Squashes at the Greenmarket in early autumn.
Recipes:
Pàppa al Pomodoro with Marjoram Pesto
Fall Minestrone with Veal Shank, Pumpkin, and Gremolata
At some point during the first few months of my first restaurant cooking job, I was assigned to make the soup. Every day the chef would dump a load of vegetables at my station, and I was supposed to “do something with them.” This became the torment of my life, the thing that gave me bad dreams. One day while I was cooking up a huge pot of onion soup, a blood-soaked Band-Aid on my middle finger seemed to disappear. Sheer panic took charge. I kept fishing around for it with my ladle and then with a strainer. I had about 20 minutes before dinner, and making another pot was absolutely out of the question. And to make matters worse, I was supposed to be finishing up another soup, a pumpkin purée, at the same time, but it was shaping up to taste really boring and I had no idea how to fix it. I prayed that the Band-Aid had fallen on the floor, but somehow I knew it hadn’t. In retrospect, 20 years later, I know I should have told the chef, and he would have just said dump it and forget it, but I was timid and scared of that kitchen at the time, so I just gave the onion soup a good boil, hoping it would destroy my cooties, and sent it out. (more…)
Erica De Mane 