Last Night’s Dinner

You’ve probably figured out by now that my Big Food Project for this week was to make homemade pasta. Now, this isn’t entirely new for me - in another time and place, I made pasta from scratch often, using a hand-crank pasta roller (one of the first kitchen gadgets I ever bought for myself). But as I got older, developed some issues with my hand and arm strength, and moved into a series of progressively tinier kitchens, that old hand-crank pasta roller did little more than gather dust. At our last apartment, there wasn’t a single patch of countertop or piece of furniture we could have attached it to to use it, so we ended up donating it in one of our mass culls before the move.

But I missed making pasta from scratch. I read with envy as bloggers near and far worked with varying proportions of flour and eggs and sometimes other things added to the mix, and kneaded and rolled and made gorgeous, silken sheets of dough. I missed the smell of it, the texture, and the satisfying feeling of sitting down to a meal that was truly a labor of love.

I yearned to make fresh pasta again, and my parents knew this, so a few years ago they gifted me with a shiny red Kitchen Aid mixer, my first ever, complete with pasta making attachments. I was so thrilled to receive yet another thoughtful gift from them, but there was one problem: we had nowhere. to. put. it. We had nowhere near enough counter space for it, but even worse, adding another box of stuff to our already cluttered apartment was just too much. So “Big Red,” as we had dubbed her, sat, unopened, under my desk at my old job until my last week there. As I neared my last day, I made arrangements to have her shipped, and she was waiting at our new place when we arrived. Big Red was the very first appliance I unpacked and set up in our new kitchen.

So I was here, and Big Red was here with her lovely attachments, and why it has taken me this long to get to the pasta making I have NO idea, but I finally did it, and the first batch was so quick, so easy, and so satisfying that I immediately made a second batch, varying the recipe just a bit.

There are probably as many ways to make fresh pasta as there are Italian grandmothers, but I decided to keep things straightforward to start, consulting my trusted Marcella Hazan for guidance. The proportions were simple: 1.5 cups flour (I did veer from her recipe by using “00″ flour rather than unbleached all-purpose) plus 2 whole eggs. That’s it. No salt, no milk, no olive oil, no water, just flour and eggs and 8 minutes of kneading before I would have my dough.

This first batch didn’t take the whole amount of flour, but it still looked and felt right as I kneaded it, shaped it into a disc, wrapped it in plastic and left it to rest for a bit. I divided it into six pieces, removed one, wrapped the remainder tightly and held my breath as I turned on Big Red and began to roll out my dough. And in just minutes I had this:

Hello, lovely.

I rolled out my remaining pieces of dough, amazed at the speed and ease of which it was all happening, and after they dried just a bit, I cut them by hand into wide, pappardelle-like ribbons. They were, shall we say, “rustic.” But I was so pleased.

We had them for dinner that very night, dressed with an earthy chicken liver ragu. They cooked up beautifully, the pasta tender and delicate but still with a nice bite.

For my second batch of dough, I varied the recipe by using two whole eggs plus two egg yolks, to 1.5 cups of my “00″ flour. This did take the entire amount of flour as I kneaded, and at 8 minutes the dough was definitely tighter than my first batch. Again, I let it rest for a bit before rolling it out into sheets, and I decided to break out the spaghetti cutter attachment. I let the ribbons of spaghetti dry before placing them into a zip-top bag and placing them into the freezer, where they remained until they became part of last night’s dinner.

The sauce was inspired by the linguine with sardines and fennel we love so much, a mixture of caramelized fennel and onions, lemon juice and zest, a few chile flakes for heat, and some beautiful marinated anchovies we picked up at Venda Ravioli recently. The finished dish got a sprinkling of fennel fronds, toasted breadcrumbs and more lemon zest. I was a bit worried about how the thin strands of spaghetti would do when they hit the boiling water - they looked so delicate - but they cooked up beautifully, and they had this great springiness to them which made them really fun to twirl around our forks and bite into.

Mike and I both agreed that this first foray into pasta making with the help of our turbocharged assistant was a big success. I can’t wait to do it again.

(You can view my Flickr photoset here.)

My earliest memories of chicken cacciatore are of the Italian chain restaurant variety, of sauces loaded with chunky bell pepper and an inexplicable blanket or filling of cheese on or inside the chicken. The dish was more heavy than hearty, and as such it was never a favorite of mine. As I got older and my love of Italian food led me to convert to the church of Marcella, Lidia and Mario, I learned there was a better way. A simpler way, in fact, because really, this “hunters-style” braise needs little more than mushrooms, onions, tomato and herbs to make it a cacciatore.

