tagliatelle with mushroom sauce

a plate of pasta.

loves long simmering in mixed company

don’t you feel good already?  Imagine really toothsome pasta, lavish with but not overwhelmed by a subtle sauce.  It is too early in the season for tomatoes, but not for butter.  Butter, onion and mushrooms.

thus inspired, we ate tagliatelle with mushrooms on the fire escape.  Sitting on the chipped dark green iron, amidst the pots of verdant herbs and lettuces, holding green plates of golden yellow noodle nests with earthy brown mushrooms.  A gluttonous silence fell; the sun set.  We lifted the plates to our chins and twined the pasta on our forks, shamelessly plowing mushrooms into our mouths left gleaming with butter.

fresh, hand cut pasta cannot be hyperbolized.  It wants your time and attention then rewards you lavishly.

to make enough to generously (and, really, is there any other way?) feed two, measure out a heaping cup of flour in a large, heavy bowl—one that will be comfortable for the movements of kneading—and make a hollow in the center, like a volcano.  Most Italian cookbooks seem to have extensive discussions of flour, how it varies in glutinousness and absorbency and flavor.  Interesting and tasty information; worth investigating between the pages.  For now, know that unbleached all-purpose flour works well for pasta.

carefully break 4 cold eggs over your fingers to hold the yolk back, letting the whites fall into a large clean bowl and slipping the yolks into the hollow in the flour.  Those egg whites will keep in the fridge for breakfast, or they whip up lickety-split into meringues for dessert that will slowly bake in a low oven while you’re puttering in the kitchen.  Leave all the eggs to come to room temperature.  Do something else for an hour.

whisk the egg yolks into the flour bit by bit with a fork then stir the lot together with a wooden spoon.  Add a bit more flour or egg white as necessary for the dough to come together.  When your dough is pulling into a ball, flour your hands and kneed it against the walls of the bowl, adding more flour if needed.  Cradle the bowl and press into the dough with the heel of your hand, rolling it along the sides of the bowl.  Turn the dough and repeat.  Work the dough until it becomes elastic and satiny.  Pasta dough is a bit stiff, so kneading for 8 to 10 minutes can be a challenge but have faith.  Supposedly spinach pasta is softer and easier to work, and we plan to try spinach noodles for lasagna this week (stay tuned).  Let your ball of dough rest for an hour.

using as many mushrooms of as many sorts as you have, pick the stems off and wipe their caps gently clean with a cloth.  Slice the caps and set aside.  We had a generous 2 cups cremini and maitake.  Peel and quarter a small onion, slice it fine.  Heat a heavy skillet over high heat, and once it is hot turn the heat down.  Add a chunk of butter and puddle of olive oil, heat and add the onions.  When the onions begin to sizzle and soften add the mushrooms.  Stir and toss and cook over high heat for 5 minutes or so.  Sprinkle with salt and fresh pepper.  Turn the heat down and cook slowly, stirring occasionally, for an hour.  This takes some care to carry off without scorching, so add more butter as you go and maybe a swig of white wine.  The surprisingly long cook time is a revelation in flavor, and a tip from Marcella Hazan’s Master Class in Marcella Says…

dramatic mushrooms

the untamed, bosky quality that draws you to [mushrooms’] flavor emerges with very long, slow cooking after they have completely shed their vegetal waters….  Cook mushrooms slowly in olive oil for at least an hour, longer if you are making a large amount, until they are gelatinously soft.  Hover over the pan, and when your nose picks up a scent reminiscent of a dark, leaf strewn forest floor, the mushrooms are done.

she also recommends butter-based sauces for fresh pastas, whose texture is glossed over by oil.  The loving handling of the dough, tugged and pulled, gently roughens the surface, which swells luxuriantly with a coating of hot butter.

