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Asparagus with Parmesan Cheese

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June 12, 2017

I am writing this sitting on a beach in Akumal, Mexico about an hour south of Cancun by car.

On the beach in Akumal
Iguanas enjoying the beach in Akumal

Just a few days ago, I was at home in Santa Fe where the weather was just beginning to turn spring-like.  The week before that I was in Hawaii.

The view from our lanai in Kauai

By the time you’ll be reading this, I’ll be in Palm Springs, where, even today, the temperature is hitting 100°F!

On the patio in Palm Springs before the heat of the day

Needless to say, my sense of seasonality is out of whack at this point.

No matter the temperature or the weather, asparagus says spring!

Just a few days ago, I was eating grilled asparagus in Santa Fe.  Days before that I made an asparagus frittata, before that I cooked the asparagus that is featured in this post.

Asparagus isn’t something I remember much of before college and usually it was the mushy white stuff out of a can.  White asparagus can certainly be a delicacy but when it comes out of a can that’s an impossibility as far as I’m concerned.

College was a time of incredible culinary growth for me.  Growing up I ate wonderful food as my mother was a great cook.  Mostly, though, it was Italian, Slovak, and the American dishes that every kid in the United States grows up eating.

I didn’t learn to cook until freshman year in college.  I was lucky enough to live in a college house at the University of Pennsylvania that was housed on two floors of an otherwise upper class dormitory made up of apartments with kitchens.  The typical freshman dorms either had no kitchens whatsoever or had the most rudimentary cooking facilities shared by large numbers of students.  Since I had a kitchen, I only took out the minimum required meal contract: 10 meals per week.  Usually this meant I ate lunch and dinner in one of the dining halls Monday through Friday.  On weekends I cooked…and baked!

I called home every Sunday from the day I went away to college.  Occasionally there was a lapse, like the time when I was 31 and hadn’t called home in a couple weeks.  The first words out of my mother’s mouth when she heard me on the other end of the line were, “I was just about to put your picture on a milk carton.”  Point made!  [You may or may not know that “back then” the pictures of missing children were put on milk cartons in the hope that someone would recognize them and call the authorities.]

Besides just catching up on our lives, I got advice.  My father gave me advice on how to handle alcohol, what to do if I had too much (don’t lie down and don’t close your eyes, for example), sex, and other topics.

My mother walked me through the steps of how to cook whatever it was I planned on making for dinner that evening.  By the end of freshman year, I was a credible cook.

My gastronomic circle was not very big, however.  Early my freshman year the resident advisors, Dennis and Martha Law from Hong Kong, took a group of us to dinner in Chinatown.  It was exciting, having grown up in a town without a Chinese restaurant.  The tastes, however, were so…well…foreign that I didn’t like much of what was served.  I tasted everything but rarely had more than one bite till something landed on my plate that struck me the right way.  The serving platter made it down the table past two or three other people till Dennis saw me eating.  He commandeered the plate and put it in front of me to be sure I had enough to eat.

By the end of the year I was not only eating, and loving, Chinese food, I had developed a rudimentary understanding of the regional differences and learned the basics of Chinese cooking from Martha.

After my taste buds got over the shock of Chinese food, I started exploring other cuisines.  A favorite became Indian food at Maharaja just a few blocks from my dorm.  It turns out the restaurant was owned by the aunt of someone I now work with!  I believe it was the first Indian restaurant in Philadelphia.

Sophomore year I was not in the college house but had one roommate in a similar upper class dorm with a kitchen.  Meal contracts were only required of freshmen and I saw no point in eating in the dining hall.  The arrangement I struck with my roommate was that I would cook and he would clean up.  It turns out he would eat, and like, most anything so I was free to explore and experiment.

That set the stage for my junior year when I was admitted to another college house, the International Residence Project.  Half of the students were from the USA and half from anywhere else in the world.

My roommate, and best friend for many years, Ray Hugh, hailed from Guyana.  Valrie Tracey from Jamaica became the third member of a triumvirate that was pretty much inseparable for the rest of college.

Two married couples were our resident advisors, Ambrose and Najma Davis, and Reginald and Nanacy Rajapakese.  Ambrose was from Jamaica, Najma from Bangladesh, and Reggie and Nanacy from Sri Lanka.

Nanacy taught me how to make Sri Lankan food and I’m almost as comfortable making that as I am Italian.  I remained close friends with Nanacy and Reggie, even making several trips to Sri Lanka with Nanacy in the last few years, after Reggie’s death.

Ray and I have reconnected on Facebook which is rekindling many memories of the trips I made to Guyana and my experiences in learning to make Guyanese and Chinese food from Ray and his mother.  Ray’s grandparents on both sides emigrated from China to Guyana in the 1800’s.

Ray and I packed an incredible amount of cooking power into a tiny dormitory kitchen.  Without enough cabinet space to store ingredients, we had stacks and stacks of plastic milk delivery crates packed with an unimaginable assortment of ingredients from international food markets.

Our apartment became known as the place for midnight snacks and folks always came knocking on the door around then to see what we’d whipped up to nibble on.

That was the year I discovered that my stovetop Corning percolator made a serviceable stand-in for an asparagus steamer.

 

Asparagus steamer in a pinch!

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Print Recipe
 Asparagus with Parmesan Cheese
Asparagus is best cooked in an asparagus steamer. This small-diameter, tall pot allows the bottom of the asparagus spears to boil in the water while the tender tips cook by steaming. When I was a college student and didn’t have an asparagus steamer I used my stovetop Corning Ware percolator. If you don’t have a steamer, or a reasonable substitute, I find it preferable to cook the asparagus in a microwave oven rather than to boil them. After rinsing off the asparagus, put the spears and whatever water clings to them in a microwave-safe dish with a cover. Cook in 1-2 minute increments, moving the spears around after each bout of zapping, until cooked but still a little “toothy” (and certainly not mushy).
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Course Sides, Vegetables
Cuisine Italian
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 15 minutes
Servings
people
Ingredients
Course Sides, Vegetables
Cuisine Italian
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 15 minutes
Servings
people
Ingredients
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Instructions
  1. Trim the tough ends off the asparagus. The “Notes” section below contains a link to a blog post describing how to do this.
  2. Crush the garlic with the side of a chef’s knife.
  3. Heat the olive oil in a small sauté pan over low heat. Add the garlic and sauté slowly until brown, pressing down on the garlic occasionally.
  4. Discard the garlic. Reserve the oil.
  5. Cook the asparagus until toothy, neither crunchy nor mushy. If you do this in an asparagus steamer, put about two inches of water in the bottom and bring to a boil. Lower in the basket with the asparagus. It will take 5-10 minutes, depending on the asparagus and your elevation, to cook the asparagus properly.
  6. Put the cooked asparagus in a warmed serving bowl.
  7. Add the garlic-infused olive oil and mix.
  8. Add the Parmigiano Reggiano cheese and the salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste. Mix well.
  9. Drizzle with lemon juice and serve.
Recipe Notes

You can find videos of prepping asparagus here.

Copyright © 2017 by VillaSentieri.com. All rights reserved.

