Posts filed under 'pork'
This is an experiment in presenting a new recipe for a new dish. Throughout the recipe I will place photos of the dish, and at the end we can decide which of the photos is most likely to make someone want to cook it or eat it.
The dish is yummy, and it could easily have been made another way, but I’ve been pondering on how to make a first course that could be plated in the kitchen and made to look quite special. If I baked it in flat layers it would just look like another lasagna. If I just casseroled it, it would look like baked ziti. I wanted something arranged, orderly, presented, in short. I had in mind to make individual ramekins, but mine are all too small and besides 15 of them would be too much for most ovens when I cook for larger groups. I will make this only when I am cooking with an assistant who can run them to the table, because they’d all get cold if I were doing it all on my own.
I haven’t really named it, either. It’s paccheri, of course, and it’s stuffed, and the filling is Sicilian inspired, but it’s not from Sicily, it’s from the nutty cook in Umbria. Have a look at the ingredients and see what you think about a name. Paccheri may not be easy to find where you are, but if you make manicotti and cut them in half it will look about the same, if a bit larger mouthed. You’d reduce the number because each would hold more stuffing.
When buying a sausage for this dish, look for the leanest ones possible. You can use salted capers if you like, but rinse them and soak them in milk before using them if you do. The ones I used are just pickled in brine and I did nothing to them. The cheese to use can be any decently mature cheese that is still soft enough to melt. It might be Fontina, Bel Paese, or another you like. I used Pecorino because it is universally available in Italy and it’s really, really good. Sometimes Pecorino in other countries is not.
Paccheri (senza nome) 
For two people
Preheat the oven to 175°C or 350° F
24 paccheri, boiled to al dente in salted water, rinsed in cold water and drained
Stuffing:
2 Italian sausages, split and meat removed
a piece of fresh bread, a cube 3 cm X3cm X 5cm or 1” X 1” X 2”, torn in pieces
1 tablespoon or less of milk to soak the bread
¼ teaspoon minced dried chili (peperoncino)
1 tablespoon drained capers, chopped
2 heaped tablespoons of pine nuts, dry toasted in a pan
½ a beaten egg (beat it in a little bowl and take half)
about 1 cup (250 ml) simplest homemade tomato sauce
a tablespoon or so of fresh oregano, marjoram or basil
about 1 ounce (30 g) semi-soft Pecorino, grated coarsely
Mix all of the Stuffing ingredients together, squishing thoroughly with your hands. Find a shallow ovenproof dish that is just about the size of all your paccheri stood up on end. Drizzle a little olive oil over the bottom, spreading it around, then a little of the tomato sauce, tipping to spread that as well.
Using a teaspoon, one by one, pick up the paccheri and stuff some of the meat mixture into each one. Alternatively and probably easier, pick up a little of the mixture and roll it into a small sausage shape between your palms, then slip it into a pacchero. As each is filled, stand it up in the pan until you have run out of filling. I ran out after 18 paccheri. Pour the rest of the tomato sauce over the standing pasta, then scatter the fresh herb, then add the grated Pecorino over that.
Put it into the heated oven and bake about 40 minutes until the sausage centers are done. I measured the temperature at 160°F, and left it to finish the climb from reserved heat.
Garnish with sprigs of whichever herb you used. Optionally you may wish to add a few drops of olive oil for gleam. Eat immediately, really hot.
Notice that I did not add any salt. Umbrian sausages are extremely salty. Capers are salty. I did not need a single grain of salt. If you live somewhere else, your sausages may not be so salty and you may need to add a little to the stuffing.
If you click on the photos, they’ll pop up on a dark background and be easier to judge. Which one do you think would tempt you to eat this?
If none look good to you, I want to know that, too, but I’d also like to know the reason why!
And now, having figured out exactly where it is this week, I am proposing this dish to Presto Pasta Night, hosted this week by Closet Cooking. When you look at that blog, you can see what is possible in countries that have closets.
June 9th, 2008
This recipe is just a lovely thing, but I have been having a hard time sitting myself down to write it. It is the meat course from the menu of April 7, 2008. I’ve cooked it four times, photographed it once and still I haven’t typed it up and published it. I’m not sure why.
