Posts filed under 'vegetarian'
Some days ago I went here and was inspired to try the recipe because I had just done some very different caramel covered nuts from another source. 
That David never misses, does he? This took some time, but it is excellent and easy. The only thing you need to watch out for is not to let that blazing sugar touch you.
I followed his directions to the letter except I cooled them on my Silpat to avoid leaving any temptation for ants. The added plus was by rolling up the Silpat I was able to separate more of the nuts than was easily accomplished with two spatulas.
The other recipe is good too, but entirely different. I’ll post a photo of the result as soon as I scan it. I gave them to my neighbors as fast as could be!
May 2nd, 2008
I had friends to dinner Saturday night. Because I was making the meat dish from the April 7 2008 menu, I decided to do a home-sized version of the Pugliese antipasto, because it keeps people busy and fed while a more complicated dish finishes.
One thing that makes this workable and tastier is that not everything is made at the last minute, or even made at home. I served no meat or fish because the course that followed is very meaty, but with something like prosciutto, pancetta or a few spicy mussels, I would consider this antipasto a whole meal and be happy to have it. I am not, however, all Italian– yet.
The dish on the left is of fried red peppers, but I think they are more accurately called braised peppers. It’s peppers, salt and oil, cooked covered for a long time and then served at room temperature. Directly in front, in a tray made just for antipasto, are fresh green olives, goat’s cheese for the potatoes, a cheese called “Crema di Maggio” or May cream cheese, and black olives. The olives are both from tubs and are not very salty. I don”t know why that is, because olives are picked once a year and I think they must be preserved the same length of time, but anyway, I like these very much and often buy them. This tray illustrates Judy Witts’ oft stated philosophy of shop more and cook less. Those four things are really good and I tried a lot of less-good things before deciding these were worthy of replacing something homemade.
To the left is a plate of tiny baked potatoes cooked under salt. On the right is a loaf of pane di Altamura, a DOP bread that is trucked into my Coop from the south every morning. The hand is Paolo’s, who is pouring a Pugliese rosé wine.
This is, once again, purea di fave secche, which recipe was published here a few posts back. It is served warm. My Umbrian guests really liked it, and it surprised me to find that none of them had ever had it before.
Eating like this, among a few friends, is just about my favorite thing. I’m not so busy that I don’t get to talk and eat with everyone else, because they are friends I can experiment a little, and the evening feels relaxed and healthy.
April 28th, 2008
This is another dish from last Monday’s dinner. It’s an antipasto/appetizer from Puglia. Although recipes I found when I first tried to make it called for using vegetable broth to cook it, I soon discovered that I could make the vegetable broth and cook it all at the same time. It is a very healthy dish in the highest level of Mediterranean attention to vitamins, fiber and animal fat completely replaced with healthy olive oil. I cannot tell you where to buy dried fave in your country, but I know people have bought them in every country I know. If all you can find are fave with their skins, you can use them, but it will have to cook longer and you will need to use a food mill to remove the skins which I am told cause really dramatic intestinal gas.
I was served this garnished or plain in Puglia several times, but this version is my favorite one so far. I ate this by itself for supper yesterday. Jump to the recipe:
Purea di Fave
1 carrot cleaned and diced
1 leg of celery cleaned and diced
1 onion cleaned and diced
1 small dried red pepper crushed
1 teaspoon salt
water to cover
1 large or 2 medium potatoes peeled and diced
250 g or 1/2 pound dried fave/favas/broadbeans without skins
water as needed
salt to taste
Garnish:
red sweet pepper/peperone/capsicum, cleaned and cut in thin slivers
good olive oil
salt to taste
In a tall pot, put the first list of vegetables and salt, then cover with water and bring to a boil. When it is boiling, add the diced potato and water to keep it covered. When it comes back to a boil, add the dried fave and more water to cover.
