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Cook Book Cookin'
Fabrizio's Back Burner Teasers and Delights
By Marty Martindale
People come from out of town and out-of-state to enjoy his
food. It’s important he presents frequent menu changes, for soon, many have
“eaten it all!” More and more guests come to
PELAGIA TRATTORIA for Fabrizio Schenardi’s specialities. “We sell about 20
lbs. a week of octopus, like crazy, and that’s a lot when you consider the
servings are only about three to four ounces.” Hardly a year goes by without new
awards.
Tall, lanky, boyish, gracious almost with a “wet behind the
ears” look, Fabrizio’s hands are beautiful for a man’s, white, supple,
long-fingered, marred temporarily by a three-inch occupational hazard, one of
many “painful-ribbons” his chosen career dishes out.
Enroute to his second office in the under-layers of the new
Renaissance Hotel, Tampa, the back-room catacombs are places happy people seem
to enjoy their work as well as Fabrizio each time he passes. Noticeably, the
kitchen floor is dry! No deep puddles with racks on his kitchen
floor.
Conspicuously on his desk is a picture of his wife. She’s
Korean, and they met in Switzerland. She speaks Italian, and “she’s a very good
cook,” he hastens. They have a three-year-old son, no doubt used to fine cooking
and with a penchant for at least three languages. In this same office, Fabrizio
stashes some of his treasures --olive oil in regal, slender. square bottles,
better, somehow than “cold pressed,” pressed as if by gravity. He has cases of
wine here, too. Soon the Trattoria will sell bottles of each, plus maybe
precious vinegars, scarce salts? Who knows? Fabrizio’s a chef with a plan, many
plans.
He invites me to sit by his desk as he pours fondly through
a few of his treasured cookbooks. “I always learn something when I look. Then I
switch things around and have a new recipe! I don’t like to go straight from the
book. Of course with a classical recipe, I go from the book.” Some of his books
are written in Italian, others in French, and he reads out loud in rapid
English. Most of my books are old, some have yellowed pages. He’s amazed so many
of the delicious dishes the books make him remember are no longer made, even in
Italy. He finds this a challenge for his new cookbook! It’s time he has one …
These are memories his books evoke:
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He searches for a word, like a wild rabbit, an animal
he likes to fix, not one fixed much in the U.S. A hare! That’s it, he wants
to serve hare. He has a recipe where the hare is cooked with raisins and
wine, butter, fume blanc, and cream. “It sounds strange, but that is what
they do. Serve it with a dressing of figs and potatoes.”
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“With is dish, we use all the red parts of roosters
faces, also intestines, combine with conichons, with Madeira, with truffle,
with porcini mushrooms. It is a great dish!
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“Snails. We used to sauté them in butter, then we would
bread them. When you bite them, the butter oozes out.
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“I love figs. How I like figs is with rosemary, then
roast slowly in port and finish with blue cheese. I like the black figs for
this.
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“Beef with anchovies? If you go in a good restaurant in
Italy, you find this.
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“We also take the leg muscle from an animal we have in
Europe. We marinate it in red wine, then smoke it with bay leaf. With a
hook, we attach him to the ceiling and we cook it for a week or two, night
and day, and it get dry. It’s like a jerkey. Then we sauté it, and it has
the wine flavor. We did the same way with a duck salame. It was good.
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“Pumpkin, fried pumpkin, it’s great!
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“Boudella. It’s stuffed stomach, with the chestnuts,
flour, hazel nuts, pine nuts, pork blood, milk, leeks, olive oil, nutmeg,
cinnamon. Once in a while it is fun.
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“Eel is good. Most people don’t know how to clean it. I
do.
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“Favre beans, more and more popular. We take a small
fish, Pinurine, from Luguria. we toss it in the flour and they we fry it.
Then we serve it with a these beans and a sauce of parsley, tomato, garlic,
basil and extra virgin olive oil.
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“Castanache. We make it with chestnut flour, it’s very
sweet. You put sweet raisins, pine nuts, extra virgin olive oil, salt and
fennel seed and you bake it. It is kind of a hard pudding. Then you serve it
plain or with mascarpone.
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“Like the Ponyak. Nobody do it anymore. It is
disappearing. It is a porcini mushroom. You start with grappa, then you make
a little basket of puff pastry and then you bake it. It just disappeared
from Italy. We need to revive it.
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“Asparagus Barbadora from Cambiano near Tourino, even
this disappear. What did they do? Ok. You take tuna, anchovies, olive oil
and a hard-boiled egg. You divide the white from the yellow. You mix the
white with the tuna, olive oil and anchovies. Then you sprinkle the top with
egg yolk. No mayonnaise.
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“This winter I want to go a little bit more on the
game, so I was looking to use duck, pork tenderloin. Not Buffalo, for it
really doesn’t go with the Mediterranean.
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“Ginnea hen. It looks like a chicken, but the meat is
more pinkish and firmer. Not too many people use it, but back in Italy we
braised it then breaded it with brandy. Delicious! This is another thing not
used a lot any more.
Even in Italy, dishes like this disappear, he ponders. “If
you think of it, there is almost nothing I mentioned here which Americans think
of as Italian. There’s a whole new world of Italian recipes out there not seen
much in North America, practically no where. Nobody does much of it any more. I
like to do it, it’s delicious,” he ruminates …
“I want to do this in my new cookbook!”
Marty Martindale operates
Food Site of the Day.
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