Kevin72

Saturday night was a sweep of Piemontese antipasti. Like Puglia on the diametrically opposite side of the boot, Piemonte is one of the very top regions for antipasti, three or four are customarily used to precede a meal instead of the normal single antipasto. Broiled polenta with gorgonzola: “Pickled” winter squash with an egg: This is a Batalification of one of Kramer’s recipes in Passion for Piedmont. In that book, zucchini is used, and then, oddly, layered over fried eggs, then the whole is submerged in vinegar and put up for a few days. I chose the more seasonally-appropriate winter squash (buttnernut), seared in a very hot pan with olive oil, then doused in vinegar. I cooked the vinegar completely off, then added slivered onion and cooked for just a few seconds, then set it aside for a few hours. I then fried eggs in the same pan and topped them over the pumpkin. My wife thinks there should have been more eggs; their yolk was a perfect counterbalance for the puckery vinegar. Next up, a sformato of roasted pepper: I do my sformati differently than Kramer or Batali do in their respective books. The big main difference in how I do it (based on Pamela Sheldon Johns’ recipe for Swiss chard custard in the cookbook Parmigiano) is to omit the béchamel. It’s an added and, I think, unnecessary step, and besides, I really don’t like making béchamel unless absolutely necessary (I inevitably scorch some onto my pot). So, I use a whole egg, several yolks, a little milk, cream, or evaporated milk—whatever’s around—and grated parmigiano. I’m not sure what the béchamel adds, but these turn out quite well and set up perfectly, so I probably won’t experiment with the béchamel version anyway. Finally, an item based only on a description in Passion for Piedmont. In the intro to the cookbook, Kramer recalls a “lunch” at a favorite restaurant (Il Belvedere in La Morra), beginning, as usual, with a parade of antipasti, and the waiter just kept insisting on bringing them “one more” item despite their insistence otherwise. One item, according to Kramer, “ . . . looked, at first glance, to be a steak . . . but the fragrance was something else again. I suddenly realized that we each had an enormous porcini mushroom . . . the dish was the essence of Piedmontese simplicity. [The chef had] removed the tough stem . . . and the cap scored diagonally . . . a bit of fresh garlic was spinkled on and the mushroom caps were grilled on each side, like steaks.” So, lacking the access to a porcini, much less one that size, I went with portabello mushroom caps, which I scored and then rubbed a paste of garlic, parsley, and the beloved Piedmontese anchovies into them, then into the oven . . . Arrgh. This was the disaster of the evening. I cut one of the caps too deeply and it promptly split apart when I went to lift it. Originally, I was going to grill them, but now with one falling apart, I decided to bake them instead; I chose not to broil them because I didn’t want to burn the garlic and parsley topping. So they wound up getting kind of tough and taking on a weird, unpleasant texture and flavor in the oven. And appearance, too; which is why there’s no pics of these shriveled things with a blackish brown, crunchy topping. I don't blame my wife for not finishing hers'.

Friday night’s meal: risotto with sausage and green cabbage. This may or may not be Piemontese; it seemed to suit the ingredients of the region, but I cooked it off the top of my head. I'm not saying there isn't a recipe out there for this (I'm almost positive Marcella Hazan has one in one of her books), but I don't recall what source would have inspired this dish. Yellow onions are sautéed in butter, then sausage is added and cooked until it gives up some of its own fat. Then the cabbage was added and slowly stewed until it nearly collapsed. Now, finally, came the rice and the normal risotto cooking method was employed. During the mantecare step at the end (when more butter and cheese is swirled in vigorously) I decided to add a bit of finely chopped raw garlic, in a nod to the Piemontese’s fondness for garlic in their dishes. Very satisfying and comforting, a solid one-dish meal.

Pontormo, I think that the cast iron skillet may have been the culprit; it built up too much heat or took too long to cool off and scorched the garlic. FoodMan, everything looks great, including the tongue(!), especially the cake. Italian cakes can skew to the dry side, though I'm not sure how to remedy that.