Cook this at a simmer for about 45 minutes, adding water periodically so that there is always about 1/2″ or one finger’s thickness of water over the top of the vegetables. At 45 minutes, take a fava out and bite it. It should be soft throughout. If it isn’t cook a bit more until it is. Check for salt at this point and stir in more until it tastes right to you.
You can use a stick blender to puree this in the pot, or you can cool it a bit and put it through a medium-fine plate on a food mill. If you do that, you will need to rewarm it before serving.
Before serving, heat the olive oil in a frying pan and quickly fry the pepper slivers with a bit of salt. Scatter them over the purea, drizzle the pink oil as well, and then add a thread of raw oil. Serve warm.
Leftovers will need a bit of added water to become semi-liquid again. You can, however, make this quite a while ahead and keep it in the refrigerator, then warm the amount you want to serve.
April 16th, 2008
I wrote this yesterday and it went poof!
Some of the dishes on this menu are already on the blog as recipes. Those that are not are being written and will be published over time. Everyone seemed to really enjoy all of it, and all but one eater were Italian. I consider that a yea vote, right?
Antipasto:
purea di fave secche con peperoni fritti (puree of dried fava beans/broadbeans with fried sweet red peppers)
piccole patate arroste sotto sale con formagino di capra (tiny potatoes roasted under salt with goat cheese)
Primo:
tagliatelle ai carciofi con pecorino sardo affumicato (egg pasta with artichokes and shards of smoked Sardegnan pecorino cheese)
Contorno:
sformato di asparagi (puffy custard of asparagus)
Secondo:
Costolette di maiale ripiene di formaggi (double rib pork chops stuffed with a cheese stuffing)
Dolce:
palline di cocco con due cioccolati (coconut balls with two chocolate ganaches)
jump to recipe
Palline di cocco (coconut balls or cocopuffs to me)
Makes enough for at least 8 people
Preheat oven to 170°C or 350°F (yes, the F temp is higher than reality, but these droop and spread if the temp is too low.)
2 eggs
175 g sugar (6 ounces or about 7/8 cup)
240 g dried coconut (8-1/2 ounces or about 3 cups)
I have been fussing for years about how to use the coconut one can buy here, which is dried and not shredded, sugared or any of the things that are done to coconut in America. I checked, and you can buy dried or dessicated coconut in US health food stores and perhaps the nicer grocery stores. Check out Indian groceries, too, for lower prices. Anyway, at last I found a recipe for using it. I misread one of the directions in a way that made it intriguing to me, so away I went. When I discovered my error, I decided to go for it anyway and I really like the result. If you don’t try this you’re nuts, because it is just about the easiest way I know to please some diners.
In a large mixing bowl, break the eggs and toss in the sugar. Using an electric mixer, beat them on high speed until they become thick and almost white. Add the coconut and at low speed, stir it in until it is blended.
Here’s the tricky, cute part. Line a baking sheet (placca) with baking paper. Using an espresso cup, scoop up this coco-dough, about 2/3 full, and press slightly with your fingers, then turn it upside down on the paper, rapping sharply to release the little form. You can place them fairly closely because they should not spread. When they are all on the paper, put them into the pre-heated oven and cook 15 minutes.
If they spread or are not that lovely golden color, your oven is running cool and you should probably get it calibrated. Cook them a little longer this time.
These are delicious. Crunchy on the outside and chewy, damp and slightly sweet inside.
For the two chocolates, choose a good dark chocolate and a good white chocolate. In two very tiny pans put the chocolate and add an equal weight of heavy cream. Over the lowest achievable heat stir the two chocolates and when each is melted and blended with the cream — you can take them off the heat when almost melted and they’ll safely finish melting with no chance of overheating disasters — use a spoon to drizzle streaks and drops on a plate and dip the bottom of each pallina into the dark before placing it on the dessert plate.
Try it. It’s really good and dessert doesn’t get any easier unless you buy it.
