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Chicken with Polenta
Take a small chicken; clean and prepare it. Take a slice of ham fat four fingers wide and one finger long (or one tablespoon of good lard). Chop up very fine with a chopping knife, and put into a good-sized saucepan. Take one-half an onion, a small carrot, a piece of celery, and cut all into very small pieces and add them all to the fat. Then put in the chicken, the salt, pepper, and a pinch of allspice, and cover the saucepan. Cook until the chicken is covered, basting with the grease, and turning the chicken until it is brown on all sides; then add one-third of a glass of red or white wine. When the wine has become absorbed, add one tablespoon of the tomato paste, dissolved in a cup of hot water (or a cup of tomato sauce not too thick). Cook for a few moments more--until the chicken is thoroughly cooked. Prepare the Indian meal as in receipt for Indian meal, and serve the chicken surrounded by the Indian meal, with the sauce poured over all and grated cheese sprinkled over the Indian meal.
Pigeon may be prepared in the same way as the chicken and served with the Indian meal; or either one may be served instead of the Indian meal with rice, as in receipt for Risotto alla Nostrale; Macaroni, as in receipt for Macaroni with Butter, or Ribbon Macaroni, as in receipt given.
A straightforward pollo in umido — chicken browned in a chopped fat-and-vegetable base, deglazed with wine, finished in tomato — served over polenta. Most of the work is in reading the vague quantities.
- Indian meal is cornmealThe polenta of the title is made from the book's separate cornmeal receipt. Coarse or medium-ground yellow cornmeal, cooked in salted water until thick, is what is meant.
- The ham fat measurement is garbled"Four fingers wide and one finger long" reads like a muddled description of a strip of fat, possibly a translation slip; a small piece, an ounce or so, will do, or take the alternative the recipe already offers -- one tablespoon of lard. Diced pancetta or prosciutto fat does the same job.
- "Cook until the chicken is covered"Another translation stumble. It means cook until the bird is coated in the fat and browning, not submerged in liquid. Keep the heat moderate so the onion and carrot soften rather than scorch while the skin colours.
- A third of a glass of wineIf a glass is taken as an ordinary drinking glass of 6 to 8 fl oz, a third is roughly 2 to 2 1/2 fl oz, or 4 to 5 tablespoons. Add it to the hot pan and let it cook off before the tomato goes in.
- Tomato pasteRead this as a very concentrated paste. A tablespoon dissolved in a cup of hot water is right; do not substitute passata or you will thin the sauce too far.
- "Cook for a few moments more" is wrongA whole small chicken needs 45 to 60 minutes covered over low heat, turned occasionally, and the thigh should read 165F. Jointing the bird into eight pieces first cuts that to about 35 minutes and makes serving easier.
- PigeonProbably a young bird, what would now be sold as squab, and much smaller -- two birds for four people, with 25 to 30 minutes of braising. An older pigeon will need considerably longer.
- Cheese and yieldGrated Parmigiano or Grana Padano over the polenta. One small chicken with polenta serves three to four.
Simple Italian Cookery belongs to a small wave of early twentieth-century books that set out to explain Italian home cooking to American households at a time when "Italian food" in the United States was often reduced to macaroni and red sauce. The dish itself is ordinary northern and central Italian practice: a battuto of chopped fat, onion, carrot and celery softened into a soffritto, the meat browned in it, wine to lift the pan, then tomato to make the sauce -- the same sequence behind countless braises. Polenta as its partner reflects the maize that spread through the Po valley and the Veneto after the sixteenth century and became a staple starch of the northern poor, cheaper than wheat and endlessly reheatable. That the author offers rice, macaroni or ribbon macaroni as equal substitutes says something honest about regional Italian cooking: the braise is the dish, and the starch under it is whatever the region and the household happen to have.