My suspicions lie with the fact that although it’s easy, it’s also easy to screw up. It depends very much on good meat. The first and third times I made it I used ordinary supermarket meat and it was a fine dish if you hadn’t had it the other way. When I used local hand-reared pork from this area that I bought and had prepared at the butcher shop for euro 13 per kilo, it was fabulous. My local Coop now offers the same service at half the price, and it was good, but not nearly as good as the pampered pork
The recipe here was inspired by a recipe I found in an Italian culinary magazine. I actually made their recipe, but I found the stuffing mixture of sausage meat, two cheeses and three salamis too heavy, although it might be great in January. I wanted something springy, and something in which I could use all the fresh herbs jumping up out of the ground these days.
The stuffing looks, even to me, unnecessarily complicated in terms of ingredients, but I found out the hard way that you really do need two different kinds of breadcrumbs and two different kinds of cheese.
The amount it makes is awkward. A whole one of these double chops is too much meat for one person, especially in an Italian meal. On the other hand, I found it impossible to cook less than one per person, because it thought it looked chintzy not to have one bony piece per person, just in case. On the plus side, the leftovers are terrific either cold or gently heated. Oh, and by the way, there is a reason why these are rib chops and not loin chops. By the time these thick stuffed chops were cooked through, the tenderloin bit of the loin chop would have become sawdust. Use the cheaper rib chop.
So how come if I like this dish so well, well enough to have cooked it four times, have fed it to clients and again to friends, how come I haven’t splashed it out onto this page? Never mind, it’s making it today.
Costellette di Maiale Ripiene or stuffed rib pork chops
Four pieces, which I think should serve six people
4 rib chops one rib wide, or about 2 centimeters thick, with a pocket cut in them to the bone
6 to 12 toothpicks
the stuffing:
soft breadcrumbs from one slice of Italian or other real bread
½ cup of dry bread crumbs (a couple of handfuls or 2 espresso cups full)
one medium onion, minced fine
2 teaspoons of fresh thyme leaves
2 teaspoons of minced chives
2 teaspoons of fresh oregano leaves
salt to taste
half of one beaten egg
enough white wine to moisten the mixture
3 ounces of coarsely grated relatively unaged pecorino cheese or another very tasty not very hard cheese
another stuffing:
4 ounces of Rambol herbed cheese in Italy and Boursin in other countries
the cooking:
olive oil for frying
about 2 teaspoons of salt
sprigs of all the herbs used in the stuffing
three or four whole garlic cloves
a couple of espresso cups of white wine
Preheat the oven to 375°F or 165°C
If you have not talked your meat seller into making the pockets for you, then you will need to use a sharp knife and carefully cut pockets from the fatty edge toward the bone, being careful not to let the knife wander and cut through the meat. I recommend using your charm on the meat person of your choice!
Mix up the stuffing. It should be moist and cling together when you gather it in your hand, but not wet.
Using your hands, (I use surgical gloves when cooking professionally and touching raw meat) open the pocket in the chop and stuff in a good spoonful of the herbed cheese. Then gather up a fistful of the stuffing and push it in after the cheese. Add another good spoonful of the cheese and then close the pocket up using one or two toothpicks, depending on how wide the meat person made the pocket opening. You can pretend you are a plastic surgeon when doing this part of the operation.
Heat a quite large frying pan, or two of them, if you don’t have one that fits all four chops. Pour in about 2 tablespoons of oil, and then brown the chops on both sides. Be patient so that you will get a lovely golden brown without chancing a scorching. When they are all nicely browned, toss in the garlic and the herb sprigs, toss the salt over the chops, then pour the wine into the sizzling pan.
Put the pan into the oven and cook about 40 minutes, or until the internal temperature reaches 160°F or 72°C. Remove the chops to a board and allow them to rest 10 minutes while you reduce the sauce in the pan over a fairly high heat.
Using a sharp knife, cut 1 cm (fat ¼ inch) slices off the chops until you almost reach the bone. Arrange the chops on a serving dish and garnish with some of the fresh herbs you used in the dish. Drizzle some of the reduced pan juices over the meat.
You know what’s really nice about this dish? That soft herby cheese melts and coats the inside of the pocket and the outside of the stuffing, making both things extraordinarily creamy and herbalicious. The meat is tender and gently seasoned. The stuffing is springlike with its herbs. I consider it a four-star meat course.
With it I served a good old American carrot and raisin salad which was new to my guests and they liked it!
