Lobster with tomatoes, cognac, and spaghetti.
Recipes:
Lobster with Tomatoes, Cognac, and Spaghetti
Slow-Cooked Duck with Green Olive Sauce
In the coldest part of every year I pull from my shelf James Villas’s l992 book The French Country Kitchen. I love this book both for what it is as for what it isn’t. What it isn’t is my kind of cooking. It’s eggy and buttery, full of duck fat and sausages. What it is is, among other things, a reminder to cook with turnips and cabbages and apples, things that don’t automatically run through my Italian-American mind. Winter is when my usual array of Mediterranean vegetables and herbs fails me, and this book is there for inspiration.
I use Villas, like with all my favorite cookbooks, more for ideas than for straight recipes, referring to it above all for his enticing flavor combinations. Many good improvisations have been born of flipping through its pages. The recipe titles themselves provoke me: Sausage and Swiss Chard Cakes, Snails with Anchovies and Walnuts, Chicken with Walnuts and Tarragon, Cabbage Soup with Roquefort, Scrambled Eggs with Wild Mushrooms, Sole with Asparagus and Almonds, Duck with Turnips, Duck Braised in Cider with Morels, Goose and Chestnut Fricassee, just to mention a few that always grab my attention.
The idea of a slow-cooked duck is what had me dragging the book out last week in the middle of a stretch of 20-degree weather. I’d been wanting to try a slow cooking method for some time; I’d been finding that the more conventional hour-and-a-half-at-moderate-heat technique sometimes produced tough meat. I didn’t find slow-cooked duck in the book, but my eyes lingered on his recipe for Roast Duck with Olives, a perfect flavor marriage, a classic one, and one that I was glad to be reminded of. So I improvised my slow-cooked duck, borrowing his green-olive idea, really tampering with his recipe (which is a great one but very hands-on, saucy, and French), concocting less of an actual sauce, more of a condimento, with a brighter flavor, making it more, well, Italian. My duck technique unfortunately clocked in at three and a half hours, but the only attention it required was replenishing the bottom of the baking dish with a splash of liquid from time to time. If you make it you can pretty much relax, rent a double feature, maybe starting with L’Avventura and going on to Grey Gardens. By then you’ll be in a well-altered state, and your duck will be cooked to tender perfection.
Lobster with tomatoes and cognac is the other recipe I offer you for cold-weather enjoyment. It’s got nothing to do with James Villas and everything to do with my grandfather Errico Russo. It’s a recipe he often made for Christmas Eve. I cooked it this past Christmas Eve, and it was as good as I had expected, actually almost ridiculously delicious. I cut back on the hot chilies, making it less Fra Diavolo, and threw in a little butter for a mellow finish. The booze is key, since it cuts down the acidity of the tomatoes and adds sweetness as its alcohol cooks off, leaving behind a suave little sauce to envelop the spaghetti.
Happy dead-of-winter cooking to you.
Lobster with Tomatoes, Cognac, and Spaghetti
As sublime as this is made with lobster, it is a bit of work. For a simpler version use shell-on jumbo shrimp (with the heads too, if you can find them that way), cooking the sauce exactly the same way, and adding the shrimp when you would have added the lobster.
(Serves 4 as a main course)
3 small lobsters (about 1 1/2 pounds each)
Extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 shallots, cut into small dice
3 large thyme sprigs, the leaves chopped
1 small inner celery stalk, cut into small dice, plus the leaves, chopped
Salt
A generous pinch of sugar
About 8 big scrapings of nutmeg
A generous pinch of Aleppo pepper (or a smaller pinch of cayenne)
1/3 cup cognac or brandy
1/2 cup low-salt canned chicken broth
1 35-ounce can chopped tomatoes, with the juice
1 pound spaghetti
A dozen basil leaves, lightly chopped
For the best flavor and texture, the lobster for this dish should be sautéed raw. This means either hacking the things up alive (something I no longer have the stomach for) or, my new solution, having your fish seller kill them for you. You just have to make sure to cook them the same day. Once you get your lobsters home, you’ll need to cut them into pieces. Get a sharp, heavy knife or a cleaver and start by cutting the lobsters in half horizontally through the top of the shell. Remove the head sac, located on either side of the top of the shell. Now separate the tail sections from the head sections. Remove the claws and front legs in one piece, and give the claws a swift whack with the back of your knife or cleaver to crack them. You’ll notice a long, dark intestinal tract running along the top of one of the tail sections; pull that out. Remove the tomalley, and the roe if you find any, and place in a small bowl, mashing it up a bit.
