Archive for December, 2007
Cold weather food happening here:
Cream of celery soup
1/2 cup chopped onion
2 cups chopped celery
1/2 teaspoon salt
a few grains of cayenne (peperoncino in polvere)
2 tablespoons butter
Sauté briefly to soften a bit, then add a cup or so of water and let simmer for 30 minutes or so.
2 tablespoons flour
1 1/2 cup milk
Pot these together in a jar and shake like mad until well blended.
Raise the flame under the simmering vegetables and pour this into it slowly, while stirring. Bring to a simmer and simmer for a couple of minutes. Taste and correct for salt. Grind fresh pepper over it when serving it HOT!
Mashed celery root
1/2 of a medium celery root (sedano rape) cut into cubes
1/4 teaspoon salt
water
Put into a pot, cover and simmer until soft– it’s pretty fast compared to potatoes. Drain, mash with a potato masher, add butter and salt and pepper to taste. Eat it up with a big grin. Serves 2 normal people or just me.
Later on there will be fresh homemade tagliatelle with ragù frozen the other day and a baked half of a poussin, or weensy chicken.
December 17th, 2007
Christmas is too close and Chanukah is over. If there is a distant loved one you wanted a gift for, but you never came up with the right idea, time’s up.
From my point of view, I could be happy with Last minute gifts
any time. Another possibility is a raffle ticket or two for Menu for Hope. You still have to figure out which of the hundreds of prizes suits your giftee, though. Until December 21st you can name your prized prize.
December 16th, 2007
Yes, that one right over there on the right. It searches only this blog and nothing else. I’ve been spending time on categories so that it’s more complete now. If you want to see everything ever written about pasta or lamb or every dessert ever posted here, stick the word that interests you into the box and search. With going on 400 posts here, I have to use it, too.
Sometimes there will appear articles about something else that mention your word, but overwhelmingly, you’ll find pages of posts that apply to the term you put in the box. I’m gradually adding in ingredients, too, so that if you are looking at a pile of something and are out of ideas for the moment, you should be able to find whatever contained that ingredient. Just watch out if you mention tomatoes or pasta, because that must be 25% of the blog!
Just because it’s something two years old doesn’t mean it won’t still be good right now. Blog articles never mold, as far as I know. I’m still making almost everything that ever was published here. I’d love for you to make it too, then post in the comments how it worked for you. Your comment won’t be lost. I get a list of all new comments everyday that I turn on the computer. Talk to me.
December 15th, 2007
you have to be an expatriate from anywhere who blogs from Italy. Valerie of 2 Baci in a Pinon Tree wants to make an expat bloggers map of Italy, so run on over there and compete … with me natch. If I win I keep the chocolate and I know just the person to give the Artusi book, which I have had for many years now.
December 14th, 2007
I have this theory, and I am willing to be told I am wrong in this. My theory is that the familiar foods we call comfort foods can make us fat. Why would that be? Because we invest those foods with emotional content. We pull them out when life is hard, when the weather is terrible or when we feel bad for some reason. It’s often the first thing that comes to mind when we want to comfort a friend, too.
So, if it’s been a hard week and things haven’t gone our way, we make mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, stew, or whatever we find comforting and that reminds us of easier times. These are all things we know very well. Our tongue responds with impulses to the brain that open the doors to good memories and good feelings.
And then we overdo it. After three to five bites we’re relying on experience, and our taste buds take a rest, but we don’t stop.
Foods don’t really have emotional content. They have triggers to parts of us that have remembered emotional content. Whether the memory is good or bad, we connect to it. I once had a liverwurst sandwich hours before coming down with a bad flu, and I have never had another liverwurst anything since, although I used to love it.
Knowing that this is true for me, I don’t fix comfort foods of my past when I feel down. I, instead, try something outside of my experience and try to lose myself in learning new tastes, which for me is as distracting as mashed potatoes.
I do not believe that nothing says loving like something from the oven. Things from the oven are a delight. They are not love, but might inspire a memory of love, and not a thing more. If I am capable of thinking, I can inspire memories of love that don’t have anything to do with doughnuts, brownies or even holiday roast turkeys. If I am incapable of thinking, I take an orange or an apple and get over it.