This is a loose adaptation of Mario’s Molto Italiano recipe which keeps his addition of pancetta as well as the delicious garlic and rosemary rub for the chicken, but I’ve chosen to go with whole, small cipollini onions in place of diced, as well as the richer, earthier taste of dried porcini mushrooms in the sauce. Don’t let the browning and peeling/chopping steps put you off, because once everything is in the pot all you have to do is sit back and enjoy the delicious aromas filling your home – the end result is well worth the effort, and a satisfying meal on a blustery winter night.

Hunter’s-Style Chicken

1 chicken (about 3 lbs.), cut into quarters, or an equivalent amount of skin-on parts of your choice
3 large garlic peeled garlic cloves
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1-2 tablespoons fresh rosemary
Olive oil
1 cup dried porcini
1 cup hot tap water
12 small cipollini onions, peeled and trimmed
2 thick slices pancetta
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 cup white wine
1 28 oz. can whole peeled tomatoes
1 tablespoon dried oregano or marjoram
Several sprigs fresh thyme
Red chile flakes to taste

Arrange the chicken pieces on a platter and pat them dry. In a food processor or mini chopper, pulse the garlic, salt, pepper and rosemary, then add enough olive oil to form a thick paste. Rub the paste all over the chicken pieces and let them sit in the refrigerator for 20-30 minutes.

Place porcini in a bowl, cover with hot tap water and let them sit until the mushrooms are soft. Remove the mushrooms from the liquid and set aside. Strain the liquid to remove any grit and reserve.

Warm the olive oil in a heavy bottomed pot over medium heat and add the chicken pieces in batches, allowing them to brown on all sides. When the last chicken pieces have been browned, remove them to a platter, discard the oil and any burnt garlic from the pot and return it to the heat. Add the pancetta and let it render and brown for a few minutes. Add the onions and porcini and a pinch of salt. Make a hot spot on the side of the pan and add the tomato paste, allowing it to cook for a minute or two before stirring it through.

Add the wine and let it come to a boil, then reduce the heat and add the reserved porcini liquid, the tomatoes with their juice, the oregano or marjoram, the thyme sprigs and the chile flakes. Stir well, crushing the tomatoes with the back of a spoon, then return the chicken pieces to the pan along with any juices that have accumulated on the platter. Cover the pan and cook over low heat for 30 minutes or more, until the chicken is cooked through and very tender and the sauce is slightly thickened.

Serve chicken and sauce over soft polenta, garnishing with additional fresh rosemary or thyme if desired.

It can be difficult to do things like cooking or even just eating when life hands you something ugly, but I try to use cooking as a coping mechanism – a distraction of sorts, a way to busy myself with the process of creating something good and restorative for myself and those around me. Feeding yourself and those you love is a basic, nurturing thing, and spending a bit of time in the kitchen, even when I feel like I’m just going through the motions, is something I rely on to get through rough patches.

I am grateful at times like these that we tend to sketch out menus for the week in advance, and that we have an abundance of pantry staples to pull out when we need something nourishing but fuss-free. As much as I love being inspired by what is fresh and shiny at the market, sometimes I just need to cook up one of those meals that I have done countless times and don’t have to think too much about.

We’ve always got sardines in the pantry for snacking or light lunches, but I also love using them with pasta. We generally get the King Oscar brand, which I believe are readily available in most stores, but we recently picked up a box of these imported Portuguese sardines at Russ and Daughters, so I decided to use them.

I got a big pot of water boiling for the pasta while I trimmed and sliced a fennel bulb and chopped half of a large ripe tomato (I used fresh because we had a leftover fresh tomato on hand; you could certainly substitute chopped canned tomatoes – about a cup worth). I placed about 4 tablespoons of olive oil in a wide skillet over medium heat, and then added three fat cloves of garlic (peeled and chopped). I added two anchovy filets to the garlic and oil and mashed them with the back of my spoon until they melted into the oil. The fennel went in next with a pinch of salt, and I cooked it for about 5 minutes. I added a splash of white vermouth next and let that bubble down, then added the tomatoes and a splash of sherry vinegar. I stirred this all together, lidded it up, and let it simmer over low heat while the pasta cooked.

I cooked about half a pound of linguine in boiling salted water until it was short of al dente – roughly 6-7 minutes. Shortly before the pasta was ready, and after the sauce had reduced a bit, I added my sardines to the sauce – one can, with their oil. I broke the sardines up just a little with my spoon, added the linguine to the sauce along with a little bit of the pasta water and tossed everything through. I placed the pasta into bowls and topped it with a little fresh parsley and toasted breadcrumbs. (I had intended to top the pasta with fennel fronds and lemon zest, but frankly, I forgot.)

