Archive for March, 2007
Whichever you like. Latin or Italian.
I will be there for the next few days making sure that my Pugliese or Apulian food is correctly seasoned and prepared. It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it.
I stopped dieting in preparation for the food trip because my face became unrecognizable. I was told today to sleep hanging upside down like a bat for a while, so that may illustrate my condition.
Ostuni, here I come. Here is something to amuse you while I am gone. And another, here.
March 28th, 2007
Lobsters haven’t gotten any cheaper in Italy and they are even rarer than before. So what else is luxurious, and do I need it? Domesticity is not my best fit. The only domestic thing I happily do is cook. The rest is just…groan… because you have to You don’t have to iron, not much. Unless you live in Umbria and you’re pootling along minding your own business and then you realize that your bed is wet. Permanently. Everything is wet, especially in winter, because if it isn’t raining it is just humid, and if it isn’t cold the heat doesn’t come on and it stays wet.
Out comes the iron because mildew is not bearable. For one who loves the smell of sheets fresh off the line, it’s torture. Ironing sheets is not the stupidest thing I ever have to do, but it is only a few inches above ironing underwear and socks. Weeks can pass when you can’t hang the clothes outside. If you have a lot of sheets you can have a clean bed, but where to keep the piles of dirty ones? And if the sheets have been stored with the least dampness remaining, they will smell musty while you are putting them on the bed.
In summer things dry very well, but they bake and they’re incredibly wrinkled and rough. Italian dryers are so tiny that even one sheet fills it and they come out wadded up like the used hankies of February. Not nice. Not the least bit as an empress should sleep.
I knew about steam presses because people who sew have them. I used to have a lot of people who sewed for me in my design work. They had them. I didn’t. Then I saw a late night TV ad for an expensive Swiss steam press and I looked it up on the internet. OVER $1000! Fuggedaboudit! But as little as I care for the domestic disciplines I kept wondering, “Does everybody pay so much for that?” An agriturismo owner told me he had one because they couldn’t turn the apartments over without it, or having the sheets professionally laundered at €8 per bed per week. With about sixteen beds, it wouldn’t take long to pay for even the pricey one. I only have four beds, but in an effort to be ecologically sensitive, I use cloth napkins, place mats and tablecloths, as well as small guest towels that aren’t as heavy to wash as terry cloth, or what is called spugna here.
As a former Olympic non-ironer, I didn’t always, OK, I seldom ironed those things, but that meant they were often damp, too. I went online and searched using words I supposed meant steam press. Surprise! After only a few tries I discovered that they don’t all cost a lot of money! People iron in Italy– bella figura and all that– plus the dampness. They often spend large amounts of money on irons with tanks that sit on the floor. But you still have to iron with those.
About two weeks ago I bought this. Now I can’t figure out what took me so long. It’s just about perfect for someone who despises ironing. I haven’t yet started to learn how to do difficult things, and I expect I will once in a while have to use a regular iron for a ruffle on a sham or something small and fluffy, but I’ve spent a total of maybe 2.5 hours in 3 tries and everything flat and easy is ironed. All my wool trousers are pressed and properly creased. My T shirts are in shock, because they have never even seen an iron before. My version of that is that I press them from the inside with my hot body.
It takes less than a half hour to press a top sheet, two shams and three pillowcases for my bed. It took perhaps an hour to do dozens of napkins and placemats. Big tablecloths took a little folding and planning, but every single one is pressed and ready to use. The steam released is so pervasive and strong that you don’t need to sprinkle, as a matter oif fact, dry things iron better than damp ones. So far it isn’t even boring, because I am learning. I’m looking for things to iron! I’ve either gone off my rocker, or this thing is so easy and pleasant that ironing is, dare I say, a little fun?
If you tell anyone who knows me they’ll never believe you anyway, because I proudly announce that it has been four months since I ironed. I want to be Janis Joplin, not June Cleaver.
I like to live well, I just don’t like the work that goes into it. Now if it would only wash the cooking pots.
March 28th, 2007
When I was experimenting the other day with crusca/bran for breading meat, I remembered a recipe I had read years ago, probably in one of my antique magazines. The recipe was for Swiss steak, a dish for which I never developed much passion. The instructions, however, have much to say about kitchen history.
