Italian Ligurian Stuffed Veal Breast | Cima alla Genovese
Cima alla genovese is a pocket, and everything difficult about the dish follows from that. A butcher opens a breast of veal along one edge and leaves a wide flat cavity closed on three sides. The cook fills it with eggs, grated Parmigiano, breadcrumbs, peas, marjoram and, in the older version, sweetbreads and brains, sews the fourth side shut with a needle and thread, and poaches the parcel in aromatic water for two hours.
What comes out is neither a roast nor a meatloaf. It is a sealed cushion of veal that must be cooled completely under a weight before a knife touches it, then cut thin and served at room temperature. Each slice shows a pale ring of veal around a set golden interior speckled green with peas and marjoram, eaten with salsa verde or lemon.
Almost every failure happens at one of two moments: the filling, because eggs and bread swell and a pocket packed full splits at the seam, and the slicing, because a cima cut warm crumbles instead of holding a clean face.
Yield: 9 servings as a main course. Prep: 45 minutes. Cook: 2 hours 15 minutes. Cooling under weight: 6 hours or overnight. Difficulty: advanced. Course: secondo, served cold or warm. Region: Liguria, Genoa and the coast.
The Story
The cima belongs to Genoa, and to the part of Genoese cooking that had almost no meat in it. Liguria is a narrow strip of terraces between mountains and sea with no pasture worth the name, and its historic kitchen runs on herbs, wild greens, chickpea flour, olive oil and salted anchovies. When meat appeared it was a cheap cut stretched as far as it would go. Breast of veal is exactly that. Opened into a pocket and filled, it feeds ten from a piece that could not feed three as a roast.
The filling records what a Genoese household could get hold of. Five things define the traditional version: sweetbreads and brains bought for small change, fresh peas from the market gardens behind the city, marjoram from a pot on the balcony, and Parmigiano, the one costly ingredient. Eggs and stale breadcrumbs bound it and made it go further. Modern cooks often leave the offal out.
Cima was a Sunday dish and a travelling dish. Because it is eaten cold and slices cleanly it went into a cloth and out of the city, to the scampagnata in the hills above Genoa, to the beach, to the cold lunch laid out when relatives arrived. It also carried a superstition: a witch can make a cima burst in the pot, and the protection is a pin left stuck in the meat. The folklore hides a practical truth, since the pin is what lets trapped steam escape and the cima does burst without it. Fabrizio De Andre put the ritual into the song A Cimma, sung in Genoese.
Ingredients
For the veal pocket
Breast of veal, boned and opened into a pocket by the butcher, 3 1/2 lb (1.6 kg)
Fine sea salt, 1 tsp (6 g), and freshly ground black pepper
For the filling
Veal sweetbreads, cleaned and blanched, 7 oz (200 g), optional
Calf brains, cleaned and blanched, 5 oz (150 g), optional
Ground veal shoulder, 10 oz (285 g), or 1 lb (450 g) without the offal
Shelled fresh or frozen peas, 1 cup (140 g)
Parmigiano Reggiano, freshly grated, 3 1/2 oz (100 g)
Dry breadcrumbs, 1 1/4 cups (100 g), soaked in whole milk, 1/2 cup (120 ml)
Large eggs, 4
Fresh marjoram, chopped, 3 tbsp (9 g)
Garlic clove, minced, 1, and pine nuts, 2 tbsp (18 g)
Dried porcini, soaked and chopped, 1/2 oz (15 g)
Grated nutmeg, 1/4 tsp (0.5 g), fine sea salt, 1 1/2 tsp (9 g)
For the poaching water
Water, 4 qt (3.8 l), enough to cover
Yellow onion, halved, 1, carrot, 1, celery stalks, 2
Bay leaves, 2, and black peppercorns, 10
Coarse sea salt, 1 tbsp (18 g)
For serving
Flat leaf parsley, packed, 1 cup (30 g)
Salt packed capers, rinsed, 1 tbsp (10 g), and 1 salted anchovy fillet
White wine vinegar, 1 tbsp (15 ml), and extra virgin olive oil, 1/3 cup (80 ml)
Lemon wedges, as an alternative to the sauce
Preparation
Step 1
Check the pocket. Run your fingers over the inner surface and hold the breast up to the light, looking for pinholes and anywhere the butcher went through the muscle. One hole the size of a match head leaks filling for two hours. Close what you find with a stitch, then season the cavity.
Step 2
Prepare the offal, if you use it. Soak the sweetbreads and brains in several changes of cold water for an hour, then peel off the outer membrane, which lifts away once they are cold. Blanch 3 minutes in barely simmering salted water and cut into 1/2 inch (1 cm) pieces.
Step 3
Mix the filling. Soak the breadcrumbs in the milk for 10 minutes and squeeze them out moist but not wet. Combine the ground veal, crumbs, Parmigiano, eggs, marjoram, garlic, pine nuts, porcini, nutmeg and salt by hand until even. Fold in the peas and offal last so they stay whole.
