Kevin72

Sunday night I took a pretty bold step and ventured into rabbit territory. My wife and I have both had it (in Italy, and stuffed into tamales at an excellent Mexican restaurant in Houston), but I’ve never made it and didn’t know how well it would go over. In fact, it was top-secret with the wife until we sat down for dinner. To soften the blow, though, I made another favorite dish of hers to start things off: black pepper pasta rottolo from the aforementioned Mario Batali shows. The pasta sheets are blanched, shocked in ice water, sponged off, and then you spread a filling of sausage, ricotta, and Swiss chard into them and roll them up. Place in a pan, top with béchamel and parmigiano and pecorino cheeses, then bake. Slice and serve, and watch them fall immediately apart into a rather unappealing-looking (but very tasty) mess. All right. The rabbit. I had been planning to cook some sort of rabbit dish this month anyways, and when Adam mentioned a few pages back a rabbit dish “smothered in pancetta” I decided this was the version I’d try. I found no recipes for it in my resources, however, and am a little leery of roasting such a lean meat, so I decided to go for a braise and do a variation on a style of cooking called “potacchio” involving pancetta, capers, sage, and garlic. I floured the rabbit, browned it off, then deglazed with vinegar and half of the potacchio mixture. Rabbit went back in the pan, along with white wine, and was braised to falling-apart stage. Everything was removed, and the remaining potacchio ingredients, along with the livers, were added to the pan, cooked a bit, then more vinegar was added to deglaze and this was then served on the side to augment the rabbit. The contorno for the meal were roasted carrots and fennel from della Croce’s Umbria cookbook. In that recipe, she directs separate roasting for the carrots and fennel, but part of the fun, to me, of roasting vegetables is putting them all in a pan together and letting them trade flavors, so that’s how I went with this, too. Man, I hate to sound like a cliché here, but for all the expense, I’d have been better off with chicken, which this was nearly indistinguishable with. My wife was reluctant at first, I gave her the least rabbit-like cut (loin) and she got into it after a few bites. Good enough, but you don’t get as much meat as you’d think looking at one of the pieces. Somewhat tough, so, despite trying to braise it in an attempt to keep it moist, that didn’t work out. Dessert was a convent specialty, serpentone, a “serpent” of puff pastry stuffed with dried pears and raisins that had been reconstituted in a spiced red wine, then mixed with walnuts, chocolate, and pine nuts.

This weekend in Dallas we had the annual GrapeFest Wine Festival (I did a report on it on the Texas boards) and to kick things off on Friday night I made a traditional Umbrian meal for la vendemmia, the grape harvest. And yes, I know that vendemmia usually comes a little later in the year. First of all, I’ve recently made some Pane Pecorino, a bread traditional to both Umbria and Le Marche (though in Umbria it’s formed into a ring shape). I made this version like a focaccia, with plenty of grated pecorino folded in, then topped with even more pecorino and baked. Earlier I had said that Mario never got to Umbria on his shows, but I forgot that I have some of his older shows from the ‘90’s on tape (Nerd Alert!) and there’s some Umbrian episodes on there. One of them was for a sage frittata with a celery-tomato sauce, which started off our meal, along with a wedge of the pecorino bread. I think the tomato sauce is a little unnecessary, actually, but I keep forgetting not to make it every time I do this dish. The secondo is a traditional item made throughout northern Italy: sausage with grapes. Some variations have links cooked in a pan with grapes; I like this version from di Blasi’s Regional Foods of Northern Italy where you make sausage patties and stuff halved grapes in them, then toss them on the grill. Make a little pan-sauce for them with red wine, vinegar, more grapes, and shallots to top them. The contorno were braised greens (collard) with potatoes.