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Recipes

Risotto with Asparagus

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May 29, 2017

Risotto is not a Southern Italian dish.  Neither is polenta, for that matter.

I never had either until college when I started cooking from Marcella Hazan’s The Classic Italian Cookbook published in 1973.  I still use the dog-eared copy I bought in college the year it was published.

It was a magnificent introduction to Northern Italian cooking which I knew little about as a kid of 18 from a small town in Western Pennsylvania in my sophomore year of college.

My knowledge of Northern Italian cooking expanded rapidly though.  Marcella was only the beginning.  There was a true restaurant renaissance in Philadelphia in the 1970’s.  Not only magnificent French restaurants like Le Bec Fin and La Panetiere, but wonderful Northern Italian restaurants like the Monte Carlo Living Room and a bevy of others whose names I can’t recall.  I ate at all of them…often.  I still remember one dinner at the Monte Carlo Living Room where, after being served a very simple spaghetti with garlic and oil, the waiter (they weren’t called servers back then) came by with a black truffle and shaved large quantities of it onto my pasta.  Heaven!

I also learned about Northern Italian cooking from the aunts of my college advisor Eugene (Gene) d’Aquili.  Well, it was Roman cooking, actually, which is in central Italy but still pretty far north from where my mother’s family hailed.

Auntie Helen (Zia Elena) and Auntie Louise (Zia Luigia) (they Anglicized their names after coming to America) were born in Rome in the early years of the 20th century.  They came to America as children.  Of the two, Auntie Helen was the cook.  From her I learned to make many classic Roman dishes.  Some of Auntie Helen’s dishes are slated to make it into the blog, including a Roman Chicken Cacciatore flavored with anchovies.

So, by the time I got absorbed into my husband’s Northern Italian family (his father is from Tuscany and his mother from Friuli) I had a good grasp of Northern Italian cooking.

We have risotto often.  Probably at least once every two weeks.  It’s usually made with a vegetable, though occasionally I’ll make Risotto alla Milanese flavored with saffron and not a vegetable in sight.  In the spring risotto usually includes asparagus or peas.  In the summer it is likely to be zucchini.  The fall brings butternut squash risotto and mushroom risotto.  Mushroom risotto pretty much carries us through the winter, too, with the occasional risotto made with meat sauce.

Since it’s spring, I’m doing risotto agli asparagi, risotto with asparagus.

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 Risotto with Asparagus
Risotto is a classic Northern Italian dish. The goal is to have rice grains that are still al dente (but not crunchy) in the middle surrounded by a creamy liquid. More often than not I find that risotto served in America is overly rich with butter, cheese, and sometimes cream. An Italian-style risotto should be creamy from the starch in the rice, augmented with a very modest amount of butter and cheese. Risotto rice is a short grain rice that cooks slowly, making it much easier to achieve an al dente texture because it takes a while to actually overcook it. The three types of rice for risotto are Arborio, Carnaroli, and Vialone Nano. Arborio is the easiest one to find though the other two are more forgiving than Arborio when it comes to overcooking. I recommend buying good quality rice imported from Italy. It really isn’t priced that differently from domestic. Do not wash the rice. I don’t buy shallots unless I have a specific recipe in mind. Since risotto is often something that I make with little advance planning based on the fresh vegetables that are in my refrigerator, I usually use onion and garlic in place of shallot. I honestly don’t think one could reliably tell the difference so feel free to use onion and garlic as noted in the recipe if shallots aren’t handy.
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Course Rice and Other Grains
Cuisine Italian
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 45 minutes
Servings
people
Ingredients
Course Rice and Other Grains
Cuisine Italian
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 45 minutes
Servings
people
Ingredients
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Instructions
  1. Trim off the tough bottom of the asparagus spears. The standard way to do this is to bend the spear and let it crack naturally where the spear is less tough and woody.
  3. Finely dice the shallot.
  6. Cut the tips off each spear, approximately the top 2 inches. Reserve the asparagus tips.
  7. Cut the remaining spears into 1 inch pieces. Reserve the cut spears separately from the tips.
  8. Bring the chicken broth to a boil.
  9. Cook the asparagus tips in chicken broth for 2-4 minutes. They should be “toothy” but not crunchy.
  10. Using a spider or large slotted spoon, remove the tips from the boiling broth and put them into a bowl of ice water to stop further cooking.
  11. Cook the cut asparagus spears in the chicken broth for 4-6 minutes. Like the tips, they should be toothy but not crunchy.
  12. Add the partially cooked cut spears to the ice water with the tips.
  13. Reduce the heat so the broth remains at a simmer.
  14. Heat a two or three quart heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium high heat. Add the olive oil.
  15. When the oil is hot, add the finely chopped shallot (or onion and garlic if you are using that instead).
  16. Sauté, stirring frequently until the shallot softens and turns translucent. Do not brown the shallot. You may need to reduce the heat.
  17. When the shallot is soft, return the heat to medium high and add the rice.
  18. Continue cooking, stirring frequently, until the rice starts to smell toasty. Do not brown the rice.
  19. The outer portion of the rice grains will get translucent while the inside will stay opaque white.
  20. Add the wine. Stir frequently, but not constantly, until the wine has totally evaporated. You will begin to see some starch leaching out of the rice. More and more of the starch will leach out as you cook the rice. This is what will make a creamy sauce.
  21. When the wine has evaporated, add a scant ½ cup of simmering broth. Stir thoroughly paying particular attention to loosening any spots where the starch seems to be sticking to the bottom of the pan. You don’t want to brown (or worse yet, burn) the starch.
  22. Stir frequently, but not constantly, until the broth has evaporated.
  23. If the broth is unsalted, as I recommend, you can add a teaspoon of salt to the rice as you begin to add broth. If the broth contains salt, I recommend not adding salt until the end.
  24. Keep repeating the process with a scant ½ cup of broth, cooking, stirring, and loosening any spots that are sticking until each addition of broth evaporates. The heat should stay as close as possible to medium high. The moderate boiling of the liquid will coax starch out of the rice to create the creaminess that is the hallmark of a good risotto.
  25. While the rice is cooking, drain the partially cooked asparagus.
  26. Begin tasting the rice after about 20 minutes of cooking. It will probably still be quite crunchy at the very core. Until you get the hang of it, I suggest testing a rice grain each time you add more broth so you develop a sense of how quickly the texture changes.
  27. When you think you’re only one or two additions of broth away from having perfectly al dente rice, add the partially cooked asparagus.
  28. Continue cooking, adding simmering broth or water as needed, until the rice is al dente.
  29. Remove the rice from the heat and stir in enough simmering broth or water to create a creamy “sauce.” The starch that you have coaxed out of the rice should absorb at least ½ cup of liquid, possibly more.
  30. Stir in the butter and Parmesan cheese. This will probably thicken the “sauce” so you will need to add a bit more simmering liquid to loosen it.
  31. Taste and add salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.
  32. Serve immediately.
Recipe Notes

I think the standard method used to decide where to trim asparagus wastes too much.   For a quick tutorial on how I prep asparagus, check out my Preparing Asparagus post.

