My Cooking Class in Venice

My generous and thoughtful brother-in-law, Johnny G, treated me to a one-on-one class in Venetian Vegan Cooking with Venetian native Gioia Tiozzo (accademiadicucinaitaliana.com). Gioia is a food psychologist – that is, she specializes in food-related behavior and how the mind can mess with your appetite and appetites.

The cooking classes are a side hustle and a curious one given her thoughts on tourists. She told me Venetians have always hated (her word) tourists -- partly because her relatively small city must play host to 31 million of us annually, partly because foreigners invest in the city at the expense of Venetian natives. Her distaste for tourists made her somewhat miscast as culinary ambassadors go, but I guess if you feel like foreigners are running rough-shod over your home town and, figuratively speaking, eating your lunch, you have a right to grab your piece of the pie where you can. (How's that for a melange of metaphors?)

Gioia and I likely will not be sharing a laugh over a crisp Prosecco when next I'm in town. Nevertheless, I'm not wholly unsympathetic to her point of view and have included below a few accommodations she named that actually benefit Venetians rather than foreign investors.

We made four dishes over the course of the day, three of which I share below. The fourth was a dessert pie that didn’t much appeal to me, particularly given the effort it required. These dishes are all pretty easy and represent tasty home cooking more than culinary derring-do.

A few general notes

-On measurements: “Spoonful” in Italian cooking generally means a large table (or soup) spoon, not a tablespoon. A small drinking glass also is a typical measurement in Italian cooking, as is a “pinch” of this or that. Otherwise, everything is measured by weight. All of this makes measuring pretty simple -- no need to drag out various measuring cups and spoons (together with a magnifying glass to see which one is which).  Therefore…

 - If you plan to make a habit of following Italian home-cooking recipes, you should have these tools on hand: good food scale, soup spoon, small drinking glass, manual food mill (passaverdure), ricer, gnocchi guillotine (helpful but not necessary).

 -Italian recipes tend to assume you’re going to adjust amounts as you go.

 -Gioia almost always uses sunflower oil to fry.

 -Using coarse salt for sauces really does seem to salt them better.

Recipe 1: Pasta e Fagioli

I could almost live on pasta e fagioli. This version tastes quite similar to my own (already posted in the Food section of this blog), with one important difference: the consistency.  I never could figure out how the soups I’m served in Italy got their texture. This is the answer: the manual food mill, called a passaverdure here. I've already ordered one online. (Among other things, the mill separates the beans from their skins, which Gioia said are the reason a lot of people have trouble digesting beans.)

Most Italian soups of this type use borlotti beans, which can be hard to come by in the States. You can always order them online, of course.

Ingredients:

Borlotti beans (1 bag)

2 onions

2 carrots

2 stalks celery with leaves

4 cloves garlic

A few bay leaves

2 spoons tomato sauce or passata

Water

Fresh rosemary

Black pepper

Pasta of your choice. We used ditalini but you can break up almost any larger pasta you happen to have.

Ground or flaked hot pepper

Salt

Olive oil

Soak beans overnight. Drain.

In a large pot, combine beans with onions, carrots, celery, garlic, bay leaves. Cover with water and then with a lid and boil gently until ingredients are soft.

Keep a glassful or two of the soup in the pot, making sure to include some whole beans.

Put the rest of the soup through the vegetable mill (in batches) and keep churning until your arm gives out. Note that the mill sits atop the pot.

Add tomato sauce and a pinch each of freshly ground rosemary and black pepper.

Warm over low heat.

Add (par-boiled) pasta and cook till al dente.

Add salt and hot pepper to taste. Dress with a thread of olive oil.

Gioia paired this with a local Malbec(k). I’ve seldom experienced that phenomenon of wine and food making each other sing, but this pairing was an aria.

Recipe 2: Vegan Polpette

This recipe is delicious and doubly nice because it’s so flexible. You can experiment with all manner of vegetables including cauliflower, broccoli, zucchini, and pumpkin and herbs such as thyme, sage, and basil. We used spinach and rosemary.

Ingredients:

1 small package red lentils (husked)

Sea salt

1 potato (for stickiness)

Huge bunch or bag of fresh spinach. As you know, it will reduce to an absurdly small amount.

Olive oil for sauteing

Flour

Fresh rosemary

Sunflower oil for frying

Boil lentils gently with sea salt till tender; drain.

Boil, peel, and put potato through a ricer. Add to lentils.

Chop spinach and saute’ in olive oil and salt. Add to lentils and potato. (Note: Even with the spinach so reduced, we ended up using only half of it. Eyeball it to see how much you’ll want to add.)

Add 2 spoons flour.

Mince rosemary very finely – to a powder, really -- and add to mixture.. (Start with a spoonful and see what you think.)

Mix everything well.

Fashion the mixture into rounded patties and put directly in freezer.

Fry frozen polpette in sunflower oil until browned on both sides., and serve.

Recipe 3: Gnocchi with Radicchio

Gnocchi just means “dumplings” in Italian. This recipe, like the one above, is pretty versatile. You can probably choose any leafy vegetable that caramelizes nicely.

Ingredients:

3 large-ish potatoes. (See note below recipe.)*

200 grams sifted flour (Molino Rosseto brand if you can get it)

Plant milk (soy or other)

Sea salt

Pinch of nutmeg

One bunch fresh radicchio (which Italians consider red chicory, just fyi)

Olive oil for sauteing

Sea salt

Place sifted flour in a large bowl. Start with ½ of it and add as needed.

Peel and boil potatoes till tender. Keep cooked potatoes warm. This is a MUST.

Put warm potatoes through ricer and add to flour.

Add plant milk as necessary for binding.

Add ground nutmeg and about one tsp. sea salt. (Adjust to taste.)

Mix till well-integrated; knead into an oval.

Separate the dough into manageable pieces and roll into thick ropes, then cut into “gnocchi.”

(Optional step) To get that familiar gnocchi imprint, roll pieces over back of a parmigiano grater or tool made for the purpose. (shown above); fold ends together.

Place gnocchi on towel-lined tray, then send straight into fridge.

Saute’ radicchio in oil and salt until caramelized.

Boil cooled gnocchi in salted hot water and extract as they rise to the top. (This will be very quick because the gnocchi really are already cooked. You’re essentially just heating them.)

Transfer gnocchi directly to radicchio pan.

Warm together. Adjust salt and serve.

*Note: Gioia specified patate vecchie, or old potatoes, which evidently are drier. In Italy, it seems you can actually ask the greengrocer for old potatoes. If you’re not sure your potatoes qualify as what some of us might prefer to call mature or of a certain age, bake them a bit first.)

As promised above, a few accommodations run by Venetians

-Rosa Salva --These folks have several properties by the same name, including a recommended pastry shop in Calle Fiubera. (www.rosasalva.it)

-Pensione Accademia --near Accademia Bridge, which is a great location. Gioia says this place also has a nice garden. (www.pensioneaccademia.it)

-Hotel Agli Alboretti in Dorsoduro (www.aglialboretti.com)

Please let me know if you stay in any of them. I'd love to hear about it.