All posts by Gary

Pear, Celery and Arugula Salad with Lemon Dressing

December 26, 2016 Gary 10 Comments

December 26, 2016

I grew up in a family that put salad on the table at the same time as the rest of the meal. I married into a family that does the same. However, in the years between leaving home to go to college and getting married I most definitely converted to serving salad after the main part of the meal was over. Notice, I didn’t say main course because the other change I made was thinking of the meal as comprising an antipasto (even if it is just a nibble of cheese and a cracker for a family meal) followed by, what Italians would call, the first course (il primo piatto) followed by a second course (il secondo piatto).

In an Italian meal, the first course is usually pasta, or soup, or risotto. The second course usually consists of meat or fish with several side dishes (contorni). After that comes the salad. Granted, there are exceptions to this sequence, even in Italy. One of the most classic exceptions is serving Risotto alla Milanese with a breaded and fried veal chop. OK, so these days, I try not to eat baby animals, so veal is pretty much off the menu at our house, but the point is Risotto alla Milanese is typically served with the meat, not before the meat.

The general rule that the sequence is antipasto, then first course, then second course, then salad was made abundantly clear when my Italian tutor had dinner at our house a few years ago. For some reason, even though my in-laws grew up in Italy, we served spaghetti and meatballs (very good spaghetti and meatballs, mind you!). Where it got interesting, however, is that we all ate the spaghetti and meatballs at the same time (for full disclosure, I didn’t touch my salad until afterwards). My tutor, hailing from Italy however, ate her pasta first. Only then did she put a meatball or two on her plate for her second course. Only after that did she touch her salad!

When I am serving dinner for company, the salad always comes after the second course. I’d rather not serve salad than serve it with the rest of the meal. Salads, by design, have sharp dressings meant to cleanse the palate. You can’t go back and forth between a subtly seasoned dish (whether it be pasta or fish or meat) and salad and do justice to the subtlety of the first. The vinegar and/or lemon juice and/or mustard (and/or whatever else you put in your salad dressing) doesn’t allow that. Forget what it does to the wine that you’ve paired with the dish! If it’s just family, however, in the interest of domestic harmony, the salad goes on the table at the beginning. I still don’t eat mine till the end but I can’t say the same for others.

Pear, Celery and Arugula Salad with Lemon Dressing

Pears add a welcome freshness to this salad that is a perfect antidote to winter when so little really good fresh produce is available. This may be a lot of pear for some but the sweet juicy taste is a great contrast to the crunch of the celery and the peppery bite of the arugula.

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Prep Time 15

Total Time 15

Servings: 6 people

Ingredients Method Notes

Ingredients

2 pears, ripe and juicy
3 stalks celery
5 ounces baby arugula
2 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice freshly squeezed
5 tablespoons olive oil extra virgin
18 curls Pecorino Romano cheese
fine sea salt to taste
Freshly ground black pepper to taste

Method

Squeeze about half a fresh lemon to make 2 ½ tablespoons of juice. Allow the juice to sit, uncovered, at room temperature for about an hour before using it to dress the salad. The flavor of the juice will improve.
Remove the top of the celery stalks, the part where the center stalk gets much thinner and smaller stalks come off the sides. Reserve these pieces for another use. Cut the remaining celery stalks on a long diagonal to create thin long pieces.
Using a sharp knife or cheese paring knife, cut about 18 curls of Pecorino Romano cheese.
Peel the pears and cut into quarters lengthwise. Core the pears. Slice into thin wedges.
Combine the lemon juice and olive oil. Shake well to combine.
Toss the arugula and celery with about 2/3 of the lemon-olive oil dressing. Season with salt and pepper to taste and toss again.
Divide the arugula and celery onto six plates.
Toss the pears in the remaining lemon-olive oil dressing. Arrange the pear slices and Pecorino Romano cheese on top of the arugula. Season with freshly ground black pepper. Serve immediately.

Notes

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Recipes

Totos (Italian Chocolate Spice Cookies)

December 21, 2016 Gary 33 Comments

December 21, 2016

Homemade cookies and pastries were staples of my childhood. Trays of cookies showed up for holidays, celebrations, weddings, funerals, and, sometimes, for no apparent reason.

My mother along with relatives and friends set up a cookie-making operation that went on every night for weeks leading up to my sister’s wedding. The overseer was Annie Castagnola, a family friend. She had a thin spiral-bound 3-inch-by-5-inch notebook of cookie recipes. The notebook was the kind we used in grade school to write down our homework assignments. Annie’s recipes were a curated collection gathered from a host of “old Italian women,” my grandmother included.

The little notebook was coveted by more than a few cooks. Annie, however, did not share her recipes, even when those recipes came from relatives of the very people who were asking for them. I know, my mother was one of those people who wanted some of her mother’s recipes. Annie wouldn’t budge. The situation got resolved, however, during the cookie-baking marathon for my sister’s wedding. One night, Annie left her little notebook at our house overnight. Nobody’s confessing, but there are a few cookie recipes in my mother’s recipe box (sitting on my bookcase) written in my twelve-year-old hand.

Annie died a while back. Her little notebook is most likely gone forever and along with it the baking secrets of a whole group of “old Italian women.”

Of all the cookies that showed up throughout the year, my favorites were the various kinds of cakey cookies, my mom’s Genets, Aunt Margie’s aptly named “Colored Cookies,” and my cousin Angie Catanese’s Sesame Seed Cookies, to name a few. These cakey cookies, which were not very sweet by American standards, were usually little balls but not always. Genets are lemon flavored knots. Colored Cookies are vanilla flavored balls, each made with four or five pinches of dough of different colors rolled together. Sesame cookies are little logs, perfect for dunking into some Vin Santo. For me, though, the best of these cakey cookies are Totos, little chocolate spice balls.

Totos (Italian Chocolate Spice Cookies)

These little chocolate balls are intended to have a good kick from an array of spices. Lard is the traditional shortening to use. I render my own. If you need these to be vegetarian, or you just don't want to use lard, you can use solid vegetable shortening. Heck, you can even use clarified butter but that is way off the traditional scale!

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Prep Time 45

Cook Time 2

Total Time 2 45

Servings: 8 dozen cookies

Ingredients Method Notes