Pascha (Pasqua) [Easter]

Well, Easter is almost here, and for the first time in about ten years, I have off. And we’re getting into it.

I’m only partly Sicilian by extraction, although most of my cultural exposure was with Sicilians, but a lot of my family traditions are *cilentano*, that is to say from Campania, which is to say Naples, the capital of Campania. That means *pastiera*, or grain pie, a sweet pie made of hulled wheat berries. It also means *pizza chena*, or *pizza piena*, which means stuffed pie (the former the Neapolitan word, the latter Italian), a yeast-raisd dough stuffed with any combination of salumi, cheeses, herbs and boiled eggs. The “ham pie” of my childhod is a simple animal made of ham, hardboiled eggs, fresh ricotta (basket cheese) and parsley.

Strangely, we never had lamb on Easter, but then again we never had lamb ever because my mother doesn’t like it. In fact, the first time I had it, it was in a restaurant when I was 12 or 13, and I ordered it mainly because I knew my mother didn’t like it. And even though it wasn’t phenomenal and it came with irridescent green mint jelly, I knew that there was something to this whole lamb thing.

What we did have was ravioli. In fact, I made my first-ever ravioli for easter, when I was 9 or 10. My mom thought I was nuts (she still does).

So I’m working on the menu, but I’m trying to hit all the traditional bases: favas, cheese, eggs, peas and artichokes. We’ll see how the markets treat me.

I’ll tell you, it’s not easy to find a lot of specialty Italian products in Southern California. In New York- or even Philadelphia- imported and artisanally made products are everywhere, **especially** around Easter. But here, not so much. I did find tuma, a somewhat obscure sicilian cheese, in this little deli near my house. If you’re in long beach, I recommend [Angelo's](http://www.yelp.com/biz/angelos-italian-deli-long-beach) highly. But it seems like I have to go back to mail order, well, internet order, which I haven’t really done since the Food Network Revolution. That and, of course, I need to start adapting recipes to available products, just like the immigrants did. But for this year, I’m sticking to the originals as much as I can.

Listening: “I Palindrome I” Apollo 18 They Might Be Giants

Pasta Sauces: Salse e Condimenti

You’d be amazed at what Italian people don’t put on pasta.

What I mean by that is good pasta requires something more like decoration than a sauce in the franco-american ideology. Basically, pasta dressing falls into one of two categories: salse and condimenti. Salsa is the familiar beast: tomato sauce, alfredo sauce (a mainly American animal) or pesto. These things, although appropriate, should be used sparingly. You might be skeptical to hear that I wouldn’t put more than three or four tablespoons of tomato sauce on a serving of pasta, less of pesto. These things should meld into the pasta, co-mingle in the fabric of the noodle, and hide in the ridges, cracks and tunnels you have gone to such pains to choose. These often, but not always, fall into the alla category: alla bolognese (Bologna), alla cacciatore (hunter), alla prostituta (like it sounds, aka puttanesca).

More common, though, is the condimento. This is, usually, one or two ingredients, cut somewhat small with some seasoning, moistened with pasta cooking water and served, distinct from but harmonious with the pasta that surrounds it. The names of these dishes usually invoke con (with): pasta con patate (potatoes), con piselli (peas), con cicireddu (bait fish), con limone (lemon), yes lemon. Very often, these things have a ladleful of tomato sauce thrown in them, but that has as much to do with the ubiquity of a simmering pot of pumaruoru (tomato sauce) as anything else.

As you can see in the picture in the previous post, these condimenti are barely there, secondary to the glory of the pasta. As an added bonus, if you’re cooking store-bought dry pastasciutta, you can assemble 90% of condimenti tradizionale in the time it takes for the water to boil and the pasta to cook. I use the word “assemble” intentionally; many of these sauces don’t really cook at all: some minced anchovies and olive oil from the can stirred in the bottom of the serving bowl will warm up nicely when the hot-off-the-presses pasta and clinging pasta water are dropped on top and mixed together. Soft butter and grated parmiggiano or romano cheese will do likewise. Pasta all’estate (in the summer) is a raw tomato sauce: fresh tomatoes, basil, oregano and some chopped red onion are warmed only by the heat from the pasta.

I don’t speak Italian well enough to know the hows and whys of the use of the word con in these dishes. Indeed, pasta al burro (with butter) or alla panna (with cream) uses a, yet it’s con broccoli. Is this because broccoli is solid? If anyone knows, please comment.

Here are some traditional dishes, then I have to drive to Philly. The dishes with 2 names have the sicilian name and the italian name. I’m feeling instructional.

First the classic: Pasta all’aglio e olio. I know, that’s a lot of Is ad Ls together. A Tuscan might pronounce that “al AHL-yo eh OH-lee-o,” but I’ve never heard it pronounced anything other than “EYE yoy” or “EYE YOY-yo.” This is olive oil with very thinly sliced garlic, just barely caramel colored around the edges, NEVER brown. Herbs can be added to this (like parsley, a classic Sicilian “aô pitrusinu” (prezzemolo)), or whole small fish “con cicireddu” or anything you have lying around the fridge. In a lot of Italian-American households, this last dish is known as “alla frigidaire.” No kidding.