returning to your pasta, separate the ball into two or three parts, whatever is manageable for your work space.  Lightly flour a clean counter or tabletop.  Flatten the dough into a disk then roll it out, moving from the center to the edge, turning the disk a quarter turn every few passes.  When it is as wide as works, lengthen the sheet by rolling towards and away from you without turning the dough.  As you work, stretch the dough on the rolling pin or, in my case, empty juice jar.  Starting at the end farthest from you, roll the edge over the pin towards you and hold down the sheet resting on the counter and gently pull, rolling the pin towards you.  Work the dough on the pin by moving your hands away from each other from the center out towards the edges, tugging the dough along.  Let the sheet fall over the side of your work surface and hang.  The dough can be worked so thin you can read newsprint through it.  If the dough seems too fragile then thicker pasta is still delicious.  Let this sheet rest while you roll out the next sheet.

to cut noodles, dust a rested sheet of dough with flour and roll it into a loose log about 3 inches wide.  With a sharp knife, slice across the roll to make ribbons in whatever noodle width suites you.  Ours were slightly wider than traditional tagliatelle which is slightly wider than fettuccine.  Unroll the slices and spread your noodles out on dry cloths to dry.

bring a big pot of water to boil; salt it generously.  Gently hand your noodles into the rolling water.  Stir them a few times and cook for about 6 minutes, until al dente.  Try one, you’ll know.  Drain and toss with butter, salt and fresh pepper.  Serve immediately in shallow bowls or plates topped by the mushrooms.

fire escape salad

come as you are!

the trouble with writing about salad is that making salad is not really cooking but assembling.  Yet, these are essential ensembles.  Consider this your salad reminder— salads make a fine meal from a cool kitchen.  With global weirding subjecting us at random from this day forth to the heat formally relegated to the official months of summer, the oven’s days are numbered.  Even off the shaded garbage courtyard, this Brooklyn apartment kitchen can get hotter than crêpes suzette come summer.  Maybe the possibilities of salad make hot weather an ideal time for wooers-not-cookers to court; salad can be high on haute and low on technique.  What matters most is the freshness of the goods, and the whole rainbow of plantdom is pretty much a candidate. It goes without saying that salad is really good for you.

this salad thrills because it is composed mostly of bounty off our fire escape, where we’re nurturing a container garden of lettuce and herbs, plus catnip for the miraculous flying cat, the K. Pidds.

the k. pidds

in scavenged tubs, two kinds of lettuce are putting out sails of green and red leaves.  After harvesting greens the size of my hand, the still unfurling centers promise more salad to come.  I hope to add Tom Thumb and Little Gem.  If we add rocket, soon we’ll have mesclun.

authorities claim the key to a gorgeous salad is well-rinsed and gently, thoroughly dried greens.  Simple oil and vinegar dressing clings to dry leaf sides.  In Unplugged Kitchen, Viana la Place not only feels “a keen excitement” when she sits down to eat a dish of beautiful green leaves, she writes: “Harvesting lettuce leaves in the garden right before supper creates a romantic vision, but it also allows us to derive the full benefits from each ruffled, fragrant leaf.”

a heartfelt Italian cook, Viana delivers 25 recipes for lovely salads, including beloved veggies: purslane, artichokes, beets, and old fashioned potato and nasturium salad.  As I nod to her here, she gleefully shares “salade fatigue” by 1960s fashion impresario Simonetta, an Italian in Paris and a Snob in the Kitchen:

many of Simonetta’s salads, including this one, call for the salad to “season” for an hour before serving.  For Simonetta, a salad must be fatigué, “tired,” to be good; it must be “mixed, beaten, and drunk with its dressing.”

current food fashions have veered away from greens besotted with dressing but beaten and drunk have a certain camp appeal.  She recommends whacking towel wrapped greens against the counter to tenderize them, also a satisfying way to call forth the essential oils in herbs going whole leaf into salad.

fire escape salad

our herb garden includes spicy or Greek basil, a diminutive cousin of the towering Italian type classically paired with fresh sliced tomatoes and creamy mozzarella in mid-summer.  Also tiny, forest green peppermint.  Lime basil, with slender, petal-thin leaves.  Sage that has since been menaced by the weather and lost its leaves but seems to be reviving.  Creeping thyme, lots of it, my favorite.

