spaghetti with zucchini & mint

There is, perhaps, no sight more depressing to a vegetable grower than the ubiquitous late-summer phenomenon of piles of overgrown zucchini being given away on little makeshift roadside tables dotting our rural, country roads.

Zucchini is the butt of jokes, its prodigious production and speed of growth overwhelming all but the most attentive caretakers. In order to keep our plants in good health and to keep the fruit size moderate, we pick twice a day, morning and night.

Indeed, there comes a point where even the most ardent enthusiasts of this noble fruit seem to have had enough.

But I don’t know of any vegetable more versatile in the kitchen or more able to take on different guises with aplomb. Zucchini fits in everywhere: in numerous side dish preparations, as a main course, in soups, in pasta sauces, in broth, in frittatas and risotto. The diverse uses of zucchini in the kitchen are more than able to keep up with the quantity this time of year. No zucchini should end up, sad and deflated, on some roadside table being given away for nothing.

So this will be the first in a series of posts on zucchini. I have the ambition and desire, if not the time, to publish a different zucchini recipe every day for a week. I’ll do my best, and hopefully offer some new ideas to those struggling to make the most of their zucchini this time of year.

First a note on the name and proper size of zucchini. In Italian, the word “zucca” means pumpkin or squash. Zucchini, therefore, is Italian for “little pumpkin”. Although in the US we tend to call the green type “zucchini” and all other colors and types “summer squash”, in Italian all summer squash are called “zucchini” and I follow that practice.

As for size, the human inclination to swing from one extreme to another has led some, in response to many zucchini being sold too large, to refuse to eat zucchini any larger than the diameter of a nickel. This is folly. I aim to harvest my zucchini at around 8 ounces, so that two together make a pound, though I think anything between 4 and 12 ounces is reasonable. Don’t let anyone convince you that little baby 2-ounce zucchini represent the pinnacle of zucchini pleasure!

Spaghetti with zucchini & mint (makes 2 or 3 servings)

Begin by cutting 8 ounces zucchini into half moons or little cubes. The choice you make here will affect the final result, but one is certainly not better than the other.

Also slice or chop about 2 to 4 ounces of onion and (optionally) an ounce or two of pancetta or bacon.

While your pasta water is heating, cook the pancetta and onion over medium-high heat in a generous bit of olive oil until a little softened and very lightly colored. Add the zucchini along with a pinch of salt and stir well.

It’s okay for the zucchini to overlap a bit, but not too much. Keep the heat strong enough to produce some real sizzle and some light browning, but not so strong that there’s a danger of burning. Be mindful that the zucchini has adequate lubrication, adding additional olive oil as needed.

After about 10 minutes, the zucchini should be softened and significantly reduced in bulk. Remove from heat.

Cook your pasta (about 150 grams for 2 to 3 people) in properly salted water (1 to 2 tablespoons for 4 quarts), and just before it is ready, return the sauce to strong heat. Taste for salt, and also season with black and/or hot pepper. Perhaps add a knob of butter if the spirit moves you. Finally, add a generous bit of mint leaves, either whole or chopped as you prefer. There is something about mint and zucchini which works beautifully. Of course, other herbs are suitable too (basil or parsley), but mint does something special for zucchini.

Drain the pasta and toss in the pan with the zucchini. Some people might add a little of the starchy pasta water, though I rarely do this.

Serve at once, garnished with a little drizzle of olive oil.

redeeming eggplant

As if cultivators of the soil hadn’t already suffered enough indignities, for the past decade we’ve had to look on in horror as the honorable and delicious eggplant has been hijacked and transformed into an emoji sex toy. Truly our culture is one to regard with shame when fruits and vegetables are the source not of pleasure and delight but a butt of jokes and the material for the juvenile and insulting practice known as “sexting.” Truly we live in a hollow and bankrupt culture in which sex increasingly seems to be our only aspiration and interest. I’ve published my thoughts before on “food porn“.

But all one can do is resist, I suppose. In such a world it indeed feels good to be a cultivator of the soil and a producer of nourishing food. The more insane the world, the more important sanity becomes. In the case of eggplant, sanity demands that we reclaim this important vegetable and learn to cook it well.

I’m the first to admit that cooking eggplant isn’t easy and it presents several unique challenges. When cooked properly, it possesses an irresistible creaminess and lovely flavor. But when done poorly, it can be nasty indeed, both in flavor and texture. Can there be any dish more nauseating than poorly prepared “eggplant parm” — bitter, seedy eggplant covered with a thick bread crumb layer, smothered with thick tomato sauce and poor-quality cheese?