This is a wine festival designed in part to promote the Texas Wine scene and held annually in Grapevine, about halfway between Dallas and Ft. Worth. Does heat stroke make wine taste better? A brief rant before I start: I really, really want to know where the decision came from to have this the second week of September every year, when chances are we’d still be wallowing in customary late-summer heat. I understand not wanting to compete with the Texas State Fair, but why not wait until afterwards? Isn’t typically the wine harvest much later in the fall anyways? And it can’t be good for the wine to be sitting out in 96 degree weather. Whew. My wife and I went on Saturday afternoon, from 1-4 pm. Admission is $6 to the Festival. If you’re going to drink Texas wines, you need to bypass the concession coupon trailers set up right inside and find the Tasting Area, and admission there is a further $15. You can use coupons to sample wines at various stands throughout the festival, but you don’t get the range of Texas wines as you do at the Tasting. Tastings go for an hour and a half, then they clear everybody out and clean up or restock for 30 minutes, then let the next wave in. We attended the 1:30-3 Tasting. Line to get in: I’d advise waiting to go about 20 minutes into a tasting to avoid that initial rush. Once everyone was in and distributed, things calmed down. Wineries are arranged in booths together under various tents. Stand in line and get a little shot of wine. One set of booths really had it set up well so that you got into a big line, then just went down each winery and got a sample. All the other tents had it set up where you stood in line separately for each winery and things often got a little confused. You’re given a little scorecard to track all the wines you taste, turn in your votes for best when you leave. Participating wineries: (Those with an asterisk are ones I tried) Becker Vineyards Bell Mountain Vineyards Blue Mountain Vineyards Chisolm Trail Winery* Circle S Vineyards* Cross Timbers Winery CrossRoads Winery Delaney Vineyards Fall Creek Vineyards Flat Creek Estate* Haak Vineyards & Winery* Homestead Winery Kiepersol Estates Vineyard & Winery La Bodega Winery La Buena Vida Winery* LightCatcher Winery Llano Estacado Winery Lone Oak Vineyards* Los Pinos Ranch Vineyard* Lost Creek Vineyard & Winery* McPherson Cellars McReynolds Winery* Messina Hof Winery & Resort Nashwood Winery* Pheasant Ridge Winery Pillar Bluff Vineyards Piney Woods Country Wines* Pleasant Hill Winery Spicewood Vineyards* Ste. Genevieve Vineyards Texas Hills Vineyard, Inc. Wales Manor Vineyard & Winery Wichita Falls Vineyards & Winery Highlights: Circle S: A winery located in Sugar Land(?!), with grapes grown in Centerville and Tuscany(?!!). Their ’03 Sangiovese was the only wine they submitted. Really good stuff, but I’m curious now as to the proportions of Tuscan and Texan grapes, and if, in the long term, they’ll eventually go all Texan. Los Pinos Winery: davebr wrote about them on the Touring Texas Wineries thread (link) and so I gave them a shot, trying their Cabernet Sauvignon. Full flavored, lots of body, lingering, pleasant aftertaste. McReynolds Winery: Located in Round Mountain in the Hill Country. Tried their Chenin Blanc. I think Texas does whites quite well and this was a prime example. Spicewood Vineyards: Another Hill Country Winery. I went with their Semillon Reserve. You can’t help but think of Texas summers when you taste this one; my first real understanding of terroir. Last year we went to the Hill Country Wine festival in Fredericksburg and were not so impressed, but I was surprised at the number of good wines I tried at GrapeFest. But where do you buy the wines? I didn’t see anyone purchasing bottles at the Tasting, and wandering around Main Street afterwards, the winery we went into sold only its own wines. Maybe (probably, after a few shots of wine) I wasn't paying that much attention, but that could have been a little better advertised. The festival itself has the usual attractions: ferris wheel, live music, souvenirs, fair food. There was a grape stomping competition: Everybody, including the announcer, seemed a little worn out by the heat. There were also live cooking demos. Here's a list for Saturday and sunday of participating chefs: There’s some good shops in downtown Grapevine. We popped into a swank kitchen supply store, and a little further down was Main Street Bakery, a great little café. They also have a branch opened in the Shops at Legacy in Plano. That would be my other tidbit of advise is probably just to skip the coupons altogether and go to the local food shops. Overall, a good time. I'd be inclined to stay longer if the weather were more pleasant. Someone, please, put a bug in the planner's ears.

