Feeling at home

My presence at Pierluigi on Tuesday mornings has now become more or less routine, both as part of my schedule and everyone else in the kitchen. I arrived this week and Antonio, after offering me a coffee, sent me down to the fridges in the basement to get all the veggies he would need for the day. The first time he sent me down he told me to get carrots, celery, onions, tomatoes and zucchini, I asked how much and he said 'tutto quanto' (the whole lot) and so I brought back up a full tray of each, thinking to myself it was a bit much, but that it's a big kitchen so it could be about right. I was wrong, after a few laughs from Antonio and Giovanni, he took what he needed, about a hand full of each, and sent me back downstairs with the rest. This week I knew what to get, so that all went a little smoother. I got everything and set about cleaning the tomatoes and getting ready to chop them.

Just as I was set to start cutting Antonio called me over to show me the first steps of another version of ragu di alici (literally anchovy ragu, but using what we would call sardines). He started with white onions ground in the meat grinder in a large pot with olive oil. That cooked for about five minutes and then we added ground pine nuts and finocchiette (finocchio is fennel and finocchiette are the little shoots coming off the main plant, feathery leaves might be the best way to describe them), and that cooked for about another five minutes. After that we put in peeled, ground tomatoes with a little more finocchiette, and the sardines (half canned and half fresh). He poured a gallon or so of water into the mix and left it to cook, at which point I returned to the cutting board.

After finished the tomatoes, and picking and washing the basil it was time for lunch. We had a simple spaghetti with tomatoes and basil, polpette (hamburger shaped meatballs) and green beans with red onions and tomatoes. One thing I have come to realize in Italy is that meatballs are never eaten with spaghetti, or even sauce for that matter. Every time I have seen them served it has been just the meat itself, nothing else. Not sure where the Americanized spaghetti and meatballs came from, maybe somewhere in northern Italy I haven't been yet, who knows.

I ate my lunch pretty quickly and returned to the kitchen where I found Giovanni peeling boiled shrimp. I started peeling as well and this time I was a little faster, I think he only peeled double the amount I did, as opposed to triple the last time. As I was cleaning off the counter where we peeled the shrimp I looked up and saw two medium size fishhooks, with bits of line still attached, sitting on the shelf at eye level, a glance into how the fish make it from ocean to kitchen.

Antonio returned from his lunch and gave me a bowl of tuna to de-vein and chop up for later use. While I was doing that he made final preparations for lunch. I had to leave a little on the early side, but I stuck around long enough to see the final touches of the sardine ragu. Earlier in the morning we had put a few cups of raisins in a bowl of luke-warm water to soak for awhile. By this point they had been soaking for about two hours, and we dumped them into the pot with everything else, along with some full sardines. The final ingredient was a reux (flour mixed with water or oil). When we originally drained the sardine cans Antonio had conserved the oil. He poured that into a pan and let it heat for a few minutes. Once it was quite hot I started shaking flour into the pan as he stirred with a whisk. I'd guess the proportions were about one to one, flour to oil and I poured the flour in quickly at first, and then more slowly as it started to thicken. Once that was done, a texture that almost held its shape, we dumped it into the pot with a few fennel seeds and a dash of black pepper. At this point all the ingredients were in, it just had to cook for a little longer, not sure exactly how long, but no more than an hour, because we were done putting everything in at 2 and the kitchen closes at 3 for the afternoon.