The first question to address with eggplant is the near universal instruction to salt it an hour or more in advance to “draw out the bitter juices.” This advice is as questionable as it is universal. It’s not wrong exactly, but only half right. Salting eggplant in advance does make sense because the salt develops the eggplant’s flavor and seems to inhibit the absorption of too much oil later when the eggplant is cooked, but it’s only needed to “draw out the bitter juices” when the eggplant is old and full of seeds. I have never encountered a fresh eggplant that is bitter. It’s a good insurance policy when using a supermarket eggplant, but not necessary when buying eggplant from a farmer’s market or when growing your own. But I pretty much always do it anyway because I want the salt to develop the eggplant’s flavor.

Nice, fresh eggplant with only immature seeds.

So I begin by salting the eggplant at the ratio I salt most foods (1% by weight). The salt I use (Alessi Sea Salt) happens to weigh just about 4.5 grams per teaspoon, and since a pound is 450 grams, a teaspoon of that salt is perfect. I always peel my eggplant because the skin contributes nothing and can be a distraction if it doesn’t completely soften. I slice my eggplant (usually in rounds but sometimes into long rectangles) and toss it with the salt before allowing it to sit in a colander for about an hour. It’s in a colander because liquid will indeed be drawn out which should drain off.

The main challenge with cooking eggplant is that it absorbs oil like a sponge. Cooking without oil produces dried-out eggplant without a creamy texture but cooking with too much oil produces oil-saturated eggplant, and even if one uses high quality olive oil, there can still be too much of a good thing.

The solution I settled on for years was following the advice of the late, great Marcella Hazan, who adored both frying and eggplant. She argues that if you deep fry the eggplant in enough oil and at the right temperature, it will not come out saturated with oil. I followed this advice for years and had good results, but two things bothered me. One thing that bothered me is that sometimes the eggplant still comes out a bit too oily. The second thing was that deep frying requires so much oil that it’s difficult to be able to afford to do it with extra virgin olive oil. If the eggplant was going to absorb oil, I at least wanted it to be extra virgin olive oil of the highest quality.

And so eventually I settled upon a cooking method which is easier and better than the one I learned from Marcella. I now shallow fry the eggplant over high heat in just enough olive oil that the eggplant will absorb nearly all of it, ensuring that the eggplant is enhanced with only the best and most flavorful oil, contributing to the creamy texture which is eggplant’s main reason for being. Cooking over high heat and cutting the eggplant to the right thickness keeps the cooking time short and prevents the absorption of too much oil.

Eggplant cooked in such a way is perfect on its own as an appetizer or side dish. It is perfect for turning into eggplant alla Parmigiana (the real one, not the disgusting American version), or for filling with ricotta and rolling into involtini. Or it can be chopped up and become part of a pasta sauce. Or it can be incorporated into the classic French dish ratatouille.

Pan-seared Eggplant

Eggplant comes in all shapes, sizes, and colors. All are good. Begin by peeling the eggplant and cutting it into slices about ½ inch thick. Salt at around 1% by weight and let steep in a colander for an hour or so. The eggplant should release a little juice.

Pat the eggplant dry and possibly slice in half if the pieces are very large. Heat a large pan (mine is 12 inches across) and add plenty of high quality olive oil. For a pan of this size, I start with about ½ cup olive oil. Just as it begins to send up faint wisps of smoke, add as many eggplant slices as will fit comfortably and cook over pretty high heat until nicely browned. Then flip and do the other side. I regulate the heat so that the slices get 2 to 3 minutes of cooking on each side. If they’re burning before that, the heat is too high. If they’re not browning deeply after 2 or 3 minutes, the heat should be higher.

If at any point the eggplant absorbs ALL of the oil, simply add more as needed. Sometimes it soaks up a lot, but then releases it again as it cooks. For this test batch I never had to add more. Half a cup was enough. But you need to keep the heat as high as you can to prevent absorbing excessive oil.

When the slices are nicely browned on both sides, carefully lift up with a spatula or pair of tongs and place on a rack to cool. It’s important to have air flow all around so that they don’t become soggy.

It’s okay to fry in batches (I can fit about 8 ounces of eggplant in one layer in a 12-inch pan, so if I’m cooking 1 pound of eggplant I usually need to fry in two batches). You probably need to add more oil between each batch, but sometimes not. If at any point the oil is all absorbed, immediately add more.

The eggplant is perfect hot, but also at room temperature. You know you did well if the eggplant is perfectly soft and creamy but without any sensation that they’ve been saturated with oil.

in praise of chard

Photo courtesy of Nicole Karr

Let me set the scene. I’m in Savigno, Italy, a tiny rural hamlet within the province of Bologna. I’ve taken clients there for an afternoon of learning about white truffles followed by an early evening wine tasting with the heartthrob Gianluca. We’ve arrived for a late dinner at Amerigo 1934, one of the most famous restaurants within Bologna province. We’re giddy with excitement, maybe a little tipsy from the wine tasting. I explain that Amerigo is famous for its wild game and fresh pasta. One could order grilled wild pheasant, succulent pork shoulder, or perhaps meat-filled tortellini in broth, ravioli with prosciutto, a plate of exquisite charcuterie made from the famous Mora Romagnola pig breed. The cuisine of Bologna is rich and exquisite.

