Food, glorious food
This isn’t a cuisine – or an article – for the faint-hearted, says Andrea Sturniolo
ROMANS HAVE AN OFFAL-LY soft spot for offal. But, first, what is offal? Imagine you’re a butcher and you have a lamb to divide into quarters. How many cuts would you get? Five, of course! Two from the front of the animal and two from the back, each one with its shoulder or leg and its part of rack or saddle. By quartering the animal though, you’d be left with some remaining parts. For lambs, this includes their heads and innards. For larger animals such as pigs or calves, it also includes trotters. And for oxen, it means tails too. These “leftovers” are the offal, or what Romans call il quinto quarto – the fifth quarter.
This quinto quarto formed part of a butcher’s salary in past centuries. It represented the least prized, and therefore least expensive, part of the animal, which was exactly what the less well-off needed back then to put together a hearty and nutritious meal. The more orthodox parts of the animals used to be reserved for the wealthy classes, such as the Pope, his court and the nobility of the city.
This is how typical Roman cuisine was born, by combining the best produce from the vegetable garden with the downmarket byproduct from cattle-breeding.
But things have changed. Nowadays these humble cuts are not so downmarket. It isn’t uncommon to spot an oxtail sold at the same price as a rump steak on the stalls of colourful street markets.
Oxtail is the key ingredient for one of the most popular Roman dishes, the coda alla vaccinara. To prepare it, the pieces of tail are braised very slowly in a sauce of tomatoes, onions, sultanas, pine nuts and celery. The chef then adds small amounts of bitter chocolate to give the dish depth. When it is done, the meat around the bones of the tail is so soft and succulent that it literally falls apart. One of the best in town is prepared by the Trattoria Da Domenico (Via di San Giovanni in Laterano 134, tel: +39 06 7759 0225). The hand-written menu changes daily, depending on what’s good in the market that day. In the cold months, the coda is almost guaranteed to be there.
One of the other best-loved dishes in town is the romano, an appetiser made with artichoke hearts and sweetbreads dipped in milk, dusted with semolina and then deep fried. The sweetbreads are the thymus glands of lamb or veal (the latter are best), a true delicacy considered by many “the offal for those who do not do offal”. Their taste is quite mild, quite different from the sharp one that liver or kidneys have. Their texture, when properly prepared, is alluring: crisp on the outside and like butter on the inside. Try them at La Matricianella (Via del Leone 3, tel: +39 06 6832 2100, www.matricianella.it). If you can, ask to be seated in the right-hand room of the restaurant where the rubicund waiter in charge is hilarious.
If you’re confident enough to tackle the “advanced offal” course, then in the same restaurant try the Rigatoni con la Pajata. Rigatoni is just your regular tube-shaped pasta, but the Pajata is a thick tomato-based sauce in which milk-fed veal’s intestines, still full with curdled milk, have been left to braise for a couple of hours.
Of course, there are many culinary options in the Eternal City. But my recommendation is to forget those burgers, pizzas and Thai restaurants. When in Rome, eat offal, like the Romans.
Kiedy wybierasz si? do Wiecznego Miasta, najlepiej, ?eby? chwilowo zapomnia? o burgerach i pizzach. Typowa rzymska kuchnia to dania z podrob