Step 4
Fill the pocket two thirds full and no more. Spoon the filling through the open edge, pushing it into the corners with the back of a spoon, in a flat even layer. Flattened under your palm it should feel like a slack cushion, because the filling expands by close to a third.
Step 5
Sew it shut. Thread a trussing needle with a doubled length of undyed kitchen thread and close the open edge with a running stitch, taking bites of about 1/2 inch (1 cm) and staying well back from the cut edge. Run along once, then back between the first stitches, and knot it.
Step 6
Poach it at the barest tremble. Bring the water, onion, carrot, celery, bay, peppercorns and salt to a boil in a pot wide enough to hold the cima flat, then drop the heat until the surface only shivers, around 180°F (82°C). Keep it covered by liquid and poach 2 hours.
Step 7
Prick it with a pin. In the first five to ten minutes, while the filling is still liquid, the parcel swells as steam builds inside. Prick the top in six or eight places with a clean pin, straight in and out. Never use a knife point: a slit keeps opening, a pinhole closes.
Step 8
Test it and press it as it cools. It is done when the centre reads 165°F (74°C). Lift it out with two spatulas and never let it cool in the water. Lay it flat under parchment and a board, weighted with 2 lb (900 g), for an hour, then overnight refrigerated.
Step 9
Slice it cold and serve it cool. Pull out the thread, blot the surface dry, and cut across the short side with a long thin blade into slices about 1/3 inch (8 mm). Cut it cold, always, then let the slices stand 20 minutes at room temperature. Pound the parsley, capers, anchovy, vinegar and oil into a salsa verde.
Plating
Serve on a cool plate, never a warmed one. Two slices per person as a main course, one as an antipasto, laid slightly overlapping so both cut faces show, since the cross section is the point of the dish and a stacked pile hides it. Keep the slices flat rather than propped up.
The sauce goes beside the meat, not over it: a spoonful of salsa verde at the edge of the plate, so the diner takes as much acidity as they want and the pale veal stays clean to look at. A lemon wedge does the same job. Alongside, Genoese practice is plain: boiled potatoes dressed with oil, or tomatoes with salt and basil in summer.
Professional Technique
The governing technique is volume management inside a sealed bag of muscle, and it has no counterpart in a rolled or tied stuffed meat, where surplus filling escapes at the ends. A sewn pocket has nowhere to vent. Roughly forty percent of the filling by volume is egg and soaked breadcrumb, and both expand as the egg coagulates and the starch takes up milk and fat. That expansion is close to a third, inside a veal wall shrinking the other way as its collagen contracts. Filling to two thirds is arithmetic, not caution.
The seam is load bearing. A running stitch taken twice in opposite directions spreads tension along the whole edge instead of concentrating it on single holes, which is how a widely spaced line tears through. Stay back from the cut edge by a good half inch, because veal breast is thin and a stitch near the margin pulls out of the fibre. Use undyed cotton or linen, never synthetic.
The pin and the weight decide whether the dish works, and they act at opposite ends of the process. The pin vents the parcel in the first minutes, while the filling is fluid and pressure is rising fastest, and a pinhole in raw veal closes around itself as the meat sets, so it relieves pressure without becoming a leak. The weight does the reverse on the cooled parcel, compressing the set filling against the veal wall until the two behave as one body.
Texture and Moisture Control
Three textures must coexist in one slice: veal tender and slightly gelatinous, filling set but moist, peas whole. Breast is full of collagen, which turns to gelatin only from about 160°F (71°C) upward and only with hours behind it. Held at a bare tremble the wall softens and the connective tissue between the muscle layers melts into the filling, which is why a properly poached cima tastes richer than its ingredients suggest. At a boil the same fibres contract and finish dry and stringy inside a wet parcel.
The filling carries its own moisture, because nothing can be added once the pocket is closed. The milk soaked crumbs hold free liquid and release it slowly as the egg sets around them. Skimp on the soaking, or use fresh soft bread instead of dry crumbs, and the filling tightens into a dense omelette.
Cooling is a moisture step too, which is why the cima comes out of the water rather than cooling in it. Steam trapped under a covered hot parcel condenses back into the surface, so cover it with parchment and never foil. The weight drives the last free liquid onto the tray, where it sets into a clear savoury jelly. Once properly cold the filling is firm enough for a thin blade to pass through peas and veal wall in one stroke.
Professional Mise en Place
Cima is a make ahead dish and is better on day two. Nothing is done to order except cutting and plating.
Equipment and tools
Trussing needle, undyed kitchen thread, and a clean sewing pin
Pot wide enough to hold the parcel flat and fully covered
Instant read thermometer and two long spatulas for lifting
Tray with a lip, parchment, flat board, 2 lb (900 g) weight
Long thin slicing knife
Prepared ahead
Pocket ordered and checked for holes the day before
Offal soaked, peeled and blanched the day before
Cima poached, pressed and refrigerated a full day ahead, thread left in
Salsa verde up to 2 days ahead, under oil
Service setup
Cima out whole, thread removed, surface blotted dry
Slices cut to order, or cut 30 minutes ahead and loosely covered
Plates cool, salsa verde at room temperature, lemon cut fresh
Chef Tips
Order the pocket days in advance and ask for it by name. A butcher who has made cima before bones the breast, opens it and leaves a clean cavity closed on three sides. One who has not will hand you a flat piece with a slit in it, a much harder object to fill.
