Links - 15th May 2020 (1) (Italian food)

Ten commandments of Italian cooking - "1 Buy the best ingredients
The Italians spend far more on food than the British, in spite of having a smaller income
2 Use the right pan
3 Season during cooking
4 Use herbs and spices subtly
5 Make a good battuto
A battuto is a mixture of very finely chopped ingredients, and varies according to their use. The most common battuto is onion, carrot and celery, which is the basis of the soffritto
6 Keep an eye on your soffritto
7 Use the right amount of sauce
The Italians like to eat pasta dressed with sauce – not sauce dressed with pasta. The usual amount of sauce added to a portion of pasta is two full tablespoons
8 Taste while you cook
Food in Italy is mostly cooked directly on the heat and not in the oven – which might be why the Italians are not strong on baking. The food in the pot is nurtured all through the cooking
9 Serve pasta and risotto alone
Only one pasta dish and two risotti are traditionally accompanied by meat: Carne alla Genovese – a braised beef dish allegedly brought to Naples by the Genovese merchants, served with penne; Ossobuco alla Milanese – the traditional ossobuco without tomatoes served with saffron risotto; and Costolette del Priore – breaded veal chops in a cheese sauce, served with risotto in bianco (plain risotto).
10 Don’t overdo the parmesan
There may be a bowl of grated parmigiano reggiano on the table when pasta or risotto are served, but the usual amount added is not more than 1-2 teaspoons, so as not to overpower the flavour of the main dish. It should be grated, not flaked; except on special salads, such as those with fennel or artichoke. The cheese must dissolve, imparting an overall flavour like a seasoning. Parmesan is not added to fish or seafood risotto, apart from some varieties with prawns."

The pungent debate of using garlic in cooking - "In Marcella Says, Hazan cautioned that flavour cannot be "replaced" with spices or garlic. "That is borrowed rather than true flavour," she said. Vecchio told me almost exactly the same thing by e-mail. In the kitchen, meat and vegetables are the "predominant" flavours, she said. "The rest is enrichment."... "One of my biggest problems as a chef," Gentile says, "is finding vegetables that taste good." He is "blown away" by the quality of vegetables he finds in Italy. But anything less is unacceptable. "If you see Italians shopping at a vegetable market," he says, "they will rip someone apart if their stuff doesn't taste good."In other words, the reason Italian chefs' recipes don't lean on garlic as a crutch is because their ingredients taste better to begin with. They possess what Hazan calls "true" flavour.""
As a friend said, Swiss cooking teaches you the importance of good ingredients. Asian cooking teaches you the importance of good sauces

Do Italians from Italy Cook Onions and Garlic Together in the Same Pot? - "I was just watching a cooking video of Mark Bittman from the New York Times. He mentioned how he was cooking once with an Italian who told him that they don’t cook garlic and onions together in the same pan in Italy. This surprised him. This surprised me!I grew up cooking garlic and onions together as the first step in my Italian tomato sauce. This was how my Italian grandmother taught it to my mother. It’s how my mother taught it to me. I assume it’s how my grandmother’s mother from Italy taught her to make it"
Apparently this is a regional thing

