Super Bowl food madness

The Super Bowl is the final game of the NFL championship, and it is normally held at the beginning of February. It culminates a long season of American football, which starts the Summer of the previous year.

Why is this relevant in a food blog like this? Because Super Bowl day is the second largest day of food consumption in the United States, after Thanksgiving, but before Christmas and New Year's Eve. Super Bowl day is also the the biggest winter grilling day of the year, with thousands of pounds of meat being sold. It is such an important "food day" that the US Department of Agriculture even has an page of its website dedicated on how to handle food for Super Bowl party! It is not a coincidence, then, than pretty much every recipe website or any food magazine is coming up with stories on how to cook your best Super Bowl food.

The tradition is for a relative large crowd (10-20 people is the norm) of friends to gather at somebody's house, and watch the game (and the many new commercials which make for half of the fun) while munching on large quantities of party food. Some classics include chicken hot wings, dips of some sort (mostly guacamole, but cheese balls - potentially with bacon - are also a must), pizza. Some fast facts (*):

• Super Bowl fans spend around $50 million on food in the four days prior to the game...
• Around 70 million pounds of avocados will be consumed, mostly prepared as guacamole dip. Considering the average weight of avocados, this means that a little less than 150,000,000 avocados will be eaten. That's a lot of avocados.
• Where there is guacamole there are chips: 14,500 tons of chips are eaten on Super Bowl day (and 4,000 tons of pop corns)  
• Approximately 90 million pounds of chicken wings are eaten, roughly 450 million individual wings...

At the two super bowl parties I went to since I moved here, chili con carne also played an important role, but I don't know if this is a tradition or not.

Now, this may sound like easy food to prepare. So you may think that there is not a lot of cooking involved. You would be wrong, for two reasons: on the one hand, preparing something for 10-20 people is always challenging and time consuming. And on the other hand, often people try to fashion their food - either in shape or in presentation - in a super bowl related way, as you can see from the photos that I have taken from the internet.

All in all, it is a very fattening day, in which you end up eating a lot of junk food and drinking LOADS of beer. It is not by coincidence that apparently 6% of Americans call in sick on Monday after the game, and that convenience store 7-Eleven reports a 20% increase in antacid sales the day after...Also, according to the Insurance Information Institite, more drivers are involved in alcohol-related accidents on Super Bowl Sunday than any other day of the year, with the exception of St. Patrick's day (can't beat the Irish).

For the record, this year Super Bowl game sees the Giants against the Patriots. But I only care about the food.

(*) The sources for the data are a variety of websites.

Pizza in America: mafia, slices and why eating a whole pie is a no-no

Since coming to the US I have often wondered why Americans, who otherwise seem to be in love with pizza, find it absolutely strange to eat a whole pie on your own. In Italy - and pretty much everywhere else in Europe I have traveled to - the common thing is to order an entire pizza, thin crust, and eat the whole thing. In America I noticed that this is not the case. (I am obviously talking about the round Neapolitan style pizza, not the pizza al taglio).

This is how pizzas are served in the rest of the World. Not by the slice

If I can understand why you wouldn't (you couldn't, actually) eat an entire Chicago deep dish pizza on your own, I cannot understand why even thin crust is often served already sliced, and as a dish to share. Plus, in most of NY  restaurants pizza seems to be offered by the slice: a very large slice, from a very large pie. But still a slice.  Don't tell me it is because an entire pizza is too much to eat, because I will laugh in your face.

I hadn't given much thought about the reason behind this until last week. I was having a disappointing BBQ dinner with a couple of friends, and one mentioned that he had read something about the Italian American mafia obliging pizza parlors to sell pizza by the slice. I dig deeper and I found out a couple of interesting things.

As reported by a blogger of the Village Voice, Al Capone, the notorious Mafia boss from Chicago, owned several dairy farms in Wisconsin. To ensure that his farms got all the business they needed, he forced NY pizzerias to use his own cheese on their pizza. This was very different from the mozzarella cheese that Italian pizzazioli in the city were buying from farmers up in New York (incidentally, mozzarella is the only cheese that Wisconsin seems unable to make decently to this present day: for the rest, Wisconsin's cheese is on par - at times better - than any cheese I have tasted from France or Italy).

Apparently - and I admit that I don't understand the reasoning here - Al Capone only allowed certain pizza parlors, like the famous Lombardi, to use good local mozzarella, but only as long as they promised to never sell pizza by the slice. This would also give a new meaning to the many "No Slices" you can see on many awnings in many NY pizzerias: it would be a sort of a code for the Mafia, something saying "don't kill us please, we are using Mafia cheese". Or something like that.

