A year of Italian cooking

[Chufi]

The meal I made Monday night is based on a dream I had about our honeymoon about a month before we left. 

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thanks Kevin that line just made my day where else but on EGullet could one read such a thing?

I'm glad things are looking up, and I certainly applaud your perseverance with the pancakes, anything to make the dream come true heh?

edited to add question: I am no mushroom expert, but the ones on the right look like porcini to me? what are they?

Edited October 11, 2005 by Chufi (log)

[Kevin72]

Thanks again, Chufi!

I had, sadly, been mentally preparing myself for this experience all day at work yesterday. So I just kept at it. But I did start getting exasperated.

Last year at almost exactly this same time I had another run of really bad luck in the kitchen. I think I talked about it a bit on the "I will never again . . . " thread. If memory serves, I spilled half a pot of stock all over the just-mopped kitchen floor, and in the time it took me to take care of that the pasta sheets I had rolled out for the evening's dinner dried out completely and broke apart trying to cut them. I went on a cooking "sabbatical" for about three weeks afterwards and let my wife take a spin at the stove. It did me alot of good, but I certainly wouldn't consider such a thing this year, particularly during one of my favorite regions to cook from!

[Kevin72]

The meal I made Monday night is based on a dream I had about our honeymoon about a month before we left. 

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edited to add question: I am no mushroom expert, but the ones on the right look like porcini to me? what are they?

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They are trumpet or trumpet royale mushrooms. Good, firm texture when pan-seared and when grilled they have that nice custardy texture in the center that porcini get. But they lack, almost entirely, that depth of woodsy flavor that porcini and chaunterelle have.

[mrbigjas]

Last year at almost exactly this same time I had another run of really bad luck in the kitchen.

seasonal affective disorder (cooking variety)!

[Kevin72]

seasonal affective disorder (cooking variety)!

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Heh, but no, I can't imagine that happening during my favorite cooking time of the year. Just odd happenstance I guess. I've had other bad runs before at other times of the year.

[hathor]

Sounds like you need a little kitchen witch or kitchen god to help you regain your balance! Hey, happens to all of us! But its particularly frustrating when its an old standby! Meanwhile those quail looked damn good, I don't care if the pancetta wasn't up to snuff.

What about making some plain white beans, served with some good olive oil. Real comfort food. I like mine contadini style, I smush them up with my fork and make sure the olive oil is all mushed around. If we are feeling festive, I'll throw in some fresh basil. You can't go wrong with beans!

[Adam Balic]

Kevin - if it makes you feel any better the last time I made this it took over a year to set correctly. I was too lazy to boil the honey/sugar until the soft crack stage .

I agree with anzu, when you take it out of the oven it is still quite soft to the touch, and firms up on cooling.

[Kevin72]

Gah! We’re back up to 90F again! At least the humidity is down, and it’s amazing how much more “pleasant” these temps seem than the 98+ we got most of September.

Normally, the dish I made Friday night is another way to celebrate cooler weather and having all the windows open: grilled sausage with baked polenta and pepperonata.

This is one of those not-necessarily-from-Tuscany-but-it-sure-seems-like-it meals.

I roast the peppers for pepperonata to give it a little more complexity. The sausages got a little crispy from the grill.

[Kevin72]

Proof my wife can hold her own: Saturday she took a turn at the stove.

Started the meal with a warm salad of shrimp and crab with a raspberry/chipotle dressing.

The main was grilled marinated salmon and roasted sweet potatoes. She begged me not to take a pic since it wasn’t so photogenic. We then finished with bread pudding and I must say it was roundly excellent, better than the routine winner for "best of" bread pudding in Dallas, which is far too boozy in my opinion.

[Kevin72]

Sunday night’s meal began with gemelli with arugula pesto. We had a similar dish in Florence and really liked it; the arugla shined through perfectly. Can’t remember where I first heard about this variant on pesto before we went to Italy.

My version: walnuts, several handfuls of arugula, fresh pecorino, olive oil, and a clove of garlic. More pecorino over the top.

We continued with pollo alla diavola, so named because it’s “hot as the devil”. This is another dish that has many variants. Some recipes use chili pepper flakes for the heat, others use chili oil, and others just use lots of pepper. The version I’m using these days uses black pepper and chili oil, along with rosemary and mustard. Not sure where I picked up the mustard angle, though Mario Batali I think has used it in a version he’s made.

A common method to cook this is “under a brick”, which means to remove the backbone and splay it open over a grill, then lay bricks (or in my case, a cast-iron skillet with bricks in it) atop to flatten in out and allow for more even cooking. Normally I’m not a fan of grilled (as opposed to spit-roasted) chicken: when the skin gets a little char on it I find it takes on an unpleasant, metallic taste. This time, with a much larger grill at my disposal, I thought I’d have a very low side to put the chicken over, heat the other side really hot and scatter more grape vine cuttings and rosemary over the flame, and cook it more or less indirectly and get lots of smokey flavors in there.