May 7th, 2008
Bucatini makes me happy. I don’t know what it is about this pasta shape, it makes me feel like a kid, feel like slurping, it requires eating alone. It’s messy, because it never gets really limp. You can’t wind it around your fork. One single piece fills your mouth. It demands fun stuff on top, none of your serious gourmet sauces need apply!
It looks like fat spaghetti, but there is a hole inside, una buca, and there’s how they got the name.
If you don’t know where to find it near you, the site where that picture comes from can sell it to you online.
Anyway, that hole means that bucatini is great for juicy things that can run inside. Therefore, since you can’t roll it around your fork, and have to slurp it a bit, and that hole is filled with something liquid, it’s pretty much a scene from Tom Jones, the movie, when I eat it. I snap the long strands into thirds and that helps a bit.
Tonight I ate them with tomato sauce just like that I used for the Pane Frattau.
Simple Tomato Sauce
1/2 cup finely minced onion, celery and carrot
2 cloves of garlic cut up
2 tablespoons of good olive oil
1 28 ounce can of peeled Roma tomatoes, or others you like
salt to taste
You may add oregano or basil or any herb you like, but you don’t have to every time.
Sauté the vegetables and garlic in the oil until they soften, then add the tomatoes, stirring them in. Using a stick blender, puree the sauce and then heat it, tasting to correct salt, for ten to 15 minutes. Once cooled it can be kept covered in the fridge for many days or frozen in portions for almost forever.
Chinese Meatballs
I also made some Chinese meatballs like I’ve made before for a very different recipe. These meatballs consist of the meat from inside sausages and about an equal amount of lean ground pork, a few minced scallion tops, some grated ginger, some wine vinegar, a bit of toasted sesame oil, and sometimes some crushed red chili bits. I think cheese would not go with these meatballs at all.
I liked it. I liked it very much indeed. I smiled through the wreath or tomato sauce around my mouth and felt not a year older than twelve. You have to love a food that can do that for you. It’s especially nice to be a twelve year old who can also drink I nice glass of Rifosco with her bucatini. As a matter of fact, with what I have been hearing about the foul weather in North America, I think I have to export this feeling to Presto Pasta Night. They could use a big red grin over there.
April 1st, 2008
It just means ham in Italy now, so if you happen to be ordering it at a delicatessen counter say prosciutto crudo to get the ham sold in other countries under that umbrella term. If, instead, you want the familiar boiled or baked ham you may have eaten all your life, ask for Prosciutto cotto.
Prosciutto crudo is pretty special stuff, no matter where you get it. Try to find out from your vendor where theirs comes from. It has to be labeled, so they can tell you. I won’t tell you that if all they have is something that isn’t Italian you shouldn’t try it or use it in a recipe, because it doesn’t have to be Italian to be good, but your chances are higher if it is Italian.
Not all Prosciutto crudo italiano is the same. Through most of Italy there is a local type which will be called nostrano, meaning ours. Our local Umbrian is rather salty for me, so I order Prosciutto di Parma, or Parma ham, or Prosciutto San Daniele from Friuli Venezia-Giulia. Both of them are less salty, tenderer and moister than others I’ve tried. Read here about San Daniele. Trust me, it’s delicious. If you click onto the Consorzio del Prosciutto di Parma above, you’ll get a visual treat that will be as good as a meal and give you some ideas about what you can do with that glorious pig.
There are some don’ts about buying prosciutto crudo. Don’t buy too much at a time. A real purist would say to buy what you can consume that very day, but I think it’s fine to buy it a day ahead. Just leave it in the carefully wrapped package it came in and remove it from the refrigerator 30 to 60 minutes before you want to serve it. Here in Italy you can buy the number of slices you want or you can buy it by the etto, which is 100 grams and close to four ounces. Unless you are feeding a huge crowd, you’ll never need a pound, let alone a kilo of it.
If you see it at a counter already “shaved” and piled up like a mess, don’t touch it with a ten foot pole. No one would treat real prosciutto crudo that way, so it’s bound to be nasty, plus it’s meant to be cut one thin slice at a time and arranged carefully so that it is beautiful when it’s served. It’s never meant to be piled up on a chunk of bread like cheap bologna, which is pretty much what those piles of shavings can do.