No slices = mafia bought cheese? 

According to many New Yorkers I have talked to - and as noted also on the post I have linked - the cheese served on pizza slices is often inferior to the one you can find on pizza served whole. I don't know if this is because the mafia still controls the cheese distribution, or if it is simply because the pizza parlors selling slices have a bigger need to cut down their costs, so they shop for inferior cheese.

However, I personally believe that if this Al Capone story is true, it could help explain why the pizza slice - nowhere to be found in Italy - is ubiquitous in the US: it all started with the mafia...

Incidentally, it seems that the mafia in the '70s also controlled the olive oil distribution, and that connections between the mafia and pizza parlors are very much still alive, as reported in this cute overview pizza-slice shaped, from the New York Magazine (click on it to view it larger).

Italian American cuisine

The concept of Italian cuisine in America is heavily influenced by the first Southern Italian immigrants that got to Ellis Island at the end of the 19th century, and especially between 1900 and 1924. These were mostly very poor people from tiny little villages from Sicily. Some of them probably didn't even know that they were "Italians", since the Italian unification had taken place in 1861, and the news hadn't made it everywhere in Italy yet...These immigrants brought with them food traditions and "dishes" that shaped forever the image of Italian cuisine in America. But most of these dishes were - and still are - completely alien to the rest of Italy. 

The Spaghetti meatballs!

There is a look of incredulity, almost of shock, that often appears on the face of my American friends, when we talk about what they consider Italian food and I tell them that I have never eaten it. When I say that the stuff they mention either doesn't exist in Italy, or it comes only from a specific part of the country (mostly Sicily), I am not sure they believe me. This issue has come up a few times already on the blog: about the braciole/braz'hul, about the sandwich called muffoletta, and more recently on my Facebook page speaking of Italian meatballs in tomato sauce (which I cooked yesterday for the first time in my life).

Now, to be honest, the first lasting Italian American communities had been founded by Northern, not Southern, Italians in Northern California in the 19th century. They had migrated there to get involved in the starting Napa Valley's wine business, and in the San Francisco's fishing fleet. However, the image of Italian American cuisine - and of Italian Americans - was provided by the Southern immigrants that moved to the East Coast: the red checked tablecloth, the tomato sauce on a huge plate of spaghetti, the meatballs, all these elements came from the South. A traveler to Italy of the 19th century would have had a very hard time to find these things North of Rome.

Yet, the image stuck.

Obviously Southern Italian cuisine adapted to the new American surroundings. The fast pace of the American life seems to be the major driver behind many of the now iconic Italian American dishes. Italian meals were normally a three/four course affairs, taking a good chunk of time out of your day. This couldn't work in the US: hence, the meat and the pasta dishes - originally separated in two courses - had to be merged into one single dish, with a salad as a side. Things needed to be faster. And here you are your spaghetti meatballs, your seafood fra diavolo, your meat dish with some pasta on the side.

The importance of meat in Italian American cuisine is very interesting. Back home, very few of these poor immigrants could afford to eat meat more than once a week (IF they could afford it at all). In the US, perhaps as a sign of a newly found prosperity, meat - and in particular beef - became a very important part of Italian cuisine. This desire to put as much meat as possible on the table lead also to the creation of a couple of typical Italian American dishes: the eggplant parmigiana, for instance, was modified and made with veal, becoming veal parmigiana. Something still unknown in Italy as of today.

Pizza, which is now as American as a cheeseburger, had some catch up to do: it really became popular only after WW2, when the US military came back home after having occupied the South of Italy for some time. During the occupation, soldiers had the chance to try the local pizza, and they loved it. And that's when pizza parlors started to pop out in the US like mushrooms after a rainy day in September.

At least until the end of the 1980s, Italian restaurants continued to be associated with cheap eateries with red checked tablecloth serving pasta dunk in red tomato sauce. It was in the '90s that a different perception of Italian cuisine started to appear. In parallel with the fall of elaborated French cuisine, which had dominated fine dining for two centuries in America (read my story on the rise and fall of French cuisine here), a different type of Italian food started to appear and be appreciated.  Northern Italian, Tuscan food, started to achieve wider appeal. And now some of the most renowned US celebrity chefs are either of Italian origins or serving Italian food.

But if you still want to find your red checked table cloth, Lombardi's in New York city is still there.