Wow, thanks for all the ideas and a great breakdown of each area. So, what did you think of the rib dish then, esp. using the more boney, knobby spareribs? Would it make an Umbrian proud? I'll look to try those clams soon.

We went on our honeymoon to Venice in the latter half of October and really enjoyed it. The mobs had died down considerably, the canals weren't as famously ripe as they are during warmer months. Pumpkins and mushrooms everywhere! Be warned that this is also the time of year, however, that seasonal rains come in and flood much of Venice out. Maybe they diminish further into November?

Waverly Root has another out-of-print book on Italian cooking whose title escapes me. Micol Negrin's Rustico is more readily available. Culinaria: Italy is a great coffee-table book broken down by region. It's pretty hefty at retail, but I've often seen it at used bookstores as well. Marlena di Blasi has two cookbooks, one on Northern and one on Southern cooking, that separated by regions, but she conspicuously leaves out Liguria.

Excellent, looking forward to your insights. Don't be shy, pipe up if I have a misstep! Salumi: decent availability, but I've lamented the guanciale situation here before when I was doing Rome. I'd order it special, but there's another Umbrian ingredient I'll be springing for this month already. Fresh porcini are a rarity and, last time I saw them, $54 a pound! The grill will be going alot the next couple of months. In fact, I'd almost say I use as much, if not more, in the fall than I do the summer. Eggs are mentioned quite a bit in della Croce's book. Quite a few of the antipasti, in fact, are frittate variations.

Really? I mean, I like it and all, but it's pretty far down my list. Certainly a little more going on than spinach, but I'm much more of a kale man myself.

Yay, it's time for more improvised dishes based on a limited understanding of the cuisine! Last night, for our first meal in Umbria, I cooked one of my wife's all-time favorite meals, and a beginning of fall, end of summer tradition. We started with a type of handmade pasta called umbricelli or circiole. Normally these are a type of spaghetti that are made by rolling small pieces in between your palms to form thin ropes. I've done this before and it's way too much of a production, so I did them in the same method as for maccheroni alla chittarra from Abruzzo: roll them to setting 4 out of 6 on my pasta machine, then cut into fettuccine width. In the introduction to the recipe in Umbria, Julia della Croce mentions that sometimes they make their pasta out of their beloved farro, which I tried to approximate by using spelt flour. For the condimento, it was grape tomatoes seared in a hot pan with olive oil, then arugula, chives, and coarsely-grated, younger pecorino. The main is based on a recipe in Lynne Rossetto Kasper's Italian Country Table for Tuscan-style grilled pork ribs. At the time I first read it, I was really getting into knowing more about Umbria, and so I added two what seemed quite traditional Umbrian flavoring ingredients: ample black pepper and fennel seeds, to a "rub" of salt and rosemary. Smear olive oil over a rack of ribs (I use spareribs, Kasper uses "country-style"), then rub in salt, rosemary leaves, fennel seeds, and black pepper, all minced together or ground in a spice mill together, and let sit overnight. The next day, place them on a rack set over a pan, wrap in foil, and place in a 250F oven for a few hours (I went 3). Then, crust them over a hot grill. They're done when you can pull a bone out with just the slightest twist--in fact, the grill part is just to give them a nice, smokey flavor and to crust up that rub; they should, obviously, be pretty much cooked already after 3 hours in an oven. Meltingly soft, smokey, full of big, bold flavors from the fennel, black pepper, and rosemary. So this is the dish my wife loves so. She's been looking forward to it all year, so much so in fact that there have been a few months where, when I announce what the region will be, she asks "Is this the one with the ribs?" The contorno were braised mushrooms (chaunterelle and cremini) with chilies, garlic, and anchovy. They go perfectly with the ribs and create a full-on, earthy experience that really is a perfect way to set the stage for autumn. I bought and Umrbian red (Vitiano) to drink with the meal, but was also overjoyed to see that now my store is carrying Due Palme Salento Primitivo, which we had and greatly enjoyed when we went to Puglia this past spring and ate at Osteria del'Tempo Perso in Ostuni. It's a rich, sweet, fruity wine, not nearly as thick and sweet as primitivo di Manduria, but a mediation between that and your standard Primitivo. But, good as this meal was, every drink did make me wish I had some 'cappriatta on hand . . .