I am 5’-1 ½” tall. As much as I cook, I could easily weigh 200 pounds if I let food and love get mixed up. Since I have the opportunity every four weeks of carrying 50-pound bags of salt, I know how I would feel if I gained even only 50 pounds. It wouldn’t be nice. Sometimes it even hurts my back for a day or two.
Divest yourself of habit and your mouth will deal with surprise. You’ll taste more. If food is an adventure rather than a happy-pill, you’ll know when you’ve had enough and won’t keep putting it in your mouth to keep the love going. Unless it is just an extraordinary thing you’ve happened on, in which case you may need a life coach to pull you off the plate. That would be me with the Sardegnan risotto with vinegared pork, which I ate yet one more time yesterday in Florence! You know what? My recipe is pretty good. I need to leave the pork in the vinegar longer, two days, I’m told, and make a more interesting tomato sauce as well.
That brings me to spaghetti sauce, which is a rather stupid term in Italian. There is no one sauce, as you know if you read this blog. I have recently found, however, that in the USA people do tend to think that there is something called spaghetti sauce and that their recipe is it. They also think you can buy it in a jar or a can. Well, you can buy various sauces in jars, cans and the refrigerated cases in Italy. The best I can say of any of them is: it’s alright. I never said that in the US, because they were too sweet.
There are thousands of ways to serve pasta wherever you are. Sometimes it’s even spaghetti. Most of the ways to serve pasta can also be used to sauce cooked grains or polenta, too. Just a glance at Presto Pasta Night ever Friday should convince you that this time I’m right.
Here is a modernized ragù that I like more often than the original recipe by Artusi, a meat sauce I find very rich and that for me lacks the brightness of modern foods. I like the spike of a little acidity from tomatoes, the slight smokiness and the reduced fat. I am still a dedicated Artusi fan, and I will still on occasion make his ragù, but this is my new fall back recipe, because it lends itself to other foods besides pasta, and yet is a wonderful thing with pasta, too. This is a spag bol, a polenta sauce, and today I ate it on boiled farro or spelt. That looked bad, but it was delicious. I used a tiny bit of Parmigiano Reggiano, but not much, because it was full-flavored on its own. This is a sauce to make up in quantity and freeze in portions that make sense for your home. It takes about 15 minutes to chop the vegetables, another 15 minutes to sauté them, perhaps ten minutes to cook the meat, and then, other than the occasional visit, it cooks itself.
A 21st century Ragù
1 cup of chopped onions
1 cup of chopped carrot
1 cup of chopped celery and leaves
2 cloves of garlic
2 teaspoons of salt
1 small chili pepper (peperoncino) broken in half
1 tablespoon dried oregano or 3 tablespoons of fresh basil – if you use fresh, add it toward the end of cooking
2 tablespoons of good olive oil
100 grams (3.5 ounces) diced smoked pancetta or bacon (cook it first and then drain the fat if you use bacon, then pick the cooking up from the oil *and proceed)
2 pounds (1 kilo) of lean chopped meat – all beef or vitellone or part that and part pork
A glug of fortified wine like Sherry or Marsala
About 1 cup of milk—fat free is fine
Water
1 can (14 ounces, these days) of peeled canned tomatoes or a similar quantity of peeled fresh tomatoes
Salt to taste
Nutmeg to taste
Heat a large frying pan with the oil*. Sauté the chopped vegetables and the pancetta or cooked bacon with the salt very slowly until they are starting to brown a bit. Add the wine and cook until it dries out. Add the dried herb and the chili pepper, and then the chopped meat. Stir it up to mix while the meat loses its red color.
Add milk almost to the top of the mixture, lower the heat and walk away until you can hear it sizzling again. This took about 30 minutes for me. Then add hot water to cover and leave it alone again, checking back every 30-40 minutes to keep it wet until it has cooked about two hours and then allow the juices to evaporate away. The meat should then be very tender.
