Kevin72

So, who provided the vision for the menu and the directions for all the cooking (wink, wink). How many were there ultimately? How did it pan out logistically? You've got a brave bunch of eaters in your office!

Great points all around, Nathan. I'm pretty much in agreement with you, particularly on the regional focus. Mario devoted at least 20 episodes of his cooking show to a region, so there's a backlog of great stuff in there. He's such a good writer and knowledgeable enough that I'd love to see him do a series of region-specific cookbooks. I'll volunteer right now to research and do the legwork!

But you live in Italy for cryin' out loud! This is just a yearlong lament on my part.

That's funny. Same thing happened here! But I didn't press them through a sieve (though I was tempted). Oddly enough the frying or second cooking took care of it and there were no discernable lumps at all, just hot, gooey, beany goodness! Try it again and don't worry about the lumps this time. Yep, here's the discussion about it. Risotto has come up as a possible option for dealing with the integrity of the arancine, and I think quite often it's used instead of long-grain rice. Just make sure that you don't have extra stuff in there or it still won't hold together. Here's a good, thorough discussion on arancine from last summer.

Vodka is actually what's called for in most recipes, but you're right, it doesn't have the same kick. I'd imagine you'll have to scale back the sugar syrup to alcohol ratio but someone more knowledgeable than I in the chemistry of the whole thing would probably have something more to say about that. Yeah, I had to really work each arancino and get the breadcrumbs to stick but not press so hard that they'd fall apart. And what an odd technique for leftovers!

I've been intrigues by Waka and am sorry I missed it when the original chef was there. Dragonfly supposedly has Cassel's official menu coming out later this summer or early fall. When we went there earlier this summer the off the menu specials were almost as long as the menu itself! So he's definitely trying to make his mark there. I'm interested to see where it goes, but to your point I'm also worried that he's going to be boxed in by the concept.

That's like on his show when he adds "a drizzle" of raw oil as a garnish and dumps like a quarter cup on there! Definitely a different view of things . . .

Sunday night we had a couple of sficione, double-crusted pizzas. Mario did a number of variations of them on his show and one version I liked was with potato in the dough. The one on the right is stuffed with broccoli and ricotta, the one on the left is stuffed with salami and mozzarella. Last night we started with panelle, which, as chufi mentioned on the previous page, are fritters made of chickpea flour. You bring some water to a simmer, then pour in chickpea flour and stir until it thickens. Then pour into a container and place in the fridge until it sets up. Cut them into squares and deep-fry them, dust with cheese. Holy cats, they're addictive. PS: It took quit a bit of effort not to put cumin in while it was cooking! Too much experience with falafel, I guess. For the main we had involtini of pork. I put it up, appropriately, on Chufi's involtini thread. Very tender, and I love the sweet bursts of the raisins that swell up and caramelize in the heat. The digestivi are ready! L-R: Lemon, Almond, Fennel, and Coffee and Cinnamon. I was worried the most about how the coffee and cinnamon one would turn out but it's really good. And the almond one tastes just like Amaretto!

For some reason, summer really brings out the involtini urge in me, too. I'm doing Sicily this month and they do lots of variations on this theme. Last night it was some pork scallopini (standing in for veal) stuffed with the standard Sicilian filling of pine nuts, raisins, breadcrumbs, pecorino, and I added some minced shallot. Tossed 'em on the grill and periodically basted them with a marsala reduction with butter and lemon juice. Didn't get a cross-section view, sorry.

Yeah, the arancine are deep-fried. I've already gone through two changes of oil this month! Edit: Much as I try to avoid deep-frying and its production, sometimes it's better that way, especially when you have something that's prone to come apart easily. These had an egg coating and then were rolled in breadrcumbs, and you had to be very, very delicate with them (actually I patted the breadcrumbs in place instead of rolling the rice balls in them). Once they hit that oil though, they more or less instanty seal up.

Ah. Well, I reduced the sauce a little because I was worried about it oozing out of the packet (past experience and sloppy sealage on my part). It was just about right, though, and there was a little left at the bottom of the packet. Some of the extra starch that normally cooks out in the last few minutes and then gets left in the pot was now in the sauce, so it had a very luscious, nearly creamy texture. And not at all gummy, like when you overcook pasta or use inferior brands (not that "you" do!).

You're trading al dente for a flavor that has gotten into each strand of pasta. At first I worried that I had overcooked it but my wife pointed this fact out and I couldn't disagree. You could cook it a little less, but once it's in the packet it's hard to test and see.

Yes to both, though I just made standard long-grain rice simmered in saffron water and made a "quick" ragu out of ground pork and onion and it cooked maybe 30 minutes. Actually, risotto may work better: the long-grain rice was pretty loose and crumbly, as it should be.