But we’ve been eating heavy for days, and a few women in the group turn to me and say What we really want are some plates of vegetables. I try to hide my displeasure while I roll my eyes in my head. I’m a vegetable farmer, of course, and a lover and promoter of vegetables, but in Savigno there are delicacies which can’t be had in the US. My clients persist. I eat my prosciutto and salami, my pork shoulder and tortellini. But they have the last laugh, because the plates of vegetables are exquisitely good, and one dish, a plate of sauteed Swiss chard, might have been the most delicious thing I ate all night.

As a farmer, I know that Swiss chard is a fantastic crop but it can be a tough sell. It’s a fantastic crop because it grows all season with minimal effort — unlike spinach, for example, which requires a lot of labor and only yields for 3 or 4 weeks before it needs to be turned in. But although chard is a farmer’s dream to grow, it can be a tough sell for customers. To begin with, the name doesn’t exactly whet the appetite. “Swiss” is okay, I suppose, but “chard”? No. I used to encourage my customers to call it by its beautiful Italian name, bieta. The word bieta sounds a little like the English word “beet” and that’s no coincidence. Chard and beets are very closely related, the main difference being that beets have been bred for root development and chard for leaf development. This is why the leaves of swiss chard, or bieta, have a faint flavor of beets. Other farmers have a hard time with the name too. One that I know has taken to cutting the chard at baby leaf stage and marketing it as “butter chard”, apparently with great success. 

Not only is the name a stumbling block, but the cooking of chard is too. It’s simply not a vegetable people have heard of or know what to do with. It’s not included in many cookbooks, although I must add that the cookbook which most shaped my culinary path – Marcella Hazan’s The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking – has several, and includes a loving defense of chard:

“There is no green more useful than Swiss Chard for Italian Cooking. Its broad dark green leaves, whose flavor is sweeter, less emphatic, than spinach, can be used in pasta dough to dye it green, or together with cheese, for the filling in a variety of stuffed pastas. The leaves are good in soup, delicious boiled and served with olive oil and lemon juice, or sauteed with olive oil and garlic. The broad sweet tasting stalks of mature chard are magnificent in gratin dishes, or sauteed, or fried.”

Indeed. That night at Amerigo, what blew me away was the absolute simplicity of preparation. The chard had simply been wilted and passed through some hot olive oil. Perhaps there was a splash of vinegar? It was the sort of minimalistic, exposed approach which is the genius of true Italian cooking.

The chard at Amerigo. It might not look like much, but its flavor was spellbinding.

As a chef, I’ve been haunted by that chard for six months, trying to recreate its spellbinding flavor, an intoxicating combination of freshness and depth. Am I exaggerating or misremembering? Perhaps. I too, after all, was a bit tipsy. But I don’t think so. That chard was every bit the equal to the exquisite meats and pastas we enjoyed that night.

Sauteed Swiss Chard with Garlic and Lemon Juice

Begin by assessing your chard. If the stalks and leaves are small, perhaps the leaves and stems can be left whole, offering an elegant preparation. If, as is more common, the stalks are big and thick, they can be detached from the leaves and cooked separately and a little longer.

Bring a small pan of water to a boil and drop in the chard. You only need enough water to steam the chard for a few minutes. If the stalks are thick, separate them, chop them into smaller pieces, and cook them for a few minutes before adding the leaves.

Once everything is wilted, remove the chard from the water and let drain a bit.

Meanwhile, saute a little garlic in olive oil, and once the garlic has become a little colored and aromatic, remove from heat. Add the chard (which can still be a bit wet as long as you let the pan with the oil cool somewhat) along with salt and possibly some hot pepper.

Return to the heat and saute for just a minute or so, adding a tiny squeeze of lemon just at the end. Not really enough to perceive strongly, but just enough to give some bright acidity to the dish. Maybe 2 or 3 teaspoons for 8 ounces of chard.

For a creamier dish, I sometimes add a bit of butter at the end as well. And always generous grindings of black pepper.

Most of that oil could have been left in the pan.

Sautéed Escarole

Our vegetable subscription season has started up again, and today we have another installment in a series on “difficult” vegetables, ones which are hard to cook or which people just don’t know about.

In this case, escarole couldn’t be easier to cook, but it’s a vegetable which not many Americans know of, and when they hear it’s in the class of Italian greens which have marked bitterness, they’re not inclined to try.