I can’t check it, but I believe the recipe was from between 1919 and 1939. That’s my guess because the recipe was for several to many people, used and even centered about a cheap piece of meat and yet was spicy and used tomatoes. In the United States, tomatoes weren’t very much used in family meals, and spices had more to do with desserts than entrees, except in ethnic cookery. Ethnic cookery was something you wouldn’t expect the average American magazine reader to know about or even want to do until after the Second World War. Meat didn’t center meals much during the rationing days of the war, and the numbers being fed dropped off, too, with most men and boys serving in the military.
I noticed that many recipes were for eight people in early 20th century, dropped to four quite often around wartime, and then popped back to six in the Fifties. There are many reasons why this would be true. One was that there were often household help before the war, and several children, and after the war women were encouraged to marry and have babies again, and because there was money once more, they did.
Anyway, to the recipe. The directions were to take a piece of round steak and cut it into moderate sized pieces. The pieces were then put on a cutting board, scattered with flour and then the flour was beaten into the meat with the edge of a plate. Look at the edge of a plate. It’s not a very big thing. As a matter of fact, you’d spend hours beating flour into steak for six using the edge of a plate.
Effective? I suspect it is. I am not going to try it or time it. By the time I started cooking most people had a meat hammer with various sized teeth that did the job better and faster. My mother called it a meat hammer. Hers was made of wood, and I once had a wooden one, too, but I snapped the neck of the handle being particularly vigorous one day, so all the ensuing ones have been cast aluminum. For delicate jobs, like flattening chicken or fish, I used the untoothed side of the hammer or the bottom of a wine bottle. If one wants to be showy, a wine bottle still works for slamming, banging, beating or crushing many things, but it can, of course, break.
I have my American meat hammer with me, but I also bought a battecarne which does a much slicker job of flattening delicate things than the wine bottle ever did. For tenderizing tough meat, nothing beats beating.
But every once in a while it’s interesting to me to imagine the women who came before me and how they did the same things I do. I may not make Swiss steak, but a lot of my nicest dishes start with a chunk of something that must be turned into feather-light and tender slices or slivers of something.
And then, for the Southerners, there is chicken-fried steak, and I bet that a lot of grandmothers used the edge of a plate to make that, too. The next time you turn to zap something in the microwave, think about the women who fed your grandparents and how much sheer muscle power and ingenuity it took to do it. Think about the Sunday night suppers with word games and charades or board games that were quite common, even among people who weren’t at all affluent. Those were hard times, but they were also generous times and with no mod cons at all, people had a lot of fun and ate the best they knew how to, on much less money than we spend.
I don’t propose that we go back to privation budgets or appliance-free kitchens– far from it! I do propose that we consider turning off the TV occasionally, feed our friends something cheap and filling and creatively entertain ourselves. We are losing some of the sense of home lately, because we are being convinced that entertaining needs to be elaborate or formalized or that the food should be like restaurant food. Maybe once a month it would be worth wondering what great-grandma would have done.
Some of you are doing this, and you are the ones who inspired this post. Hello, Snowpea!
March 27th, 2007
Much less calorific and when I made it last night I thought the angels were feeding me. And about time, too. I’m sick of dealing out one ounce portions of this and oil free portions of that.
I’m also stumped on which photo to choose, so I will put two up and you choose. I’ll remove the one we don’t like.
If you want to make regular asparagus soup, which is creamy velvet in the mouth, go to lobstersquad because she presents it as matter-of-factly as I have ever seen. This is simple cookery, folks. No magic, no special skills required. Her illustrations are ineffably finer than mine, too. However, nice as it is, I want asparagus soup without calories.
Buy a bunch of asparagus, wash them and snap the ends off. Then cut them to an even length that will fit in your big pot. Put your big pot, filled with water, onto a big burner and turn it on. Add a small fist of coarse salt. While it is heating, chop up the parts you removed, and put the pieces into a small pot with water to cover and some broth concentrate, or forgo the water and just put in broth. Put that on a smaller burner to come to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and leave it alone.
