Carciofi e Patate (Artichokes and Potatoes)

Name: Carciofi e Patate (Artichokes and Potatoes)
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 45 min
Yield: 6 people
Ingredients: 12 ounces frozen artichokes; 2 1/2 pounds russet potatoes; 3/4 medium onion (diced); 2 cloves garlic (minced); 6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil; 1/4 cup dry white wine; 2 tablespoons minced parsley; salt (to taste); black pepper (freshly ground, to taste)

4 Comments

January 13, 2021

January 7th is International Porchetta Day.

It was declared so by the participants in a charcuterie class at the Italian Culinary Institute in January 2019.

There is a private Facebook group of individuals who subscribe to the cult of porchetta. We agree to make porchetta annually on January 7th.

The charcuterie class in question began on January 7, 2019, one week before my three-month Master of Italian Cuisine course began. I made a point of getting to Italy early, really early, as I didn’t want to find myself in class with a sharp knife in my hand the day after landing, jetlagged from a 29-hour trip and an eight-hour time change.

**A traditional porchetta at a street fair in Bagni di Lucca.**

I arrived the evening of January 8th, almost a week before my course started. I was invited to go to dinner with the charcuterie class. I described that first chaotic day in my first dispatch from Calabria.

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The next day, Chef John invited me to sit in on the charcuterie class. Although not officially part of the class, I shared meals and course time with the group.

When International Porchetta Day was declared, with the date matching the first day of the charcuterie course, I became a member.

Traditionally porchetta is made with a whole pig, and not a small suckling pig, but a BIG one!

**Roasted cauliflower is an easy and dramatic side dish.**

When porchetta is made at home, it’s done with a smaller cut of meat. I use the shoulder, aka Boston Butt. At the Italian Culinary Institute, they use two cuts, the capo collo and a pork belly. The capo collo is a long muscle group in the shoulder that, in essence, is a large cylinder. The shoulder, and by extension the capo collo, contain beautiful marbling that makes a luscious roast.

At the Italian Culinary Institute, the belly is rolled around the capo collo. The fat of the belly protects the capo collo. It also makes a beautiful presentation. It also adds about 8 pounds to the weight of the roast. So, unless you’re cooking for a very large crowd, using the shoulder alone will more than likely be ample.

Given the limitations of the lock-down in Palm Springs where I’ve been sheltering in place, six of us, members of our COVID Pod, celebrated International Porchetta Day.

**My porchetta ready for the serving platter.**

Porchetta was obviously the centerpiece of the meal and I made my traditional version. Here’s a link to my Porchetta recipe.

I focused on side dishes that would compliment the roast and settled on a whole roasted cauliflower and a Roman dish called Carciofi e Patate (artichokes and potatoes). For dessert we had an Olive Oil Cake.

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Carciofi e Patate is traditionally made with whole artichokes, lots of them! In season, one can buy 12 artichokes for €1 in Italy! That’s right, about 10¢ each!!! I once used 12 artichokes when I made the dish as part of Easter Dinner. I spent more than $50 on artichokes for that one dish. Clearly when Italians describe the dish as “economical” they have no idea about artichoke prices in the United States.

While I prefer the dish made with fresh artichokes, I won’t do that again until I’m in Italy during artichoke season. Frozen artichokes work well and are much more budget-friendly.

Carciofi e Patate (Artichokes and Potatoes)

Carciofi e Patate is a classic Roman recipe. It pairs well with most roasts.

Course

Potatoes and Other Tubers, Vegetables

Cuisine

Italian

Prep Time

20 minutes

Cook Time

45 minutes

Servings

people

Ingredients

12 ounces frozen artichokes
2 1/2 pounds russet potatoes
3/4 medium onion diced
2 cloves garlic minced
6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup dry white wine
2 tablespoons minced parsley
salt to taste
black pepper freshly ground, to taste

Course

Potatoes and Other Tubers, Vegetables

Cuisine

Italian

Prep Time

20 minutes

Cook Time

45 minutes

Servings

people

Ingredients

12 ounces frozen artichokes
2 1/2 pounds russet potatoes
3/4 medium onion diced
2 cloves garlic minced
6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup dry white wine
2 tablespoons minced parsley
salt to taste
black pepper freshly ground, to taste

