ViLco wrote:
>
> A famous old italian cookbook, made not just of recipes but also tips and
> folklore stories, is "La Scienza in cucina e l'Arte di mangiar bene"
> ("Science in the kitchen and the Art of good eating") by Pellegrino Artusi,
> born in Forlimpopoli in 1820 and dead in Firenze in 1911. He was a merchant
> and his book covers a lot of recipes from every part of Italy between one
> century and a half and ninety years ago. The last edition is from 1910 and
> lists 790 recipes. Some researchers consider ribute this book as the basis
> of the national italian kitchen.
>
> This is the paragraph about the famous tortellini alla bolognese, which have
> meanwhile changed a lot from this old version. Nowadays tortellini almost
> always see meat in the filling, and the marrow is no more commonly found in
> bolognese households and butcheries. As it usually happens with food
> traditions, they evolve. The interesting things here are the recipe and
> Artusi's idea of a cooking school, which would sustain itself by selling the
> cooked dishes to those who would order them for lunch or dinner. The style
> is old-fashioned but not too much affected. The recipe talks only about the
> filling since the instructions for making the broth, sfoglia (egg-noodle)
> and shaping the tortellini are in the first tortellini recipe he lists in
> his book ("Cappelletti all'uso di Romagna", made with a capon based
> filling), so I took those instructions and put them translated at the end of
> this recipe. I have never made tortellini this way until saturday, when the
> butcher told me they had some ox marrow. This recipe immediately flashed up
> in my mind, I called my GF and asked her to read me the other ingredients
> from the book. I bougth all what was needed and went straight to cook this.
> I didn't follow the capon breast variant but used capon for the broth, as is
> called for in almost any cappelletti or tortellini recipe. In the section
> about the Cappelletti all'uso di Romagna Artusi recommends using capon broth
> for all the four tortellini recipes he lists, and tortellini is the third
> one. They are wonderful, really, the only hard part has been mincing the ham
> since my GF hasn't a suitable food processor and I had to mince it with a
> knife. The smoking hot broth, 1-2mm thin sfoglia made from scratch on a 50
> years old cutting board always used for sfoglia, the hearthy filling... they
> went wonderfully with Picol Ross lambrusco for a nice saturday lunch. The
> lambrusco were "Pjcol ross" from Rinaldini and "Nero di Cio'" from La
> Piccola, two nearby wineyards.
>
> Some of the recipes in this book by Pellegrino Artusi have changed
> noticeably in the years, a century is a very long time, so parts of his
> works are nowadays more a culinary history lesson than a real cooking book,
> but there are also lots of recipes which have remained just as they were
> when the book went printed for the first time.
>
> 9. TORTELLINI ALLA BOLOGNESE
>
> When you hear talking about bolognese kitchen just bow to it, because it
> deserves it. It's a way to cook which is a bit heavy, one could say, because
> that's what the climate asks for; but juicy, hearthy and healthy, in fact
> persons in theyr 80s and 90s are more common there than elsewhere. The
> following tortellini, even though easier and cheaper than other ones, aren't
> inferior in goodness, and you'll convince yourself if you'll try them.
>
> Ham, both lean and fat, grams 30.
>
> Mortadella di bologna, grams 20.
>
> Ox marrow, grams 60.
>
> Grated parmigiano, grams 60.
>
> Eggs, n. 1.
>
> A hint of nutmeg
>
> Salt and pepper, very few.
>
> Finely mince the ham and the mortadella, mince and add the marrow without
> cooking it, add it to the ham and mortadella and mix the egg in mixing
> thoroughly. They get closed in a little circle of sfoglia (egg noodle*).
> They don't suffer from being stored for days and even some weeks, and if you
> want them of a bright yellow color put them, as soon as made, to dry up in
> the caldana (the little room near the bread oven where the temperature is
> lukewarm and the bread is put to raise). With this dose you'll make about
> 300 of them, and it will take a 3 eggs sfoglia*.
>
> "Bologna is a big castle where they make continuous luncheons", used to say
> a man who frequently went to Bologna to feast with friends. In the hyperbole
> of this sentence there's a piece of thruth whom, a philanthropist looking
> for a new kind of charity, could make use of. I'm talking of Culinary
> Istitute, a kitchen school which Bologna could offer to host better than any
> other city thanks to its great consumption of food, for the excellence of
> the foods and the way to cook them. Nobody apparently cares about food, and
> the reason is easy to understand: but then, leaving hypocrisy behind,
> everybody whines about a bad tasting lunch or a sick belly due to badly
> prepared foods. Being nutrition the first need of life, it's reasonable to
> handle it so to satisfy it in the best possible way.
>
> A stranger writer says: "Health, morale and happyness of the family are all
> tied to the kitchen, so it would be perfect that every woman, of the people
> as of the nobility, would know an art which is fertile of well being,
> health, wealth and peace for the family"; and our Lorenzo Stecchetti (Olindo
> Guerrini) in a conference held at Turin's Exposition on the 21 of June 1884
> said: "It's necessary to stop the prejudice which accuses the kitchen of
> vulgarity, because it's not vulgar that which helps to an intellectual and
> elegant voluptuosness. A winemaker who works the grapes and the land to make
> a good beverage, is well treaten, seen with envy and made Commendatore
> (official title awarded for services to the Country). A cook who too works
> the raw materials to obtain a pleasant food, be it honored and renowned,
> isn't even allowed into the anteroom of important households. Bacchus is son
> to Zeus, Como (the God of the canteens) is from unknown parents. But the
> sage says 'Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are'. The
> peoples have a nature of theyrs, strong or vile, great or miserable, in the
> vast majority of the food they use. Therefore, there's no justice in the
> distribution of judgement. Kitchen has to be rehabilitated".
>
> I therefore say that my Institute should help in raise young cooks who then,
> being naturally more economic of men and of lesser expenditure, wuold easily
> find themselves a job and would posses an art which, brougth to the
> bourgeois homes, would be a medicine against the many quarrels who often
> happen in families due to bad food; and I hear that a sage lady from a
> tuscan city, in order to avoid those quarrels, has had her kitchen expanded
> so to be more at ease in having fun with my book at hand.
>
> I have given this idea so embryonal and shapeless; someone else take it up,
> makes something out of it and honour himself of it f he deems the idea
> praiseworthy. I think that a similar, well managed institution, collecting
> the orders of the private citizens and selling the ready and cooked dishes,
> could be set up, run and made wealthy with a relatively small working
> capital and initial expense.
>
> If you want gentler tortellini, add to this recipe half a capon breast
> cooked in butter, an egg yolk and the good measure of all the rest (slightly
> augment the other ingredients).
>
> * FOR THE SFOGLIA (EGG-NOODLE) WRAPPING :
>
> To wrap these, make a soft sfoglia made of all purpose flour and just egg
> yolks, using also some whites if too dry, and cut it with a small disk as
> the one here printed (it's circa 5 cm in diameter). Put the filling in the
> center of the disks and ply them in two so to have a halfmoon shape; then
> take the two opposite ends and join them together, and you'll have made the
> cappelletto, or tortellino. If the dough dries up too quick, wet the disks'
> edge with a wet finger. [Artusi doesn't specify that but usually, here in
> Emilia Romagna, the ratio is 100 grams flour for a whole egg, so if one
> wants to use just the yolks that amount of flour must be lowered a bit].
>
> --
> Vilco
> Don't think pink: drink rosè

Quite a culinary adventure. Saved for when I am feeling ambitious...