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Roman Fry (Fritto alla Romana I)
(Fritto alla Romana) I.
Put on the fire a hash of onion and butter and when it is well browned cook in it a piece of lean veal seasoned with salt and pepper. When the meat begins to brown put in a little sherry wine to complete the cooking.
Pound the whole to soften it a little using the sauce remained and if this is not enough add some broth and finally the yolk of an egg. See that the whole is not softened too much.
Now take some wafers, not too thin and cut them in squares similar to those used by druggists. Beat one egg and the white from the other egg, then take a wafer, dip it in the egg and place it on a layer of bread crumbs ground fine. On the wafer put a little ball of the compound above, then dip another wafer in the egg, make it touch the bread crumbs only from the part that remains outside, and with this cover the compound attaching it to the lower wafer.
Sprinkle again with bread crumbs if necessary and put the piece aside repeating the operation until all the meat is disposed of. Cook in oil or fat and serve with lemon.
With half a pound of meat about twenty filled wafers should be obtained. 69
A fried course built from a stiff veal paste sandwiched between two thin wafers, breaded and fried. The whole thing hinges on the filling being firm enough to hold a ball.
- The wafersThese are unleavened baking wafers — the sheets sold in Italy as cialde or ostie and used for communion bread and for torrone; note the recipe asks for ones "not too thin." The comparison to "those used by druggists" refers to the edible wafer squares pharmacists once used to enclose bitter powders. Communion wafer sheets, ostia sheets from an Italian grocer, or the wafer paper sold for confectionery all work; cut them into small squares.
- Keep the paste stiffThe instruction "see that the whole is not softened too much" is the one that decides the dish. A slack filling weeps into the wafer, which dissolves on contact with moisture, and the parcel bursts in the fat. Add pan juices and broth a teaspoon at a time; the finished paste should hold its shape when rolled into a ball.
- QuantitiesHalf a pound of lean veal — shoulder or leg — for about twenty wafers. Figure roughly a small onion, two tablespoons of butter, and two tablespoons of dry sherry, with broth only as needed.
- PoundingThe original means a mortar. A food processor does it in seconds, but pulse rather than run it, or the meat turns to gluey paste.
- Two eggs, used separatelyOne whole egg's yolk goes into the meat mixture. The dipping wash is the remaining whole egg plus the leftover white.
- FryingOil or lard, hot enough to brown briskly and deep enough to float the parcels, until the crumb coat is a light gold — about a minute or two a side. Wafer paper browns and blisters fast, so watch colour rather than the clock.
- ServingTwenty pieces will serve four as an antipasto or a fritto course. Salt them the moment they come out of the fat and send lemon wedges to the table; the acid is doing real work against the richness.
The Italian Cook Book (Maria Gentile, 1919) draws heavily on the Italian domestic tradition codified by Pellegrino Artusi, and this recipe belongs to the old fritto course — a plate of assorted fried morsels served between the soup and the roast. The wafer casing is the interesting part: thin unleavened ostie, identical to communion wafers, were a standard piece of kitchen and pharmacy equipment in nineteenth-century Italy, used to hold nougat together and to encase bitter medicinal powders so they could be swallowed. Borrowing them as a wrapper for a spoonful of pounded veal is a frugal cook's trick: it gives the appearance and crunch of a pastry parcel without the labour of making pastry. Naming a fried dish "alla Romana" is a loose regional label rather than a documented Roman origin — the book gives two versions under the same heading, which suggests the name attached to a style of frying more than to any single recipe.