While the risotto is crisping up, heat another flat pan large enough to hold all the cabbage balls. Put in the vegetable oil and add the cabbage balls, smooth side down. Cook over a medium heat for 2-3 minutes, turn them over, then add the white wine. Cover with a lid and cook for another 15 minutes, very slowly, adding a little water (or chicken stock if you have it) if the liquid evaporates. Remove the cabbage balls from the pan and keep warm. Let the liquid in the pan reduce a little, then add the butter to make a slightly creamy sauce. Take the pan from the heat.
Slice the risotto into whatever shapes you like and place on 4 serving plates, with the cabbage balls on top. Drizzle over the sauce.
Lingua di manzo in salsa verde Ox tongue with green sauce
In Italy we traditionally serve salsa verde, our famous green sauce, with anything that is boiled – bollito misto (mixed meats), boiled chicken or ox tongue. If you go into a butcher’s to buy ox tongue, they will usually sell you a little pot of green sauce to go with it.
I prefer to make salsa verde with a mortar and pestle, the way it was made for centuries before modern kitchen gadgets came along. You can, of course, use a food processor, but it tends to warm up the sauce and darken the fantastic bright-green colour, whereas in a mortar you don’t crush out any of the flavour or colour.
The tongue can be served hot or cold. If you like it cold, you can cook it the day before you want to serve it. Just make sure you peel the skin off while it is still warm (it will be impossible to do it later) and keep the tongue in the cooking water in the fridge, to preserve it and keep its colour. The cooking liquid will solidify because it will be full of gelatine from the tongue.
By rinsing the tongue well before cooking, you should draw out the excess salt but if, when it is cooked, you taste the cooking liquid and it still seems too salty, you can cover it with sparkling water – the gas helps to draw out the salt – and leave it overnight in the fridge. Take it out a few hours before you need it so that it is not too cold, or keep back the cooking liquid (keep it in the fridge as well) and warm the tongue up in it, in a pan.
1 salted ox tongue
1 carrot, cut in half
1 shallot, cut in half
1 wine glass of white wine
3—4 black peppercorns
1 bay leaf
3 tablespoons plain flour
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
For the salsa verde:
6 salted anchovy fillets, rinsed
1 garlic clove
leaves from 50g flat-leaf parsley
yolks of 2 hard-boiled eggs, plus a few extra for garnish, if you like
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
15g dried breadcrumbs
200ml extra-virgin olive oil
Rinse the tongue under gently running cold water for an hour to remove the excess salt.
Put the carrot, shallot, wine, peppercorns and bay leaf in a large pan of water. Bring to the boil and add the ox tongue. Once it is boiling, taste the water and, if it is salty, bring another pan to the boil and transfer the vegetables, herbs and tongue from the first pan.
Mix the flour with the vinegar to make a thin paste, add it to the pan and whisk in. It will make the water appear cloudy, but it will help to keep the colour and bring out the flavour of the tongue. Turn down the heat and simmer for about 2½ hours. The tongue is cooked when you can easily peel off the skin. Peel, then leave to cool in the cooking liquid. If it still tastes a little salty, leave it to cool down more, as the salt will be less apparent when the tongue is cold.
Make the sauce, preferably using a mortar and pestle. First crush the anchovies and the garlic, then put in the parsley leaves and egg yolks and work to a fine paste. Mix in the vinegar and breadcrumbs, then add the olive oil a little at a time. If you prefer the sauce a little sharper, add a touch more vinegar; if you like it firmer, put in more breadcrumbs. (To make the sauce in a food processor, put everything except the oil in together, then add the oil a little at a time. Pulse very quickly, as the longer you let it go on, the darker green it will get as the food processor warms up.)
Slice the tongue quite thinly, drizzle the green sauce over it and, if you like, grate some more hard-boiled egg yolks over the top.
Testina di vitello Calf’s head salad
Until thirty or forty years ago, when the market for veal began to decline, veal farming thrived in Northern Italy, especially in my region of Lombardia and Piemonte. Small farmers reared calves along with chickens and other animals, and sold the prime meat to rich people or Milanese restaurants, so they were left with the cheaper cuts and the heads and feet, which would be eaten at home or sold to poorer people. Cooking these parts of the animal requires much more work, but because they are full of gelatinous tissue they become meltingly tender, with long-lasting flavours that make some of the most memorable and tasty dishes.
I understand that people these days find offal a harsh reality to deal with at home, and even in the restaurant I know it can take a bit of courage to try. One of the reasons we have become wary of eating certain parts of animals is the prevalence of problems such as BSE, which is why you have to find a responsible butcher and trust him. But, you know, sometimes I think that if people saw what goes into the processed foods they eat every day they might think differently about some of the food they buy without question. The foot of an animal is far more wholesome than the chemicals, additives and processed fats many people consume regularly, most of the time without even knowing it. Think about it: we happily buy anything in friendly sanitised commercial packaging because we are convinced it must be okay, when the guy who set up the company is probably already in Bermuda with a big house and a private jet. He doesn’t give a damn if we die after twenty years from eating all the additives his factory has put into our food.
But if you buy a calf’s head that has been carefully boned and rolled up and tied with string, a process that takes a lot of time and care, you know you are being given something that has been prepared by someone who doesn’t cut corners. And if you go into a restaurant where calf’s head is on the menu, you know that the cook is someone who cares about sharing fantastic flavours – because it would be much easier just to do a burger and chips. Again, it brings us back to the idea that good food doesn’t have to be expensive.
The problem, I know, is finding prepared calves’ heads. Supermarkets? Forget it. Even the few high-street butchers that are left rarely sell them, but if you ask, they may be able to get them for you. And if enough people ask, maybe we can make them fashionable, the way the humble lamb shank became something ‘smart’ in the Nineties.
If you