The Soup Is On

I don’t mean to harp on soup this week, but because of the weather- and an attempt to eat out less (and therefore have to come up with things to make out of increasingly discordant ingredients)- I have been thinking about and making a lot of soup.

People are always asking me for recipes. They ask me for recipes, very often, that I don’t have, because I made something up at my house, or because I made some ancient dish that was passed on to me by my family or friends. This is what I mean when I say that cooking is more than a recipe. Cooking is a body of techniques, and one cuisine is distinguished from another not by recipes and often not even by ingredients: they are distinguished by their methods.

A few days ago, I posted a bit about the way many Italians make soup, that is to say, the technique involved in making such a soup. Tonight, I found myself alone for dinner, with a few potatoes growing eyes on them, and a head of curly escarole, or batavia, about to lose its luster in the fridge. Enter the joy of having stock in the freezer.

When I make stock, I try to make a lot of it. If I have chicken parts or bones left in a smaller quantity, I freeze them so when there’s 4 or 5 pounds of chicken bones (which is quite a bit), I make a lot of stock. Then I freeze it in deli containers, being sure to use a container that tapers towards the bottom. Why? So when there’s frozen stock in it, I can slip it out.

Back to the technique: I put the stock in a pan with some water to begin melting. Once it’s melted, taste it. If the stock is really strong, thin it with water. I tend to make my stock strong and freeze it in pint containers. I washed out the container with water and added it to the pot for a scant quart of liquid.

I cut up some lesser potatoes into chunks and once the stock was simmering, I added them. I cooked these for about 15 minutes or so, then I started the pestata (see link above).

After looking through the fridge, I had found some scallions, some celery, parsley and cilantro (no carrots, sadly). Two smaller ribs of celery, three scallions, a tuft of each herb and two cloves of garlic found themselves in the food processor. After a quick chop, I left the motor running and drizzled in a tablespoon or two of extra virgin olive oil- the only olive oil you should be cooking with, btw- until I had a paste, but not too liquid of one.

That paste then got fried in some more olive oil until it began to color.

I had some crushed up tomatoes in the fridge, so those were added to the pestata to cook a bit before the whole thing was mixed into the simmering soup.

After the pestata, went the escarole, cleaned (in several changes of cold water) and sliced somewhat thinly. This simmers together until the potatoes and greens are quite tender.

If I were serving this soup as an appetizer, I would use rice as a panade, good, short-grain rice like carnaroli. Tonight, I used a piece of bread, mainly because I added a poached egg to my soup, and egg and bread in soup is a winning combination. I toasted a day-old slice of bread and put it in the bottom of my bowl. I cracked an egg into the simmering soup for five minutes, then ladled the soup (egg first) on top of the bread, and sprinkled with some grated parmiggiano cheese, but you could certainly use pecorino romano or sardo or even ricotta salata. Sadly, I was so hungry I ate the egg immediately, but here’s a shot of my second helping, note the bread crust sticking out on the right.

Buon apetito.

Listening: A very powerful interview with Tony Judt on Fresh Air.

Easter Stress

Oh my god, there is so much to do for easter.

I have 5 doughs to percentagize, size, make shopping lists for – not to mention make. I have to work out the wines with Massi…and I have to organize the logistics across 2 cities and three kitchens.

BREATHE.

Ei, dai ‘mme nu caffè!

So just when I thought that New York couldn’t upset me anymore, I opened the NY Times food section today, and look what I saw: New York Is Finally Taking Its Coffee Seriously.

Read the article. No, go ahead, I’ll wait; it’s not that long.

I’m so infuriated about everything in this article that I don’t know where to begin. Let’s start with some quotes, shall we?

Some of the obsessiveness may get a bit off-putting. Want an espresso to go at Ninth Street Espresso? Forget it. The baristas there believe it should be drunk immediately from a warm ceramic cup. Want a cappuccino made from single-origin beans at Kaffe 1668? Sorry, you’ll be told, but milk would overpower the subtle flavors of the coffee.

How about a hot steaming cup of go fuck yourself instead? At the end of the day, all this coffee culture is based on how they drink coffee in Italy. In many Italian coffee bars, people will storm up to the counter, down an espresso and out. However, just as many will linger a little with a magazine or outside in nice weather, if they don’t have anywhere else to be. As for your single-origin beans, blow me. Italian coffees have been blended for hundreds of years to produce a consistent product. Italian food and drink is about tradition and quality. The esoteric search for the end-all and be-all of everything is uniquely american, and you can blow it out your ass. Oh to be a fly on the wall the first time an Italian tourist wanders into this place at the crack of ten and gets told they can’t have a cappucino. Che cazzo dici!?!

