Eleonora Baldwin: “I’ll spare you speeches on how chicken Parmesan isn’t Italian. Volumes have been written about the dubiously Italian nature of Fettuccine Alfredo, spaghetti with meatballs, and Caesar salad. Still, there are a few generalizations and assumptions that stop me in my tracks.”
My favorite has always been “paninis”.
The fundamental essence in many Italian dishes begins with a battuto, soffritto, or trito. These elemental methods in Italian cooking are not afterthoughts or merely decorative, but where Italian flavor begins. To know Italian cooking is to become familiar with these techniques.
A battuto is a flavor base of finely chopped or beaten raw ingredients. The word is a derivative of battere, which means “to strike”, and describes the use of a chef’s knife chopping on a cutting board. A battuto is usually a very finely chopped mixture of lardo (cured pork back fat), salt pork, pork fat, or pancetta with garlic and onions. It can also contain celery, carrots, chilies, and / or other chopped ingredients. Originally, a battuto was parsley and onion chopped in creamed pork lard, but today cooks have substituted olive oil or butter for lard and added other vegetables as well. In Italy, many butchers sell a pre-made basic battuto. Simmered in water, battuto can also serve as an alternative to more expensive meat broth.
Lardo battuto is cured pork fat pounded to a cream with herbs and garlic, used for stuffing or added to a broth or stew at the beginning or end of cooking.
A battuto becomes a soffritto when it is gently sautéed in fat, usually olive oil. A more precise definition of soffritto is a mixture of vegetables – usually onion, celery, carrot, garlic, herbs, and sometimes lardo or pancetta – sautéed in olive oil or butter until they become soft and caramelized, imparting their flavors to any ingredient that follows.
A trito is the same as a battuto but doesn’t contain pork. It’s very finely chopped vegetables, usually including some combination of onions, celery, garlic, carrot, and parsley. Other cuisines use this same technique: refogado in Portuguese, sofrito in Spanish, sofregit in Catalan, mirepoix in French, and “holy trinity” in Creole cooking.
Crudo is a trito of raw vegetables and herbs or other ingredients that are added to a dish or sauce, and then cooked. It can also be a mixture of raw herbs and vegetables that is put directly on (or mixed with) cooked food just before serving, as in Venetian risi e bisi (rice and peas) or pasta primavera.
Italians take their battuti and soffritti very seriously and it’s fair to say that grandma can keep hers a secret. Here are some tips for success:
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Related: Mastering the Techniques of Sautéing and Browning
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Welcome to the new home of Bellavitae’s blog. We may have closed the doors of our physical location, but our enthusiasm for Italian food and wine remains undiminished.
Take some time to look around and see what’s new:
We hope you enjoy our new format and content. Please visit often! As always, we appreciate any comments you may have.
Grazie!
Winding down the restaurant has been more exhausting than I ever imagined. My dear friend Andreas recently invited me to spend a weekend at his mother’s home on Long Island for some rest and relaxation. Beautiful gardens and an inviting swimming pool surround her home. How could I refuse?
Andreas is an accomplished baker – his family is full of professional bakers, so it’s in his blood. Moreover, he recently completed extensive baking instruction at New York’s French Culinary Institute. What better way to relax than enjoy the garden, the pool, and baking?
I met Rose Levy Beranbaum a few months ago when she began coming to Bellavitae at the recommendation of Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg. Her cookbooks are well suited for every type of baker, from the novice (me) to the expert (Andreas). I had success with bread recipes from Rose’s The Bread Bible, so I asked Andreas if we could try some desserts from The Pie and Pastry Bible. He’s a fan of Rose’s so no convincing was necessary.
Here’s what we made:
Open-Faced Fresh Blueberry Pie (page 107)
There are several blueberry bushes on the property and the fruit is now at its peak. This pie seemed like the perfect choice. We put a twist on the recipe by using the crumb topping Rose uses on her Apple Crumb Pie (page 86). We used her Basic Flaky Pie Crust (Page 22).
The dessert turned out beautifully – the pie’s star was undoubtedly the blueberries, which we had freshly picked. No cloying sauce or heavy pastry to crowd out nature’s sweet gift to summer – fresh berries. What a delight.
Classic Napoleon (page 453)
Gulp. What dessert is more intimidating? Or more satisfying! I hadn’t had Classic Napoleon since the last time I vacationed at the Cala di Volpe. This resort hotel on Sardinia’s Costa Smeralda may very well have the best hotel lunch in the world. The freshest, most carefully crafted cuisine still remains in my memory – including their Napoleon, which I had at least once a day (!)
