Bollito Misto · Apr 4, 04:41 AM by James Martin
Few classic dishes in any cuisine tickle the senses better than a good, Italian bollito misto.
We started one four hours before dinner time last night. After an hour, the big chunk of beef was simmering away and the vegetables were adding to the delightful smells clouding the kitchen. Martha moved the computer in there to bask in the smells and write about Sicilian chocolate
As time passes, meats get added to the bollito in a particular order, ending with the chicken. Smells get more complex. You can hardly contain your hunger as you prepare the green sauce. You pound the anchovies with the garlic in the mortar, you chop parsley and capers…
What makes bollito misto so appealing? I mean, boiled mixed meats, how can that be good?
When the plate comes together though, and the glistening, slightly unctuous meats lie in a thin pool of fragrant broth next to a little mound of green sauce, your mouth waters without philosophical help from your brain. Your senses are open and ready for business.
It’s cuisine at the edge. No, not the cutting edge. What I mean is that in one corner you have the rounded flavors of long-simmered beef, veal, tongue and chicken in a concentrated broth. In the other you have all the spiky flavors of the Italian kitchen—the green sauce with its vinegar, capers, anchovies and garlic. Two opposites coming together beautifully.
Most cuisine depends on the blending of ingredients that fit smack in the middle between the “round” and what I call the “spiky” parts of the flavor spectrum. In bollito misto they’re separate, coming together on the tongue to dance.
And there’s another benefit, besides the leftovers you’re bound to have: spread that sauce on halves of a hard boiled egg for breakfast. That’ll wake you up!
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