Restoration and a Tuscan Feast

When you read a book set in Tuscany, it is difficult to choose one dish to make!  While food is certainly not the focus of Olaf Olafsson's Restoration,  I could not resit making a few simple, fresh and hearty Tuscan dishes this week.  The book is set on at a Tuscan villa and farm owned by a British expat - Alice, and her Italian husband during World War Two.  As Italy became a battle zone,  Alice turned the villa into a hospital of sorts, and then a school and home for refugee children from the north.  One day, a mysterious Icelandic woman, Kristin, shows up at the villa severely injured from a train bombing.  Kristin is a struggling artist and has a connection to Alice that Alice is unaware of.  The book alternates between two stories - Alice's and Kristin's.  Alice's story is about life on the farm,  her grief the loss of her young son, her careless affair, and the difficulties in her relationship with her husband Claudio.  Kristin's story is about art, about her struggle to become an artist, her obsessive love affair with her boss, and about a dangerous forgery.  To me, Kristin's story was much more engaging and believable while Alice's story, told through diary entries that are written as a letter to her missing husband, were cliche and less interesting, perhaps because I found Alice kind of boring and unlikable.   More about the book and the Tuscan feast after the jump.

First off, while I did not love the book, I must commend Olafsson for his industriousness.  Not only is this his fourth novel, but he manages to find the time to write these novels while at the same time maintaining a position as an Executive Vice President at Time Warner.  He must be one mighty multitasker and he must never sleep.  1944, as WWII is nearing its end, Alice Orsini's Tuscan villa is thrust onto the front lines of the war, with both retreating German soldiers and advancing Allied forces converging at the villa.  Alice is a British expatriate who has raised in close knit British community in Florence. To rebel from her mother, Alice marries Claudio Orsini, an Italian of modest wealth, and they escape to Tuscany to live a country life.  By the time the war hits, Alice and Claudio have been through the severe trauma of losing their young son and it has caused a major rift in their relationship.  Much of this we learn about through Alice's diary entries, which are styled as letters to Claudio, who disappears shortly after the fighting around the villa heats up.  Alice is guilty about her son's death and guilty about the affair she had with another Brit.  She is drawn in an unflattering light - or at least I found her extremely unlikable  - I do wonder whether Olafsson meant her to be so unlikable.  Alice is flighty, fickle and flakey - she runs away to the country to annoy her mother and when she gets bored or farm like becomes to difficult, she runs back into Florence and into the open arms of a fellow sophisticated ex-pat.  She canoodles with him outside the hospital where her son dies.  A much more intriguing character is Kristin, recently graduated art student from Iceland who comes to Florence to try to make the transition from art student to true artist.  Kristin is a technical whiz, but after losing her beloved father at young age she is emotionally scarred and unable to fill her canvases with true emotion.  Kristin gets a job working as a restorer for a slick British art dealer Robert Marshall.  She falls for him and embarks on an unhealthy, obsessive affair with Marshall.  One day she seems Marshall speaking with a woman, who turned out to be Alice Orsini, in a Florence Piazza.  Kristin observed that some sort of deal had been made between Marshall and Alice.  Eventually, the relationship between Marshall and Kristin goes bad and Kristin embarks on an ingenious and involved plan of revenge, which utilizes her technical artistic skills.  It is this act of revenge that causes Kristin to seek out Alice, and eventually end up a wounded patient in the Tuscan countryside.  There is little interaction in the book between Alice and Kristin and while there is a central object that brings their stories together, the book does not successfully meld this two paths together, so Restoration reads as two books rather than one.   I found myself rushing through the Alice portions of the book to get to the Kristin portions, and if you choose to read Restoration, I think you will too.

Some Tuscan Classics: Ribollita, Tuscan Chicken Liver Crostini and Panzanella, all adapted from Saveur magazine.
No need to let a little thing like a so so book also bring down the cooking!  Of course a novel set in Tuscany during the end of World War II is not going to be filled with food - people were suffering and there were food shortages.  That said, the central feature of each of these three dishes was likely widely available - bread.  Ribollita is the classic Tuscan soup which is both comforting and thrifty - it uses no meat, is thickened with bread, and is filled with hearty greens and white beans, the quintessential Tuscan ingredient.  Now that I made this soup I will make it year round using the vegetables that are most in season.  Here, I used locally grown chard and kale.  This is stick to your ribs food that is also incredibly healthy.  Chicken liver crostini is the most classic Tuscan crostini, and as a Jew I can't resist chicken livers, so I was excited to try a sightly gussied up version of my beloved chopped liver.  It was yummy but I was surprised that I preferred the plainer Jewish version (which is really just chicken livers, tons of onions, and eggs, oh, and chicken fat of course!)  Finally a simple panzanella salad - the recipe called for roasting the peppers, but I prefer fresh peppers in a panzanella.    All three of these dishes were simple, beautiful (well maybe not the liver) and delicious. 

