The food available in Italy is truly outstanding. Perhaps I'm simply thinking with my belly, but while there are those who flock to the leaning towers & such like for their sense of wonder, a meander about the local markets is doing it for me. I'm in La Spezia, medieval capital of northern Italy's Ligurian coast, & here, on worn cobblestones, surrounded by avenues of elegantly aging buildings with great wooden doors at street level & wrought iron balconies above, flower pots everywhere, green shutters & peeling paint, are the markets where I've been going for supplies; that's the place I've found for my daily fix. Just the other day, I bought a couple of ropes of small freshly made sausage Montignoso from an open air deli there.
An audience had gathered by the time my purchase was made. Apparently, it's unusual to stand at the counter gawping at all the long/short/fat/skinny mouldy skinned sausages, cheeses in wheels & bubbles; wax paper & twine wrapped treasures. So enraptured was I at the display before me that the old lady overseeing the operation ended up climbing down off of the stool upon which she was perched to come & join the man serving me. She gathered slices of cheese & cuts of cured meat on the way over & pretty much fed me by hand, one piece after the other &, with my eyes closing at the delight of each mouthful, chuckling & speaking Italian as she fed me the next piece. Had I died & gone to heaven?? My belly thought so...
Sausage
Montignoso,
speciality of the
region of its
name, is essentially a cured pork
sausage. I ate one raw, torn open for me to inspect & to taste. I mean, me: 'what's that?' deli dude: 'here, eat!' just like that - the way to shop, I reckon. So I shopped, I ate, I bought sausage Montignoso. It's a sweet mix, a little spicy, a hint of fennel I thought, & it's small in size. In fact, it is made simply of 'the best, noble parts of the pig, the leg, the shoulder & the neck', salt & pepper, garlic & lard, & water; curing giving the final taste a delicate, slightly sour note. Mt first thought married it up with the tomatoes I'd tasted a few moments before...& what else? Onions, garlic...& perhaps in some way use up the ridiculous quantities of fresh sage & basil I was now carrying by the armful, in branches.
& so, something alike to a peasant stew began to form in the cooking pot of my mind...
ingredients: salsiccia montignoso & friends
onions garlic fennel bulb -2 of each
red & yellow peppers - 1 or 2 of each
salt & white peppercorns - pinches
butter & olive oil -again, be generous
fresh herbs, in abundance, roughly chopped -basil/parsley/sage/thyme
fresh ripe beautifully ugly tomatoes - delicious like from heaven's lab -lots&lots
sausage Montignoso - whole, still tied together if that's how they come
wine-am using a local dry white, grown on the Cinque Terra & simply called 'Cinque Terra'
* preheat oven to about 200, olive oil into 2 or 3 roasting dishes
* in one dish, peel&quarter onions & fennel, cut garlic bulbs in half cut side down, peppercorns&salt
*roast the peppers, whole, then remove when skin begins to burn, cool, peel & deseed
*if using tomatoes (this time I didn't, tho next time I will) cut in half, scoop out seeds, season, drizzle a little olive oil on top, a knob of butter, sprigs of thyme in there, about a glass of wine, oven for about 15-20 minutes
*oven roast the sausage - I like to use the same dish that held the fennel, getting transference of flavour. make sure to toss them from time to time, so they colour evenly. the meat stays quite pink inside, & is succulent. Once done, I pull the string & it cuts thru the now delicate skins, all the little sausies dropping one by one into the dish.
*to bring the dish together, combine all in a large bowl. Make sure you use a spatula to get all the tasty bits from the roasting trays! Separate the fennel & onion loosely, squeeze out the garlic from its skin, slice the capsicums, either slice the Montignoso or leave them whole, throw in the handfuls of fresh herbs...toss once, twice, serve.
*bulghur wheat/risotto, pasta/couscous make great accompaniments, tho I must say I prefer a nice thin spaghetti. A glass of something light & white, well it goes without saying...
buon appetito
(ok, so a little trip to Pisa can't hurt, since it's in the neighbourhood)
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