European Cooking Secrets

Old Oct 26th, 2016, 08:17 AM
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European Cooking Secrets

I was just reading the "What's for Dinner October Part II" thread in the lounge with an interesting discussion on how to cook octopus and calamari. One poster wrote:

"I love octopus but will never dare cooking it myself. Everyone seems to complain the octopi we get here are tough (at restaurants), whereas the ones you get in the countries surrounding the Mediterranea are always very tender."

Someone else wrote that her husband thinks calamari taste like rubber.

Well, here on this forum are many Europeans and we can share our cooking secrets - which are no secrets at all.

I invite you all either to ask a question like "How do you prepare an authentic..." or to share your tips and recipes.
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Old Oct 26th, 2016, 08:39 AM
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I will start with the octopus and calamari.

In Greece (and other Mediterranean countries), octopus is a pretty ordinary dish. You just go snorkeling and you come back with a bunch of octopi. Several times, it happened to me that I was even approached by an octopus. Well, octopus around the Med is maybe what oppossum is for people living in the Southern States of the U.S.

The secret to cook an octopus that is neither rubbery nor mushy is just the right cooking time. And since every animal is different, you simply cannot tell a certain cooking time but you must try.

Cooking an octopus is very easy. If frozen, let it thaw. You can cut the tentacles from the rest either before or after cooking. In any case, you pull out the hard mouth.

Then you cover the octopus with water, pour some vinegar into it, two bay leaves and salt and bring it to cook. The water should not boil but simmer just under the boiling point. After 30 minutes, begin to try. Take a fork or knife - if it easily goes in and out of the flesh, then it is done (like a potatoe). Most octopi will need 50 or 60 minutes, some even more. Just try until it is ready (in the restaurants, they may not be patient enough).

You may remove the skin from the tentacles, however, it is not really necessary. Cut the tentacles into pieces, sprinkle generously with black pepper, olive oil and lemon juice, maybe a bit more salt, and serve as a salad or as a main dish.

Now, calamari. Firstly, let frozen calamari thaw. When thawed, use paper towels to dry them.

Then, there a two methods:

1) Put them on a very hot grill and grill them one minute from each side. Sprinkle with garlic and olive oil, salt and pepper.

2) Bring a pan to maximum heat. Fill in olive oil and garlic, coarsely chipped. Do not let the garlic become brown. Immediately throw in calamari, not too many at one time. Sear for one minute on each side.

That's is. The calamari should be eaten medium rare, some parts of the bodies maybe even raw. Raw is tasty!
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Old Oct 26th, 2016, 08:40 AM
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I'll bite. (Probably because I'm hungry). How do you prepare authentic pasta sauce? Any kind? My understanding is that the sauces in the US are much heavier and I don't like heavy sauce. But I love pasta. And how do I cook the large ravioli without losing the stuffing? Last time it looked like a crime scene- and yes, I followed the instructions- but it always is so pretty at restaurants. And what do you serve on ravioli?


And does anyone have a simple recipe for rabbit? From the menus I've seen in Germany, game is more popular in Europe, and I have found a butcher that carries it, but I have no clue how to cook it.

And then there is the octopus...did the lounge thread come up with any ideas? Because I love octopus but never cook it at home. I would love to know what you do with the whole baby octopi? (If that is European?) I used to work at a store in college that sold those but the only people who bought them didn't speak enough English to explain.

Oh boy. This has made me hungrier. Off to eat breakfast!
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Old Oct 26th, 2016, 08:42 AM
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Traveller1959- that's fascinating! How to you remove the hard mouth? (I haven't ever bought a whole octopus).
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Old Oct 26th, 2016, 09:02 AM
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Signing on for the cooking class.
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Old Oct 26th, 2016, 09:12 AM
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Kashmiri curry, whatever the recipe double the salt. ;-)
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Old Oct 26th, 2016, 09:33 AM
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I may be wrong but I assumed octopus had to be tenderised, which is why you can (or could, in my memory) see people bashing it on the quayside straight off the boat (or, on one occasion in Crete, using an old toploader washing machine so the agitator could do the job).

Can't stand the things myself....

