Kevin72

Jimmy's Food Store 4901 Bryan St. 214-823-6180 Bryan @ Fitzhugh

Great news! I swung by there Friday and it looked ready to go, so I was perplexed as to why they hadn't opened up shop yet. They have moved out of the Sigel's they were operating from, though. I'll head down this weekend for sure.

Pan, thanks for looking up the Buoni book for me. I definitely want to get a few of her books, particularly the regional cooking book mentioned here, to contrast with the Waverly Root book.

One of the dishes I’ve come to make each year at the start of December and to really kick off festive Holiday cooking is gatto, a savory “cake” of potato, cheeses, and salami. Schwartz says that it makes an elaborate primo to precede a plain roasted meat or chicken, but I like it to be the star player with just a nice tart salad afterwards, which is how we did it Monday night. This sounds ridiculous, but one of the very best lessons I’ve learned in traveling to Italy is how to make the perfect salad. And it’s not even something you have to go there to learn, if I’d just opened my damned eyes and read the countless instructions by countless authors on how to do it: spritz the leaves with great-quality olive oil, then season with salt to get it to adhere to the leaves, then add the vinegar. My old approach was to emulsify the oil, vinegar, and seasoning together, then glop over the salad. But getting salt on each leaf of the greens really wakes up their flavor and everything tastes so vibrant afterwards.

Sunday night’s meal: Ragu Napoletano, the Campanian counterpart to Ragu Bolognese, fortuitously coinciding with the direction the Italian Ragu thread has taken. The chief difference in style is that in the Neapolitan-style Ragu, (as it is in much of Southern Italy) a large cut of meat, or several different cuts, are braised in a tomato sauce, and then the sauce is served over pasta while the meat is reserved for the main. Using Arthur Schwartz’s technique and basic ingredients for Ragu Napoletano in Naples At Table, I made a version with a pork “bracciolona”, a cut of shoulder meat butterflied, flattened, then layered with spicy salami, raisins, pine nuts, cheese, and currants. Looks like a zampone! Schwartz mentions numerous times throughout his book that by in large, the Campanians do not like to cook both onion and garlic together as an aromatic base, only one or the other. So, resisting every urge I had otherwise, the sole other aromatic in this dish was onion. I even stopped myself from adding bay leaves. Red wine was also used, as was a good pinch of chilies to spike things up. He directs you to brown the meat and the onions together, but I can’t ever get that technique right and find that either the aromatics throw off too much liquid to brown the meat effectively, or that the aromatics wind up getting scorched in the long, slow process of browning the meat. So I do them separately, or nearly so, with the onion going in just during the last part of browning the meat. We kicked off the meal with mozzarella in carozza, sandwiches with mozzarella that are dipped in egg wash and then fried. To go with them we had a Sorrento cocktail from a Molto Mario episode: vodka, limoncello, campari, and orange juice. The other major reason for my fruitless foray to find the Italian deli was to find “true” ziti, as long as a standard piece of spaghetti. Alberto, on the Italian ragu thread, gives a very evocative description of how that is the best pasta to serve the ragu over after breaking it up by hand first. (I actually was given a package of true ziti a few years ago, and cooked and sauced it whole, then was perplexed on how to eat it!). So, now without that type of ziti, I bought the standard, pre-cut ziti about the length of your pinkie. But now I know why the pasta package calls it “ziti cut”, something I could never figure out. So, the ziti were served with the sauce and a mixture of pecorino and parmigiano cheeses. I like the interplay of the two for the dish and find that one or the other alone seems to throw the whole thing out of balance. The bracciolona: The contorno was braised broccoli with lemon. This is not the “smothered” broccoli rabe or “soffritto” style that Neapolitans dote on; that comes later. Instead, this was the standard broccoli with garlic and then enlivened with a little lemon juice at the end.

We’ve taken to doing food gift baskets to our friends and family for Christmas and one of the things I submit is a container of ragu Bolognese and another container of my version of tomato sauce. While I’m not claiming any authenticity to Campanian traditions, here’s how I make it: Wilt diced red and yellow onion in olive oil and cook it, covered until it has nearly collapsed and melted into the oil. Don’t let it caramelize. Then add garlic and stir through just to get fragrant: Then come the tomatoes. I use big cans of whole tomatoes (Cento is my go-to brand), not even the famed San Marzanos. I used to laboriously drain them, split them open, and seed them, but one time I forgot to do this step and found next to no difference in the finished product. So now I just crush them all up by hand and toss ‘em in. Many recipes for a basic tomato sauce call for diced or shredded carrot and celery to tame the acidic element of the canned tomatoes and add a little sweetness. I don’t like all those extra “chunks” in there and besides, this is a tomato sauce, not a vegetable sauce! So I add whole peeled carrots and celery too cook in the sauce and give up their flavors. The sauce is basically done when the vegetables are soft enough to break up: Off the heat, stir in fresh herbs like oregano and/or basil and you’re done. In a complete anathema to Campania and the rest of the South, I really prefer fresh, homemade spaghettini to go with this sauce instead of dried. I just like the texture in the pasta and the way the two meld together to make something more than the sum.