Want Real Italian Food? Skip These 8 Dishes - " so much of the food that we consider Italian, well, isn’t. It’s Italian-American... Back home, they survived, barely, on items like polenta, or black bread in brine. Richer foods, like meat, cheeses, and even pasta, were for special occasions or flush times. In the States, however, immigrants found that they not only earned more — their money went further. And so they weren’t about to go eating the same foods that reminded them of the lean years. Instead, they were going to eat like kings. If that meant making meatballs that their cousins back in Italy would find absurdly (impressively!) large, and then putting them right on the spaghetti, that other sign of prosperity, then so be it. This was America, baby. Land of the free … and the well fed. Another big change came from the fact that, often for the first time, Italians in the U.S. ate (and cooked) together. As anyone who has traveled from Florence to Rome can tell you, Italian food is extremely regional... a fusion cuisine — albeit one that leaned on some of the traditions of Southern Italy, where most of the immigrants were from — emerged...
1. Garlic bread
Instead, try: bruschetta al pomodoro
2. Spaghetti and meatballs
Instead, try: polpette al sugo
3. Fettuccine Alfredo
It’s like macaroni and cheese … with an Italian twist. Or so I always thought — until I moved to Italy. Turns out, there’s only one restaurant I ever heard of that served it: Alfredo’s, in Rome. It was created there in 1920 by the chef, Alfredo, to appeal to American clientele. No surprise there, really, since nothing about the dish appeals to traditional Italian palates; putting cream on pasta is so rarely done that in Rome, the home of pasta carbonara, the recipe calls for not a hint of cream. And, again, there’s the whole issue of using butter. But legend has it that, when honeymooning in Rome in 1920, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford liked Alfredo’s pasta so much they brought the recipe back home...
Instead, try: cacio e pepe
4. Chicken on pasta, ever
Instead, try: fish on pasta
5. Lobster fra’ diavolo
Instead, try: pasta all’arrabbiata
6. Chicken or veal parmesan...
the idea of layering melted cheese on meat is something that would make the noses of most of my Italian friends turn right up.
Instead, try: melanzane alla parmigiana
Similar concept, but with eggplant
7. Penne alla vodka
8. Cheesecake
Instead, try: cassata siciliana
Sweetened ricotta mixes are common in Southern Italy, particularly in Naples and Sicily (although they’re not generally as heavy, or sweet, as anything you’d taste in a cheesecake). They fill cannoli, sfogliatelle, and a myriad of other pastries. The closest to a cheesecake in terms of sheer decadence, though, is the cassata siciliana, a liquor-soaked sponge cake that gets layered with sweetened ricotta, covered in green almond paste, and iced; it likely took on its current appearance in the 18th century, when it would have been consumed only around Easter celebrations. In this case, in terms of richness, the Italian version might just give the Italian-American one a run for its money."

Part II: Learning to Tell Real Italian Food from Fake | Memorie di Angelina - "avoid like the plague the so-called Italian recipes on sites like allrecipes.com—these sites are hot beds of ‘Italian-style’ or just plain fake Italian food, even if some authentic recipes can be found like diamonds cast in the mud...
Number of ingredients: As a general rule, the fewer ingredients in a recipe, the more likely it is to be authentic. If a recipe contains more than, say six or seven ingredients (including salt and pepper) then start to doubt its authenticity; if it has more than ten, then turn the page. Italian food is about bringing out the best of the natural flavor of its main ingredient or ingredients. Normally, that means not piling on different ingredients on top of the other. One of the most common signs that a dish may be faux Italian, for example, is the tendency (very common in Italian-American cooking) to strafare, or over-do, at least in the eyes of Italians. Take, by way of illustration, the dish called Utica Greens from the Italian immigrant communities of upstate New York. This dish is probably a descendant of the ubiquitous southern Italian simply sautéed vegetable dishes like cicoria in padella. While the original is simply boiled greens sautéed in garlic and olive oil, and perhaps with a bit of peperoncino thrown in for heat, its New World cousin adds romano (aka pecorino) cheese, breadcrumbs, prosciutto, cherry peppers and chicken broth… A very American combination of flavors that, while it has its own kitch charms, most native Italians would find sort of gross...
Obsession with Chicken and Shrimp. For some reason, there is a surfeit of pseudo-Italian dishes using chicken breasts and shrimp. Don’t ask me why, but it seems to be so. Obviously, Italians do eat chicken breasts, but not as often as Americans seem to think they do. And chicken breast is not a typical substitution for veal. If an Italian wants scallopine but doesn’t want to spend a bundle on veal, s/he will usually use pork loin or turkey instead, not chicken. And I can tell you that I managed to live in Italy for ten years without a bowl of spaghetti and shrimp passing my lips.
Simplicity and discretion: In general, Italian culinary tradition prizes simple, straight-forward cooking techniques. Long, complex, multi-stepped recipes are very much the exception, although they do exist. Similarly, although Italian food is often known for bold flavors, that is something of a misnomer. Yes, Italian food is tasty, but more often than not, its use of herbs and spices is discrete—and it never overpowers. If a dish calls for multiple cloves of garlic, or spoonfuls of dried oregano or a whole bunch of chopped parsley, beware! Ditto for dishes that call for multiple herbs, especially multiple dried herbs, like dried oregano and dried basil and thyme… (NB: Thyme is rarely used in Italian cooking anyway.)"
Those who agonise over how "authenticity" in Asian food in the West is racist will ignore this