But they don’t know what they’re missing. As Italians know, mildly bitter greens marry beautifully with strong flavors like hot pepper, pork fat, and anchovies. Of course, there’s bitter and then there’s BITTER. The former can be pleasant if in balance with other flavors. The latter is a flaw.

In order to tame the bitterness in our escarole, we grow it only during cool weather, finishing the harvest by June and not beginning again until October. We grow it only in greenhouses, protected from the elements, which results in a more tender result. Escarole harvested in the middle of July is going to be hard for anyone to eat. But in the right season and with the right architecture of flavors, mild bitter Italian greens like escarole (along with endive, radicchio, broccoli-raab, dandelion, and others) deserve a place on our tables.

Sautéed Escarole

Begin by rinsing the escarole well. It’s possible to get soil hidden deep in center, so a little extra cleaning time is worthwhile.

With a small head, simply cutting it in half or quarters works well. For a bigger head, individual leaves can be pulled off.

Some people swear that soaking the leaves for a half hour or more in cold water reduces bitterness, but for me it’s enough to blanch them in boiling water for a minute or two, until just wilted and mostly tender. Some people think that plunging them back in cold water afterward helps with bitterness as well. I usually don’t bother.

Heat a pan with a generous bit of olive oil and some chopped or sliced garlic. Over medium heat, cook until the garlic just begins to take on some color and then remove from heat. Be careful because the garlic will continue to cook once off heat.

Add the escarole to the pan once it cools down a bit, so you don’t get splattering (the escarole will be a little wet). Season the escarole with salt and hot pepper. If you’re brave add a high quality anchovy or two and stir to dissolve it. If you do, you’ll produce a dish which tastes very much of Rome, specifically the Jewish culinary tradition of that city.

In any case, cook for a minute or two over vigorous heat, allowing the flavors to come together and serve at once.

 

 

a meatball primer

In the early days of her teaching career, the late Marcella Hazan used to startle people by pointing out that spaghetti and meatballs is not an Italian dish. If you see it on a menu in Italy today, it’s an indication that the restaurant is a tourist trap and that one should dine somewhere else.

The problem with the dish is that a plate of pasta should become one with its sauce, full integrated without a separation of pasta on the bottom and sauce on top. Meatballs and spaghetti can never become one. It’s a dish which is clunky and inelegant, violating one of the principal standards of good Italian cooking: balance.

And yet, meatballs themselves, served not with pasta but as a stand-alone appetizer or meat course is very Italian, and nearly every Italian region makes meatballs of some kind or another. Honestly, meatballs are one of my very favorite foods in all the world. Sadly, the quality of most meatballs out there is quite poor, even in Italy. I can’t count the number of times I’ve ordered them, even in a good restaurant in Italy, only to be disappointed. It’s made me obsessed with understanding what makes a good meatball, and where so many people go wrong.

The rarity of a good meatball has always puzzled me because making good ones is not especially hard. I did it right from the start, following Marcella Hazan’s classic recipe in her The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. Honestly, I’m not sure where so many people go wrong and why so many meatballs end up tasting heavy and dense, or worse yet, spongy and plastic.

For me, a meatball should be rich but delicate, hearty but soft, and meaty but fresh. To accomplish this, I think there are a few key things.

The first is to use meat which is not too lean. Fat provides flavor and juiciness, and so using lean ground meat can never provide the sort of meatball I’m looking for. If shopping at the store, I always buy 80/20 ground beef, the richer the better. Of course, shopping at the store is problematic because most meat there comes from industrial, confinement operations which are too nauseating to contemplate. Buying from a local farm makes me feel much better, except that local, grass-fed beef is often too lean and sometimes too gamey in flavor. It can be a problem. Sometimes I accept the leanness, but usually I enrich the lean meat with ground pork fat (which I realize not everyone has), and sometimes I even shop at the store, despite my scruples. But there’s no doubt that the richer the meat, the better the meatball will be. Different types of meat will affect the meatball too – pork instead of beef for example – but most types of meat can produce a good meatball. Don’t believe anyone with over-specific instructions, explaining that it HAS to be an exact mix of beef, pork, and veal. One of the best meatballs I ever made was a mix of ground duck legs and beef.

A second essential principle is to use high-quality bread rather than Wonder bread or ground bread crumbs, as so many recipes recommend. High-quality bread, soaked in milk to soften, provides the essential counterpoint to the meat in a meatball. Dan Richer – who operates Razza, one of the best pizzerias in the US and one of the only places in the US to make meatballs which blow me away – spoke elegantly about the importance of the bread in an interview we did in 2018:

“I think people typically don’t use enough bread. We use really big chunks of our bread, and it’s light and airy so it produces this negative space in your mouth, like in a black and white photo. The bread is that negative space. When your teeth bite through it, your perceive that airiness – that negative space – in your mouth.”