It will likely take more than 4 cups of broth to cook the rice. If you don’t have more broth, just use plain water. I do that very frequently. Except for the initial addition of wine, all liquid added to the risotto should be simmering.  As I’m getting near the end of the broth, I always put a couple of cups of water on to boil so that I have simmering water to add if needed.

Although the broth used for risotto should be flavorful, it should not be overly concentrated. The flavor of the asparagus should come through and not be muddled because the broth tastes assertively like chicken or herbs. Because you will be cooking down a fair amount of broth, it is best that it not be salted otherwise you run the risk of the risotto being too salty.

Copyright © 2017 by VillaSentieri.com. All rights reserved.

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Recipes

Pasta al Pesto

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May 15, 2017

Gardening at 8000 feet is challenging.  Even more so when you consider that we are sitting on almost solid rock.

There’s not much soil to begin with, just the barest of covering on a rocky foundation.  The piñon and juniper that surround us work their roots through little crevices in the rock that sits just inches below the surface.

What little soil there was in the area immediately surrounding our house was removed to level the building site.  The excavation was almost exclusively rock, one hundred truck loads were taken away.  Some rock was kept on site to create retaining walls around the property.

The corollary, however, is that there’s no dirt around the house to dig into to plant much of anything.  The landscaping that was done was exclusively within rock retaining walls or our front enclosed courtyard, where topsoil was brought in.  The first load of topsoil for the courtyard arrived April 2007, before we were ready to plant anything.  April is a windy month in New Mexico.  The winds started up one day and before evening every last speck of topsoil was blown to West Texas!

We could consider raised bed gardening but that would just invite the rabbits and deer to munch their way through our garden.  As it is, we’ve offered up several stands of ornamental grasses on the periphery of our landscaped area to the critters.  We seem to have reached a truce of some sort.  We let them eat the ones around the edges and, for the most part, they let the others alone.

We installed a greenhouse that allows us to extend the growing season by many months.  It also allows us to winter over a number of plants that would not survive in this climate.  The greenhouse also allows us to grow fig trees in large pots.  The first year we grew figs, they didn’t ripen.  It turns out that even though summer days are warm, the nights are cool enough that the fruit doesn’t ripen.  The following year we left the fig trees in the greenhouse throughout the summer, convinced that it would be too warm for them to thrive even with the automatic ventilation system.

Luckily, we were wrong.  The fig trees loved the heat.  Picking a ripe fig off of the tree and eating it immediately is amazing.  The only fresh fruit experience that would be superior, in my estimation, is a fresh-picked mango…and those trees won’t fit in our greenhouse!

We have one row of planter boxes outside the greenhouse.  We use these for plants, like tomatoes, that are not very attractive to deer and rabbits.  Salad greens, such as arugula, radicchio, and leaf lettuce grows in shallow trays on a raised shelf in the greenhouse.  Many pots of herbs also remain in the greenhouse year-round.  Everything else is planted in our interior courtyard, either in pots or in another row of planter boxes.

Depending on the type of plants, we start planting seeds in February.  Seedlings are transplanted once the risk of frost is minimal.

This year, we started too much basil from seed.  It needed to be thinned.  This created the opportunity for us to have pesto much earlier than would otherwise have been the case.  Usually it’s June before the basil plants have grown large enough that we can harvest leaves for pesto.

We had this pesto on April 30th, a day that measured more than 8 inches of snow at Villa Sentieri.  It was winter’s last hurrah and fresh pesto was a perfect way to welcome spring and say good-bye to winter.

 

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 Pasta al Pesto
The classic basil-based pesto is Pesto alla Genovese. However, because the recipe and ingredients for Pesto alla Genovese are tightly regulated (for example, the basil must be grown in Genoa, Italy), I’ll refrain from calling this Pesto alla Genovese since it can’t meet those strict regulations. Try to use young, small basil leaves. If you must use larger ones, tear them into smaller pieces so they measure approximately the same way. Using olive oil from Liguria, where Pesto alla Genovese originated, is another of those difficult-to-meet requirements. Nonetheless, try to use a sweet, fruity olive oil rather than one that is spicy and pungent. Make the pesto as close to serving time as possible. I like to have all the ingredients measured, making the pesto after the pasta starts to a boil. If you’re wondering about the use of a food processor, that would not be permitted either but I doubt there are many of us that would make pesto if we had to use the traditional marble mortar and wooden pestle!
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Course Pasta, Noodles, and Sauces
Cuisine Italian
Prep Time 30 minutes
Cook Time 15 minutes
Passive Time 30 minutes
Servings
people
Ingredients
For the pesto
For the pasta
Course Pasta, Noodles, and Sauces
Cuisine Italian
Prep Time 30 minutes
Cook Time 15 minutes
Passive Time 30 minutes
Servings
people
Ingredients
For the pesto
For the pasta
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Instructions
  1. Pluck the basil leaves from the stems and measure 2 cups, lightly packed.
  3. Measure all the other ingredients. Pine nuts.
  4. Garlic.
  5. Parmigiano Reggiano and Pecorino Romano cheeses.
  6. Don't forget the extra-virgin olive oil and salt.
  7. Bring three quarts of water and 1/3 cup of salt to a rolling boil.
  8. While water comes to a boil and the pasta cooks, heat the serving bowl by placing it in a 150°F oven or partially filling it with boiling water.
  9. When the water comes to a boil, add the pasta. Return to a boil, stirring frequently.
  11. As the pasta boils, put the basil leaves, olive oil, pine nuts, garlic, and salt in a food processor. Puree the basil mixture, scraping down the sides of the bowl occasionally.
  12. When the pasta is almost al dente, pour the basil puree into the warmed serving bowl.
  13. Add the Parmigiano and Romano cheeses. Stir to combine.
  14. Remove ¼ of the boiling pasta-cooking water from the pot and stir into the pesto to loosen it.
  15. When the pasta is al dente, remove and reserve a cup of pasta cooking water.
  16. Drain the pasta. Do not rinse. Add the pasta to the serving bowl and toss to coat each strand.
  17. If the pesto seems a little thick, add a tablespoon or two of the reserved pasta-cooking water.
  18. Taste and adjust salt if necessary.
  19. The finished dish.
Recipe Notes

Copyright © 2017 by VillaSentieri.com. All rights reserved.

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Recipes

Orecchiette with Broccoli and Anchovies

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May 10, 2017

A few times in my life I’ve been lucky enough to cook with my husband’s Great Aunt Fidalma.  It’s always been in my kitchen, though I keep hoping to make a trip to Tuscany to cook with her in her kitchen.

Zia Fidalma speaks Italian and German.  I speak English.  Though I studied German in high school and college, and at one point was passably able to translate scientific German, my command of spoken German (and at this point, scientific German) is hopeless.  I studied Italian for a while too, but the best I can do is read a menu, order in a restaurant, and find out where the restroom is.

So, cooking with Zia Fidalma starts with a language barrier but it doesn’t seem to matter.  Somehow we communicate.

Mostly that means Zia Fidalma speaks slowly in Italian emphasizing the words I am likely to understand most.

