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Kidney Saute'
(Rognoni saltati) Take one large kidney, or two or three small kidneys, open them and remove all the fat. Cut lengthwise in thin slices, salt and pour as much boiling water as is needed to cover them. When the water is thoroughly cooled, drain it and wipe well the slices with a cloth, then put them in a frying pan with a small piece of butter. Turn them often and when they have cooked for five minutes put in a pinch of flour and season with salt and pepper. Leave them on the fire until thoroughly cooked and when you are going to take them away add another piece of butter, a sprig of chopped parsley and a little broth if needed. The kidney must not be kept too much on the fire, because in that case it hardens.
A fast sauté that lives or dies on heat and timing. The hinge is in the last line of the original: kidney toughens the moment it overcooks, so treat the pan like a steak pan, not a stew pot.
- Which kidneyrognoni is the general Italian word for kidneys; the recipe's 'one large... or two or three small' points to veal or lamb rather than beef, which is much stronger and coarser. Reckon on one large veal kidney, or three or four lamb kidneys, for two.
- Trimming"Open them and remove all the fat" means halving lengthwise and cutting out the white core of suet and gristle at the centre with the tip of a knife. Also peel off the thin outer membrane, which shrinks and curls in the pan.
- The boiling-water stepPouring boiling water over the salted slices and letting it cool acts mainly as a purge: it draws off some blood and the ammoniac smell kidneys pick up as they sit, though it will also firm the surface. The recipe's own marker is the water being thoroughly cooled. Drying them properly afterwards matters, since wet kidney steams rather than browns.
- Heat and timingA wide pan and a brisk heat, so the slices sear rather than weep. The recipe gives five minutes before the flour and then only 'until thoroughly cooked', which for thin slices is a matter of a couple of minutes more. Kidney turns rubbery well before it looks overdone.
- "A pinch of flour"A teaspoon at most, dusted over the slices and turned through. It is there to catch the pan juices and the broth into a light coating sauce, not to make gravy.
- BrothA tablespoon or two of meat or chicken stock, added off the direct heat with the second knob of butter, loosens the flour into a glossy sauce. Adding it earlier will stew the kidneys.
- ServingServes two as a main with bread or polenta, three or four as an antipasto or secondo in a larger meal. Serve at once; reheated kidney is tough.
Rognoni saltati belongs to the Italian repertoire of quinto quarto cooking, the "fifth quarter" of the animal left after the four prime quarters were sold, a term generally traced to the slaughterhouse trade of Rome's Testaccio district and long a staple of butchers' and workers' kitchens there. Maria Gentile's The Italian Cook Book (1919) was aimed at American households curious about Italian food, and its inclusion of kidney reflects a period when offal was ordinary market meat rather than a specialist purchase. The preliminary scald with salted water is a technique found in other kidney recipes of the period, and the concluding warning about hardening is one such recipes often repeat.