When the water boils in the POT, toss in the whole asparagus. Watch it come to a boil again, wait about 30 seconds and test. They should still be firm but not taste raw. Fatter ones will take a bit longer, but not longer than one minute. Remove it from the cooker, put the pot under the faucet and add cold water to stop the cooking. Drain the asparagus into a colander. You already have your snacking and nibbling techniques in place, I think.
After about 20 minutes, remove the smaller pot, drain off the broth and keep it. Pulverize the cooked asparagus and then sieve it– I used a food mill, but many things will do. You do not want teensy weensy openings, or all you will get is juice, but you also don’t want the fibers to remain. I milled it right back into the pot it cooked in. Add back the broth.
Pick up a handful of the cooked asparagus spears and cut them into small pieces, leaving the tips whole. Toss those into the asparagus puree and bring the whole pot to a simmer. That’s all, folks. No cream, no flour, no butter, just delicious asparagus taste and the rest of the stalks you didn’t use can be bagged and kept in the fridge for tomorrow.
It’s a very good diuretic, as well.
March 24th, 2007
I had an idea and decided to test it yesterday.
The participants were a large piece of fresh uncured ham and crusca or miller’s bran. This ham is part of the artisanal pork I bought a few months ago. This is not a pig who lolled around in the sunshine, but one who trotted around the farm eating what he liked. The texture of the meat is therefore nothing like cured ham or fresh ham from a factory farm
The crusca I already know can be used in place of bread crumbs. It tastes more like whole wheat bread than daily bread, but that’s OK with me. It is great on a diet because it fills you up a bit, adds fiber and has virtually no calories. Go look in your markets and see where the miller’s bran is, because it is nothing like those cereals made of bran. They have their place, but they don’t do what just plain bran, the outer covering of a wheat berry, does.
So, the project was to try the meat “breaded” with crusca and unbreaded, beaten or flattened with my battecarne (which I will photograph later, but it is like the flat side of your meat hammer.) What makes a difference, and how much difference? To be fair, I seasoned all with the same salt and herbs mixture.
I first cut two thin cutlets off the end of the meat to try them just as they come. I mixed up some crusca with seasoning in a pasta bowl, and dipped one of them into it. Knowing this would be a chewier meat, I heated a frying pan to medium and added a little oil. I sautéed both pieces side by side until they were just done. I cut into them.
They were both delicious, but very chewy. Some might say tough. The only difference between the two was the whole wheat flavor of the crusca one. It apparently did nothing to moderate the affect of the heat on the thin meat.
I cut two more, and on the chopping board using my trusty metal beater, flattened them to very thin indeed and about three times as large in area as they began. One was dipped in seasoned crusca, the other not. Both were cooked.
This time there is a great difference. Maybe it is because with more surface, the crusca taste was more pronounced, but it really tasted almost like a sandwich. The uncoated one was perfect. It had become very tender, had cooked very quickly because of the flattening, and was juicy to an extreme.
I would still use the bran for variety, but the tale that breading holds in juices and protects the meat from the toughening affect of heat just didn’t happen for me. The beaten plain piece was better than the other one, and better by far than the natural one.
So if you don’t have a battecarne, go get one. I’ve several recipes in which it is required, and just simple sautéed cutlets are very much improved with it. That’s it, folks.
March 23rd, 2007
It has been since 21 February that I have not had pasta. The urge to have a luscious sauce over a supporting cast of mild long things has recently grown to lead me to try slivered lettuce, slivered cooked cabbage, etc., etc. Hmmm. So when I noticed that I had some buckwheat noodles in a jar in the pantry I decided to have them. They certainly are whole grain and I can eat whole grains. The dish they were bought for is pizzoccheri and I didn’t like that at all. Carole of Alpine Settler feels differently about that, but I learned it for a friend whose favorite dish it is and decided I would rather starve.
I didn’t feel much different about this dish, which at least wasn’t swimming in butter and grease released by Bitto cheese. I truly believe that buckwheat was not born to be pasta. There are disconcerting minuscule crunchies in it that feel like ground glass. And yes, it really is that khaki/camouflage color.