The Napoleon is a combination of many French classics:
Classic Puff Pasty [Millefoglie in Italian] (Page 417)
Puff pastry seems to be the threshold over which all would-be pastry chefs must cross. Once again, Rose guides you through the process with ease, anticipating any question or problem that may arise during your endeavor. And yes, Rose, we gave the pastry a total of seven turns!
Poured Fondant (Page 581)
What used to be a painstaking process for this cream confection is now extraordinarily easy with Rose’s use of a food processor.
Pastry Cream [Crème Pâtissière] (Page 560)
Rose’s version of this classic custard is light but still flavorful due to her use of whole eggs (instead of just the yolks) and half-and-half (instead of heavy cream). Fat tends to dull the palate, so a lighter pastry cream will allow other flavors of any dessert to shine (éclairs, fruit tarts, and of course Napoleons).
Chocolate Drizzle Glaze (Page 454)
As Rose suggests in other recipes, we used chocolate that had not too-high a percentage of cocoa – I think we used 52%.
Cooking – and baking – can be so relaxing. And it’s a fun project to do with a dear friend. Our two desserts turned out wonderfully and I just finished the last piece of the Napoleon today – it kept well refrigerated since Sunday.
So thanks Andreas and Rose (and Ingeborg and Wil). I have a few new techniques under my belt!
By the way, Rose has one of the most helpful websites / blogs for baking and I highly recommend it. She has developed a sizeable following of bakers that write in to offer comments and ask questions. So if you cook from one of her books and get stuck, you can simply check out her blog for comments or even write in and wait for her to answer, something that is rare in the cookbook world.
Finally, here is what amazon.com has to say about The Pie and Pastry Bible:
Reading about the ins and outs of baking the perfect, flaky pie crust is a little like reading about how to achieve the perfect golf swing: the proof is in the doing. And it often takes a remarkably intuitive reader to understand exactly what the author is getting at. Not so the work of Rose Levy Beranbaum, the author who gave us The Cake Bible. If ever there was a cookbook author who could place her hands on top of yours, putting you through the proper motions, helping you arrive at just the right touch, Beranbaum is the one.
The Pie and Pastry Bible begins with the crust. The author confesses right up front that 21 years ago, when she first began her quest for the perfect crust, “it was a complete mystery to me.” She wasn’t looking for a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but something she could consistently turn out at a moment’s notice. The ideal pie crust, she writes, “has light, flaky layers, but also … is tender, and nicely browned, with a flavor good enough to eat by itself.”
In a book that stretches to about 700 pages long, her favorite pie crust is the first recipe: Perfect Flaky and Tender Cream Cheese Pie Crust. Typically, Beranbaum lists the ingredients by measure and weight for three separate sizes of pies, then gives instructions for the food processor or by hand.
After 70 pages of pie crusts, tart crusts, and crumb pie crusts of every imaginable make and combination, Beranbaum starts with fruit pies. Her first (of many) detailed charts shows exactly what her ratios are of fruit to sugar to cornstarch. Then each recipe (start with The Best All American Apple Pie) includes pointers for success as well as several variations on the theme. Under the headline “Understanding,” Beranbaum goes that extra mile by taking the trouble to explain just why something works the way it does.
If you are only going to own one cookbook for pie and pastry recipes of every imaginable stripe and combination, you can’t go wrong with this one. It’s the Bible, after all.
–Schuyler Ingle
It’s been nearly six years since we signed our lease on Minetta Lane and prepared to open Bellavitae. Looking back, many of our concepts seem cliché now, but at the time, we were one of the pioneers in New York’s restaurant scene. Perhaps we were not always the first with these ideas, but Bellavitae undoubtedly influenced the city’s dining experience. The sincerest form of flattery comes to mind, as many of our original concepts are ubiquitous now, such as:
When the recession hit in late 2007, we immediately began to change our model to reflect the new business environment (a Wall Street background helped). I began to wear many more hats than before, and soon I was working well over 14 hours a day – every day. Over the next two years, we found ourselves in a position where, in order to continue the restaurant in our current space and within negative economic conditions, we would need either to significantly raise our prices or lower our quality – neither of which appealed to me. So in July of this year, I decided to close our location on Minetta Lane.
