Prosciutto and Asparagus Bundles Marcella Style

Marcella Hazan introduced me, and many Americans, to authentic Italian recipes. Her food, and the details she described about Italian cuisine, were part of what first brought me to Italy in search of the flavors and ingredients in her dishes. (For more on her story, here is a link to a post from the summer of 2018: https://www.twopartsitaly.com/blog/2018/8/8/cooking-with-marcella).

On that first trip I marveled at the fresh produce in the markets, the meats, the cheeses, the variety of fresh pasta, and the delicious meals I had in Florence, Venice, and along the shores of Lake Como. And I took notes!

Returning home, I began a journey to recreate all those flavors with the best ingredients I could find, often guided by one of Marcella’s cookbooks. Now that I live most of the year in Italy (something I never even dreamed of back then) I have access to those wonderful ingredients and I enjoy making these recipes even more.

When spring arrives in Italy so does asparagus season. Heading into summer, the markets in Tuscany have gorgeous bright green bundles of asparagus - I try to pick the nice fat ones which I prefer to the more slender stalks.

When the asparagus appears, I know that it is time to make one of my favorite Marcella recipes - Involtini di Asparagi e Prosciutto (originally published in her book More Classic Italian Cooking). The flavors of fresh asparagus, slightly salty prosciutto, fontina cheese and a generous amount of butter combine to make a flavorful dish perfect for a spring or early summer brunch or luncheon.

3 basic ingredients - prosciutto, fontina cheese, fresh asparagus. Just add some butter !

The prosciutto is topped with the asparagus, cheese, and butter before rolling into a tight bundle.

The preparation is easy and involves only 4 ingredients. The asparagus is cooked ever so briefly in boiling water (my non-Marcella shortcut is to wrap the spears in a wet paper towel and microwave for 90 seconds or so) and then flash cooled in cold water. 3 spears are placed across a slice of prosciutto, topped with slices of fontina, dabbed with butter, and rolled up tight.

Another couple of cheese slices are placed on top, with a bit more butter (ok, maybe more than a bit), and baked until the cheese is melted and golden, a quick 15 - 20 minutes. They look beautiful on a platter drizzled with the flavorful pan drippings. For exact measurements, just google “Marcella’s Asparagus Prosciutto Bundles” and the recipe will pop up - or better yet get a copy of the cookbook which is chock full of wonderful recipes.

Ready to bake !

A couple of keys: Medium to large asparagus are best, and that first cooking in boiling water is just until they begin to soften. If overcooked they will get mushy in the oven. It’s also important to use a good quality, soft prosciutto. If the prosciutto is leathery to begin with it will become more so when baked and that’s not good (the same is true if baked too long). In Italy I buy “prosciutto di Parma morbida” (morbida means soft). My Italian butcher tells me that one end of the prosciutto is actually softer than the other, and so that is what he slices for me. Who knew? In the US, I find that Costco actually has a nice, fairly soft, thinly sliced imported prosciutto that works quite well (brand name Citterio). If the slices are small I overlap two for each bundle so that the prosciutto base is wide enough to just let the tips and ends of the asparagus spears stick out.

These involtini make a wonderful brunch / lunch when paired with a poached egg or a salad. For dinner, a side of rice goes nicely.

Grazie Marcella !

Involtini di asparagi e prosciutto - flavorful rolls of prosciutto filled with asparagus and fontina cheese.

Cooking in Italian

I love Italian cooking and, even better, I like cooking in Italian.  For me that may mean using a recipe written in Italian, listening to Italian music while I cook or - best of all - taking a cooking class presented entirely in Italian.  Over the past several years I have taken many classes that combine language learning and cooking at Lucca Italian School (LIS).  Some classes were held in the kitchen at LIS while others were held in a fattoria (farm) kitchen in the hills outside of Lucca. These were peak experiences for me, combining language, hands-on cooking lessons, learning about local dishes and ingredients, wine tasting, lots of laughter, and the opportunity to socialize with students from around the world.

A pre-COVID cooking class with Lucca Italian School

 And then, along came the pandemic and it became impossible for LIS to offer in-person classes.  In response to the mandatory restrictions, the staff at LIS began offering on-line language classes, both group and individual.  More recently, they have developed a variety of classes on special topics (art, music, history, local legends) which allow us to continue practicing the language while also learning about Italian culture. Last week they introduced an on-line cooking class, taught by LIS’s fantastic culinary star Eva Dal Porto. Sign me up!
I have to admit I had some reservations about on-line learning at first (having experienced some really dry continuing education classes in my prior professional life), but I have really enjoyed my weekly at-a-distance language classes with LIS, along with some of the specialty classes, and have found them to be both effective and fun.  And now that I’ve just completed my first on-line cooking class, along with 40+ other students from around the world, I can honestly say that I can’t wait to do this again!

The class was all about carciofi (artichokes) and was delivered via Zoom straight from Eva’s kitchen.  A few days before hand we received a link to the Zoom session along with 3 recipes – a marinated raw artichoke dish, a carciofi fritti (fried artichoke) appetizer, and an artichoke risotto.  

Also included was a shopping list for the ingredients.  Shopping for the ingredients was fun – especially picking out those beautiful purple Italian artichokes.  

And I learned some new words, like scalogno (shallot). With my ingredients on hand I was ready to start cooking. 

Ingredients ready to begin preparation of the risotto

Participants had the option to just watch the demonstration or to cook along with Eva.  I knew that my tiny Italian kitchen would not have enough prep space to manage all 3 dishes, so I only watched during the preparation of the salad and the fried artichokes.  But the risotto I cooked during the class.  What fun!  