It’s an ideal diet food, because even hungry I couldn’t eat much. Instead of saving the other half of the recipe, I gave it to the cats. They circled it, sniffed it, then carefully picked out the turkey bits. My cats love pasta. They hate pizzoccheri noodles. Here they are having a look. There are eight cats here, and only these two even thought it was worth a sniff.
They’ve dragged an empty catfood bag from the garage trash bin either to tell me what they’d prefer or to cover this abomination from their offended eyes.
March 22nd, 2007
Straight from the horse’s mouth, Dora is guest blogging to tell us how to make her version, which is absolutely the best I ever had. This is very rich, and will serve 12. It looks like a lot of work, and maybe it is, but it is a feast dessert for a very special occasion and it is worth it.
For my pastiera I use the following basic recipe but I make a few changes to it.
The first change is the quantity of candied citron, pumpkin and orange. I use half the quantities (40, 40 and 25 grams) and I cut them very finely so that they don’t stick in the teeth. The other change is that I blend the grano cotto
(cooked wheat) because I don’t like the original texture. If you don’t like the pieces of candied fruit in the pastiera you can make it without, it’s up to you, it’s important though the millefiori or fiori d’arancio aroma, it gives the pastiera the typical smell of spring.
I was sure I had taken pictures while making it (I last made it here in USA last week) but I can’t find them anywhere,
the web is full of pictures anyway.
PASTIERA NAPOLETANA
PASTA FROLLA PER PASTIERA
• 3 uova intere 3 whole eggs
• 500 gr. Farina 500 g flour
• 200 gr. Zucchero 200 g sugar
• 200 gr. di strutto o di burro 200 g lard or butter
Preparazione:
Su un tavolo disporre la farina e lo zucchero a fontana con al centro il
burro ammorbidito, i tuorli d’uovo e la buccia grattugiata di mezzo limone.
Con una forchetta sbattere le uova al centro della fontana incorporando poco
alla volta la farina i burro e lo zucchero. Quando gli ingredienti saranno amalgamati,
lavorare la pasta rapidamente senza impastarla, ma soltanto pressandola fino a
quando il colore sarà diventato uniforme. La pasta frolla non va lavorata
troppo per non farle perdere la friabilità. Far riposare, almeno una mezzora,
l’impasto coperto da un tovagliolo bagnato e strizzato.
Preparation:
On a work surface, arrange the flour and sugar in the form of a fountain
or of Vesuvius, with the softened butter, the yolks of the eggs and the
grated peel of half a lemon in the center. With a fork, beat the egg yolks
in the center, mixing it gradually into the flour, incorporating theflour/sugar
and the butter bit by bit. When the ingredients are mixed, knead the pastry
quickly, but only until smooth and of a uniform color, don’t overwork it like
bread or it will be tough. Let it rest at least a half hour covered with a napkin
you have wet and wrung out.
Ingredienti per la pasta: per 12 persone ingredients for the filling
• gr. 700 di ricotta 700 g of ricotta
• gr. 600 di zucchero 600 g of sugar
• gr. 400 di grano cotto (si trova in scatola anche 400 g of cooked wheat from a jar or tins
nei supermercati, se non lo trovi clicca su grano cotto if you can’t find it, I’ll make a link to a place
per cuocerlo da te) that tells you how to make your own.
• gr. 80 di cedro candito (I use 40 gr) 80 g (40) candied citron
• gr. 80 di arancia candita (40) 80 g (40) candied orange peel
• gr. 50 di zucca candita ( 25) (si chiama”cucuzzata”) 50 g (25) candied squash (cucuzzata)
• un pizzico di cannella a pinch of cinnamon
• gr. 100 di latte 100 g of milk
• gr. 30 di burro o strutto 30 g of butter or lard
• 5 uova intere + 2 tuorli 5 whole eggs plus 2 yolks
• una bustina di vaniglia 1 tsp. of vanilla extract
• un cucchiaio di acqua di fiori d’arancio 1 tablespoon of orange flower flavoring
(I use> millefiori, if I don’t have the fiori d’arancio, or millefiori flavoring
it’s the same)
• 2 limoni 2 lemons
Preparazione:
Versate in una casseruola il grano (blended in my case), il latte, il burro
e la scorza grattugiata di 1 limone; lasciate cuocere per 10 minuti
mescolando spesso finchè diventi crema.