Yorkshire pudding: the pan you're going to cook it in has to be hotter than you think, and the fat practically smoking.
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Old Oct 26th, 2016, 09:45 AM
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Calamari : bzfore cooking, remove their very thin skin.
Stuff them with ground pork meat mixed with onions, parsley,garlic, and a little stale bread soaked in milk.
Cook in the oven.
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Old Oct 26th, 2016, 10:09 AM
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Not European but the best way to eat squid https://accidentalnomads.com/2015/10...stuffed-squid/
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Old Oct 26th, 2016, 11:28 AM
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>> How to you remove the hard mouth?
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Old Oct 26th, 2016, 11:28 AM
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I've never cooked octopus, but their relatives, squid and cuttlefish, get tough if cooked too long. Of ocurse, they're also tough if not cooked long enough.

The main problem with American pasta is that they tend to put too much sauce on it, and the sauce usually has too much meat in it. Just cutting the quantity in half, or maybe more, would help a lot.

A good Italian ragù (meat sauce) begins with a little olive oil, and a little lard. Heat over low heat until the lard is melted.

Add finely chopped onion, garlic, carrot, and celery (You can use a mini food processor.)

After a minute or two, add ground meat. (I use a mixture of lean beef, pork, and turkey, which I have ground to order.) When it's begun to color, turn up the heat, add some white wine, and let it boil away, stirring and scraping the pot constantly. Add salt and pepper, but remember that it will boil down quite a lot, so it's best to add too little and adjust at the end.

Then add tomato purée (without sugar or salt or other additives). If you can't find the right kind of tomato purée, skin some ripe (preferably plum) tomatoes by plunging them in boiling water, which lets you just slip the skins off.You might want to also remove the seeds, but I don't. I don't know if canned plum tomatoes would work; I think they have additives, and they look a little . Cover the pot partially, and cook over low heat for several hours. Long cooking is key. If it gets too dense, add a little water and cover the pot more tightly. Towards the end, you have to stir often to

If you can find some soup bones, cook them in the sauce. You could also cook some chicken backs or wings in the sauce. At the end you would remove these bones or chicken parts; take all the meat off them and return it to the sauce.

Some people add a sausage to the ground meat, but I've never seen the right kind of sausage in the US. The kind we have here is made just of pork, salt, and pepper.

Some people stick a clove or two into a piece of onion, and cook it in the sauce. (The piece of onion is so that you can find the cloves and remove them at the end, because biting into a clove isn't very tasty.)

Some people add a small amount of milk or cream at the end if the tomatoes are very acid.

Adjust the salt to taste at the end, and toss the sauce with the pasta. The sauce should just coat the pasta, with very little left over. It shouldn't be dripping all over the serving plate. Add cheese (grana padano or parmigiano reggiano) and toss again before bringing it to the table.

If I had to guess the quantities, I would say that you'd want a tablespoon of lard, two of oil, and about 1/4 cup of the chopped veggies. Then maybe half a pound of meat and 3 cups of tomato purée.

In central Italy, a ragù doesn't have any spices or herbs, or even red pepper. In southern Italy, tomato sauces are likely to have red pepper, but they're usually not the ragù type of sauce, but a quicker sauce.

For the amount of sauce to put on the pasta, we use about 1/4 cup per person. You can put any excess sauce in small jars and freeze it. It's not easy to make the sauce in small quantities, so it's better to make too much and save what's left.

I learned most of my Italian recipes from our previous housekeeper, who was from a peasant family, but had also worked as a cook in a restaurant. She knew all the traditional recipes, but also some more refined dishes. She rarely measured anything. When making pasta, like all the traditional families around here, she started with the number of eggs, and added flour "quanta basta" (until it's enough). By watching her and weighing as she worked, I learned that each egg requires about 100 grams of flour.

You see the term "quanta basta" often in Italian cook books.
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Old Oct 26th, 2016, 11:34 AM
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>> And does anyone have a simple recipe for rabbit?
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Old Oct 26th, 2016, 11:47 AM
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>>> How do you prepare authentic pasta sauce? Any kind? My understanding is that the sauces in the US are much heavier and I don't like heavy sauce.
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Old Oct 26th, 2016, 12:06 PM
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Here's how we cook rabbit in Le Marche. It's called coniglio in potacchio .

