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A List of My Favorite Herbs in Order of Love, plus a Recipe for Sautéed Skate with a Marjoram Caper Salsa Verde

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 28, 2025| Leave a Comment »

An Islamic herb doctor, painted in 1224.

I’ve never done this in any organized way before, but I just now decided it would be a nice thing to rank my favorite herbs by how much I love them. I wanted to write it out for myself, and then I thought possibly you’d be interested in it, too.

I find good uses for every herb except cilantro, which makes me gag. I love summer savory with beans and braised beef and pork dishes, and in minestrone, but it’s not my favorite smell straight on. Thyme is an herb I use in many dishes, often as an anchoring flavor in the early stages of cooking. It’s amazing in a compound butter to melt over a thick pork chop, or as a starting point for chicken alla cacciatore, but cutting a few sprigs and bringing them up to my nose, why do I sometimes smell toothpaste? Strange.  Oregano has a bite I expect to accompany certain grilled vegetables, eggplant and sweet peppers, for instance, and meats, sausages especially. It takes me back to my Italian American childhood. Yet a clean chomp on an oregano sprig doesn’t make me so happy. I love these herbs as tools for cooking, but for all-out beauty of aroma and taste, there are herbs that fall into a different category, ones of pure intoxication. Here are the herbs that are knocking me out right now, in early summer, best, then next best, then down to almost best.

This ranking will likely change as the season progressives. But this is my up-to-the-minute report.

Thai basil

Thai basil’s deep anise aroma is for me an exotic joy, but the herb’s taste is different from its smell, more like licorice. It’s really bold, but somehow I never tire of it. The herb still surprises me, even after years of cooking with it. And its strength doesn’t fade out with heat, unlike other basils. That’s a bonus. Siam Queen is the type I plant. It’s the standard Thai variety that’s easiest to find and grow in the Northeast.  So different from Italian basil varieties. (Actually no basil is originally Italian. Their origins lie in India, Southeast Asia, and parts of Africa, but Liguria and all of Southern Italy have made basil their own.) Every spring when I plant my Siam Queen (it’s an annual), I feel like I’m giving myself a huge gift. Braised calamari with cannellini beans and Thai basil is an exception thing.

Marjoram

If it weren’t for my current love affair with Thai basil, marjoram would be number one. I consider it a perfume, meaning something I’d personally love to smell like. I use it so much in my cooking, I guess I do often smell like it. Even though it’s closely related to oregano, to me they are so different. Marjoram is sweet and floral, with none of the camphor tones of oregano. I do pick up a gentle pine taste, but there’s so much sweetness, too, that nothing registers as sharp. I even made a sweet marjoram sorbetto last summer, and you wouldn’t believe how desserty it was. (I tend to like desserts than could pass as appetizers.) Marjoram is my current favorite flavoring for shellfish. I recently used it in place of Italian parsley in a linguine with clam sauce, I thought with good results.

Genoa basil

Genoese basil is what Genoese pesto is all about. It’s a beautiful clean basil, without a profound hit of anise. For me, it’s a perfect blend of sweet and savory. My father always grew it in his backyard garden. Each leaf was precious. At the end of the season he’d salt what was left, wrap it in plastic and then in aluminum foil, and stick his little packages in the freezer, only to pull them out in December, the leaves now black as could be, to add to our Christmas Eve zuppa di pesce. Floating black strips in a sea of  mussels and shrimp. That memory now makes me sad, I guess because we can now buy fresh basil at the supermarket year-round. He worked so hard on his basil. But there’s nothing like summer basil, picked from the garden and immediately ground down into a pesto.  That ritual is reserved for high summer.

Rosemary

I’m crazy about rosemary, but I think I overdid it with it last year. I used it in places where I should have chosen something less obvious. I also added it many sweet things, like sugar cookies and polenta cake.  It started to wear on me. But its pure pine aroma is such a draw, I reach for it sometimes when I’m feeling disgusted or agitated, knowing it will likely lift me up. However, it offers no sweetness. When I crush a needle in my fingers I capture fresh eucalyptus. I think the beauty of rosemary comes through best when you let heat open it up and diffuse its oils. Rosemary-and-garlic lamb spiedini, and rosemary-and-lemon roast chicken come to mind. Classics.

