hathor

To kick off the weekend, a filet mignon on a bed of roasted onions with a red wine reduction. Lunch on Saturday was an abundance of green leafy things to make up for the beef orgy the night before. Last night was a dish that's made in Le Marche...Baccala made Ancona style. Basically roasted cod, potatoes, stuffed tomatoes and some tuna-anchovy paste. If you are interested, 'clicca qui' for a photo blow by blow that I posted on the Le Marche thread.

Fifi, those black columbian pots are total workhorses! I use them all the time, and as Paula said, they just get better and better. If you scout around for them, they can be had at a very reasonable price. Although technically not a braise, I used my open/flat one for a Le Marche inspired dinner last night. Beautiful summary on the braise, by the way.

Thanks guys! I had some fun! P.S. to Pontormo: and here I thought it was just gelato!! Not a metaphor for all the Marche!

STOCCAFISSO ALL’ANCONETANA Stockfish Ancona-style Well, I made the Stoccafisso...only with baccala. I've never seen stoccafisso in the States. It's a fairly elaborate dish, but well worth it. It's incredibly flavorful, but even better, each component has been seasoned a bit differently, so each bite tastes a little different. Well worth it. Here is a blow by blow. The soaked fish is covered with a tuna-anchovy-caper-carrot-celery-onion paste. This alone would make a great sandwich...could have been the excellent Genova tuna fish that made it so tasty. This is the full on mise en place. Tuna-anchovy paste. Fish. Potato wedges. Tomatoes before being stuffed. As the tomatoes were small, I put them in the oven about 1/2 hour later. Here is the finished dish, served with herb toasts and a delicious, elegant verdicchio. And now for the full effect. I wish I had a little time elapse video...this dish disappeared! Desert wasn't very Marchegiani... I made a honey/almond ice cream, with a bit of Saba (that's Central Italian) and bits of candied, spiced orange peel. hmmmm....seems I got a little carried away with the photos. We had fun....wish you had been with us!

Pontormo is right Franci, that chicken looks just beautiful!! Remember the clams I made a few days ago? I just came across the recipe, and it's name is "Vongole alla Poveraccia", or Poor Man's Clams. I wish I had an explanation why these are poor mans clams...they taste pretty 'rich' to me....

Sandy: okra remoulade?? Care to guess how that was made? I'm looking to expand my okra repertoire! That was one chocolatey feast....wow.....!

Look what Daniel said over on the dinner thread: "Word word.. The dinner thread hit a million?? I think thats pretty amazing. Thats a million times people have shared the things they made for their family and the special people and times in their lives.. Such great memories we have saved forever." Kind of sums up a lot of our feelings, now doesn't it?

That sounds really, really good! I love pigeon...but its hard to find in the States. P.S. Thanks Pontormo!!

Well, I'll be darned. There is a lunch thread! Yesterday: sardinian bottarga pasta Today: swiss chard and leek sformata

I use it when I want to make a particularly rich, lather filled soap. p.s. someone on the dinner thread was very enthusiastic about goat milk butter. Could we worth checking out.

I thought bergamot was an orange, and it is what gives Earl Grey it's distinctive flavor. Love the fusion wedding soup!

Pontormo: go with the branzino recipe. The salt cod flavor/texture is necessary for the Stoccafissa recipe...IMHO. If you go to my intro, there's a picture of that stoccafissa dish. It's the one with the stuffed tomatoes. I'm planning on making this over the weekend, it's one of my favorite Marche recipes. Last night, as a little appetizer I made some steamed clams, using a method taught to me by a very good Marchegiani fish chef. Saute some garlic, chili pepper, anchovies until the anchovies fall apart. Throw in the clams, remove and eat as soon as they open. Kevin, I remember that you tried this method, but that you were less than thrilled. I think it has to do with the variety of clams. When I've done this in Italy, the clams release a lot of juice very quickly. Using basic east coast littlenecks last night, there wasn't enough liquid released to keep the garlic from scorching. So, I added a small shot of white wine which did the trick. The clam juice mingles with the garlic/anchovy juice and it all just tastes great. Elie: that soup looks delicious! I could use some right about now.

Remember hot island breezes, sunshine, long days melting into warm evenings? No? Me either. It was -2F when I woke up this morning...and yesterday morning. But, yesterday for lunch, we remembered Sardegna. I found a carefully wrapped and stored piece of Sardegian (sp?) bottarga that I'd brought back from Italy. The Sardegna stuff is much milder than anything I've tasted from Sicily or Calabria or Puglia. So we had a simple angle hair pasta with chopped parsley, garlic, chili pepper and lots of bottarga. It just tasted great. Now, if I only had some of that fresh sheep ricotta.....

Gorgeous pizzas!! That post about bubbles cracked me up...where else would you find rhapsodies about pizza bubbles?? Nice scallops Wendy! 65F...wow! It's freezing in New York! Lunch was some angel hair pasta with bottarga (pressed, preserved tuna roe) Dinner: pan roasted trout with a tangerine/almond beurre blanc sauce.

