That’s my status on facebook right now, and it’s true.

If you drop the word “zeppole” into Google Translate, it comes up with “doughnut,” which is more or less what a zeppole is, but- like everything- it’s so much more.The word, by the way, predates the term “zeppelin” by several hundred years.

There are many occasions in the life of a yeast baker to have leftover dough: an extra pizza crust; or a too-full oven or baking stone; or maybe even an extra bit of dough saved for this purpose. I’ve never seen someone make dough specifically for zeppoli, though I am sure it has happened. Zeppoli are a happy accident of yeast baking. So what, exactly, are they?

A zeppole is a bit of yeast dough, anywhere from 1-3″ in diameter, fried and usually rolled in sugar. Sometimes a rolled up anchovy filet goes inside, or a dried fig, but usually they are plain. In sicily, the sugar coating is often cinnamon sugar, but vanilla sugar and jasmine sugar are certainly options (as is plain sugar). Vanilla sugar, I’m sure all you foodies know, is made by stuffing a whole vanilla bean inside a few cups of sugar, a great way to store your vanilla beans and get a freebie in the process. Jasmine sugar is made the same way, only with jasmine flowers, easy enough to get if you live in California. If you live in the east, I bet honeysuckle sugar would be awesome, too, though I can’t say from experience.

Pieces of dough are fried in moderately hot oil (325 neighborhood) until they puff and turn as golden as you like them: I keep mine a shade darker than beach sand. The darker they are the crustier the outside, which, if you ask me, becomes a diminishing return after about 2 minutes or so in the oil. After a quick rest on some paper towels, roll them in your sugar of choice. The sooner they’re eaten, the better.

As you might imagine these are an incidental goody more than anything else, so I hope some serendipitously find their way into your merenda, or afternoon snack. By the way, the memory of the fig tree is that of the one growing out of a crack in the pavement, that I’ve mentioned before.

Listening: Laurie Lewis, “Stealing Chickens” from the album Restless Ramblinbg Heart

My feet, my hands, my back; I’m tired.

I’m tired like restaurant business tired, but we got so much good stuff, and we got so much done.We went to Santa Monica Farmers’ Market at the crack of ass this morning and came back with sprouting broccoli, spanish onions, shallots, torpedo onions, green garlic, fennel bulbs, artichokes, fava beans, sage, savory, parsley, oregano, cilantro, celery, carrots (4 or 5 colors), beets, chard, potatoes, zucchini and god knows what else.

I have a few phots, but they will have to wait for tomorrow, as will the menu… too tired now.

Goodnight, moon.

It’s time, bitches.

The battaria di cucina is unloaded, and tomorrow we shop (at Santa Monica Farmer’s Market). Here’s the tentative menu, subject to change tomorrow, of course:

Pani Pasquali
Torta di Riso Liguriana
Pizza Chena Cilentana
Mafalda al Serpente
Panini di Pepe

Ravioli di Fave
Fava Ravioli with Sheep’s Milk Ricotta

Capretto Stufato
Kid braised with potatoes
Contorni

Pastiera Napoletana
Neapolitan Easter Grain Pie

Granita di Limone
Eureka Lemon Granita

The goat is butchered, and it’s in the fridge. BOO YA.

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.

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.

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.

You’ve all seen the pizzaiolo (pizza guy) tossing pies in the air. There are hundreds of ways to shape pizza, some very showy, some not. They all have advantages and disadvantages, to home use and to commercial use. As usual, I will try to provide you with enough information for you to make a decision on your own.