We dove in Friday night with a couple of items from Le Marche. First up, a mussel dish from di Blasi’s Regional Foods of Northern Italy. Arrange several branches of pine over a fire, then put mussels atop, then lay more branches atop them, and let ‘em burn. I instead used some rosemary from the monstrous bush we inherited at the new place. Before: After: Needless to say, the mussels were completely suffused with a smoky, rosemary flavor. Unfortunately, these are the limpid, end-of-summer mussels with very little meat. About a third didn't open, some that did looked an unappealing grey or looked "melted" inside the shell, and so got tossed out. But those four mussels we managed to eat were great! The secondo were calamari en porchetta. Porchetta, normally a whole pig stuffed with sausage, breadcrumbs, wild fennel, and rosemary and then spit-roasted, is a specialty of the “Central Italian” regions of Tuscany, Umbria, Le Marche, Lazio, and Abruzzo. (I made a pork tenderloin version for Easter: click) But in both Umbria and Le Marche it reaches a near fever pitch, so much so that there is an entire cooking method called “en porchetta” where an item is stuffed with the same ingredients listed above and cooked. So, calamari tubes are stuffed with sausage, fennel, and rosmary, then simmered with white wine, garlic, and chilies. Really good. The pork-y sausage flavor mingled with the buttery braised calamari flavor to create something new. We had to consciously restrain ourselves from preventing leftovers. Wanna see what you get when you buy 2 bunches of Swiss chard and braise them with butter, white wine, garlic, and nutmeg?

September in Dallas brings the dawning excitement that hopefully in just two months we’ll actually have a cool day to look forward to. With that in mind, we leave the southern-centric cooking of the past few months and start making our way back northwards. This is another “two-fer” month, this time the honest, robust cooking of Umbria and Le Marche. Here again, I feel that I have to explain that doing two regions in one month does not mean to say that the cuisines of each are indistinguishable. Rather, they are just relatively unexplored in cookbook literature in the United States. Umbria is beginning to enjoy some interest thanks to spillover from tourist-saturated Tuscany, but poor Le Marche, just to the east, is largely ignored. As with Basilicata in August, it gets the short end of the stick this month and there are only a handful of meals I’ll be cooking from there. Chief references other than Culinaria and di Blasi (both were two more regions Mario never got to): the oddly-named cookbook Umbria by Julia della Croce and for Le Marche . . . niente. Della Croce’s Umbria begins with a fantastic treatment of the region’s history, particularly the impact of the mysterious Etruscans and the locals’ centuries-long resistance to and resentment of papal dominance. Unfortunately, the rest of the book is woefully short: the “antipasti” chapter is actually an amalgamation of antipasti and “sauces”; the vegetables chapter has only seven recipes, and the desserts chapter has five (and one of those is candied orange peel?!). But it’s the only one available, and for such a short book, she really conveys an idea of the cuisine and its major flavor elements: truffles, fennel, black pepper, and salumi. While I have managed to come up with a good spread of meals that I hope are a fair representation of each region, I’d love to know more about their traditional dishes and/or good cooking references. Kellytree, Hathor, I’m lookin’ at you.

So, is it kosher to say where you're cooking? Or at least the style of food the restaurant offers? What title do you have in the kitchen?