I said earlier that I could use a whole extra month just cooking caponata variations. Well I could use even a third month just doing all the Sicilian sweets. Here's the various pastries I've been making lately, all out of Sweet Siciliy. "Bigne" are a baked pastry based on the pate choix (sp?) method. Pipe custard into the natural air pockets that form. If you use a chocolate or Nutella whipped cream, they're "lulus" which I made in June for a friend's birthday, and if you fry them instead of baking them they're sfinci. I think I'm mangling all the plural endings here, so all apologies. Almond "pillows" are made with a dough of just almond meal, eggs, and sugar, no flour except what you dust the work surface with, that are folded around a filling of quince paste and aniseseeds. In Sweet Sicily it's actually candied citron, but I've searched high and low to no avail and came up with this substitute filling instead. So, yeah, they spread quite a bit when you cook them, and mine all got stuck together, so I had to break them apart, resulting in some pretty brutto pillows. But they're some of our favorites so far. I had some of the dough left over after making the pillows and mixed in some orange zest, shaped pieces of the dough into little balls and topped them with pine nuts. Last are sweet taralli, a variation of the savory taralli I did to disastrous effect, in May when I was cooking from Puglia. These are not leavened, or rather they use eggs instead of yeast, but they are boiled and then baked as for the savory taralli. They're then topped with an orange-icing (orange zest and juice, powdered sugar).

Last night we started with breaded fried cutlets of eggplant, topped with grated provolone and then a squeeze of orange over them. It's the seemingly mundane difference of using orange instead of the standard lemon over something hot out of the fryer or off the grill that I love about Sicilian food. Just something I'd have never thought to reconsider and they just do it. The main was spaghetti with a seafood ragu "en cartoccio". As you can see, I used foil instead of the more standard parchment paper. In the ragu are squid, mussels, and clams, cooked in a spicy tomato sauce. The spaghetti is cooked to about 2/3rds of the package directions, tossed in the sauce, and then sealed in the foil and baked for 10 minutes in a very hot oven. The whole thing "roasts", concentrating and caremelizing the sauce into the pasta itself.

Friday night was a Sicilian antipasto spread (can you tell I like these kinds of meals?). In the foreground is a salad of sliced oranges and fennel. Yes, you use the whole orange slice, pith, peel, and all, in there. Sounds too bitter? Sprinkle sugar over the slices! That's a little Sicilian-esque technique I picked up I think from Mario Batali. In the lavendar bowl is a caponata of--get this--eggplant and canteloupe. This is from, of all places, actor Vincent Schiavelli's memoir, Many Beautiful Things and absolutely blew my mind when I saw it. Brown eggplant in olive oil, remove it from the pan and discard the oil, then start with more oil and get the pan very, very hot. Add slices of underripe (very important!) canteloupe and caramelize them. Return the eggplant to the pan and and a dash of vinegar and sugar stirred together, then cook it off. Let it cool to room temp and garnish with mint and chilies. Highly unusual flavors but man, does it work. This might be my only caponata this month, regrettably. I could use almost a whole other month on the infinite and all delicious-sounding caponate recipes I've run across: a variation with artichoke, the standard eggplant version, the more Spanish/Moorish variation with bitter chocolate, and, ahem, my own, not-too-shabby variation. In the other two dishes are two fried items: arancine and sardine and ricotta balls. The arancine, "little oranges" are balls of saffron rice stuffed with a meat ragu that are then rolled in breadcrumbs and fried. The ricotta and sardine balls are sardines, ricotta, grated provolone/cacciocavallo, parsley, chives, almonds, raisins, breadcrumbs, and eggs. Even though the sardines weren't packed in salt, they added a sharp, saline bite to the whole thing that's almost too much if you eat a couple in a row. A bite here and there followed by the caponata was the way to go, though. For a cocktail we had a "godfather", a not-Sicilian-but-hey-they're-from-Sicily-in-The-Godfather-right? drink of scotch and amaretto. Dessert was toasted almond and honey gelato. I think I should've ground the almonds finer, but my wife liked the coarse texture.

Thanks everyone. Feel free to share your thoughts of the book or of course meals you make from it.

Actually, for tonight's dinner we're meeting fellow eG'er Richard Kilgore at a Thai place here in Dallas. From everything I've heard about cacciocavallo and provolone, it would appear that they are similar enough to each other. But does cacciocavallo get that sharp as it ages? My only concern with using provolone instead is that whenever it's aged it's invariably "extra sharp" so I'm wondering how accurate to cacciocavallo it is . . .

Those both look great! Where do you get your zucchini blossoms? When we get them here they seem way too small to stuff and fry, and they also seem a little old. And his pasta stuff is always dependable. What do you think of his book? Do you have his others? Anyone else trying out his new book?