Cook a spoonful of the filling before you commit it. Flatten a tablespoon into a pan with a drop of oil and taste it set. Once the pocket is sewn you cannot adjust salt, nutmeg or marjoram, and cold mutes salt noticeably.
Save the poaching liquid. Two hours of veal breast and aromatics give a light clean broth, excellent the next day with small pasta. Strain it, chill it, lift off the cap of fat. Throwing it away is the one real waste in a recipe invented to avoid waste.
Be generous with the marjoram and add it raw. It is the herb that makes this taste Ligurian rather than simply of stuffed veal, and its aroma is volatile. Chop it at the last moment and use more than feels sensible, because two hours of poaching takes much of it away.
Common Mistakes
Filling the pocket completely. Eggs and soaked crumbs expand by roughly a third while the veal shrinks around them, and a full pocket splits at the seam and empties into the water. Fill to two thirds and check that the parcel feels slack before you sew it.
Not pricking the cima in the first minutes. Steam builds fast inside a sealed parcel and the pressure alone tears the stitches. Six or eight pinholes in the top surface within the first ten minutes release it, and they close as the veal sets. This is what the old story about witches is really describing.
Letting the water boil. A rolling boil tears the seam, toughens the breast and clouds the broth. Keep the surface barely trembling at about 180°F (82°C), and check the flame after ten minutes, when most pots creep back to a boil unnoticed.
Slicing it warm. Warm filling is set but fragile, so the blade drags it out of the pocket instead of cutting through and the slice collapses. Cool it completely under weight, cut it cold, then let the slices warm on the plate.
Skipping the weight. Without pressing, the parcel keeps its dome, the filling never bonds to the veal wall, and every slice separates into two pieces. A board and 2 lb (900 g) for six hours is all it needs.
Wine Pairing
Riviera Ligure di Ponente Pigato DOC: The bottle this dish grew up beside and the most complete answer on the list. Pigato has real body for a white, with a herbal, almost marjoram scented top note that lands on the herb in the filling, and a saline acidity that cuts the egg and Parmigiano richness without thinning out when poured cool.
Cinque Terre DOC: Leaner and more mineral, from terraces on the eastern Ligurian coast, and the choice when the cima is served in thin slices as an antipasto. The blend of Bosco, Albarola and Vermentino is dry, brisk and faintly bitter, so it never competes with the marjoram while its acidity resets the palate.
Rossese di Dolceacqua DOC: If the table wants red, this is the Ligurian one and the best structural fit. Rossese is pale, low in tannin and scented with rose and wild herbs, and its lack of astringency matters, because cold veal makes firm tannin taste metallic. Serve it at about 57°F (14°C), cooler than a normal red.
Alto Adige DOC Pinot Nero: A mainland alternative with the same light frame and more precision. Mountain grown Pinot Nero has high acidity, fine grained tannin and an undergrowth character that finds the sweetbreads and porcini without overwhelming the veal. Its acidity does on the palate what salsa verde does on the plate.
Bardolino DOC: The casual choice, and the right one for a cima eaten outdoors, which is how it was eaten for generations. Light, tart and low in tannin, drunk cold from the cellar, it behaves almost like a rosato: enough bite to refresh, no structure to weigh on the dish.
Storage & Reheating
Cima keeps better than almost any other stuffed meat and improves on the second day, once the seasoning has evened out and the block has firmed further. Keep it whole and unsliced with the thread still in, wrapped in parchment and sealed in a container, up to 4 days refrigerated. Slice only what you are eating, since cut faces dry and darken within hours. Store the salsa verde separately under a film of oil.
It freezes acceptably but only whole, never in slices. Wrap in parchment then a freezer bag with the air pressed out, and use within 2 months. Thaw over 24 hours in the refrigerator and expect softer peas and a grainier filling, because the egg structure releases water on thawing.
There is no reheating step in the classical dish: let cold slices stand half an hour at room temperature. If you want them warm, lay them in a single layer with two tablespoons of the reserved broth, cover, and warm over the lowest heat for 3 or 4 minutes. Never microwave cima, which turns the egg filling rubbery. Ragged end pieces are excellent chopped into a frittata.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 9 servings of two slices each, with the offal included:
Calories: 385 kcal
Total Fat: 23 g
Saturated Fat: 9 g
Trans Fat: 0.4 g
Unsaturated Fat: 13 g
Cholesterol: 290 mg
Sodium: 620 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 12 g
Fiber: 2 g
Total Sugars: 3 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 32 g
Lactose: 1.2 g
Principal micronutrients: vitamin B12, zinc, selenium, phosphorus, iron, calcium, niacin
These figures are estimates. Cholesterol drops to around 175 mg if the offal is left out, and most of the salt in the poaching water is discarded rather than eaten.
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