. . . Dammit. So even under the low flame, the skin got charred and I lost a good chunk of it (and the seasoning) stuck to the grill grates. It was moist and juicy though, and there was a nice little tickle from the chili oil, but no really nice, big, smokey flavor like I’ve gotten with the fiorentina earlier this month or even the ribs from Umbria. I’m starting to lose faith in the grill part of this equation, though I like the flattening part. I may just switch to a really hot oven next time.

[Kevin72]

Not quite out of the woods yet as far as bad luck goes. I made more bread this weekend: a whole wheat version (actually 1/3rd wheat) with rosemary, raisins, and walnuts, a variation on a Easter Bread version in Michele Sciocolone’s Italian Holiday Cooking.

Not too shabby, but all the goodies gravitated to the center of the bread and weren’t as evenly distributed as I’d have liked. But I also made another loaf of Tuscan saltless, exactly as I had done the previous batch, and it didn’t rise nearly as much and came out of the oven very heavy and dense.

[Kevin72]

Earlier I mentioned that my wife didn’t want one of her dishes for Saturday dinner in a picture as it wasn’t photogenic enough. I however have no such compunction about my own dishes. Last night we had panzanella, the bread salad of Tuscany.

Soak bread in water, shred it up, toss with tomatoes, basil, cucumbers, and onion, toss with vinegar and olive oil. Obviously, it tastes much, much better than it looks.

Dessert was neci (leftover from last week, not a new batch, thank God!) with ricotta, honey, and walnuts, the more traditional way of serving neci.

[Kevin72]

Kevin - if it makes you feel any better the last time I made this it took over a year to set correctly. I was too lazy to boil the honey/sugar until the soft crack stage .

I agree with anzu, when you take it out of the oven it is still quite soft to the touch, and firms up on cooling.

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And into the trash it goes! Got through about 2/3rds of it and then just decided I was eating it just to spite the results. Plus there was always that unpleasant second, as I was biting in to break off a piece, of which was going to give first: my teeth or the cake.

[Pan]

Earlier I mentioned that my wife didn’t want one of her dishes for Saturday dinner in a picture as it wasn’t photogenic enough.  I however have no such compunction about my own dishes.  Last night we had panzanella, the bread salad of Tuscany. 

Soak bread in water, shred it up, toss with tomatoes, basil, cucumbers, and onion, toss with vinegar and olive oil.  Obviously, it tastes much, much better than it looks.[...]

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Frankly, I never liked panzanella that much when I was in Siena; I found it too vinegary. That said, what's that silvery thing near the bottom of your picture, slightly left of center?

[Kevin72]

I was worried about that too; some recipes direct you to soak the bread in vinegar, not water. I decided to go the water route for the bread, and while I did add much more than the standard dose of vinegar to the salad than normal, the bread "mush" really goes a long way to cancelling it out.

I can't find silvery thing you're referring to; there are scallions in the salad, and some of the cukes were sliced pretty thin, so maybe one of them is catching the light weird . . . ?

Edit: I think I see it now. Didn't catch the "bottom of the picture" part. That's just the bowl catching the light.

Edited October 18, 2005 by Kevin72 (log)

[Adam Balic]

I like panzanella made with, eh, farro rather then bread. No quite so monolithic. Also, this is something that I would only eat in summer....One way on cutting the vinegar is to soak the bread in the tomato pulp (minus the seeds), which is quite acidic

Neci look great, what sort of honey did you use? Chestnut is really good.

[Kevin72]

Also, this is something that I would only eat in summer....

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It was a brisk 93F the day I made it.

Neci look great, what sort of honey did you use? Chestnut is really good.

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That would indeed have been the correct impulse. I bought a jar several years back and used it (actually on a version of that baked pear on the previous page) and it had a very pronounced, gamey flavor. Don't know why, but when you tasted it, there was no two ways about it: tasted like goat cheese or wild game. My wife, then, didn't like it at all, and so it has sat, unused, in our cupboards ever since. When she's being difficult I threaten to make something with it.

Final edit: So what I did use was some organic, unfiltered, Texas wildflower honey. Supposed to help with allergies, which are pretty bad for me this time of year.

Edited October 19, 2005 by Kevin72 (log)

[Kevin72]

So, a question:

What's up with Tuscans and antipasti?

I've sifted through all my cookbooks that even threaten Tuscan cooking for a new or novel antipasto idea and they all pretty much run the same gambit: bruschetta/crostini, panzanella, the artichoke tortino, a vegetable tart or two, and then salumi. That's it. Very little variation in there even with all my books, and certainly when compared to previous regions like Sicily, Rome, or Puglia, the difference is quite noticeable. I'm a huge fan of bruschetta of course, and maybe another bruschetta meal will make an appearance, but I'm also leary of filling guests up on bread, then going on to a robust pasta or soup afterwards. Are Tuscans averse to antipasto in general? Are there more but they're just so simple that it kind of escapes the cookbook radar?

Edited October 19, 2005 by Kevin72 (log)

[Adam Balic]

So, a question:

What's up with Tuscans and antipasti?

