california olive ranch

Here is one of the most informative and fun email-ers in our "Eating Italian" landscape. In addition to lots of information on olive oil generally -- it is not all commercial -- there are great recipes and a host of other assorted facts and figures.

Go to their web site: www.californiaoliveranch.com and sign up for the enewsletter. The emails are frequent but, in this camp anyway, always anticipated with much pleasure.

If you sign up right away (this is November 1) you will get the email with a great interview with the Canal House publishers. These are the same wonderful women you met on this blog -- just scroll back -- with their background, interests, and some terrific recipes, which they present in absolutely beautiful books.

penne with peppers and bacon

We believe that Marcella's Italian Kitchen is the most under-appreciated of all her wonderful cook books. The wonderful pasta recipes are worth more than the price of admission. Here is an incredible taste treat we have adapted from one of the recipes in this book. Simple, fabulous and you will love it.

for the sauce:

• four tablespoons of butter
• three tablespoons olive oil
• two good-sized red bell peppers
• one half cup onion, chopped
• one clove garlic, peeled and minced
• six ounces bacon, sliced and chopped into quarter inch pieces
• salt and freshly ground pepper
• one quarter cup freshly grated pecorino (or parmesan)
• two tablespoons chopped parsely

for the pasta:

• one pound of penne or similar tubed pasta

Cut open the peppers and seed them and get rid of the core. Then slice and chop the peppers into quarter inch squares.

Put a tablespoon of olive oil in a skillet and saute the bacon until it is starting to brown but not yet crisp. Remove from the skillet and set aside on paper towels. Use a tablespoon of the fat as below (optional).

In another saute pan put in the remaining two tablespoons of olive oil and two tablespoons of butter, over a medium high heat. (If, like us, you like that flavor of fat, also add the reserved tablespoon of fat from the bacon). Add the garlic and onion and cook until the onion starts to turn  soft. Add the peppers and cook for ten minutes or so until the peppers are soft but not mushy. Add the bacon back into the pan and salt and some freshly ground pepper. Stir and saute another minute.

Meanwhile bring 4-5 quarts of water to a boil. Add two tablespoons of salt. Drop in the pasta and stir. Continue cooking until al dente. Save a cup of the pasta cooking liquid. Drain.

Add the pasta to the reheated sauce and stir. Add the tablespoon of butter and the parmesan and stir. Add from the reserved pasta water as necessary to keep the sauce moist. Cover and turn the heat to high and steam for one minute to get the pasta very hot.

Put the finished pasta in warm serving bowls, top with parsley, and serve immediately.

Then get Marcella's Italian Kitchen  and check out all the other great pasta recipes for yourself!

Canal House Cooking . . . 

Thanks to my friend Nach Waxman and his great book store: Kitchen Arts & Letters, I found this book, one of a series, called Canal House Cooking Volume No. 7. This is their Italian volume.


"They" are two talented ladies, Christopher and Melissa, who have a studio, workshop, and atelier devoted to "good ideas and good work relating to the world of food", in a red brick warehouse alongside a canal in Lambertville, New Jersey.

This Italian book is a result of staying several months in a remote farmhouse in Tuscany and also traveling throughout the country they love. When they returned home, Volume 7 (shown above) was the result. The book, not large but carefully selected, is as useful and intriguing as it is beautiful.

The book opens with a terrific essay on Italian sparklers -- spumante, prosecco, and many others, and goes on from there. 

Here is one of the opening recipes, which we did immediately: 


prosciutto and arugula tramezzini

Beat eight tablespoons room temp unsalted butter in a bowl with an electric mixer until light and fluffy, about one to two minutes. Set aside. Makes about 8-12 half sandwiches.

Use plain white sandwich bread. Trim the crusts off three slices. Spread some whipped butter on each of the three. Put one thin slice of prosciutto on each of two slices. Top them with small arugula leaves. Stack them on top of each other, arugula side up.Top this stack with the third slice of bread, butter side down. Cut the sandwich in half on a diagonal. Presto: two half sandwiches.

Their web site is "thecanalhouse.com".   You can order the book from Kitchen Arts & Letters, 1435 Lexington, NY NY 10128 (kitchenartsandletters.com).

Fall is, of course, wonderful fresh tomato sauce time. We bask in it, and put a lot of sauce away in the freezer for those winter months. We came across this recipe, and adapted it slightly. It is just terrific. Peppers, when they come to the market in all their glory, provide not only a wonderful flavor and texture, but dazzling color. We have an all-start flaming red extravaganza with this fall classic.
And note -- true to our roots -- we do not peel or roast the peppers! Easy.

for the sauce:

one pound of red bell peppers, cut in medium dice
one and one-quarter pounds tomatoes, roughly diced
two tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
three garlic cloves, peeled and diced
one medium onion, roughly chopped
one quarter cup fresh basil, chopped
salt and freshly ground pepper
two tablespoons fresh parsley
one quarter cup fresh parmesan

for the pasta:

one pound spaghettii (or linguine, or penne)

In a saute pan over medium heat, add the olive oil and garlic. After thirty seconds, add the onion. Cook until the onion is tender, about three minutes, and add the peppers, a teaspoon of salt and some freshly ground pepper. Cook until the peppers have softened, about ten minutes.

Add the tomatoes and the basil, and bring to a simmer. Cook about fifteen minutes; the tomatoes should have broken down.Then cover, reduce the heat to a very mild but constant simmer, and cook for another fifteen minutes. Cool and then put the sauce through the medium blade of a food mill. Return to the pan.