Robert Wilonsky's cover story in the Observer sheds a little more and not too encouraging light on the state of Deep Ellum. Including that Entertainment Collaborative, the group that owns the Green Room, has filed for bankruptcy and just lost Trees, so it's not looking good.

Definitely snap them up. They hold up better than the oil-packed kind which just dissolve as soon as any heat hits them. Not as strong, either. Not to continue to pepper debate, but even those peppers with Italian names on them, at least in Dallas, are still grown in Holland: we got corne di bue one year, and a frying kind, and both had a "Grown in Holland" sticker on them when I bought them . . .

Looks like we need to start a cardoon confessional thread. I've had the same luck when I first started cooking with them: it really isn't stressed enough how diligent you have to be getting the outer fibers off, or how long to cook them just to get them edible. Adam, I wouldn't be surprised if those peppers came from Chufi's way . . . there are some peppers like that at our market here and they're all from Holland!

What about a brasato al vino rosso?

A shank, usually in one whole piece as opposed to cut up (osso bucco). Great looking meals, everyone! And tongue, Elie? You really know how to start off!

Please keep us posted, congratulations on the move, and I'm eager to see what's next!

We call ours' (same model) Hoth. Wish I'd seen this thread sooner; I'd have advised that shortly after I bought mine at CostCo last year I was in a Home Depot or a Lowe's and saw a larger model for $20 cheaper.

What's the Dutch word for baked? "(Baked)bollen"?

Well, keep in mind who's right next door, and who occupied them until the mid 1800's . . . Looks like a great meal! I've never heard of salami cotto before, either. Thanks for the web link.

I found his brassato al barolo recipe particularly refreshing; that he advocates brisket over round or shoulder and that he's been somewhat disappointed at how dry and tough it can get; an observation I've had myself previously when I've made it. And then, to advocate carbernet instead of a local (expensive) wine . . . ! Well done. I'm quite glad I tracked this book down.

Sounds delicious!

So after a year I finally get to see Hathor's kitchen efforts, eh? Looks great! Salt crusting is such a great technique but truly I haven't even begun to understand the many uses it can be put to, so this veal dish was a real eye opener. OK, what's for dinner tonight?

Everything looks incredible. Congratulations on your opening and best of continuing luck in the future!

This thread is already turning out better than I ever thought it could be. Hathor, pontormo, and kanljung have done great jobs conveying the cuisine and providing links for further research and reference. Bravo!

Well, hey, I'll just order that instead of make it from scratch and call it a day!

I did a couple adjustments to Kramer's recipe. First, since I only wanted to make enough to serve two for a primo, I cut all the requirements in thirds, though I only used one head of garlic for two people and it was plenty. And, I did separate them out: I just didn't like the idea of having loose papery husks getting into the soup, not to mention fishing out the two soggy halves and squeezing them out. While it was a pain initially, it helped in the long run. And, with then out of their husks, maybe the gave a stronger flavor to the broth, so I didn't need to use as much garlic.

The Galleria is right off the tollway at 635. If you go a little further north you'll hit a huge number of restaurants, leading up to and including Addison, "restaurant row". On the other side of 635, just a little west at the intersection of Forest and Preston, there's a Whole Foods.

Well, heh, that's the joys of having a KitchenAid at your disposal to beat the tar out of the dough. I made it that morning and then let it sit all day before rolling it out for dinner that night.

I fell back to using my pasta roller for this operation and so used the stock "fettucine cut" attachment for them.

I guess I meant that a higher proportion of meat as opposed to only bones, as in the French or professional tradition where they are laboriously browned and only one type is used. Italians use scraps, whole cuts of meat, and bones, and from many different kinds of meat. In my observation, of course. Even that scorched onion half you mentioned is news to me, all other recipes I can think of basically do the other method you mention where whole aromatics are added with no caramelization. I go for the roasting of the bones/carcasses, etc in high winter when (ostensibly) it's coldest out.

