Below is produced a hearty meal scene from a famous American movie. It is another evidence of the fact that movies do play a huge part in soothing our aesthetic food senses by bringing to us specialties of diverse cultures just like the Italian dish below.
Eat Pray Love (2010 USA)
Julia Roberts, Javier Bardem, and Richard Jenkins were directed by Ryan Murphy from the book by Elizabeth Gilbert. A newly divorced and completely miserable American woman visits Italy, India, and Bali to find herself. That’s all very nice, but let’s us just cut to the food, which she finds in great abundance in Italy. “You American girls, when you come to Italy, all you want is pasta and sausage,” declares her landlady.
She downs nose-tickling cappuccino and napoleons and many Roman specialties such as artichokes ala guida, along with eggplant, spaghetti Bolognese and carbonara, and linguini con vongole. She also learns the concept of “dolce far niente,” the sweetness of doing nothing (except eating). Finally her Italian improves so that she can order an entire meal in that language. Included in that meal is saltimbocca.
Saltimbocca
- 8 thinly pounded veal scaloppini
- 8 slices Parma ham (prosciutto)
- 8 fresh sage leaves or some dried sage if need be
- 4 Tablespoons butter
- ½ cup white Italian wine (optional), the rest you can drink
- fresh ground pepper to taste
- Heat the butter in a sturdy skillet.
- Brown the veal quickly on both sides, no longer than five minutes total.
- Place on a platter.
- Deglaze the pan with wine, then pour over the veal topped with a slice of proscuitto and decorated with a whole sage leaf or sprinkled with dried sage.
- Pepper to taste.
You can add salt if the salted butter and ham are not enough.
