With the sky still an early morning
pink, crates of dark green artichokes, yellow pears and fragrant fennel are
stacked willy nilly, cluttering the streets as fruit and vegetable vendors at
Turin’s great food market, Porta Palazzo set up their market stalls for the
day. Working nearby, brawny butchers in white coats and blood stained aprons
pull large beef hindquarters and pork carcasses from the back of rumbling
refrigerated trucks and hang them on large hooks behind their counters in the
immense glass and wrought iron market building.
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| Porta Palazzo, City Market of Turin, Italy |
But even before the butchers start to
sharpen their knives or farmers stick price cards into the produce boxes, local
chefs are on the prowl, menu ideas running through their minds. How many crates
of Swiss chard do you have? How about these beets, will you have more tomorrow?
The day’s menu depends on what they choose. The only thing certain is that the
food they’ll prepare is unlike any you have ever eaten in Italy.
Just ask Turin native Chef Roberto
Donna of Washington, D.C.’s four-star Galileo restaurant. He knows firsthand
how creative the chefs in his hometown can be.
He’ll also tell you that with such incredibly voluptuous and seductive
ingredients as white truffles, porcini mushrooms, Piedmont beef, fresh brook
trout, and an abundance of game, no one is ever really surprised when first
time visitors can barely keep from swooning at the dinner table.
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| Butcher Stall, Porta Palazzo Market, Turin, Italy |
In part it’s the luck of the location.
Turin is in the extreme northwest corner of Italy, in the province of Piedmont, away from the tourist heavy routes that favor Rome, Florence and Venice. Even in recent years as Piedmont, home of the Slow Food movement, has become a Mecca for food
lovers, Turin continues to hover below the radar.
As gourmands track elusive white
truffles in Alba and frolic through the vineyards of Montferrato, the tables of
Turin are largely ignored. Even after the 2006 Winter Olympics brought more
than a million visitors to the city, the cuisine of Turin remains a mystery not
just to foreigners, but to Italians as well.
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| You'll Find Eveything You Need at Porta Palazzo Market |
If you are lucky enough to spend time
in Turin the first thing you’ll notice is Torinese cuisine is not like the food
in any other part of Italy. For one, chefs tend to reach for butter and lard
instead of olive oil. Olive oil has only been used in local cooking since the
1950’s, brought north by southerners who immigrated to Turin to work in the
automobile industry. And more than in any other part of Italy, local dishes
incorporate a variety of savory sauces.
Another difference is that appetizers
play a much larger role here than in other parts of Italy, both in the size of
the portions and in their sheer creativity. In Chef Donna’s definitive
cookbook, ‘Cooking in Piedmont’, he presents twenty-six recipes for appetizers
including such non-appetizer sounding dishes as rabbit salad, stuffed roasted
peppers, veal tongue in a spicy red sauce, a duck liver flan and spicy polenta
served with fried quail eggs.
Probably the two best known
Piedmontese appetizers are bagna caoda –literally a hot bath -of oil, garlic,
anchovies and butter served as a dipping sauce for winter vegetables, and fonduta
(from the French fondre, to melt) a fondue of creamy Fontina cheese flavored
with white truffles. Truffles are used extensively in Torinese cooking and when
they are in season – between November and February – they are liberally
showered over just about everything.
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| Creamy Fontina Cheese Flavored with White Truffles |
The best rice in Italy, some say the
world, grows in the wide flat lands between Milan and Turin so in addition to
pasta you’ll find rich and creamy risotto, riso all piemontese, rice served
with meat sauce, and riso e ceci, a rice and chick pea dish on local menus.
Other non-pasta choices are chestnut flour gnocchi served with a fonduta di
Castelmagno (Castelmagno is a town southwest of Turin that is famous for its
cheese), or baccalà (salted cod), served with saffron flavored polenta. And then,
as the Italians say, Coraggio! – courage! It’s time to move on to the main
course.
