Our Verdict: Brutto

Maureen: We predicted a delicious month, and delicious it was.

I can’t imagine a better way to lift people out of the January doldrums than some delectable Italian cooking, and for us, it worked. Night after night (bar the one disaster), we had good food that we enjoyed and lifted our spirits.

(If you’re curious, some of the other ways I manage to get through the 7,429 days of January is the following: 1. Make plans to meet up with friends for lunch/dinner/whatever as often as possible. This is especially good when they suggest getting together in December, which is always busy, and you suggest January instead. 2. Always plan at least one fun thing in the week, if not more. For us, this meant going to the cinema, going to museums or other distracting excursions. 3. Do not apologise for becoming fully invested in The Traitors on BBC (only the British version will do). Unapologetically park yourself in your favourite seat on the sofa every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and enjoy this junk food television. 4. Be sure to note when the sky is the amazing blue it only gets on a rare bright day in January. Drink it in. Take pictures. Whatever you do, don’t let the moment escape your notice.)

But I digress. The delicious Italian food was great for us, and this cookbook was just the ticket. Polpo continues to have Pride of Place on my High Rotation bookshelf– mainly for its tomato sauce and meatball recipes– so I felt fairly confident that this cookbook would be just as good, and it was.

My admiration for this cookbook is tinged with sadness, given that Russell Norman died in November. He was a fantastic restaurateur and a wonderful writer. He will be missed.

Kirstin: The one and only time I met Russell Norman was within the first few weeks of Brutto’s opening. He welcomed us into the restaurant with a huge smile on his face. I couldn’t resist telling him how much I adore Jenny Zarins’s photography and we briefly discussed her images for his Venice books. The meal itself was just wonderful and I have loved cooking from this cookbook, reading his reminiscences and seeing the world through his foodie eyes (and also Zarins’s photography, of course!). Yes, I will miss his cookbooks and next time we go to Brutto, I shall raise a glass to him, knowing that he knew how to enjoy life and especially all the food. And I thank him for sharing that vision with us. 

“Vitello Milanese” & “Sformato alla Fiorentina” from “Brutto”

Or, to translate into English, “Fried Breaded Veal Fillets” and “Spinach Cooked in the Oven.” See? Doesn’t it look better in Italian?

This was another recipe I did not hesitate to try, mainly because we both love veal. I had planned to make something different, but when I saw my local butcher Dring’s had veal, I very quickly pivoted. Also, as I’ve written before, although Jamie Oliver may have become rich (or more accurately richer) from his 30-Minute Meals and 15-Minute Meals– and yes, I still have PTSD from it– but you can’t beat a breaded veal cutlet for speed when it comes to dinner.

This was no different. It’s quick work to flour, egg and then bread the cutlets, and then you fry them. You have to be quick; the last thing you want is tough veal, which is what happens if you overcook them. This recipe didn’t reinvent the wheel, but it didn’t have to. Veal cutlets are sublime, and even typing this days after the fact is making my mouth water.

The creamed spinach was a bit different, in that rather than boiling the spinach down and then adding the cream and nutmeg to it, you instead quickly cook the spinach down, add an egg-cream-cheese mixture to it, and then bake it in the oven. The clue, I suppose, is in the name. An added bonus was I got to name drop Catherine de’ Medici, because she, like me, loved spinach.

I love creamed spinach in all its guises and this was no different. Baking it in the oven took longer, but I suppose this might be a handy recipe to keep to hand if you’re having a dinner party and want all the work done in advance, rather than faffing around at the stove at the last minute. We had some leftover, which we used on a white pizza two nights later, and I can confirm it was delicious.

It was another winning dinner from Brutto.

“Penne with Vodka & Tomato Sauce” from “Brutto”

When I was growing up in New Jersey, home of the Sopranos (Happy 25th Anniversary!), this was a stone-cold classic.

As far as I could tell, every Italian restaurant in the New York metropolitan area worth its salt then had a vodka tomato sauce on the menu. Since I now have lived in London for 25 years, I don’t know if it’s still as ubiquitous, but I know that I always loved it and I always will.

When I saw this recipe was in the cookbook, it was a no brainer. We were definitely going to be eating this one night for dinner. Like all good things, this one took more time than I thought it would, because you bake the tomato sauce in the oven for about 30 minutes, but it was worth the wait. It’s an easy recipe, it just takes some patience to see it finished.