Frullate a parte la ricotta, lo zucchero, 5 uova intere più 2 tuorli, una bustina
di vaniglia, un cucchiaio di acqua di fiori d’arancio e un pizzico di cannella.
Lavorare il tutto fino a rendere l’impasto molto sottile.
Aggiungere una grattata di buccia di un limone e I canditi tagliati a dadi.
Amalgamare il tutto con il grano. Prendete la pasta frolla e distendete
l’impasto allo spessore di circa 1/2 cm con il mattarello e rivestite la
teglia (c.a. 30 cm. di diametro) precedentemente imburrata, Ritagliate la
parte eccedente, ristendetela e ricavatene delle strisce. Versate il
composto di ricotta nella teglia, livellatelo, ripiegate verso l’interno i
bordi della pasta e decorate con strisce formando una grata che pennellerete
con un tuorlo sbattuto. Infornate a 180 gradi per un’ora e mezzo finch’è la
pastiera non avrà preso un colore ambrato; lasciate raffreddare e, prima di
servire, spolverizzate con zucchero a velo.
Preparation:
Turn the cooked grain into a pan with the milk, the butter and the grated peel
of one lemon. Cook it for 10 minutes, stirring, often until it becomes creamy.
Using a blender or food processor, mix the ricotta, the sugar, the 5 whole eggs
and two yolks, the vanilla, the flower flavoring and the cinnamon. Blend until it
becomes very smooth. Stir in the grated peel of a lemon, and the diced candied
fruit peels. Mix this together with the grain mixture.
Take the pasta frolla you have made and roll it out about 1/8 inch thick and line
a buttered cake or torte pan of about 12” diameter with it. Cut away the extra
pastry from the edge, leaving from ½” to 1” all around, and then re-roll the extra
and cut it into strips.
Pour the filling mixture into the pastry shell and level it. Turn the edge piece
toward the center and then using the strips you’ve made, cover the filling
with a lattice pattern of strips. Brush the top of the pastry with a beaten egg yolk.
Put the Pastiera into a preheated 180° C or 350 °F oven and cook it for
about 1.5 hours, removing it before it turns amber colored. Leave it to cool
and then before serving it, sprinkle it with powdered sugar.
The grano cotto: In Italy I found it in a glass jar (here in the States I found it available
in a aluminum 220 gr. can ).
It never happened to me in Italy but it happened to me twice here in
the USA….. the mixture of the ricotta cheese and wheat and all those
ingredients together was too liquid the first time and the strings of
pasta frolla on top dropped inside. What I did the second time to correct the
issue was to put a couple of tablespoons of corn starch in the corn and
ricotta mixture while cooking it to make it more solid so that when I
laid the strings of pasta frolla they did not fall inside
Another thing I will be trying next time is to drain the ricotta cheese with a
cheesecloth… looks like the ricotta here in the states is softer and more liquid
compared to the Italian one. So I will have to drain the ricotta.
March 19th, 2007
I have bought a domain and I am building a website. It’s not happening very quickly, and there’s nothing to see yet, but soon!
I am very grateful for Cristina hosting my blog on Expats In Italy, in space she pays for, but when you want to expand into lots of things, it isn’t fair to let someone else pay.
I’ll certainly announce anything that is about to happen, and I am hoping to leave a forwarding chiclet here, but it is not at all ready now. I sincerely hope that anyone who comes here now will come to the new site. My life includes you all now.
It will be at http://www.judithgreenwood.com when it comes.
March 19th, 2007
The last hem of winter’s skirts is brushing past us these days. People in Minnesota would laugh at us for saying it is cold, but it feels cold and humid. The heat has popped back on during the day. I don’t feel like going out into the garden under the windy gray skies, even though with a sweater it would be fine to do so.
Last week the windows were opened from mid-morning until sunset. Not now.
Still, it is nearly Easter and so I am thinking about what new things I can cook once Easter is come. I am almost at my goal of fitting everything well. I should be gradually adding complex carbohydrates to my diet soon.