April 9th, 2008
Over the next few days we shall be having the recipes for everything that is in that photo, one at a time. Today it’s “Fool’s Hollandaise.” Did you know that Hollandaise is part of classic Italian cookery as well as French? In Italian, however, it’s called salsa olandese. You can find the recipe for real Hollandaise sauce a thousand different places, and for blender Hollandaise a thousand more. I, too, can crouch over a double boiler watching egg yolks attempt suicide and splodge themselves into orangey bits clinging to pan and spoon and unwilling to play nice with lemon juice. I only do that if someone is paying me to.
This is the one I make when I just want sauce for myself and mine. I can make this without looking, while talking over my shoulder to a friend, while dressed or undressed, in any quantity I need. This should be enough to sauce perhaps asparagus for four normal people, or two spring-starved eaters who plan to eat a lot of asparagus– or something else.
Fool’s Hollandaise
4 ounces (120 g) butter at room temperature, cut into pieces
1/2 teaspoon salt
juice of 1/2 lemon
pinch of cayenne (peperoncino in polvere)
1 egg
In a small, heavy pot, start to heat the butter and lemon juice. Once the lemon juice heats and starts melting the butter, remove it from the heat and add the cayenne and salt, then stir vigorously with a whisk. As soon as the butter is completely melted into the lemon juice, add the whole egg, whisking vigorously and continuously. Move the pot back over low heat, continuously whisking, and lifting the pot to cool it occasionally, if it appears to be thickening too fast. Quickly taste for salt; you may need to add some because it depends on how acid your lemon was. Continue to whisk until it is become a smooth, thickened sauce.
The only thing you can do wrong is let it get too hot too quickly in which case the egg will scramble and separate from the lemon butter. In that case, call it Goldenrod Sauce and serve it anyway. Avoid that by controlling the amount of heat and never stopping whisking until it is finished. I could have used a flametamer as I do with polenta, but to me it is just easier to lift the pan away from the heat.
If when it is done you are not ready to eat it, keep it warm by putting the pan into a larger pan containing hot, not boiling, water. I don’t think the microwave should come into this at all, although because I don’t have one, I haven’t tried it.
This sauce is fantastic on greens and with spinach as shown above, it provides the acid you must eat to liberate the iron in spinach. I like it on asparagus, as a dip to artichoke leaves, on eggs, and surprise! stirred like fudge ripple into mashed potatoes. Don’t incorporate it, just make a swirl of it in the potatoes.
April 1st, 2008
but she is not and she is also not really a soup.
When something tastes this good and is this easy to make, looks shouldn’t count. I even threw a rosemary sprig at her, but it didn’t help, and I didn’t want to sprinkle something all over that would alter the flavor. This is a traditional dish of Sardinia again, and again it is just the kind of thing you need to know how to make if people come in for meals at intervals or at odd hours. It takes five or ten minutes to put it on the table if the ingredients are at hand.
I hope someone will try making it with lavash, because I think that will work but I can’t buy lavash here.
This is another dish made with Pane Carasau– see below. It sounds a bit unpromising, but once you have the box in the kitchen, you really do have to try all the ways to use it. Don’t you? It turns out that this first course vegetarian main dish is delicious enough to warrant buying the box in the first place. The most difficult part of making it was deciding which cheeses would work the best. The ones I used were terrific and I suspect that anything you choose may be terrific too. Recipe after the
Zuppa Gallurese
Pane Carasau, about 1 to 1-1/2 sheets for 2 portions
formaggio fresco/fresh cheese, anything from Kraft Philadelphia on up, about 2 ounces (60 g) for two
Pecorino not very aged, grated on the big holes of the grater (about 2 ounces for 2)
Pecorino stagionato quite aged and gratable like Parmigiano, or use any grana including Parmigiano– about 1 ounce or 30 g for two
a few leaves and sprigs of herbs, such as bay, rosemary, thyme or sage
boiling hot reduced broth or stock, enough to cover, about one pint for two.