Fennel

Fennel is a natural flavor for me, maybe because I grew up smelling and tasting all the Italian fennel or anise liqueurs that appeared on our table after dinner. Sweet and bitter are stamps of many Italian childhoods. I grow a cultivated variety of wild fennel in my garden, mainly for its fronds. It has become a perennial there, in upstate New York. Not sure why. Maybe global warming? It grows tall and bushy and attracts Eastern swallowtail caterpillars, which is one of the reasons I plant it. Its fluffy fronds are excellent raw in salads and are a main component of pasta con le sarde, which I make at least once every summer. But the big event is when it goes to seed in the early fall. I cut off its umbrella-like flower stalks, which contain its seeds, and plunge them into Everclear to make my bright green finocchietto, a liqueur stronger and way less sweet than the sticky ones I grew up with. My finocchietto clears the head, and it’s also great worked into a big bowl of mussels with crème fraîche and tarragon.

Spearmint

A few years back I planted Berries and Cream mint, a spearmint cultivar. It jumped pot and is now taking over part of my garden. That’s a good thing. I use a lot of spearmint, especially since I began cooking Sicilian food years ago. Zucchini with anchovies, summer garlic, and fresh mint I make as soon as I see the first zucchini show up at the local farm stands. I just cooked up a pot the other day. Blood oranges, spearmint, a little red onion, salt. It is a dish I wait for every winter.  

Spearmint is soft and sweet, good to just stick your nose into, which I often do. A strange thing happens when you heat spearmint. A caraway taste is released. That’s because both plants carry a molecule called carvone. I like its flavor, but I don’t want it in the forefront, so to preserve a clean mint taste I don’t let the herb stew in a dish. I add it at the last minute instead. And on a sweaty summer day I love grabbing a handful and sticking it into a pitcher of cold water, a glass pitcher so I can admire the herb’s beauty.

Lemon verbena

Its aroma is phenomenal, like pure, clear lemon zest without any of the bitter. But since lemon verbena’s brilliant aroma fades with heat, it’s a waste to add the leaves to a stew or a braise. I’ve learned that the best way to harness its beauty is to mince it raw into a semi-damp cluster. Then you can scatter it over cooked dishes or work it into an ice cream mix. I make a gremolata substituting lemon verbena for the lemon zest, mixing it with Italian parsley, maybe some sage, and fresh garlic. Grilled swordfish with that is a wonderful thing.

Bay leaf

If I tear a fresh bay leaf in half and bring it up to my nose and sniff it in, I sense a softness of atmosphere, a gentle mix of pine and thyme. Some people say bay leaves have no flavor. That’s just crazy. Maybe those dried-out things you buy in jars don’t offer much, but since now you can find fresh bay leaves year-round at many supermarkets, there’s no excuse for those. I like to use a few bay leaves to perfume a chicken broth that will go into risotto, and I often add the leaves to a winter tomato sauce. A dish I learned years ago from Giuliano Bugialli and still make often is baked ricotta lined with bay leaves, a lot of bay leaves. Their perfume penetrates the entire cheese. I love it drizzled with honey and served warm. Make sure you deal with true bay, with the fatter, more rounded leaves. The long, tapered California bay leaves can be harsh.

Italian parsley

After traditional Genoese pesto, my second favorite pesto is made with all Italian parsley, almonds, a little grana Padano, and fresh summer garlic. I love Italian parsley’s clean, slightly black pepper taste. I use it so often with seafood that I sometimes taste a fishy undertone when I bite a leaf, but I don’t think that actually exists. It’s just a brain jump. Have you ever tried making a salad of all Italian parsley? I eat that alone, dressed with good olive oil and a few drops of sherry wine vinegar. It tastes surprisingly deep to me. It also makes a great bed for roasted chicken.

And now for the recipe . . .

As you can see above I happened to buy one very large skate wing, which I knew would be difficult the cook and flip without breaking. I had a lucky flip, and it stayed in one piece. I’d suggest that for this recipe you get two smaller wings to make your life easier.

Sautéed Skate with a Marjoram Caper Salsa Verde

For the salsa verde:

Salt
¾ cup marjoram leaves
⅓ cup extra-virgin olive oil (a good one—I used Benza Taggiasca oil from Liguria, which Gustiamo carries)
A palmful of Sicilian salt-packed capers, soaked for about 10 minutes, changing the water a few times, and then drained
The grated zest from a large lemon

For the fish:

2  cartilage-free skate wings, about ½ pound apiece
Salt
Black pepper
Extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
About ½ cup fine semolina (I used Bob’s Red Mill)
The juice from 1 large lemon

To make the salsa verde, set up a pot of water, add salt, and bring it to a boil. Drop in the marjoram leaves, and blanch them for about 30 seconds. Drain them, and run cold water over them to stop the cooking and set their color.  Give them a squeeze to remove excess water. Give them a rough chop. Mix the marjoram with ⅓ cup of your best olive oil, the capers, a little salt, and the zest from a large lemon. That’s your salsa.

