Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking - Marcella Hazan [39]
A small garlic clove, chopped fine
1 egg
3 tablespoons parsley chopped fine
⅛ teaspoon dried marjoram OR ¼ teaspoon chopped fresh
Salt
Black pepper, ground fresh from the mill
½ cup dried, unflavored bread crumbs
⅓ cup extra virgin olive oil
1. Put the dried mushrooms in 2 cups of lukewarm water and let them soak for at least 30 minutes.
2. Put the soft crumb and milk together in a small bowl or deep dish and set aside to soak.
3. Wash the fresh mushrooms rapidly under cold running water, and pat them thoroughly dry with paper towels, taking care not to bruise them. Gently detach the stems without breaking the caps.
4. Line a wire strainer with a paper towel and place it over a small saucepan. Lift the porcini from their soak, but do not discard the liquid. Pour the liquid into the strainer, filtering it through the paper towel into the saucepan. Rinse the reconstituted porcini in several changes of cold water, making sure no grit remains attached to them. Add them to the saucepan and cook, uncovered, over lively heat until all the liquid has boiled away.
5. Preheat oven to 400°.
6. Chop the cooked reconstituted porcini, the fresh mushroom stems, the pancetta, and anchovy fillets all very fine. It can be done by hand or in a food processor.
7. Put all the above chopped ingredients in a mixing bowl, adding the basil leaves and chopped garlic. Take the milk-soaked crumb into your hand, squeeze it gently until it stops dripping, and add it to the bowl. Break the egg into the bowl. Add the parsley, marjoram, salt, and several grindings of pepper, and thoroughly mix all the ingredients in the bowl with a fork until they are combined into a smooth, homogeneous mixture. Taste and correct for salt and pepper.
8. Stuff the mushroom caps with the mixture from the bowl. Put enough stuffing into each cap to make a rounded mound. Sprinkle the mounds with bread crumbs.
9. Choose a baking dish that will accommodate all the mushroom caps side by side in a single layer. Smear the bottom and sides of the dish with a little of the olive oil. Put the mushrooms in the dish, stuffed sides facing up. Crisscross the mushrooms with a thin stream of olive oil, lightly daubing the stuffing.
10. Place the dish in the uppermost level of the preheated oven and bake for 30 minutes, or until the mounds of stuffing have formed a light crust. After removing from the oven, allow them to settle for several minutes before serving.
Bagna Caôda—Hot Piedmontese Dip for Raw Vegetables
THE FLAVORS and sensations of the winter season are nowhere more affectingly celebrated than at a Piedmontese table when the bagna caôda is brought out: They are expressed by the austere taste of the cardoons, artichokes, scallions, and Jerusalem artichokes and others that form the classic assortment of dipping greens; by the cold of the raw vegetable softened by the heat of the sauce; by the spritzy, astringent impact of the newly racked wine that is its traditional accompaniment.
Caôda is the Piedmontese word for hot, and heat, in the sense of temperature, not spice, is an essential feature of this sauce. In Piedmont, table burners fed by candles keep bagna caôda at the desirable temperature, but any contraption whose purpose is to keep food hot, whether it is fed by candles, electricity, or canned heat, will do the job. Nonetheless, for esthetic reasons if for no others, an earthenware pot is what you want for your bagna caôda and, if you don’t already own one, there may be no better reason than this to get one.
For 6 to 8 servings
¾ cup extra virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons garlic chopped very fine
8 to 10 anchovy fillets (preferably the ones prepared at home), chopped fine
Salt
1. Choose a pot over which you will subsequently be able to rest, double-boiler fashion, the saucepan in which you are making the bagna caôda. Put water in it and bring it to a lively simmer.
2. Put the oil and butter in the pot for bagna caôda, turn on the heat to medium-low, and heat the butter until it is thoroughly liquefied