Like the time we were in my kitchen in Santa Fe preparing dinner for twelve.  The first course was spaghetti al pesto.  A pile of basil stalks from my father-in-law’s (Zia Fidalma’s nephew) garden were on the kitchen counter.  Zia Fidalma was plucking off basil leaves one at a time, inspecting each one.  At one point, she looked up at me holding a leaf and said “è brutta” (it’s ugly), clearly wanting my agreement to discard the less-than-perfect leaf.

One day at our home in Chicago, she was making risotto for lunch.  It had a very similar flavor profile to this pasta in that it contained broccoli, garlic and anchovies.

Zia Fidalma cranked up the 15,000 BTU burner to high.  She sizzled some minced garlic for a moment.  There was a vague hint of smoke coming from the pan.  She added the anchovies and stirred them about.  Smoke started to billow up.  She smiled knowingly.  She added the broccoli, undeterred.  Smoke continued.  She stirred.  I stood there horrified.  Then she lightly charred the broccoli.  I was even more horrified.  At long last some liquid went in and the rest of the risotto-making followed a familiar pattern.

I try to avoid smoking oil at all cost when cooking.  I was more than a little concerned about how the risotto would taste.

However, I have never had anything but fabulous food from Zia Fidalma, so I had to trust that this would be OK, too.

This wasn’t her first rodeo.  She’d been making risotto since before I was born.

In the end, all I can say is that the risotto was wonderful.  It had layers of flavor.  It provided an important lesson about how techniques different from what one would typically use can create incredible flavors.

So, if you see wisps of smoke coming from the pan as you singe the broccoli for this recipe, don’t fret.  Just raise a toast to Zia Fidalma, and enjoy!

Print Recipe
 Orecchiette with Broccoli and Anchovies
My husband’s Great Aunt Fidalma, who lives in Tuscany, showed me how to cook the broccoli in this manner. Previously, I parboiled the florets and added them and the beans to the sautéed garlic and anchovies. This method adds layers of flavor that cannot be obtained by just boiling the broccoli. I prefer to use home-cooked kidney beans following my recipe for Cannellini alla Toscana. You can use either red or white (cannellini) beans but the red ones add more color contrast. As an alternative you can use one 15 ounce can of beans. Do not discard the liquid in the can as it will improve the body of the sauce.
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Course Pasta, Noodles, and Sauces
Cuisine Italian
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 30 minutes
Passive Time 15 minutes
Servings
people
Ingredients
Course Pasta, Noodles, and Sauces
Cuisine Italian
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 30 minutes
Passive Time 15 minutes
Servings
people
Ingredients
Votes: 0
Rating: 0
You:
Rate this recipe!
Instructions
  1. Put 3 quarts of water and 1/3 cup salt in a 5 quart stockpot or Dutch oven. Bring to a boil over high heat.
  2. Meanwhile, cut the thick stems off the broccoli just below where the stems start to branch into individual florets.
  4. Cut the individual florets off the broccoli by cutting lengthwise through the stalk from top to bottom.
  5. Cut off any remaining stalk just below the floret. These tender stalks can be cut crosswise into one-half inch pieces and added to the florets.
  7. You can use some of the thicker stalks as well, if you wish. To do so, use a vegetable peeler to remove the tough outer skin. Dice the peeled stems into 1/3 inch cubes. Reserve these diced stalks separately from the florets and diced tender stalks.
  8. When the salted water comes to a boil, add the diced, peeled stalks, if using. Return to a boil and cook for 2-3 minutes until they just begin to get tender. Using a spider or large slotted spoon, remove the stalks from the water and plunge them into a bowl of ice water to stop cooking. When cool, drain in a colander.
  9. Keep the water on low heat so you can return it to a boil quickly when needed to cook the pasta.
  10. In a heavy-bottomed pan large enough to hold the finished dish, sauté the garlic over medium high heat until it turns fragrant, about 30 seconds.
  11. Add the anchovies and their oil and continue to sauté, breaking up the anchovies till they turn to a paste.
  12. Continue to cook until the anchovies darken slightly, about 1-2 minutes.
  13. Add the broccoli florets and diced tender stems. If using, add the partially cooked peeled stems. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
  14. Sauté on high heat, stirring very frequently, until some of the broccoli florets just begin to singe, about 5 minutes.
  15. Add the crushed red pepper. Stir to combine.
  16. Add the wine and cover with a tight fitting lid. Cook over medium high heat till the florets are cooked through but not mushy, shaking the pan occasionally.
  17. If all the wine evaporates before the broccoli is cooked, ladle in a bit of the pasta cooking liquid and continue.
  18. When the broccoli is cooked, add the beans and their cooking liquid along with the oregano. Bring to a simmer over gentle heat.
  19. Meanwhile, return the pasta-cooking water to a rolling boil and add the pasta. Cook until the pasta is slightly shy of al dente. The pasta will finish cooking in the sauce.
  20. Put about ¾ cup of pasta cooking liquid into the beans. Reserve another cup of the liquid.
  21. Quickly drain the pasta and add to the beans. Stir well. Bring to a gentle boil, uncovered. Cook stirring occasionally until the pasta is al dente. Add as much of the reserved pasta-cooking liquid as needed to have enough sauce to coat the pasta and broccoli.
  22. The starch in the pasta-cooking liquid will add body to the sauce. One way to incorporate more of the pasta-cooking liquid is to cook the pasta over higher heat so that you can add, and boil off, more of the liquid, leaving the starch behind.
  23. When the pasta is cooked, remove the pan from the heat and stir in the Parmesan cheese and 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper. Taste and adjust salt after adding the cheese.
  24. Stir in the finishing extra-virgin olive oil. This will make the sauce glossy and add additional flavor.
  25. The starch from the pasta water and bean-cooking liquid along with the cheese should create an emulsion with the oil. You may need to add more of the reserved pasta-cooking liquid to loosen the sauce.
  26. Serve immediately. Pass extra Parmesan cheese at the table.
Recipe Notes

Copyright © 2017 by VillaSentieri.com. All rights reserved.

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Recipes

Italian Slow-Roasted Chicken or Turkey

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April 21, 2017

For two countries that are geographically so close, Italy and France couldn’t be further apart on views of how to roast poultry.

The French typically roast quickly and at high temperature.

Italians are masters of the low and slow approach.

Italian roast chicken (or turkey, for that matter) literally falls apart.  The French version does not.  It’s a matter of style and technique, not quality or skill.

The usual style in the United States leans more toward France than Italy.  It’s the basis of the style of roasting described in most modern cookbooks and cooking magazines; higher temperatures rather than lower temperatures and yanking the bird out of the oven as soon as it reaches the minimum acceptable temperature to be “cooked” and “safe.”  Even when these magazines try to champion the approach of low and slow, they almost always miss the boat.  They miss the boat because they are still focused on the thermometer approach.

You can’t do low and slow if you’re focused on getting the bird out of the oven as soon as it hits the “safe” temperature.  Italian roast chicken is more like “pulled” chicken than the minimally cooked French version.  The whole mouthfeel is different.  So is the taste.

What I didn’t understand growing up is that my mother’s roast chicken and turkey drew from a broader Italian approach.

A few years ago we were in Tuscany having lunch with my husband’s Great Uncle Beppe and his family.