Pat your skate wings dry with paper towels, and season them well, on both sides, with salt and black pepper.

Get out a sauté pan large enough to hold the fish without overlapping (you might need to use two pans). Set it over high heat, and add a few tablespoons of olive oil and the butter.

Pour the semolina out on a plate, and coat the skate on both sides, shaking off excess.

When the oil is hot, add the skate, and let it brown, about 3 minutes or so. Gently give the pieces a flip with a large spatula, and brown them on the other side, about another 3 minutes. When the skate pulls apart easily when poked with a knife, it’s done. Squeeze the lemon juice on the skate, and plate it. 

Spoon a generous amount of the salsa verde down the middle of the fish. Serve right away.

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Monkfish Tagine with Saffron, Almonds, and Mint

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 15, 2025| 5 Comments »

Fumée d’Ambre Gris, by John Singer Sargent, Morocco, 1880.

Does every moderately successful person have a mentor? I don’t know the answer to that. I’d call myself moderately successful. I could have had more opportunities, to write more books for one thing, if I wanted to be more well-known. But I didn’t want that. So here I am writing to you on this rainy day in Manhattan. What I’ve learned so far, I’ve learned pretty much on my own. And I know a hell of a lot about Italian cooking.

If I had to name a culinary mentor, it would be Paula Wolfert. You’d think it would be someone who cooked Italian, like Marcella Hazan for instance, but that didn’t happen (one of my problems with Hazan was that I got the feeling she didn’t have much respect for Southern Italian flavors). Wolfert’s book Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco came out in 1973. I didn’t discover her until 1979. I had already learned basic Southern Italian from mimicking the food my family cooked. I bought her book because it looked like an adventure. And it was. I quickly cooked my way through it. I couldn’t stop. And I liked her attitude, the fact that she went to Tangier initially to study poetry but found her teacher Paul Bowles such a drugged-out bore that she began visiting the local ladies to see what they were up to in the kitchen. And her culinary career was born.

Aside from Southern Italian cooking, the only cuisine I’ve absorbed in a deep way is Moroccan. The flavors immediately made sense to me, since Southern Italian cooking still carries hints of its Arab past. My only problem with traditional Moroccan cooking is its reliance on cilantro. I can’t even be in the same room with the stuff. I’ve gotten around it by subbing mint, basil, or parsley (and sometimes thyme or oregano), creating different dishes to be sure, but in the process coming up with ones that are truly my own. Here’s one of my Southern Italian–Moroccan hybrids.  

I hope everyone had a successful No Kings Day.

Monkfish Tagine with Saffron, Almonds, and Mint

2 pounds monkfish, cut on an angle into ½-inch-thick medallions
Salt
Piment d’Espelette
Extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
2 shallots, cut into small dice
½ teaspoon ras el hanout (here’s my recipe, if you’d like to try making your own, in a post that also includes my recipe for carrots roasted with ras el hanout, summer savory, and crème fraîche)
1 1-inch chunk fresh ginger, peeled and minced
2 summer garlic cloves, sliced
2 fresh bay leaves
6 thyme sprigs, the leaves chopped
A big splash of dry vermouth
A big pinch of saffron threads, lightly dried, ground to a powder, and opened up in about ½ cup of hot water
1 35-ounce can Italian plum tomatoes, chopped, using some of the juice (if yours are packed in a thick purée, wash most of it off)
1 teaspoon honey
About ½ cup flour
A handful of fresh spearmint leaves, lightly chopped
A palmful of toasted almonds, lightly chopped

Pat the fish pieces dry. Season them with salt and some piment d’Espelette.

Get out a wide sauté pan, and set it over medium heat. Add a big drizzle of olive oil and a tablespoon of butter. When hot, add the shallot, ras el hanout, and ginger, and let it soften for a couple of minutes to release its flavors. Add the garlic and a little salt, and sauté for another minute. Add the bay leaves and thyme, and let them warm through. Add the dry vermouth, and let it bubble for a minute. Add the saffron water, tomatoes, honey, and another good pinch of piment d’Espelette. Simmer uncovered for about 5 minutes. Turn off the heat.

