The Omnivorous Fish

I made a painful but true observation recently: The quality of my cooking has declined recently. My friend Massimo, whose taste is beyond reproach, said it more politically: that my cooking “has become more relaxed in style.”

It’s not as if I wasn’t aware: I made a number of conscious decisions about my cooking that I knew would lead to its decline. Mostly, they were based on the availability of time. Stock made less frequent appearances. Some very detail-oriented things got less attention- like risotto. I also have had to work through some bad ingredient choices. For example, after much lobbying by friends of mine, I bought the Trader Joe’s arborio rice. I said “How can this be? Two pounds of arborio rice for five bucks? It’s too good to be true.” Well, it was too good to be true, because that rice blows.

Also, the menus were getting longer as time became dearer. Here’s an example. This menu is from June of 2003:

Toasted Almonds, Garlic Shrimp, Serrano Ham, Green Olive Tapenade
Hidalgo La Gitana Manzanilla Sherry NV
St-Hilaire Blanquette de Limoux Brut 2000

Asparagus Soup
Hermann Wiemer Dy Johannisberg Riesling 2002

Poeled Pork Shoulder with Turnips
Braised Brussels Sprouts
Domaine Esmonin Sylvie Gevrey-Chambertin 1999
Ramsay Vineyards Pinot Noir 2000

Salad of Belgian Endive with Roaring Forties Blue Cheese and Walnuts

Epoisse and Gala Apples

Pear Tart a la Bordaloue
Chambers Rosewood Reserve Muscat NV

Yes, this is a six course meal, but not really. The first course is hors-d’oeuvres, completed in advance. The second is soup, done and sitting in a bain-marie when people arrive. A roast is tricky to time, but doable. A salad, easy, a cheese course, easy and a tart, completed early that morning. In other words, it is safe. It also was expertly prepared, even if I do say so myself- and shows the former largesse of my spending on wine. Of course Burgundy is always worth the expense.

Here’s the last menu I wrote about, one whose execution had serious defects:

Mostarda of Celery with fresh ricotta on crostini with my special olives: oil-cured sicilian olives macerated with blood orange juice and zest

Cauliflower risotto alla cariinese. (a replacement for rice and nettle soup)

Panelle with a salad of favas, salame calabrese (spicy), ricotta salata and whole chopped meyer lemons

Pork Butt Roast with braised leeks and Sicilian potato salad

Strawberries with lemon mousse

This is only five courses, but much more complicated. The mostarda is [a piece of] cake, but I boned the crostini: I just couldn’t get the right bread, and it ruined it. I should have either made the bread or made the trip to get something better. Crackers would have been better.
The risotto was a big disappointment. As I was making the Plan-A nettle soup and realized that was going awry, I should have just trashed the course, but I didn’t. I made risotto, instead, without stock, or an acceptably flavorful replacement, and didn’t have enough cauliflower sauce to season the risotto properly, not to mention the suck-ass rice I used, and it was blah. With more salt it could have been in any check-tablecloth place in Little Italy.
The panelle were good, but I might not fry them in advance next time. The texture was fine, but they had that not-freshly-fried taste. Or maybe next time I’ll fry them in lard. That stale taste comes from vegetable oil.
The pork butt was good, as was the potato salad, but the leeks were a bomb. I cooked them at too high a temperature and they dried out. They also probably needed more butter. The real problem is that I didn’t flesh out the recipe enough, I threw them together, and it showed.
There was a certain amount of hubris involved, since I entertain so much, I figured I could just pull some things out of my ass, which I did, and did very well, but not great. It’s like the Ruth’s Chris syndrome: There is nothing wrong with a meal at Ruth’s Chris. In fact, I enjoy a steak there from time to time, usually when traveling, but you won’t have a really spectacular meal there, ever.

So what is a spectacular meal?

Well, a spectacular meal doesn’t leave any detail unnoticed. In addition to absolutely perfect execution, the dish has to have harmony. A rich, succulent meat needs something to lighten its heaviness, like vinegar with foie gras or a salad with salumi. This, however, is not just a point-counterpoint, the harmony has to apply to flavors, too, though sometimes the counterpoint is something unexpected. I ate at Osteria Mozza last night, and the dish was grilled octopus, perfect in its execution, smokey and mysterious with a gentle bite to the seafood. And all of a sudden- in this smokey, chewy haze- there was a bite of raw celery: light, fresh, spry in the mouth, it was exactly what was needed. The problem with the risotto was attention to detail: since the rice was crappy, I lost control of the timing since cheap rice cooks very quickly, not to mention that in a dish made almost entirely out of one ingredient, the flavor of the dish will vary in direct proportion to the quality of that ingredient; mediocre rice makes mediocre risotto.