Dan is the first person I’ve ever heard talk about the importance of bread in a meatball in this way, and he’s dead-on right. The bread needs to be good, light, abundant, and not too fine.

A third, and related principle, is that the meatball “dough” should be gently mixed and individual ingredients should retain their identity. The “dough” shouldn’t be mixed to a homogenous, heavy mass with no air. When the meatballs are shaped, it should be done gently, enough to keep the meatballs from falling apart but not so much that all the air is pressed out. Shaping a meatball with too much pressure can ruin the whole thing.

Finally, and this is a bit controversial, I think the best meatball is one which has been coated with bread crumbs and deep fried, and then braised with a sauce of tomatoes, cabbage, peppers, or whatever. Frying the meatballs creates a crisp surface which serves as a great counterpoint to the soft and tender interior. I have to admit, however, that Dan Richer has no fryer at Razza, and his meatballs go straight into his wood-fired pizza oven with no coating of any kind. They come out perfectly. But then again, the oven is heated to a wickedly high temperature that home ovens can’t produce. To me, baking a meatball in a home oven is always a disappointment.

Dan’s amazing meatballs at Razza

Of course, there is no such thing as a definitive recipe for anything. This is my current approach, constantly being evaluated for improvements. There should be no dogmatism in cooking, and you should make your cooking your own.

Braised Meatballs

Begin by soaking about 100 grams of high-quality bread in a bowl with enough milk or buttermilk to almost cover. I often cut off some of the crust if it’s firm, but I like to leave some for texture.

While the bread is soaking, add 450 g (1 pound) ground meat to a bowl, and add an egg, some chopped parsley, two or three tablespoons of finely chopped onion, about ¼ cup parmigiano, a tablespoon or two olive oil, and a small grating of nutmeg. Add the soaked bread (squeezing out most of the milk) along with salt and pepper. The right amount of salt will be a teaspoon to a teaspoon and a half, depending on the salt.

Mix everything together gently, until just combined. You want to see chunks of this and that, not too homogeneous.

Coat in bread crumbs (no need to dip in egg first, the meatballs should be tacky enough) and fry until both sides are browned. For me, the best way is to deep fry them at 365 degrees in a pot with enough oil that the meatballs can float. If that kind of cooking is a turn-off for you, brown one side in a pan with a generous coating of olive oil, and then turn and do the other. They won’t be as good, but life is often a compromise!

Once browned, transfer them to a pan with some high-quality canned tomatoes, crushed by hand and well-seasoned with salt. No need for extra oil. The oil clinging to the meatballs will be enough.

Add a little water to the pan, bring to a simmer and then transfer to a hot oven (400 to 450 degrees), cooking for about 15 to 20 minutes until the meatballs are cooked through.

For an extra elegant touch, pass some high-quality canned tomatoes through a food mill, season well with salt and olive oil, and bring to a gentle simmer. Place this rather pure tomato sauce under the meatballs for an elegant presentation.

Serve at once, with a little garnish of parsley and parmigiano.

braised red cabbage with bacon and onions

I’m embarrassed to admit that I hadn’t cooked a red cabbage in more than 10 years, until last week. There’s no good reason. When I first starting cooking about 20 years ago, everything was so new that I’d try anything. I’d just go page by page in Marcella Hazan’s The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, and almost everything was as wonderful a revelation as what I’d cooked the day before. I was especially fond of Marcella’s recipe for braised chicken with red cabbage.

But over time one develops preferences. It’s not that I disliked red cabbage, but that I was drawn to other things more. To me, one of the least attractive aspects of getting older is the loss of the joy, typical of one’s youth, that comes from the lovely newness of everything. As one ages, what was once fringed with delight can become rather ordinary from repeated exposure. I suppose red cabbage was a little like that for me.

I’ve always grown it for our CSA, and though it is not the most popular item we grow, a few customers really love it. Last week I decided that enough was enough, and that it was time to reintroduce myself to red cabbage. This post is the third in a series on “difficult” vegetables, those that are easy to cook but unfamiliar to many. If one has never tried red cabbage or been turned off by overcooked, mushy and strong-tasting ones, I think the approach I offer here will be a welcome revelation. May it provoke the surprised delight that I so often experienced in my early days of cooking!

Although it could be made with a non-smoked meat like pancetta or sausage (or even made vegetarian without any meat at all), I like this dish best when it has something smoky in it, so ham would be fine, or speck (the smoked prosciutto from Northeastern Italy). Most readily available to Americans would be bacon, which is what I used last week when I had fresh bacon just off the smoker. When you smoke your own bacon, you always have end bits and scraps left over from the slicing, and those are perfect for using here because they tend to be extra savory. If all you have is traditional sliced bacon, that’s just fine to use as well.

