COOKED CHEESE IN PLACE OF MEAT.
It would be sufficient honor for one nation to provide the world with the best olive oil and the real staff of life. But Italy lays claim to another gastronomic distinction.
It is generally conceded that the Americans and also the English, French, Germans, Russians and Scandinavians, eat more than is necessary, especially meat. In a previous chapter attention was called to the fact that, in the cooking of the future, meat is destined, for diverse reasons, to be used largely, if not chiefly, as a condiment to be added to equally nutritious but cheaper foods. The Italians, more than any other nation, have shown how this can be done without any real deprivation.
When our greatest man of letters, Mr. Howells, was consul in Venice and gathering the material for his delightful book on life in that city, he was impressed particularly by the surprisingly small scale on which provisions for the daily meals were bought and the general absence of gluttonous excesses: "As to the poorer classes, one observes without great surprise how slenderly they fare, and how with a great habit of talking of meat and drink, the verb mangiare remains in fact for the most part inactive with them. But it is only just to say that this virtue of abstinence seems to be not wholly the result of necessity, for it prevails with other classes which could well afford the opposite vice. Meat and drink do not form the substance of conviviality with Venetians, as with the Germans and the English, and in degree with ourselves; and I have often noticed on the Mondays at the Gardens, and other social festivals of the people, how the crowd amused itself with anything—music, dancing, walking, talking—anything but the great northern pastime of gluttony."
After describing the meals and referring to the great market at the Rialto and the way provisions are distributed throughout the city, he says: "A great Bostonian, whom I remember to have heard speculate on the superiority of a state of civilization in which you could buy two cents' worth of beef, to that in which so small a quantity was unpurchasable, would find the system perfected here, where you can buy half a cent's worth."
Half a cent's worth of meat will not go very far, even in Italy, but for a few cents' worth you can get enough to impart the Flavor of veal, lamb, or chicken to a pot of farinaceous food or a dish of vegetables, and that is all a true epicure needs to be happy.
Throughout Italy, especially in the South, meat is used sparingly. Large joints are seldom cooked, because of the effect of the warm climate in spoiling animal food rapidly. But there is another food which does not thus deteriorate and which is therefore used largely as a substitute for meat, and that is cheese.
To speak of cheese as a substitute for meat seems odd to those who—like most Americans—have been brought up to look on cheese with French eyes, as a dessert. The Italians also have cheeses—notably Gorgonzola, a variety of Roquefort—which are eaten at the end of a meal; but more characteristically Italian is the use of cheese as an ingredient of various cooked dishes, which take the place of meat.
While the statement made by one writer that the Italians put cheese into everything they eat is an exaggeration, it is true that many of their dishes are thus enriched; and it is this enriching of foods with cheese, to make up for the absence or scarcity of meat, that constitutes one of the great lessons Italy is teaching the world. Gastronomically, this lesson is as valuable as what France has taught the world regarding the dessert usefulness of ripened cheese as an appetizer; and from an economic point of view it is much more important, because meat is becoming dearer every year, whereas cheese is not only cheaper but more nutritious than meat.
More nutritious—yes, twice as nutritious. In Farmers' Bulletin 487, entitled Cheese and its Economical Uses, two of our Government's nutrition experts published a table (p. 13) based on a series of experiments which show that "cheese has nearly twice as much protein, weight for weight, as beef of average composition as purchased, and that its fuel value is more than twice as great. It contains over twenty-five per cent. more protein than the same weight of porterhouse steak as purchased, and nearly twice as much fat."
Thus does science justify the culinary practices of Italy, and explain how it happens that the sturdy sons of that land, instead of being, as many foolishly suppose, idlers, habitually indulging in dolce far niente, can and do accomplish the hardest manual labor, notably railway building—abroad as well as at home—on a diet which contains little or no meat.
Among the first things that strike one on visiting Italy the first time is the universal custom of putting grated cheese in the soup.
Being hot, the soup dissolves the cheese at once; and this is a point of great importance. There is an impression the world over that cheese is indigestible, and this is correct so far as raw cheese is concerned, unless it is taken in small quantities at dessert and carefully munched with a hard cracker or a crusty roll of bread. Cooked cheese, however, is easily digested—provided the cook knows her business and does not follow the British custom, graphically described by the eminent chemist, W. Mattieu Williams, of making, for instance, "macaroni-cheese," which is "commonly prepared in England by depositing macaroni in a pie-dish, and then covering it with a stratum of grated cheese, and placing this in an oven or before a fire until the cheese is desiccated, browned, and converted into a horny, caseous form of carbon that would induce chronic dyspepsia in the stomach of a wild-boar if he fed upon it for a week."
How it should be prepared, it is not the mission of this volume to indicate. The best cook books reveal the method and so does the Farmers' Bulletin (No. 487) just referred to. This bulletin should be, indeed, bound and placed in the kitchen of every American and English home, as it goes into the subject in much more detail than any of the cook books. There are in it pages on Kinds of Cheese Used in American Homes, The Care of Cheese in the Home, The Flavor of Cheese, Nutritive Value and Cost of Cheese and Some Other Food Materials, Home-made Cheeses, Cheese Dishes and Their Preparation, Cheese Soups and Vegetables Cooked with Cheese, Cheese Salads and Sandwiches, Cheese Pastry, etc.
Especially important are the pages devoted to a description of "Cheese dishes which may be used in the same way as meat." Under this head we find, among many other things, and with the recipes in full, references to cheese sauces, corn and cheese soufflé, macaroni and cheese, baked rice and cheese, cheese rolls, nut and cheese roast, Boston roast, baked eggs with cheese, cheese omelet, fried bread with cheese, cheese with mush, cheese croquettes, oatmeal with cheese, etc.
Doubtless the best cooking cheese is Parmesan; but when the genuine article cannot be obtained in bulk (never buy it grated, in a bottle) it is better to use Swiss or even American cheese (cheddar). The Dutch Edam is also excellent for the kitchen, as good as when eaten raw. Of the Italian uncooked cheeses for the table, the best are Gorgonzola and, particularly, Caciocavallo. This is not, as its name suggests, made of mare's milk. It looks like a rag doll, is similar to Edam in consistency and has a very pleasant and unique Flavor owing to its being slightly smoked. Beware of American imitations, cured with "liquid smoke."
In times of meat scarcity and high prices it is well to remember that hard-working men can (as experiments have shown) fully sustain their strength for months on the cheapest of all products of the dairy—cottage cheese made of skim milk, to which, just before eating it, some cream is added for fat and flavor. Strange to say, in all the literature on this matter I have never seen any reference to the transformations to which cottage cheese can be subjected. By standing a few days, it gets a ripening flavor that appeals to epicures, and if it is then boiled it assumes a consistency like that of Port Salut, making another pleasant variant.
A helpful little volume for those who wish to know how the Italians use cheese in cooking and how they make a number of other national dishes is Antonia Isola's "Simple Italian Cookery." Here are receipts showing how risotto, and other rice dishes, ravioli, polenta, gnocchi of farina or potato, are made (all of them delicious and desirable in American and English homes, particularly the gnocchi), and how eggs, fishes, vegetables, and meats can be cooked in tempting Italian ways. The chestnut, as a matter of course, is a frequent ingredient in the dressings and the pastry.