Instructions

Peel potatoes and cut in 8 wedges unless the potatoes are very large or very small.
Brown the potatoes in the three tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil in a large sauté pan over high heat.
When the potatoes are well-browned, reduce the heat to medium. Add half the onions and garlic.
Sauté until the onion is golden.
Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste. Add approximately ½ cup of water. Cover and cook on medium heat until cooked through, adding more water as needed, approximately 25 minutes. There should be no water left when the potatoes are cooked.
Meanwhile, sauté the remaining onions and garlic in the remaining extra-virgin olive oil in a sauté pan.
When the onions are golden, add the artichokes and salt and pepper to taste. Sauté briefly.
Add white wine, cover and braise until barely tender, approximately 10 minutes. The artichokes will cook further with the potatoes so do not over-cook them.
Add artichokes to the pan with the potatoes.
Sauté, uncovered, about 10 minutes longer, to meld flavors. Adjust salt and pepper.
Stir in parsley and serve.

Recipe Notes

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Recipes

Sformato di Patate (Italian Potato “Cake”)

Gnocchi di Patate (Potato Gnocchi)

2 Comments

April 4, 2018

My father didn’t like gnocchi.

As far as I know, it is the only food he refused to eat.

It was all about the texture. Mind you, this is from a man who’s comfort food was a BIG bowl of cold mashed potatoes with buttermilk poured over top.

I understand the texture thing but for me the offending texture is slimy…like Jello (or cold mashed potatoes with buttermilk).

The next worst texture is hot cereal. It’s not as bad as Jello but it’s not a favorite. It took a long time for me to enjoy polenta because it has a texture just like hot cereal. I think my dislike for hot cereal has diminished as I’ve gotten older and I can probably now keep Jello down, which as a kid wasn’t always the case.

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But gnocchi? In the pantheon of foods, gnocchi reign supreme. They are my favorite food. Not to be morose, but they would be my death row meal (assuming a prison chef could make them like my mother with her pepperoni sauce!).

The pepperoni sauce is an interesting twist.

Since my father didn’t like gnocchi, we didn’t have them when he was home for dinner. My father worked out of town from time to time, so there were weeknight meals where he wasn’t around.

**The back of a fork is commonly used to imprint ridges on gnocchi but a gnocchi board does a much better job**

My mother would freeze her Sunday sauce, which was made with large pieces of pork. Sometimes a container of sauce wouldn’t have any meat. A common Italian approach to adding a bit of protein to a meal of pasta with red sauce is to simmer some shelled hard-boiled eggs in the sauce for a little while and serve them with the pasta.

My mother did that, but she also would take pieces of pepperoni, pierce them with a fork in a few places, boil them for about 20 minutes to render some of the fat and to soften the meat, and then add them to sauce to simmer for half-an-hour or so.

That sauce, which only appeared on weeknights from leftover Sunday sauce is my favorite sauce for my favorite food!

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Let’s face it, pepperoni is an American creation. To be sure, it’s a riff on any number of Italian regional salame piccante (hot salami). In fact, you can’t get a pepperoni pizza in Italy but you can get a pizza with slices of salame piccante.

It took a while for our Italian relatives to wrap their heads around pepperoni. In Italian, pepperoni are peppers not a cured meat product. The word is also plural, not singular. Americans often adopt the plural form of an Italian word (whether changing the meaning or not) and then treat it like it’s singular.

Consider panini. One sandwich is panino. More than one are panini. The same is true with gnoccho and gnocchi or raviolo and ravioli. Americans tend to say paninis and raviolis (fingers on blackboard screeching sound) if they mean more than one. We don’t really have a rule about this as far as I know. It’s just random. Or so it appears to me.

Italian, on the other hand, has a very clear rule when adopting foreign words. The singular form of the word becomes the Italian word. That word is use for both the singular and the plural, with the adjective changing to indicate more than one.

Take bar, for example. The “Italian” word for bar is bar. (This is a critical bit of information that one learns early when taking Italian lessons.) If you’re going to the bar, in Italian you would say “il bar” (the bar). If you’re going out for a night of pub-crawling to many bars you would say “i bar” (the bars).

