Home › Cereals › Macaroni à la Milanaise
Macaroni à la Milanaise
Cook macaroni as for Macaroni à l'Italienne, reheat in Tomato Sauce II, add six sliced mushrooms, two slices cooked smoked beef tongue cut in strips, and one-half cup grated cheese.
A two-line assembly recipe that assumes you have two other Farmer recipes already in hand. Everything hinges on having the pasta and the sauce ready before the garnishes go in.
- What the cross-references mean"Macaroni à l'Italienne" supplies the boiling method borrowed here: macaroni broken up, cooked in salted water until soft, and drained (Farmer's Italienne then goes on to dress it). Farmer's Tomato Sauce II is a flour-thickened tomato sauce of the usual type; any competent tomato sauce of pouring consistency, roughly 1 1/2 to 2 cups, will do.
- The macaroni itselfIn 1896 macaroni was commonly sold in long tubes, broken into short lengths before boiling, and cooked until soft rather than al dente — Farmer's macaroni directions run to about twenty minutes. This recipe names no quantity; around half a pound of dried elbows or ziti, cooked to package time, suits the sauce and garnishes given.
- MushroomsSix sliced mushrooms means six whole caps, sliced — perhaps 4 oz. Canned mushrooms, already cooked, were available to Farmer's readers. If using fresh, sauté them in butter until the liquid has evaporated before adding, or they will thin the sauce.
- Smoked beef tongueTwo slices of cooked smoked tongue is about 2 oz, cut in matchsticks. Delicatessen tongue is still sold in some cities; otherwise a firm smoked ham, bresaola or good salami cut the same way plays the same part, which is salty, dense, and cut fine enough to distribute.
- The cheeseGrated cheese in this book usually means Parmesan for Italian-style dishes; half a cup grated is about 1 1/2 oz. Stir it in off the heat so it melts into the sauce rather than seizing into strings.
- Reheating"Reheat in Tomato Sauce II" means fold the drained macaroni into the hot sauce over low heat just until warmed through, a couple of minutes. This is not a baked dish and needs no oven; long simmering turns the pasta to paste.
- YieldDepending on how much macaroni you cook, roughly four servings as a light main course or six as a side. It goes to the table immediately — the sauce tightens and the cheese stiffens as it stands.
The Milanaise garnish in nineteenth-century professional cookery meant a fairly fixed set — tongue or ham, mushrooms, and cheese, usually with tomato — cut in julienne and tossed with pasta or bound into a timbale; it runs through the French repertoire under that name, and in America it belongs to hotel and restaurant cooking rather than to Italian immigrant households. Its placement among the cereals, near hominy, cracked wheat and boiled rice, shows how macaroni was classified in 1896: as a starch to be dressed rather than a cuisine of its own. Farmer gives several dressings for the same boiled macaroni in quick succession — one technique with several finishes. Beef tongue, now an unusual purchase, was then an ordinary and thrifty cut, sold cooked and pressed by many markets.