Another recipe from Ari, for all us tomato-lovers. -Jillian

To quote Calvin Trillin, “. . . pappa al pomodoro, (is) the bread-and-tomato soup that is somehow missing from most of the supposedly Tuscan restaurants in America.” He wrote that a number of years ago, but in rereading his quote, I think it still holds true — for some reason this soup rarely shows up on restaurant menus (at least ones that I’ve seen). It is really good, and rereading this bit, I think I’m reminded how good it is. In fact, I’m probably going to go ahead and make some in the next day or so — it’s really that good. In our part of the world there are only about eight weeks a year when it’s worth making and those eight weeks are now!

If you aren’t familiar with Pappa al Pomodoro, it’s a great and exceptionally easy to make Tuscan tomato and bread soup. Like most of the foods I love, it relies on great ingredients — good tomatoes, excellent Tuscan olive oil, fresh garlic, and good bread. Like all good country recipes, there are hundreds of variations, so every book you look in and everyone you talk to is going to give you a slightly different version. But if you’ve never made it, here’s the simple overview:

Chop a couple cloves of fresh garlic and saute in a lot of olive oil slowly ’til it’s soft (you can also add some chopped onion if like. Or the sun-dried organic garlic from the Mahjoubs in Tunisia is great as well — very sweet and very good). Lightly seed four or five good-sized tomatoes and then cut into chunks. (Actually, I recommend roasting the tomatoes to char their skins first, a tip I learned from Judy Rodgers excellent “Zuni Cafe Cookbook” – just roast over an open flame as you would bell peppers, cool slightly then slide off any charred skins.) Add the tomatoes to the oil and garlic for 10 or 15 minutes, enough to cook the tomatoes but not so much that you turn them into a dense paste.

Then cut about the same amount of leftover bread as you did tomatoes (Rustic Italian, Paesano or Farm bread would all work well). Add it to the pot along with a bit of broth or water. Simmer for another fifteen minutes. The soup should be pretty thick, the texture of a hearty bean soup. Add a good dose of chopped fresh basil, some sea salt and black pepper to taste. Turn off the heat, cover the pot and let stand for about ten or fifteen minutes so that the bread absorbs the liquid.

When you’re ready to serve, give the soup a quick stir. Be gentle so that the bread maintains its shape and texture — there should be chunks of bread in the soup, not breadcrumbs. The texture of the soup should sort of resemble a very loose bread pudding almost. Ladle it into warm bowls then pour on a very generous ribbon of full flavored fruity olive oil — the oil is one of the key flavors so the bigger more interesting the oil you choose the better the soup will be. If you want you can make a “cross” on the soup with the oil on each bowl before serving as they do in Tuscany. To my taste, the more oil the better.

Serve with sea salt and pepper and a nice green salad and you’ve got a pretty great meal. -Ari

 

Saturday's tomato harvest from my garden. -Jillian

The tomatoes are coming ripe in droves in my little garden, and are at the Farmer’s Market now by the bushel. Ari wrote up a few tomato recipes recently, all of which sounded really tasty and easy so I thought I’d share them here one at a time. First, here’s Ari’s Pan-Roasted Tomato Sauce. Enjoy! -Jillian
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Pan-Roasted Tomato Sauce

I’ve told a few of you about making this over the last few weeks as the tomatoes were coming in the market in such profusion. I’ve been asking around about it because I’m sure something like this sauce must exist in some traditional cooking somewhere, but I haven’t found it yet. If you know about it send me some info – love to learn something new.

Anyways, the story of the sauce really came out of being sort of lazy. I had a lot of tomatoes and they were really good and I was wanting to make some tomato sauce. I like roasted tomatoes a lot but it’s sort of hard to do them on the open flame and I was tired and didn’t feel like risking the mess they make if you flame-roast and aren’t really careful about what you’re doing. So I decided to cut my tomatoes into chunks and drop them into a hot, dry skillet. “Dry” as in no olive oil or anything. Just metal and heat. You could probably add garlic cloves if you want too though I didn’t. I let the tomato chunks cook without stirring for a while, probably about six or seven minutes, so that they got sort of pan-charred. Then I stirred them once, to move them around in the pan and char the parts that weren’t already getting black. I added a little sea salt, stirred and char again. The tomatoes do get kind of dark—I’d say it was in the pan for probably fifteen minutes but each cook can of course decide for him or herself what they like.

While that was happening I got my pasta water boiling. When the tomatoes are dark enough to my taste I add the salt and then the pasta and start that cooking.

When the tomatoes look cooked and charred I add some hot water from the pasta pot, some olive oil, and the Maras red pepper Zingerman’s Deli gets from Turkey. If there are fresh herbs you want, add them too. Ditto for a piece of Parmesan rind if I have that sitting around—adds depth of flavor at basically no cost. Add some anchovies at the end if you’re feeling so inclined (being a big anchovy lover, I’m often so inclined), or some chopped arugula or other greens. I keep the sauce simmering pretty steadily while the pasta cooks, adding more water from the pasta pot to thin it if I need to.