Don’t put mustard or pickle with it as you might with ordinary ham. You’ll miss the true delight of this special thing if you kill it with strong flavors like those.
Don’t fry it. Really, just don’t.
So you’ve found it, you’ve bought 100 grams; what to do with it now? Most of mine gets picked up, slice by slice, and nibbled straight from the package. Maybe you’re a more disciplined type. I like prosciutto crudo with fruits, not just melon or figs, but any fruit. That’s a perfect antipasto course in almost anyone’s terms. Very occasionally I order prosciutto and eggs at a cafe. It’s served as a crunchy slab of toasted bread topped with fried eggs, and prosciutto is laid over all, so that the heat of the eggs starts to melt it a bit, draping it gracefully over the plate. It’s a lot better than it reads, or so I found after gagging at the thought for a couple of years, then finally giving it a shot. Nice.
Crudo is often use minced and added to things for its wonderful flavor; things like ravioli or tortellini stuffings, or minced fillings for involtini or meat roll-ups. I usually look for the end pieces too small to slice and sold at a bargain pèrice for those purposes. It makes a very unsatisfactory broth, in my opinion. Since it isn’t smoked, it turns back into pork and makes pork broth. There are easier ways to get pork broth.
If you are interested to know more about prosciutto, Wikipedia has a page on it. I can’t guarantee every word as I am more of an eater than a researcher when it comes to hams, but I did not see Prosciutto di Praga there, which I hear good things about. I also note a lack of detail in the handling of San Daniele, but it isn’t our only resource. If you know something that author didn’t know, fill in the blanks and I’ll go read it.
Speaking of smoked, there is smoked prosciutto in Italy. It’s called Speck and comes from the Austro-Germanic parts of Italy in the Dolomites.
You can read what Kyle Philips has to say about Speck and what to do with it at about.com. It’s approximate to Virginia country ham, and I use it as I would the US product, but I also eat it as it comes, which I never did with country ham.
A word on cotto? It’s just like what you are used to. It can be arrosto, or baked, or just cotto, boiled. There are grades and if possible get “alta qualità” which doesn’t have additives. 
If you come to Italy, just go to a grocery store and order un etto of each kind that interests you, get a loaf of good bread. some fruit and a bottle of Prosecco. It may be a supper you’ll want only once in your life, but it will give you an education and an attitude on prosciutto. Or seek out a good source wherever you are, buy what you can find, following the few rules and when you come to Italy, you’ll already approach the deli counter with attitude, just like we do.
January 2nd, 2008
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
Two in one: Elizabeth, cook and entertainer of many, and Martin, everyone’s favorite local artist and all-around great fellow. How can you celebrate two such exceptional people? Melchiorre knows. You roast a suckling pig in the kitchen fireplace.
The place is Melchiorre’s family home in Umbria. The festive ones are expatriates from many countries, and the chef is said Melchiorre, Sardegnan by birth and Umbrian by rearing. The man has a way with meat.
The first course was raviolone, or big ravioli, stuffed with potato and cheese and sauced with piquant honey from his own bees and chili peppers. There’s no photo of the finished dish, because I decided to be the assistant and waitress.
This capable and generous woman always seems to be the helper, and it seems like it might be time for her to a bit more the guest and a bit less the worker bee.
But what is Melchiorre doing in the kitchen? Why he’s talking the piglet through rehearsal.
Where shall we eat this feast?
Maybe this table set for twenty six will do.
Who is Martin, again? Right over there in the corner among his friends.
After dinner, Brian played the accordion for us as we pretended to know the words to the songs. At the British sea chanties, we gave even the pretense up.
Then I drove home and 2 miles from my house had a flat tire. It was dark, there were 80 kilos of salt in the trunk on top of the tiny spare and I hadn’t so much as a match to light the job, so I took off down the road in my party heels and halfway there I was rescued and given a ride the rest of they way. Did you know your cellphone makes a decent warning signal to approaching cars? Now you do. And who gave me a ride?
The Samaritan was the chef of a local restaurant, and I call that serendipity.
November 12th, 2007
I decided to try something different for a change. As I work through developing a recipe, I thought I would post the versions as they happen, as long as they are good to eat. Tonight I started working on this one. The dish as I ate it at a restaurant called Terra Terra in Florence, was brilliant with flavors and spicy and red as a devil. The waiter told me that vinegaring was one of the ways the old timers used to preserve pork before refrigeration.