Mike poured a couple of glasses of Nero d’Avola, and as we sat in the dim light of our living room with our plates in our laps, quietly eating our meal, I felt a bit of calm come over me. Despite everything that was going on, I was eating good food with someone I love very much beside me, and I knew that things would be all right. Besides, as any cook knows, you sometimes need a little something bitter to bring out the sweet.

One of the surest signs of spring in these parts is the appearance of ramps at markets and on menus around town. For those of you who may not have heard of them before, ramps are a variety of wild leek native to states along the eastern coast of the U.S. from the Carolinas northward. They’re only around for a short time, and they’re delicious, so when they’re available, we tend to binge on them.

When word got out on Saturday that the ramps had finally hit Union Square, we were sure that they’d be gone by the time we made it in to the city, but to our surprise and delight, there were plenty left when we arrived. We grabbed four fat bunches and began brainstorming.

I recently saw a segment on NY1 featuring chef April Bloomfield of The Spotted Pig; they did a brief interview and shot lots of footage of her in the kitchen, and I noticed at one point she was preparing bundles of ramps with the stems wrapped in bacon. I used half of our ramps in that preparation as part of our Sunday brunch, and we decided to use the remainder for Monday’s dinner in an equally simple preparation – spaghetti with ramps. I basically riffed on Mario Batali’s recipe, tinkering with the proportions a bit and spiking the toasted breadcrumbs with a bit of lemon zest to brighten up the flavors. It’s a delicious dish, quick and easy to put together, and it really lets the flavor of the ramps shine through.

Spaghetti with Ramps

2 bundles small ramps, cleaned and trimmed (ours were very small so we used them whole; if you have larger ramps, separate the white and green parts, and allow the whites to cook for a few minutes before adding the greens)
2-3 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 teaspoon red chile flakes
Kosher salt
1/3 to 3/4 lb. thin spaghetti
1/8 cup breadcrumbs, toasted
Zest of 1/2 lemon

Cook spaghetti in an abundant amount of boiling salted water about 7 minutes, until it is just short of al dente.

While the spaghetti cooks, warm the olive oil in a skillet. Add the ramps, chile flakes and a pinch of salt and sauté until bright green. Add the spaghetti with a couple of tablespoons of the pasta water and toss through. Allow the pasta to continue cooking another minute or two and serve in warmed bowls. Mix breadcrumbs and lemon zest and sprinkle on top of the pasta.

We’ve had a cold and busy weekend, and I’ve got a long day of cooking ahead of me today, so it was nice last night to just pull something out of the freezer and get a good meal on the table in no time. This is the rest of my last batch of Ragu Bolognese, which I thawed and reheated gently while waiting for my pasta water to boil. I cooked a pound of rigatoni and finished it in the sauce, tossed a salad, and we were good to go. It really is worth it to make big batches of things like this sauce and to save them for future use.

I’m still ailing. My husband, bless him, not only brought home some gorgeous mackerel from the Greenmarket yesterday, but he cooked it up like so. Delicious.

Yesterday’s damp and rainy weather kept me from spending time in the garden as I had planned, so instead I decided to clean out and reorganize the freezer. I have a bad habit of cramming stuff in there and just letting it go until the door barely stays closed, and also of forgetting what we’ve got in there in the first place, so as I went through, I took inventory.

It’s fun to find little gems lurking in the deepest recesses of the freezer. When I discovered that I had one bag of basic tomato sauce left over from my final batch of last summer I knew immediately that I wanted to do something with it, so I pulled that out along with a package of pancetta (pretty much a freezer staple in our home) and decided to make Bucatini All’Amatriciana.

I basically used Mario Batali’s recipe for the version served at Babbo, though I had to substitute two large shallots for the red onion. It’s a great dish, a little sweet, a little spicy, with a rich porky flavor that’s really satisfying - what a way to transform odds and ends and pantry staples into something delicious.

Wine Pairing: The lovely and charming Dan at Uva Wines recommended the 2004 Villa Malacari Rosso Conero, a Montepulciano with deep, rich fruit and spice notes. As always, he picked us a winner.

Risotto is probably one of my favorite fallback dishes. It’s easy to prepare, comes together quickly and can be dressed up or down in a multitude of ways. I love playing with flavorings and add-ins for it as the seasons change - I’m anxious for Spring’s first peas and favas to show up at the Greenmarket so I can make one favorite version.

I had a package of fresh Mozzarella di Bufala that I had purchased for a dish we didn’t end up making, and as I tried to think of a way to use it (other than just eating the whole thing straight, which is quite easy to do), I remembered an episode of Lidia’s Family Table I saw recently where Lidia focused on risotto. The version she made in that episode was enriched with a basic tomato-basil sauce, and little chunks of fresh mozzarella were stirred in at the end so that you’d get little gooey pockets of cheese with each bite. I had, unfortunately, deleted the episode from the DVR already, so I had to go from memory, but what I ended up with was pretty darn tasty.