When the roast chicken was served, it was just like my mother’s!  Seasoned with garlic, rosemary, salt and pepper and roasted slowly, till it basically fell apart.

My mother’s mother came to the United States from Calabria around the turn of the 20th century at four years of age.  Here I was, nearly a century later in a province at the other end of the Italian peninsula eating chicken that could have been my mother’s, the way she learned it from her mother, who learned it from her mother.

I think that was a turning point for me in wanting to better understand Italian food traditions throughout the country and even throughout the Italian diaspora around the world.

Another amazing thing, when I think about it, is that my mother brined her chicken for an hour before cooking.  We’re talking the 1960’s here (probably the 1950’s too but I’m too young to remember that) way before brining was ever mentioned in cooking circles.  I can’t tell you why she did it or how it started but when I was learning to cook under her guidance, brining was always the first step for any recipe that included chicken.

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 Italian Slow-Roasted Chicken or Turkey
This is a no-recipe recipe. I never measure the seasonings. It’s really pretty hard to use an inappropriate amount. The cooking time is pretty forgiving, too. Until you get the hang of it, I suggest planning on the longer cooking time and the higher temperature. If the chicken or turkey is falling-apart tender before you’re ready for it, just reduce the oven to 150°F to keep the bird warm. My mother would usually brine the bird for about an hour before cooking. Time permitting, I do the same. This basic recipe works for everything from a three pound chicken to an 18 pound turkey. Just for a point of reference, the pictures feature a 12 pound turkey.
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Course Mains, Poultry
Cuisine Italian
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 40 minutes per pound
Servings
people
Ingredients
Course Mains, Poultry
Cuisine Italian
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 40 minutes per pound
Servings
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Ingredients
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Instructions
  1. Brine the bird, if you like, for about an hour.
  2. Thoroughly rinse and dry the bird.
  3. Prop the bird with the cavity facing up. Generously season the inside of the bird with garlic powder, rosemary black pepper and salt. As a matter of habit, if I'm using dried rosemary, I always crust it with my fingers before sprinkling it on the bird.
  4. Put the bird in a roasting pan, breast up, preferably one able to hold the bird rather snugly. The roasting pan should have a tight-fitting cover.
  5. Generously season the outside of the bird with garlic powder, rosemary, black pepper and salt.
  8. Add water (or wine) to the bottom of the roasting pan not over the top of the bird. You don't want to displace the seasonings.
  9. Cover and roast at 350°F for 30 minutes. Reduce heat to 275°F to 300°F.
  10. After the first hour, baste the bird with the juices in the roasting pan about every 30-45 minutes. Be sure to tip the bird, or use a basting bulb, to remove the juices from the cavity and add them to the juices in the bottom of the roasting pan.
  11. Roast for a total of 30-40 minutes per pound (including the first half hour). The bird should just about be falling off the bone.
  12. If there is too much liquid in the bottom of the pan or if the bird is not brown enough, uncover the pan for the last 30 minutes or so.
Recipe Notes

Poultry cooked this way will not submit to carving in a photogenic Norman Rockwell manner. It’s just a different style. It would be like trying to cut delicate slices from pulled pork. It’s not going to happen. That said, the joints will usually separate easily and you can cut along the grain rather than against the grain to portion appropriate-sized pieces for serving.

Copyright © 2017 by VillaSentieri.com. All rights reserved.

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Farfalle con Salsa di Piselli (Bowtie Pasta with Peas)

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April 13, 2017

I’ve been silent for a while.  It wasn’t planned or anticipated.  Life just got in the way.  Mostly it was good stuff, though.  For example…

My husband’s birthday…a momentous one that ends in a zero…held at Trio Restaurant in Palm Springs.

A wedding (complete with a photo shoot using vintage hats!)  Congratulations Suzanne and Bob!!

A visit to the Trinity Site on one of the two days per year that it is open to the public.

Cooking at Palm Desert Food and Wine Festival.  Yep!  I got to cook at the Palm Desert Food and Wine Festival!!

That was a hoot!

The main events of the food and wine festival are held in a series of large tents on the top of a parking garage in Palm Desert.  The festival starts off on Friday with a multi-course, wine-paired James Beard Luncheon prepared by celebrity chefs.  The festival continues on Saturday and Sunday with The Grand Tasting and Chef Demonstrations.  There are other related events, such as special dinners, in the area, too.

There are three tents devoted to chef demonstrations.  Each demonstration runs for about an hour.  One demonstration per hour in each of three tents for two days is a lot of demonstrations.

Local chefs bring their own ingredients for their demonstrations and also prepare samples of the finished dish for about 100 audience participants.  Mostly what the local chefs really bring is their restaurant kitchen staff to do the work.

Celebrity Chefs have a whole different deal.  They submit their recipes.  The ingredients get purchased.  The commercial kitchen, set up in a tent on top of the parking garage, preps all the ingredients for their demonstrations and also prepares between 75 and 175 portions of the dish to be distributed to the audience.

I got to prepare food for The Beekman Boys, Stuart O’Keeffe, Zac Young, and Aarti Sequeira, among others.  The Beekman Boys, Josh and Brent, were gracious enough to come into the kitchen and chat with me during their Facebook Live post!  The post is below.

https://www.facebook.com/FabulousBeekmanBoys/videos/10155167453464283/

 

So, while I wasn’t posting recipes, for which I apologize, I was further pursuing my cooking goals.

After being in Palm Desert, where it was definitely spring, and returning to Santa Fe where it was definitely winter, I felt the need for something spring-like.  This pasta, with a sauce of spring-like peas, was exactly the thing!  Unless you have absolutely glorious peas from a local farmers’ market, I suggest using frozen peas.  This is exactly what I did to create a taste of spring in the Santa Fe winter!

