Christmas Recipe – Lesso e Pearà

Hello everyone, as anticipated in the last article today we will give you the recipe to prepare an excellent Lesso e Pearà at your home.

Ingredients for 4 people, for the Lesso you will need:

• 1/2 hen
• 800gr of beef tongue
• 1 kg of beef shoulder 
• 4 liters of cold water
• 2 sticks of celery
• 2 carrots
• 1 large onion
• 1-2 bay leaves
• cloves (optional)
• salt
• pepper

For the Pearà you will need:

• 200 grams of stale / grated bread
• 80/100 grams of very fresh ox marrow
• 1 liter of defatted meat broth
• salt
• lots of freshly ground pepper
• Parmesan type cheese (optional)

Let’s start by preparing the Lesso:
As mentioned in the last article, Lesso is a cooking technique suitable for many foods that becomes a freely composable dish with more or less noble and more or less numerous cuts of meat. And let’s not confuse it with the mixed Bollito of the Piedmontese tradition where the cuts of meat are strictly seven and the cooking technique of the meat differs slightly from the Lesso.

For our Lesso we have chosen 3 different types of meat: beef shoulder, chicken and tongue.
The procedure for preparing this dish is simple but the main ingredient is time, in fact the water should never boil but ‘quiver’ over low heat for at least three hours.
To make a good Lesso, start preparing the meats you will use, check the half hen well and if necessary use a flame  to eliminate any residual feathers, remove excess fat from the tongue. Clean the vegetables well, but keep all the skins. Prepare the cloves (optional) and bay leaves.

In a very large pot put all the ingredients and cover with cold water, turn on the heat and cook over moderate heat for at least 3/4 hours (the water must never boil but only quiver otherwise the meat will become hard). Continuously remove residues that come to the surface with a skimmer. When the Lesso is done, add a little salt. The broth thus obtained needs to be filtered and can be used for other preparations (such as tortellini in brodo, pearà or risotto). When serving, cut the different varieties of meat and place them on a warm serving dish.

Once the broth and Lesso are ready, we can start preparing Pearà by removing the marrow from the bone, using a knife, then melting the marrow over low heat and pouring it into a kitchen sieve to remove the impurities. Add the finely grated bread to the hot marrow in the pan and mix well, stirring with a wooden spoon, add the broth and cook slowly over low heat for at least two / three hours.
Stir every now and then to prevent the sauce from sticking to the bottom.
Add plenty of freshly ground pepper and a couple of tablespoons of grated Parmesan cheese (cheese optional). There are those who love a very dense pearà, others softer, everything is in the proportion between bread and broth. Our advice is therefore to not put all the broth, but to keep a little to add eventually towards the end of cooking. Serve the Lesso accompanied by a generous portion of steaming sauce.

And your Christmas dish is ready, and trust me, it’s something delicious… try it at home and let us know if you liked it! Stay connected because tomorrow an extra article will arrive with some tips to make these two Christmas recipes infallible.

Happy Holidays to all!
Camilla & Mara