Add the tomatoes and break them up with a wooden spoon. Simmer that mixture ten minutes, then taste for salt and correct for it.
Allow it to cool in the pan, and then fill plastic freezer bags with the quantity you think you will use.
When you thaw and reheat it, grate nutmeg at the end until it suits you. Some like a lot, some none.
This recipe made 4 packages of something over a cup for my freezer.
There’s nothing tricky or out of bounds about this recipe. It’s a great thing to have in your fridge freezer, ready to pull out when tagliatelle, cooked grain or polenta is the right thing to eat. It will make a lasagna much richer than my taste, but certainly a tasty one.
Give it a try. You have nothing to lose but the handy extra jars from the Prego you thought you liked.
December 14th, 2007
Readership zoomed to match my best single day ever. Click-throughs to the raffle sites were numerous. I know why, too. I spent some time looking around to see what there was to get, too.
There are prizes that I would never imagined.
Meals with internationally famous chefs.
UK33: A unique historic British menu for two at the Hinds Head from Heston Blumenthal of the Fat Duck. Heston will also meet the winner and present autographed copies of all his three books.
The more public side of Heston Blumenthal is the pre-eminent chef-scientist at the Michelin three-star restaurant The Fat Duck, while the side lesser known is the passionate researcher and restorer of historic British dishes. The lucky winner of this prize (and a guest) will dine on a menu that is literally a representation of British cuisine from the 17th and 18th century. Heston promises that they will be outstanding, and some of them will never have been tested before!
Tours of some of the greatest kitchens in the world.
Tickets to food shows that existed only in my dreams.
A weekend with a foodie in France, a week with two foodies in the Chianti.
A Kitchen Aid standard mixer with ice cream maker and THE ice cream cookbook of the decade or even the century (unfortunately only for those with 110 volt electricity.)
Baskets and boxes filled with imaginative and personalized treats.
Lunch with a food scientist of international renown.
A review meal with a British restaurant reviewer.
Prizes like these tickle the imagination.
I guess the things I want are things a lot of people will want, with lots of competition and tickets sold. I’ve been really good this year, so maybe I’ve the karma to win one. I’m not telling what they are!
The one thing I don’t know is this: Is anyone buying tickets to me? Am I egocentric, or what? Still, isn’t that normal curiosity?
December 12th, 2007
December 10th is the kickoff — hey! That’s today!
So how about jumping into this picture? Look at that speed, the refined movements, the smiles.
Or this one?
Then, of course, we eat it all up.
The prize I am offering, code EU19, is a cooking class for one at our school, or if you’d rather, a cooking class at your place in reachable central Italy for two. The values are €175-€170. Take a chance on me!
If you choose the school, we’ll go marketing and learn about the ingredients and how to choose them, then get into the kitchen and whip them into an Italian shape. What we’ll cook will be what we decide from what’s the best Umbria has to offer.
If you want to learn in your own rental kitchen, I’ll arrive with the food and off to the kitchen we’ll go. What’s not to love about that?
I plan to really spoil the winner…. really. I promise you’ll walk away with some splendid dishes conquered, the recipes for them and the great feeling that your Italian souvenir will last forever.
The money raised from the raffle tickets all goes to feed the hungry. This and many, many other prizes will be listed around the internet over the next weeks. You can buy tickets right THERE.
Menu for Hope was begun by that peripatetic eater, Pim and if you don’t know Pim, you just have to go over there and meet her and get a load of how she eats. At Chez Pim, you can read all about how international food bloggers get together and give of themselves to feed those who can’t feed themselves. Read the whole article, because it’s amazing how little of the money goes to the expenses of collecting the money. On her site is also the enormous total international list of prizes available around the world.
The winners of all the prizes will be announced on January 9, 2008 at Chez Pim.
My boss is Fanny Zanotti of foodbeam, because she’s the European coordinator. If you click over there, you can see what Europe has to offer. The variety is stunning. I’m shooting for a couple of real dream prizes, myself.
Be a sport, the tickets are only US $10.00. Aim high and win something you might never otherwise have a chance at. Like me!