In another wide sauté pan, turn the flame to high, and add about 2 tablespoons of olive oil and a tablespoon of butter.

Put the flour on a plate, spread it out, and coat the monkfish slices on both sides with it, shaking off excess.

When the oil is hot, add the fish slices. Brown them quickly on both sides.

Turn the heat back on under the tomato saffron sauce, and add the fish to it, spooning the sauce over the top and cooking just until the fish is tender, about 3 or 4 minutes, depending on thickness. Check the seasoning.

Transfer to a serving platter. Scatter the mint and almonds over the top.

I served this with a buttery couscous seasoned with a pinch of cinnamon, but you could instead just buy some good bread to go with it. Or make rice.

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Women with Fish, The Story Continues.

Posted in Uncategorized on June 4, 2025| 5 Comments »

I always wanted to feel so well taken care of. Maybe if, as a child, I’d had this comforting hat, I could have gotten into a good college.

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A Goat Cheese Tart with Chives and Summer Savory, plus a Video: A Quick Trip Through My Spring Herb Garden

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 31, 2025| 2 Comments »

I and the Village, by Marc Chagall, 1911. He loved his goats. If you’d like to see this painting, it’s at MoMA in New York City.

Last week was my husband Fred’s birthday. We had a small party where I made a couple of roasted chickens, spatchcocked, with tarragon, good olive oil, and rice wine vinegar. Sometimes when I flatten chickens that way I’m so intent on getting a good crisp, browned skin that I hammer them dry. It didn’t happen this time, but I did achieve the brown skin, an exact hit. A birthday gift. It was a nice, loud party that culminated in a painting session and an unexpected guest sleepover. Limoncello martinis anyone? I also made this goat cheese tart for a starter.

It was a cold night for May, raining off and on, but my kitchen was warm from the oven, and the tart turned out surprisingly well. I say surprisingly because when I first tried this idea last spring what I expected would be a smooth, custardy filling came out grainy. So I chucked the recipe and forgot about it until a few days ago, when I decided to try it one more time. What got me thinking about the tart again was the summer savory popping up in my little herb garden. I love that herb. To me it tastes like a mix of thyme and black pepper with a hint of sweet pine, a slightly gentler version of its bold winter cousin. I already knew how good it was with fresh goat cheese as I often scatter it over supermarket goat cheese logs to deepen their flavor. Even though summer savory is milder than the winter version, it’s still strong and its flavor is magnified by heat, so I  pay attention to how much I add. I used only four sprigs for this filling and about the same amount worked into the pastry.

The tart came out creamy and custardy, like a sugar-free New York cheesecake. I served it as an antipasto offering with a plate of prosciutto and a bowl of Taggiasca olives.

And speaking of supermarket goat cheese, some of it is terrible, overly tangy or gritty or both. I’ve learned by trial and error which ones to avoid. West Side Market, where I usually shop, carries a fresh goat cheese log made by Président, a cheese company in western France that’s been around since the 1930s, the same people who supply us Americans with Président brie. It’s a big company, and its goat cheese logs are industrial, but their taste is good. They are tangy but not aggressively so and smooth on the tongue, so they’re great for baking.

Goat Cheese Tart with Chives and Summery Savory

  • Servings: 6 as an appetizer
  • Print

Have ready a 9-inch tart pan with a removable bottom

For the pastry:

1¾ cups unbleached flour
1 tablespoon powdered sugar
A big pinch of salt
4 large sprigs summer savory, the leaves chopped
1 stick cold unsalted butter, cut into approximately ½-inch cubes
1 large egg
2 tablespoons cold white wine, or possibly a bit more

For the filling:

1 4-ounce log fresh goat cheese, at room temperature
¼ cup heavy cream
2 large eggs, plus an egg for the egg wash
1 tablespoon runny honey, plus an extra drizzle for the egg wash
¼ teaspoon allspice
Salt
Black pepper
A few drops of sherry wine vinegar
4 or 5 sprigs summer savory, the leaves chopped
4 chives, chopped

To make the pastry, put the flour, powdered sugar, salt, and savory in the bowl of a food processor. Give it a few pulses to blend everything. Add the butter bits, and give it a few short pulses to further break up the butter. You want approximately lentil-size bits. Crack the egg into a cup, along with the white wine, and give it a good stir. Pour it on top of the flour, and pulse quickly, one, two, three, four, possibly five times, just until you have a bowl of moist crumble. If it looks too dry, add a tiny drizzle more wine, and pulse again.