Now, you might ask yourself, when you would ever eat just one gnoccho. Gnocchi translates as dumplings. So if you had a large American or Eastern European dumpling, it would be a gnoccho, and you might have just one. Today, however, we are making small gnocchi, and one is never enough.

If you have a favorite family recipe and a bit of a story to tell, please email me at santafecook@villasentieri.com and we can discuss including it in the blog. I am expanding the scope of my blog to include traditional recipes from around the country and around the world. If you haven’t seen Bertha’s Flan or Melinda’s Drunken Prunes, take a look. They will give you an idea of what I’m looking for.

Gnocchi di Patate (Potato Gnocchi)

There are some very strong opinions about making gnocchi. The first is whether they should be very soft or somewhat firm. That preference tends to drive other decisions but sometimes in different directions. My husband’s Great Aunt Juliana liked soft gnocchi so she did not use eggs. She insisted that the gnocchi should be mixed while the potatoes were still hot, though other folks who like soft gnocchi use the potatoes after they’ve cooled and lost some of their moisture so less flour is needed. I like firmer gnocchi, so I use eggs. I also let the potatoes cool (as my mother did) because 1) it’s easier on the fingertips and 2) the trivial amount of moisture lost or not by cooling or not is no competition for the addition of eggs.

Course

Pasta, Noodles, and Sauces

Cuisine

Italian

Prep Time

5 minutes

Cook Time

1 hour

Servings

people

Ingredients

4 pounds russet potatoes
3 cups all purpose flour plus more as needed
2 tablespoons kosher salt
4 eggs

Course

Pasta, Noodles, and Sauces

Cuisine

Italian

Prep Time

5 minutes

Cook Time

1 hour

Servings

people

Ingredients

4 pounds russet potatoes
3 cups all purpose flour plus more as needed
2 tablespoons kosher salt
4 eggs

Instructions

Scrub the potatoes.
Put the potatoes in a large stockpot and cover with a generous amount of cold water. Bring to a rolling boil and cook until a knife can be easily inserted, approximately 20 minutes. This will depend on the potatoes and the altitude so begin testing after about 15-17 minutes.
Remove the potatoes from the water and allow them to cool enough to peel, about 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, put three cups of flour on the counter or a pasta board.
Pass the peeled, but still warm, potatoes, through a ricer on top of the flour. Note: it is very difficult to rice cold potatoes so this step should be completed as quickly as possible after the potatoes have been removed from the water.
Allow the potatoes to cool completely.
Sprinkle the salt on the potatoes.
Using your fingers, begin to mix in the flour.
Add two eggs. Work in the eggs, incorporating more flour.
Add the remaining two eggs and work in enough flour to make a dough that is just very slightly tacky. It will firm up a bit as the flour completely hydrates.
Cut off a small piece of dough and roll it into a cylinder approximately 1/2 inch in diameter.
After all the gnocchi have been rolled and cut bring a large pot of abundantly salted water to a rolling boil.
Add some of the gnocchi, maybe 18-24 depending on the amount of water.
As soon as the water returns to a full boil. Remove the gnocchi with a spider or slotted spoon.
Put them in a serving bowl with a small amount of whatever sauce you are using on the bottom.
Add more gnocchi to the boiling water.
Meanwhile drizzle a bit more sauce on the gnocchi in the bowl and sprinkle with a bit of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, if desired.
Add each batch of gnocchi to the serving bowl, keeping it warm in a low oven and sprinkling each later with some sauce (and cheese, if desired).
Once all the gnocchi have been added, gently stir the gnocchi to distribute the sauce and cheese.
Serve immediately.

Recipe Notes

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Recipes

Tiella (Southern Italian Vegetable and Pasta Casserole)

4 Comments

September 18, 2017

When I was growing up, we mostly socialized within the extended family plus a very few close family friends (that’s you, Joe and Betty Slivosky!).

It was a time (the 60’s) and place (small-town Western Pennsylvania) where it was rare to call in advance of a visit. One just showed up. This usually happened in the evening after dinner, though almost never on Monday or Thursday when the stores downtown were open until 9 PM and we dressed and went shopping after dinner.