I've sifted through all my cookbooks that even threaten Tuscan cooking for a new or novel antipasto idea and they all pretty much run the same gambit: bruschetta/crostini, panzanella, the artichoke tortino, a vegetable tart or two, and then salumi.  That's it.  Very little variation in there even with all my books, and certainly when compared to previous regions like Sicily, Rome, or Puglia, the difference is quite noticeable.  I'm a huge fan of bruschetta of course, and maybe another bruschetta meal will make an appearance, but I'm also leary of filling guests up on bread, then going on to a robust pasta or soup afterwards.  Are Tuscans averse to antipasto in general?  Are there more but they're just so simple that it kind of escapes the cookbook radar?

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You are right, a lot of bread is involved. In general the Tuscans I know have a very slight build, but they can put away huge amounts of bread and beans during a meal. Fried veg are also very popular (during cooler weather), especially zucchini flowers and porcini.

[Kevin72]

Hijacker! You . . . you've killed my thread with those glorious photos Adam!

I guess it just reinforces how enamored they are with their bread. Nothing wrong with that; I just have memories of a "Tuscan" dinner party a few years back that started with bruschetta and then the look of horror on everyone's faces when I brought out the pasta course . . . and the secondo . . . and dessert . . .

Edit:

In general the Tuscans I know have a very slight build, but they can put away huge amounts of bread and beans during a meal.

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Take that Atkins!

Edited October 19, 2005 by Kevin72 (log)

[Adam Balic]

Bread and beans (including chickpeas). You buy both from the forno.

A typical family meal would be:

Anti-pasti - melon and ham or figs and ham.

maybe soup

pasta

main

salad

dessert. mostly this is gelati or fruit or little cakes from a shop.

Most nights average evening meals would be:

Anti-pasti

pasta or main

salad

dessert

If we go out for pizza, the ladies have pizza me and the lads have pasta and pizza. Maybe a dessert (I am not big on desserts). One nice thing is a really runny lemon gelati with some type of wine (forgot the name of this).

If we go out for pizza and get really, really drunk (only happens if the ratio of Australians to Italians is high), we go to the all night Forno for doughnuts etc.

My brother-in-law weights ~50 kg, I am ~ double this. He can eat much, much more then me.

Another popular (in this family) anti-pasti is raw sausage meat spread on bread.

[hathor]

What about a Tuscan aperitivo instead of antipasto? Have a Negron! This cocktail was supposed to have originated in Florence.

What about chicken liver crostini? That's very Tuscan.

Adam, your pictures are the essence of antipasti!

[Kevin72]

Ahh, the Negroni. My second favorite cocktail. But I thought it originated in Emilia Romagna somewhere?

At any rate, I went to make one recently and found we were out of Campari So I did a generous jot of Angostura in there instead. Wasn't quite the same, obviously.

Edit (damn I'm doing this alot today): Chicken livers are another tough sell with my wife. When I made the vincigrassi last month she expertly picked them out and left them on her plate afterwards.

Edited October 19, 2005 by Kevin72 (log)

[Kevin72]

Ahh, the Negroni.  My second favorite cocktail.  But I thought it originated in Emilia Romagna somewhere?

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Woops! I looked this up in a cocktail book and sure enough it credits Florence. Sorry Hathor. Mario mentioned this cocktail a few times when doing cooking from Emilia Romagna, so maybe I just associated the two.

[Kevin72]

Yesterday was our 2nd Wedding Anniversary, so I made a little Tuscan countryside feast.

Primo: Cannellini Bean Soup.

This is one of the very first things I made when I started delving into Italian cooking for real (we'll leave out my disastrous forays in college), out of Marcella Hazan's first cookbook. I think she just uses parsley in her recipe for the herb garnish, and I know many others like sage in there, but I love using rosemary and garlic as the flavor base.

I know you're all probably tired of hearing this, but I can't stress enough how lame it is to be eating such a robust soup and then having to stop between spoonfuls to mop your brow and go turn the AC down a little lower.

For the secondo, we had tonno del Chianti, a recipe from Paula Wolfert's superb Slow Mediterranean Kitchen cookbook. The "tonno" in the title is actually pork, which is liberally seasoned with black pepper, bay leaves, fennel seeds, and salt, then left to sit overnight. The next day you submerge it in oil, then bring to a gradual simmer and cook for a long time, some in the stove, and some in the oven. Let it sit in this oil (in the fridge) for a few days to develop its flavors, then reheat gently and serve. I made to go with it a contorno of pureed potatoes and butternut squash, probably something more at home in the Veneto or Friuli than Tuscany. But I wanted something to catch all those juices!

That plate isn't very flattering to the meat, is it?

The pork was, as you can imagine, meltingly tender; it would break apart just spooning it onto the plate. I was probably a little too heavy-handed with the spices and next time I might even make it with just salt, a little black pepper, and bay leaves.

My wife was in charge of dessert, and made a pumpkin and macadamia nut bundt cake:

Quite evocative of autumn and a great capper to the meal.

Edited October 20, 2005 by Kevin72 (log)