Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking - Marcella Hazan [191]
3. When all the ingredients are evenly combined, shape the meat into a firmly packed ball. Place the ball on any flat work surface and roll it into a salami-like cylinder about 2½ inches thick. With your palm, tap it sharply in several places to drive out any air bubbles. Turn the roll in the bread crumbs until it is evenly coated all over.
4. Choose a heavy-bottomed pot—possibly an oval or a rectangular roaster—that can snugly accommodate the meat roll. Put in the butter and oil and turn on the heat to medium. When the butter foam subsides, put in the meat. Brown it well all over, using two spatulas to turn the roll to keep it from breaking up.
5. When you have browned the meat, add the wine, and let it bubble until it is reduced to half its original volume. In the process, turn the roll carefully once or twice.
6. Turn the heat down to medium low and add the chopped reconstituted porcini mushrooms. Add the tomatoes and their juice to the pot together with the filtered mushroom liquid. Cover tightly and adjust heat to cook at a gentle, but steady simmer, turning and basting the meat from time to time. After 30 minutes, set the cover slightly ajar, and cook for another 30 minutes, turning the meat once or twice.
7. Transfer the meat roll to a cutting board. Let it settle for a few minutes, then cut it into slices about ⅜ inch thick. If the juices left in the pot are a little too runny, boil them down over high heat, scraping the pot with a wooden spoon to loosen any cooking residues stuck to the bottom and sides. Coat the bottom of a serving platter with a spoonful or so of the cooking juices, place the meat slices over it, arranging them so they overlap slightly, pour the remaining juices in the pot over the meat, and serve at once.
Bollito Misto—Mixed Boiled Meat Platter
THE TIME MAY COME when bollito misto will become part of the heroic legends of our past and be a dish we only read about. And when we shall have to be satisfied with just reading, we won’t do better than to look up Marcel Rouff’s The Passionate Epicure and the episode of Dodin Bouffant’s boiled beef dinner for the Prince of Eurasia.
In the meantime, if we travel to Northern Italy, we can still profit from a visit to those few restaurants where a steam trolley is rolled out to our table, and a waiter spears out of its vapors a moist round of beef, a whole buttery chicken, a breast of veal or even a satiny shin, a cut of tongue, or a cotechino—plump, rosy pork sausage soft as cream. Or we can gather a crowd of lusty eaters at home and produce a bollito misto of our own.
The recipe given below is for a complete bollito and will serve at least eighteen persons. You can reduce it by more than half simply by omitting the tongue and the cotechino. If any of the other meats are left over, they can be used in a salad. Leftover beef is, if anything, even more delicious than when it has just come out of the pot; see the recipe. And the greatest bonus of all may be the stupendous broth: You can freeze it as described and use it for weeks to make some of the best risotti and soups you have ever had.
For 18 or more servings, if making the full recipe
2 carrots, peeled
2 stalks celery
1 onion, peeled
½ red or yellow sweet bell pepper, its seeds and pulpy core removed
1 potato, peeled
1 beef tongue, about 3 to 3½ pounds
2 to 3 pounds boneless beef brisket or chuck
¼ cup canned imported Italian plum tomatoes, drained and cut up, OR 1 whole fresh, very ripe tomato
3 pounds veal breast with the short ribs in
A 3½-pound chicken
Salt
1 cotechino sausage, boiled separately as described, and kept warm in its own broth
1. Choose a stockpot that can contain all the above ingredients, except for the cotechino. The depth of flavor and aroma of a great bollito misto—and of its precious broth—comes from all the meats cooking together. If you don’t have a single large pot to do it in, divide all the vegetables into two parts, cook the