A surplus of milk leads to maiale al latte

"the fact is that this, one of my favourite dishes, is beige. What a chef might call “textures” of beige or even 50 shades of beige. Beige with a hint of toffee, a dash of cream and even a bit of café au lait — but beige." Rowley Leigh

Yesterday was a minor comedy of errors in that I needed to buy milk, and because I thought I would have another go at making my own yoghurt, I bought two bottles, one full-cream and one light. Having finished my shopping and seeing that David was happily browsing Aldi's offers of the week which included multiple tools of no interest to me, I set off on my walk back home. When I got home I found that David had also bought a bottle of milk - skim milk for some reason, because he knew that we needed it and had forgotten that I had bought some. So we now had three bottles of milk, and we really don't drink much. What to do with it all?

Well I did have a go at the yoghurt - which took the light bottle. It is now sitting in its big thermos flask, hopefully thickening. I shall resist temptation though and not check it until the morning. Tonight we are going to dinner with our son and family, so we are taking the skim milk with us in the hope of palming it off on them. Just quietly I don't think they will want it, but we'll try. Which leaves us with one bottle of full cream milk. Now next Wednesday we have friends coming for lunch and so I thought I would have a go at maiale al latte - pork in milk - a dish that I have thought about cooking for many, many years. It's going to be hot on Wednesday and this is supposed to be good cold as well as hot, so maybe I'll cook it on Tuesday and serve it with salads on Wednesday. Maybe.

I also remembered that my interest in the dish had been restimulated just the other day when I saw a very tempting looking picture of the dish. Where? I thought it was in Jamie Oliver's latest Italian cookbook. But no - in fact Jamie does not have a recipe for this classic Italian dish, which is very surprising, particularly since the version that most people go on about is that produced by River Café in London, and Jamie Oliver is very emotionally attached to that place. I think he worked there early on in his life and is a huge admirer of the late Ruth Rogers. I even found a video of their version made by one of their more recent chefs. It's quite long but informative.

However, it turns out that their version is, in turn based on Elizabeth David's - or sea subsequent writer I came across said. Her version, reproduced in At Elizabeth David's Table (a sort of best of Elizabeth David, that everyone should have), is shown at the top of the page. Probably lots of other versions also use it as their template, so here it is:

MAIALE AL LATTE

About 1 1/2 lb of loin of pork, or boned leg, without the rind, rolled into a sausage shape, 1 1/2 pints of milk, 1 1/2 oz of butter, 1 1/2 oz of ham, salt and pepper, an onion, garlic, coriander seeds, marjoram basil, or fennel.

Melt the butter, brown the finely chopped onion in it, then the ham, also finely chopped.

Stick a clove of garlic inside the rolled meat, together with 3 or 4 coriander seeds and a little marjoram, basil, or fennel. Rub it with salt and pepper and brown it in the butter with the onion and ham. In the meantime heat the milk to boiling point in another pan. When the meat has browned pour the milk over it. Add no more salt or pepper. Keep the pan steadily simmering at a moderate pace, uncovered. Gradually a golden web of skin begins to form over the top of the meat while the milk is bubbling away underneath. Don't disturb it until it has been cooking for a good hour. At this moment break the skin and scrape the sides of the pan, stirring it all into the remaining milk, which will be beginning to get thick. In about another 30 minutes the milk should have reduced to about a small cupful, full of the delicious little bits of bacon and onion, and the meat should be encased in a fine crust formed by the milk, while it is moist and tender inside. It is at this moment that any meat or bird cooked in milk should be carefully watched, for the remaining sauce evaporates with disconcerting rapidity, leaving the meat to stick and burn.

To serve, pour the sauce, with all its grainy little pieces, over the meat. Can be eaten hot or cold. But best cold I think.

Whatever the weight of the piece of meat to be cooked in this fashion, allow roughly a pint of milk per pound.

She then added this note in her later edition of the book:

One or two readers have told me that they find this recipe very tricky. It can be made easier by transferring the dish, uncovered to a moderate oven, after the web has formed. When the meat is cooked, return the pan to the top of the stove and reduce the sauce.

Having now typed this out I see that it differs in a number of ways from the River Café version. They used shoulder not loin (I shall be using loin because that's what I have), they did not roll it up at all - just cooked it as it was. I think they used oil rather than butter. They used heaps of garlic and just sage - quite a lot - as the herbal element. He sprinkled the meat with an alarming amount of salt, and also added some lemon peel.

So not very like Elizabeth David at all. But very like several other versions that I found. Most of them favoured lemon rind, bay leaf, thyme and sage as the herbs of choice. Not everyone browned the meat first, but lots of them did and also not many of them added ham. Claudia Roden even marinaded her pork in some white wine and white wine vinegar overnight - which nobody else did. And somebody cooked it in the oven. But then this is once again one of those traditional dishes that evolves according to the personal tastes of whoever is making it. I think I'll go for lots of garlic, sage, thyme and bay leaf, plus the lemon peel. Maybe some ham, but then again, maybe not.

The main trick, and I must confess I'm a little bit nervous about this, is not to burn the milk or the meat. Some say you have to watch it like a hawk, although the River Café guy seemed to think you only needed to baste it every now and then. My guess is that you need to put in plenty of milk. You can always reduce it down at the end after all. All of which is really leading me to think that I will make it the day before. I guess I could always warm it in the oven if I wanted to serve it warm.

Here is a selection of the recipes I found from: Rachel Roddy, Women's Weekly, Food and Wine - Laura Rege,Nigel Slater and Gill Meller - River Cottage

As a a slightly amusing aside to all of this it was interesting to see that some of the chefs stressed that this was not a pretty dish. The quote at the top of the page is one of these. And Nigel Slater says much the same:

"The dish, where a boned shoulder of pork is cooked in milk, garlic and bay, would probably be better known if it wasn't for its appearance, with its seriously curdled sauce and ivory-coloured skin."

And it is indeed true that the photograph of his version does look pretty greyish. But it just goes to show, does it not, that you just need a good photographer. The other pictures vary from mildly ordinary looking to really very tempting. And that quote at the top of the page (the recipe that followed was sort of Elizabeth David's) went on to say he wondered how the photographer would make it look good. Well she did - here it is:

Just add a touch of colour and a few different shades of beige.

The taste however is not beige.

"The flavour is another matter altogether, though. The garlic faintly caramelises in the butter, the milk softens any strident notes the meat may have, the curds of coagulated milk take on a toasty quality. With a dish of broccoli and some floury potatoes, this is a meal of quiet comfort. It is not, however, an elegant dish." Nigel Slater

Nuttiness was another word that was often used to describe it.

And I almost forgot - Delia's version is for pork chops. And that does look seriously good.

I was also amazed that some of my Italian sources did not have a recipe - Italy the Beautiful, The Silver Spoon, Jamie Oliver's two Italian cookbooks, Nigella Lawson and Robert Carrier does not list it as one of the Great Dishes of the World - old or new.

I still have no idea where the photo that inspired me to have a look for it again. came from.