What a nightmarish concoction this looks like! All those jaws poking out of the liquid and fish heads . . . I assume this is the stock base, correct? Does it get strained or pureed into the base? In Marcella Hazan's first book, her Adriatic fish soup recipe calls for ample fish heads which are then pureed and passed through a food mill. Interesting how it looks like there's mackerel in there, too, which I've always seen as being too strong and oily to make an effective stock. ← I know! I just love this picture, seething sea monsters! The broth cooks and then you pick all the meat off the bones and return the meat to the broth. Sounds tedious but it actually goes pretty quickly one the meat gets soft. The teeth are still sharp though.... Franci: we ALL count on you to have the right tool!

The passatelli dough wound up as 'crumbly croutons' in a celery root soup. I fried little crumbles...interesting, but not ground breaking. Here is the ingredient list from our Slow Food vincisgrassi recipe. Nothing special required for the pasta. Ingredients: 1 sheet of hand-rolled pasta 100 g. ground beef 300 g. chicken giblets (livers, heart, gizzards, coxcombs) 1 onion 1 carrot 1 glass white wine 500 g. tomato sauce 150 g. extra virgin olive oil 200 g. grated parmigiano 500 g. white sauce salt and pepper

CarrotTop: why are you even thinking of hitting yourself upside the head? Feminism does not mean that you don't care for someone, you are expressing your caring thru making a meal that your partner enjoys. That's not anti-feminism, that's just being human and civilized. Both halves of the female mind: the nuturing and the intellectual can coincide peacefully. (It does occur to me that female minds have more than 2 halves...!)

What asparagus thread!!? I need to go find that thread! 'Since we don't have a lunch thread... Yesterday's lunch was a fennel/tangerine and olive salad, with a celery root soup, finished with some roast garlic cream and passatelli crumbs. You need to come to the LeMarche thread to figure out what passatelli is! Dinner was a roast duck with a rum/cherry glaze. This bird was very, uh, economically, priced at Fairway, so I thought, what the heck, vhy not a duck? It was amazing....it was essentially a meat free duck. All looks, no meat. You just know there is a blonde joke in there somewhere. But, my husband, otherwise known as Arlo on this board, blew me away. He made desert!! He's in charge of doing dishes and eating, so it was a very unexpected treat. He even ground up the peanuts, by hand, in my mortar. (OK,OK, so I cleaned the mortar this morning, but it was all good!)

Wendy, seems we were in snyc. Last night we had some thin pork chops with cream and mustard, and a touch of cognac. Comfort food..served along with some creamy cauliflower and sauted spinach. Nice cocktail party by the way!

It is a fun appetizer as long as you don't mind peeling a bunch of little tomatoes. The tomatoes are marinated in a mixture of vodka, lemon zest a little superfine sugar and some white wine vinegar. You can peel the tomatoes and make the marinade ahead of time, just keep them in the fridge and combine them about an hour before you want to serve. Then drain, mix kosher salt and fresh ground pepper together to dip the tomatoes in. They were great. A little zing from the vinegar and a citrus note from the lemon, made my guests and I immediately think "summer". ← Thanks Marlene! I don't mind the peeling part after canning a ridiculous amount of them last summer, I can now say that I can peel them with my eyes closed while standing on my head! Sounds like a yummy summer appetizer.

Beware the Vincigrassi debate!! This is one of those dishes with lots of variations and recipes that can be debated endlessly. The recipe I have calls for a sort of bolognese type sauce, but with the addition of chicken hearts, livers, giblets, coxcombs etc. It was just too....chewy....for me, but PM me if you want another recipe.

I let desire overtake common sense. Now, how many movie plots revolve around that premise?? Pontormo warned me, and I thought I could handle it. I wanted to make passatelli. I think passatelli is a great comfort food. I'd just made a batch of chicken brodo. I had all the ingredients, except I didn't have a proper 'extruder', so I went in search of a potato ricer. The only potato ricer I could find was an OXO one, nice handles, but I knew the holes were pretty small. I figured if I got the mix fine enough, I could still extrude the passatelli. I did the research, compared 3 different recipes, picked one and added some walnuts because my favorite passatelli restaurant does that. I figured wrong. The holes were just too damn small. However, adversity being the mother of invention. I present "pasatell-ini"! Little bitty bits of passatelli. You know, in some ways, it almost worked better. Sometimes passatelli can just be too much, too thick in the mouth. This gave you the flavor, but not the substance. Now I've got some left over passatelli dough, and I'm wondering what I can invent now. I'm thinking little fried pasatelli gnocchi.....

Marlene: tell me more about the tomatoes spiked with vodka. That sounds like a very fun appetizer. Percyn: what is Swedish Kaviar? And what kind of polenta did you use? The photo makes it sort of look like tapioca. Very interesting flavor combinations! Last night began with watching the Lunar Eclipse....followed by a glass of wine with neighbors, and a warm fire...then lamb shoulder, garlic pureed potatoes and a big green salad.

ChefCrash, that sounds really good...and interesting. Question: why the thin layer is a shallow dish? Are they heated this way? I'm mean, what's the difference between thin layer/shallow dish and tossing them in a bowl? Thanks.