Tomato Risotto with Basil and Fresh Mozzarella

2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 large shallot, diced
2 cups Carnaroli or Arborio rice
1 cup white wine
1 cup tomato-basil pasta sauce (I had some homemade sauce on hand, but you can always use a good-quality jarred sauce)
1 pint chicken stock
3-4 cups water
12 large basil leaves, cut into chiffonade, plus additional whole leaves for garnish
Fresh mozzarella, cut into small cubes (about 1 cup)
Kosher salt to taste
Freshly grated Parmagiano Reggiano

Melt butter into olive oil in a heavy-bottomed pan over medium heat. Add shallot and a pinch of salt and cook a few minutes until softened. Add the rice and stir well to coat with the butter/olive oil mixture. Allow to cook a few minutes more until the rice begins to become translucent. Add wine and stir, allowing to cook until most of the liquid has been absorbed. Stir in tomato-basil sauce and half of the chicken stock and again allow to cook until most of the liquid has been absorbed.

Continue adding the remaining liquid (stock and water) a cup or so at a time, stirring often, and allowing the liquid to cook into the risotto as described above. You may need more or less liquid than I have listed above, but what you want is for the risotto to be creamy and the texture of the grains of rice to be al dente. Taste often as the rice cooks so you can monitor the texture of the rice, and also adjust for salt.

Once the risotto is creamy and al dente, turn off the heat and gently fold in the basil chiffonade. Add a bit of freshly grated Parmagiano Reggiano and stir that in, then fold in the mozzarella cubes a little bit at a time immediately before serving. Spoon into shallow bowls and garnish with whole basil leaves.

Pasta with shellfish is one of my favorite combinations, but I was never really a fan of the clam sauces that are served in many restaurants - chewy chopped clams in either a marinara or alfredo sauce, scooped on top of a pile of soggy noodles. This light, fresh version is neither a white sauce nor a red sauce, but it combines some of the best elements of both. It has quite a bit of heat from the chiles, so feel free to adjust the amount to your taste.

This is a simple meal that comes together extremely quickly. Get a big pot of water boiling to cook your pasta, prep your sauce ingredients while you wait, and the hard part is done - the actual cooking takes just minutes.

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
4 cloves garlic, sliced
1/2 pint cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
Kosher salt
1 teaspoon red chile flakes
18 littleneck clams, scrubbed
1 cup white wine (I used a Venetian Pinot Bianco which we also drank with the dish)
1/2 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
1/4 cup chopped basil or mint
1/2 lb. linguine or spaghetti

Cook the pasta in an abundant amount of salted water, according to package directions.

While the pasta cooks, sauté garlic in olive oil until fragrant. Add the cherry tomatoes with a pinch of salt and cook until softened. Add the chile flakes, clams, wine and half of the herbs, cover the pan and allow the clams to steam open, gently shaking the pan a few times while they cook. Discard any clams that do not open. When the pasta is just short of al dente, add it directly to the pan that the clams and sauce are cooking in and toss through to coat. Allow the pasta to continue cooking in the sauce for just a few minutes, then plate and sprinkle the remaining fresh herbs on top.

It was a beautiful day yesterday, but I wasn’t able to get out of the office to enjoy it, so when I got home, Mike mixed us up a round of Aviations and we took them out front to the stoop to take advantage of the evening’s waning warmth.

I had some local wild cod filets and a bunch of escarole that I wanted to cook up for dinner, so I did a quick search on foodandwine.com and found a recipe for Caponata-Style Escarole and Cod. It sounded quick, easy and tasty, so while I generally don’t cook from recipes, I thought I’d give this a go.

I have cooked a lot of fish fillets (cod included), and I think I can say I’m pretty good at it, but in this instance the cod began to break up about as soon as it hit the oil, and by the time I flipped the fillets and cooked them through, we were left with this:

Not pretty, and not a good sign of things to come.

Despite the fact that the fish had pretty much disintegrated, I had high hopes for the sauce. We love olives, capers, anchovies and tomatoes, and we love escarole and all manner of bitter greens - the combination sounded awesome. However, in the finished dish, we thought that the bitter and salty flavors were almost overwhelming. They definitely overpowered the fish, and it just didn’t taste balanced to us. I pulled out the cooked olives and added some uncooked whole olives hoping that their fruitiness might help, but it didn’t. The dish wasn’t inedible, but it was disappointing.

As Mike said, this has a lot of potential, but it needs some work. I do think that I’ll attempt the dish again, tweaking it to maybe add a bit of heat or acidity, and maybe try it with a different fish that will hold up better to the cooking. Not a bad dish, but I hope I can turn out a better version next time around.