Pizza Party! We went over to some good friends’ house Saturday night and had a procession of pizzas, each of the four of us getting to chose one with the chef getting to pick two. The two men cooked while the women got to watch TV and sip cocktails. The pizzas were: White Pizza topped with Ricotta, Mozzarella (fair warning: I will slip many times this month and call fior di Latte mozzarella, as I just did, so get used to it), parmigiano, and pecorino. The Classic “Margherita” with mozzarella, tomatoes, and basil. Roasted peppers, olives, and capers Prosciutto and chaunterelles (my favorite) Sausage and, just out of the oven, some slivered arugula over the top to wilt into it. I did quite a bit of research on the crust, including going to eG poster Pizza Napoletana’s site, rereading Alberto's Recent Trip Threadfor the breakout discussion on pizza, and combing through five of my cookbooks. I wanted to try to make it with “Tipo 00” flour as Pizza Napoletana has directed, and as Jeffery Steingarten implies in his pizza chapter in It Must’ve Been Something I Ate, and so off I went on a last-minute shopping excursion to downtown Dallas on Friday night. We have, or had, an Italian-style grocery store here that gets very well-stocked for the Holidays and is the only source I could find for 00 flour. A little over a year ago, though, they had a fire and were forced to close up shop. Several months later, they started operating out of a liquor and wine retailer nearby, and recently announced plans to re-open their original location. So, I headed off to the satellite location. The plan was to stock up for the coming onslaught of cooking, including the giant cans of tomatoes they sell, unique pasta shapes, this flour, and cotechino. Unfortunately, they were no longer there. Then I went to the original location hoping against hope they’d somehow re-opened, even though fellow eGer Richard Kilgore is keeping tabs on them and told me they hadn’t progressed far after the announcement. And indeed they hadn’t, though frustratingly I could see through the window that the store looked pretty well stocked so far. So I returned, empty-handed, and forgot to try to track down cake flour and mix it with regular flour. This is all a roundabout way of offering advanced apologies for not being as authentic to traditional recipes in the coming month that I’d like to be. So reluctantly I went ahead with making the dough with all-purpose flour, as all of my other sources direct. I also “aged” the dough overnight in the fridge, as I learned from Alberto’s thread. The dough for each pizza was a piece weighing about 7 ounces. I couldn’t get them too terribly thin or stretched out; each was a little smaller than a standard dinner plate. Everyone really enjoyed the crust, but I was wistful about what could have been and still want to take a stab at it with 00 flour, even though that still won’t get me there without a wood-burning stove and 800F temps to cook it with. [Jeffery Steingarten embarks on a similar quest with amusing results in the same pizza chapter I referenced above in It Must’ve Been Something I Ate.] Dessert was the inaugural batch of Holiday cookies my wife and I take turns at making. These are hazelnut baci, little sandwiches more traditionally made with ground almond cookie dough and chocolate icing holding them together; I go with ground hazelnut meal and nutella instead.

I like those premixed kinds that our Central Market sells, the baby romaine mix in particular. They seem to stay fresh forever! Never have gotten into buying all the lettuces separately and making it from there: when only making it for two people it just seems that they go bad before you can get through them. With cold weather here, we're not doing too many salads as meals, though once the New Year kicks off and the long planned-for diet begins, my wife will probably start making alot of salads for our lunches. I'll be posting those.

I'm up for it. I'll be doing a bib for my thread at the end of the year, also.

That's a pretty good, accessible layout. The only thing I'd add is that you don't seem to have any roasts in there . . . I'd imagine alot of students would love to learn to make the perfect moist, juicy, roasted chicken with crispy skin.

Why does it taste better? Is it because it's not left out to sit? ← From what I can gather, because you choose the cut of meats to grind up as opposed to getting odds and ends, you choose the grind size yourself to get the texture you want, and now, having read this thread, you won't be (hopefully) injecting it with a saline solution. The grinder attachment is a good idea for my quite barren-looking Christmas list . . .