In a pot that will hold the amount you want to make, make a layer of pieces of Pane Carasau on the bottom. Using a spoon, add a few dollops of the fresh cheese on top, then sprinkle with the grated soft cheese, then grate the hard cheese over that. Add a few pieces of herbs. Continue with another layer of everything, in the same order, but you must end up with a layer of the crispy bread.
Now pour boiling hot broth over it until it is just covered. Let it sit for a minute or so until it is moistened, then serve. This is the step that gives her her name. Soaking the dish in broth is to inzuppare, and so it is called zuppa even though as you can see, it is not soup. Black pepper is a very nice addition. You really won’t believe what this tastes like!
I gave you an estimated amount for two portions, but that could change if your pot were wider or narrower. My pot was about 7″ wide and I made 3 cheese layers surrounded with bread layers. By simply layering up more I could have made many more servings. In a 10″ pot I could easily have made servings for 10 people. I could have made it richer by using more cheese. I could have made it less rich by using stronger cheeses but less of them– although you do need the soft cheese to combine with the broth, so don’t alter that one. The broth both melts the cheeses and becomes milky itself, and that is why there are two fairly young cheeses in the dish. If you were to use more aged cheeses, that effect would lessen. It would probably still be mighty good, however. I don’t really see how it could ever fail as long as you use tasty cheeses.
I picked the herb bits out as I ate this. They definitely flavored the dish, so I would never leave them out, but all the herbs mentioned are woody and stemmy and I can’t see eating them. All in all, this is another surprising dish from Sardinia, a place that has a talent for surprising me in the nicest possible ways. Let’s see if we can surprise Ruth at Presto Pasta Night with it. 
March 16th, 2008
We begin with this. It’s an inconveniently large, flat box filled with thinnest and crispest stuff called Pane Carasau or Carta di Musica
or music paper. It’s from Sardinia and in Sardinia it’s used in so many ways I may never work my way to the end of them. For me the only problem is how to store it, because 500 grams, or about a pound, can last a long time. Once you’ve broken into the plastic covering it is vulnerable to humidity, dust and critters. Fortunately, most uses require that it be broken into pieces, so you can stick it into a big sealable bag if you do that.
I can buy it at any grocery store and I know it is available at a horrific price in the UK, but I’m not sure how widely available it is across the Atlantic. The various labeling on the back of my brand is in German, French, English and Spanish, so do look for it. Otherwise, I am convinced you can use lavash bread instead, and that really is widely distributed in the US. If you are very ambitious, you will find a recipe for making it from scratch at home at The Ingredient Store. Please let me know if you do that! N.B. I think a pasta roller could help you get this thin as paper and who cares if it’s round?
OK, so why would you want this product? For its extreme usefulness and flexibility, say I. It’s delicious and crunchy as a bread or cracker, really tasty with baba ghanouj and hummus, just nice tucked in among other breads. But even more, it makes a series of traditional Sardegnan dishes that are perfect for how a lot of people live nowadays. You can make them in moments of few ingredients and for as many diners as there are. It can even be used to make a lasagna.
Today’s dish is Pane Frattau or just Frattau. I’ve made it and eaten it three times this week because I could not convince myself that was all there was to it. (OK, also because my poached eggs kept coming out warped.) I used the recipe on the back of the package and I can’t wait to get to the rest of them now. Each time I varied the cheese a bit, or how much I poached the egg, but no matter what, I couldn’t ruin it. 
Jump to the recipe:
Pane Frattau
tomato sauce (purchased or homemade)
Pane Carasau in the amount you want to eat
about 1 ounce per person/30 g of grated Pecorino (because that’s what they make in Sardinia which is very far from Parma!)
1 poached egg per person (crack it into a cup or a small bowl at this point)
I shall give you a simple recipe for the tomato sauce I used below. Whatever sauce you will use, you must gently heat it while you do the rest of this.
