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 19th 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).