Panzanella
Ingredients
1 loaf ciabatta bread, torn into pieces
6 ripe plum tomatoes
2 cloves garlic
4 tablespoons of vinegar
2 red peppers, chopped into large pieces
2 yellow peppers, cut into large pieces
1 tablespoon capers
6 anchovies
1/4 cup black olives
1 cup fresh basil leaves
olive oil
salt and pepper
Directions:

1.  Put the torn bread pieces into a large bowl.
2. Halve the tomatoes and seed them in a sieve over a bowl to catch the tomato water. Discard the seeds.  Cut the tomato halves into smaller pieces and set aside.
3. Combine the tomato water with the garlic, two tablespoons of vinegar, salt and pepper and 1/4 cup of olive oil.  
4. Toss this mixture with the bread.
5. Add the chopped peppers, capers, anchovies, olives and basil.  Toss with additional olive oil and vinegar. 
6. Either let sit for an hour for the flavors to mingle or serve immediately.  The bread is purposefully soggy, but if you prefer a crisper bread, toast the pieces before you toss them in the dressing.

Ribollita (note you need to start this a day ahead)
Ingredients
(for beans)
1 lb dried white (cannellini) beans
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cloves garlic
4-5 fresh sage leaves
4-5 whole black pepper corns
salt and freshly ground peppers.
Directions:

1. In a large bowl, cover the dried beans with water and let soak overnight.
2. When ready to cook, drain the beans.
3. Put the beans in a large dutch oven and fill with 10 cups of water.  
4. Add the olive oil, garlic, sage, black peppercorns as well as salt and ground pepper to taste.
5. Bring to a simmer over medium heat and cook 1 hour, covered.
6. Lower heat to low and simmer gently, covered, 1 - 2 hours more, until beans are tender.
7. Let cool.  
8. Remove 1 cup of beans from the mixture (you will need to use a slotted spoon because there is still a lot of water, but you need to save the water).  In another bowl, place the rest of the beans with 2 cups of the cooking liquid.  Save and set aside whatever remaining cooking liquid there is. (got that, the beans and water are put in three separate bowls - one bowl with 1 cup of beans, no liquid, one large bowl with rest of beans and two cups of liquid, and a bowl with whatever liquid remains.

(for soup)
Cooked beans, as described above
2 medium onions, roughly chopped
2 carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
2 stalks of celery, trimmed and roughly chopped
2  potatoes, peeled and sliced
1 bunch Swiss chard, chopped
1 bunch Tuscan kale (cavolo nero), chopped
1 cup chopped canned plum tomatoes
3 thick slices stale country bread
salt and pepper
olive oil

Directions:

1. Take the majority of the beans and the two cups of water (in a large bowl) see above, and puree with a hand blender or in a regular blender, set aside.
2. Heat 1/4 cup of olive oil in a large dutch oven until medium hot.  Add onions.  Cook until soft, 15-20 minutes.
3. Add the carrots, celery, potatoes and greens and stir until mixed.  
4. Add the tomatoes.  
5. Cover and cook until the greens are wilted, 20 minutes.
6. Add the bean puree and the cooking liquid and simmer, covered for about 1 hour.
7. Add bread and reserved beans, stir and cook, covered, until bread is incorporated into soup, about 10 minutes.  Add salt and pepper to taste.
8. Serve, drizzled with olive oil.
9. This soup is also often served the day after it is made, warmed up in the oven. 

Tuscan Chicken Liver Crostini
Ingredients
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 lb chicken livers, cleaned and trimmed
4 anchovy fillets
3 shallots, finely chopped
1 carrot, finely chopped
1 celery stalk, finely chopped
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
2 tablespoons vin santo or sherry
1/4 cup chicken stock
1/4 cup finely chopped parsley
2 tablespoons capers
2 tablespoons lemon juice
salt and pepper to taste
baguette cut in slices

Directions:

1. To make the crostini, hear oven to 250 degrees, brush baguette slices with 1 tablespoon of olive oil and toast bread until dry and toasty about 10 minutes.
2. Cut the chicken livers into smaller pieces.
3. Heat three tablespoons of olive oil in a 12 inch skillet over medium high heat and add the chicken livers.  Cook for 8-10 minutes, flipping a few times so that they are evenly cooked.
4. Remove the chicken livers with a slotted spoon and set aside.
5. Return the pan to the heat, add the anchovy fillets and cook for 2 minutes until they dissolve in oil.
6. Add the shallot, carrot, celery and garlic and cook for 5 - 10 more minutes.
7. Add the sherry and cook until evaporated, about 30 seconds.
8. Add the chicken stock and cook until the liquid is evaporated, about two minutes.
9. Add back the livers along with the parsley, capers and salt and pepper (careful with the salt, we've already added capers and anchovies.)
10. Stir until and cook until the flavors meld, about 2 -4 minutes.
11. Remove from heat and let cool 10 minutes.
12. Pour this liver mixture into a food processor and processor until chunky or smooth - your preference.
13. Refrigerate until cool and then spread on crostini.