I loved that risotto. As eg could tell you, I didn’t want to eat anything else, but went back and had to be cajoled into trying other dishes by being given a free sample of it. I love Italian food, but I miss hit-you-in-the-face strong flavors. They’re rare here.
When starting a new recipe, I always try the simplest things first. Unless you are at a four star restaurant with a dozen or more chefs, most kitchens are taking the simplest route to the end they envision. Besides, this was supposed to be a country dish made by housewives, so I figured simple was good.
This one didn’t quite make it for me. It was good and I feel like I ate well, but my face is still in one piece and it wasn’t red enough, either. I need a couple of ingredients I don’t have in the house.
Iit may be that the original dish would be too strong for you. Maybe you prefer a nicely spicy, but not revolutionary flavor? This version might be just right for you. It wasn’t a failure at being good, it was just not what I ate at Terra Terra. So here it is. It’s easy, cheap and yummy. It isn’t stirred endlessly like normal risotto and it only dirties two pots. That counts for something. It can be either a first course or a main dish.
Risotto with Vinegared Pork
Version One
2 servings
2 ounces lean pork, chopped
strong vinegar to moisten well, any kind
Prepare the pork a day ahead, completely mixing in the vinegar and let marinate in the fridge
2 tablespoons butter
½ onion chopped
½ cup arborio or other risotto rice
1 pint boiling broth
boiling water as needed
½ cup of tomato puree (passata)
1 pinch sugar
1 small pinch cloves
2 pinches of cayenne or peperoncino in polvere
about 1 ounce of pecorino, finely grated
Heat the butter in a pan and sauté the onions until transparent. Add the rice and sauté it until it turns opaque and white. Add all of the broth and stir up. Stir once in a while to prevent sticking, but you don’t have to stand there stirring constantly. Cook it to a stiff risotto consistency rather than creamy. You might need a tablespoon or so of the extra water to get the rice to al dente, just to where there is no crunchiness left. Toward the end, it does need stirring or it will stick.
Add the tomato puree and stir it in. Add the pinch of sugar, cayenne and clove. As it heats, taste for salt. You probably won’t need it.
Dump the water out of the pan you were boiling, and dry the pan. Put just a little olive oil in it, then the pork, and sauté it briefly. It foams, rather than browns, but when it loses its color, it is done. It takes only moments. Stir the pork and vinegar into the risotto. Add the grated pecorino and stir it in. Serve immediately, piping hot.
November 6th, 2007
Today is a holiday all over Italy. Only entertainment venues are open so that holidayers can go out and eat or have their caffé. Schools are out until Monday, like Thanksgiving in the US.
Once upon a time, this was a religious holiday for visiting the graves of the ancestors, having masses said for them, spending time as a family to remember those who are no more. Now it’s a day off and everyone does as he likes.
The unique day off for the entire Italian world has made it easy for some Italians to take up Halloween and do it any way they like. Last night Tina had a potluck supper in her fun room that was once a garage. This year she’s added a wood cook stove, and that’s a happy thought indeed. We’ve had some chilly evenings out there in past years.
The dishes brought to the lengthy tables were varied and delicious. I wanted to know names for all of them. No one had a name for anything except one risotto for which Tina just made something up, “Riso al Duca.” For the rest, the makers told me to make up my own name. I think that’s an attitude that needs some tenderizer. After all, my American dish had a name.
I made Chili Mac. I used the homemade chili powder from the other day, and the flavor is wonderful, but the resultant chili is almost atomic, at least to an Umbrian. Some of my Umbrian friends like somewhat spicy foods, but this would have been a bit exaggerated even for them, and since I’d forgotten the shopping list in the car and therefore forgot to buy polenta, Tamale Pie wasn’t on, so I cooked some skinny, elongated elbows called gramigna, put them in the bottom of a big Dutch oven, then ladled chili over them and topped it all with grated American cheddar that my friend, Missjoe, had sent me this summer when her children visited. It bubbled and browned in the oven and perfumed my house in a way predicted to stimulate an American appetite. Lid clapped on, into the car, and onto the crackling wood fire of Tina’s stove.