Delicious. And as good as I remembered.

Epilogue

On our Facebook page, we had a question about roasting it for 30 minutes, versus cooking it on the stove top for the same amount of time, since roasting it would not be energy efficient.

I fell down a delicious rabbit hole of looking at other penne with vodka and tomato sauce recipes. The first five all cooked it on the stove top, but the sixth from the Barefoot Contessa herself Ina Garten, also recommended roasting it in the oven. Meanwhile, I asked my food scientist sister-in-law what the difference between the two methods would be.

She answered right away. “Yes, richer by roasting. Roasting is a dry heat method that concentrates flavors ( think sun dried tomato) and adds browned/ caramelized notes, while simmering is a wet heat method which will concentrate tomato flavor given enough time (think Italian Sunday Gravy) but has a different character. Like the difference between roasted carrots and simmered carrots- both good, different flavors. Seems you found a fancy smancy recipe- sounds great!”

This was so interesting to me. As they say, “Every day is a school day!”

If you’d like to make this oven roasted version yourself, you can find it by clicking here.

“Tagliatelle with meat sauce” from “Brutto”

Kirstin: Norman describes how the senior sous chef at Brutto lived in Bologna for 3 years and “insists that you can’t do justice to this recipe in under 6 hours”. Challenge accepted. And so on yet another cold (but brilliant blue sky) day in January I set out to make this recipe. In 6 hours. But did all those hours make a difference? Good question. While I would say this was a lovely recipe and went perfectly well with a lovely Italian Chianti, I don’t think all those hours made this recipe particularly special. And so for now if I want to wow people with an outstanding ragù type recipe I will continue to use this one from Tim Siadatan (of Padella and Trullo fame). Bonus it doesn’t take 6 hours.

“Cannellini Bean & Cavolo Nero Broth” from “Brutto”

Gather round, readers, and listen to how I burned this dinner not once, but TWICE.

I should make clear from the start that this was purely the result of operator error, and not any failings in the recipe itself. The fault was entirely mine.

The root of the problem, like so many problems, was hubris. Even though the recipe said I should soak the beans overnight, I thought to myself, “Ha! I don’t need to do that! I can just cook the beans in my pressure cooker.” Usually, that would be fine, but not this time. I put the beans and water in the pressure cooker, put on the heat, set the timer, and then left the kitchen to go to something else. By the time Tim got to the pressure cooker, about 20 minutes into the 30 minutes it needed, he said there was something wrong with the pressure cooker. Now I still don’t know what that was, exactly, but when I checked the pot 10 minutes later, there beans were woefully undercooked. “Fine,” I thought to myself with misplaced confidence. “I’ll just cook them in the pressure cooker a little while longer. I know what I’m doing.”

Reader, I did not know what I was doing.

By the time I checked the pressure cooker a bit later, the water was gone and the beans were blackened, or to be more accurate, burnt. Though not all of them! Some of them were undercooked. It was a bit of a disaster.

“Fine,” I thought to myself. “I will snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.”

Ha.

I took the salvageable beans, including some of the undercooked ones, and put it into a regular pot. To make a long sad story short, I put the heat on too hot and I managed to burn even more of the beans.

Maybe this dish was cursed?

It wasn’t as bad as the first burning, to be sure, but there was a fair amount of dark-brown beans stuck to the bottom. Like I said, burned.

I lowered the temperature. I took a few deep breaths. I hoped for the best. All in that order. It seemed to have worked, because I was able to salvage dinner. Was it the best dinner we’ve ever had? Have you been paying attention? I burned it twice.

Like I said at the top, however, I don’t blame this cookbook. The fault was entirely mine. (But I won’t be rushing to make this again any time soon.)

“Chicken with grapes, olives and sage” from “Brutto”

Kirstin: It’s still January in these parts and on this millionth Friday of winter I chose to make a hearty stew from Brutto. This really is a wonderful dish, filled with Roman-ish feels. Not only does it include fried chicken (always a winner in these parts) but also benefits from the addition of grapes, olives, sage, garlic and wine. ALL the good things. I’ve cooked chicken with grapes previously here and this recipe from Melissa Clark is a big favourite in our home, especially at harvest time. But I think the olives really added something special. It was a big hit with everyone.