Everyone would sit around (usually in the kitchen) drinking coffee (with caffeine), chatting…and smoking. Oh, the smoking! Occasionally the men would drink beer but unless it was a holiday or celebration of some sort, hard liquor was a rarity.

On Sundays, visiting frequently occurred (or at least started) in the afternoon and there might be two or three stops before heading home.

I can’t tell you how many times I heard the same stories. It’s one of the ways I developed a connection with family members, like my maternal grandparents, who died when I was very young.

To be sure, sometimes my cousin Donna and I would abandon the adults and pursue some childhood activity but we still hung out in the kitchen much of the time.

Often times the conversation would veer towards food; things my grandmother would make, the huge platters of cannoli one of my great aunts would make, what was eaten on holidays, and on and on.

There was the oft-repeated reminder of how my grandfather could come home late at night with a group of friends and how my grandmother would cook for them near midnight. There were stories of my grandmother cleaning and cooking chicken feet. My mother would talk about the time she killed a chicken in the basement and it got away from her and ran, headless, around the room. My father would remind everyone that the only food he didn’t like was gnocchi.

Food was a central feature of our lives.

So was conversation.

There were also times I would just sit in the kitchen and chat with my mother for hours. Relatives and food were common topics of conversation. There were dishes my grandmother made that I heard about over and over but never tasted because my mother never made them for some inexplicable reason. One of them was a quickly sautéed veal chop with a pan sauce made of the drippings in the pan, crushed canned tomatoes, peas, and seasonings. Back in the days when I cooked veal, I actually made it. Now I do it with pork chops.

The other dish that stands out in my memory from these conversations is Tiella. My mother talked of it frequently but never made it. The instructions were basic, a layer of pasta, a layer of potatoes, a layer of zucchini, and a can of tomatoes crushed by hand and poured on top. The whole thing was then baked. There wasn’t much of a discussion of which seasonings to use or proportions of ingredients. It was just assumed it would have garlic (of course it would have garlic) and the herbs that were commonly used in our family. Proportions…well…it just needed to look “right.”

For the number of times my mother rhapsodized about this dish, I can’t figure out why she never made it.

The first time I tried to make it was in the early 1990’s at our little house on Griffin Street in Santa Fe. That first time around, it didn’t live up to the hype, for sure, but it christened the house in an odd way.

In November 1992 my mother, my husband’s mother, and my husband’s grandmother traveled to Santa Fe with us for Thanksgiving week. We looked at property and fell for a little (1151 square foot) house on Griffin Street. My mother was terminally ill at the time. When we got back home, my mother insisted that we use her money for the down payment, which we did. She kept saying that she wanted to live long enough to return to that house in the spring. It didn’t happen. She died in early January.

All of the kitchen gear, china, and glassware for the house on Griffin came from my mother’s house. So, it was fitting that I should make this dish for the first time using my mother’s kitchenware in a house that we owned thanks to her.

It took me many years of working (off and on) on the seasonings and proportions to get it to taste great. (Well, I think it does.) The only real liberty I took with the dish is to use fresh tomatoes rather than canned when I make this in the summer.

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Tiella (Southern Italian Vegetable and Pasta Casserole)

This is a wonderful late summer dish when tomatoes are at their peak. If you make it at other times, use a 28 ounce can of whole tomatoes in place of the tomato puree and fresh tomatoes. Pour the liquid in the can over the potatoes instead of the puree. Crush the tomatoes by hand, add the seasonings described for fresh tomatoes, and arrange the crushed tomatoes on top.

