.  Pour over the dry Masala, white wine vinegar, adding a little broth if necessary.  Cook for another 10 minutes, season to taste with salt and pepper, and serve hot.”

This recipe comes from Ristorante Sotto la Mole in Turin.  It was devised in the 19^th century for bankers and financiers of Turin, thus its Italian name “Finanziera”.  The English name “veal and chicken stew” is totally misleading as it is not a stew, the only chicken part is cock’s crest, and the veal is mostly offal.  This old-fashioned local dish sounds delicious to Mr. A.  He has eaten all but one of the ingredients before in separate dishes as roasted marrow bones, pieces of crispy sweetbreads as well as whole creamy ones, sauced cock’s crests and mushroom in a pastry puff, and so on.  But having all of them on a single plate is a culinary tour de force, a masterpiece of Italian cooking.   

Unfortunately Mr. A won’t be able to cook this dish at home as many ingredients are not easy to come by where he lives.  Besides, this is not Mrs. A’s “cup of tea”, so to speak.  He has to wait for the day that he and Mrs. A can travel to Turin to eat it at the Ristorante Sotto la Mole.

(Note:  A picture of the dish can be found on the Tripadvisor site under “Sotto la Mole, Turin”; look for “Finanziera alla Piemontese” posted by Senor blunotte79 in Nov 2013 in the section of visitor photos).