Читать книгу Made in Italy: Food and Stories - Giorgio Locatelli - Страница 74

Around Milano, there are a few recipes that break with the tradition of serving pasta or risotto followed by a meat course by bringing the two together. Many reasons are given, but the main one is that when the men came home from the factories they had only one hour to eat, so it was seen as a quick way of having your meat and carbohydrate together – the same principle as the American hamburger.

The most famous of these dishes is risotto Milanese (saffron risotto) with osso buco, but stuffed cabbage is another that I have always loved. When my grandmother made this dish, the smell would fill the whole house. When I came home from school, I knew what was cooking as soon as I opened the door, and I couldn’t wait to eat it.

My grandmother served it in the traditional way: a big dish of risotto alla Lodigiano (made with grana cheese) with a portion of the mondeghini – cabbage stuffed with meat – on top. Let’s not forget that, forty years ago, to eat meat twice a week was a luxury – whereas now it is almost a luxury not to. So you would share what meat there was, cooked inside the cabbage, which was a way of stretching whatever food you had.

Now, because I am cooking in a London restaurant and because we all live in a more affluent society, we have played with the old idea a little. So meat (in this case sausage meat) and cabbage have become the main ingredients, and the risotto is now the garnish.

½ recipe quantity of Saffron risotto (see page 226)

1 large Savoy cabbage

350g sliced white bread, crusts cut off

175ml milk

400g good quality plain pork sausages, skins removed

1 small garlic clove, finely chopped

sprig of sage, finely chopped

sprig of rosemary, finely chopped

1 tablespoon freshly grated Parmesan cheese

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

½ wine glass of white wine

20g butter

salt and pepper

If you are making fresh risotto, follow the recipe on page 226 but keep cooking it until it is ‘overcooked’ – about 25-30 minutes, so it is really sticky and dry. Don’t finish with any butter, just the Parmesan. If you are using leftover risotto, put it back on the heat, add a little hot water or, better still, hot stock, and cook it for about 10 minutes, until it reaches this ‘overcooked’ stage. Keep on one side.

Discard the outer leaves of the cabbage and choose 8 fairly large inner ones. Blanch them in boiling salted water until just soft, then drain, rinse under cold running water and pat dry.

Soak the bread in the milk. Put the skinned sausages in a separate bowl and mix with the garlic, sage, rosemary and Parmesan. Squeeze the bread and add to the sausage mixture. Season and roll into 8 balls, each about the size of a golf ball.

Lay the cabbage leaves out flat and cut out the stalks with a sharp knife. Now you need to make little balls of cabbage-wrapped sausage meat – to do this, hold a cloth in one hand, put a cabbage leaf on top, and then a ball of the sausage mixture in the centre. Close your hand so that the cabbage wraps itself around the sausage meat. Turn your hand over and, with the other hand, twist the bottom of the cloth so that it squeezes the cabbage into a tight ball. Unwrap the cloth and trim the cabbage of any excess, leaving enough to enclose the sausage meat completely. Repeat with the rest of the sausage meat and cabbage leaves. If not using straight away, keep in the fridge.

Heat a sauté pan on the hob, add the olive oil, spoon in the risotto and press into a ‘cake’. Cook until crisp and golden underneath, then place a plate over the top and turn over the pan, so the risotto cake lands on the plate. Slide it back into the pan to crisp up the other side.

While the risotto is crisping up, heat another flat pan large enough to hold all the cabbage balls. Put in the vegetable oil and add the cabbage balls, smooth side down. Cook over a medium heat for 2-3 minutes, turn them over, then add the white wine. Cover with a lid and cook for another 15 minutes, very slowly, adding a little water (or chicken stock if you have it) if the liquid evaporates. Remove the cabbage balls from the pan and keep warm. Let the liquid in the pan reduce a little, then add the butter to make a slightly creamy sauce. Take the pan from the heat.

Slice the risotto into whatever shapes you like and place on 4 serving plates, with the cabbage balls on top. Drizzle over the sauce.