Passport & Plate - Nonni's Farinata
Italy | Friday, March 6, 2015 | 2 photos
Ingredients
sage
garlic
clove
celery
carrot
onion
kale
kidney or red beans
fennel seeds
cornmeal
butter
olive oil
How to prepare this recipeCook red kidney beans in water, adding sage, garlic, and clove.
Sautee celery, carrot, onion, kale. And add one or two tablespoons of tomato sauce.
Drain beans and add broth from beans to sautéed vegetables.
Take half of beans and puree and add to mixture. Add other half of beans whole.
Add three fennel seeds.
Add cornmeal very slowly, stirring constantly.
Add olive oil and butter, lower the gas, cover and cook about 20 minutes always stirring.
Some people pour a little more olive oil on top of it.
Once everything is in, cook for about 20 minutes.
The story behind this recipeI grew up hearing stories of farinata like it was an event. Nonni (I preferred that name to nonna) didn’t make it often. Boiling the beans is time consuming and the cornmeal becomes cement-like as you stir. It was reserved for special occasions, like when my grandpa’s boss came over for dinner.
Farinata is minestrone, vegetable soup, mixed with polenta. It derives from Tuscan villages, where people were too poor to afford meat, so they used cornmeal to make the dish more filling.
At less than 5-feet tall, nonni would stand on her tiptoes over the pot to put all of her weight behind each churn. Once it was ready, she would bring the pot to the table and dump it out onto a cloth that everyone would eat off of; it's the right consistency if it stops spreading on its own.
(Once my uncle Charlie leapt out of his chair because he thought she had dropped it).
The appearance leaves a lot to be desired: it is a thick, mud-like stew with pieces of vegetable and bean in it.
"It looks like shit," as my grandma would say. "You just have to try it.”
As usual, the new guests would lean in, lift a spoonful to their mouths, and hesitate before taking the first bite. And after they are left lusting for it forever.
It’s thick and creamy—dowsed in olive oil, heavy doses of garlic, basil, and vegetables; it's bone-sticking but not fattening — it is everything you need to understand Tuscan cooking.
In my search to recreate this recipe, I found four versions, each slightly different: did she use cloves or a clove of garlic? Was it pinto or kidney beans, kale or cabbage?
No one can recreate what my great grandmother made, which explains the number of times this recipe has been rewritten. The basil was measured by the size of her hands, and the vegetables were from her garden. And when you try to look it up, there is no trace of it; there is only unleavened chickpea bread from Genoa (good but not the same thing).
Farinata is a memory that you can never relive the same way.