Owing to a surprising number of relatively “light” salads and soups in Matt Kramer’s A Passion for Piedmont, I’m even going Piemontese for lunches. For dinner one night last week, and then lunch the next day, we had a salad of steamed trout and artichokes: For all the rich buttery dishes so typical of Piemonte, there is also a strong tradition of tart, vinegary salads and pickled vegetables, maybe to cut the heavier main courses. Also, the Piemontese are quite fond of anchovies, and use them in a number of dishes. Here, the dressing for the salad was made of pureed anchovies, vinegar, olive oil, and mustard (my addition). Lunches this week will be cauliflower soup: The soup is thickened with cooked pureed Arborio rice and a little bit of cream. It’s supposed to be chunkier but I got a little overzealous with my immersion blender.

Sunday night was the Piemontese warhorse, brassato al vino rosso. Normally of course, the beef is braised in their native Barolo (brassato al barolo), but no way I’m splurging for a bottle of that only to cook it. Kramer gives a good write up of the recipe and is quite permissive of twists on the tradition: use brisket instead of the normally called for shoulder or round, and just find a good bottle of Cabernet. I went a step further and just looked for a really bold red wine, lots of tannins, little oak, and found a bottle of Don Rodolfo Tannat, from Argentina. The label description sounded like it was everything I was after, and hey, it was grown way up in the mountains, like Barolo, maybe? So I bought one bottle to cook with and a second to drink. The beef was browned in butter and lard, then set aside. I then drained off all but a few tablespoons of fat, caramelized the aromatics (onion, celery, carrot), and returned the meat to the pot. I poured in the wine, a few cloves of garlic, a few cloves, bay leaves, a pinch of cinnamon, and rosemary, then popped it in the oven and cooked it at 275 overnight, about 10 hours. I checked it the next day and was somewhat dismayed to find that most of the wine had evaporated. I had even used the butcher paper under the lid trick, but forgot to crumple it up beforehand, which I think is what prevents the evaporation? I resisted the urge to augment the juices with the stock I was making, and instead just kept adding wine throughout the day, keeping the pot in a low oven and replenishing it from time to time. So, the meal itself: we started with garlic soup: A whole head’s worth of garlic is simmered with stock, sage, a dash of cayenne (Kramer’s recipe calls for a cut in half chili pepper pod) and parsley, then pureed. I added a touch of cream instead of the milk and olive oil that are called for. For so few ingredients, the soup was very complex flavored, and the sweet, slow-cooked garlic flavor predominated the dish, but not in the overpowering manner that oven-roasted garlic sometimes does. The dinner spread: There’s the beef in the lower right-hand corner (didn’t get a closeup to show you the “threads”, Chufi! ), in the dish on the left are vermouth glazed carrots, a contorno that is in honor of Piemonte being the home of vermouth. In the top part of the photo is Piemontese gnocchi from Ada Boni’s Italian Regional Cooking cookbook, baked rather than fried as she calls for. Normally, these gnocchi are of course a primo, but I’ve come to like serving them alongside the main as they sop up some of the spare juices from the meat. The sauce itself for the brassato (I forgot to get a pic), came out nearly black after all the additions of wine. The essence of the big red I used at the beginning remained and permeated the meat nicely, and of course being able to sip the wine it was cooked in alongside the meal really capped things off well. The wine was quite intense, concentrated, lots of berry. Try to track it down. I know I will get next to no sympathy for this, but the only thing missing from the meal itself was a blustery winter day outside. Our warm weather has continued to bounce back after a series of cold fronts, and yesterday we were in the low 80s. The real capper is that there’s been no significant rain since Halloween. Dessert was zabaglione, the custard made from egg yolks and sugar whipped together in a double boiler, then plumped with a dash of cloves and some marsala. I topped it with a raspberry puree, but that sank immediately to the bottom of the dish (guess I didn’t cook the zabaglione enough).