Cooking with Francesco Padera

Today I was at the International Culinary Academy cooking with Chef Francesco Padera from Puglia, Italy. He is the chef for more than 150 people a day at the Mercure hotel in Bari. We had a lot of fun cooking traditional dishes from his native region, and I have posted one of his recipes (a lamb and cheese entree) here to give you a true taste of the food that comes from Southern Italy.AGNELLO FARCITO ALLA PUGLIESE CON CAPOCOLLO DI MARTINA, CACIOCAVALLO PODALICO E PURE DI FAVE

(Pugliese-style lamb stuffed with capicollo (*), caciocavallo cheese (**) and puree of broad beans)

6 servings

Ingredients:

1 boned lamb thigh

100 g (4 oz.) smoked capocollo, cut into matchsticks

50 g (6 oz.) caciocavallo, cut into matchsticks

Herbs, salt, pepper and extra-virgin olive oil to taste

1 cloves garlic

1 shallot
1 scallion

100 g (4oz.) peeled potatoes

250 g (8 oz.) dried broad beans

½ l (2 c) Primitivo di Manduria, reduced to 1/3

1 bay leaf

1 clove garlic

Procedure: Open the lamb thigh and pound with a meat pounder. Season with salt, pepper, herbs, garlic and oil and let sit a few minutes. Spread the sticks of capocollo and caciocavallo out on the meat and close the meat. Tie with cooking string and brown in a pan with oil.

Soak the broad beans in cold water for 10 minutes. Rinse, add the potatoes, bay leaf and a whole clove of garlic. Cover with cold water, cover and cook over a low flame for about 30 minutes. When the beans have absorbed all the moisture and are thoroughly cooked, remove from flame and blend with olive oil. When the lamb is done, remove the sting and slice. Serve the lamb over the broad bean puree with the Primitivo di Manduria reduction on top.

(*) Capicola, or coppa, is a traditional Neapolitan cold cut made from pork shoulder or neck and dry-cured whole. The name coppa is Italian for “nape,” while capicola comes from capo—head and collo—neck of a pig. The Neapolitan Italian spelling, "'Capocollo'", is dervied from Latin, "caput collum". It is similar to the more widely known cured ham, prosciutto, because they are both pork-derived cold-cuts that are used in similar dishes. However, the technical definition of ham is the thigh and buttocks of a pig (or boar), whereas Capicola is solely meat from the shoulder or neck.

(**) Caciocavallo cheese is similar in taste to the aged Southern Italian provolone cheese, with a hard edible rind. Its tear-drop shape with a small, round head comes from the method of tying two cheeses together and hanging them over a board for curing.

Buon appetito!

Cesare Casella