To be perfect, the risotto would have been more al dente, and creamier, from better rice; more flavorful, from better stock; and even if I had used leftover sauce, I would have a) had enough of it and b) I would have augmented some of the surprise goodies, like the pine nuts and raisins. I also would have paid a lot more attention to the acid balance than I did. On pasta, the sweet-and-sour element would be clear in this sauce, but some cooked vinegar, or maybe even a gastrique (vinegar caramel) would have refueled the agrodolce flavor that dispersed into the soupy rice. I was lazy.

So I’m simplifying. Since time is at a premium right now, rather than scatter my efforts afield, I am editing my standard menu from:

Hors D’oeuvres
Pasta or Fish
Meat
Salad and Cheese
Dessert
Coffee

to something more like this:

Very simple Hors D’oeuvres
Vegetable Appetizer
Main
Salad and Cheese OR Dessert
Coffee

I never used to make dessert, and when I baked it was either as a gift or to scratch a specific itch and usually became an afternoon treat or breakfast. Mostly I did it for the holidays. Somewhere along the line I started doing a lot of desserts, I’m not really sure when or why, but the fact is I don’t enjoy them much, and people- at my house, at least- are usually so full they look at dessert with trepidation (read: dread). A salad and a piece of cheese, maybe a slice of pear and a few walnuts, aid digestion, clear the palate and turn the page on richer tastes just gone. A very delicate plated dessert- a perfect, harmonious whole- can be another stage in the natural progression of a meal, or a simple fruit dessert can provide some contrast. A piece of chocolate cake, though, to my taste, is a discordant, vulgar pie in the face of an otherwise lovely experience.

With a shorter menu- not to mention summer approaching- intensely flavored cold and warm vegetable appetizers will lead into whatever is cooking, which will have my undivided attention.

So I’m simplifying, but not relaxing.

I wrote this over the last couple of days, but before I posted it, I coincidentally but unsurprisingly read the following passage this afternoon. My latest food musings have been on things like garnished sauerkraut, cassoulet (strange considering the weather), poached chicken and souffles (probably more digestible at the moment). At any rate, this is from MFK Fisher’s How to Cook a Wolf, and is offered in the context of wartime rationing, but no less relevant to my latest thinking:

If you want Mortimer [your theoretical son] to drink a fruit juice you can almost certainly arrange to have it given to him in the middle of the morning or afternoon, when it will not war with the starches in his own middle, and will give him an unadulterated and uncluttered lift.

For lunch make an enormous salad, in the summer, or a casserole of vegetables, or a heartening and ample soup. That is all you need, if there is enough of it.

And for dinner, if you want to stick solemnly to your “balanced day,” have a cheese souffle and a light salad, or, if you are in funds, a broiled rare steak and a beautiful platter of sliced herb-besprinkled ripe tomatoes.

That with some red wine or ale if you like it and a loaf of honest bread, with or without butter, and toasted or not and good coffee afterwards, is a meal that may startle your company at first with its simplicity but will satisy their hunger and their sense of fitness and balance, all at once. An unnecessary peptic goad, but a very nice one now and then, is a good soft stinky cheese, a Camembert or Liederkranz, with what is left of the bread, the wine, the hunger.

And later, when they begin to think of the automatic extravagance of most of our menus, and above all of the ghastly stupid monotony of them, they too will cast off many of their habits, and begin like you to eat the way they want to, instead of the way their parents and grandparents taught them. They will be richer, and healthier, and perhaps, best of all, their palates will awaken to new pleasures, or remember old ones. All those things are devoutly to be wishesed for, now especially.

Emphasis mine. Listening: NPR Marketplace

I have been standing on the beach at Camp Pendleton Marine Base since we last talked. I am much like a Mercedes from the sixties: alternately brown, red, red or black.