Bring 4-5 quarts of cold water to a heavy boil. Add a couple of teaspoons of salt. Add the pasta, stirring it well to get it separated and mixed. Cook to al dente. Reserve one cup of the pasta water. Drain.

Add the pasta to the sauce; add the parsley; stir. Add cooking liquid if necessary to make the sauce not too thick. It should easily thoroughly coat the pasta. Check for salt and pepper. Serve with the parmesan on the side.

fegato alla Veneziana

This is Trattoria alla Madonna, just off the Rialto, in Venice. I first found this gem in 1970, and since thenI have established a tradition that my first luncheon on a trip to Venice always would be here. With always the same menu: spaghetti con vongole and fegato alla Veneziana. Not having been in Venice for a while, I pined for a fegato, so last week I made it myself. My wife and I loved it.

There are many recipes, varying only slightly, for fegato -- some with a touch of aceto (vinegar) -- not here. Marcella's does not have wine, but we like it with. This simple recipe is adapted from that huge compendium, La Cucina, The Regional Cooking of Italy

Whatever the recipe, one fundamental principal must hold: simmer the onions very slowly for a long time and then cook the liver in a flash!

ingredients:

• four tablespoons olive oil
• four tablespoons butter
• one-half cup beef or veal broth
• one pound of onions, thinly sliced
• one pound of calves liver, cut thin and then thinly sliced
• two tablespoons white wine
• salt and pepper

In a saute pan, heat the olive oil, butter and broth. Add the onions, and cook over a low heat, stirring occasionally until very translucent, but not colored. Remove the onions. This could be a half hour.

Add a touch more olive oil if needed. Turn heat up. Add the liver and do a quick stir. The liver, depending on its thinness, should be done in just a few seconds. Add the onions back, add the wine, salt and pepper, stir and serve. Serve ideally over a soft polenta.

A simple variation: at the last step add a tablespoon of lemon juice and a tablespoon of chopped parsley.

great issue

As a peruser of a lot of food magazines, often inundated with recipe after recipe, it is possible to feel bloated in a figurative sense. So when an issue comes along with a creative approach that rings bells and has a lot of "wows", it is a special delight. The October Food and Wine is one of those.

Loving all things Roman, I was entranced with the article "Eat & drink Like a Roman", which provided new insights into the Lazio region. Our love of the food of Rome is well documented -- see www.classicpasta.com, on the home page, for a view of the Piazza Rotunda and links to recipes for the big three of Roman pasta classics: Amatriciana, cacio e pep, and carbonnara. This magazine has its versions of Amatriciana (by the Queen of Amatriciana they claim) and cacio e pepe. We are now trying these versions. And an interesting riff on Lazio's wines -- remember Frascati?

"Ravioli should be tender, not wimpy" says Domenica Marchetti in the magazine, in an excellent article on making ravioli -- plus suggestions for three fillings. No matter how good one thinks one is in creating home-made ravioli, new insights and tips, as here, are always appreciated.

The ubiquitous Mario has yet another meat ragu, what he calls a Butcher's ragu, which he serves in his newest restaurant "Eataly". At the pasta section in this complex, he offers three different pasta shapes and five sauces: customers mix and match as they please. Mario uses fusilli with this ragu.

One of the favorites of mine when I ate at the classic Little Italy trattorias in lower Manhattan in the sixties and seventies, was chicken scarpariello. I haven't had it for years. But Grace Parisi has the recipe for it in this issue, so the missing link has been solved!

And finally a quote we love, as it is really the theme of the recipes in classicpasta.com: from the aforementioned Anna Dente, the Queen of Amatriciana: "Like the best songs, the best recipes have few ingredients."

Eating . . . a Memoir

Jason Epstein, an old friend from wonderful New York publishing days, was not only an editor par excellence, a brilliant creative genius and innovator in that world, but also a first-class cook and lover of everything in food.

He has written a memoir -- see above -- that is nothing but a pure delight. And filled with insights that are both entertaining, enlightening and fun. Nothing for you to do but buy the book . . . and enjoy! "It is delicious" as Maida Heatter says. Plus, you will find a host of terrific recipes -- all easily done -- Chinese, Italian, French, New England, etc. A feast.

Jason talks about several key Italian recipes in his memoir, which qualifies it for a place in our "eating Italian" blog. He also provides some excellent tips and bits of advice that I, for one, found incredibly valuable.

As we also recommend: one finds out when the pasta is properly al dente by tasting. We pick out the strand of pasta or the individual penne and then blow on it to cool it for tasting. He has a cup of cold water at hand to do the cooling. When the pasta is ready he lifts it out of its water with a long-handled strainer (for penne) or tongs (for spaghetti for example) and drops the pasta directly into the sauce. This rather than dumping the pasta into a collander to drain it. We like it.

We had to include several of the recipes from "Eating" in our web site:
http://www.classicpasta.com/.


First there is Jason's take on a classic Bolognese:

www.classicpasta.com/jasons_bolognese.htm. Then you can compare his with our own "best Bolognese sauce ever" and put them both to a test.

His simple and spicy tomato sauce that he prepares for the penne (see above) is found at:

www.classicpasta.com/garlic_tomato_sauce.htm. We present the recipe almost exactly as Jason writes it, in his wonderful style.

And for an added attraction, a scallops and fettuccine dish:
www.classicpasta.com/fettucine_scallops_Jason.htm.

Buy the book: read, enjoy and cook!