Pasta con patate: Potatoes, anchovies and capers

Pasta con vruccoli (broccoli): Broccoli blanched, then sauteed with oil and garlic, sometimes served as a very thick soup

Pasta con sparaceddu (cavolofiore): Cauliflower, boiled, then sauteed with onions, tomato sauce, pine nuts and currants (halfway between a salsa and a condimento)

Pasta con sfrizzoli: Pork or chicken skin, rendered and fried until crisp, then perfumed with a small amount of garlic (cracklings with garlic)

Pasta con piselli: Butter, cheese and a handful of freshly blanched or defrosted frozen peas. Before you go all apeshit, remember that when peas are picked they immediately begin to convert their sugar to starch, so unless you can get crazy-fresh peas from the market, frozen is the way to go. I have never gotten an edible fresh pea from the supermarket.

Listening: In a bizarre moment of iTunes random, 10,000 Maniacs was followed by Persian Ghazal, then the decidedly Jewish Klezmatics. World peace brought to you by Apple.

10,000 Maniacs “Hey Jack Kerouac” In My Tribe
Ghazal “Between Dawn and a New Truth” As Night Falls on the Silk Road
The Klezmatics “Russian Shers” Shvaygn Egel Toyt (Silence Equals Death)

Delfina and Tartine

There’s something about the block of 18th Street in San Francisco between Guerrero and Oakwood. Maybe it’s the ancient spirit of the Mission, maybe it’s something in the water, maybe Jimmy Hoffa’s body is under Bi Rite, I’m not quite sure what it is, but some of the best things to eat in the city are right there.

On the corner of 18th is **Tartine**, which is a bakery and café in a big space, yet the tables and chairs are jammed inexplicably into a New York corner. Thanks to California’s progressive ideas about the sale of booze, it’s a proper café, where you can get anything from OJ to a bottle of wine to enjoy with your goodies, savory or sweet. In fact, the kids at the next table over came for a bottle of wine and three glasses to while away the afternoon discussing Marxism. It was so undergrad.

Huge, unsubtle but delicious *croissants* come in plain; (Niman Ranch) ham and gruyere; chocolate and other permutations (though be warned; they cook them dark). Tarts, cakes, cookies, quiches, quick and yeast breads all make appearances, and I have to say they range from pretty good to underwear-changing good. Lemon lovers look out for the lemon meringue cake; a baked Alaska filled with lemon curd. Cute hipster kids swarm both in front of and behind the counters from which they make excellent coffee (though SF has some of the oldest hipsters I’ve ever seen).

The Bay Area, I must say, has the most consistently good coffee from the greatest number of independents than any city I have ever been (calm down, Seattle, I haven’t been there- yet).

Speaking of places I hadn’t been, I took a suggestion and went to dinner at **Delfina**, almost next door. It looks like your typical urban hip place, easily transported to New York, LA, Philly, Chicago or Boston, with distressed metal this and marble that. I didn’t take note of too much of the décor since I was flying solo and ate at the bar, but I did have a nice view of the open kitchen and the very young, mostly cute crew behind the line.

It was an absolute madhouse when I got there at 9, but being a party of one, I snagged the end seat at the bar, next to two completely odious 20-something women that were there to see, be seen and eat expensive food they don’t deserve before going home to vomit it up. The advantage to eating so late (and planning to eat everything in the place) is that you get to watch the place slow down and see how the machine contracts to its slower pace. I have always been fascinated by the operation of restaurants, and this process is perhaps the most interesting bit of theater.

At any rate, I sat down and was brought some dense-crumbed, crusty, but noticeably cold bread, and remarkably good butter, anointed with one of the new salts that all the cool kids have. This was soon followed by mint tagliatelle with porcini. Sounds simple doesn’t it? Well, so does string theory, but it’s not. This pasta was the kind of pasta that grandmothers make, but flecked with fresh mint, in a butter sauce light enough to keep you hungry, inundated with paper thin shavings of *boletus edulis* that kicked you in the teeth when you bit into them. The whole thing was earth, sex and light-colored sin in my mouth, and I regretted getting the half portion one bite in. Since, however, details haunt me, I have to note that I scratched down ‘tagliatelle’ in my notebook, and the website confirms that’s what the menu had written on it, and it is a free country, but in reality what I was served is tagliarini. No harm no foul.

With this, I drank a Gavi from Villa Sparini, one of a few half bottles available on the short but functional wine list. I was struggling between it and a colline they had by the glass, and the bartender’s rec was right-on. It had just the right amount of citrus to lighten it up.

Next I had quail stuffed with sausage and fennel, a little polenta and a brown, nectarous sauce made of stock and *vin santo*. It was one of those dishes which is merely excellent, that is to say, I wasn’t annoyed by the lengthy list of ingredients or put off by dubious combinations. I had a red wine with this that was being served by the glass after much discussion with the bartender, but I was having much too good a time by then to write anything down.

