Erica De Mane

Looks like fun. I want that hat.

Recipe: Spaghetti with Red Mullet and Haricots Verts, Da Fiore Style

One thing wrong with this country is our lack of respect for vacation time. Compared with Italy and France, we are pathetic, overworked Puritans. It’s tragic that we feel guilty and broke at the thought of taking two weeks in a row, a luxury here for most people. In Italy two weeks is a joke; you don’t even start to unwind before at least three. I haven’t taken two weeks in several years, and I’m so used to it that I forget how badly I need those two weeks. The occasional summer weekend getaway, much of it stuck in traffic, can be fun and will do in a pinch, but it’s no substitute for the real thing. I always seem to return from these weekends feeling tired, and nervous about facing Monday and all the stuff I tried not to think about over those two days. Less pay, more work, chintzy vacation: It’s the American way. This cannot be good for our waistlines. Stress and overeating, as we all know but somehow fail to take seriously, are a classic combination that can result in nervous fat build-up. You not only look bad but you feel bad too. Why do we let this happen? I think because we’re all so beaten down we don’t think we deserve a real vacation. Maybe I’m only speaking for myself, but I think it may be an American epidemic. (more…)

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Dino holding a bottle of his signature vino (has anybody ever tasted it?).

Recipe: Cherries in Red Wine Vanilla Syrup

So now we all know what my grandmother always knew: Red wine is a medicine, albeit a really delicious, intoxicating one. When my father was a kid, she’d administer it to him by the tablespoon like cod liver oil. When I was young, my sister and I got handed little glasses of red wine mixed with 7Up to drink with dinner, “to aid digestion.” And my grandmother used it herself to chase away her demons, not always with the best results, but her mental state aside, she lived to be 99, and I do believe red wine must have had something to do with it. (And she still had very smooth olive skin.)

The secret health ingredient in red wine turns out to be something called resveratrol, a substance found in all wine but in much higher concentrations in most reds. Many serious studies seem to indicate that resveratrol could be a key to longevity. I’ve even read some studies that have found that resveratrol might have the power to hinder fat storage and reduce the number of fat cells in your body. Now, that just seems too good to be true, and we’ll have to wait for a definitive answer on it, but science is moving to declare resveratrol a possible life-extending elixir. Unbelievable. Seems it may be able to accomplish this amazing feat by switching the body’s resources from fertility to tissue maintenance. This improved tissue maintenance is thought to extend life by cutting down on the degenerative diseases of aging. Can you believe it?

Red wines that get prolonged grape skin contact in the winemaking process have especially high levels of resveratrol, and reds from areas with relatively high humidity tend to be loaded with it. Pinot Noir has a very high level. I wanted to know the amounts of this wonder ingredient in Southern Italian reds, and I found a study conducted at the University of Foggia in Puglia that tested a handful of Southern Italian monovarietal wines. The report is a bit confusing, since it’s written in high scientific language in addition to being translated from Italian rather ineptly, but I could figure out that the study’s purpose was to compare resveratrol levels in Aglianico, Piedirosso, and Nerello Mascalese grapes, all native Southern Italian red wine grape varietals. What the test showed was that the resveratrol level in the Aglianico and Piedirosso, although starting out relatively high, declined after a time in maceration, while the level in the Nerello Mascalese grapes kept increasing with prolonged maceration. Curious. (more…)

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You can serve this pretty spring dish either hot or at room temperature.

Recipe: Spring Vegetables with Mixed Herb Pesto

The more you crowd your plate with beautiful vegetables, the less room you have for bad fats and refined carbs. A little bad fat and carb is desirable, but I’ve found that an excellent way to avoid overdoing it is by learning to be a fabulous vegetable cook. That’s not so hard, especially this time of year, when good things are bursting forth from our still somewhat productive earth, beckoning to be cooked and eaten.

I like going to the market and simply selecting vegetables by color, and then coming up with a way to present them, all together, in a palate of visual and savory pleasure. This week I picked up snap peas, shell peas, little baby fennel, and first-of-the-season zucchini, all in varying shades of green that really caught my eye. And I grabbed basil, parsley, and tarragon because there they were there. I decided to do a little sauté of pretty green things and make a pesto of green to go with it. Now I had a plan. (more…)

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Gelato in brioche, a bad Sicilian idea of breakfast.

Recipe: Uova in Purgatorio (Eggs in Purgatory)

Every diet I’ve ever heard of instructs you to eat a good breakfast. It will supposedly set you up for the day. I for one am not hungry in the morning. Am I supposed to eat anyway just to get set up? What I’ve always wanted in the morning is nothing but coffee, a big cappuccino. Maybe if I started getting shaky and deranged, a sign of a blood sugar dip, I’d want breakfast, but I never feel that way, unless I overdo it with the coffee.

If I’m coerced into eating breakfast, I get just as hungry for lunch, and at the same time as if I hadn’t eaten breakfast at all. Eating in the morning jump starts my eating cycle, depriving me of several peaceful hours where I feel no need to stuff my face. As I see it, there’s very little point in ignoring the individual quirks of your own body and mind, no matter what the diet experts say.