The easy to follow lesson, in Italian, began with how to clean and trim the artichokes and then soak them in lemon water to prevent discoloration.  

Next came step by step instruction and demonstration of the preparation of each dish.

And if you aren’t confident using a mezzaluna, well Eva demonstrated that too. 

The on-line instructions and demonstration was easy to follow

 By the end of the lesson my kitchen smelled wonderful and I was hungry!  Luckily, my artichoke risotto was ready to eat.  A delicious ending to a fun lesson.

The finished risotto. The grains of rice remain separate and are never mushy

Artichoke Risotto  (In the class we used half of these amounts to make 2 servings)

 8 artichokes (the small purple ones are best)

1 lemon, juiced

5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

2 shallots, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, chopped fine

320 grams of risotto rice (about 1 ¾ cups)

1 cup dry white wine

1 liter vegetable broth (about 4 ¼ cups)

Salt and pepper to taste

2 Tablespoons butter

Grated parmesan cheese, to sprinkle on top of the finished risotto

 Clean and trim the artichokes (remove tough outer leaves, cut away top half of remaining bulb to leave the heart and tender inner leaves).

Cut each trimmed artichoke lengthwise into 8 pieces and remove the fuzzy “choke” (leaving the tender inner leaves just above it).

Immerse the cut artichokes into a bowl of lemon water until ready to cook.

Dice the garlic and the shallots and saute in the olive oil until softened.  Add the artichoke pieces, stir, and cook for another 5 minutes or so.  Add the rice and stir to coat with oil. 

Add the wine and allow it to evaporate fairly quickly over moderately high heat.  Keep stirring!

 Lower the heat, add the salt, pepper, and about 1/3 of the broth.  Stir and cook until broth is absorbed.

 Continue to add broth 1 ladle full at a time, stirring until each is absorbed.  Rice should be cooked by the end but still a bit al dente and not sticky or mushy.

Add the butter and stir well.   Serve right away sprinkled with parmesan cheese.

Minestrone - a Big Pot of Italy

One of the things I love about the Italian language is the many unique words that describe similar, yet subtly different, things. Take soup for example. Zuppa. Minestra. Minestrina. Minestrone. And those are just the common words for soup. So what is the difference? 

A bowl of ribollita, a zuppa that makes good use of leftover bread, from the restaurant Antica Drogheria in Lucca, Italy

Zuppa is often used as a generic word for soup and because it sounds like the English word, it's what many of us remember. To be more precise, a zuppa is a broth-based soup often served over bread. Think zuppa di pomodoro (the best tomato soup you will ever eat) or zuppa di pesce (a fragrant fisherman's soup).  Zuppa is not thickened except by the bread, so no beans or pasta here.

Minestra is a more important soup and the word has deeper cultural significance. Marcella Hazan, in her book "Marcella Cucina," describes minestra in this way: "When Italy was a poor country, minestra signified more than a dish - it was, for most of its people, the whole meal. Minestra was synonymous with survival." There are two common variations on the word minestra. In Italian, the ending "ina" is a diminutive, so a minestrina is a "little" or light soup. Minestrone on the other hand is a big soup ("one" = big in Italian), thick and hearty and chock full of veggies, beans and pasta. When I was in Italy in January of this year I made a minestrone that chased away the cold weather and enticed me all afternoon with it's wonderful aroma. Because today is a cold day here in New Mexico, and I'm thinking of how good that pot of soup was on a similarly cold day in Italy, I've decided to make a minestrone for dinner and thought I'd share my recipe. This recipe makes a really big pot of soup (6-8 servings). The recipe can easily be cut in half and you can experiment with the ingredients - if there is something you don't like, omit it or replace it with something different, substitute chicken or vegetable broth for the beef stock, omit the pancetta for a vegetarian minestrone, and if you like a thinner soup, just add more water. Make it your own!   

Minestrone

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 ounces pancetta “cubetti”  (cubed pieces of pancetta; I can usually find it at Trader Joe's)
• 1 large onion, diced
•  1 tablespoon garlic, chopped
• 3 carrots, chopped
• 3 stalks celery, chopped
• 1 bunch chard, big stems removed and leaves roughly chopped
• 3 red potatoes (about ¾ pound), cubed
• 28-ounce can of tomatoes (plum or fine diced), drained
• 6-7 cups beef stock (I cheat and use store-bought rather than homemade stock)
• leaves from 4 sprigs of thyme
• 1 teaspoon sea salt or more to taste and 1 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 Parmesan rind (optional)
• ½ head of savory cabbage, sliced thin
• 2 15-ounce cans of cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
• ½ cup ditalini pasta (optional)

Heat olive oil in a large heavy-bottomed soup pan. Add pancetta and stir until it begins to look cooked but do not let it get crisp. Add onions and garlic; sauté on medium low heat until onions are translucent. Add carrots and celery; sauté for another 10 minutes. Stir every few minutes.

Add chard, red potatoes, tomatoes, beef stock, thyme, salt, pepper, bay leaf, and Parmesan rind. Bring to a good simmer. Reduce heat, cover loosely and simmer on low for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

Add cabbage and beans, cover loosely and return to simmer on low for 1 hour. If adding ditalini, add in the last 20 minutes to avoid overcooking the pasta.

Add more water as needed as this soup gets very thick. To maintain flavor, you can add 1 beef bouillon cube for every additional cup of water.  

To serve: drizzle each bowl with some good quality extra virgin olive oil and a few grinds of black pepper. Top with grated Parmesan and a piece of toasted bread if desired.

The finished minestrone - delizioso!