“Bar Pizza” from “Brutto”

As I have written before, pizza is a religion in this house, and our weekly Pizza Night on Saturday is sacrosanct. (We do very occasionally veer from this schedule, but it’s usually for a very good reason, like Christmas or Thanksgiving.)

We’ve been having Pizza Night for so long that we now rotate the types of pizza we make: thin crust, Chicago Deep Dish and Detroit style all are in the regular rotation. Whatever takes our fancy on a particular day is what we eat that night.

We thought this would be a slam dunk. This cookbook has already proven to be reliable and delicious and we thought that Florentine-style pizza would be a winner. In September, we had some bar pizza in Florence in the shadow of the Duomo on a very hot and sunny day, so we knew what to expect. And to reiterate a very basic point: who doesn’t love pizza?

Well, I’m sorry to say this one didn’t really deliver. It wasn’t objectively bad, but it wasn’t objectively good either. We found the crust a little too chewy and thick, and everyone knows that the crust is essential to the success of any pizza. I examined my conscience and wondered if in fact it was operator error, but I don’t think so. I followed the directions to the letter. So I don’t think it was that, either.

Compared to the other pizzas we eat regularly, this one just didn’t fly. Like I said, it wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t for us, either.

However, I need to conclude with a very important point: Even bad pizza is a good dinner.

“Brutto green salad” from “Brutto”

Kirstin: You might wonder why I have chosen to include a green salad in this blog. Well that’s because in the introduction to this recipe, Norman writes “my original idea for our house salad was to dress and serve it tableside”. He later explains how the restaurant is often too busy to perform the tossing and dressing as proposed, but this concept appealed to me and I thought I would give it a go at home. The salad itself has no surprises (peeling the celery did seem a little over the top, but I went with it anyways) and it was really well complimented by the dressing (complete with dried tarragon). This is about as fancy as I like to go with salads, both in terms of time it took to make and ingredients it used. It was a perfect green salad. But after all that because we were also busy, I then forgot to toss it at the table in a theatrical fashion. I’ll just have to make it again and NEXT time I will endeavour to add the dressing a little more dramatically AT THE TABLE. As Norman suggests, this can “add a little bit of theatre to mealtimes and dinner parties”.

“Not French Onion Soup” from “Brutto”

Please ignore the slightly singed toast on top– it’s the way Tim likes it.

The interesting thing about this recipe is Russell Norman writes in the introduction that claims have been made that onion soup originated not in France, but in Florence. The assertion is made in “La Cucina Fiorentina” by Aldo Santini, when Santini writes, “Onion soup is ours, and woe betide anyone who touches it…” I’m going to stay out of it, but it’s an interesting idea.

As it is soup season, it made perfect sense to give this Florentine version a try. What made this version different to the traditional French ones was how it omitted sugar and alcohol. It could not have been more basic– onions, veg stock, olive oil, butter, salt and better, along with the parmesan toast on top. The difference is you spend an hour cooking down all of the onions, which makes for a richer and more complex base. Given that onions are the star of the show, this is no bad thing, if you ask me.

We agreed that we loved it and would want to eat it again. We also agreed to not wade into the French or Italian origin story controversy. Either way, it’s delicious.

“Tortelloni in brodo” from “Brutto”

My personal philosophy for surviving the hellscape that can be January is to find joy wherever I can. It might be cheesy, but it works. One of the ways I find my joy is by tackling a Sunday Afternoon Food Project (TM). This week, the food project was homemade tortelloni– from start to finish.

I need to add here that the Sunday Afternoon Food Project (TM) would not have been possible without the help of my husband Tim, who tackled both the making of the pasta dough and the filling, as well as rolling out the pasta dough. I then took over and cut the pasta dough to squares, and then filled and shaped the tortelloni itself. By the time all the hours had elapsed to make all of that happen, the cooking was an absolute doddle.

The team effort meant that neither one of us lost the will to live by spending an entire day doing this. But our sense of accomplishment could not be denied once we enjoyed the spoils of such a huge culinary project.

It was delicious. I’m glad we made it. But I won’t be rushing to make it again any time soon, because there’s loads of other things we could also make that take up an entire afternoon (See: Dishoom Sundays during the Pandemic, which were stellar.) But still, definitely worth doing.