Grate the cheese you’ll use and set it aside. Start a pot of water to boil for poaching the egg(s) and put salt and a little vinegar in it. Put some water into a large pot and put it onto the flame. Make sure to have a slotted spoon or spatula for removing things.
When the egg water boils, stir it into a whirlpool and slide the egg into the vortex. This is how I wrecked my eggs. I broke them from the shell and couldn’t aim them, so they didn’t go into the center and became sort of sea slug shaped. Let the water return to a simmer while you drop the pieces of carasau into the big pot of hot water, a few pieces at a time, immediately removing them with the slotted spoon to a serving plate. When they are all dipped and drained, your egg will probably be done just right, with a firm white and a liquid yolk.
Pour tomato sauce over the wet carasau pieces, toss the grated cheese over that, top it all with the poached egg. Done. Yummy, too.
Oh, and the cleanup report is super easy, because although there are three pans, two have only had water in them, and a quick wash and rinse is all it takes.
The Tomato Sauce I made is simple and quick.
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.
And now, let’s slide this past the folks at Presto Pasta Night and see if they buy this idea for “instant” pasta.
March 6th, 2008
I vacated my house two weekends in a row. I become so cooped up through winter and believe me, gray and drippy and cold are not tempting me out, that I start to get tunnel vision. So I’m getting a new look around lately.
This past weekend I went to Civitacastellana. That’s in northern Lazio, somewhere on the shin of the boot, almost at the foot. To get there I drive south to Terni in southern Umbria, then streak off southwest toward Viterbo and eventually south toward Rome. Civitacastellana used to be one day from Rome and so it was a stop off point for travelers north. It perches on a plateau with a rather dramatic gorge that runs through it now, but used to separate it for safety’s sake.
I probably wouldn’t even know it if a friend didn’t live there. Similarly, nearby Otricoli, to which I also went and where another friend now lives.
It’s just different. The terrain, the people, what they eat, the way the light looks, the architecture. It’s all just different. I’m jammed into the Apennines that run along the eastern side of Italy. They’re stuck into the western ones. It’s something like the difference between New Hampshire and West Virginia, only not so far apart.
My refrigerator wasn’t working as I left, so I dragged along a sack of things that wouldn’t be any good if it didn’t switch on while I was away. (It did and I was very happy.) Alison and I decided to make supper of that sack for our friend in Otricoli and her visiting art school student daughter. I played with Alison’s very cute cat. I watched satellite television a bit. I slept late.
The sun shone both days. Sunday we drove to see the house near Otricoli and ended up making lunch together. Alison grilled sausages in the fireplace, Lisa grilled bruschetta in the wood stove and I whipped up some vegetables that were lying around. It was very good and lots of fun to cook so effortlessly with friends, which really doesn’t happen here.
I left a bit early because I am not so crazy about driving after real dark descends. It meant driving through sunset, twilight and evening.
When I turned eastward, all the eastern Apennines were rosy with light coming from the sun sinking into the Mediterranean. Mile after mile the mountains, rocky and gray or whitely snowy, lay bathed in pink and looking like an illustration in a book of fairy tales. I was almost reluctant to turn north toward home, but as I did I saw that the western Apennines were deeply violet from the same sunset and for at least half an hour of the northward travel they slid by on my left like a thousand postcards.
All that pleasure and beauty affected the way I thought over the next couple of days. A bit of change is good for me. There is beauty all over this country if you just open your eyes and go out to meet it. It’s probably true where you are, too.
Cavollini di Bruxelles alla Lisa (Brussels Sprouts for Lisa)
1 Kilo (2.2 pounds) Brussels Sprouts, trimmed and washed
3 tablespoons (cucchiai) good extra virgin olive oil
1 big handful of roughly chopped walnuts
salt to taste
about 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
Heat a large pot of salted water and when it is vigorously boiling, toss in the brussels sprouts and cook briefly to set the color. They should still be crunchy. Drain them.
