A Quintarelli Dinner Party

In last week’s post, I brought to your attention the wines of Giuseppe Quintarelli from the Veneto region of Italy. These beautiful and complex wines are available to purchase at The Wine Press right now. But once you have them home, how best to enjoy them? In every region of Italy, wine is best enjoyed with food. A region’s cuisine highlights the best qualities of its wines, and vice versa. 

The Veneto region is one of the few parts of Italy in which pasta does not play a central gustatory role. Rice and polenta (milled corn meal) are the staples there. Vegetables are abundant, grown on the same volcanic soil as the grapes. So is fish, freshly caught in the Aegean Sea or the inland rivers and lakes. Cattle meat is found as one goes further inland toward Verona (although if you plan to visit and eat locally, make sure you are perfectly aware that the word cavallo means “horse”). In Venice, cicchetti are at the heart of the city’s culinary world. All manner of cheeses, cured meats, fresh or preserved fish, and vegetables are placed atop slices of bread and enjoyed liberally with Veneto wine. 

For all the complexity of Quintarelli, the wines are best enjoyed with the simplest of dishes. In Italian cooking this means tapping into la cucina povera. For centuries, the Italian aristocracy imported their chefs and cuisine from France, eating much the same as one would in Lyon or Paris. Italian peasants, meanwhile, prepared humble dishes from the cheapest and most readily available produce, farinacei, and protein (hence, the proliferation of horse meat). These dishes were not meant to be fancy or celebrated. They were a way of feeding a large family as efficiently as possible when dearth and want were the norm.

Should you decide to feature Quintarelli wine at a dinner party, I suggest the following classic of Veneto cucina povera, one of the region’s most renowned dishes: baccalà alla Vicentina, adapted from my personal brand, Table Thirteen. It will pair perfectly with Giuseppe Quintarelli, Bianco Secco, Cà del Merlo.

Baccalà alla Vicentina ~ Table Thirteen

See note below about baccalà (salt cod) and how to prepare it properly.

Ingredients

• 2 lbs., prepared baccalà (salt cod)

• 1 cup, all-purpose flour

• 1 lb., yellow onions, sliced very thin (preferably with a mandolin)

• 5 filleted anchovies preserved in salt, soaked in cold water for 10 minutes, drained, and patted dry

• 2 tbsp., chopped fresh Italian (flat-leaf) Parsley leaves

• Salt & Pepper

• 1/4 cup, Extra Virgin Olive Oil, plus extra for drizzling

• 1/2 cup of whole milk, or more depending on your baking dish

• 6 oz., freshly grated aged Parmigiano-Reggiano or aged Asagio cheese

Hardware

• A large skillet or dutch oven

• An oven-proof baking dish (glass or ceramic, 13x9” or 8x8”)

Recipe

1. Heat the 1/4 cup of olive oil in a large pan or dutch oven over medium heat. 

2. When the oil is ready, add the onions and sweat, stirring frequently to avoid burning, until they are soft and translucent, about 10 minutes.

3. Lower the heat to low and add the anchovy filets. Stir frequently until they have “melted” into the onions.

4. Turn off the heat and add the parsley, salt and pepper to taste. Stir gently to combine. Remove the onion mix (soffrito) to a clean bowl and reserve.

5. Heat the oven to 300 degrees with a rack in the upper third of the oven.

6. Cut the baccalà into 1” chunks. Dredge in the flour, ensuring the pieces are coated evenly. Shake off the excess flour and reserve on a plate.

7. Spread a thin layer of the soffrito on the bottom of the baking dish. Add the baccalà in a single layer and cover with the remaining soffrito. (If you are using an 8x8” dish, make 2 layers.)

8. Fill the dish with milk until the pieces of baccalà are just barely covered. Top the dish with the grated cheese and drizzle with olive oil.

9. Bake uncovered for 3-4 hours, until the liquid has been reduced to almost nothing and the fish is very tender. Give the dish a shake every thirty minutes or so to ensure the fish is not sticking and burning to the bottom of the dish.

10. Remove the dish from the oven to a heat-safe surface and serve immediately. 

Serves 4 as a main course. Feel free to multiply the amount to serve more, but remember that the layers in the baking dish should not exceed 2. The traditional accompaniment is soft yellow polenta. 

A note about baccalà

Before reliable refrigeration in storage and transportation, preserving proteins like beef, pork, or fish in salt was the best way to avoid spoilage. In cucina povera, Italian families would salt the abundant cod fished from the Mediterranean Sea to enjoy throughout the seasons. Here in the United States, you are most likely to find baccalà in a traditional Italian-American Christmas Eve “Feast of the Seven Fishes.” But in Italy, baccalà is enjoyed as part of a fritto misto (mixed seafood fry), a fresh salad with herbs and olives, or part of a pasta sauce. When cooking with baccalà, make sure you limit the amount of salt you add while cooking, as the fish will still be abundantly salty even after soaking. You can purchase it at a specialty supermarket like Restaurant Depot; a North End Italian grocery; or, if you are very lucky, at one of the Haymarket fishmongers on Friday or Saturday morning.

To prepare baccalà at home:

1. At least 36 hours before you plan to cook the baccalà, fill a very large, non-reactive bowl (stainless steel or ceramic) with cold water. 

2. Submerge the baccalà in the cold water and allow it to soak, undisturbed and uncovered, in the refrigerator. 

3. Every 8 to 12 hours, drain the bowl and replace with fresh water.

When you are ready to begin cooking, remove the baccalà from the water and pat dry completely with paper towels. Reserve in the refrigerator until the recipe calls for it.