Erica De Mane

Spaghetti with big shrimp, tarragon, and lemon.

My Birthday Menu 2005

Recipes:

Escarole Salad with Buffalo Mozzarella Bruschetta and Anchovy Vinaigrette
Spaghetti with Big Shrimp, Tarragon, and Lemon

Wine: Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo, Valentini

I know several people who have birthdays in early to mid-December, including me and my idol Maria Callas. It’s a good time for a birthday. Things are just starting to get festive, and Manhattan, where I live, is decorated in sparkly junk, but it’s not close enough to Christmas to get you gypped out of receiving two distinct gifts or great dinners.

My birthday falls on December 3, and a few weeks before it this year I started thinking about what I’d like my special birthday dinner to be. I had no trouble zeroing in on the flavors I most love-pasta and seafood, preferably mixed together.

Any type of pasta with just about any seafood is my all-time favorite thing to eat. I love just about every combination I’ve either made myself or been served. The spaghetti with sea urchins, tomato, and mint I had years ago in Palermo was one of the most delicious tastes ever and was completely unfamiliar to me at the time. I love all forms of pasta with sardines, from the elaborately flavored Sicilian classic with saffron, fennel, pine nuts, and raisins to the simpler versions made with tomato and a hint of oregano. Penne with tuna and capers is a sublime combination, and is something I also first tasted in Sicily. I’ve duplicated it back home many times using the floral, salt-packed Sicilian capers I can now find at many Italian food shops (and also at buonitalia.com). I love the trenette with lobster and brandy I often make for Christmas Eve dinner, a dish patterned after one my grandfather devised, rich without cream or butter, just bathed in great olive oil, shallots, and a touch of tomato.

Grilled calamari cut into rings with scissors and dropped into a bowl of rigatoni tossed with raw tomatoes and arugula is my new favorite summer pasta. Also I love any type of pasta with clams, with or without tomatoes, with sweet wine, with dry wine, or with lemon juice. I make it with a handful of gentle herbs like basil and parsley, or with fresh chilies and a stronger herb like marjoram or thyme. Bucatini with mussels and pancetta, tossed with a sprinkling of crisp breadcrumbs, is to me one of the most perfectly balanced pastas, briny but meaty; I sometimes add a touch of sugar to the breadcrumbs just to add another dimension to the dish. Spaghetti with anchovies and garlic makes for another intense pasta experience, especially when prepared with salt-packed anchovies mashed with fresh summer garlic; I can eat it until my mouth is stinging from salt overload. Fusilli with squid and spring peas is a recipe I found in the Da Fiore Venetian restaurant’s cookbook. It sounds commonplace enough except that their version is flavored with cinnamon, thyme, pancetta, and Parmigiano, making the dish sweet and nuanced (the sweet cinnamon underscores the sweetness of the squid in an unexpected way, so the dish actually tastes quite exotic). Great olive oil is the secret to all these dishes. Not only does it add great flavor, but it’s a carrier of flavor, distributing gentle sea notes, garlic, herbs, and wine throughout the dish, wrapping these essences around each piece of pasta, making the entire platter glisten.

Shrimp with pasta can be especially sublime because I use the shrimp shells to fashion a little broth that coats the pasta with sweet shrimp flavor. Citarella, in New York City, sells really humongous shrimp. I always grill them in their shells during the summer, but they’re incredible tangled up with spaghetti or bucatini too. I take extra care when I cook pasta with seafood, making it the best it can be by tossing the pasta and seafood together in the skillet over heat for a minute or so to blend all the flavors and envelope the pasta with flavor. And I really watch the cooking time, so I don’t hammer any of the seafood (which is easy enough to do after a few glasses of wine). I also try to use Latini brand artisanal pasta, with its rough, matte surface and light, porous texture that allows sauce not only to cling to it but also to soak in just a bit, producing a rounded flavor (see my product review of Latini for a fuller discussion of this great pasta and information on where to buy it).

I devised the following shrimp-and-pasta recipe with my birthday in mind and cooked it for my husband and sister and myself a few days before my birthday. I didn’t feel right cooking on my actual birthday, because that night I wanted to wear my new high heels and hoped to be taken out. And I did have the excellent fortune to be taken to Esca, on West 43rd Street in Manhattan. I figured if I wasn’t going to make my own pasta with seafood I should go to the best place in the city for this potentially perfect food combination. Esca’s chef, David Pasternack, creates pasta-and-seafood dishes in the Southern Italian style that’s so close to my heart, and judging from the taste of his dishes it’s obviously close to his heart too.