That's a good point, and I wondered that, but with only four cookbooks out there, it seems a little early for him to do a "best of". Still, I also think that maybe this is a counterpoint to shows like "Everyday Italian" and its attendant cookbook which have taken over FoodTV. He's definitely drawn a line in the sand and stuck to his guns. He easily has the most esoteric and exotic show on FoodTV, throughout the show's entire run. And so it is with this book: you get fettuccine alfredo recipes sharing space with sweet and sour calves' tongue. But yes, this is a good starting point to pick up on his works. Despite some of the shortcuts, there's alot in here to like. Thanks for the compliments! I'll take the honorary citizenship, but does it by any chance come with airline mileage? He really stirs the pot on the tradition thing with this book. Some of his recipes are arch-regional specialties, like the anchovy almond soup from Calabria, or again the fettuccine alfredo recipe that calls for butter only, no cream. Then he does renditions of Italian-American classics, like a cheese-and-herb-whallop of a foccaccia that he ate in San Francisco. Then there's his telltale dishes that come from one of his restaurants. Usually you recognize the basis for the dish, but he'll add his own twist. An example of this is his lemon fettuccine with hot chilies dish. It started out as a Venetian dish of creamy pasta with lemon, but now he adds a jolt of slivered jalapenos to it (and gives the appropriate nod to his Latino kitchen staff for the inspiration). This certainly strays a bit; I thought that the Babbo cookbook, for all its gorgeous photos and recipes, left me more just wanting to eat at his restaurant than run out and make something from it. He insists that the cooking in the Babbo book is true to Italian traditions, but I have a hard time believing that when you have to run out and buy a juicer for one recipe or roast a bunch of mushrooms just to flavor their oil. But yet he still comes across as humble, at least in his approach to the cuisine, to me. I know quite a few disagree, but he never seems cocky or arrogant about Italian cuisines (maybe it doesn't allow him to!). He knows his stuff, sure, and what would fly and what wouldn't, but he just seems to be perpetually in awe of its microregionality and discovering a new dish. I'm rewatching his Sicilian shows right now and he seems absolutely giddy alot of the times about what he's making, not because he's making it or showing off, but because he had it in Sicily last time he was there and now he's excited to share it. And on top of all that, he's a great, accessible writer and has a solid academic background, so he can solidly convey the cultures and traditions behind a dish. By the way, can you go more into what you meant by "rigid" in describing Italian cuisine?

Man, what am I going to do with all this food you're all requesting? Yeah, panelle are another dish I'm considering. The Middle Eastern Market I mentioned earlier is normally my chickpea flour resource, but they didn't have any--only farina? I thought farina had something to do with chickpeas (although I'm aware that the Italian translation is just "flour"). So, if I can't come by any this month they'll have to sit this one out.

*goes to lunch early*

Thanks for both of the references. Unfortunately, $25 is currently the "prohibitively expensive" boundary right now for a food item. But that book's pretty much what I was looking for! I'll be making a couscous dish, but I will not be making actual couscous (sprinkling water over semolina, sieving it, baking it, etc)

Just making sure it wasn't some sort of dialect term I was clueless on (again).

As it was the Fourth of July yesterday, I would have my citizenship (and possibly manhood) revoked if I didn't grill something, so I did a little Sicilian cookout. (Relax, we had burgers and hot dogs the night before!) Started with pan-seared cheese. Dust some thick-cut slabs of cheese--I used aged provolone to stand in for cacciocavallo--in flour. Get a pan screeching hot, add oil, then put the cheese in there and crust it on one side, then flip and brown the other side. Remove and set aside. Pour red wine vinegar into the pan (stand back!) then when it stops fussing, sprinkle dried oregano flowers ( ) into the emulsion and pour over the cheese. Serve with bread. Sex on a plate. Next up was a last-minute addition to the menu. I was buying supplies yesterday and passed by some artichokes with the longest stems on them I've yet seen in the U.S. Had to buy them. So I smeared them with a paste of almonds, garlic, green olives, chilies, orange and lemon juice, and tossed them, whole, on the grill. After they came off you peel away the blackened outer leaves and go to town. Unfortunately, the whole reason I bought them, the long stem, was charred beyond possible usage. I left them whole as I've seen most recipes direct, but dealing with the choke and the spiny inner leaves right above it was a pain--when I've grilled them before (see the Easter meal a few pages back) I halved them and scooped out the chokes first, which is what I'll stick to. Served them with a second paste of mint, rosemary, garlic and olive oil. The main were some grilled lamb "steaks" from Mario Batali's shows. He used a whole leg of lamb (and another time, a goat's leg). Our market started selling these "steaks" which were cross-sections of the leg, bone-in, and they've always intrigued me so I gave them a spin. This is a reversal of the artichoke recipe, where now I smeared the meat with the mint and rosemary paste, grilled it, and served it with the almond-olive-orange "pesto" as a dipping sauce. As a contorno it was a tossed salad of arugula, lemon, and orange segments. Nice tart accompaniment to cut the meat's flavors. Dessert was "virgin's breasts", a Sicilian pastry/cookie filled with chocolate custard, candied pumpkin, and orange zest. My wife thought it tasted almost like figs. Hope I don't get banned for posting lewd images!