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 Farfalle con Salsa di Piselli (Bowtie Pasta with Peas)
If you have access to fresh peas from a farmers’ market please give them a try. If not, frozen peas work well. I’ve never had good luck with the “fresh” shelled peas in the supermarket. They always seem too starchy, and sometimes even musty tasting. Each pound of peas in the pod yields about 1 cup of shelled peas. For the 2 ¼ cups of peas needed for this recipe, I’d start with at least 2 ¼ pounds of peas in the pod. The vermouth adds an herbal quality and its slight bitterness balances the sweetness of the peas.
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Course Pasta, Noodles, and Sauces
Cuisine Italian
Prep Time 30 minutes
Cook Time 30 minutes
Servings
people
Ingredients
Course Pasta, Noodles, and Sauces
Cuisine Italian
Prep Time 30 minutes
Cook Time 30 minutes
Servings
people
Ingredients
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Instructions
  1. Combine the peas, thyme and water. Season with salt. Bring to a boil. If you are using frozen peas remove from the heat as soon as the water comes to a boil and continue with the next step. If you are using fresh peas, cook until the skins pop when bitten into and the peas are just cooked. This will take just a few minutes. The time is dependent on the peas so you’ll have to taste a pea about every 30 seconds so that you don’t overcook them.
  2. Remove ½ cup of the cooked peas from the cooking liquid. Rinse the peas under cool water to stop the cooking. Reserve the peas.
  3. Puree the remaining peas with the cooking liquid in a blender. Reserve the pea puree.
  4. Cut the pancetta into ¼ inch dice.
  8. In a wide, heavy-bottomed pan large enough to hold the cooked pasta comfortably, cook the pancetta over medium-low heat until crisp and brown. If the oil from the pancetta starts to smoke reduce the heat and add a tablespoon of water to quickly lower the temperature. It is important to brown the pancetta well, and to create browned bits in the bottom of the pan (without burning) to build flavor for the sauce.
  9. Remove the pancetta and reserve.
  10. Thinly slice the onion.
  11. Add the butter to the pan you just used to cook the pancetta. leaving in the rendered fat and browned bits. As soon as the butter melts, add the thinly-sliced onion and sauté until the onion is soft and golden brown.
  13. Add the vermouth to the sautéed onions. (Note, the recipe can be prepared several hours in advance up to this point. If doing so, as soon as you add the vermouth, remove the pan from the heat and cover tightly.)
  14. Bring the onion-vermouth mixture to a boil and boil rapidly until the vermouth has evaporated.
  15. Add the pureed peas, reduce heat to low, and gently warm the onion-pea puree mixture.
  16. Meanwhile cook the pasta in three quarts of heavily-salted, rapidly-boiling water. When the pasta is al dente, remove one cup of the cooking liquid and reserve.
  17. Drain the pasta and immediately add it to the warm onion-pea puree mixture.
  18. Increase heat to medium. Add the whole cooked peas, the pancetta, freshly ground black pepper to taste, and enough of the reserved pasta cooking liquid to make a sauce that just clings to the pasta. Cook for a minute or two to allow the sauce to bubble and thicken, stirring occasionally. Add more pasta cooking liquid as needed.
  19. Off the heat, add the Parmesan cheese. Stir well. Add a bit more pasta cooking water if the sauce becomes too thick after adding the Parmesan cheese.
  20. Add the fruity extra virgin olive oil, if using. Stir. Taste and adjust salt and pepper, if necessary.
Recipe Notes

Browning the pancetta and onions is critical to building flavor for the sauce.  It is better to use low heat than heat that is too high.  The starch in the pasta-cooking liquid helps to add body to the sauce.

Copyright © 2017 by VillaSentieri.com. All rights reserved.

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Limoncello (Italian Lemon Liqueur)

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March 13, 2017

I love mead, more so dry mead than sweet mead.  I first tasted mead at the age of 19 when my college roommate, Ray Hugh, and I visited his mother outside of London one summer.  For some reason, I never had it again but the experience stuck with me.  (I know you’re wondering how this is going to get around to Limoncello but read on!)

Fast forward to the late 1990’s when my husband began making wine at home.  We didn’t have a proper wine cellar at the time, though we ultimately built a temperature controlled wine cellar in the basement of the coach house at our estate on Oakdale Avenue in Chicago…right below the gear works that were once used to rotate the horse-drawn carriages on the floor above.

This is what the coach house looked like when we owned the property on Oakdale Avenue.

We had a whole row of five gallon carboys of grape juice bubbling away through air locks in our family room.  The wooden floors became stained purple.  Luckily we were planning on remodeling the room and tearing up the floor so it didn’t matter much.

The wine was surprisingly good.  We had both red and white.  We made labels for our “Rohkam House” wines that portrayed a picture of the house as it looked in the late 1880’s.  You can find that picture in a previous post.

After a few successes with wine, I asked Frank to make mead.  He settled on a recipe he fancied, though it was not entirely a traditional northern European mead.  It contained honey, of course, but the recipe specifically called for orange blossom honey which obviously has no connection to northern Europe.  The recipe also required some freshly squeezed orange juice instead of just water.  I was a bit skeptical about the non-traditional ingredients but…hey…I was finally getting my mead after all these years.

I found a beekeeper in Florida who would sell me five pounds of orange blossom honey from his own bees.  I ordered five pounds of honey.  I got fifty pounds sent overnight delivery!

It turns out that Muriel, the beekeeper, got two orders at the same time.  My order was for five pounds sent by UPS ground.  Someone else ordered 50 pounds sent express.  Muriel got the orders confused and we suddenly were in the business of making ten times as much mead as we had planned.

That also meant we needed ten time the number of oranges we had planned on to get enough juice.  I couldn’t bear to let those orange peels go to waste so I took out the recipe for limoncello that I got from relatives in Tuscany on our visit a couple of years earlier and decided to make it with orange zest instead of lemon zest.

I dubbed it arancello, using the Italian word for orange in the same way the Italian word for lemon is used to make the word limoncello.

I ultimately served it to friends and family visiting from Europe.  I explained what I had done to make it.  Not one of them had ever heard of anything like it but it was a hit.

Fast forward a decade or two and arancello started to be imported from Italy (often called orancello or orangecello).  While I can’t claim to have invented arancello, I am pretty sure it was not a common product when I got the idea to repurpose the family recipe for limoncello.

Oh, and that mead…it was pretty darn good.  We served it for many dinner parties in place of white wine.  Everyone thought it was wine.  It had that haunting floral quality so like a good Viognier.  Now that we have orange trees outside our door in Palm Springs maybe we can dig up that mead recipe again and make arancello as a buyproduct!

Print Recipe
 Limoncello (Italian Lemon Liqueur)
While you will find recipes for Limoncello made with vodka, using higher proof alcohol yields a more consistent extraction of the flavor compounds. The higher the proof, the better. However, 190 proof alcohol is not available everywhere so I’ve adjusted this recipe to use 151 proof alcohol. The original recipe, which came from family in Tuscany, called for less than half the amount of lemon zest I've used here. Over successive versions for over the last 2 decades, I find I like these proportions best. Lemoncello does not keep indefinitely. It is best to use this within a year. Use the freshest lemons you can find for the most flavorful limoncello.
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Course Beverages
Cuisine Italian
Prep Time 75 minutes
Passive Time 11 days
Servings
liters
Ingredients
Course Beverages
Cuisine Italian
Prep Time 75 minutes
Passive Time 11 days
Servings
liters
Ingredients
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Instructions
  1. The starting point: lemons in the tree in Palm Springs.
  2. Using a vegetable peeler, carefully pare zest from lemons without including any of the white pith. Use a peeler that removes the zest in strips, not the zesters that remove little tiny curls.
  4. Weigh the zest.
  5. Combine the zest and alcohol in a large glass jar with a tight-fitting lid. I use a one-gallon jar, though something of approximately three quarts will work just fine.
  6. Put the jar out of direct sunlight in an area that is at comfortable room temperature for seven days. Swirl the contents of the jar daily. The alcohol will not cover the zest so it is important to mix up the contents at least once a day.
  7. On the fifth day, combine the sugar and water in another glass jar or non-reactive container. Stir or swirl several times a day until all the sugar is fully dissolved.
  8. After the zest has macerated for a week in the alcohol, add the sugar syrup.
  9. The limoncello will initially become cloudy as some of the sugar comes out of solution.
  10. Allow the lemon zest to steep in the alcohol-sugar syrup mixture for an additional 3-4 days, swirling once or twice daily.
  11. It will become mostly clear after a few days. Because of the amount of lemon oil in this limoncello, it may remain slightly cloudy.
  12. It is important to not over-extract the lemon zest or the limoncello may become bitter.
  13. Strain the limoncello. Discard the zest. Divide the limoncello into bottles with tight-fitting lids. I like to use 750 ml liquor bottles.
  14. Store for at least one week before using to allow the flavors to mellow.
  15. Limoncello is best served frosty cold, over an ice cube or two. I like to keep a bottle in the freezer. It may get cloudy but just shake it well before using.
Recipe Notes

Copyright © 2017 by VillaSentieri.com. All rights reserved.