The penultimate month of cooking will be the festive, vibrant cooking of Campania, dominated by the city of Naples and the scenic Amalfi Coast. This should be an interesting and appropriate counterpoint to Emilia-Romagna, as Campania/Naples has its own fair share of “classic” and famous Italian dishes and products that have originated there: pizza, the Southern Italian (and to most Americans, the more familiar) Lasagne, spaghetti with a range of tomato sauces, bracciole, meatballs, spaghetti with clams, mozzarella/fior di latte . . . I chose to do Campania in December as opposed to the more seasonally-appropriate summer months almost exclusively because of La Vigilia, the famous “Feast of the Fishes”. This is a procession of dishes served on Christmas Eve all over Italy and whose exact number (7, 9, or 13 are the most common variants) is up for debate; each variation has specific familial and especially religious significance. After much lobbying with my parents, and after they heard about it in detail last year when I cooked for my wife’s family, they’ve agreed to let me give it a spin on Christmas Eve and already my wife and I are drawing up a plan of attack. So there’s that to look forward to. Furthermore, I stretch out the Vigilia a little and do “teaser” meals throughout the month for friends, so it looks like this will be a seafood and feast-intensive month, which, while not completely representative of its traditional cooking styles, Campania seems perfectly suited for. Southern Italian cooking in general, and specifically, the cooking of Campania, have been a strong influence on my cooking at this time of the year for a while now, so this is a natural leap. Thus, two of the main influences for this month are both Holiday (and Campania)-influenced: Mario Batali’s Holiday Food and Michele Scicolone’s Italian Holiday Cooking books. I have a sentimental attachment to Batali’s book as I have now ritualistically dug it out every year at this time and read through it for ideas, but it is almost criminally short and only covers Christmas to New Year’s (besides, a sizable portion of those recipes are now recycled into Molto Italiano) Sciccolone’s book is far more comprehensive and touches on numerous other Italian holidays, including some not widely known about here in the U.S. She also runs the gambit of different regions so it’s a good, all-purpose tool. In fact I just now realized that I was going to use it as a reference for some specific Holidays this past year but got sidetracked. The other major resource is Arthur Schwartz’s Naples at Table, a recent acquisition and actually I haven’t quite made it all the way through yet. I will say that it is another stunningly in depth book and gives such a major cuisine its appropriate due in much the same way that Splendid Table does for Emilia-Romagna. Again, stories, history, and personal anecdotes abound, drawing you in. Thoroughly underrated. That should cover it. I’d like to do some “fasting” dishes as well, though, and am tinkering with the idea of doing maybe a little vegetarian or nearly vegetarian stretch the week before Christmas Eve. Too bad we don’t have a prominent poster on these boards that comes from Campania who can weigh in and offer advice and direction, though, hmmm . . .

Hmm, that is a thought. But the year's not over yet!

Is Ada Buoni's book in Italian? Do you have her other book that goes region by region or is that it? I don't recall ever seeing her stuff in stores here. I really like the mixture of anchovies and mushrooms, even ordinary cremini 'shrooms get elevated that way. And lemon and mushrooms are good too; really wakes up those flavors.

Country Table, while it doesn't have the singular regional focus of Splendid Table, is fairly underrated and gets eclipsed by its more famous predecessor. I like it because it's highly rustic, give a good sampling of different regional country traditions throughout Italy, and offers some unique recipes; it was one of the big books that piqued my interest in Pugliese cuisine. I actually got it before ST. I've used it a number of times throughout this year of cooking. Definitely worth a buy. Try the cabbage without the vinegar next time; the whole pleasure of the dish is its uniform, smooth, comforting taste. Though I could easily cook another three months in E-R, I didn't mean to give an impression that it was going to take up the last two months of the year. Too much other ground to cover!

Thanks! My wife, when we first started dating, claimed not to like duck, particularly the seared duck breast dishes, but she was pretty crazy about this version. I got a grill with a burner attachment this past summer and it burns much hotter and higher than any of my household burners do; it often scorched my pans when I put them on there outside. I decided to give the cast-iron skillet a whirl out there and it worked beautifully. I had to stand over it with a flashlight and closely inspect the meat though since it was already dark when I started cooking.

I can’t vouch for the authenticity of Schwartz’s writings and research in this area, but here’s what he says. He offers two “master” ragu recipes, one mixing cuts of veal, pork, and beef, canned tomatoes, and red wine. The other is one he calls a more old-fashioned, traditional recipe with just pork and tomato paste. Both use only onion for the sole aromatic. Of the technique, he writes: Here’s what Lynne Rossetto-Kasper offers in her own research on the origins of ragus in The Splendid Table: Kasper then relates how the court of Louis XV annexed Parma and the citizens of these region and surrounding areas became enamored of the French styles and customs. French cooks were brought in, and at the time, ragout was quite the fashionable dish in their native country. So when did Italians pick it up and start cooking for their own nobility, and when did they start using it to sauce pasta? She continues:

