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Meat with Ribbon Macaroni
Take a piece of ham fat, one finger high and four fingers wide, chop up fine with a piece of onion, piece of celery, piece of carrot, and put into a saucepan. Take three-quarters of a pound of meat, either lamb, veal, beef, or fresh pork, cut it into several pieces, salt and pepper it, and put a pinch of allspice, then put it into the saucepan; cook it until it is well colored, then add two tablespoons of red white wine. When it is absorbed add one tablespoon of tomato paste, dissolved in water, or tomato sauce of fresh tomatoes (receipt Tomato Sauce No.1). Cook over a moderate fire, one hour longer if the meat is veal or lamb, and one and one-half hours to two hours for pork or beef, adding water if necessary.
This meat can be served with Ribbon Macaroni. Put the meat in the middle, the macaroni around it, and the sauce over all, adding two tablespoons of grated Parmesan cheese to the macaroni after it is boiled, and mixing well before putting it on the platter. Sprinkle on a little more cheese before carrying to the table.
This dish can be made equally well with left-over meats of any kind, turkey being especially good served this way.
A small braise built on a chopped fat-and-vegetable base, the ancestor of every Sunday ragù. The measurements are given in fingers and pinches, so read the proportions rather than the numbers.
- "A piece of ham fat, one finger high and four fingers wide"Roughly 2 to 3 oz of fatty cured pork — prosciutto end, pancetta or unsmoked bacon all work. Chopped fine with the onion, carrot and celery it becomes a battuto, the flavour base; it should render slowly rather than fry hard.
- "Red white wine"Almost certainly a printer's slip for "red or white wine"; the recipe gives no guidance on which to use with which meat. Two tablespoons is a genuinely small deglaze — enough to lift the browned fond, no more.
- Brown the meat properly"Cook it until it is well colored" is the hinge of the dish. With only two tablespoons of wine and a spoonful of tomato, all the depth comes from that initial colouring, so do it in batches in a wide pan rather than crowding the meat.
- Cut size"Several pieces" from three-quarters of a pound points to chunks rather than fine stew dice, served whole in the centre of the platter with the pasta ringed around.
- A moderate fireOn a modern hob this is a bare simmer with the lid ajar. The stated one hour for veal or lamb and one and a half to two for beef or pork still holds for a braising cut; a lean loin or leg will be dry long before then.
- Tomato pastePeriod tomato conserva was generally more concentrated than a supermarket tube; the recipe also allows tomato sauce made from fresh tomatoes. One tablespoon dissolved in water gives a thin, brick-coloured sauce, which is what is wanted — this is not a heavy tomato ragù.
- Ribbon macaroniFlat ribbon pasta, of the kind now sold as fettuccine, tagliatelle or mafalde; the recipe does not say whether it is made with egg. Mix in the grated Parmesan after the pasta is boiled, as directed, and slacken with a little pasta water if the cheese clumps.
- YieldThree-quarters of a pound of meat will stretch to about four with pasta, though the recipe specifies no pasta quantity and no number of servings, and assumes a larger meal of several courses.
- The leftover versionWith cooked meat or turkey, skip the long braise: make the battuto and tomato base, then warm the meat through for ten or fifteen minutes so it takes up the sauce without falling to threads.
History: The vagueness of the measurements — fingers, pieces, pinches — is domestic shorthand of a kind common in English-language books on Italian cooking. The structure is textbook: a battuto of pork fat with onion, carrot and celery, meat coloured in it, a splash of wine, a little tomato, then long slow cooking. That the same page offers the dish as a way of using up cold turkey suggests a readership being handed an Italian technique and a thrifty domestic problem at once. The instruction to stir grated Parmesan into the pasta and then sprinkle more at table is spelled out in a way that implies readers who might not know to do it.