Before we get too far into shaping, though, I want to talk a minute about the Tools of the Trade. As always, you don’t need much besides your hands and a stove to make decent food, but there are some things that I really need to stress are important to the making of great pizza. The one thing that will have the greatest effect on the overall taste and texture of your pie is without a doubt some kind of stone on which to bake it. There are pizza or bread stones available in cookware shops that yield good results, but they are often expensive and prone to breakage and usually too small to do much on. Commercial pizza ovens have a kind of composite ceramic material and if you go to a used restaurant supply house, you may be able to get a broken piece of “oven floor” that will fit in your oven, or can be cut (or smashed) to fit. Old school wood-fired ovens have soapstone floors, I am told, but I’ve never worked on one. Another inexpensive alternative is unglazed quarry tiles, which Home Depot used to carry (and may still, but I switched to Lowe’s, who definitely does not carry them) but you can get at any tile shop for about 20 cents apiece. Bread ovens are often made of firebrick, which is the material the interior of fireplaces are made of, and you can buy enough firebrick to line your oven for about $10 at any block yard.

Whatever you use, you’ll want to put your oven rack on the lowest position and cover it with whatever stone medium you choose. If you use tiles, cover as much of the rack as you like, but leave yourself a couple of inches around the perimeter of the stone to allow air to circulate around it. You’ll want to preheat your stone for at least an hour before trying to bake on it. At home, you will probably just want to set your oven to the highest setting it will allow. My oven goes to 550 and produces decent results, but higher would be better. Commercial American ovens are usually run around 600-650, sometimes higher depending on the style of pie. Wood-fired dome ovens are usually kept at ambient temperatures of about 800 degrees, though the floor remains much cooler.

You will often see recipes telling you to bake at a more conservative 450 or even 400, but this won’t create a blisteringly hot surface to crisp up your crust properly, and will necessitate too much time in the oven, making sauce, dough and, especially, cheese very unhappy.

The other piece of equipment I’d encourage you to invest in is a small peel, which is the flat shovel you use to slide the pies on and off the stone. Aluminum ones are easier to care for, and perhaps to use to a novice. They don’t perform as well as wood, but you can get into trouble more easily with wood as I’ll explain later. You can find a cheap, generic peel at any restaurant supply for about twenty bucks, or you could get one [here](https://www.surfasonline.com/products/4146.cfm). You can use a cookie sheet as a peel as well, or even an upside-down jelly-roll pan, but the operation of raw pie to stone will never be easier than with a peel.

**Shaping a pie**

No, we do not start out tossing the dough in the air, cool your jets. A pizza at home, a nice 10-12” pie should come from a piece of dough that’s around 6-7 ounces. If you’re metric, this would be about 200g. The [previous post](http://omnivorousfish.com/node/339) tells you how to get the dough ready. After its 24 hours in the fridge, here’s how to proceed.

Handle it carefully. You will deflate it eventually, but you want it to happen evenly. Dunk the dough in bench flour on each side, and tap it gently in the air to dust off excess.

Working on a smooth surface (like marble or formica), dimple the dough evenly with your fingertips all over, but avoid the very center. You generally avoid pushing the center because as the circular movements happen, then center of the dough gets stretched whether you press on it or not. Press on it from the beginning, and the dough becomes unevenly thin in the center.

At this point, you could punt with a rolling pin, and pinch up the sides a little to make an edge to your crust. But if you want to go pro…

Some people- in italy and here- will continue to pat with their fingers and stretch at the sides until the dough has reached the desired diameter. Some people “scratch” pies. This means placing your hands flat on the dough, side by side in a quasi pyramid shape. Holding one hand still (your left if you’re right-handed), gently providing a grip on the dough, move the other hand away and ever-so-slightly down, stretching that quadrant of dough. If you move your scratching hand in a continuous circular motion, you will be able to rotate the dough between stretching by lifting your static hand and lowering it again when you’ve rotated the dough sufficiently.

That’s a terrible description, but that’s all I got. I promise there will be photos and videos soon, we just need to migrate out of this drupal wilderness.

After a revolution or two of scratching, lay the dough over one hand on the counter. Make a fist, but then hinge your fingers slightly forward again. That’s how you want to have both hands for the next step. Lift the dough up off the counter with your not-quite-fists and gently stretch it by moving your fists apart. Almost simultaneously, spin the dough slightly across your hands so you’re turning and stretching in a continuous motion. Be mindful of places where the dough is thicker or thinner. Even is important.