What fits this weather? Soup, of course. Frittata. Roasted things and things with hearty sauces. All of the baked vegetable dishes we’ve ever cooked on these pages are ideal for this season of leeks, cabbages and potatoes. I would love to have polenta carbonara right now, but I have no interest at all in messing up my metabolism, which now can make adequate glucose to keep the old brain turning over.
The cherry tomatoes I bought last week were as sweet as strawberries in the mouth. The cucumber was disappointing. Last year the hydroponic cucumbers were very, very good. This year they are undistinguished. Did they change the variety? Or did Coop change the grower?
The non-cooking activities outweigh the cooking activities by a lot, currently. I bought a splendid remnant at market – three meters of beautiful upholstery fabric at one and a half meters wide for €20. That’s a buy for sure. I plan to make dresses for two antique chairs I have and use daily, which has them looking tatty. I haven’t yet found a good upholsterer and can’t afford to reupholster them right now, anyway. First I have to finish the banana colored linen bikini I started for one of them last year.
So, what’s cooking? Today it’s poached chicken. Poached chicken is not boiled chicken. You have to use a good, strongly flavored broth, for a start. Cover the chicken completely with the broth, bring to a simmer and cover it. Continue to simmer until it is just done. I use a thermometer to check doneness. Leaving it covered, turn off the heat and allow the chicken to cool in the broth. That’s it, folks. Fish is poached exactly the same way, using either fish broth or vegetable broth. Chicken will keep in the refrigerator for a couple of days, but don’t try to keep poached fish more than a day. The quality of fish will plummet quickly.
Poached fish or chicken is flavorful and has a nice texture. It can be eaten as is in slices or cubes, or masked with a sauce and served cool, or it can be used in any dishes in which you use cooked chicken with a better result than chicken boiled to extract the flavor and make broth. One idea might be to use the broth to make risotto and serve the chicken in thin slices on top of it. You see? I wrote a whole sentence in which rice occurred without wincing.
I can imagine a country potpie made with either pastry or with a lid of browned mashed potatoes using poached chicken, too. You could cook some carrots, onions and peas in the broth, then thicken it for gravy, assemble it and bake it just before dinner. The next time you go to a potluck or a picnic, poach chicken and make chicken salad with it. Lots of very thin slices of celery—I heard recently that celery has a plant hormone very like male human hormones and therefore is appealing to women. Any recipe you like is fine. Perhaps a curried mayonnaise with a handful of raisins and some peanuts or cashews? I love chicken salad—always in chunks and never ground—with sliced and toasted almonds or white grapes. It’s easy to experiment, because you can always pull out a small amount and try a new ingredient before altering the whole batch without knowing you’ll like it.
My sister used to make what was called “Irish Chicken Hash.” It consisted of chunks of poached chicken, chunks of onion, chunks of parboiled potatoes, all in a buttered low baking dish. Salt and pepper, and then pour thick, heavy cream over it, add pieces of butter and bake slowly. It is delicate enough for an Irish duchess. I recommend it for underweight duchesses. Eat it with something green or something bright yellow/orange. I remember my now-departed brother-in-law pouring ketchup over it, as he did to most things, and to me that explains adequately why he didn’t reach sixty.
If all you want is a chicken sandwich with leaves of lettuce and lashings of mayonnaise, go ahead and I will try to forgive you.
March 19th, 2007
“But the new mirror, introduced to Nanette Lepore by IconNicholson, an interactive design firm in Manhattan, takes the concept of shopping in tandem one step further by streaming real-time video to the Internet and inviting shoppers to actively involve off-site friends to join the process. It brings fashion into the realm of social networking where people already freely share their opinions and lives via MySpace, Friendster, Facebook, YouTube, blogs and Web cams.
But it raises the question of whether the immediacy and tactile experience of shopping together in person can translate to a virtual audience.”
You can read all about this mirror here. Don’t worry about registering– there are no negative results.
I can see the appeal. I would love to be able to shop with eg or Susan from here.
On the other hand, I can see potential for shoppers using this to end up looking like members of a gang, with one group taste applied to all. Tribal style doesn’t appeal to me much.
What do you think?
March 17th, 2007
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