They liked it! I saw a few people eat several helpings, so it wasn’t just kindness. Although they ate it like a primo, or first course, and called it a pasta, it was still impressive to me that so many Italians unbent to a foreign dish in which the flavors are absolutely unlike anything Italian. I can’t think of anything more American, can you? Although the particular chili peppers have Mexican roots, it isn’t Mexican. The cheese is certainly not much like British cheddar, it’s all-American. The combination looks, smells and tastes “molto particulare” or quite its own self.
I’ve always maintained that Italians would like cheddar if they were only allowed to try the real thing. It’s a bit the expatriate’s Holy Grail, with reports of finding some in this Auchan here, that Esselunga there — those are Italian supermarkets, well actually Auchan is French but we shan’t split hairs. I wish I had a photo to share, but really, who reading this has never seen a big pot of bubbling cheddar-topped something?
I first heard of Chili Mac when I was a young mum and wife living in Falls Church, Virginia. eg’s little friend gravely told me that his mother was the best cook in the entire world and that her best dish was Chili Mac. I’d never in all my New England rearing tasted a chili that was powerful enough to serve over anything, let alone spaghetti. It didn’t take long to find out what the lower part of the USA already knew — that chili was a deeply spiced meat stew with CHARACTER and not a mild creature from a can that looked like dog food until it was heated and served in a bowl. Chili never became an important part of my culinary repertoire, but something about autumn usually brought on a pot of chili. There’s hardly anything more cold weather appropriate in the American kitchen. Even the Thanksgiving roast turkey holds a single place in the autumn menu.
But chili can sit on a stovetop or in an oven and wait for you to come in cold and wet, and its perfume immediately promises the kind of comfort that warms the blood. Which wine? Are you joking? It’s beer for chili! Except last night the first offering of Franca’s new wine, or vino novello, was perfect. Right now the new wine still has a bit of sugar, not much alcohol and millions of the tiniest bubbles. It seemed a marriage made in Heaven.
I’m not sure that there has ever been an iconic recipe for chili. There’s more argument about chili than almost any dish I know. I bow to the vaster knowledge of the Southwesterners who have grown up knowing chili and eating chili and developing new chili recipes for chili contests. This recipe is just how I made it yesterday in a country far from Texas and New Mexico and a bunch of eaters who have never tasted any of the more expert chilis. As a practical cook, I used the meat that was on sale for €3.95 per kilo and it happened to be whole loin of pork. Ground beef was €7.95 per kilo and up. Argh! I figure no Mexican mamma ever spent that or failed to make chili if a cow hadn’t met her fate in the village. Chili is not rich folks food. I am not rich folk.
Meat: I cut the loin off a two kilo (4.4 pound) loin of pork. It was too lean, so I used lard to do the frying part to make up for that. I neglected to weigh the loin part before using it, sorry. There remain the bones with meat on them, which I will tackle later, and the tenderloin, which it will be my pleasure to use in other ways as well. I think I used about 3 pounds of pork, cut into a small dice.
3 onions, roughly chopped
1 large green pepper, diced
3 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
6 tablespoons of homemade chili powder
salt to taste
lard for frying
4 tablespoons of corn meal
optional: 2 400 gram tins of beans, drained
Melt some lard to cover the bottom of a moderately sized stock pot. Throw in the onions and sauté them until they are transparent. Add the diced pepper and fry that, too, until softened. Add the garlic, and reduce the heat, stirring once in a while. Add the chili powder, stirring in, and fry that, too. Add about one liter of boiling water and leave to simmer.
In a separate heavy frying pan, melt a small amount of lard and fry the meat cubes a bit at a time, adding them to the big pot as they lose their pink color. When you are finishing the last batch, dip some of the cooking water out of the stock pot into the frying pan so that you don’t leave any of the meat flavors behind.
Now add enough boiling water to come to about an inch over the solids in the stock pot, and keep the stew at a simmer for several hours. After about 2 hours, check for salt and correct it. Add the beans if you want them. A half hour before it needs to be done, stir in the corn meal to thicken the juices. My chili cooked for four hours and I would have happily left it for several more, but I had to put the Chili Mac together in time to get it bubbly before carting it away. I was frankly stunned at how spicy it was! I knew when I was making the chili powder that it was a chancy venture. The recipe says “three of this one, three of that one” but the chillies were all different sizes. One would be 1.5 inches by 2 inches, another 2.5 inches by 4.5. Weighing would have been a big help, but I didn’t find any recipes with estimated weights.
