Italian Wedding Soup
With its hearty combination of winter greens, beans, and meatballs Italian Wedding Soup is perfect for a winter time family meal. It’s also an ideal vehicle to explore the history and necessity of recipes. January is National Soup Month. Why not try your hand at Italian Wedding Soup? Without a recipe?
Italian Recipes or Cooking Like Cesarine
Nach Waxman is profiled in an interesting set of clips on Chow.com in their terrific “Obsessives” series (Remember Chef Chris Cosentino I profiled in Head to Tail Dining? He was also an "Obsessive" interviewed by Chow.) Waxman is the owner of the quirky and revered Kitchen Arts & Letters. Though he makes his living selling cookbooks, he laments that Americans need them to cook from. Gone are the days when people had skills, and confidence, and could create a meal without a strict set of steps, measurements and guidelines to follow.
This brings us back to Italian Wedding Soup. This is the perfect recipe, or non-recipe, for making Waxman’s point. If you were cooking in Italy with someone’s Nonna, perhaps on a culinary vacation cooking with the Cesarine (link to the Cesarine in that article), chances are you would not see her whip out a book or an index card. The Cesarine organizations take travelers into the homes of women who are "kitchen cesars" - guardians of true regional Italian cuisine.
Cooking like our Grandmothers or Nonnas Did
It might go something like this. Assess what greens you have to use, what bread you have on hand leftover from dinner. Go shopping. Pick up whatever other greens look good that day. Get bread if you need it (day old is best.) Go to the butcher and get some inexpensive meat ground for meatballs.
At home you would roll little meatballs (small enough to sit easily in a soup spoon.) Use day old bread soaked in some milk, add a grated onion and a little parmigiano-reggiano, some marjoram or oregano, S&P. You could boil some small noodles (ditalini or orzo). You could use some tomatoes.
Fry the meatballs in some olive oil. Remove them and saute onion, carrots, greens (escarole, rapini, chicory, kale - any combination will do.) Add a little wine, some stock. Throw in some beans, a rind of cheese, add back the meatballs and let everything warm up together. Taste, adjust. Maybe a little red pepper flakes. Grate a little cheese on top and serve.
There. Not really a “Step one dice 1/4C of....x” set of instructions. Nervous? Perhaps we have become a nation of cooks who have lost our self-confidence in the kitchen. Another result of our loss of cooking confidence and mastery is that we often do not recognize in-authentic cuisine when we are served it. A group of dedicated Italian chefs is out to change that.
Celebrating True Risotto MIlanese "Say No to Bogus Italian Cuisine"
January 17th is the International Day of Italian Cuisines (click link for information, recipes and videos). The International Day of Italian Cuisines will be celebrated with a special event at the new Italian Culinary Academy. The Virtual Group of Italian Chefs will be represented in a special Risotto Milanese event at the sister school of the FCI on Thursday January 15, 2009.
Chef Cesare Casella, Dean of Italian Culinary Studies at the ICA, will be hosting a media and industry group reviewing the purpose of the day. Then, he will cook risotto milanese for the guests. Rosario Scarpato food/wine expert and Hon. President of GVCI and top chefs from New York, Otto Italian Restaurant in Singapore, La Credenza in Torino will participate. Food Network chef and New York restauranteur Anne Burrell (pictured below) will also be participating.
For more information: The Italian Culinary Academy (see ItalianCulinaryAcademy.com) Is the sister school of the French Culinary Institute. Thursday January 15, 2009 from Noon to 2 PM is the special Risotto event. Call Alexandra Boardly at Knight Communications 210.966.3075 for more information.
Jacqueline Church - Award-winning writer, speaker, teacher on topics at the intersection of gourmet and sustainable food issues.
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