I ordered a chitarra pasta with a creamy sea urchin purée. It was smooth and rich, with that sweet but bitter sea urchin taste I love so much (much different from the sea urchin pasta I ate in Sicily, which had whole chunks of roe, tomato, and wine). My husband had spaghetti with a perfectly cooked whole, hacked up lobster in a spicy, minty tomato sauce. Chef Pasternack cooks pasta just the way I like it; very al dente (so important when tossed with sea things, which can be quite soft in texture). I’m pretty sure he uses Latini pasta. I can tell by the roughed-up, clingy surface and the wheaty taste. We then went on to split a whole grouper bathed in olive oil, marjoram, and blood orange, although both of us were quite full already (but you’ve got to order a secondo for a special dinner). We finished with an incredibly light gelato in hazelnut and spiced orange, with “Happy Birthday” written in beautiful Catholic-school script in dark chocolate around the rim of the plate. What a wonderful birthday meal.

A strange side note about Esca: I’ve eaten in this restaurant only maybe once a year since it opened four years ago (it’s definitely in the class of special-occasion places for me), but every time I’ve been there Woody Allen has also been there. Strange. Does he eat there every night? I wonder. His birthday is December 1. Maybe he goes every year for his birthday too.

Escarole Salad with Buffalo Mozzarella Bruschetta and Anchovy Vinaigrette

Ever since I first saw Vittorio De Sica’s great movie The Bicycle Thief, when I was a teenager, I have found toasted bread dripping with warm mozzarella to be one of the ultimate luxuries (as it was for Antonio and his son; they were celebrating Antonio’s getting a job with this lunch at the fateful moment when the bike was stolen).

(Serves 4 as a first course)

1 medium head escarole, torn into pieces
1 small garlic clove
2 oil-packed anchovy fillets
The juice from half a lemon
Freshly ground black pepper
Extra-virgin olive oil
1 ball buffalo mozzarella, cut into slices
8 slices good Italian bread
Salt
A few marjoram sprigs, the leaves chopped

Set out four salad plates. Place the escarole in a salad bowl. With a mortar and pestle grind the garlic with the anchovies until you have a paste. Add the lemon juice, about 3 tablespoons of olive oil, and a few turns of black pepper, and mix everything well.

Place the bread on a sheet pan and broil until golden. Turn the slices, brush them with olive oil, and lay a slice of mozzarella on each slice. Broil until the cheese is soft and bubbly.

Divide up the escarole onto four plates, and place two bruschettas on each plate alongside it. Sprinkle lightly with salt, and scatter on the marjoram. Serve right away.

Spaghetti with Big Shrimp, Tarragon, and Lemon

Shrimp and tarragon make a wonderful coupling, but it’s one not often used in Italy. Fennel and anise are favored there; tarragon has a similar and in my opinion suaver taste.

(Serves 4 as a main course or 6 as a first course)

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 1/2 pounds jumbo shrimp, peeled and deveined (saving the shrimp shells)
1/4 cup dry white wine
Salt
1 pound spaghetti, preferably Latini brand
Extra-virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
4 plum tomatoes, seeded, and cut into small dice
Freshly ground black pepper
The grated zest from 1 lemon
8 large tarragon sprigs, the leaves lightly chopped
12 large flat-leaf parsley sprigs, the leaves lightly chopped

In a medium-size saucepan, heat the butter over medium flame. Add the shrimp shells, and sauté until they turn pink, about 2 minutes. Add the white wine, and let it reduce by half. Add enough water to just cover the shells. Add a pinch of salt, and simmer uncovered for 10 minutes. Strain into a small bowl, and set aside (you should have about 1/2 cup).

Set up a large pot of pasta-cooking water, and bring it to a boil. Add a generous amount of salt. Drop in the spaghetti.

In a skillet large enough to hold all the spaghetti and shrimp, heat 3 tablespoons of olive oil over high heat. When the skillet is hot, add the shrimp, the garlic, the lemon zest, and about half the tarragon. Season with salt and black pepper, and sauté quickly, just until the shrimp is tender, about 2 minutes. Add the tomatoes, and sauté about a minute longer. Add the shrimp broth, and simmer for a few seconds, just to blend the flavors.

When the bucatini is al dente, drain it and add it to the skillet. Turn the heat to medium, and toss everything together until the bucatini is well-coated, about a minute. Add the rest of the tarragon and all the parsley, and toss again. Turn off the heat. Taste for seasoning, adding a little more salt if needed. Add a drizzle of fresh olive oil, and give everything a final toss. Pour the pasta into a large serving bowl. Serve right away.