Fritto Misto

[Deleted]

I just came across this and it seems to be "Italian tempura". Do we have any experts on it here? I want to know more about it.

[spaceneedle]

K,

I think I may have eaten vegetables cooked this way once. They were fried in olive oil.

[lagatta]

I have certainly eaten fritto misto (several times; I love fish) in Italy, but have never attempted making it. I don't like frying at home much. The challenge is to make something deep-fried that isn't greasy at all.

Here is one recipe in English from epicurious: www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Fritto-Misto-352490 usually they are tested well. I'm pretty sure the Italians used peanut oil, often with some olive oil in the mix.

The fritto misto I had featured very small fish.

kerouac, remember that "Tempura", as the Latinate name might indicate, is a Japanese adaptation of a Portuguese dish.

I'm craving some now, and I don't think a single restaurant in Montréal does it well. Moreover I've always eaten it outdoors, in far more clement weather.

[Deleted]

This also appealed to me.

[hwinpp]

Good stuff. I think it's the specialty of a particular region but I had it in Genoa and I liked it. Small fish, shrimp, squid.

[Don Cuevas]

I was reading, or more accurately, skiming over, a recipe for Fritto Misto in Joyce Goldstein's Square One Cookbook The Mediterranean Cookbook.. It's a wonderful cookbook, from the late 80's or early 90's of Mediterranean food. I've never made anything from it, as the recipes are too complex for the most part. (We did have the pleasure of dining there, and it exceeeded or satisfied all my expectations. Alas, it closed down a number of years ago.)
tinyurl.com/yddu5df Wow! It was over 13 years ago.

There's a Fritto Misto that contains optional organ meats, which the author complained the restaurant could not "sell" to customers. I believe that there's another one of fried seafood.
I haven't looked into this subject deeply, as I'm not going to make either one.

[Deleted]

The first mention that I read of fritto misto concerned rabbit and chicken pieces with vegetables.

[lagatta]

Don Cuevas, I have Joyce Goldstein's three books on Mediterranean Jewish cookery - thought I'd find a "fritto misto" recipe in the Italian one, "Cucina Ebraica: flavors of the Italian Jewish kitchen, but no fishy fritto misto. There is a vegetable recipe, "roba fritta" (fried stuff, or as Goldstein says, mixed fry) that really looks as if it contained anything that could be found, including smoked salt cod.

I always think of fritto misto as being fish, sometimes including other seafood, especially little calamari for the pretty tentacles - though obviously not in the kosher Jewish version. I've never heard of a rabbit and chicken version, but people cooked what they had. There are different fritti misti in different regions - looking the subject up in Italian, I find Piemontese ones that involve organ meats, and other regional ones but I think it is a dish that existed in various forms in many Mediterranean countries - and even in Portugal which is southern European but not technically Mediterranean, unlike Spain.

The major "fritto misto" festival in Italy is in Ascoli Piceno, in the Marches region on the middle Adriatic coast. frittomistoallitaliana.it/ There is of course a scholarly conference and many solemn speeches - this is typical of such events in Italy, where they really like honours and academic titles. I have several useless medals in one of my drawers.

But right now I'm feeling like an anthropologist poring through lore on sexual moeurs in various forgotten cultures when he or she would simply want to get laid. I want my fritto misto!

[Deleted]

I am definitely going to look into this and make some experiments.

[bixaorellana]

;D, LaGatta!

Would cuttlefish be proscribed for the kosher table because it would be considered a shellfish?

[lagatta]

Yes, no cuttlefish in kosher cookery. Cripes, there is EVERYTHING on the internets now. A Fly-fishing rabbi has the answer! theflyfishingrabbi.blogspot.com/2007/05/quiz-answer-and-cuttlefish-dear-friends.html

I'm no expert on the dietary rules of any religion, but this gentleman seems "leniently kosher" - he doesn't eat proscribed seafoods or pork, but does eat in non-kosher restaurants and drinks ordinary table wine, not kosher in Italy.

[Deleted]

That does seem more than "leniently kosher" to eat in non-kosher restaurants,no?

[bixaorellana]

When I was in high school in Savannah, there was a venerable and fabulous barbecue restaurant that we frequented. It had old fashioned high, varnished wood booths in the dining room, but you could also eat in the kitchen, where the booths were painted with white enamel. I always got the lamb, because who wouldn't get lamb anytime it was available? However, my Jewish friends would always order the pork -- maybe for the same reason I got lamb, or maybe just because they liked being naughty.

[Deleted]

I worked with an Orthodox Jewish(Chabad House etc.) woman for years...would be a major thread jack to relate some of her indiscretions that only I was privy to.(Sausage PoBoys??? )

[lagatta]

Did she have CHEESE on them?

A Moroccan friend, of Muslim background but not remotely devout, hated people who made a great show of piety and would say:
"La Mosquée en haut, le cabaret en bas"!

[fumobici]

I've seen this on menus a couple of times but didn't know quite what it is. Perhaps i'll give it a go.

[Deleted]

Jan 5, 2010 18:07:00 GMT lagatta said:

Did she have CHEESE on them?

A Moroccan friend, of Muslim background but not remotely devout, hated people who made a great show of piety and would say:
"La Mosquée en haut, le cabaret en bas"!

The "works".

[Don Cuevas]

Back to Fritto Misto: I found the recipe for Fritto Misto Al Mare on p. 195 of Goldstein's The Mediterranean Cookbook. (Which I mislabelled The Square One Cookbook, upthread.)

It has shrimp, mussels, clams, squid, scallops and strips of filet of sole.
No wonder I never have made anything from this cookbook! I am considering trying her version of Fennel Sausage. But that's another thread.

[auntieannie]

I have seen "fritto misto" (as in fish) on many italian restaurants' menus. And have tried a few.