rosemary too, which is now only three branches strong but with care will become a bush and burst forth with fragrant purple blossoms.  Those will go in the salad too.  Rosemary needles, with the resiny toughness of an evergreen (though it’s a member of the mint family), are better cooked, even for salad.  Bringing me off the fire escape and into the pantry for staples that made this salad a meal.

cannellini beans cooked with one healthy branch of our little shrub and a bit of salt and fresh ground pepper.  When boiled tender, drain the beans in a colander and toss with a pour of olive oil, salt, fresh pepper and handfuls of fresh herbs.  While the beans cook, slice a red onion very fine and soak the shreds in ice water for at least 10 minutes to take the bite out.  Marinade in balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper for as long as you like.

in your biggest, best salad bowl, gently combine the beans and onions with your greens, including that succulent lettuce and fresh herbs.  Just lift the onions out of their marinade with a fork.  Despite Simonetta’s preferences, the vinegar soaked onions and oiled beans will carry plenty of dressing into the salad.  Croutons are nice, and grated parmesan.  Serve with crusty white bread toasted and sliced, along with a plate of very fine olive oil with a pool of honey in its center, sprinkle with sea salt and a crank of fresh pepper.  Trust me.

vol au vent mushrooms

vol-au-vent: a large shell of light, flaky pastry for filling with vegetable, fish, or meat mixtures.
origin: 1820–30; < F: lit., flight on the wind

marcella hazan writes that mushrooms are nature’s own vol au vent.
begging to be filled and bedded and baked together.
these are not flaky bottoms, no, but succulent and earthy with notes of ancient witchiness.

for our most recent feast, i translated this nonna di cucina’s cappelle di funghi ripiene recipe for the radical muffin kitchen.  so I omitted the pancetta and anchovies, but I did add the egg, which I think binds the whole thing together and is hazan’s best advice.  i also left out the parsley, only because i forgot, and it wasn’t missed.

with just a dry towel, we wiped off about two dozen mushrooms, a mix of cremini and shitake, then chose those with the deepest, sturdiest hollows for stuffing.  Any casserole of an accommodating size will work, and we had a wonderful piece: a round shallow, terra cotta casserole with a glazed interior and raw exterior.  Sweep your casserole with olive oil and nestle the mushrooms in side by side, touching but not over lapping.  You won’t use so many mushrooms – i think a baker’s dozen fit in our pan- so save some for the filling and some for something else wonderful.  Unless, of course, you have a huge pan then double the recipe for the filling and have a grand fete…

mince half a red onion and begin sautéing it in a hot fry pan with melted butter, about 4 tablespoons.  Use 1/3 cup olive oil if you want less dairy fat.  Mince and add 4 or 5 mushroom heads and 3 or 4 cloves of garlic.  Salt a bit; pepper a bit.  Find your zen.  When the onions are translucent turn off the heat and add several stripped stems of thyme.

in a bowl, mix together ¼ cup each ricotta cheese, shredded parmesan and bread crumbs.  Add a beaten egg then the cooled onion/mushroom mixture along with several shredded leaves of basil.  Pack each of the mushroom heads generously with the cheese mixture.

in a smaller bowl, mix about ¼ each of bread crumbs, shredded parmesan, and chopped and whole pine nuts.  Sprinkle this over the stuffed shrooms.  Dash with paprika if you like.  Bake at 375° for half an hour or until the top is beautifully crusted and golden.  Partway through baking, it is lovely to splash a little moscato in the pan if you are drinking it anyway.  Turn the pan at least once for good measure.  Serve to friends just out of the oven or throughout dinner; they sit fairly well.

manga manga!

white beans italiana

dear maria,

sorry for the delay in sending the recipe, but I needed to experiment to see how I make white beans.  I made herbed white beans with roasted garlic, and I think it will work for you:

Dried beans generally double in size when you soak and cook them, so three cups dried will come out about 6 cups cooked and that is probably a good amount for a family dinner leaving some for the next day (hooray!).  I used and favor dried cannellini beans, white kidney beans, one of the beans common to Italian cooking, but this will work with any white bean, like navy beans, too.