I left you hanging with that last market report, sorry. The menu did evolve a little, here’s what really happened:

Mostarda of Celery (this is where celery [though usually fruit] is cooked in a syrup with spices to make a conserve) with fresh ricotta on crostini with my special olives: oil-cured sicilian olives macerated with blood orange juice and zest
Check.

Nettle and rice soup with bacon- a venetian style minestra-risotto
Well, the nettles didn’t survive my trip to Vegas, so they got bounced to compost duty, and I reached into the freezer for a little backup and came up with a last-minute risotto.

Panelle- Fried squares of chickpea flour polenta- palermo style- with a salad of favas, salame calabrese (spicy), ricotta salata and whole chopped (meaning pith and all) meyer lemons
Check, although I seasoned this with mint and oil, and it was great, but the lemons were a mistake. They didn’t become the bright counterpoint I thought they would be…they ended up being too strong for the delicate fava. The salame was enough of a contrast, and also went well with the cheese, which the lemon did not.

Pork Butt Roast (the top part of the foreleg that I sometimes call shoulder, but is not accurate in English) with braised leeks and Sicilian potato salad (cooked potatoes, extra virgin olive oil, red wine vinegar, fresh mint)
As planned, and it was SO good. I used those French chestnut potatoes, and though they fell apart a little, the flavor was superb. I burned the leeks, though they tasted good. My bad.

Strawberries alongside Lebanese rosewater-flavored baklava. Yes, Rose, Danny Thomas was one, too.
Yeah, I wasn’t feeling the baklava. I made a lemon mousse instead, with some lemon curd and whipped cream, which I set out in bowls around the table with a huge bowl of chopped strawberries in the center. Like a make-your-own-fool.
Good times.

Listening: NPR: Fair Game with Faith Salie

So, if you’ve ever planted mint, you know that you can’t kill it. Mulching, acid, weeding, DDT, whatever, that mint, much like dandelions, is coming BACK. And although it is a pain, when I weed the garden, I leave the mint, the dandelions and the purslane until last. Know why? They all taste great. They’re like free money. The purslane can get dropped into any salad. The dandelions can join the salad, or hop into pasta, risotto, or just get cooked by themselves with some fatback or – especially good with dandelions- chicken skin. The mint isn’t always as easy to use up, but if you can put together a pint or so of it, then, as they say, when life gives you mint, make mint ice cream.

Ice cream is a joy when made at home. Ice cream from the store can, frankly, suck it, because that’s what it does. It’s lower in fat than it should be, and often in industrial dairy, the milk that’s too old for yogurt gets made into ice cream since its flavor will be obscured by god only knows what fruit, nut, marshmallow, peat moss, plus good old-fashioned cold.

That doesn’t cut it for me.

Generally speaking, ice cream is a light custard, sweetened and flavored with myriad possible things, and stirred in a freezing environment, to slowly chill and permeate it with air. I have made ice cream with cream, milk, eggs, yolks and prayer in every possible combination, but the most reliable recipe I’ve had is from the Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook, and it comes from a recipe for Honey Ice Cream. I like it because unlike many recipes that call for milk, I can get consistent results using supermarket dairy. Ultra-pasteurized cream behaves reasonably well when there’s enough fat to help the mixture along. If I can’t get cream I’m really thrilled with, but I still want ice cream, I add clarified butter to the custard, about a third cup.

The original recipe calls for strong-flavored honey, and makes a fine ice cream all by itself. I, however, almost always use honey for ice cream, because I like the flavor, and it lowers the freezing temperature of the custard, making it easier to scoop later. You could substitute so many things for the mint: Rose petals, lavender flowers, bay leaves, basil, cloves, orange blossoms, ground pistachios, or a plain old vanilla bean. You would not want to use as much lavender or cloves as the mint, but taste the custard as you go. If it’s getting too strong, strain it out, if it’s not strong enough, add some more. It’s ice cream, no one’s going to get hurt. Just keep in mind the custard will taste somewhat less strong when it’s frozen.