The American Casual dining chain project

As I had mentioned here, one of my 2012 projects is to eat in as many American casual dining chains as I can. Why? Because they are a major part of the American dining scene, and this blog is about understanding American cuisine. Plus, I think it is going to make for a fun (and child friendly) experience.

Now, some definitions. Casual dining restaurants are moderately priced restaurants, providing table service and made-to-order food. If you have been to the US, you will have seen restaurants such as Applebee's, Chili's, Red Lobster, Cracker Barrell, TGI Friday, Cheesecake Factory (some of these have an international presence). These are different from fast food restaurant chains, because they provide table service: you sit down, you are brought a menu, you order from it with a waiter, like in any other restaurants. The only difference is that they are part of a chain.

Dining restaurant chains are an American invention. Disagreement exists on which was the first restaurant chain. But it is a well established fact that between the 50's and the 60's some of the chains that we are now familiar with started to appear. Some of them offer typical American fare, with steaks, burgers, bar food, while others go after specific niches (Red lobster is specialized in seafood, Olive Garden in Italian American food).

My initial attitude towards these chains was skeptical. If I was ready to enter into a fast food restaurant chain and order a burger or a taco for 5$, I was a lot less inclined to enter into a casual dining chain and order an entire meal for 20$. I thought that these chains would never be able to provide a better service than the mum and pop's restaurants next door. I do remember passing in front of a Chili's restaurant in Chicago, seeing it packed, and wondering: why on earth would anyone want to go there, if there are so many other options?

I was wrong.

My reasoning had a fundamental flaw: it was anchored in my Italian and Belgian experience, where you can find pretty much everywhere, even in the most outlandish far away village, a decent mom and pop restaurant, serving decent food at a decent price. Look at Italy, and at its thousands of trattorias: I am not saying that they are always fantastic (they are not); but I am saying that if you stop by a restaurant in the middle of nowhere, chances are you are going to have a good meal for a decent price (unless you are in a very touristy area).

In my experience, this is not always true in the US. It may be true in large cities such as Chicago, New York, Washington: in large cities you can probably find small family operated diners and restaurants where you can have a good meal for a decent price. But Europeans often tend to forget that America is not New York. Or the East Coast or California. There is something else in between. A huge something else.

As soon as I started to venture even only 20-30 miles outside of Chicago on my motorcycle tours, going through small villages, I started to see the flaws in my argument. I would look for a local diner, a local roadhouse, assuming it would be ten times better than the fare offered at the Cracker Barrel chain next door. And I ended up having less than sub par experiences: dirty establishments, bland food, poor services. of course there are good independent diners. But I must say that outside major cities, they are the exceptions, not the rule (again, at least in my experience).

In our trips to Utah, Arizona, New mexico, my wife and I only had good food in the major cities and in Native American reservations...but other than that, we found ourselves desperately looking for a big chain sign along the highways. Our experience in eating at local family owned restaurants that we had stumbled upon our highways tours had given us too many stomach aches. And we are no wimps. Yet, we found ourselves increasingly going to the casual dining chains: a healthy salad, a good steak, a nice bowl of soup, in a clean environment. Hell, in Holbrook Arizona, a must-see spot on Route 66, the only place we found offering a decent breakfast in a clean environment was Macdonald's...

In a land where the phenomenon of the so called food deserts is so widespread, I started to see the value in these casual dining chains: consistently good food, wide choice, good prices. Some of these chains are actually very, very good: it is the case of the Cheesecake Factory, for instance, which I already talked about here.

Over the next twelve months I plan on eating in as many of these chains as possible, providing comments to you readers...you may consider this a dining guide for casual dining. I have created a specific page for this project, with a list of the restaurants I intend to eat at. If you have suggestions or recommendations, just let me know in the comment section.

Next stop: Chili's, a chain offering Southwestern/Mexican food.

American BBQ

I realized that I haven't talked about one of the most traditional American things: barbecue. Readers unfamiliar with American BBQ may be frowning upon what I just wrote. The Tuscan Foodie has lost his mind...we have barbeque in Italy, or France, or pretty much everywhere! This is not an American thing, you will be thinking.

And boy: would you be wrong.

What we traditionally call barbecue in Italy, the simple form of quickly grilling meat or fish on an open pit, has evolved into a very serious artistic slow cooking form in the US, with regional variations that make a Kansas style BBQ something very different from a Texas BBQ.  Texans in particular are very serious about their BBQ.

Kreuz Market BBQ, from Texas.