I’ve been reading a book called Eat, Drink, and Weigh Less, drawn to it initially because it had the word drink in the title. This book, written by Mollie Katzen, of Moosewood Cookbook fame, and Walter Willett, M.D., a nutritionist, is in many ways a fine, reasonable book, aside from some very unreasonable, non-Italian, health-foodie recipes, heavy on the tempeh and cumin. What this book says about breakfast makes perfect sense: “When it comes to smoothing out the peaks and troughs of hunger all day long, a good breakfast starts things off on exactly the right track. Skip breakfast . . . and it’s easy to set off a chain of overeating that lasts till bedtime.”

Every diet book says this, so it must be true, but it’s not true for me. Eating breakfast makes me gain weight. Eating breakfast just adds another meal when I don’t even want it. This book emphasizes setting your blood sugar at a good level by eating whole grains and some protein. That sounds perfectly and scientifically sensible, but don’t let it scare you into eating when you don’t feel like it. After reading tons of diet books and blogs, you’re led to believe skipping breakfast turns you into a savage, food-starved beast, grabbing at any edible thing in your path and stuffing your face endlessly until you finally pass out at night in a bloated haze. For me, I’ve found the opposite to be true. Do you still have to eat breakfast? Dr. De Mane says no, unless you want to. (more…)

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Benito Mussolini stands on a wheat threshing machine in Aprilia, Italy, to inaugurate the harvest of 1938 (I love the no-smoking sign).

Recipe: Warm Wheat Berries with Shrimp, Peas, and Spring Onion

A culinary trilogy has been running through my head all spring: dishes made from a seafood, a green vegetable, and some form of whole wheat. My recent posting of a recipe for Mussels with Whole Wheat Linguine, Swiss Chard, and Smoked Chili came from this mindset, and I’ve got more brewing in my little Italian-American head.

I really love whole wheat berries. I love the pure wheat aroma that fills my kitchen while they simmer. Their texture and taste is really special to me. I believe I first encountered their taste as a kid when we ate pastiera, the Southern Italian Easter cake filled with wheat berries and ricotta. In Southern Italy, wheat berries are used in all sorts of salads and soups. both hot and cold. Sicily has a filling dish called cuccia in which wheat berries are served warm, mixed with ricotta and usually something sweet like honey or grape must (possibly not a great diet choice). You traditionally eat this on St. Lucy’s feast day, December 13. I often buy big bags of wheat berries for no particular reason, just because I want to have them in my kitchen. I always find something to do with them.

Since spring pod peas have just arrived at my New York Greenmarket, I know I have to cook with them right away. Despite what people always tell me about the virtues of frozen peas, I’m sorry, but they’re just not as fine as fresh, and all the work involved in shucking and blanching just makes the latter more special for me. (more…)

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Ultra-fresh mussels from the Union Square Greenmarket.

Recipe: Mussels with Whole Wheat Linguine, Swiss Chard, and Smoked Chili

This past weekend I bought the most beautiful mussels from Phil Karlin, the number-one fish man at the New York Greenmarkets. They were tiny, glistening black, all shut tight, and they cooked up amazingly sweet and creamy. I’ve been getting local Long Island fish from Mr. Karlin for many years, and his seasonal catch has spoiled me. Nothing else seems fresh enough. His calamari? It’s slippery, firm, and caught that morning. His whole fish (I’ll take whatever he has on any given day) is a pleasure to clean—even the guts are pristine (he sells some pre-cleaned fish, but I actually enjoy the grisly labor).

I had these gorgeous little mussels in my kitchen, and I knew I wanted to show them off. Not only are mussels incredibly delicious, but they’re a low-calorie, low-fat, high-protein food, just about perfect. I love pasta with any type of shellfish, but since I’ve been trying to limit my intake of refined carbohydrates, I’ve switched more often than not to whole wheat pasta. Sound dreary? Not at all, as it turns out. You just have to rethink your sauces a little, making them piu forte. My solution for the mussels was to add bitter greens and a hint of spicy smoke, both flavors able to stand up to the whole wheat taste and texture, balancing the dish nicely. (more…)

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Nasturtiums at the Union Square Greenmarket in Manhattan.

And if you’d like to eat flowers, try some of these. They’re gorgeous and delicious. Here’s a recipe:

Arugula Salad with Nasturtium Blossoms, Spring Onion, and Black Olives

(Serves 2)

1 large bunch arugula, stemmed
1 small spring onion, very thinly sliced, using some of the tender green part
1 1/2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon Spanish sherry vinegar
A few scrapings of fresh nutmeg
A pinch of salt
Freshly ground black pepper
A small handful of black Niçoise olives
About a dozen nasturtium blossoms

Put the arugula and onion in a salad bowl. Whisk the olive oil with the vinegar, and season it with the nutmeg, salt, and black pepper. Pour the dressing over the salad and toss gently. Scatter and olives and nasturtium blossoms on top. Serve right away.

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