When the pasta is almost done I drain it, then dump it into the sauce, stir gently but thoroughly and then cook for another minute or two so that the pasta absorbs a bit of the sauce. (I’ve been very partial to the Rustichella Primo Grana Chitarra of late.) Anyways, served with ricotta or some fresh goat cheese crumbled on top it’s a very easy and very good way to eat. You could, now that I think about it, drop cubes of fresh mozzarella in at the very end, just long enough to warm them but not so long that they melt completely into the sauce.    -Ari

Corn is from the “New World” — why did polenta become a staple back in Italy? Please read on for Ari’s answer. -Jillian

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Polenta; Past and Present

by Ari Weinzweig

Since corn arrived in Europe only after Columbus’ first visit to the Western Hemisphere, it would be reasonable to assume that the history of polenta would seem to start in the Americas. But in truth ground corn meal was a natural next step for people who were already making similar porridges from chickpea flour, chestnut flour, millet, barley and other grains. The Romans used the names pulmentum and puls for these dishes, either of which could have served as a linguistic root for the modern term polenta. In post-Roman, but pre-Columbian times, buckwheat arrived in northern Italy from Asia in the 1200s. Known to this day as Grano Saraceno (the Saracen grain), it too was dried, ground and made into gruel.

Corn came to Italy long after this tradition of porridge eating was well established. In Italian it is referred to as granoturco (“Turkish grain”) which would indicate that, despite its North American origins, it arrived from the Ottoman east, most likely via Venetian traders. One old Italian name for corn is meliga, or melica, derived the even older word for millet to which it was commonly compared. (On the label of the Marino polenta you’ll see the word “meira,” which is Piemontese dialect for meliga.)

In the second half of the 17th century Piero Gaioncelli of Bergamo imported corn and cooking to the region of Bergamo northern Italy. Like the potato in Ireland, the new arrival was seen as a long needed way to feed the poor economically. In a surprisingly short time it was well established as the daily fare of poor people across much of the north; the first part of the 18th century has been referred to as the “Golden Age of Polenta.” Polenta remained a staple of the poor, primarily in the north, right through into the early years of the 20th century. That was the good news. The bad news took a little longer to surface.

Unbeknownst to the Italian peasants who relied on it, the ground corn meal they were cooking was notably different from the seemingly similar meal Americans were eating. Invisible to the naked eye, the Italians skipped a step from the traditional Native American preparation, leaving people on the peninsula vulnerable to a previously unheard of disease.

In the Western Hemisphere corn had long been preparing the dried kernels in water that’s been spiked with an alkaline substance such as wood ash, lye or quicklime. This cooking step loosened the husk and most importantly, unlocked the natural niacin in the enzymes of the corn kernel. Humans need niacin; without it, our tissues start to degenerate. The Native American discovery of this process permitted them to make a cuisine that relied heavily on corn—supplemented by beans and squash—nutritionally viable. Betty Fussell, America’s queen of corn knowledge, called this corn cooking technique (formally known as nixtimalization) the, “…true gift of the Aztec…” Left whole, this limed corn is usually called hominy in the south. Dried and ground it becomes grits.

Polenta makers skipped this stage of the process. The corn was simply grown, dried and then ground, but never nixtimalized. Why disregard such an important step? Convenience, it seems. Europeans were apparently aware of Native American corn cooking techniques. They assumed—incorrectly—that the point of the process was flavor. For poverty stricken northern Italian peasants, polenta was pretty daily fare in the winter; they relied on corn as 19th century Irish came to rely on potatoes. Early in the 18th century, increasing number of poor Italians began to fall victim to a new disease, called pellagra. (The name means, literally, “rough skin.”) The symptoms included nervousness, sore joints, mental illness and the just-mentioned rough skin—appeared when weather began to warm in the spring, after the peasantry had been eating little but polenta for months.

The onset of pellagra left much of the northern Italian peasantry looking pallid and unhealthy. At first corn was blamed, and actually banned, as the cause of pellagra. Many note taking travelers commented on this. In his, Italian Journey 1786-1788, Goethe wrote that: “Of the (Italian) inhabitants, I have little to say and that unfavorable…(the) sallow complexion of the women spoke of misery and their children looked just as pitiful…I believe that their unhealthy condition is due to their constant diet of yellow polenta…”

With little else to eat though, many peasants continued cooking polenta just as they had. Finally, early in the 20th century scientific advancement made clear that nutrient-deficient diets, not corn itself, was the cause of pellagra. Fortunately, it’s one health problem that people don’t have to worry about anymore.

One interesting 20th century side note: Carol Field, writing in, In Nonna’s Kitchen, reported that Italian women’s resistance to the Fascists came when they didn’t want to give up their copper paiolo for polenta cooking. Not surprisingly the government gave in before the women did and let them keep their pots.

Today of course, polenta is one of the most glamorous players in the high, international interest in Italian eating. Perhaps we’re entering another golden age of polenta.