Begin by slicing or dicing up about 2 ounces of bacon and 2 to 4 ounces ounces onion. I like to leave the onion in larger chunks, but thin slices are okay too. Saute with olive oil over a lively flame until the bacon is lightly browned and the onion is wilting and taking on some color.

Add about 8 ounces of sliced red cabbage. I don’t bother to remove the white inner core and see no need to. Season with salt and pepper and toss everything very well. If you sense more lubrication is needed, don’t be bashful in adding extra olive oil. It depends how much fat the bacon renders.

Lower the heat to a gentle simmer and cover. Let the cabbage cook gently for about 20 minutes, either on the stovetop or transferred to the oven. As long as it’s covered, the moisture trapped should be enough to cook the cabbage and keep everything from burning, but you might need to add a bit of water if things are drying out to much.

When the cabbage is tender (about 20 minutes or so), return it to a lively flame and taste for seasoning. Add some freshly chopped parsley, toss, and serve at once.

savoy cabbage soup

In addition to operating our little restaurant, we also raise vegetables for a select group of customers. Inevitably, some vegetables are harder to sell than others because many people are unfamiliar with them or they seem difficult to cook.

I think of these as “problem vegetables”, vegetables for which people need a little hand-holding, a little extra encouragement and guidance to cook. Savoy cabbage is one of these vegetables. It’s popular in Italy, especially the North, but not so well known in the US. For many Americans of a certain generation, the word cabbage summons thoughts or memories of smelly, overcooked, mushy disgustingness.

Fortunately, cabbage need not be strong-smelling mush. This soup is a great introduction to savoy cabbage because the proportion of cabbage to other ingredients is moderate, and it only needs about 30 minutes from start to finish. Rather than being musty, this soup shows savoy cabbage in a fresher, more attractive guise.

Savoy cabbage soup with bacon, tomatoes, and cannellini beans (serves 4)

Begin by browning something meaty and savory, like bacon, pancetta, sausage, or smoked ham. I like to use something smoky. Use 1/2 to 1 cup of it and brown in a little olive oil.

Add about a cup of onions or leeks, sliced thin. Reduce the heat and cook until the onion is soft and taking on some light color, 5 minutes or so.

If the meat has rendered too much fat, pour off most of it and add a little more olive oil or maybe a little butter, then add shredded Savoy cabbage, about a 1/4 or 1/2 head depending on size, or more if you want a higher proportion of cabbage in the soup.

Season with a generous three-finger pinch of salt, stir everything to combine and reduce the heat to a gentle simmer, adding a little water, wine, or beer if you like. Cover and wilt the cabbage until it is soft and significantly reduced in bulk, about 10 minutes.

Remove the lid and add a cup or so high quality canned tomatoes and simmer gently for 5 minutes before adding enough broth to make a nice soup, maybe 2 cups or so. Add a can of high-quality canned cannellini beans (Goya is my favorite) and bring to a gentle simmer.

Allow the flavors to blend for 10 minutes or so and finish with a generous bit of chopped parsley and some freshly ground black pepper. Check and correct for salt (This is THE most important step). Serve at once or reheat later in the day.

 

Chicken Breasts Braised in Butter

There’s a famous restaurant in Florence, Trattoria Sostanza, which prepares chicken breasts by briefly cooking them over hot coals and then braising in butter. I’ve never been to Sostanza, but back when people still blogged lots of people wrote about it. You can check out two good examples here and here. And long before bloggers came along, the great Elizabeth David wrote about it in 1954.

I can see why it’s such a popular dish. Chicken breasts need all the help they can get, both in flavor and texture. Naturally lean, they lack the flavor that comes from marbling with fat, and when overcooked they are truly dreadful.

Many chefs solve this problem by not serving them, choosing more impressive cuts for their restaurant menus. But for us it’s not an option. We’re committed to whole animal butchery, using every part of the animal and not leaving farmers stuck with the less sexy cuts (there are only two beef tenderloins, for example, per animal but hundreds of pounds of other muscles!).

When it comes to lean meats like chicken breasts and pork loin, I pull out all the stops. Chicken breasts are one of the few meats which I take the extra trouble to brine, using a solution of 2 quarts water, 125 grams salt, and 30 grams sugar. Other aromatics like bay leaves, garlic, black pepper, and lemon are worth a try, though I’m skeptical they really are absorbed into the meat. An 8 ounce boneless chicken breast needs 4 to 6 hours in the brine. Once brined, they can be removed and kept for an extra day or two before cooking.