This is the point at which you would throw the dough in the air, allowing centrifugal force to stretch the pie for you.

Now you’re headed for the peel, and I could write a whole article on the topic of what to put on the peel. Some people say there absolutely must be cornmeal on the peel. Some people say whole wheat flour. Some people say as little as possible, and I agree with them. When I’m eating pizza, I don’t like my tongue encountering a bunch of foreign nibs along the bottom. At the same time, too much flour and you will be eating raw flour on the surface of your pizza – also not enjoyable.

Here’s the issue, though. The moment the sauce goes on the pizza, the pizza wants to stick to the peel. The best way to avoid this is to work quickly, which isn’t much comfort when you’re new at something. There is a trick, though, to come in a minute.

So, just as a safety, put your peel or cookie sheet on top of your pizza stone and make sure that you’ll be able to fit your pizza on it. If the stone is smaller, take a pencil and just scratch some reference lines on it.

Next, lightly dust your peel with flour and arrange the dough over it. Put about a half a cup of sauce – ish, judge as you go – and starting from the center gently press a ladle or the bowl of a deep spoon to the top of the dough and swirl a vortex out to the sides of the pie creating an even layer of sauce.

Quickly scatter the cheese over the pie, though not too much, you should still be able to see sauce, and then tear a few basil leaves over the top. There’s your margherita.

Now take the handle of the peel and gently flick it to one side or the other. Ideally, the peel will move but the pie will stay more or less still. If it doesn’t, here’s what to do: get your face up close to the pie, pick up one edge just slightly, and blow air underneath it. A giant, crazy air bubble will move around between the dough and the peel. Once it’s traveled around, pick up an edge to dispel it, and you’re ready for the oven. (You can accomplish the same thing by lifting one edge of the pie somewhat high and quickly flicking it back down, but it’s not as easy.)

Place the edge of the peel on the far corner of your stone. Very gently begin shaking the peel back and forth, walking the dough off of the peel and onto the stone. Go slowly and forgive yourself if your first pie bunches up here or there. Once it’s on the stone, it’s there, so don’t try to adjust it. That stone is hot and you **will** burn yourself.

Once you’ve got it in, get the oven door closed ASAP- you’re losing heat. After six minutes, take a peek. If you’re not browning evenly, reach in with the peel and spin her around. If it looks even, leave it, until the top of the pie is golden and the bottom is well browned.

Give yourself a few minutes between pies, since the stone will need some time to heat up. All in all, in a home oven at 550, I’d plan on 8-10 minutes for your pie. I guess next time we’ll have to cover sauce.

Listening: The birds. The movers come tomorrow, so I’m enjoying it while I can.

But here’s the roundup for today:

**Ravioli**

At 9AM I had a kilo of flour on the counter and 600g of eggs. I’m all metric since I have been working with my buddy Anna, who doesn’t know a pound from a… a… cubit, I dunno, she only knows metric, so I can adapt. I had big USDA jumbo eggs, which weigh just over 2 oz (60g), so there were probably about ten of them, though USDA large eggs would be more like 12, since they normally weigh in at 1.75oz (50g). All this is out of the shell, btw. I just lost some respect for a very highly regarded cookbook when I realized today that all its recipes listed “whole eggs” and the weights were for shell-on eggs. Stupid…

Note that I am referring to the sizes as “USDA Large” or whatever. There is a reason. Their size is legally graded into Small, Medium, Large, Extra-Large and Jumbo, and although their size has nothing to do with quality, you should be aware that these sizes mean something specific. If you make a cake with large eggs that called for jumbo, as some do, you may not be happy with the results.

Anyway, once the pasta was all kneaded up (which hurt since I kind of overdid my workout yesterday), I had the filling ingredients all laid out, so I mixed up the filling. Speaking of kneading, I think the problems some of you have been emailing me about have come from under-kneading. When in doubt, keep kneading. I may grow to regret this statement, but I would say it is nearly impossible to over-knead by hand. Someday I will post a more comprehensive Pasta Opus than what is already here.