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| Creamy Risotto with Slivers of Truffles |
The city’s signature dish is bollito
misto, a mix of boiled meats served with three sauces: bagnet verd, a parsley
sauce spiced up with anchovy, garlic and olive oil; bagnet ross, crushed
tomatoes, garlic and hot peppers, and saussa d’avije, a mustard sauce sweetened
with honey and crushed nuts.
In the past, traditionalists insisted
that bollito misto contain seven vegetables, seven types of meat, and seven
types of ornamenti, i.e. tongue, tail and dangly bits, but today the more
exotic dangly bits are slowly being eased out. This boiled meat dish is on the
menu at least once a week in most Turin restaurants and served from a rolling
stainless steel cart, each meat kept warm in its own broth filled compartment.
And you don’t have to worry about what you will be served for you can ask for
the meat that you want.
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| Bollito Misto, A Torinese Favorite |
Other classic dishes include brasato
al Barolo, Piedmont beef slowly braised in Barolo wine, and finanziera, a stew
of cock’s crests, chicken livers, veal, peas and porcini mushrooms. In the fall
and winter, you’ll find venison, roe deer (a small European deer), quail and
even tagliata di renna, slices of reindeer meat, on some menu, along with beef
and veal, free range poultry and freshly caught fish instead of fish farm
fish.
The food in Turin may just change the
way you look at Italian food forever. In a country where no culinary rock has
been left unturned, it’s nice to know there is still a small corner where you
can find new taste experiences.
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| Ravioli del Plin with Butter and Sage |
“When I was growing up in Turin,” says
Chef Donna, “my two favorite foods were ravioli del plin and the chocolate and
hazelnut cream pudding called bonet. My list of favorite foods has grown since
then, but ravioli del plin and bonet are still at the top.”
Here are some typical
Turinese/Piedmontese dishes Chef Donna recommends first time visitors to Turin
and Piedmont try.
The Chef Recommends
Starters
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| Acciughe al Verde |
acciughe al verde, anchovies served
with basil and parsley pesto spiked with hot peppers
vitello tonnato, razor thin slices of
rare roasted veal served with a rich tuna sauce. This is most often thought of
as a summer dish, but when the weather outside is frightful, the sauce is
served warm.
fonduta, made from fontina cheese from Aosta,
butter, egg yolks, milk and white truffles from Alba. (only available in the
winter).
Pasta
 |
| Golden Talglierini |
taglierini al rosso d’uovo – rich egg
noodles, (12 egg yolks to each pound of flour), served with butter and truffle
shavings, or sometimes with a sauce of butter, oil, onions, tomatoes, and
finely chopped chicken livers
raviolini del plin – tiny ravioli may
be offered with a creamy cheese sauce (fonduta) or a reduced veal stock, or
even served in broth. The sauce depends entirely on what they are filled with.
Main courses
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| Brasato al Barolo |
brasato al Barolo – the classic
Piedmont beef slow cooked in rich red Barolo wine
bollito misto – a mix of boiled meats
traditionally served with three piquant sauces
fritto misto – a mix of flash fried
bits of meat, fish and vegetables. The mix depends on what is fresh in the
marketplace
Dessert
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| Everyone's Favorite, Chocolate Bonet |
bonet – the Chef’s favorite chocolate
and hazelnut cream pudding.
nocciolini di Chiavasso – a tiny
cookie made of toasted hazelnuts, sugar and egg whites, traditionally served
with a zabaglione sauce. These cookies were originally called “noisettes”,
which is the French word for nuts, but the name was changed during Mussolini’s
reign in the 1930’s.
torta gianduia – chocolate cake with chocolate and hazelnut
cream filling and frosting.
ON ANOTHER NOTE
This Italian Life now has a Facebook Page. You can get there
by clicking the Facebook badge on the right hand side of the page or going to
https://www.facebook.com/thisitalianlife. I’m still working out the
kinks, and the badge is kind of crummy, but it will take you to daily updates
of life in Italy. I hope you’ll check it
out, leave a comment or two, and while you are there it would be nice if you
gave the page a Like. Thanks.
Having just come back from a day in Torino, I now realise that there's a lot more to taste. What a tantalizing post.
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