That's actually not a bad idea at all. The seeds got a little more toasty than I'd have wanted (still adapting to that gas burner) and became a little tedious at times. Go for it, just don't invite any Basilicatan shepherds over when you do.

That recipe caught my eye, too. It's a twist on a "straw and hay" pasta dish with lemon, cream, and radicchio using, obviously, the fresh chilies in place of the radicchio. The original recipe is one of my favorites; you should try it in the winter sometime. The radicchio cooks down so it isn't as bitter, but it does help cut the cream and works nicely with the lemon flavors. Glad you're enjoying the book!

Just as we began the month with a meal from Basilicata, so we end it. A couple of recipes from Marlena di Blasi’s Regional Foods of Southern Italy. Curiously, Mario Batali did almost identical dishes for his shows on Puglia. The primo was spaghetti with pan-toasted fennel seeds and sheep’s milk cheese, “pasta alla pastore” for the shepherd who could whip this up easily with what they had on-hand. While recipe calls for an aged pecorino, I like to use the rather un-Italian sheep’s milk feta instead. It’s one of my favorite cheeses and a good stand-in for a semi-fresh ricotta or young pecorino, neither of which are widely available here. Get a sauté pan very, very hot, add olive oil, ample fennel seeds, and garlic in quick succession. The fennel seeds brown almost instantly and impart their flavor wonderfully into the oil. Then take this mixture, still warm, and pour it on top of a pile of sheep’s milk cheese and fold it all together. Boil pasta, drain, and stir it into the sauce, along with a jot of the requisite olio santo to liven it up. While the fennel seeds, now a dark brown or black, do rather unpleasantly resemble gnats, it’s a an appealing, full-flavored dish. The slight bitterness of the toasted seeds cuts the richness of the cheese. The secondo were whole branzini (aka striped sea bass, aka sea wolf, aka loup de mer . . . ) stuffed with olives and wrapped in pancetta, then laid atop slices of orange. Finally, they are wrapped in foil and grilled. Served with, as usual, one of the best accompaniments for simple fish dishes, a nice arugula salad with lemon and rich, fruity olive oil. So that wraps up Basilicata and Calabria. Again, the limited number of dishes prepped this month are in no way a reflection of two cuisines that are unfortunately largely undiscovered here in the U.S. Further apologies for the rampant experimentation and non-Italian embellishments this month, but with so many varieties of peppers flying around, the Tex-mex impulses ground into my DNA took over. Edited fish names after reading Adam's thread.

Thanks for the compliments, Elie. I'd heard of the buttermilk version of the pseudoricotta (hi kellytree!), but I just can't bring myself to try it. Not much of a fan of the flavor of buttermilk. There's also versions that call for a drop of rennet to set it up, but even that may make too firm a product, or stirring the mixture with an artichoke stem or cut cardoon, both of which have enough acid to curdle the mixture, albeit slowly. I've noticed that about the Houston Central Market, as well. For being so very much closer to the water than Dallas is, there isn't much in the way of choices. Whole Foods picks up some of the slack there, and then there's Champions Seafood Market, near my parents in the 1960 area.

What a great idea for a book! Very enjoyable read, wish it had been longer! And an excellent reference for the coming months of cooking.

2429 Rice Blvd. Houston, TX (713) 529-2891 kahnsdeli.com Edited to add: It's in Rice Village, on the right if you're coming onto Rice from Kirby. Very small, narrow storefront; you may miss it at first.

Actually, I have two: Parmigiano is on the upper shelf and isn't part of the close-ups. I've used many salads from that book, and the Swiss Chard custard has become a Christmas staple. Food Artisans is a recent aquisition that I regrettably haven't had time to read through in its entirety, but now I will!