Mint Ice Cream
4 cups heavy cream
5 egg yolks
½ cup mild-flavored honey, like clover or thyme, NOT buckwheat or thistle
1 1/2 cups loosely packed mint thinnings, stems and all
2-3 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped (optional)

Heat the cream slightly in a heavy saucepan, or in a double boiler if you’re squeamish. Beat the egg yolks in a medium bowl. Add some of the warmed cream and stir it in quickly. Add the honey, mint and the egg yolk mixture to the cream, and stir it in well. Cook, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon or heatproof spatula, over hot water or medium-low heat for about ten minutes, until the consistency of a very light custard sauce is reached (it thoroughly coats a spoon). Be sure to scrape the sides and bottom of the pot as the mixture cooks. There is also a smell associated with a ready custard… but I’m at a loss as to how to explain it. Keep your nose out for it, and you’ll know for next time. Cooking is more than a recipe, after all.

Pour the mixture into a bowl set in a larger bowl of ice and water. Stir occasionally until cool to the touch, then strain it- pressing on the solids to milk out that green elixir- and put it in the refrigerator. Chill for several hours, or overnight.

Put the chocolate and the custard in the freezer while you dig out the ice cream machine. After about ten minutes, process the custard in the ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Add the frozen chocolate about halfway through the process.

Freeze the ice cream until firm, then it’s ready when you are.

Listening: This American Life

This whole eating from the garden thing is blowing my mind. I know; Captain Obvious rides again. The spinach loves getting thinned, and exploded after its last trimming.

There are a number of ways to cook spinach, and they can really influence the nature of its flavor. Spinach is one of the most distinctly flavored greens, but that flavor can run the gamut from a bright omigawd to a subtle what-is-this-kale? kind of reaction. A salad of young, tiny spinach with a light sherry or balsamic vinaigrette could practically get up, walk around and tell you how good and fresh and vibrant it is. Blanched, pureed and cooked in beef stock and butter, spinach has a very deep voice and the character of an ent. Chopped and added to something like risotto, spinach can play both roles, adding both freshness and earth to a dish.

So, there’s this boy who’s been around for a few months now. I kept waiting for him to wise up and move on, but I guess there’s no judging taste: he seems to like me. And good thing, too, since he’s a Green Lantern. So, blog, Green Lantern, Green Lantern, blog.

Anyway, when he’s not saving the world, he works one of those grown up jobs. You know, the kind where you go every day, and it’s always Monday through Friday. I’ve heard about these, but I’m not anxious to try one. Sometimes I treat him after a long day with something like this:

Pantry and Garden Thinning Risotto

Er, uh, I mean:

Risotto of Spinach with Porcini

Serves 4 as a first course, 2-3 for dinner

½ cup dried porcini mushrooms, morels or others would be good
2 cups hot water

four slices bacon, chopped
1 small onion, chopped
salt, pepper, freshly grated nutmeg

1 cup short-grain rice, arborio or carnaroli for example
1 cup white wine (or pink wine)
2 cups (or more) stock, water or other flavorful liquid (dried mushroom soaking liquid, cheese rinds (not wax ones) simmered in water for a half hour, half-strength bouillon from Knorr brand cubes, water from cooking vegetables, almost anything) In this case, water from soaking the mushrooms simmered with some bay leaves.

2 cups, loosely packed, chopped fresh spinach or thinnings or young shoots from any garden green, like dandelions, arugula or sorrel (yes, if you don’t use pesticides in your garden, you can absolutely use the dandelions you pull out of the flower beds)
3 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup grated pecorino romano cheese