Dump it all out on a work surface, and press it together into a ball. Flatten it out into a thick disk, cover it in plastic wrap, and stick it in the refrigerator for at least an hour, or overnight if that’s more convenient.

Lightly butter the tart pan.

Roll the pastry out to a round about 2 inches larger than the tart pan. Drape it in the pan, pressing in into the sides. Cut off all but about  ½ inch of overhang all around. Working around the top of the pan, fold the overhang into the top of the inside of the pan. Then push it upward so it comes up just over the top of the pan. Stick the pan in the refrigerator while you make the filling.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Put all the ingredients for the filling except for the savory and chives into a food processor, and whirl it to blend. Taste for seasoning. Add the savory and chives, and give it one quick pulse, enough to blend them in but not to purée them.

Put the extra egg in a little bowl. Add a drizzle of water, a pinch of salt, and a drizzle of honey. Mix well.

Take the tart shell from the refrigerator, and pour in the filling. Brush the pastry edges with the egg wash. Bake for about 30 to 35 minutes, just until the filling is set and the pastry takes on some color. Let it sit about 30 before slicing, so it can firm up.

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Two New Carb-and-Seafood Recipes for Your Springtime Table: Calamari Salad with Potatoes, Spring Garlic, and Mint, and Corona Beans with Shrimp, Saffron, and Cumin

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 23, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Squid, by Foxy-Wolff.

Every engaged cook has patterns. Themes with variations. Repetitive behavior semi-disguised by fresh thoughts. One of my themes is seafood teamed with a starch. If you’ve been following my cooking journey for any length of time, you are all too familiar with my numerous takes on pasta with fish or shellfish. I could write a book on pasta with clams alone, although I would never do that, since it would be ridiculously nuanced.

Pasta is where I most frequently turn when I have the good fortune to get my hands on really fresh seafood. It stretches a luxury ingredient in a very fine way. But I also consider potatoes; rice, in red, black, and risotto varieties; grains, such as farro; and of course all varieties of beans, my favorites for marrying with seafood being ceci and any firm, largish, white bean, like cannellini or the extra huge corona I used here in this shrimp dish. Have you ever tried braised octopus with big white beans, rosemary, fennel, and a hit of Aleppo pepper? It’s pretty good, a nice alternative to the more usual octopus with potato pairing. Swordfish chunks make a good addition to a spring rice salad, especially if you include a seasonal vegetable like freshly shucked peas. I find that that makes much more sense than a pasta salad, which almost always seems stupid and gummy to me. Ceci with mussels is another theme I keep going back to, especially in high summer, when I’ve got tomatoes or sweet peppers and lots of basil. Have you ever tried bits of grilled tuna tossed with warm farro, black olives, and arugula? That’s a thought. Or a warm zucchini and couscous salad with scallops and tarragon. That’s something I’ll be making as soon as the first mini zucchini shows up in the markets, which should be only a few weeks from now.

A Chinese sculpture of a shell with a shrimp, with a robin’s-egg-blue glaze.

So many choices. This time around I’ve gone with calamari-potato and shrimp-bean combos. Beyond the starch-seafood pairing, what ties these two dishes together is spring garlic, something I wait for, the kickoff to my warm-weather cooking. It’s such a welcome jolt after a long haul with that papery, often acrid supermarket garlic, which at this point in my cooking career I’ve almost completely rejected, preferring to use leeks or shallots in the cold months. When spring garlic first appears in my farmer markets, usually early April, it’s indistinguishable from scallion, long, lean, and white, maybe tinged with purple at its base, working its way up to a dark green, leafy top. As the season progresses, a bulb starts to form. You can see that in my photo. But it still hasn’t broken out into individual cloves. This is when I like it the best. Juicy and sweet but emerging with clear garlic flavor.

I’m just starting to emerge from a long cold spell brought on more by our horrible political atmosphere than by winter weather. Spring cooking is beginning to lift my spirits. I hope it lifts everyone’s.