Course

Mains, Sides, Vegetables, Vegetarian

Cuisine

Italian

Prep Time

1 hour

Cook Time

2 hours

Passive Time

30 minutes

Servings

people

Ingredients

5 ounces ditalini pasta
21 ounces russet potatoes peeled and sliced ¼ inch thick
22 ounces small zucchini peeled and sliced ½ inch thick
2 pounds ripe tomatoes sliced ⅓ inch thick
1 cup tomato puree preferably homemade (see note)
3/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
4 cloves garlic crushed
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
4-5 cloves garlic minced
1 tablespoon minced fresh rosemary
3 tablespoons minced fresh oregano
1/4 cup fresh basil cut into chiffonade
1/4 cup minced fresh parsley
1 cup breadcrumbs made from day old Italian or French bread
salt
black pepper freshly ground

Course

Mains, Sides, Vegetables, Vegetarian

Cuisine

Italian

Prep Time

1 hour

Cook Time

2 hours

Passive Time

30 minutes

Servings

people

Ingredients

5 ounces ditalini pasta
21 ounces russet potatoes peeled and sliced ¼ inch thick
22 ounces small zucchini peeled and sliced ½ inch thick
2 pounds ripe tomatoes sliced ⅓ inch thick
1 cup tomato puree preferably homemade (see note)
3/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
4 cloves garlic crushed
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
4-5 cloves garlic minced
1 tablespoon minced fresh rosemary
3 tablespoons minced fresh oregano
1/4 cup fresh basil cut into chiffonade
1/4 cup minced fresh parsley
1 cup breadcrumbs made from day old Italian or French bread
salt
black pepper freshly ground

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Combine the olive oil and crushed garlic in a small sauté pan. Sauté garlic until lightly browned. Remove the garlic and reserve the oil.
Put the raw ditalini in the bottom of a deep, circular casserole, approximately 10 inches in diameter. The pasta should form a single layer with a fair amount of extra room for it to expand.
Add 2 tablespoons of Parmesan cheese, ¼ of the minced garlic, and 2 tablespoons of the garlic oil and mix well.
In a bowl, toss the sliced potatoes with half the rosemary, ⅓ of the oregano, ¼ of the basil, 2 tablespoons of Parmesan cheese, ¼ of the minced garlic, 2 tablespoons of the garlic oil, and a generous amount of salt and pepper.
Arrange the potatoes neatly in overlapping layers on top of the ditalini. Do not wash the bowl.
Season the tomato puree with salt and pour over the potatoes.
In the same bowl used for the potatoes, toss the zucchini with the remaining oregano, ¼ of the basil, the remaining rosemary, 2 tablespoons of Parmesan cheese, ¼ of the minced garlic, 2 tablespoons of the garlic oil, and a generous amount of salt and pepper.
Arrange the zucchini on top of the potatoes. Do not wash the bowl.
Neatly arrange half the tomatoes on top of the zucchini. Season with half the remaining minced garlic, half the remaining basil, and salt and pepper.
Arrange the remaining tomatoes on top and season with salt and pepper as well as the remaining garlic, basil, and all the parsley.
Put the tiella in the preheated oven.
Remove the crusts from several slices of day-old Italian or French bread. Whiz the bread in a food processor to make coarse crumbs.
While the tiella bakes, toss the breadcrumbs with the remaining garlic oil in the bowl used for the potatoes and zucchini.
After the tiella has baked for 90 minutes, sprinkle the oiled crumbs on top and bake till golden, approximately 30 minutes more.
Allow to rest at least 30 minutes before serving. The tiella can be served warm or at room temperature. It can also be reheated in the oven briefly before serving, if desired.

Recipe Notes

Here’s the link for my recipe for homemade tomato puree (passata di pomodoro).

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Recipes

Mom’s Potatoes with Tomato Sauce

2 Comments

July 19, 2017

Pasta. Potatoes. Bread.

I crave carbohydrates. I can go about three to four days without eating pasta before I start to really crave it.

Funny, because we only had pasta about once or twice a week while I was growing up.

We did, however, have potatoes on many of the intervening days.

Sometimes we’d have gnocchi (little pasta dumplings made with potatoes and flour) or pierogi (pasta stuffed with potatoes)! Though there are many other pierogi fillings, potato and cheese was the preferred variation in our house.

Once, when I hadn’t been home from college for a while, I asked my mom to make either pierogi or baba (sometimes Anglicized to bubba) for me for dinner. She made both. There wasn’t a piece of meat in sight. She knew me all too well. Meanwhile, the two college friends who came home with me were aghast at the absence of meat…and vegetables for that matter!

