Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking - Marcella Hazan [266]
Insalatone—Mixed Cooked Vegetable Salad
IT TAKES a considerable amount of time to assemble all the components of this magnificent cooked salad, but the time it needs is mainly for cooking, not for watching, so you might plan on doing it when you have something else on the fire that requires lengthy cooking, such as a pot roast. Serve this salad the same day you make it, without refrigerating it, and with some of the ingredients still lukewarm, if that is possible.
The preparation of the ingredients is necessarily listed as a sequence, but in fact, except for the beets, which can be done a day or two earlier, they can all be done at the same time and taken in any order.
For 6 servings
3 medium round, waxy, boiling potatoes
5 medium onions
2 yellow or red sweet bell peppers
½ pound green beans
3 medium or 2 large beets, baked as described
Salt
Extra virgin olive oil
Choice quality red wine vinegar
Black pepper, ground fresh from the mill
1. Preheat oven to 400°.
2. Boil the potatoes with their skins on as described. Drain when tender, peel while hot, and cut into ¼-inch slices. Put on a serving platter.
3. Meanwhile, bake the onions with their skins on on a baking sheet placed on the upper rack of the preheated oven. Cook until tender all the way through to the center when prodded with a fork. Pull off their skins, cut the onions into halves, and add them to the platter.
4. Char and peel the peppers as described, split them to remove the pulpy core with all the seeds, and cut them lengthwise into 1-inch-wide strips. Add them to the salad platter.
5. Boil the beans as described, drain and put them on the platter.
6. Squeeze off the dark skin of the baked beets, cut them into thin slices, and add these to the salad.
7. Toss the salad with salt, enough olive oil to coat all ingredients, a dash of vinegar, and liberal grindings of pepper. Taste and correct for seasoning, and serve at once.
Beans and Tuna Salad
THE SALAD given here is basically a bean salad, enriched by tuna and flavored by onion. The proportions of the ingredients, however, can be adjusted to suit individual tastes. The balance can be tipped in favor of tuna, if that is what you prefer, particularly if you have access to very good tuna in olive oil sold in bulk. Nor would it do much damage to use a whole onion instead of a half; remember to slice it very thin, as described in the basic method for preparing onion for salads.
For 4 servings
1 cup dried cannellini white beans, soaked and cooked as directed, and drained, OR
3 cups canned cannellini beans, drained
½ medium onion, preferably of a sweet variety, such as Bermuda red, Vidalia, or Maui, sliced and soaked as described
Salt
1 seven-ounce can imported tuna packed in olive oil
Extra virgin olive oil
Choice quality red wine vinegar
Black pepper, cracked fairly coarse
Put the beans and onion into a serving bowl, sprinkle liberally with salt, and toss. Drain the tuna and add it to the bowl, breaking it into large flakes with a fork. Pour on enough oil to coat well, add a dash of vinegar and a generous quantity of cracked pepper, toss thoroughly, turning over the ingredients several times, taste and correct for seasoning, and serve at once.
Seafood Salad
IN SUMMER, in Italy, seafood salads are everywhere, on every buffet table, on every fish restaurant’s list. They are hard to pass up because when they are good, they are very, very good. Unfortunately, they are sometimes trotted in and out of refrigerators more often than one would rather know, and are totally lacking in that vibrant, fresh taste that is their whole reason for being. The only road a seafood salad should travel is directly from the kitchen to the table with no overnight stops or detours through the icebox. The best reason for making it yourself at home may just be to be able to control that.
For 6 to 8 servings