I also leave the skin on, which provides an essential element of flavor and fat. I take the bone out, however, for ease of serving and eating, and the ability to easily cut the breast in half to serve.

Braising in a generous quantity of butter also helps this lean meat by allowing the butter to flavor the chicken as it luxuriates in its butter bath. Basting and pouring a little of the butter over the chicken when serving also helps enhance the chicken with a baroque richness.

My method is not an attempt to replicate Sostanza’s version. They use a live flame along with flour and egg. My version is simply an attempt to produce a delicious dish using the simplest possible means.

Begin by preparing the chicken breasts by removing the bones but keeping the skin on. Brine, as described above, but make sure the chicken is completely dry before browning. I aim for 8 ounce breasts, which is the size you get if you start with a 5 pounds chicken.

Quickly brown in a pan with a little bit of olive oil, about 2 or 3 minutes. The extra sugar from the brine might make the chicken brown quickly, so be careful.

Flip the chicken over and remove from heat. After about a minute, add a very generous quantity of butter, more than you think you need, at least 2 tablespoons per breast, maybe more like 4 tablespoons if only cooking one or two breasts.

Transfer to an oven heated to around 350 degrees and bake for about 10 or 15 minutes.

Remove from the oven and baste with the lovely butter. Check the internal temp. It should be 165 degrees. But one of the beautiful things about brining is that it insures a tender result, even when cooked beyond 170 degrees. Once the chicken is cooked through, run briefly under a broiler to crisp the skin. I put the chicken far from the broiler element and give it a full 3 minutes to crisp up.

Add some chopped parsley, generous grindings of black pepper, and possibly a little lemon juice to the butter, pour a little bit over the chicken, and serve immediately.

 

 

 

 

 

 

in defense of Marcella’s Amatriciana

A few days ago the New York Times published this article on the pasta sauce Amatriciana. It was a loving portrait of the town of Amatrice, but I thought it contained a lot of questionable assertions about Amatricina. Although I doubt it will be published, I wrote this letter to the editor in reply. For my own recipe, check this out.

In defense of Marcella’s Amatriciana

I read with interest Stephen Hall’s loving portrait of the town of Amatrice and the pasta sauce (Amatriciana) which takes its name from it. His description of Amatrice, all but destroyed by a 2016 earthquake, and its slow recovery were moving and valuable.

His discussion of the pasta sauce, however, left much to be desired. His criticism of Marcella Hazan’s recipe was especially troubling. Mr. Hall’s search for the “real Amatriciana” led him down a common but unfortunate road in pursuit of a kind of non-existent purity, as if such a thing as the “real Amatriciana” could possibly exist. This approach to cooking is akin to one who looks for the “real” Beethoven by playing only on period instruments or the real Hamlet by performing with an English accent.

Cooking, like music, is about taste, judgment, and expression. Slavish reliance on recipes and formulae are antithetical to good cooking, as Marcella knew and taught. She knew that good cooking contained an element of improvisation and personality without creeping into the more questionable territory of “creative” cooking.

Mr. Hall criticizes Marcella’s use of butter in her recipe for Amatriciana, and in his article chefs from Amatrice heap on the scorn on the idea as well. But this only shows the small-mindedness which too often plagues and holds back proud and provincial Italians. Marcella knew better. Having lived in Rome, she surely knew that olive oil was the traditional cooking fat in Amatriciana. But she also had a palate. She knew that good cooking tasted like it came from a real person whose personality came through in the dish. Marcella was a human being of course and wasn’t perfect. She wasn’t a “goddess”, but a cook with personality. Her cooking was not the soulless, anonymous cooking of most restaurants, but the personal cooking of the home. A little butter in her amatriciana surely created a texture and flavor which she preferred to the “official” version from Amatrice.

No, Mr. Hall, by cooking Marcella’s version all these years you haven’t been “doing it wrong”. Perhaps, you were not cooking the “real Amatriciana”, whatever that might be. You were cooking Marcella’s Amatriciana to be sure, but there’s no reason that hers might not have been the one to provide the most pleasure to you. Maybe you were right all along.

 

spaghetti with tomatoes, garlic, and basil

The first pasta sauce I ever cooked from scratch was one with tomatoes, garlic, and basil from Marcella Hazan’s benchmark book: The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. I picked it because it was so familiar. It’s the kind of thing on every Italian-American restaurant menu. And I had had more than one meal at Romano’s Macaroni Grill. This sauce was what I thought Italian cooking was. For many Americans, it is the quintessential pasta sauce. It’s what I cooked for my college professor who came to dine with me and my then-girlfriend (the same professor who later tried to seduce said girlfriend. True story… but one for a different post).