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Green Beans with Tomato Sauce and Bacon

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February 27, 2017

Earlier this month I wrote about my “crunchy vegetable” phase of cooking back in the 1970’s.  One of the dishes I was reacting to was my mother’s green beans with tomato sauce and bacon.  Honestly, though, I can’t tell you why.  It was, bar none, my favorite vegetable dish growing up.  Why, when I started cooking in my late teens, I thought I could make it better by cooking the beans until they were just crunchy is beyond me.

Chalk it up to youthful indiscretion.

Americans served a lot of mushy vegetables back then, no doubt, but the reaction shouldn’t be to turn every vegetable crunchy.  But I was just learning to cook and had a lot to learn, not only about technique, but about understanding the essence of a dish.

The essence of this dish is the silky texture (most definitely not mushy) of the beans cooked for a couple of hours in tomato sauce.  The textural change is accompanied by a flavor change that is unobtainable by quickly cooking the ingredients.

It’s actually pretty difficult to turn these beans mushy unless you boil them too long before adding them to the tomato sauce.  The tomato sauce reacts with the beans to somehow inhibit the development of mushiness.  I’m not sure, but it think it might be the acid in the tomatoes.

That first four minute boil is critical, however.  One time, thinking I could eliminate a step, I tried putting the cut up beans in the sauce without parboiling them first.  Mistake!  Four hours later the beans were still not cooked properly!

Green beans cooked in tomato sauce is a classic Italian combination.  The use of bacon clearly signals that this is Italian-American, however.  Italian recipes might use pancetta but not bacon.  Smoked foods are uncommon in traditional Italian cuisine.  The few that appear really stand out.

Pancetta and bacon are made from the same cut, pork belly.  Both are cured but only bacon is smoked.  Although I’ve made other versions of green beans in tomato sauce that are traditional Italian, rather than Italian-American, I keep coming back to this one as my favorite.

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 Green Beans with Tomato Sauce and Bacon
These long-simmered green beans in tomato sauce with bacon are an Italian-American favorite. The long, slow cooking is really essential to achieving the right texture and flavor. Although I've specified the amount of water in cups, when cooking with tomato paste my mother always measured water by the can. This dish would have had five tomato paste cans of water. She didn't quite fill them to the top so each can held about 5 1/2 ounces of water, or a little over three cups total. You may need to add more water, or to boil some away, to get a thick sauce.
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Course Vegetables
Cuisine Italian
Prep Time 25 minutes
Cook Time 3 hours
Servings
people
Ingredients
Course Vegetables
Cuisine Italian
Prep Time 25 minutes
Cook Time 3 hours
Servings
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Ingredients
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Instructions
  1. Cut the bacon into matchstick-sized pieces.
  2. Mince the garlic.
  3. In a heavy-bottomed pot, large enough to ultimately hold the beans, gently sauté the bacon until golden brown.
  4. Add the minced garlic to the bacon and bacon drippings and sauté until fragrant and just beginning to turn golden, about one minute.
  5. Add the tomato paste and sauté until it turns a shade darker and smells sweet.
  6. Add the water, stirring to combine. Cover and bring to a boil.
  7. Reduce to a simmer. Add salt, freshly ground black pepper to taste, oregano and sugar. Simmer, partially covered, for 45-60 minutes, stirring occasionally.
  8. Meanwhile, cut the tips off the beans at a diagonal. Cut the beans into pieces about 2 to 2 ½ inches long, also on the diagonal.
  9. Wash the beans in several changes of cold water. Cover with water and allow the beans to soak for 15 to 20 minutes, to fully plump up with water before cooking.
  10. Bring a large pot of heavily salted water (at least 4 quarts of water and ¼ cup of salt) to a boil.
  11. Drain the beans, add to the boiling water, and return to a boil as quickly as possible.
  12. Boil until the beans are just beginning to get tender, approximately 4 minutes. They will cook much longer in the sauce so be careful not to overcook them at this point.
  13. Drain the beans and add to the tomato sauce, which should have been cooking for 45-60 minutes by this point.
  14. Simmer until the beans are silky, but not mushy. This can take 2 hours, plus or minus. Go by texture, not time. The beans should be silky but still have some body.
  15. Taste once or twice while cooking and adjust salt, pepper and, if you wish, oregano.
Recipe Notes

You can make the sauce and partially cook the beans in advance. After the beans have been boiled, quickly chill them in a bowl of ice water. Cool the cooked sauce to room temperature.  Drain and add the partially cooked beans to the sauce.  Refrigerate until ready to complete cooking.

Copyright © 2017 by VillaSentieri.com. All rights reserved.

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Mom’s Pasta e Fagioli (Mom’s Pasta and Beans)

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February 22, 2017

We didn’t eat a lot of prepared foods growing up.  In fact we almost never did.  OK, there were a few times in the early 60’s where I got to try out those recently-invented “TV Dinners.”

I was well into adulthood before I had a real appreciation for the quality of the homemade food that was put on our table every day.

My mother made putting great food on the table seem effortless.  I remember many Sunday mornings when I’d wake up to find her making ravioli from scratch for our big midday meal: cooking the beef and spinach filling, preparing the dough, rolling and filling the ravioli, all the while a big pot of tomato sauce bubbling away on the stove.  It was just a family Sunday dinner!

Weekday meals were usually less elaborate but no less delicious; maybe homemade sausage, pan-fried potatoes, and a vegetable or two or maybe pasta with sauce leftover from Sunday.  It was always fun to walk into the kitchen to find her making something I’d never had before; something that her mother used to make.  Sometimes that wasn’t even at a defined meal time.

Now I think I understand.  My mother died in 1993 and I bet I didn’t make her version of pasta e fagioli for 20 years after her death.  Then one day, the desire for it just struck me and there I was, in the kitchen, cooking.

It’s become part of my regular routine again after that long hiatus.  Sitting down to a bowl of my mother’s pasta e fagioli is comforting; almost as comforting as if she had made it for me.  There’s just something about the combination of pasta, beans and red sauce that I can’t explain.  It triggers an emotional bridge to what feels like an earlier time in my life.  I’m guessing something similar prompted my mother to occasionally whip up dishes from her youth that she hadn’t made in decades, if ever.