Pour the hot water over the mushrooms and allow to soak while you prepare the rest of the ingredients. When they are thoroughly softened, remove them from the liquid, chop them coarsely and set them aside. Strain the soaking liquid, or allow the grit to settle to the bottom.
Heat the stock in a pan adjacent to your risotto pan, you will be ladling from one pot to another almost continuously. It should barely simmer.
Cook the bacon over medium heat in a heavy, nonreactive pot, like copper lined with tin or stainless steel or enameled cast iron. Aluminum may darken the risotto. When it begins to crisp, add the onion and sweat, stirring frequently. Sweating means to cook without browning, so keep your eye on it, you want to cook the onions until they are just softened. Season onion with salt and pepper. Add the rice and stir well. When the liquid from the onions has evaporated, the rice will begin to brown, stir frequently and listen for the rice to begin to whistle. No, I’m not kidding. When the natural moisture in the endosperm of the rice breaks out it will make a little whistling noise. This means the rice grains are getting in the mood.
After the rice has been whistling for a minute or so, add the wine all at once. When wine is mostly evaporated, add half the mushroom soaking liquid. Stir it in well and adjust heat so that the mixture bubbles excitedly but not vigorously while you stir. From this point on, the risotto must be stirred regularly. Stir, and stir with a purpose, scraping the bottom and corners to avoid the risotto scorching. When there is just barely enough stock in the pan to keep all the rice submerged, add the rest of the liquid and the reserved mushrooms. Again, when that liquid is almost gone, add a half cup of stock and continue stirring, adding stock every few minutes as needed. Meanwhile season the risotto with salt and pepper.
In about eight minutes (or longer, depending on your rice), start tasting a grain or two of rice to determine its consistency. Much like pasta, the rice should be neither crunchy nor mushy, and that last little white pearl of starch should remain inside the rice. This is not fluffy white rice with a stir fry, don’t expect it to be. This whole process will take from 15-20 minutes, depending on heat, rice and humidity. When the rice is almost there, add spinach to heat through and season with some nutmeg. When the spinach is wilted, adjust the seasoning with salt, pepper and nutmeg. When you believe it to be thrirty seconds from being done, add the butter and cheese and stir thoroughly. Add stock to adjust the consistency to your liking and serve immediately. It’s not as urgent as it is with pasta, but don’t wait around. Get everybody sitting down before you add the cheese.

We drank this with one of many refreshing but unremarkable pink wines that we drink so much of this time of year. The Chateau D’acqueria Tavel is ubiquitous and good, the Tin Roof Pinot Noir Pink is really nice, and I had an Umbrian pink the other day that was great, but I forget the name of the producer (but it had Umbria in the name, like Azienda Umbria or something, although it wasn’t that). This time of year, I’ll try anything pink that’s under ten bucks. Ha ha ha.

Listening: NPR: national. public. radio.

What do this spinach and arugula have in common? Yes, they are both organic. There’s something else. Yes, they’re both green, duh. Yes, they’re both grown in California. But you know what else? I grew them both.

Whoa.

I have often said that time and distance are reflected in the food we eat, so something flown in from Chile last week will never be as good as something picked yesterday on the local farm. Well, try picking the salad on your way inside from work. I’m not saying it was the best arugula I’ve ever tasted, but I will say that it had a taste and a vibrancy unlike anything else one can eat. Even a tomato eaten warm from the sun- one of the best things you can do with clothes on- as beautiful and explosive as that experience is- and it is- there is an urgent greenness inherent to salads and herbs this fresh that eclipse even the sacred tomato.

So I called up some of the crew and had them over to try it, and to help clean out the fridge from earlier in the week. The cupboard was relatively bare, but here’s what I came up with:

Bruschetta with Ricotta Salata and Oregano- that’s the recipe, essentially. Toast some bread with olive oil on both sides in the oven, grate over ricotta salata and sprinkle with chopped oregano- preferably from the garden.

Arugula (and spinach) Salad with Eureka Lemon Segments (god I love lemon segments in a salad)

Fava and Tuma Ravioli from Easter with sage butter… guess where the sage came from

Apple Tart- courtesy of Laura

I also had guacamole and chips out. Fresh fresh fresh guacamole and blue corn chips, THAT is MFing snack food. Boo-YA.

Listening: A soundstage. Oh jeez.

Well, I’m in Vegas, but this morning I hit Santa Monica Farmers’ Market. A an old, dear friend’s mom is in town, and it’s criminal that I have yet to cook for this woman, so Monday we’re rectifying that. Here’s what I found that really blew my skirt up:

Celery- Yes, not usually much of a fan, but this was no ordinary celery
Nettles- Stinging nettles, but big mofo stinging nettles, perfect for soup
Fava beans- need I say more?
Strawberries- not good enough to kill for, but good enough to get down on the ground and vibrate for
Leeks- beautiful, tiny leeks from Rutiz Farms, home of the Orgasmic Arugula
Green garlic- what’s better about spring, exactly, than green garlic?
French fingerling potatoes- just a hint of chestnut in the flavor- excellent for composed salads
Citrus- holy shit I will never cease to be blown away by meyer lemons and blood oranges at the farmer’s market

So here’s what I have in mind for monday, criticism encouraged:

Mostarda of Celery (this is where celery [though usually fruit] is cooked in a syrup with spices to make a conserve) with fresh ricotta on crostini with my special olives: oil-cured sicilian olives macerated with blood orange juice and zest

Nettle and rice soup with bacon- a venetian style minestra-risotto

Panelle- Fried squares of chickpea flour polenta- palermo style- with a salad of favas, salame calabrese (spicy), ricotta salata and whole chopped (meaning pith and all) meyer lemons

Pork Butt Roast (the top part of the foreleg that I sometimes call shoulder, but is not accurate in English) with braised leeks and Sicilian potato salad (cooked potatoes, extra virgin olive oil, red wine vinegar, frsh mint)

Strawberries alongside Lebanese rosewater-flavored baklava. Yes, Rose, Danny Thomas was one, too.

I have several interesting pink wines laid in to help this process. Let me know what you think of the menu as a whole.

Well, crap, I lived. Thanks to everybody who came for Easter, from as far away as Simi Valley… sheesh!

Having its roots in a pagan festival, Easter brings to mind the cycle of life for me. There’s still a nip in the air, but here we are, eating peas. There are some dead leaves still visible in the mulch, but there’s enough sun to get artichokes. It’s a time of transition and renewal, much more than New Year’s, which- especially in the Northeast- is a time where gray and cold transitions into grayer and colder. Some lentils and pork don’t quite signify the revolution that a change in weather and new life do.

It’s easy to be philosophical when you spend a lot of time in the garden. To take dirt and some alien seeds and eggshells and mere effort, then to yield- with the forbearance of time- something alive that will perfume the sights and smells and energy of your home, and eventually nourish your body; this is a miracle. It’s especially dramatic, of course to live in California, which is rife with biology in a way that I can’t imagine any other state being. The shifts in temperature, not only from time of year, but from elevation, landform and ocean, along with an abundance of conserved areas not far from- and often within- populated areas make for a surrounding of life unlike any I’ve seen in this country.

artichoke in flower

So, all that said, I still have a mountain of peas to deal with, and- out of nowhere- the strangest craving for meatballs. I haven’t historically loved meatballs, but I figure there has to be a way for me to like something that is made of ingredients that I like. My mother’s recipe reads not unlike a meatloaf recipe, with beef, breadcrumbs, eggs, parsley (always dried, which smells of grass clippings to me and may well be), romano cheese… and that’s about all I can think of. So I said to myself, what could be different?

This brings me to one of the cookbooks in the Reference Section. These are seminal volumes that we go back to for answers, not necessarily for new inspiration (unless we’re feeling retro/classical). Among these are, of course, The Iliad and The Odyssey, that is to say Mastering the Art of French Cooking, volumes 1 and 2; Larousse Gastronomique; its Italian sister Il Cucchiaio d’Argento; The Joy of Cooking; and baking treatises, like The Cake Bible and The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion. These are all stately final-authority type tomes, but there are some more modest books in the category, too. One of them is Marcella Hazan’s Classic Italian Cooking, a book truly ahead of its time, and while it makes no claim to be an exhaustive study of the cuisine, it is a collection of historically sound, well-tested recipes designed to capture the interest of an American audience. The Lutece Cookbook is a similar study of the evolution of haute cuisine in America’s restaurants. These books have something over the encyclopedias that precede them: they give us a solid answer without exhausting us with information. Case in point, Marcella’s Classic Italian Cooking > index > meatballs > answer. The answer? Milk soaked in bread in place of the breadcrumbs. I should have known this, having made many forcemeats exactly the same way, but hey.

So, peas and meatballs. But not together- not for me, anyway, although my old buddy Marianna puts peas in damn near everything. I used to think this was a palermitana (Palermo-style) but I later learned this was a Marianna, in an effort to get her kids to eat something green. I know I talk about Sicilian food a lot, and I love food from all over the country, but I have a special fondness for Northeastern Italy. Friuli, Alto Adige and Veneto- not to mention Istria and the Slovenian provinces that are no longer part of Italy politically- are regions that straddle cultures, truly. Sicily’s food culture is a fascinating sum of its parts, but the Germanic and Italianate influences in the Northeast- although coherent- are distinct.