Our final day of cooking from Emilia-Romagna yesterday began with crepes with bananas and nutella. A friend of ours’ had gone to Paris and when she got back waxed nostalgic for the banana-nutella crepes she ate every day for breakfast. When we were walking around in Bologna one night, we passed by a Creperie, looked inside and saw, first thing on the menu, the same crepes. We excitedly made our way there first thing the next morning for our breakfast, only to find that it didn’t open until 3 in the afternoon?! Who wouldn’t want crepes for breakfast? So we had to settle for steaming cappuccinos and some custard-filled pastries at a local bakery. Last night’s meal was another procession of dishes that I attribute to Emilia-Romagna even without any real evidence to substantiate my claim. We started with pasta with mushrooms “two ways”: Not because there’s two kinds of mushroom (cremini and chaunterelle) in the condimento, but because the homemade pasta has ground up dried porcini in it. Incidentally, Central Market, the gourmet grocery store I frequent has been selling fresh porcini the past week, at $70 a pound, up from the “normal” price of $54. Just to see how much it would cost, I scooped up three of the smallest mushrooms, thinking maybe I’d garnish the pasta with them, only to find that those three were $18! Back into the bin they go. I can’t believe anyone buys them at this price. The condimento was basically mushrooms trifolati style, that is, sautéed in garlic-scented olive oil and parsley. I added a pat of butter to meld the condimento with the pasta when tossing them together. I’ve heard that E-R-ians regard putting parmigiano on mushrooms the same way they look at parmigiano on shellfish: a horrible use of both. Still, I couldn’t resist tossing in the scant bit of grated parm leftover in a bowl as I was tossing everything together. Bah. For the main, it was seared duck breast with apples, along with Kasper’s Sweet Squash for Yom Kippur: roasted and pureed squash with citrus rind and spices. How do Italians look at medium-rare duck? Is it commonly done, or, like tuna, is the tradition to cook it through? That’s it for Emilia-Romagna. This month went so fast; it feels like I lost a week’s worth of cooking somewhere. So very, very much I didn’t even get to cook. I actually pondered a follow up “Year of Emilia Romagna Cooking” resolution at one point but then decided we probably wouldn’t be able to afford the wardrobe overhaul that would inevitably bring. It remains my favorite region to cook from though.

That's too bad about dalle Marissa; I really enjoyed your enthusiastic writeup of it last summer. Was it just the lunch crew do you think? And another enthusiastic review for Testiere. That one really slipped my radar when we went a few years back. Reading these reviews of yours' really makes me want to do a return trip, particularly this time of year.

What a great intro to the thread! Soups with some sort of bean seem to be de rigeur for this time of year for me. I'm still working on the pasta e fagiole, Emilia-Romagna style from last week. That's a whole category unto itself, all interesting interplays between the bean, the pasta, and the thick, starchy liquid they make together as they intermingle. Tuscan bean soup is an exercise in simplicity and so nourishing and right. An absolute favorite for bean-based soups is la jota, the bean and sauerkraut soup of Friuli. I can't think of a better way to while away a frigid night. Another favorite is a hearty winter minestrone, no real recipe, just something I've improvised over the years that involves whatever dried bean I have on hand, base aromatics, potato, rosemary, broth, and a small can of tomatoes to give the broth a good nourishing zip. Once it's been cooked a while, about thirty minutes before it's done, I add some Tuscan kale in slivers. Got to, got to, got to have crusty bread jotted with olive oil to go with a soup though.

I've used a food processor with the shredding blade on before. Get rid of the stuff that accumulates on the blade as that will have been whipped into oblivion but the stuff that went into the bowl is fine.

Perfect! Right at home there. No one would've noticed if you'd mentioned it.

Allow me to return the compliment and say that your "Oink" thread on the Cooking board brought a tear to my eye. I was going to make an Iron Chef comment but someone beat me to it. Bravo. Err, umm . . . I'd better start thinking of one, huh? That's exactly what I do, right down to the saving a bit of dark meat to stuff a pasta with. In fact, earlier today I had a moment of panic when I didn't remember if I had saved the carcass. Then I realized I had put it in our fridge freezer instead of the usual deep freeze location, in anticipation of whipping out some stock fairly soon.

Thanks for the help, azureus. Sorry for the confusion then.

It was a phonetic spelling. I've Googled it and can't come up with anything close. You make a batter, spoon it into a round mold, mound slivered apple over the top, and then cook until golden. Then you carefully flip it in the mold so that the whole thing comes out perfectly round. Man, this is no help at all. Just the spelling of "appel" upthread got me to wondering. I'll ask Mom about it and come back. Holy crap that rabbit dish looks great! And I love crumbling the gingerbread into the sauce!