Wonder why the barista pulled and tossed out two shots of espresso before she served you yours? She was making sure it was perfect, the coffee evenly tamped, the water temperature ideal for the particular beans, the timing just right. (The best baristas will “dial in” throughout the day, tasting the espresso and adjusting the grind and dose.)

Spare me. The grind is the grind. The dose can need adjustment based on the roast and age. Don’t get me wrong, there is a true arte di caffè, but let’s not forget what makes Italian coffee what it is: La Macchina, every machine is different; La Miscela, the blend of beans; il Macinadosatore, the perfect grind to suit the machine: not your mood; and la Mano, the human touch that makes every cup of coffee different and beautiful, in its way.

Want a double espresso? You’ll have to buy two singles.

Suck what? Again, I would love to see my friend Alfredo be confronted with this. If only these hipsters spoke Italian. Maybe then they would have a clue what coffee culture is really about.

Today, most of the chains use about seven grams of ground coffee for a two-ounce shot. Espresso pods are filled with around five grams. Baristas at the best places in town, like Bluebird Coffee Shop or Joe, tamp down between 19 and 21 grams. Often the espresso is even more concentrated because it’s pulled “short,” with less water, so that the final volume is a thick 1.5 to 2 ounces.

Excuse me, espresso comes from an expression meaning ‘coffee made expressly for this person, this moment.’  That means I can have it any way I god damn well want it. “Short,” or ristretto is an option for coffee drinkers, not an edict. Many people, especially those with an upset stomach, might want a coffee lungo or long, made with more water. Or, gee whiz, I might just have it regular.

I’m so completely over people telling me what is good or right or cool. In the Afterthoughts of her seminal work “The Classic Italian Cookbook,” Marcella Hazan writes, “The world of Italians is not a phenomenon that needs to be subdued, reshaped, arranged in logical patterns. It is not a challenge to be won. It is there simply to be enjoyed, mostly on its own terms.” These nazi foodies, in their quest to find and be the apotheosis of everything, lose all notion of enjoyment. Coffee, like so many things, need only be made with care and of good ingredients. Remember what we say down south: Lu caffe si piglia con tre “C”: Cazzu, cummu coce: Coffee is drunk with balls, like it’s made.

Listening: “Take It From Me” The Weepies, from Say I Am You

La Minestra

La Cucina Povera- The Food of the Poor. It was about to be a huge fad, and then people realized they didn’t want to pay ten bucks for bread soup. Surprise.

I’m making soup. I’m making Minestra di Pasta e Fagioli. This is a soup often known in the US as “Pasta Fazool,” because of the Neapolitan word for bean: fasulo. Whatever you call it, soup, pasta and beans are cooked together and separately throughout Italy in many preparations. There are many renditions of this soup in American restaurants and they largely suck, frankly, because they take a french or franco-american approach to an intrinsically Italian soup. They take beans and boil them with chicken stock, add a can of tomatoes and a bag of frozen vegetables. It’s a simmer-and-stir. Many delicate french soups are made this way (minus the frozen vegetables) and it’s a perfectly fine technique- but not for Italian soups.

Italian soups have 2 components  that will set them apart: pestata and pandade. Like everything in Italian, there are many different words that mean the same thing, but here’s what they mean: Pestata (or trito or mirpazza) is a paste of aromatic vegetables and fat- usually pork fat like back fat or salt pork, but could also be lard or olive oil. Garlic, onions, carrots, celery, parsely, rosemary- whatever is appropriate to the recipe (or your mood) are chopped together until very fine, and then the fat is added and chopped in as well (or you can do what I do- use a food processor). This is one of the traditional uses of the mezzaluna you got for christmas five years ago and lost in the back of the pantry. The paste is then fried separately and added to the soup once it’s lightly toasted.

Then there is the panade (or rinforzo) or thickener. In many recipes with beans, which have a natural affinity for them, potatoes are cooked along with the legumes until they’re cooked enough to be mashed, either in the soup pot, or taken out and mashed to a finer consistency and added back in. Bread can act in this role as well, and grains like semolina. Rice is generally not used in this way, since its consistency, like pasta’s, is considered sacred and is added only at the last moment to cook to its optimum point. The point is, unlike a roux or cornstarch, these add body and flavor, not merely viscosity.

And in the spirit of soup’s economy, after dinner which included a potato and radicchio salad, there was a little left, and into the soup that went as well.

I could hear my grandmother calling me a greaseball.