I remember one of the most mystical experiences (I cannot avoid using almost religious terms when I talk about the flavors of BBQ) was to enter into this giant BBQ joint, Kreuz Market, in Lockardt, Texas, the self-dubbed Capital of Barbeue. Two gigantic smokers, as big as the 18 wheels trucks that are the nightmares of any motorcyclists, were slowly cooking tons and tons of meat. The smell was Paradise. And the food we got - served in plain paper, with no forks or knives and with absolutely no sauce - was the tastiest meat we have ever had.

In much of Europe barbecue is often associated with quick preparation: you get your steak and your sausages, you throw them on the grill, you eat. Although this type of BBQ can obviously also be found in the US, the actual cuisine called BBQ is a different thing entirely. And it is as much to do with fast preparation as Berlusconi has to do with sexual abstinence: very little.

Certain traditional BBQ dishes (brisket, pulled pork), are extremely long preparations, requiring often more than 20 hours if you want to do them right. Texas BBQ, if I understand correctly, actually demands the longest preparation, because here the meat is cooked/smoked through indirect heat: the meat is not put on coals or a grill, but it is cooking standing next to a furnace which sends its smoke and heat towards the meat for hours.

If you are not salivating by now you have no heart, really.

Different American States have different traditions in barbecuing different animals (or different parts of the same animals). Variations can also be found in the sauces or rubs used to marinate the meat: from the mustard based sauce of South Carolina (I must admit, one of my favorites), to the Texas mop sauce, the sauce will tell you what type of BBQ you are eating as much as the cooking method.

Whatever the type of BBQ you are having though, the one feature that groups them all is that BBQ is served in joints which are as unpretentious as they come: metal chairs, metal tables, no towels. Some places - for instance Chicago Q - try to offer an upscale dining experience, with cloths on the table. But if you are going to eat BBQ and you can't be licking your fingers at the end of the meal, then you are in the wrong place, as far as I am concerned.

A typical BBQ joint interior: unpretentious...

Cooking good BBQ at home is not impossible. Provided your building allows for charcoal grills or at least gas grills. If - like me - you live in a place where the only grill allowed is electric, and no smoker, then you are out of luck. That's why my experiments with BBQ have been mostly limited to the classic quick grilling, and to the BBQ dishes that you can actually make at home in a slowcooker. The slowcooker is in fact an excellent alternative cooking method for some of the BBQ dishes: the extremely long cooking times allow the fat and the connective tissues of the meat to dissolve and give the meat that specific tender, off the bone appearance that is required in so many US BBQ dishes.

Baby back ribs, slowcooked and caramelized in the oven. Not a bad alternative...

I have devoted myself to two areas in particular: BBQ ribs and pulled pork (but this year I am going to start experimenting with brisket). Pulled pork is a US specialty that I disliked at first: In a very old post back in 2010 I indicated that that stuff was growing on me...now it hasn't just grown: it is one of my favorite dishes.

I have been playing it with quite some time, and I came up with a couple of recipes that I think are smashing good, if I do say so myself: pulled pork with dry tart cherries and cherry beer, with a cherry beer BBQ sauce, for instance. Interested?

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The plan for 2012

I am not going to call them New Year's resolutions: 2012 is going to be a tough year for a number of reasons, and I intend to treat food as pleasure, not as a resolution. They are more like a draft plan of attack for 2012, some guidelines that I hope to be able to follow to some degree. Here they are:

Eat in as many American diners' chains as possible. Chili's, Texas roadhouse, Olive garden, Red lobster...I have eaten in some of them, but not in all. I want to eat in as many as possible this year. Why? First of all because I think they are a quintessential part of the American dining scene, especially outside large cities. If you don't want to eat at fast foods, diners' chains are often your only options. In my experience the food served there is often superior to the one served in small city, non-chain diners. Yes, I will say it again: the food served in most chain restaurants is not bad. I am not saying is a gourmet experience. But good? Often yes. And what I like about them is that often they go with a theme: Mexican, bbq, even Tuscan...I am curious. And I think this makes for a fun, inexpensive and child-friendly project. And I think it will provide good writing material...

Eat in Cicago' culinary landmarks. Next to the inexpensive chain dining experience, I have another pet project, a tad more expensive. Chicago is home to some of the world's most renowned restaurants. Charlie Trotter (now closing in August 2012), Alinea...these are once in a lifetime experiences. And I intend to enjoy them this year. Will I be disappointed?