Actually, love me or love me not (and what are you doing here if you love me not?), love yourself and what you can accomplish by buying a few $10 tickets that can save lives and change yours. There are bound to be 10 prizes on that list you’d love to have. Me too.
December 10th, 2007
I am not a pastry chef. I like savory foods better and I dedicate my time to working on them, rather than dessert. There comes a time for all of us when we want to make a great dessert without using kitchen resources or a lot of time.
I’ve been working on exactly that: desserts that look and taste great, but are no trouble at all. This is the first that’s ready to show you. I don’t even have a name for it and I am open to suggestions from you, because that certainly worked with the “Phone Home” expat cookies.
This cake is made out of things you can buy and keep around the house, if you have to. If not, you can probably get them together with little effort. You don’t have to buy my version of the ingredients, but I’m sure you can get a suitable alternative near you. It’s not really cooking, but more assembly.
The finished cake you see today is not as pretty as the one I started with last summer for two reasons. I’d had the whipping cream stored in the freezer for months and for some reason it just wouldn’t whip stiffly. In the summer I used two packages of fresh raspberries and covered the top completely with them in concentric circles. For the winter version, I bought late summer raspberries, froze them separately and then bagged them. They wept as they thawed. One person really liked that effect, but I liked the original non-weepy cake better.
You need:
Sponge cake layers. The original cake was made of packaged layers that come in threes and are wider than this cake. If I were somewhere else, I could have ordered them from a grocery store with a bakery, from a bakery or made them myself, and any of them could be kept wrapped in the freezer. With these normal 9” layers, I used a bread knife to split them into four thinner layers. They were a little too fresh, really. They cut poorly and I was able to use less liqueur, because they would have shattered and slid apart if I’d generously dampened them.
Raspberry liquor of some kind. I looked for a French white raspberry eau de vie, and there was none, so the vintner convinced me to try raspberry grappa and it was fabulous. It was just grappa poured over raspberries in a bottle, and the berries gave up their perfume and a slight pinkish tinge.
Raspberry jam. There was only one brand in my shop and fortunately it was good.
Chocolate mousse mix. You can see what I used. That’s it here. As instant things go, it’s pretty good.
A pint of whipping cream and a little sugar.
Raspberries.
Make the mousse according to directions. You don’t cook it, you just whip it. Stick it in the fridge to firm up. You could get this far a day ahead.
Put the first layer on a large plate that will hold it. Sprinkle it with raspberry liquor, generously if you have the drier layers. Spread the jam sparingly over the cake, covering it, but not thickly at all. This is important.
Spread a light covering of mousse over the jam. Keep doing this in series until the top layer goes on and that one you just sprinkle with liquor. Spear the cake with three long skewers to stabilize it and put it in the fridge. This is when you’ll be happy you weren’t excessive with the jam and mousse, because if you had been, the layers would be so unstable that you’d never get it to stand on it’s own.
Just before serving time, whip the cream, being stingy with the sugar so the pronounced flavor will be cream and not sweet. There’s enough sweet in there already. Arrange the raspberries on top, and serve.
Look! Matching hostess.
If I use the drier bought layers, it serves 12 to 16 people, easily. With four smaller layers, it serves 10 to 12 people. Although there’s just as much cake each way, the very tall one just can’t be cut into narrow slices.
My favorite dog likes this too, in a virtual way, because although I sent him a generous piece, he never got it.
The two pictures of the finished cake were shot by Barb of Barb and Art Live in Italy.
December 9th, 2007
Sugarplum loaf
December 7th, 2007
Almost everybody here is sick. Most of them have a stomach virus and they can’t eat, but when it starts to go they have the hunger of a roaring lion, but no ability to digest what we usually eat. I was talking to Sognatrice from Bleeding Espresso the other day about what sick people can eat. We both agreed that big, pillowy Mennonite noodles that they call dumplings are one of the things to eat when you are recovering.