And the Venetians love their rice. They love rice so much that it would be impossible to say that any way of cooking rice is the “Venetian style” since there are about 30 ways they cook rice that are all more or less “standard.” They even have different styles of risotto. In springtime, when the peas first arrive, people go nuts with the classic risi e bisi, rice and peas. Not exactly a minestra, but decidedly not a risotto, it’s a thick soup of rice, peas, onions, stock and just a taste of pancetta (the salt of cured pork always makes peas taste sweeter). How thick? I describe it like this: you want it to be like a cooking risotto that you’ve just added liquid to, but it has yet to be absorbed.

This is one of those dishes that every Mamma in Veneto will tell you definitively that this is how much pancetta is right and this amount of liquid. However you make it, you can hardly go wrong. It’s a light but flavorful primo that follows the grows-together-goes-together truism: try serving it with grated piave and a young Soave (not Rico).

And really, why not follow this with a rich meatball in a slightly acid tomato sauce? With a little frisee salad, it’s dinner.

Listening: “The Preacher” Jimmy Smith

Well, last year, I fantasized about Easter dinner. This year, I’m doing it. I made 120 ravioli and did mise* for 3 easter pies plus bread tomorrow. 15 ladies and gentlemen are coming to eat all this stuff sunday, and I am psyched. If only I had had time for landscaping. Living in an apartment, you forget that there even is an outside to your home. It’s an amorphous concept, like Detroit.

Well, here’s the menu, if you can’t wait to find out. It’s a mixture of Neapolitan, Sicilian and Southern Californian influences, with nods to tradition, availability and pragmatism. And no, unfortunately, I did not find a goat.

Pizza Chena Easter “Stuffed” Pie in the style of Acqua Bella, Campania: A rich yeast dough with butter and eggs, filled with basket cheese, ham, pecorino romano and herbs.

Torta di Zucchini Another Easter Pie, this time Filo filled with a custard holding together Salame Napoletano, zucchini and spring onions.

Pane Pasquali A festive yellow bread dough braided with whole eggs, covered with poppy seeds and baked.

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Ravioli of Fava Beans with tuma cheese, sauced with butter, olive oil and marjoram, with caciocavallo cheese

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Lamb Leg Cacio e Uova: Braised Lamb with onions and white wine with an enriched sauce of eggs, lemon and cheese

Braised artichokes
Roasted potatoes with rosemary

Arugula Salad with Lemon

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Pastiera Napoletana Easter grain pie

Risu Niuro Sicilian Black Easter Risotto (with cocoa, not squid ink, you knucklehead)

So, as you can see, I have to get back to work. I hope you all have a great holiday.

Listening: NPR, Fresh Air

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 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

Sometimes you just get a taste in your head. Like a bad song from high school, no matter what you do, you know there’s only one way to get it out, which is how you came to find yourself in Best Buy at nine o’clock at night trying to decide between “Becoming X” and “Best of the Sneaker Pimps.”

Well, a couple of months ago, a very specific flavor rolled into my head: the sicilian sweet and sour flavor. An amalgamation of wine, tomatoes, sugar, vinegar and sometimes honey, it’s a singular taste that can’t really be explained. It’s richer than what Americans think of as Chinese sweet and sour, much subtler and infinitely more complex. Imagine a tomato sauce a little on the sweet side with an astringent background note that doesn’t quite make you pucker, but stays with you nonetheless. The subtlety comes from long cooking, and often one or more of the sweet and sour components disappear completely, like in polpo agrodolce, sweet and sour octopus, which has tomatoes in it, but you’d never know.

Sometimes the sauce is left slightly out of balance, and ingredients are added at the end to shift it one way or the other, like currants or raisins for sweet, or fresh vinegar or capers for sour. You could cook just about anything agrodolce, probably, and get away with it; though squashes (summer and winter), sprouting vegetables and shellfish seem to have an especial affinity for the treatment.

Last night, I finally scratched the itch with an old-school pasta al cavolofiore: pasta with cauliflower. It’s a typical agrodolce dish, garnished with toasted breadcrumbs rather than cheese, which would be at odds with the complex and poignant flavor of the sauce. I took some poetic license this time and used panko breadcrumbs, mainly because I didn’t have any dry bread lying around, and the panko seem to keep their flavor better in packaging than regular breadcrumbs and their larger size mimics fresh.