Cooking more recipes from the Marche's region. Now, the name of this blog is A Tuscan foodie in America. But as I said often, I am only half Tuscan, from my father's side. My mother is from the Italian region called Marche, which faces the Adriatic sea. As a result, the food I grew up w always a bit of a mixture of Tuscan, Marche's and northern Italian recipes (a big chunk of my family comes from Lombardy, near Milan). Although less known than Tuscany, both internationally and within Italy itself, Marche is a gem, both from a landscape and a food point of view. In an article of a couple of years ago that I cannot find, the New York Times ferred to it as a rougher Tuscany. My objective for 2012? Cook more recipes from the Marche region, and take you on this tour with me.

One year of food

Exactly one year ago I had compiled a list of resolutions for 2011. Looking back, the glass is half full or half empty, depending on the way you look at it. I certainly did entertain more at home compared to the previous years, although you could argue that that's because we couldn't really go out that much in the evening, with a newborn in the house...I most certainly did bake a lot more than in the past: actually 2011 was the year of baking, if you will. And we did visit at least one US food mecca, New Orleans (I always meant to talk about it on the blog, but for some reason I never got around it). But I did fail miserably on all other accounts.

One year ago I also started my first real diet of my life. I will soon talk about this in more details, but to cut a long story short, even in this area the glass is half full and half empty. I did lose weight, but I did not achieve my objectives (and most certainly over the last three weeks I threw away a good chunk of 12 months of work). 

Anyway, I think 2011 was overall a very good year from a food point of view. And I want to summarize it like this, with a photo for each of the 12 months. Happy New Year everyone, and I hope I can still count you among my readers for 2012!

1. Bread: I have been baking more bread in 2011 than in my entire life. Sourdoughs, ciabattas, Tuscan breads...name a bread: I am pretty sure I tried to bake it. I am not saying they all came out well...but some of them did!
2. Barbecue: it is official. In 2011 American barbecue cuisine became my No. 1 favorite cuisine, overtaking Mexican and Japanese BY FAR. I will soon talk about this new passion of mine. 
3. Oysters: I have eaten more oysters in 2011 (and in very funky ways) than in my entire life. And in New Orleans they were so cheap (I mean, really cheap: 3 dollars for 6 oysters!)
4. Tuscan traditions: in my schizophrenia, in which I sometimes cook a purely American dish, next to a Mexican, next to a Belgian, next to a French, I tried not to forget my roots. Tuscan cantuccini help me in that sense. 
5. New Orlean's beignet: good. Yet, overrated. 
6. Raw shellfish: I have eaten a lot of this stuff this year...  
7. Soft shell crab po-boy: one of the new foods I tried (not a fan though: I mean, it is ok, but it is a sandwich. I can't understand the excitement about it). 
8. Cupcakes: I have been baking a lot of them. And I think I am getting decent at them, and my piping skills have improved a lot...
9. Christmas in Santa Fe: Green pork chili, next to red beef chili. This is what you get when you ask for a "Christmas" dish in New Mexico. 2011 was the year of the chili, among other things. 
10. Snake: there is a first time for (almost) everything. And this year it was the first time for me to eat snake, in Arizona. It is ok: it tastes like dry chicken. 
11. Thanksgiving: my first Thanksgiving as a cook. It went decently. 
12. Schiacciata: at last, 2011 was the year I was able to replicate the schiacciata (focaccia bread) from back home!

Christmas beers

Photo from Serious Eats.

The first year I was living in Belgium (many, many years ago, alas), I saw bottles dubbed Christmas beers for the first time. I wasn't a beer connoisseur (and neither I am now), but I assumed that this was a marketing gimmick to sell more beers during Christmas. Little did I know that Christmas beers were actually a very respected tradition, dating back to...when? 

Depending on who you ask, you will hear different accounts of the history behind the so called Christmas beers. The story I heard living in Belgium was that Christmas beers started after WW2. At the end of the harvest period, brewers would  put freshly harvested hop into their barrels, together with the remains from the previous season. Autumn providing the perfect temperatures for the fermentation of beer, by December these Christmas beers would be ready to be sold/given as presents to the best customers. Each brewery would of course put its signature into their Christmas beer, adding spices of their liking.

But this story may not fly if you talk to a Brit: he will tell you that British brewers had been making Christmas beers for a very long time, well before Belgians copied this tradition. But then again, talk to Scandinavians, and they will tell you that they invented the tradition: hundreds of years ago, Scandinavians would celebrate Jolner in December, in honor of one of their gods, Thor. In preparation of that celebration, they would start preparing a special drink in September/October, for it to be ready in December. They called this drink Julol. 