Back to the filling. For once, I even wrote down what I put in it:

4 cups shucked AND peeled favas (this is from **ten pounds** of whole favas)
2 lbs Ricotta, pref sheep’s milk
1 cup Pecorino Romano (or sardo), grated
1 cup Parmiggiano Reggiano (or Grana Padano), grated
1-2 tbsn Chopped fresh mint
To taste Salt, Black Pepper and Nutmeg
3 jumbo eggs
1 or 2 jumbo egg yolks

(I know it seems weird that I can’t tell you exactly how many eggs I used, but I was in the zone and had to pick through the compost to guess how many, either way won’t hurt it.)

This amount of filling and pasta will easily make 120 ravioli. And let me tell you, the pastry bag (or the freezer bag with the corner snipped off) is the way to go. I just saw that at a restaurant a few weeks ago and decided to try it… it even beats the 1 tablespoon ice cream scoop.

**Bread**

I’m making a Sicilian bread called *mafalda*, which is made from white flour and semolina flour, and it is the dough for the famous “Eyes of St Lucy” bread. In case you sat that religion class out, St Lucy is the patron saint of the eyes, and of Siracusa, Sicily. When she refused to marry a pagan that her parents had arranged for her to wed, he outed her as a Christian to the romans. When the local magistrate bade her to offer a sacrifice to the emperor, she basically flipped him off- in a very christlike way- and she was sentenced to work in a brothel. As if this wasn’t enough, when they came to get her, they stabbed her in the throat and drug her through the town with a team of oxen, before finally gouging out the eyes of a fifteen year old girl.

Oh, it gets better. Christian iconographers of the time then decided to depict her carrying her eyes before her on a plate, which led to the famous spiraled bread, the eyes of St Lucy, the most morbid bread ever conceived. (Pictures to come.)

There’s also a long tradition of sweet-and-savory in Sicilian cooking, including in bread, and perking away in the fridge is a *biga* for black pepper rolls…mmmmmmmm.

OK, I’m exhausted, more to come.

Listening: “This Is Hip” Johnny Lee Hooker, from some compilation, but a great track.

>Pani Pasquali
Easter Breads and Pies

This year, our guest of honor is making *Casatiello,* a traditional Neapolitan savory bread. I am making a *Triccia ai Racine Secche*, a braided egg bread that straddles sweet and salty, like so much Sicilian food. And a *Pizza Chena*, or “Ham Pie” in the cilentano style, with fresh basket cheese and smoked ham. Plus, time permitting, I will make Mrs La Puma’s pepper and anise seed rolls… mmmmmmmmmmm.

>Ravioli di Fave
Fava Ravioli with Sheep’s Milk Ricotta

A little departure from the Sicilian method here to something a little more mainstream, but sheep’s milk ricotta is really something else.

>Gamba D’agnello Cacio e Uova
Leg of Lamb with Eggs and Cheese

Just like we had [last year](http://omnivorousfish.com/node/311). Good, but no goat.

>Pastiera Napoletana
Neapolitan Easter Grain Pie

Again, from Anna, who will show me what-for in the grain pie department.

>Granita di Limone
Eureka Lemon Granita

But what lemons… thank you Robin!

>Agnellini Pasquali
Marzipan Easter Lambs

On the fence about this, but I’m going to take a stab at a couple of simple ones. Work my way up to making my own plaster molds…

We dug around in the garden for a while looking for dinner. Since we decided on making Swiss chard ravioli, we had to dig up the makings of [caponata](http://omnivorousfish.com/node/66), so we had something to snack on.

But the boogie prize goes to the six and a half pounds of gorgeous favas that we thinned out of Robin’s winter cover crop. A close second are the bowls full of softball-sized lemons and red, succulent *morri*, Sicilian blood oranges.

Robin’s garden is a little bit mad scientist, with rows this way and that, but also patches of this here and a thatch of that there, making it nearly impossible to step anywhere without killing a seedling, but coming up with a beautiful, biodiverse garden that is the envy of… well, of me, at least.

One step closer to fava ravioli…