Calamari Salad with Potatoes, Spring Garlic, and Mint

About 1½ pounds small Yukon Gold potatoes, cut in half
Salt
Rice wine vinegar
A big glass of dry white wine
1½ pounds small calamari, cleaned and cut into not-too-skinny rings, the tentacles halved if large
1 tablespoon white miso
Your best extra-virgin olive oil
3 scallions, cut into thin rounds, using a lot of the tender green part
1 thin spring garlic, chopped, including some of the green part
A small palmful of green peppercorns, coarse-ground
A larger palmful of Sicilian capers, soaked in a few changes of water to remove excess salt and then drained
A handful of fresh spearmint leaves, lightly chopped
A few large sprigs of Italian parsley, the leaves chopped

Put the potatoes into a good-size pot and cover them with at least 2 inches of water. Add a decent amount of salt and a big drizzle of rice wine vinegar. Bring to a boil over high heat, then turn the heat down a bit, and cook at a medium bubble until just tender, about 8 minutes. I like the potatoes still firm enough so their skins haven’t detached. Drain them into a colander.

While the potatoes are cooking, set up another pot of water, add a large glass of white wine and a good amount of salt, and bring it to a boil. Add the calamari, and blanch it until just tender, about a minute. Drain the calamari into a colander, and then spread it out on paper towels to soak up any additional moisture.

Put the miso in a small bowl, and add about 1½ tablespoons of rice wine vinegar. Stir to dissolve the miso. Add about 2½ tablespoons of your best extra-virgin olive oil and a little salt.

Put the still somewhat warm potatoes and calamari into a large serving bowl. Add the scallions, garlic, green peppercorns, and capers. Pour on the miso vinaigrette, and toss (I like using my hands for this, so I don’t break up the potatoes). Add the mint and parsley, and toss lightly. Taste for seasoning. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Corona Beans with Shrimp, Saffron, and Cumin

3 cups dried Corona beans (I used Rancho Gordo), cooked (see note below on how I cooked them)
1½ pounds shell-on large shrimp (if you can find fresh American shrimp, all the better)
Extra-virgin olive oil
A big splash of dry vermouth
Salt
A big pinch of saffron threads, lightly dried and then crushed with a mortar and pestle
3 scallions, cut into thin rounds, using some of the tender green part
1 thin spring garlic, chopped, including some of the tender green part
1 teaspoon cumin seeds, ground
Piment d’Espelette
A drizzle of sherry wine vinegar
A handful of Italian parsley leaves, lightly chopped

Cook the beans (see note below on how I cooked them).

Shell the shrimp, and put the shells in a pot with a drizzle of olive oil. Turn the heat to medium, and sauté the shells until they turn pink, about 2 minutes. Add a splash of dry vermouth, and let it bubble away. Add about 1½ cups of water and a little salt, and simmer at a medium bubble for about 8 minutes. Strain the broth into a small bowl or cup. Add the crushed saffron, and give it a stir. The broth will turn a beautiful dark yellow.

Drain the beans, saving the broth for a soup or stew.

Set a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add a big drizzle of olive oil. When the oil is hot, add the scallion, garlic, and cumin, and warm everything through for about a minute to release its fragrances. Add the beans, and sauté for a minute or so, seasoning with salt and piment d’Espelette.

Set up another large sauté pan over high heat. Add a generous amount of olive oil. When the oil is hot, add the shrimp, spreading it out, and season it with salt. Sauté until the shrimp is just tender, turning it once, about 2 minutes in all. Add the shrimp broth, scraping up any cooked-on bits from the bottom of the pan, and pour the shrimp and broth over the beans. Add a drizzle of fresh olive oil and a few drops of sherry wine vinegar, and give everything a gentle toss. Taste for seasoning. Add the parsley, and toss lightly. Transfer to a large serving bowl. Serve warm.

A note on how I cooked the beans: I covered the beans with cool water by about 4 inches, added 3 fresh bay leaves, a chunk of spring garlic, and a big drizzle of olive oil, and brought it to a boil. I turned the heat down low, covered the pot, and let the beans simmer for about 50 minutes. Then I added a drizzle of sherry wine vinegar and a little salt and continued cooking until the beans were just tender, which took about another half hour. I find that with Rancho Gordo beans I don’t have to presoak, since they’re not overly dry to begin with.

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Risotto Milanese with Marrow, The Last Supper, and Cotoletto in Milano

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 24, 2025| 4 Comments »

Recipe below: Risotto Milanese with Marrow

I recently went to Milano for the first time. I saw Leonardo’s Last Supper. It’s painted on the end wall of the former dining room of the Santa Maria della Grazie monastery. It took Leonardo four years to complete, which doesn’t seem like a long time for the size of the thing, but Sforza, the then duke of Milano, who paid for the work, was evidently constantly angry at him for procrastinating.