Personally I am inclined to go with a mixture of these stories: I think the Scandinavians did invent this, although it had nothing to do with Christmas; the British imported the whole affair in the UK, but the Belgians were those who relaunched the whole tradition after WW2. Do I have any ground to think that this is how it went? Nope.

Christmas beers are richer than "normal" beers: denser, more aromatic, spicier, with a higher alcohol content, they are made of two different types of malts. Although there are a couple of "blonde" Christmas beers, the vast majority are dark beers, some of them almost pitch-black.

As many things-Belgian, Christmas beers go strong in the US. The American beer scene is, even to a non-expert like me, pretty impressive: artisanal beers are pretty lively, but Belgian beers are dominating the import markets (+29% in 2011 compared to 2010...). However, next to many traditional Belgian Christmas beers (Delirium Noel, N'ice Chouffe, Fantome de Noel), you will also find American and Canadian Christmas beers that are very, very good.

Christmas beers are a wonderful thing, and make for a beautiful Christmas present, if you are still undecided about what to give. Here is a list of 8 Christmas beers, some Belgian, some North American chosen  by the site Serious Eats. I have had a few of them (Fantome de Noel, Mad Elf), and they are very good.

The all American Mac and Cheese tradition

If Americans were to single out one meal as their favorite comfort food, there is no question that macaroni and cheese (mac & cheese for friends) would win hands down. The overcooked, super soft pasta covered in melting cheese is something that most Italians do not even dare to get close to. If there is one thing that scares the hell out of Italians more than non-Italian food is food that is "similar" to Italian, but - as they would put it - it is an Italian violated.

Photo from the website My recipes

And let's be frank: nothing says violation of pasta more than a good, gooey, overcheesy bowl of mac & heese. It is true that some traditional Italian pasta dishes are technically mac & cheese: spaghetti cacio e pepe are nothing more than noodles with pecorino cheese and pepper; pasta alla ricotta is nothing more than pasta with ricotta cheese. Yet, nothing is more un-Italian than mac & cheese. It is even a bigger violation than the Chicago pizza, that at least resembles a Sicilian sfincione. In a good mac & cheese the pasta (traditionally tubolar "elbow" pasta) is boiled well past its al dente point, and then baked with a cheese sauce so as to become almost a smooth paste of starch and melted cheese. Sometimes you can add a crust of crunchy crumbs on top, but that's considered fancy in many parts of America.

Plus, this dish is almost never considered an entree, rather a side dish that one chooses to replace vegetables. YES!

Now, I often said (for instance, here) that Italians are stupid to even refuse to taste certain food simply because it is not Italian or because it seems to go against every rule of Italian cuisine. And my position is exactly the same also on mac & cheese: this stuff is D E L I C I O U S.

The history of this dish is quite interesting. The first to import pasta making machines from Italy to the US was Thomas Jefferson at the beginning of the 19th century. Pasta had already appeared here and there, but it was only with the French fleeing the French revolution that pasta factories were then created. Although there are several "recipes" of what resembles mac & cheese popping out here and there, the original mac & cheese recipe is attributed to Mary Randolph, the author of the book The Virginia Housewife. Her brother was the son in law of Thomas Jefferson, so perhaps it is not by accident that she came up with what is considered the first REAL mac & cheese recipe:

Since then, mac & cheese  has become first a Southerner typical dish, then an African American specialty, and finally a national obsession. Kraft introduced its mac & cheese in 1937, and its ubiquitous blue box is still the market leader. Kids grow up loving it, and I can't blame them.

Now, since I moved here I have been (eating and) experimenting a lot with mac & cheese. Recently I also organized a mac & cheese dinner, where guests were invited to bring their own versions of mac & cheese. If it is true that the original version only calls for pasta, butter, cheese, the variations are infinite: I have eaten mac & cheese with lobster, with burnt tips (a barbecue specialty), apples and walnuts, bacon, hot chiles, herbs...so the idea of the dinner was to see what people could come up with.

The mac & cheese options at the Tuscan Foodie's house: a traditional one, one topped with fried onion rings, one with bacon and jalapenos, one with radicchio and one with walnuts and apples...

