Italian Regional Cuisine: Northeast (Pasta in Reverse)

Class started with a lecture about yesterday's region as well as today, then we got down to it. The menu included minestrone milanese (the classic soup), Polenta con Sugo de Porri (sausage and polenta), Fritto Misto de Mare (fried bits o' seafood), Polpette Fritte (meatballs with raisins and pinenuts), Fagiolini con L'Orore di Vaniglia (marinated string beans with vanilla), and Zucchini in Scapece (fried zucchini with mint and vinegar). Dirty Dave and Chef Jr took the meatballs, Dora the Explorer was set off to explore with the beans and zucchini, Speedy did the sausage polenta and the fried seafood, and I went after the soup.

The soup called for fresh pasta, so I made fettuccine. Speedy juiced beets yesterday, so Chef K instructed me to make my gluten n' yolk heavy pasta again with the beet for color. I admit, it was a really good feeling to have my own thang specifically requested by Chef K. I suggested to her that such a pretty pasta would be wasted all chopped up in a dark colored soup like minestrone. So we talked, and she called up for a short stack of ingredients -- heavy cream, walnuts, pears, pear brandy. We had tallegio on hand.

She gave me instructions without amounts: reduce the cream, add cheese, make napé. Slice pears thin, with skin on, sauté in butter to slightly brown, flambé with brandy. Toast walnuts in oven. Add them all together, serve with beet pasta. She demoed for me how to plate a nice pasta -- take a serving fork, twist around the fork, then deposit the circular mound on plate, sauce around it, and garnish. This pasta was surprisingly good, with the funky cheese and the mildly sweet pears really amping each other. The beet pasta did not taste beety at all, though it's slightly sweet edge didn't hurt this recipe. It was like pasta in reverse: pale sauce and red pasta. I can't wait to serve this kind of dish to B -- it's pasta and sauce, sure, but it so.....not boring!

The minestrone was pretty straight forward. Sweat pancetta and onions in olive oil, then sweat celery and little flat squares of carrot for a solid 15 minutes. Add stock, little flat squares of potato, a large sachet of herbs (parsley, thyme, basil, garlic) and chicken stock, season. After 10 minutes, throw in diced zucchini. At the end, finish with little squares of fresh pasta and hit it with salt and grated Parmesan. Hearty and satisfying and flavorful, not life changing.

I tried the minestrone of Stalker Kowalski's group, and it was much more flavorful than mine. A few students said mine needed more salt, which may have been the case, but the flavor profile was just too different. Maybe they browned their mirepoix for more flavor?

Class ended with a tasting of three different kinds of prociutto, a parma, a san danielle, and a cutello. The first was sharp and familiar, the cutello oddly mild and vaguely sweet, and the san danielle absolutely delicious, balanced in its sharp and sweet and meaty notes. Of course, that one is the most expensive...

Tomorrow, we head south to the Central Region.

ADDENDA:
Assisted in a 'French Steakhouse' recreational class this evening, made some fun dishes leading a group of civilians. We made a great dish of blanched and shocked stringbeans mixed with sautéed mushrooms and shallots and whole toasted hazelnuts (gotta make a vegan version for the HVS), oysters on the halfshell (everyone was so fascinated by how to shuck 'em), and a grilled hanger steak with decadent bourdelaise (sweat shallots in butter, add red wine, reduce by half, add equal amount of veal stock, reduce until thick, finish with bits of bone marrow).

BREAKFAST: 6:30am, good granola with good milk, .5 bowl, hunger 3/5
Really missed this granola, picked up 3 packs from the farmer's market before yogacize.

AM TASTINGS: 11am, beet pasta with pears, walnuts and cream sauce, 2 fried shrimpos, half a meat ball, a few spoonfuls of sausage and polenta, a few spoonfuls of minestrone soup, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

PM SNACK: 2:30pm, green salad, mint chip ice cream, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 9:30pm, hanger steak, bourdelaise & marrow sauce, string beans and mushrooms with hazelnuts, pommes anna, 4 profiteroles, water, 1.5 bowls, hunger 4/5

EVENING WATERING: quart of 11:30pm, lightly bubbled seltzer