The second sauce I ever cooked from scratch was another from Marcella: tomatoes with butter and onion. This one completely inverted the previous approach. Instead of the assertive garlic we had mellow onion. In place of the familiar duo of tomato and olive oil we had the more luxurious combo of tomatoes and butter. In place of the heady aroma of basil we had the rich complexity of parmigiano-reggiano. I took a bite and stopped cold. I can’t say it was love at first bite. It was so contrary in flavor and character to everything I thought I knew about Italian cooking, that I didn’t know what to make of it. Fortunately, I persevered. That sauce became beloved, as it has for so many countless others. It was the beginning of my true exploration of the cooking of Italy, so varied, so inexhaustible, and so different from Italian cooking in the US.

Over time perhaps I became a little snooty. Like the half-educated ass who reacts to the overuse of tomato by eliminating the tomato completely from his “Northern Italian” cooking, I began to look down upon that first sauce I had made, as if Italy were divided neatly into a “North” and “South” instead of a myriad of rich, diverse regions. Even though I had learned it from Marcella, the sauce with tomatoes, garlic, and basil came to represent Italian-American cooking to me. The Macaroni Grill. The Olive Garden. I stopped making it. I moved on to spaghetti alla carbonara, fresh pastas with butter-based sauces, true Bolognese lasagne made with spinach egg pasta but with neither ricotta nor mozzarella.

This was an important education. But it obscured the fact that pasta with tomatoes, garlic, and basil is truly Italian too, even if the Americanized version of it is a pale shadow of its true Italian nature. Marcella wrote that it’s one of countless Roman sauces called “alla carrettiera” (wagon-style), named for the wagons which brought down wine and produce to the city from the surrounding hillsides. It is improvisational and seasonal, as the best Italian cooking is. You cook not with recipes but with whatever looks best at market (or in the garden) on a given day.

What brought me back to the sauce in recent years was access to fresh, meaty tomatoes without seeds or juice. I love high-quality canned tomatoes and use them liberally, but on certain occasions a fresh tomato creates a subtly different flavor, color, and texture. This is one of those times. Many think that only plum tomatoes or “sauce tomatoes” are good for cooking, but the variety I’m growing this year is a large, ox-heart variety called Cauralina. It has firm flesh that nonetheless breaks down beautifully into the most succulent sauce. It’s inspiring to cook with.

Marcella gives the sauce a pretty long cook time, about 25 minutes, until the tomatoes are highly concentrated. She also uses an abundant amount of garlic (5 cloves), which is poached with the tomatoes but never browned for a more mild flavor. But one of the great joys of cooking is adapting a recipe to suit one’s style and personality. For me, the tomatoes should cook briefly, until breaking down but with still-recognizable pieces. It should be clear it was made with a fresh tomato.

This sauce represents the kind of cooking which is resistant to recipe writing. There are a dozen small details essential for the best result which just can’t be written down without excessive tediousness. The heat needs to be brisk but not so brisk that the tomatoes burn or become too dry. Sometimes a touch of water needs to be added to keep the sauce moist. Too much water dilutes the flavor and keeps the sauce from clinging properly to the pasta. The sauce needs to be salted correctly. But the salting needs to be done keeping in mind the amount of sauce you plan to dress the pasta with (the more moderate the dressing, the saltier the sauce should be). All of these decisions require observation and experience to draw on. I make the sauce much better today than I did 20 years ago. You would make it better cooking side by side with an experienced cook than reading a recipe (even this one!). Still, one must begin somewhere. This sauce is where I began, and it’s a sauce that I’m still happy to return to. When made well, there is no sauce which gives me greater pleasure.

Spaghetti with Tomatoes, Garlic & Basil (For two people)

Begin by bringing four quarts of well-salted water to a boil (1 to 2 tablespoons depending on the strength of the salt). Add about 100 grams of high-quality imported spaghetti.

In a medium saucepan, lightly saute some chopped or sliced garlic in a generous bit of high-quality olive oil until aromatic and very lightly colored. Add about a half pound of chopped, meaty fresh tomatoes from your garden or a good farmers market. Don’t bother peeling them or removing seeds, etc. Season with salt, ¼ to ½ teaspoon depending on the strength of the salt. Add freshly ground black pepper or dried hot pepper as you prefer.

Cook over lively heat for just a couple minutes until the tomatoes begin to break down. Add a little water here and there to keep everything moist. Add a few basil leaves if you like, keeping in mind that cooking reduces the aroma of basil significantly. When the sauce is mostly broken down with just a piece of tomato visible here and there, it is ready. Remove from the heat and check for salt. Keep in mind that the less sauce you use, the saltier the sauce should be.

When the pasta is ready it, return the sauce to lively heat and toss with the pasta with the sauce in the pan. Plate and garnish with fresh basil (whole leaves or chopped) and a drizzle of highest-quality olive oil.