Bring a big stockpot of water to a boil, turn off the heat and leave your dried beans for an hour to soak.  Drain the soaked beans and bring a fresh pot of water to a boil, about double the amount of water to beans.  Peel a few cloves of garlic and quarter a small onion; add these to the boiling water.  Add a few stalks of rosemary, thyme or both as well.  Add your beans, cover the pot and bring it back to a boil.  Salt and pepper the water and give it all a good stirring.  Simmer, stirring occasionally, for half an hour and check the beans for tenderness.  They may need to cook for up to half an hour more.

Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 400° and strip off the papery outermost layers of three heads of garlic.  Slice off the tough, root end.  Coat with olive oil and bundle in foil.  Stick them in the oven and roast, turning occasionally, for half an hour.  Let cool on top of the stove or out of the way until cool to handle.

Drain the cooked beans and dump into a big serving bowl, picking out the onion, garlic and herb stems.  Chop a few tablespoons of fresh thyme or rosemary or both and stir them in.  Pop the roasted garlic from their skins and stir them in.  Drizzle with rosemary, sprinkle with salt and pepper, stir.  Drizzle again with olive oil, sprinkle with paprika and serve with grated paramesean cheese.

Good hot or room temperature or reheated, so this is a fine dish for making in advance and sitting for a long time at the table.

lemon & thyme risotto

1 small sweet onion
1 ½ cups Arbario rice
1 cup white wine
5 cups veggie stock
2 organic lemons
fresh thyme
1 cup shredded parmesan cheese
3 tablespoons of butter

zest your two lemons, scrapping their bright yellow peel with the finest side of a grater or a file.   Pick the thyme leaves off their stalks, generating about 2-3 tablespoons of fresh herb.

heat a stockpot over a medium flame, and add in a tablespoon or two of olive oil and of butter.  Add in the rice and stir to coat and cook 3-5 minutes to toast.  Turn up the heat and pour in a cup of white wine.  Bring to a boil, stirring until the wine is absorbed.  Add another cup of wine and squeeze in half a lemon.  Stir until absorbed.  Add the veggie stock ½ a cup at a time, alternating with fresh lemon juice, and stirring until the liquid is absorbed each time.  Cook, adding liquid, until the rice is al dente and the risotto is creamy, about 20 minutes- ½ an hour.

stir in the lemon zest, thyme and cheese.  Pour in another slug of highest quality olive oil, a dash of salt and pepper.  Serve in big shallow bowls.

pasta and fennel meet balls

uncork a bottle of respectable red table wine. Pour a half a cup into a wine glass with a generous bowl, swirl. Enjoying your wine, read this recipe entirely:

slice two yellow onions and one red bell pepper. Smash, peel, and mince five cloves of garlic. Setting aside the rest for your sauce, two of the cloves and a handful of the onion are for your faux meat balls.

mince this onion finely. In a mortar with a pestle, crush two teaspoons of fennel seeds with 2 teaspoons of coarse sea salt. In a big bowl, add these spices and a teaspoon of black pepper to the onions and garlic. Add a handful of quick cooking oatmeal and one egg. These are made with egg in a nod toward my grandfather’s original recipe, but you can omit the egg and the oatmeal and have tasty balls (note: the oatmeal or bread or cracker crumbs, is a good extender to make more balls for cheaper). Let this all rest together while you get on with the sauce. Stick it in the fridge if you are neurotic about leaving out egg at room temperature.

in a hot pot—a large stock pot with a heavy bottom, heated over a medium flame—toast a proportion to taste of hot and sweet paprika and red pepper flakes. I used about two teaspoons of sweet paprika and one teaspoon of hot paprika and red pepper flakes. Pour olive oil into the pot, about three tablespoons, bring to hot and pour the red pepper and onion and garlic into the pot. Cover and cook over medium-high for five minutes: in a series of 3 x 5, every five minutes for a cycle of three times cook and stir and cover the spicy pepper mix. Add sea salt and black pepper.

as this base cooks down, rub clean a pound of crimini mushrooms, ranging from a quarter in diameter to fungi the size of an egg. De-stem them, and slice the heads into threes, making fat slices. Add them to the pot, and do another round of 3 x 5 cooking and stirring.