Delfina is one of those places where everybody loves food. Everyone who works there wants to talk about the wine list and the ingredients and they genuinely want you to have a good time. Unlike the clientele, I observed no posturing. I started talking to the bartender, a mysteriously beautiful young woman who lit up to chat about the minutiae of Gavi. And I got to hear her story since, like New York, nobody is from San Francisco, so everybody has a story.

Then I had cheese, which I will quote right from [their website](http://www.delfinasf.com/index.html):
>Wrinkled pagliarina with marcona almonds
Piemonte- cow, sheep, and goat milks
Moliterno tartufato with housemade quince paste
Sardegna- sheep’s milk
Parmigiano Reggiano with saba
Blu del Moncensio with brachetto gelatina
Piemonte – cow’s milk
Tumin rutulin with wildflower honey
Piemonte- goat’s milk

They were mostly fantastic, and the braccheto gelatina kind of haunts me still. By this point I had fallen completely in love with the bartender, and was overwhelmed emotionally and gastronomically by a big pedestal-dish of strawberry ice cream she put in front of me. It was rich and cold and ambrosial and frankly almost surreal. It was like sitting at the bar chatting with a giant strawberry breathing strawberry breath on you, inundating you with his strawberry presence. It was smooth and subtle, yet frosty and poignant. It was perhaps the best ice cream I’ve ever had in my life.

Delfina. Go there. Fall in love.

Delfina Restaurant
3621 18th Street
San Francisco, CA
415.552.4055

Here Comes Peter Cottontail

This Easter, I’m working. All the time. What’s more, I still don’t have a kitchen (though I’m getting closer every day).

I drove down to my Mom’s house yesterday, I’m going to my sister’s for dinner, and then back on my head tomorrow at 8AM.

My sister is making ham, which will be fine. She bought it at Sam’s Club, but it will be fine, since ham, even at its humblest, is a excellent vehicle for salt. I don’t know what else there will be, except for the bottles of barbera I’m bringing, but it will all be fine.

But I can’t help but fantasize about what I would cook. Want to fantasize with me?

First, you need to know that Easter is the holiest day in the Roman Catholic Calendar, and is a Feast day (as opposed to Good Friday, which is a Fast day [as is Christmas Eve, where you eat more than almost any other day, which makes no sense, but there you go looking for sense in religion]). Italians, however, *especially* Sicilians, have retained a great deal of their indigenous rituals, mostly regarding curses and charms, but also unabashedly use Easter as a ritual of Spring, and the traditional foods reflect that.

What are the traditional foods, you ask? Ace #1 Italian Easter food, hands-down no question: eggs. In times before modern animal husbandry, Spring is when eggs began to appear in abundance, and have been associated with fertility and rebirth since man first broke a shell. Goat and lamb rank high, as do peas, artichokes and cheese. In Naples, they stew kid with wine, peas, hardboiled eggs and hard cheese. In Lazio the Roman influence is strong, and many *brodetti* make an appearance, that is to say soups thickened with egg, often including lemon and rice. Salami, ham, etc. also pop up, as people cleaned out the last of the winter preserves. Thus, the Easter “Ham Pie” of Italian-American fame: *Pizza Chena* (or *Pizza Rustica*).

This Ham Pie, of course, begins a long list of things that get eaten after Mass on Saturday night, and Easter morning (and about an hour after Easter dinner). To me, it is the ne plus ultra for Easter foods, but the first runner up is Easter Bread, which is not unlike a brioche, rolled into long ropes and braided together with dyed, hardboiled eggs.

All that aside, what would I cook for dinner?

Pea Soup. No doubt about it, if fresh peas are available. Leeks, peas, mint, stock, cream, period. Falanghina or Greco di Tufo would be welcome additions.

Fava Ravioli. Traditional, but contemporary, favas blanched and mixed with basket cheese and fresh mint, stuffed into pasta and tossed with butter, marjoram and fava greens. A light red wine would be the order of the day for me, or a ballsier white, but I would rather see a nice Barbera d’Asti or maybe [the varietal gamay from Edmunds St John](http://www.edmundsstjohn.com/TheWines/Bone-Jolly/). Mmm.

Kid Leg Roasted with Rosemary, Potatoes and Lemon. Yes, kid, as in goat. I guess you could have lamb, but it wouldn’t be the same. I would garnish this with hardboiled eggs and an herb salad. Call me a crazy American, but I would want Ridge zinfandel with this. A heavier Barbera or Dolcetto could do the job here, too. Don’t be afraid of the lemon; it loses its teeth in the oven.

For dessert, a cheese cake of some order would be traditional, but I might be inclined to go with Riso Nero di Pasqua, or Easter Black Rice. This is a black risotto, not from squid ink, but from cocoa and chocolate, thickened with cheese, and garnished with rum-soaked fried figs. Labor intensive, yes, but it’s a labor of love. Very much a traditional animal from Sicily, it should be served with a nice passito, but be sure to leave room for *agneddu pasquali*, the marzipan lambs.

Whatever you’re eating, having a good holiday.