Pizza prosciutto crudo

Anyone who knows even a bit about Italian food would have heard of Bill Marchetti. And that’s not surprising, for he was here when the average Indian’s concept of Italian food started and ended with the pizza — and he’s here now that they know their mozzarella from their mascarpone.

Expat chefs have come and gone, but Marchetti — who first made his name in India as a chef in ITC hotels — has grown roots. I first met him all those years ago when he was creating some delicious food at the Maurya in Delhi. Now he runs a chain of restaurants called Spaghetti Kitchen — which has outlets in Delhi, Gurgaon, Calcutta, Bangalore, Mumbai and Pune.

I was speaking to him the other day when we got talking about cheeses — an integral part of Italian cuisine. How do different kinds of cheeses fit into different dishes? He named four kinds of Italian cheeses — mozzarella, mascarpone, parmesan and scamorza — to make his point. A particular kind of cheese has a specific taste and flavour. And it’s used judiciously with a dish keeping the flavours in mind.

Bill Marchetti

I suppose the question came to my mind because a food-loving, culinarily-trained friend had a trying time at a Delhi restaurant one evening. He had asked for a tiramisu and found — to his utter shock — that instead of the mascarpone cheese which is used for the delicious Italian dessert, the cooks had put mozzarella. And that, as any chef worth his or her salt would know, is a terrible crime.

“I read somewhere where it was suggested that people can use parmesan instead of mozzarella in an Italian soup. That’s culinary blasphemy,” Chef Marchetti fumes.

Indeed it is, for the parmesan, as the chef points out, has a “sharp, complex fruity taste and gritty texture” while the mozzarella is mild, moist and buttery, and is just right for something like the chef’s pizza prosciutto crudo.

Likewise, you can’t — or shouldn’t — replace your creamy and rich mascarpone — which works so well in desserts — with scamorza, which has a smoky flavour and belongs to the mozzarella family.

“I wouldn’t use smoked scamorza even in place of buffalo mozzarella in my salad Caprese as buffalo mozzarella has the ability to absorb more flavours and marries well with the tangy taste of tomatoes and aromatic basil (used in the salad),” says chef Marchetti. “Apart from that its rather creamy texture adds to the ‘mouth feel’ of the dish.”

I spoke to a couple of other well-known Italian chefs, and found that they had equally strong views on the use of cheeses.

Chef Willi Haueter, the executive chef at The Imperial in New Delhi, for instance, uses these four cheeses depending on what’s being cooked. The parmesan, he points out, is a ripe and hard low-fat cheese that goes well with all pastas and antipasti, while fresh mozzarella is best consumed with tomatoes, peppers, squash and so on, and pasteurised on pizzas.

“Scamorza is a very rustic cheese with a semi-soft texture and is great for baked dishes such as ziti, penne or gnocchi. The smoked cheese especially gives the dishes a very special flavour,” he says. And the soft mascarpone, he points out, is not just used for tiramisu but also for hot dishes and ice creams and parfaits.

Chef Marchetti adds that the versatile creamy cheese is used in some exotic pasta recipes, fillings for desserts and risottos. “It can also be paired in a dish with eggs, lobster, bacon and smoked salmon, and goes well with fruits in various desserts,” he stresses.

Tiramisu

I have been asked by friends who enjoy cooking Italian if one kind of cheese can be replaced by another. I posed the question to Chef Ritu Dalmia, who runs Diva, Latitude and Diva Café in Delhi. She is an open-minded cook who likes to demystify Italian recipes in her cookbooks meant for the average food-loving Indian.

“Sticking to the cheese in a recipe is fairly important — you cannot substitute a melt cheese with a hard grainy one, or a soft creamy cheese with a sharp blue cheese,” she explains. “For example I can substitute grana (a hard cheese particularly good for grating) when the recipe calls for parmesan, but you cannot grate scamorza over pasta,” she says.

Chef Dalmia’s own favourite is the parmesan, and in her characteristic style, she tells me why. “It is got a lot of oomph, a lot of character, and it’s very versatile,” she says.

She always keeps a block of parmesan in her fridge, wrapped around a piece of date. “It makes a great starter. When grated over pasta, it gives the pasta a new life. And then with some marmalade or chutney, it makes a great end with a glass of red wine,” she exults.

Now that a whole new world of cheeses is opening up to a people who thought Amul was the word for cheese, I can understand the chefs’ exultations. Indeed, a rose can be what it is, but you can’t say a cheese is a cheese is a cheese.

Tangy Chicken Rolls (serves 1 - 2)

Ingredients

• 100g chicken breast • 10ml olive oil • 5g mixed herbs •25g scarmoza cheese •25g fontina cheese •stock for cooking • salt and pepper to taste • butter for sautéing

For frittata: • 50g sautéed spinach • 50g chopped American corn • 2 eggs •60ml fresh cream •20g parmesan cheese •salt and pepper to taste

Method

Thinly slice the chicken breast and beat it thin. Cut scarmoza and fontina into matchstick shapes. Stuff the chicken breast strips with the cheese sticks and roll to form small cylinders. Marinate it with salt, pepper, mixed herbs and olive oil. In a hot pan add butter and sauté the chicken rolls. Add stock and cook it further. Add chopped parsley, lemon juice and season well. For the frittata, mix all the ingredients and cook in a buttered non-stick pan. Cook till partially set. Finish in a heated oven. Cut the frittata and place on a dinner plate. Arrange the cooked chicken rolls on top. Drizzle the pan sauce over it. Garnish with a parsley sprig and serve.