In the preface to her book on Sistema, Al thanks Paul and Valerie Canarelli and their Corsican house in Murtoli for the inspiration, which helped her to complete her work on such a complex subject with an almost infinite number of components.
The book does not mention this, but according to St, the Corsican version of the dish, which we call “mesivo” (from the word mess), had a decisive influence on the author’s ability to finish the book. There are also a lot of ingredients in it and at that summer, St prepared it using Corsican wild boar hunted together with Jean-Francois and Piero, which, in the opinion of the latter, is completely different to any other wild boar in the world, vegetables gathered in the garden, herbs and spices collected from the maquis. The Corsican mess helped to understand the Russian mess and write a book about it.
Mesivo was born at the junction of the Caucasian and Mediterranean cuisines. We cook it in what is used to cook a goose – an oblong pan with a thick bottom and sides. This is a layered dish, at the very bottom we have meat, above it, several vegetable levels. Vegetables may vary by season and availability.
Our summer mesivo is prepared as follows.
- Heat light olive oil in a roaster and fry small pieces of lamb in it over high heat, some with bones that will add a special flavor to the dish.
- When the meat is roasted from all sides (for this you need to interfere with it periodically), reduce the heat and layer the vegetables.
- The first layer is sliced onions, the second is carrots, the third is eggplants, the fourth is zucchini, the fifth is potatoes, the sixth is peppers, the seventh is tomatoes, add bay leaf and black peppercorns.
- Stew under a lid on low heat for an hour, then add seasonings – finely chopped cilantro, crushed garlic, thyme, salt, hot green or red pepper.
- Stew another fifteen minutes, then put in a cold place. After a couple of hours, remove the pepper and the mess is ready to eat.
As for the proportions, we take about two parts of meat and one part of each type of vegetables and root crops (by volume). In this dish, cilantro can never be too much. Fine messivo is obtained from young wild boar, the meat of the tour and roe deer.
In winter, the mess goes well with the red Chateauneuf-du-Pape, for example, our beloved, Chateau de La Gardine. In summer, the mess is good paired with a cool rosé from Bandol.
