Molto Gusto_ Easy Italian Cooking - Mario Batali [1]
We created Otto Pizzeria for one basic reason, to give us a place to go with our kids that made sense in the “big three” for families: (1) to have fun; (2) to be able to find something the kids want to eat at the same place where the adults want to eat; and (3) to serve both adults and kids something that is good for them but, at the same time, delicious—without having to resort to the didacticism and sloganeering language that “health food” restaurants are trapped by. In the true world of Italian meal ideology, this is not as hard as it might seem when you look at that list: we simply created a menu that doesn’t require a huge commitment to any particular or specific course. The typical meals may change from day to day, but most people have some vegetable antipasti and a leafy salad or two, maybe some cheeses or salumi, and then split a few pastas and a few pizzas and share a couple of gelati and coppette. I do not think that after our first year anyone even noticed that there are no standard meat- or fish-based main courses served in the restaurant. And if you have been paying attention to the current food brain-trust literati, it seems that our customers were ahead of the curve. Not really vegetarian, they’ve nonetheless been eating a diet heavy on vegetables, mostly leafy, with some grains thrown in, in the form of pasta and pizza, plus farro and legumes in salads, and very little protein from animals.
What you will certainly notice quite quickly is that this cookbook is radically different from all of the others I have written in its complete lack of traditional main courses. We do not serve any “meat and potatoes” plates at Otto, and we never have. What seems to be all the rage in the smart world of foodies is simply an extension of the traditional Italian table, where farming, foraging, and gardening have always yielded the bulk of the food in the daily diet, and where the occasional pig, chicken, or cow has been the exception to the rule. The health implications of this style of diet are no new shakes either, but I think that what you will note when dining on the following group of recipes is a kind of happy passing sense of content and fullness not associated with the consumption of a huge steak or chop. Most of the protein comes from small portions of cured meats, cheeses, and grains, with any animal protein as the flavoring and the bulk of the actual comestibles plant-based, whether leaf, stalk, flower, seed, or drupe. An ideal meal for several people from this book might consist of two or three vegetable antipasti, and a salad, followed by a pasta or two and a cheese course. Or maybe a plate of salumi and then some pizzas, with a couple of gelati and a coppetta or two.
The real trick is to let the market inspire you to buy and forage for the right things, then take them home and prepare them—and spend at least that amount of time enjoying them. You will notice that many of the recipes in this book are less than half a page long. This reflects the fact that they are indeed simple and a real part of the daily lives of many Italian people, who base a lot of their cooking and eating more on great products that they merely adorn.
But I do not want to weigh you down with a lot of political rigamarole. What is most important about food is the pleasure and nourishment it gives us. The sourcing is as significant a component of the process as the cooking, but let’s not forget that the main event is not just to care for ourselves, but also to create energy for our constantly moving lives and our brains, and our laughing and singing and dancing and playing. So look at these recipes and ideas and think about smaller plates of food in a meal much less reliant on a big main course, yet still involving big beautiful flavors, and, most important, variation with the seasons. Many of the recipes are, in fact, organized by seasonal availability.
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VEGETABLE ANTIPASTI
There is nothing that inspires me more, no matter where I am in the world, than a visit to a local farmers