Sunday night's meal was largely improvised and based on remembered glimpses of Calabrian specialities I've seen elsewhere. I'm really not doing a good job with strict regional interpretation this month, am I? We started with olives marinated in orange peel. red wine vinegar, garlic, chilies, rosemary, and olive oil. The second antipasto is inspired by reading about rosemarino on Alberto's website a few weeks back. Rosemarino is a spread made of peppers and whole baby fish, and appears to be generating some controversy for its potential ecological impacts. To make mine a little less controversial and at the same time blow out the no doubt refined, subtle flavors of the original dish, I used sardines (I'm only about halfway through that container I bought for Sicily), blended with reconstitued sweet chilies, sundried tomatoes and pecorino. Pungent and spicy, highly addictive. I don't know how, but it completely slipped my mind to take a pic of the antipasti. We then had homemade spaghetti with tomato sauce "two ways": first I simmered sundried tomatoes, garlic and chilies in olive oil until the oil was a deep, rust red. At the last second, I added chopped fresh tomatoes and seethed them a bit. I love the vivid descriptions I've read of tomatoes drying on mats in the sun, a common sight beginning at this time of year all over Southern Italy, and that's the inspiration for this recipe. The main was another dish I read about in Rustico, roasted pork loin glazed with orange, chilies, and honey. Very evocative of Calabria, at least in my limited understanding of the cuisine. The contorno was braised broccoli rabe and escarole with lemon. Dessert was the only recipe I actually followed for the whole meal: Mustaciolli Calabrese from Cucina di Calabria. These are a highly spiced cookie made with ground almonds, chocolate, honey, and coffee.

Even though we haven't even unpacked and are still living out of boxes, I was chomping at the bit to get friends over for dinner and show off the new place this weekend. Saturday night's primo was Murseddu, "Version 2", this time taken out of the write-up in Culinaria: Italy. This version is baked in an unleavened crust to make more of pie-like dish. The stuffing was the leftover murseddu mix from last weekend's meal, but now I combined it with chicken livers to give it a more organ-y flavor in a nod to the true dish. I also used some Mexican chorizo, which is a soft sausage, not the cured kind found in Spanish or Portugese cooking. I seem to be "blending" alot this month, throwing in Mexican flavors to go with all the peppers Calabria and Basilicata are so famous for. The secondo was pollo arrabiatta, chicken braised with dried chilies and vinegar. I used only leg-thigh quarters for this dish to stand in for the game birds or rabbit that the recipe originally called for in some forgotten cookbook I was reading once at a used bookstore. The vinegar dominated the dish and unfortunately, not much of the sweet dried pepper flavor carried through. Also wasn't as spicy as I wanted it. The contorno was eggplant and potatoes with basil. Dessert was watermelon granita, one of the most refreshing things you can ask for in summer.

I'm guessing "deflection" is referring the bowing of the shelves under the weight of the books? That poor thing. The vegetables I'll be growing are pretty straightforward at first. Peppers, tomatoes, and zucchini for sure. Maybe favas or eggplant. Yes, it's too hot for artichokes; I'd gladly give up by whole back yard to grow those if I could. Thanks for the compliments, 'Zadi and Barbara. What caponata recipe do you use, Barbara?

Deflection?

Thanks for the post, Dave. I'm really intrigued by the Los Pinos winery now, but I'm not sure where Pittsburg even is. Time and again, I keep hearing that where Texas wines will take off is if they use Italian and Spanish varietals instead of trying to mimic California and France. I'm curious about the Kippersol Cabernet . . . it had actual ginger juice in it? Or just that flavor? Did the owner say why? Is that a common practice?

Let’s tour the new house, shall we? Kitchen: Yep, that’s a gas stove! Double oven was just installed to replace a single oven/micro combo. Living room (the color idea is not stolen from Adam Ballic, I assure you) Back yard: Fig tree: Peach tree (peaches were all over it when we first looked at the place at the start of June): Nice little patch that will next spring be used as the basis for a vegetable garden: Is there a Garden Gullet? I'm going to need lots of advice on how to de-bug the fruit trees and what to grow for vegetables. Cookbook collection, per Nathan P’s request: The dining room will probably be repainted as well, so that will be snapped later. That’s pretty much all that matters, right?