Cut the rabbit into fairly small pieces. Heat some olive oil and plenty of pancetta in a heavy pan (maybe cast iron). Put the rabbit pieces in, along with some split garlic cloves, brown them a bit, then add plenty of white wine, a branch of rosemary, and some twigs of wild fennel. Cover tightly, and cook for 45 minutes to an hour, turning the pieces frequently, and adding broth, water, or more wine if it gets dry. Salt near the end of cooking time, and remove the garlic cloves.

Our housekeeper used to wrap a branch of rosemary in thyme, from the top to the bottom and then back up, tying it in a knot at the end. This keeps the leaves from falling off during the cooking. I'm pretty sure wild fennel isn't found in the US. It's got a taste similar to anise (the fresh herb, not dried, and not the seeds), so maybe that would be a good substitute. A mature plant has thick, woody, stems, and it's the stems that are used to flavor this dish.

A similar dish, cooked in the oven, is called coniglio in porchetta. This version usually has olives cooked with it.
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Old Oct 26th, 2016, 12:09 PM
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Here's how I cook rabbit in the US.
I hope it's okay to post here

http://www.cooks.com/recipe/y50q048l...ed-rabbit.html
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Old Oct 26th, 2016, 12:09 PM
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It is either cook VERY fast or slow cook/braise for a long time. Anything in between will be chewy!!
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Old Oct 26th, 2016, 12:17 PM
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Traveller - what a GREAT thread. Thank you for starting it and for sharing all your recipes with the rest of us.

I have occasionally tried to cook octopus, with no great success but frequently deep fry calamari rings in tempura batter which as others have said, need to be cooked very quickly. I think that is the rule with octopus or calamari - either long and slow or hot and fast; there are no half measures.

Of course different cultures have ideas about what and how others cook which are not necessarily correct. I was on a language and cookery course in Tuscany once where I had the chance to watch a professional chef preparing octopus salad; the assumption was that I knew all about the basic preparation of the beast [such as you describe above] but of course I didn't have a clue. [even in Cornwall it's not often on the menu and rarely if ever cooked at home] The next night we went to a family home to help them prepare their supper and eat it afterwards and our hosts were amazed that I knew how to make a stew [I think that was rabbit] which they clearly believed was unknown in the UK.

I hadn't thought of serving apple with rabbit - thanks for the idea.

bvl - that looks like a good ragu. [of course it is!] When you use the phrase "tomato puree" I think you are referring to what we call passata - puree comes in tubes here and is very concentrated and strong. we usually add a tablespoonful or two, no more than that. We don't add any peppers, red or otherwise, but DH likes to put in chicken livers and chopped black olives which probably aren't traditional but certainly add to the flavour. I agree about not using too much meat in the sauce or too much sauce with the pasta. There are probably as many ragu recipes in Italy as there are cooks.
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Old Oct 26th, 2016, 12:52 PM
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Yes, actually it's called passata in Italian also. Maybe purée is just the wrong word. I often have trouble remembering the correct English words for things. I'm pretty sure it's not passata in the US.

I asked my husband the other day what was the English name for something, and his response was, "You're asking me ?"

We're having more earthquakes this evening. There was a very strong one, 6.2 on the Richter scale, at 9:15 PM, with epicenter in southern Le Marche. We're further away from that area now, but we're worried about the people in the town where we spend a good part of our summers. The second one had everyone here out in the street.
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Old Oct 26th, 2016, 12:54 PM
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Thanks so much! And unexpected number of great rabbit ideas- can't wait to try it with baked apple!

I've seen fennel at the grocery stores here but I have no idea if it's wild. Probably not. That recipe looks delicious, bvlenci, thanks. But then again anything with pancetta sounds good to me.

Annhig- I must try the sauce with chicken livers. Does your husband sauté the lovers separately and add them at the end, or cook them in the sauce?
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Old Oct 26th, 2016, 12:58 PM
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Thank you all for the lively response to this thread.

I have to go to bed now - tomorrow I will tell you the two secrets to make a good Sauerbraten!
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