Heat the oil in a wide frying pan and toast/fry the walnut pieces for a few minutes, then add the drained brussels sprouts and sauté, stirring/tossing to dry them a bit. Some of the outer leaves may brown and that’s OK. Taste for salt and correct it. When ready to serve, add the balsamic vinegar and stir to coat the sprouts and nuts with a glaze then scrape all into a serving dish. Pretty good!
February 20th, 2008
I’ve been reading lists all over the internet food world based on the best recipes of 2007, either their own trials or recipes they’ve picked up from this site or that one. I have never done a list like that for Think On It, so I thought I would instead farm the entire life of this blog and list what has been mentioned most often or eaten most often here casa mia.
Think On It, as a food blog, is in main dedicated to food prepared according to the basic tenets of Italian cookery, but simple enough for anyone to make. I mean anyone, and that includes you as well as the cook who has been turning out great meals for twenty years. I avoid piling up flavors and sauces, because that’s not Italian!
Toasted leeks and pecorino pasta is still Art’s favorite pasta. I am really proud of that, that living in Italy where pasta is tossed about like M&Ms Art still likes one of my original recipes the best! What would one do for reassurance without one’s friends?
The best carrots I know are still the best to me. I made this dish for a shared Christmas dinner this year and they disappeared like snow in Miami. I left out the thyme, too, because the real secret is the cumin, or comino. For a former carrot-avoider, this recipe has turned out to really have legs. Try them. (For some reason this link won’t work. Go to: http://www.judithgreenwood.com/thinkonit/the-best-carrots-i-know/
My vote for best one dish meal from the pages of Think On It, is Insalatona fra diavolo. I always freeze some pitted black cherries so that I can have this salad when cherries aren’t in season (and because you can’t buy bags of frozen plain cherries in my city.) When they are used up I have to wait until cherries come back in May and it makes me sad. The recipe actually makes two meals I love at once, and there can’t be anything wrong with that idea!
Antipasto is well represented here, but on another international food site Tiny Baked Potatoes has been the hands down winner, voted among the top one hundred appetizer recipes worldwide. I can only take credit for figuring out how you can make this Pugliese dish at home, if you, like I, can’t rush off to Puglia today. How I would love to.
My most often cooked non pasta first course, or primo, is surely Toasted Leek and Potato Soufflé, a dish I find beautiful and absolutely delicious. I know it looks difficult, but it isn’t at all, and you don’t have to use a soufflé dish to cook it, although if you have one, why not?
The vote for best vegetarian dish is split. The first one has to be Pasta e Fagioli which is a feel-good dish without equal. I can make a little for just me, or a lot for a crowd and it always is good. When the weather is awful, this makes up for it. Just leave out the ham and you can feed it to a Bhuddist.
The second one is la Bomba although it is not Italian other than that I developed it here in my Italian kitchen using ingredients I bought in Italy. My evenings in Paris are about food. Sad, isn’t it? Just leave out the ham, and you’ll never miss it. I love, love, love this way with lentils. Ahh, Paris, how you inspire me.
Best cucina alta, the Italian version of haute cuisine, dish is the veal stuffed with veal on that page. I’ve come up with one small improvement lately, which is the inclusion of finely minced prosciutto crudo, or parma ham in the stuffing. This is a dish that goes on giving, because if you don’t slurp the cooking broth down immediately, you can have it another day with some tiny stuffed pasta, like capelletti or tortellini, or you can freeze it and cook another meat in it another day. I consider that practical as all get out.
Okay, that’s nine choices, and everybody does ten. The tenth is waiting for you. Please comment and tell me about something you’ve cooked from here and how it came out for you. If it wasn’t a success, tell me, because I’m determined to make every recipe just right.
If you click on something and there’s no photo, it may be that it’s a Flickr feed that isn’t working. Flickr has become irregular in what they show and I can’t count on them any more. That’s a shame, ma è la vita, sì?
December 31st, 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
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