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By Root 3999 0

whether fresh or preserved, is sliced paper thin, using a tool that looks like a pocket mandoline. Lacking such a tool, one can use a potato peeler. The slices can be distributed, as generously as one’s means will allow, over homemade fettuccine tossed with butter and Parmesan, over risotto also made with butter and Parmesan, over veal scaloppine sautéed in butter, on a traditional Piedmontese fontina cheese fondue, or over fried or scrambled eggs. Although one generally uses truffles thus, without cooking them, on the principle that there isn’t anything cooking could do that could make them even better, an extraordinary expansion of flavor takes place when truffles are baked with slivers of parmigiano-reggiano cheese, particularly in a tortino or gratin consisting of layers of cheese, truffle, and sliced potatoes interspersed with dabs of butter.

TUNA

Tonno

In towns along both coasts of Italy, people used to buy the plentiful, cheap fresh tuna, boil it in water, vinegar, and bay leaves, drain it, and put it up, submerged in good olive oil, in large glass jars. It was one of the tastiest things one could eat. Acceptable canned tuna has long been universally available, and few cooks now bother to make their own.

Good canned Italian tuna packed in olive oil is delicious in sauces, both for pasta and for meats, and in salads, particularly when matched with beans. It used to be quite common on supermarket shelves, but it has been crowded off now by cheaper products packed in water. None of these is of any use in Italian dishes, least of all the wholly tasteless kind called light meat tuna.

Buying canned tuna For Italian cooking, only tuna packed in olive oil has the required flavor. The most advantageous way to buy it, is loose from a large can: It is juicier, more savory, and less expensive. Some ethnic grocers sell it thus, by weight. The alternative is buying smaller, individual cans of imported tuna packed in olive oil.

VEAL SCALOPPINE

Scaloppine di Vitello

Some of the most justifiably popular of all Italian dishes are those made with veal scaloppine. The problem is that it is exceptionally rare to find a butcher that knows how to slice and pound veal for scaloppine correctly. Even in Italy, I prefer to bring a solid piece of meat home and do it myself. It is, admittedly, one of the trickiest things to learn: It takes patience, determination, and coordination. If you do master it, however, you’ll probably have better scaloppine at home than you have eaten anywhere.

The first requirement is not just good veal, but the right cut of veal. What you need is a solid piece of meat cut from the top round and when your relationship with the butcher enables you to obtain that, you are halfway to success.

Slicing What you must do at home is to cut the meat into thin slices across the grain. The ribbons of muscle in meat are tightly layered one over the other and form a pattern of fine lines. That pattern is the grain. If you take a close look at the cut side of the meat, you can easily see the parallel lines of closely stacked layers of muscle that should appear on each properly cut slice of top round. The blade of the knife must cut across those layers of muscle exactly as though you were sawing a log of wood across. It’s essential to get this right, because if scaloppine are cut along the length of the grain, instead of across it, no matter how perfect they may look, they will curl, shrink, and toughen in the cooking.

Pounding Once cut, scaloppine must be pounded flat and thin so they will cook quickly and evenly. Pounding is an unfortunate word because it makes one think of pummeling or thumping. Which is exactly what you must not do. If all you do is bring the pounder down hard against the scaloppine, you’ll just be mashing the meat between the pounder and the cutting board, breaking it up or punching holes in it. What you want to do is to stretch out the meat, thus thinning and evening it. Bring the pounder down on the slice so that it meets it flat, not on an edge, and as it comes down on the meat, slide it, in