Our Amazing Guests
Thousands of people have visited Bellavitae over the years and, of course, scores of relationships now bless our lives. The remarkable diversity of guests who came to Bellavitae reflected one commonality: a love of good food and wine in the Italian style, prompting an almost cult following that has been simply magical.
We had the opportunity to develop friendships with many in the food and wine world; and were honored to serve numerous influential individuals, such as:
I’ve never been star struck, but it was always fun to have famous people in the restaurant, many of whom became regulars. Previously, I respected their privacy by not publicizing their patronage, but now it seems appropriate to include them in my reminiscing:
Authors / Publishing World
Journalists / Columnists
Entertainers
Events
Occasionally we held events at Bellavitae, and three stand out:
Judy Rodgers from San Francisco’s Zuni Café held a private dinner at Bellavitae and cooked some of her favorite dishes. Her cookbook remains one of my favorites and I’ll always be grateful for her kind invitation to visit Zuni and cook for a few weeks before we opened Bellavitae.
A Night in Sicily was a memorable evening when Anna Tasca Lanza prepared dinner for guests and paired wines from the Regaleali estate with dishes that came from her various cookbooks. We named one of the dishes from that event in her honor, and the dish remained our menu’s number-one bestseller until the day we closed.
Perhaps the most memorable event was in the spring of 2007 when we invited the Tre Bicchieri winners to Bellavitae after their annual tasting at the Puck Building. We prepared a great Italian feast and they brought their award-winning wines – and what a night it was. I don’t remember the menu now, but I do remember most of those who attended, and I’m not sure there has ever been a collection of such prestigious winemakers in one place outside of Italy that wasn’t some sort of promotion. This was all about having fun. I don’t think the following is a complete list of those who attended, but it sure is an impressive one:
We simply had wonderful food, award-winning and incomparable wines, and great camaraderie. How Italian is that?
On Becoming a Chef
What I’ve learned most through our experience on Minetta Lane is how difficult it is to prepare simple food in a restaurant setting. The quintessence of traditional Italian cooking is its simplicity, along with proper technique and using the highest quality ingredients.
Eating in the Italian style is about celebrating the garden rather than “sophisticated” manipulation in the kitchen. In traditional Italian cuisine, there are no complex sauces to hide behind, no short cuts on technique, and nothing available to mask improper balance or inferior ingredients. Nevertheless, after six years, the ability to perform this challenging task consistently became almost second nature to us and it’s a skill that I now proudly think of as proprietary; it is perhaps my greatest personal asset.
Grazie
There are too many individuals to thank for me to include in this post, and I hope to reach out to each person in the near future. The many people who have come into my life because of Bellavitae touches my heart and will always be a part of my soul. From staff to guests and to all of those listed above, I will be forever grateful.
I don’t think of Bellavitae as a destination, a restaurant, or even a way of life. It’s simply a way of enjoying Italian food and wine. So keep an eye on this blog, as I will continue to write about Italy’s greatest gift to the world.
So what happens next? All I can say is look for Bellavitae in the future – and look in unexpected places.
From today’s New York Times:
THE MINETTA PLAYGROUND, along Avenue of the Americas from Minetta Lane to Third Street, opened in 1935, and the play equipment looked that old. The colorful plastic furniture that the adjacent McDonald’s installed in the mid-1990s was boarded up and just plain tacky looking.
It really began to irk Jon Mudder, owner and head chef at Bellavitae, a nearby restaurant, and one day he raised the issue with a regular customer — the City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn. Ms. Quinn told him he was not alone. The city is beginning a $1.5 million renovation of the park on Monday. It is scheduled for completion by next summer. Ms. Quinn said by phone on Thursday, “I was glad he mentioned it because it had long bothered me — it looked like a Habitrail,” a hamster habitat.
You can read more about The Minetta Playground here and here
A helpful way to understand any society in history is to study its cuisine. Sicily is especially fascinating due to influence from other civilizations throughout its history. The Greeks, Phoenicians, Iberians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, and Angevins have all shaped Sicilian traditions, including cuisine. It wasn’t until 1860 that Sicily became a part of the Kingdom of Italy.
Over the centuries, Sicily has developed layers of interesting culinary traditions and unique flavor combinations. If you begin to study Sicilian cuisine, you will undoubtedly encounter Marchesa Anna Tasca Lanza di Mazzarino, one of the important historians of Sicilian food and wine.
She has written several important cookbooks, including The Flavors of Sicily, Herbs and Wild Greens from the Sicilian Countryside, The Heart of Sicily, and The Garden of Endangered Fruit. In 1989 she began The World of Regaleali cooking school at the family’s estate, which is also home to famous vineyards, groves, and gardens.