Americans, by and large, are not protein deficient so the occasional meal without meat or another major protein source isn’t an issue.

My mom’s potatoes with tomato sauce were usually served alongside sausage. Typically, it would be hot Italian fennel sausage that was browned in a skillet then braised slowly with some water to tenderize it.

If we were having kielbasa, the second most common sausage in our house, my mom would make a version of these potatoes without the tomato sauce. She’d get the potatoes good and brown and then cover the pan for a bit to trap the moisture and tenderize the potatoes without making them mushy.

Since my mom made a big pot of slow-cooked Southern Italian sugo most every Sunday, there was a ready supply of homemade tomato sauce for these potatoes. In my house, unfortunately, I don’t make that kind of sauce often enough (though I plan on changing that) and it always seems like a luxury to use some of it for these potatoes as opposed to putting the sauce on pasta.

I have found, however, that my uncooked pizza sauce works well. In a pinch canned or bottled tomato puree is good too (or even one of those 8 ounce cans of tomato “sauce”). If using canned puree, add a pinch or two of oregano for flavor.

While Italian versions of potatoes cooked in tomato sauce usually end up being more “saucy,” this Italian-American version turns the tomato sauce into little more than a coating on the potatoes.

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Mom's Potatoes with Tomato Sauce

This variation on home-fried potatoes was common in our house. Cooking potatoes in tomato sauce is very Italian but this variation, which includes bell pepper and onion, and where the tomato sauce is basically cooked away, is more Italian-American. The tomato sauce could be leftover homemade pasta sauce (without meat) or pizza sauce. It can also be canned tomato puree. If using puree, I suggest adding a few pinches of dried oregano for flavor.

Course

Potatoes and Other Tubers, Sides

Cuisine

Italian

Prep Time

15 minutes

Cook Time

75 minutes

Servings

people

Ingredients

2 1/2 pounds russet potatoes medium size
1/3 cup oil such as corn, canola, or olive
1/2 green bell pepper
1/2 medium onion
1 cup tomato sauce preferably homemade
1 teaspoon salt plus more, to taste
black pepper freshly ground, to taste

Course

Potatoes and Other Tubers, Sides

Cuisine

Italian

Prep Time

15 minutes

Cook Time

75 minutes

Servings

people

Ingredients

2 1/2 pounds russet potatoes medium size
1/3 cup oil such as corn, canola, or olive
1/2 green bell pepper
1/2 medium onion
1 cup tomato sauce preferably homemade
1 teaspoon salt plus more, to taste
black pepper freshly ground, to taste

Instructions

Peel the potatoes. Cut them crosswise into ¼ inch thick slices.
Cut the bell pepper into 1/3 inch dice.
Dice the onion.
Heat oil over medium-high heat in a 12 inch skillet.
When the oil is hot, add the potatoes. The potatoes should start sizzling immediately. Season the potatoes with 1 teaspoon of salt and a generous amount of freshly ground black pepper. Do not stir the potatoes just yet.
Allow the potatoes to brown on the bottom.
These are getting browner on the bottom but not ready to turn yet.
When the potatoes on the bottom have turned golden brown, use a spatula to flip and separate them.
When approximately 1/3 of the potatoes are browned, add the bell pepper.
Continue cooking, allowing the potatoes on the bottom to brown more before flipping and separating, until about ½ of the potatoes are browned and the bell pepper is just beginning to char.
Add the onion.
Continue cooking until the potatoes are nicely browned and the onion is golden. Adjust the heat as needed to prevent the potatoes and onions from burning, though a few dark spots won’t be a problem.
Taste and adjust salt and pepper.
Add the tomato sauce to the potatoes. Mix well.
Reduce the heat to low and cook, uncovered, until the potatoes are tender, but not mushy, stirring occasionally. Approximately 45-60 minutes more. The tomato sauce should have pretty much completely evaporated, leaving the potatoes coated in red.
The potatoes ready to serve.

Recipe Notes

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Carciofi e Patate (Artichokes and Potatoes)

Gnocchi di Patate (Potato Gnocchi)

Mom’s Potatoes with Tomato Sauce

A Passion for Traditional Recipes