Italy

Milan

A veal rib chop on the bone, egged, breadcrumbed and fried in clarified butter until the crust is deep gold and the meat inside is just cooked: the cotoletta alla milanese is Milan's defining dish, and the city is particular about every part of that sentence. It is veal, not pork or chicken; it keeps its bone, which is why it is a cotoletta from costola, rib, and not a scaloppina; and it is cooked in butter, not oil. The dispute with Vienna over who fed the recipe to whom has run since the nineteenth century, with a Milanese monastery menu of 1134 listing lombolos cum panitio usually cited as the city's evidence. Two shapes coexist today: the traditional thick chop, two fingers deep and pink at the bone, and the orecchia d'elefante, the elephant's ear, pounded thin and wide enough to cover the plate, boneless and cooked through.

The chop is cut from the loin with the rib attached, trimmed of its outer fat and, for the thick version, lightly flattened so it cooks evenly. It is dipped in beaten egg, sometimes after a dusting of flour, then pressed firmly into fine dry breadcrumbs made from stale white bread, never panko, so the coating is tight and even. Clarified butter is heated in a wide pan to a lively but not smoking heat, and the chop fries for four to six minutes a side depending on thickness, basted with the butter, until the crust is uniformly golden and the meat near the bone reads a faint pink. The elephant's ear takes two minutes a side. It rests briefly, is salted on the plate, and is served with lemon wedges and little else: in Milan a few leaves of rocket and cherry tomatoes are a modern addition, and potatoes or risotto alongside are a restaurant's choice, not the rule.

Judge the crust and the meat separately. The crust should be fine-grained, crisp and evenly coloured, bonded to the meat so that cutting does not lift it off in a sheet; a crust that slides away, is pale in patches, or glistens with oil was cooked in the wrong fat or at the wrong heat. The veal should be tender and moist, pink at the bone in the thick version, with the clean taste of butter in the coating. Mark down a chop fried in oil, which tastes flat, a crust made from coarse or seasoned crumbs, pork or turkey passed off as veal, a dry grey interior, and a chop served swimming in sauce or buried under tomato and cheese, which is a different dish from a different country. The bone is part of the deal, and the lemon is the only sauce.

Cotoletta alla Milanese

The food was too heavy and greasy, and you can’t really taste the flavor of the meat. I think the traditional one is cooked in a pan. I will try that next time.

Two thin sheets of egg pasta sealed around a spoonful of filling, cut into squares or rounds, boiled for a few minutes and dressed simply: ravioli are the oldest and most widespread of Italy's stuffed pastas, mentioned in Genoese and Venetian documents from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and now made, under one name or another, in every region. The classic fillings are ricotta with spinach or chard in Emilia and Tuscany, meat in Piedmont's agnolotti and Liguria's ravioli di carne, fish along the Ligurian coast, and potato with mint in Sardinia's culurgiones; each region also has its own shape, from the half-moon of the Emilian tortello to the pleated culurgiones. What distinguishes a ravioli from a tortellino or a cappelletto is only the fold. The dressing is kept quiet, butter and sage, a light tomato sauce or the meat's own juices, so the filling is tasted.

Fresh pasta is the first requirement: soft wheat flour, or a mix with semola, kneaded with whole eggs at about one egg per hundred grams, rested, then rolled thin enough that the filling shows through, which in Emilia means close to a millimetre. The sheet is laid out, small mounds of filling are placed at even intervals, a second sheet is laid over, and the air is pressed out around each mound before cutting with a wheel or a stamp, because trapped air bursts the pasta in the water. Fillings are drained and dry enough to hold shape: ricotta is strained overnight, greens are squeezed hard, meat is braised and chopped fine with parmesan and nutmeg. They cook in well-salted water at a steady, not rolling, boil for three to five minutes, until the seam is tender, and are lifted out rather than poured into a colander, then turned gently in the sauce for a moment.