I remember fundraising suppers for Meals on Wheels in Hardy County, West Virginia, which were focused on those dumplings. The first time I attended, I was expecting big, fluffy biscuity dumplings, but that’s not at all what I found. One of the two suppers would be a velvet chicken soup loaded with puffy little squares, the other one was ham dumplings. I approached the crock-pot where they kept warm and saw, what? It looked like white sauce. But when it was stirred up for serving, revealed were scraps of country ham and the ubiquitous dumpling noodles. It was really, really good and we ate it with really, really good cole slaw. Hurrah for Meals on Wheels!
I decided to make them for Presto Pasta Night and dedicate the effort to all the sickos currently lying around Italy with sore tummies.
I have only made the noodles once in my life, when some of us were trapped by snow at my friend Jane’s house in Chevy Chase. It was soup weather, for sure, so we made chicken soup and homemade noodles. That must have been a decade ago, but a noodle like this is not easily forgot. In casting about the house, it was clear that no soup-worthy hen was hiding out. But there was a scrap of prosciutto crudo, so off we go.
First thing to say is that prosciutto crudo is not the right ham. You need a bit of either smoked country ham, or speck if you are in Italy. This really needs the smoke. Not having the smoke, I had to add this and that to make this good. I finally got something I would eat, but it’s a lot more and very different ingredients than the wonderful Mennonite cooks of my past would have used.
I started with the noodles. I piled 100 grams of flour on the counter top and made a well in it, dropped in an egg and a good pinch of salt and stirred it with a fork until it was dampened. Then I added a fat tablespoon of water, because these are American noodles. Using a dough scraper and two floury hands, I kneaded it a lot more than I do when I make Italian pasta. Once it was smooth, I formed a neat ball and left it on the counter to rest. Why the pasta gets to rest and cook doesn’t, I don’t know, but that’s the way it is.
I then used a rolling pin to roll it out on the floury counter. If you look at the photo below you’ll see it doesn’t resemble my Italian pasta at all. It’s floury, thicker and not stretchy. It’s almost 1/8” thick. I used a pizza wheel to cut it into the squares you see. They are a fat 1 inch. I left it to rest again.
To make the sauce, I decided that sick people need vitamins and vitamins live in vegetables. Voila! A sofritto.
My elaborated Mennonite cream/ham sauce
½ cup finely chopped celery
½ cup finely chopped carrot
¼ cup finely chopped onion
2 tablespoons butter
½ cup finely minced country style ham
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup or more milk
three splashes of Tabasco
a glug of fortified wine, such as sherry or marsala
salt to taste
generous nutmeg to taste
the juice of half a lemon
Begin by heating the butter in a heavy pan and sautéing the first three ingredients until really soft. Don’t brown them. Sick people don’t want crispy vegetables, so check the carrots, because they are the hardest one. Add the bits of ham, and stir in. Sprinkle the flour over the mixture, and cook a minute or so, stirring. Slowly add the milk, stirring it in. With all those lumpy vegetables, this will go smoother than with a plain white sauce. Bring to a simmer and cook over a very low heat for about 15 minutes, adding milk if it is too stiff. You want the liquid part to be a bit like heavy cream. Taste for salt and correct it. Your individual ham will add some, so it’s definitely a thing to taste and work at.
If it isn’t very tasty yet, add the Tabasco, wine, and then the lemon juice. I blame my porky but not smoky ham for these last two ingredients.
Bring a pot of water to a brisk boil, salt it and dump in the noodle squares. Boil them until they are fairly soft, not al dente like Italian pasta. It was hard for me to do this, but I persevered. I feared to end with flour soup, but managed to rescue them at a point where you could still chew a bit.
If your sauce thickens again, you can add a bit of the noodle water to loosen it.
Drain the pasta, then toss it with the sauce. Hmmm, pretty white! Put it on a colored plate, add a small vegetable and a bunch of white grapes (I always eat those when I am sick) and serve it steaming hot. It should feed three sort of sick people, four fairly sick people, and a crowd of really sick people. Those recovering can probably eat half each.
And now I hope everybody gets well and starts being able to eat like royalty again. Or go to Hardy County and eat the original which shmecks like crazy. Those are some very fine cooks.
December 6th, 2007
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