The dinner came out well, if I do say so myself: we ate like pigs, and there were two mac and cheese that really stood out. One with apples and walnuts that was subtle, yet very cheesy, and then there was a heart attack chili, with I can't remember how many kilos of cheese had in it, and that was smothered with a crust of fried onion rings. Boy, was that thing GOOD. My liver was crying for mercy at every bite, but I kept on going. For science, of course.

I don't think anyone can accuse me of not doing enough to embrace the culture I am living in, right?
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No-knead schiacciata with potato in the dough

Before I give you the recipe for this schiacciata, let me explain a couple of things. If you are not interested, scroll down to read the recipe, or just click here to download it or print it, and go try it.

Schiacciata is as Tuscan as the leaning Tower of Pisa: you eat it every day, either as a snack mid-morning, or at lunch, or as a mid-afternoon snack, or at dinner. Or - at least in my family - in the morning AND at lunch AND at dinner. Alas, finding a good schiacciata outside of Italy is difficult. And that's what got me into bread and schiacciata baking: the need to replicate the flavors that i couldn't find anywhere else.

The perfect morning snack. The perfect lunch. The perfect mid-afternoon snack. The perfect dinner.

What is schiacciata, you may ask? For the sake of brevity, let's just say that schiacciata is the name used in Tuscany to indicate what is elsewhere known as focaccia bread. I am half lying saying this, because there are some differences, and focaccia is a very confusing word in Italian, sometimes indicating even sweets, panettone style. I will get back to the linguistic differences of schiacciata and focaccia. For the time being though, let's just say that if you are in Tuscany and go to a bakery you are going to ask for schiacciata and not focaccia. 

At its core, schiacciata is a very simple thing: a flattened bread (schiacciare in Italian means to flatten), containing three basic ingredients (flour, yeast, water). But the infinite ratios to combine these ingredients (and the different quality in the flours and the water), the addition of other elements (olive oil, herbs...), and the climatic conditions mean that 1) a lot of different products go by the same term and that 2)  it is very difficult to consistently obtain the same product at home.

As you may have understood from my previous posts about schiacciata baking, this has almost become an obsession of mine. I am spending a lot of my free time baking schiacciate from different recipes, from books, blogs, conversations with old Italian ladies...each one comes out different. Some of them I discard after the first attempt, because, honestly, they suck. Some I spend weeks baking them again and again to make them come out as I want them. I even baked a sweet focaccia with dried fruits and jams as dessert once. (And yes, it was very good).

Some of the focaccia bread I have baked...

Today I want to share with you the recipe that got me started, and that I baked and altered, baked and altered, baked and altered, until I consistently started to get what I wanted: a schiacciata with a crisp crust, a moist crumb, tall enough to be sliced open and eaten with cold cuts, but not as tall as to lose its crunchiness and become too airy when eaten on its own.

I developed this recipe starting from the no-kneading recipe given by Jim Lahey in his "My Bread" book. Lahey's method for bread baking calls for a lot less yeast and a lot less kneading (almost none). As a trade off, it requires extremely long rising time, sometimes as long as 24 hours (although this is not the case for this schiacciata). According to Lahey, working the dough less but let it rise longer, develops a bread structure stronger than what you can obtain with longer kneading and shorter rising times. I can confirm this: I baked tens of focaccia recipes requiring longer kneading times, and none of them has given me the same strength in the schiacciata crumbs (I am not saying the no-kneading method is the best for every bread, of course. All I am saying is that it seemed to work for this specific schiacciata I wanted).

Obviously Lahey hasn't invented anything, and he admits it openly: this method was used already in Roman times, and often in Middle Age's Tuscan bread making.

My obsession started now more than 18 months ago. Since then I have actually developed another recipe, with no potato in the dough, which has become my absolute favorite. I will publish it some other time, if you are interested. However, every guest we have seems to prefer this "potato" version, so here you go.

No-knead schiacciata with potato in the dough 
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The final product will look like this

This schiacciata takes very little active time to prepare, but it takes a long time to rise (twice), and you should plan accordingly. From the moment you start to the moment the schiacciata is out of the oven at least 5 hours will have passed. In cold weathers, make that 6 or 7.

For this particular version of schiacciata, in my experience all purpose flour seems to work better than bread flour, which has a higher protein content: the schiacciata comes out less dry. However, if you only have bread flour, it will do perfectly (for Italians I would recommend OO flour). As for the potato to use: russet potatoes seem to work better than Yukon gold: Yukon gold leave the crumbs too moist to my taste, but any yellow potato will do the trick (I even tried it with a sweet potato and it came out delicious...). The potato in the dough serves to moisten the crumbs and to make the schiacciata lighter, since it replaces part of the flour. 