If you don’t want to bother with all this, just have your fish seller cut up your lobsters for you.
Set up a large pot of pasta cooking water over high heat.
In a medium saucepan, heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil and the butter over medium heat. Add the shallots, celery and leaves, thyme, a pinch of sugar, salt, Aleppo or cayenne, and nutmeg, and sauté until soft and fragrant, about 5 minutes. Add half of the cognac and let it bubble until almost dry. Add the tomatoes and the chicken broth and simmer, uncovered, for ten minutes.
In a very large sauté skillet (or two smaller ones), heat two tablespoons of olive oil over medium-high heat (a little more if you’re using two skillets). When hot, add the lobster pieces, shell side down, and sauté until they turn pink, about 4 minutes. Turn the pieces over and sauté for a minute on the other side. Now add the remaining cognac and let it bubble away. Add the tomato sauce and the tomalley and roe if you have it, and let everything simmer, uncovered, until the lobster is just tender, about 5 minutes. The sauce will be a bit loose. Taste for seasoning, adding more salt and a pinch of Aleppo or cayenne, if desired (this is not meant to be a full-on Fra Diavolo hot sauce. You really want to a hint of heat. Add the basil.
While the lobster is simmering, add a generous amount of salt to the boiling pasta water and drop the spaghetti into the pot. Cook until al dente. Drain the spaghetti and pour it onto a very large serving platter. Drizzle with olive oil and give it a toss. Pour the lobster sauce over the top. Serve right away.
Slow-Cooked Duck with Green Olive Sauce
I served this duck will whole-wheat couscous tossed with a handful of sautéed mushrooms-a mix of wild and cultivated varieties. It was a very good match.
(Serves 2 as a main course)
1 approximately 4 1/2-pound duck (of the Peking variety)
1 lemon, cut in half
A few branches of rosemary
A few branches of thyme
4 garlic cloves, peeled and lightly crushed
1 cup dry white wine
Extra-virgin olive oil
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
A few large scrapings of nutmeg
1/2 cup low-salt canned chicken broth (or homemade if you have it)
A pinch of sugar
A drizzle of Spanish sherry vinegar or balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup green olives, rinsed and pitted (picholines, I feel, are best for this, since they’re fruity and usually not too salty)
Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.
Place the duck in a roasting dish and fill its cavity with the lemon, herbs, and garlic. Pierce its skin all over with a small, sharp knife or a sharp metal skewer. Pour the white wine over it, and let the wine puddle in the dish. Drizzle the duck with olive oil, and season it with salt, black pepper, and the nutmeg. Roast for 3 hours. Turn the heat up to 500 degrees and roast for 1/2 hour longer. Check from time to time to make sure there is at least an inch of liquid in the dish. If not, add a little warm water. The duck should now be crisp and tender. Remove it to a serving platter.
Pour all the fat out of the roasting dish. Pull a few herb sprigs and garlic cloves out of the duck and add them to the roasting dish. Place the dish over a low flame and add the chicken broth and a pinch of sugar and simmer another 3 minutes or so, pressing down on the garlic and swishing the herbs around to release their flavors. Add a little drizzle of sherry wine vinegar. Taste for seasoning, adding more salt or black pepper if needed. Place the olives in a sauce boat, and strain the duck juice over them, giving everything a stir. Carve the duck, and give each serving a generous ladle of olive sauce.
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