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 Mom's Pasta e Fagioli (Mom's Pasta and Beans)
Follow the directions for Cannelini alla Toscana but use dried lima beans instead of cannellini and substitute ½ teaspoon of dried oregano and a sprig of fresh rosemary for the sage. There will be leftover beans that you can freeze or refrigerate for another use. You can also use two 15 ounce cans of Butter Beans in place of the home-cooked lima beans. Mom always used ditalini for this dish. These days, when you can find them (and it can be challenging) they have usually been upgraded from ditalini to ditali, though they are exactly what she used. More frequently, I use a slightly larger, but still rather small, pasta such as the mezzi rigatoni shown here.
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Course Pasta, Noodles, and Sauces
Cuisine Italian
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 1 1/2 hours
Servings
people
Ingredients
Course Pasta, Noodles, and Sauces
Cuisine Italian
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 1 1/2 hours
Servings
people
Ingredients
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Instructions
  1. Finely dice the onion. Sauté the onion in ¼ cup of olive oil until soft and golden.
  2. Add the crushed red pepper and sauté another minute.
  3. Add the tomato paste and sauté, stirring frequently until the tomato paste turns a shade darker and smells sweet, 2-3 minutes.
  5. Add the water, oregano, basil and salt and pepper to taste. Stir well to fully incorporate the tomato paste.
  6. Bring to a very low boil, partially covered, and cook 30-45 minutes stirring occasionally. Adjust seasoning as needed, tasting several times as the sauce cooks.
  7. Meanwhile, sauté the garlic in the remaining ¼ cup of olive oil very slowly until browned. Remove from the heat and reserve.
  8. The dish can be cooked several hours ahead to this point.
  9. Bring three quarts of water and three tablespoons of salt to a boil.
  10. While the water is heating, add the beans and their liquid to the tomato sauce, return to a simmer, and cook, partially covered till the pasta is ready.
  12. Cook pasta until it still has a small bit of chewy center. It will cook more in the sauce. Scoop out and reserve two cups of the pasta cooking liquid.
  13. Drain the pasta. Add the pasta to the tomato-bean mixture. Add the browned garlic and olive oil. Stir well, cover and cook on very low heat until the pasta is cooked but al dente and the sauce has thickened. Add some of the pasta cooking liquid as needed from time to time to create a smooth sauce.
  14. Off the heat stir in the Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. Taste and adjust seasoning.
  15. It is not unheard of for me to add an extra glug or two of olive oil at this point to get a luscious sauce. Stir and decide if another dash of pasta-cooking water is needed, as well.
Recipe Notes

Mezzi Rigatoni

 

 

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Salsicce con Cardone (Sausage with Cardoons)

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February 17, 2017

We made our move to multi-generational living in 1998 when my husband’s parents moved into the Coach House at our estate in Chicago, The Henry Rohkam House.  (There are a couple pictures of the main house in a prior post.)

Pretty quickly we settled into a routine of having meals together.  When we went to work, the dogs went to Grandma and Grandpa’s (21 feet away in the Coach House) for the day.

My husband started gardening with his father.  A large piece of our one-third-of-an-acre property in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood was turned over to cultivation.  We had grapes, strawberries, corn, tomatoes, eggplant, sweet peppers, radicchio, arugula, leaf lettuce, Swiss chard, okra, hot peppers of various types, an array of herbs and other vegetables that varied year by year.  The fruit trees never did very well.  The kiwi thrived but never bore fruit.  One of the four kiwi was accidentally injured and died.  In retrospect, it was probably the male plant (there were three female and one male plant), hence no fruit.

Every fall we canned and preserved foods in various ways.  We made jars of olives marinated in red wine vinegar and herbs from the garden.  We made herb-infused vinegar and olive oil.  We dried herbs for the winter.  We froze vats of tomato sauce.  I’ll admit to even freezing pesto which, while it doesn’t taste like its fresh-made cousin, is pretty awesome in the dead of a Chicago winter!

Some years there were enough strawberries to put up jam.  City squirrels can be quite bold, however.  I was standing alongside the garden one spring day when a squirrel, who had gone grocery shopping in our strawberry patch, literally ran over the top of my foot with a strawberry in his mouth on his way out of the produce isle.

The birds had Houdini-like skills.  Despite wrapping the grape arbor in yards of netting, the birds found their way in, decimated the grapes, and escaped.   The few grapes we were able to harvest were very sweet!

We built a temperature-controlled wine cellar in the basement of the Coach House.  My husband made wine for a few years but stopped when work got too busy.

I started cooking more often with my mother-in-law.  Every month or so, my husband’s grandmother, Noni, would come to visit for a weekend.  Noni was a marvelous cook.  Some dish always appeared during those weekends that I had never had before.  Sausage with Cardone was one of them.

For a vegetable that has been popular since the ancient Romans, I’m surprised I’d never hear of it.  I grew up eating sausage with peppers and onions.  Sometimes the sausage was cooked in a tomato sauce, sometimes not.  Cardone was a whole new thing!

This goes really well with polenta but it’s equally good on its own.  Leftover sauce can be put on pasta or can accompany a frittata.  You may notice from the pictures that we didn’t use as much sausage as called for in the recipe.  We didn’t want leftover sausage but that didn’t mean we didn’t want leftover sauce!  Sadly, the cardone usually all gets eaten on the first go-around but on those rare occasions where it doesn’t, I like to use it as a sandwich filling for lunch.

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 Salsicce con Cardone (Sausage with Cardoons)
Cardone looks like oversized celery. It is giant, about 2 feet long as sold trimmed in the grocery store. It is related to the artichoke and was popular among the ancient Romans. Cardone should always be served cooked. Leaves should be removed and not eaten.
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Course Mains, Meats
Cuisine Italian
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 2 1/2 hours
Servings
people
Ingredients
Course Mains, Meats
Cuisine Italian
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 2 1/2 hours
Servings
people
Ingredients
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Instructions
  1. The starting point: cardone from the market.
  2. Cut off the bottom of the cardone.
  3. Using a vegetable peeler (or knife if you are my mother-in-law), remove the leafy edges of the cardone.
  4. Remove any stringy parts of each rib.
  5. Cut the ribs into pieces approximately 4 inch long. Wash well.
  6. Bring 3 quarts of water to a boil. Add 3 tablespoons of salt and a pinch of baking soda. Add the cardone and boil until you can pierce it relatively easily with the point of a sharp knife. Do not overcook the cardone as it will be cooked further with the sausage.
  7. Remove the cardone from the water. Stop cooking by putting the cardone in a bowl of ice water. When cold, cut into pieces approximately 1 ½ inches long and reserve.
  8. If the sausage is not in links, cut into pieces approximately 4-5 inches in length. Using the tines of a fork, pierce the skin of each piece of sausage in several places.
  9. Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy-bottomed sauté pan or a wide, shallow casserole. Add the sausage and brown well on all sides.
  10. Remove the sausage from the pan.
  11. Add the onions, garlic, parsley, and rosemary to the sausage drippings in the pan. Sauté until the onions are soft and golden.
  12. Add the wine, if using. Allow wine to mostly cook away then add tomato puree and water.
  13. Return the sausage to the pot with the sauce. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper. Simmer, partially covered, for about an hour.
  14. Add the cardone. Taste for seasoning. Simmer, partially covered, until the cardone is tender, approximately 30-45 minutes.
  15. Pour into a serving dish and bring to the table.
Recipe Notes

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