It’s a big recipe; it will sauce at least two or three pounds of pasta, but it is fantastic spooned over polenta and would be equally at home stirred into or poured onto rice or plain risotto. You can pretty much substitute winter squash, broccoli or brussels sprouts directly into this recipe. For zucchini or yellow squash skip the initial blanching, and for eggplant a quick saute in peanut oil should replace the blanching altogether.

I’ve only made this with white cauliflower, but I’d imagine that other colors or romanesco would be equally good, though for romanesco I would only blanch it very briefly.

The pictures of this didn’t come out terribly well, but I included one anyway so you could see the texture of the finished sauce. Don’t let the look of that pic fool you: this sauce is boss.

Pasta al Cavolofiore Agrodolce
Pasta with Sweet and Sour Cauliflower

1 head very fresh cauliflower, about 1-1/2 pounds

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 medium onions, thinly sliced
5 or 6 cloves of garlic, peeled
2 28 oz cans of whole peeled plum tomatoes, san marzano or bel roma if available
1 to 2 teaspoons sugar, to tase and depending on the tomatoes
2 tablespoons red or white wine vinegar, plus more to taste
1 tablespoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
1/2 teaspoon black pepper, plus more to taste
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes, or to taste
1 teaspoon dried oregano, with the blossoms if using branch oregano
2/3 cup dried black currants or golden raisins (or plain raisins)
1/2 cup pine nuts

2 cups homemade (or packaged Panko) breadcrumbs
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup or so extra virgin olive oil
2 teaspoons minced fresh rosemary or other herb

Set a large pot of salted water to boil. If cooking pasta, do NOT use the same water to cook the pasta and the cauliflower. The pasta will end up tasting like funky old cabbage.

Heat the oil in a deep pot (at least 4 quarts) and add the onion. Cook over medium heat until softened, about 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and add the garlic. When the garlic just begins to turn golden (NOT brown) add the tomatoes and all their juice. Rinse out the cans with some water, but don’t add more than 3/4 of a cup or so to the sauce. Add the sugar, vinegar, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes and oregano. Bring to a gentle boil and cook for ten minutes, stirring occasionally.

After ten minutes, lower the heat to medium and start breaking up the tomatoes with a spoon. Don’t worry about the texture at this point, just pop each tomato so they’re not keeping their seeds and juice separate from the rest of the sauce. Cover partially and cook for thirty minutes or so, somewhere between a lively simmer and a gentle boil. Stir it regularly, as the tomatoes will want to stick to the bottom. If you’re not using a very heavy pan for this, you might want to use a flame tamer (or my ghetto flame tamer, the lid from the tomato can). If it seems that the sauce is too liquid, remove the cover.

Meanwhile, break off the leaves from the cauliflower stalk and cut around it to separate the florets. Trim them into inch or so pieces, then pare away the outer layers of the stalk and slice what’s left (do not throw this part away on any vegetable, including heads of lettuce). Blanch the cauliflower for about 5 minutes, until it is barely softened, but still retains some crunch in the middle. Drain the cauliflower in a colander. Don’t use this water for anything else; it tastes kind of funky.

Put the breadcrumbs into a skillet and season them with salt and pepper. Pour in some of the olive oil, just enough to moisten them. Don’t put so much that there is oil pooling in the bottom. Put this over medium low heat and stir it often, so that the breadcrumbs turn a toasty mahogany color, but don’t let them burn. If they burn, start over: there’s no saving them. When you think they’re getting close, add the rosemary so it perfumes the crumbs. Transfer to a plate when they’re ready.

Cover the raisins with boiling water. Toast the pine nuts in a small, heavy skillet over medium heat, tossing regularly, then transfer to a plate to cool.

After thirty minutes, the sauce should taste more or less like a marinara sauce: bright and fresh, but a little bit sour and a little bit oniony-sweet. The tomatoes should be pretty coarse by this point, but break them up with a spoon to a chunky but regular consistency. Add the cauliflower and lower the heat so the sauce simmers gently. Cook the sauce and cauliflower together for about ten minutes, stirring occaisionally.

Drain the raisins.

After ten minutes, add the raisins and pine nuts to the sauce, adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper and maybe some fresh vinegar if it’s needed or desired. Cook the sauce for five minutes more.

Serve over pasta or polenta, sprinkled with the toasted breadcrumbs.

Finished Sauce