I call for honey or sugar in my recipe: both help the flour ferment. I prefer honey because it gives a darker crust, but sugar will work just as perfectly.

Also, this is a no-topping recipe, perfect to be cut open and filled with cold cuts. This is the real deal. For this reason, there are no herbs (sage, rosemary, thyme, onions) nor olives added on top. What I am giving you is a "vessel" to transport the cold cuts' flavors, but which is also delicious on its own. But of course you can add whatever herb you want. Keep in mind though, that adding "wet" ingredients, such as onions and olives, will have an impact on the rising times and on the fermentation. 


Ingredients

• 600 gr (4 1/2 cups) all purpose or bread flour (or 00 for my Italian readers)
• 600 gr water (2 1/2 cups) 
• 1 potato (approximately 200 grams)
• 4 gr sugar (1 tsp) OR 10gr honey (1 tsp)
• 10 gr dry yeast (or 30 grams fresh yeast - lievito di birra - diluted in a finger of water)
• 5 gr table salt (3/4 tsp)
• 10 gr coarse salt (if you don't have it, you can use regular table salt) for dusting the dough
• olive oil: enough to coat the pan and the top of the dough, approximately 50-70gr (1/4 cup)

How to make it

• Cut the potatoes in cubes, put them with the cold water in a sauce pan, and bring to boil, covered, over high heat. Cook until the potato is very tender (you need to be able to cut through it with a fork), about 15 minutes. Keep the sauce pan covered, or else the water will evaporate, leaving you with a dough non wet enough. 

• With an immersion blender (or in a blender) pure' the potato with its water. Let the mixture rest until it gets cool enough to touch, but not still warm. It will take about an hour. 

• In a large bowl, sift the flour, then stir in the yeast, the sugar (or the honey), the salt, the water with the potato. Mix with your hands or with a wooden spoon for about a minute, until you have an extremely wet dough (there is a 1:1 flour/water ratio!). Cover with plastic wrap and put this in a draft-free spot to rise for 3 hours, or until the dough has at least doubled, but preferentially tripled. (Remember that - as for any baking - the rising times and fermentation are heavily conditioned by the atmospheric pressure, the humidity, temperature...this is why a good recipe during the summer may not work as well during the winter. Put the dough to rise in a draft-free spot. The oven is perfect. A trick I sometimes use is to turn the light of the oven on (NOT THE OVEN) and, with a thermometer, I check that the temperature is at 25C/77F. If the temperature goes up, I turn the light off: fermentation above 25C/77F will give a nasty yeasty flavor and smell to your schiacciata - or to any bread, really). 

• Oil a 13 X 18 inches (33X40cm) pan (beware: a smaller or larger pan will give you a thicker or thinner schiacciata than the one I took photos of, altering the flavor and consistency: you may even like it more, or less, who knows). Pour the dough onto the pan: it will be very soft, sticky and messy. Oil your fingers, and use your hands to gently press the dough down, so as to extend it to cover the whole pan, creating a surface of an even thickness. (See the photo below).

• Using your fingertips, create dimples in the dough (no long nails, please): this is typical of any schiacciata. Drizzle with olive oil, and spread the coarse salt evenly (table salt will also be fine).

• Let the dough rest around 1 hour, or until it has risen to the (or over the) edges of the pan. In the meantime, preheat the oven to 200 degrees C (400 degrees F).

• Put the pan into the oven on the middle rack, paying attention not to move it too violently, or else the dough will collapse. Baking times vary a lot: from a minimum of 20 minutes to a maximum of 45 minutes. Just make sure you have a golden brown crusted top (see photo below).

• Take the schiacciata out of the oven, let it rest a minute. Take it out of the pan, gently, so as not to break it. Let it rest using a cookie rack or something that lets air pass underneath, or else the schiacciata will become soggy. 

• Slice after at least 5 mintues and devour it...

• Schiacciata can be served warm or cold, and can be frozen in air-tight containers.  

1) The ingredients; 2) sift the flour; 3) cook the potato until it is soft, but it doesn't break out completely; 4) mix the wet dough; 5) let the dough rest for at least 3 hours; 6) the dough has risen and fermented; 7) pull the dough onto an oiled pan; 9) spread the dough to cover the entire surface of the pan; 9) after 1 hour the dough has risen again; 10) cook in the oven at 400F/200C; 11) and 12) the schiacciata is ready. Look at that crumb and that crust...