Judge the pasta first, because it is the hardest part to buy and the easiest to fake. It should be thin, silky and yellow with egg, with the seam only slightly thicker than the rest and no dry white edge; thick, pale, chewy pasta points to a machine-made product or a factory packet. Cut one open: the filling should fill the pocket, be seasoned clearly and hold together without being pasty or wet. Mark down ravioli that have burst or leaked, a sauce heavy enough to bury the filling, cream added to a butter-and-sage dressing, a sweet or bland ricotta, and frozen ravioli served in a restaurant that claims fresh pasta, recognisable by uniform size, a gummy seam and a grey filling. Six to eight large ravioli is a portion; a pile of twenty small ones is a different, lesser dish.

Ravioli

Pasta d’Autore

I went the restaurant because it was one of the most famous restaurant in Milan. We waited a long line to get in the restaurant. 

I preferred the ravioli with Parmecan sauce. It was really under cooked for me. I would expect a better taste. The sauce was okay. The overall taste was decent but not the best

Tagliatelle al pesto

Tried the pesto pasta — it was pretty good, but didn’t really blow me away. The pasta felt a little undercooked. The place had a nice vibe, but it was super crowded.

A half-moon of soft pizza-type dough sealed around tomato and mozzarella and dropped into hot oil until it swells and turns gold: the panzerotto is Puglia's answer to the question of what to do with leftover bread dough, and Bari eats it standing on the pavement at ten at night. The name comes from panza, belly, for the way it puffs. It is a cousin of the Neapolitan pizza fritta and the calzone, but smaller than either, always fried rather than baked, and with a filling that in the original is only tomato, mozzarella and a little pepper or oregano. Newer fillings include ricotta and spinach, mortadella, or ham and cheese, and a sweet version with Nutella exists, but the tomato and mozzarella one is what a Barese means by the word. It is sold from friggitorie and bakeries and made at home for Carnival and for guests.

The dough is a soft, well-hydrated mix of flour, water, yeast, salt and a little oil or lard, often with a share of semola rimacinata, proved for several hours until light. It is divided into balls of 80 to 100 grams, rolled into discs about the thickness of a coin, and a spoonful of filling is placed on one half: chopped fior di latte that has been drained so it does not weep, tomato pulp or passata cooked down and seasoned, sometimes a few capers or an anchovy. The edge is folded over, pressed, and crimped with the fingers or a fork so nothing escapes in the oil. The panzerotti are fried in deep sunflower or peanut oil at 170 to 180°C for two to three minutes, turned once, until the surface is blistered and gold, then drained briefly on paper. They are eaten within minutes, wrapped in paper, with the first bite taken carefully because the filling is molten.

A good panzerotto puffs into a hollow shell with the filling pooled at the bottom, and the dough is thin, crisp and dry on the outside and soft, almost bready, within; it should not drip oil when lifted. The seal must hold. The mozzarella should stretch and the tomato should be hot and tasting of itself, not sugary or of tinned paste. Mark down a heavy, greasy casing from oil that was too cool, a pale soft one from oil that was too hot for too short a time, a dough that is dense and raw at the seam, a filling that has burst and fried on the outside, and an overfilled panzerotto where the dough is an afterthought. Baked versions sold under the name are a different, lesser product. Two is a snack and three is dinner, and they do not keep.

Panzerotti

Panzerotti Luini

Fried dough with flavorful fillings. We tried mozeralla with tomato, ricotta with spinach and four cheese. Definitely worth to try. My favorite was mozeralla and tomato. 

Rank	Place	Top dish	Reviews	Score
1	Panzerotti Luini Via Santa Radegonda, 16, 20121 Milano MI, Italy Top dish: Panzerotti	Panzerotti	1	7.791 review
2	Pasta d’Autore Corso di Porta Ticinese, 16, 20123 Milano MI, Italy Top dish: Tagliatelle al pesto	Tagliatelle al pesto	2	72 reviews
3	Milan Milan, Metropolitan City of Milan, Italy Top dish: Cotoletta alla Milanese	Cotoletta alla Milanese	1	5.421 review

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Cotoletta alla Milanese

Ravioli

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Panzerotti

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