For the Chili Mac, I cooked the pasta for a bit less than the six minutes recommended. I drained it, put it in the bottom of the big casserole, ladled some of the chili over it, maybe half, then covered it generously with grated cheddar cheese. I popped it uncovered into the oven which I’d preheated to 175°C or 350°F. It cooked for about thirty minutes, then lidded, was carted off to Tina’s.
This is no revelatory recipe, I know. It’s just what I and my friends ate one night in the autumn of 2007. If any of the chili that was left un-macked gets turned into Chili Mac again, I’ll throw a photo in here. Buon appetito!
N.B. I think I have finally gotten really good at loving my friends. I was so happy to see them, old and new, and for the few hours we were together, I wouldn’t have chosen another place to be for any prize. Maybe the best thing about aging is being in the moment, loving whoever is there, not feeling nervous about how you look, what you’re wearing or what useful thing you might be doing instead of being happy.
November 1st, 2007
When I could hardly eat last week, I made a quintessential American pot of chili con carne. It was quite mild, but even so I used almost all of the rest of my chili powder so thoughtfully suggested by friend Jane and provided by eg. I happily ate it day after day, although it wasn’t that big a pot, since I’d used only half a pound of meat and a lot of cannellini. Yeah, yeah, cannellini don’t exactly taste like red kidney beans!
So then I started to worry about where my next comforting pot of chili might come from once the chili powder was gone. Here is an answer. I had much to choose from, but this was the least complicated. It happens that I do have those peppers, but once they’re gone I’ll be scrounging around ethnic food shops like everyone else. I’m going to leave out the garlic powder and use fresh garlic in the pot.
Italian food is great. I love Italian food. Somehow, though, when things go badly I often want something from the past. I made chicken a la king, too. Tomorrow night Tina is hosting a Halloween pot luck, and I think I will use homemade chili powder to create tamale pie. Sort of a Central American lasagne, eh? I think ground or chopped vitellone and pork should do it, with a crust made of polenta. Missjoe sent me some cheddar, so that will make a gloriously bubbly top to it all. And if no one likes it, I will have another week of practically no cooking. Sounds win-win to me.
Life is not all roasted duck breasts and truffled pasta. Sometimes it gets sucky and you need mummy food.
October 30th, 2007
Here is a list of things to make starting now. They’re all from past indulgences eaten at my table. So, gobble these up while I finish the experiments I’m working on now.
Barzottini to start off with. A delicious appetizer/antipasto as crisp and savory as October days.
A pasta to love now that leeks are back in the markets? Try this Toasted Leek and Pecorino with Penne!
One of my favorites, the crunchy topped, cheesy goodness of this leek, bread and cheese casserole, as a replacement for pasta, a vegetable or a hearty meal in one.
Who has forgotten La Bomba? Not I. This is an ongoing love affair for me.
Where’s the meat? If you haven’t fixed this one yet, you’re missing one of the recipes I’m proudest of.
Room for dessert? Sin along with me with a bit of Hot Silk.
There, that ought to keep you busy for a day or two.
October 5th, 2007
Previous Posts
This is an experiment in presenting a new recipe for a new dish. Throughout the recipe I will place photos of the dish, and at the end we can decide which of the photos is most likely to make someone want to cook it or eat it.
I haven’t really named it, either. It’s paccheri, of course, and it’s stuffed, and the filling is Sicilian inspired, but it’s not from Sicily, it’s from the nutty cook in Umbria. Have a look at the ingredients and see what you think about a name. Paccheri may not be easy to find where you are, but if you make manicotti and cut them in half it will look about the same, if a bit larger mouthed. You’d reduce the number because each would hold more stuffing.
When buying a sausage for this dish, look for the leanest ones possible. You can use salted capers if you like, but rinse them and soak them in milk before using them if you do. The ones I used are just pickled in brine and I did nothing to them. The cheese to use can be any decently mature cheese that is still soft enough to melt. It might be Fontina, Bel Paese, or another you like. I used Pecorino because it is universally available in Italy and it’s really, really good. Sometimes Pecorino in other countries is not.
If you click on the photos, they’ll pop up on a dark background and be easier to judge. Which one do you think would tempt you to eat this?
