Cousin Caveman's Prehistoric Italian Recipes

[no. 5]

Numero cinque,

Tra me e te, mi Italiano esta arruginito. Mi nonna e morto. So I learned all I could from her when I was a kid.

Mine is nearly nonexistent, I wrote the above with much help from my sister.

 

[stratman]

I really want to start taking lessons, my Spanish is much better, since I've lived here all my life I've learned to speak it, its the only way to survive in Miami, my wife speaks Spanish perfectly and she's from Boston, at first it was funny with her Boston accent. Now she lost her Boston accent and speaks Spanish like a local. I want Mikey to learn Italian and Spanish, but we have to wait on that one. I think the Major and Highfihoney both know Spanish, I might be wrong.

 

[ChrisJam]

Sugar and liver

Of course this is my uncle's recipe, from Little Italy, I adopted it as my own.

[big snip]

a pinch of sugar if acidity too strong for taste--I never use it

I'm coming to this thread late, because I spent a long time out of state recently helping my parents.

Stratman, I'm a big time foodie. I live near a huge university, one with lots of international grad students, postdocs, and professors. My GF is a prof there. Over the past 10+ years I've been fortunate to have had many Italian friends. In fact, the wife of my local best friend is Italian. Most of the Italian people I've known are good cooks, and have given me recipes and tips.

One tip was your sugar one. Two good Italian cooks from the group, though, preferred adding some finely sliced carrots instead of sugar. They said they do it for all their red sauces, and that they did it in Italy, too. (For those of you who don't know, carrots would sweeten the sauce. I suspect Strat would know this.)

Strat, I rarely have to use a sweetener for my red sauces, whether they're a quick Marinara or a long-cooking ragu, puttanesca, or Bolognese. The few times I've had to temper my sauce's acidity--sometimes I use homegrown tomatoes or store-bought tomatoes that are unknowns compared to good, canned tomatoes--I'll throw in some good fruit jam instead of sugar or chopped carrots, if needed. When I do it--usually with blackberry jam, because we almost always have it on hand--we can never taste the fruit itself, but it balances out any tomato tartness. (Yup, I know sugar'd do the same.) According to my Italian friends, my idea is acceptable.

-------
Liver:

I don't have the liver quote from later in the thread. But wow, I hate liver. I've never liked it. I've had it from my mother's cooking, I've tried it in American restaurants, and I've had it in Europe. In Europe, I've tried fois gras from the best Paris fois gras shop and I've had cooked liver from a dairy farmer who slaughtered his own organic cow for the meat. I hate it all. That said, my GF likes liver, and my father loves liver. Though I can't stand it, I always try to buy him some when I'm in France, so he can enjoy the really good stuff.


Chris

 

[stratman]

Sometimes I use carrots. The best tomatoes in my experience are San Marzano, sweeter too, they're a bit pricier, you can only get them canned, unless you live in Italy. The liver in my recipe is only marginal, enough to add another layer of flavor, unless you know what you're looking for you won't notice.

 

[mtrycrafts]

That sound marvelous but I will wait for an invite