The Amazon.com review of her book, The Heart of Sicily, captures the spirit of Anna Tasca Lanza:
Many cookbooks tempt, inform, and inspire. A few capture the essence of a place, but rarely does a cookbook communicate the very soul of a place. Anna Tasca Lanza’s telling of life at Regaleali, the vast estate that has belonged to her family since 1830, is so vivid that you feel her sitting next to you, talking and turning the pages of The Heart of Sicily as if it were a photo album.
Tasca Lanza provides enough information about Sicily’s complex history and rich culture to help you understand the special nature of Regaleali and what her noble family – rich with barones, principessas, and contessas – has created. Under their stewardship, this working estate has become an international cooking school. It is also the place where Tasca Lanza pursues her passion for preserving the abundant culinary and cultural traditions of Sicily.
The short video below, narrated by her daughter Fabrizia, gives a glimpse of the beautiful estate:
In February 2005, after Bellavitae had been open less than two months, we asked Anna if we could feature her at a private dinner that would include recipes from her cookbooks paired with wines from the Regaleali estate. We would call it A Night in Sicily. Much to our delight, she enthusiastically accepted. She publicized the event on the Regaleali website where it remains today:
Anna Tasca Lanza, from The World of Regaleali, will be hosting a dinner at a new restaurant in New York. She will be at Bellavitae on Tuesday, February 15, 2005. There is a reception from 6:30-7:30 pm where you can meet this fabulous chef, and a dinner following at 7:30 pm. The dinner will be a special five-course menu featuring Sicilian dishes prepared from Anna’s cookbooks and will include a tasting of Regaleali Tasca d’Almerita wines and olive oil. A Night in Sicily will be a rare opportunity to meet and talk to a noted culinary authority and taste the flavors of Sicily here in the United States.
The evening was delightful. Guests enjoyed the food and wine pairings, as well as the interaction with one of Sicily’s food and wine authorities.
One dish stood out that evening, and it was the cauliflower. It was so impressive that we asked her if we could put it on our menu. She said, “Certo!” [Of course!]. In order to acknowledge the recipe’s source properly, we call it Cavolfiore ‘Anna’ [Cauliflower ‘Anna’].
By far, the most popular dish on Bellavitae’s menu is Cavolfiore ‘Anna.’ Imagine, the item most ordered at an Italian trattoria is a vegetable!
There are several Sicilian dishes that are similar to this recipe, including Pasta con i Broccoli Arriminati [Pasta – usually bucatini – with cauliflower, saffron, pine nuts, onion, currants, anchovies and toasted breadcrumbs]. But I suspect her recipe is based on a more well-known dish called Cavolfiore con l’Uvetta e i Pignoli [Cauliflower with Raisins and Pine Nuts]. Raisins and pine nuts in a dish divulge its Sicilian origin.
Anna substitutes currants for the raisins and adds caramelized onions. Genius. The flavors work exceptionally well together, and the sensation in the palate is most pleasing. The juxtaposition of contrasting flavors and textures create perfect balance. No wonder it’s so popular!
We thank Anna Tasca Lanza for her great work in researching, documenting, and promoting Sicilian culture, especially the region’s food and wine. And we think of her every time someone orders Cavolfiore ‘Anna.’
Here’s an excerpt from her biography that appears on the cooking school’s website:
I was the first of four children. Welcomed with great joy but with one regret: I was not a boy.
My family lived a very comfortable life. My grandparents were very much present along with my parents, a brother and two sisters. At the age of 15, I was sent to Lausanne to study at the école menagère Briamond, to learn how to be a good wife. It was a revelation to me: I learned many things, from embroidery to French cooking. When I came home after two years my father put me to the test immediately, asking me to prepare choux au fromage, which turned out perfectly (to my good fortune). But then nothing happened; for years I never again touched a saucepan. In the meantime I married Venceslao Lanza di Mazzarino, son of a great Sicilian noble family who was accustomed to eating international cuisine prepared by the cooks of the family, once called Monsù.
Mine was not exactly what one would call the life of an average housewife. I lived with Lanza in a huge palazzo in the center of Palermo, where nobody had any idea what went on in the kitchen and where the chef, every evening, questioned Count Fabrizio, my father-in-law, about what was wanted for the following day’s menu. None of us, and above all my mother-in-law, the lady of the house, ever set foot in the kitchen. These, as you can see, were other times!