stir in three tablespoons of tomato paste. Pour in two large cans (28 ounces each) of crushed tomatoes. By all means if you come by this recipe in the heart of tomato season then boil & peel and crush a whole pile of fruit, but in early spring in Brooklyn, the cans are fine and preferable. Add a smaller can of diced tomatoes. Bring to a slow, popping simmer and cook for an hour or longer.

about half an hour before you want to eat, put a big pot of water onto boil.

add a tube of ground beef style soy “meat” to the big bowl of eggy, spicy slop, and mix it together well with your hands. Roll tablespoons of mixture into balls.

heat a heavy skillet and when it is hot, add a few tablespoons of olive oil. Fry the balls until brown on all sides.

pour a few generous slugs of wine into your sauce and stir. Add your fried meet balls. Bring the sauce back to a simmer.

add a box of noodles to the boiling water: spaghetti is Italian-American classic; fettuccini is seductive; and penne, somehow, feels domestic and family-like. Cook until al dente and drain. Pile noodles on a plate or in a bowl as appropriate, top with sauce. Somewhere in this cooking, maybe put together a nice salad. Now sit down with you, and whomever you dine with if you are dining in company or family, and polish off the wine.

as it simmers, you can also read this blog:

http://thyme-for-herbs.blogspot.com/

and maybe, watch a little more labyrinth:

green peppers & egg sandwiches

This is one of my favorite sandwiches because I can get everything local and because it is something my family made for breakfast, lunch, and dinner when I was growing up. My grandpa and great uncle grew up in a Sicilian family who immigrated via New Orleans to Chicago. Uncle Ronnie was a butcher, so these sandwiches followed dinners of Italian sausage and peppers and the leftovers went with the eggs. Now they follow sausage-free meals when I sauté an extra pepper or two or they emerge on their own, worth the work of slicing a pepper.

For two sandwiches or one generous sandwich (a good idea):

slice 1 green pepper into strips and sauté in olive oil on medium-high heat until soft and slightly charred about 15-20 minutes. Scoop the cooked peppers into a bowl

slice a hand’s length from a loaf of Italian bread (or baguette) and cut that in ½ lengthwise.

rub the cut sides into the oil in the skillet and fry till toasted. Weighing down the bread will flatten it and more deeply toast it. I often use my tea kettle or another cast iron skillet.

whisk an egg or two with a little cream and a little salt & pepper. Scramble in the skillet.

assemble eggs, peppers on the baguette and sandwich. Eat.

 

If you are upset by how the egg and pepper squidges out the sides, try hollowing out your bread a little.

trifle

admittedly, not just any trifle. This is festival trifle. Trifle with Italian Christmas cake, pistachios, cardamom, heavy cream, and apricots soaked in hot sugared liquor (not in the original recipe).  make your own panettone for this, and we’ll do our own you-tube video.

as it came to me from Nigella via my favorite kitchen witch:

Here you go love ~ from Nigella’s Feast

4.5 C dried apricots

6 C water

3/4 C superfine sugar

juice of 1 lemon

juice of 1/2 orange or 1 tangerine

6 cardamom pods

1/2 pandoro or 1lb piece of pandoro or panettone

1 C heavy cream

1 C greek or whole milk yogurt

3 Tbs honey

1/4 C pistachios

1/4 C slivered almonds

amaretto if you like

Put apricots, water, sugar, juices in saucepan

Bruise cardamom, add to pan, stir

Bring to boil, turn down, add a few slugs of amaretto and simmer for 30 min

Drain apricots, discarding seeds and pods, put liquid back in pan, boil over high heat 15-20 min to reduce to syrup (to about 1.5 cups) – let cool

Cut pandoro into 1/2 inch wide, long slices. Line bowl with half of long slices, spread half of warm apricots over cake, pour half of suryp over this.

Repeat (placing slices opposite direction) – leave overnight covered with plastic wrap in fridge

Topping: whisk heavy cream till soft peaks, add yogurt and beat to combine – spread over trifle

Drizzle honey, scatter nuts