When Fabrizia was born, we moved into our own household, and this changed our relationship with food because I suddenly found myself facing the stove. Encouraged by my parents, I set up a little cooking school at Regaleali, the family vineyards, assisted, at first, by my sisters Costanza and Rosemarie. I began to visit America, year after year, and got to know that extraordinary country where, with great freedom, everyone– young and old, women, men and children—is offered an opportunity in life. I got to know the world of people who work with food, all so generous and encouraging about my Sicilian adventure. In 1989 I had my first group of American students.
Promoting my school and our wines, I did a little bit of everything, writing several Sicilian cookbooks in English (these had great success), giving talks and demonstrations at the Smithsonian, with James Beard, at Cipriani, at the Culinary Institute of America. Perhaps the most moving thing I’ve done in my career was to give the Commencement speech at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, saluting and encouraging young Americans as they began their life as chefs.
Check it out in The New York Weekly Yelp.
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Congratulations to Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg; their recent book, The Flavor Bible, has received a 2010 Nautilus Book Award. The book is also a 2009 James Beard Foundation award winner for Best Book – Reference and Scholarship.
At Bellavitae, we are constantly referencing this book, which is now full of food stains from constant use! If you’re a professional chef or an enthusiastic home cook, The Flavor Bible will easily become one of your most-used reference books. More on the book here.
Well done Andrew and Karen!
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As winter fades from memory, our appetites begin to yearn for fresh spring vegetables. The two earliest to arrive are asparagus [asparagi] and fava beans [fave]. For most of the U.S., these vegetables are best from late April through mid-June. Both share important status in Italian cuisine.
Fava beans
The only bean known in Italy for nearly 5,000 years was the fava bean. Italians from central parts southward to Sicily enjoyed these beans either fresh and young or dried and later soaked in water and cooked. It wasn’t until the discovery of the New World did Italians begin growing other varieties of beans, which during the late 16th Century were introduced into nearly all of Europe and are today an important part of the Italian diet.
Fava beans are an annual cool-weather crop. Italians eat fava beans raw, cooked, or dried (after reconstitution). In Tuscany, fava beans are eaten raw with some sea salt or simply grilled while still in their pods.
As the fava plants mature in late spring, their beans become drier, starchier, and tougher. At this point, they are dried and used later in soups and other dishes.
Traditional early fava bean dishes include:
At Bellavitae, we are serving fresh fava beans my favorite way – Tuscan-style. We shell fresh fava beans, combine them with small cubes of fresh Pecorino Toscano DOP (young Tuscan pecorino), and drizzle liberally with Tuscan olive oil. Nothing says spring more than this dish.
Dried fava beans are used mainly in soups and purees. But here are a couple of other traditional Italian dishes that use dried fava beans:
Asparagus
Asparagus is found throughout Italy and the vegetable is served raw, grilled, fried, boiled, dressed with sauces, or deep-fried in batter as part of a fritto misto. There’s even an Italian saying – attributed to the Roman Emperor Augustus – “Velocius quam asparagi coquantur.” [Let it be done quicker than you would cook asparagus].
Asparagus is one of the oldest domesticated vegetables. It grew wild along the Nile in ancient Egypt. The Greeks enjoyed the vegetable and introduced it to the Romans. Asparagus was believed to be an aphrodisiac – the name comes from Greek meaning “to swell to be ripe.”
The best-known variety is probably Asparagi Bianchi del Bassano, the white asparagus from the town of Bassano del Grappa in the Veneto. It is grown entirely underground by about 100 local farmers. They deliberately keep the plants in the dark – a process known as etiolation – as a result, no chlorophyll develops in the spears, which remain white. J.S. Marcus wrote an interesting article in The Wall Street Journal about how Italians go wild for this variety beginning in early March each year that dates back to the mid-16th Century.
Classic Italian dishes using asparagus include:
Sicilians adore wild asparagus, which has a pleasantly bitter taste. This recipe calls for wild asparagus tips sautéed in an earthenware pan with white wine, tomato paste, and salt. (Sicily)
At Bellavitae, we are offering fresh asparagus two ways:
The growing season for both fava beans and asparagus is very short – some six or seven weeks. Then it’s on to other vegetables: first peas, then fresh basil (pesto!), and, well, I’m dreaming about juicy summer tomatoes.
Meanwhile, celebrate spring in New York – Italian-style at Bellavitae.
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