They let small groups in for 15 minutes at a time and then kick them out. But it was such an overwhelming yet slightly eerie feeling being in that big space that 15 minutes seemed like a long time. According to our guide, only about 20 percent of the painting is completely original. The outlines of the forms are original, but the colors and much detail has been worked over by various restorers over the years, most recently in 1999. The colors are still lighter than the original. It’s a dark meal now tinted in pastels.

Milano has never been a culinary draw for me so I was perplexed about what I could learn there to expand my knowledge of Italian food. Many of the restaurants I passed by felt New Yorky, with avocados, miso, smoked salmon. So I decided to go full-on retro and sample some of the standards—risotto Milanese, cotoletto. I’ve always loved a fried veal chop, and saffron, the main flavoring in their risotto, is a magic aroma for me.

We first decided on a checked tablecloth place called Burla Giò, which translates as something like “throw it down” in Milanese dialect. It was a lovely five-minute walk from our Airbnb. It opened in 1969, and the same family still runs it. From the clientele I could tell that it had over the years turned into a bit of a tourist trap, but not completely. Aside from the Australians and Germans, there were plenty of Italians, mostly older men, who I imagine had nostalgia for this kind of food.

I ordered the cotoletto, a giant, hammered-out veal cutlet, which was pretty good, could have been a touch moister. Mrs. Cavuoti, my next-door neighbor when I was growing up on Long Island, made it better. It came with a small lettuce and fennel salad, which I thought was a nice touch. My husband had guancia di manzo, braised veal cheek, that was tender and had a good smell. It came sitting in a slightly acidic brown sauce dotted with almonds. I tasted it. A good balanced flavor. I spotted a duck with apricot dish on another table that looked appealing. I have no idea if it was. Many tables ordered the osso buco with risotto Milanese, a piatto unico I wasn’t sure I was up to after seeing the huge portions being carried by, but I really wanted to taste the risotto, so we split an order of that as a first course. And it was very good. Thicker than I’d expected, but rich with saffron and parmigiano. Good rice.  Well prepared. A drizzle of balsamico finished it off, but the little pile of saffron threads on the top was an extravagant surprise. And this wasn’t an expensive restaurant. All around a fine experience.

For Easter I decided I’d go all out and served a risotto Milanese in the classic manner, with osso buco. It’s not often in an Italian kitchen that you’re served a starch such as pasta or rice alongside a big hunk of meat, but you’ve got that here. It was rich but so worth it. I could hardly believe my guests actually ate my pastiera after it.

I don’t think Burla Giò included it, but I added marrow to my version, which is a traditional variation. After cooking it this way for the first time, now I’m thinking the marrow completely belongs and will be hard for me to leave out in the future. See what you think. And try and find carnaroli rice. It really is the best for this dish.

Risotto Milanese with Marrow

About 7 cups homemade chicken broth (homemade is important, because you want the collagen to help hold the rice in a creamy suspension)
1 teaspoon saffron threads
1 beef marrow bone, split down the middle
A big drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 large Vidalia onion, cut into small dice
2 cups carnaroli rice
2 fresh bay leaves
½ teaspoon nutmeg
Sea salt
1 cup dry but fruity white wine (I used a flat prosecco, because I had it hanging around)
A big chunk of Parmigiano Reggiano cheese
Black pepper
A drizzle of real balsamic vinegar, if you’d like to try finishing it with that

The first thing you want to do is pour your broth into a pot and get it hot over medium heat. Once it’s hot, turn the flame down low, and keep in warm. Stick a ladle in it.

Put the saffron threads into a small pan, and set it over a low heat for about 10 seconds. You just want to dry them out enough so you can grind them to a powder (otherwise, the moist strands won’t open up completely, and you’ll lose a lot of their flavor). Put the dry saffron in a mortar, and give it a grind. Add about ¼ cup of the hot broth to the saffron. It should bloom into a bright orange. ( I like keeping this little bit of saffron broth separate, instead of dissolving the saffron into the big broth pot; I then add the saffron halfway through the cooking, so it stays bright and aromatic).

You’ll now want to scrape the marrow out from both sides of the split bone with a small spoon or a dinner knife, and then chop it finely.

Get out a wide, high-sided pan. This will allow the broth to evaporate more quickly than a deep pot and make the stirring easier, even breezy. I used my 11-inch-wide, 3-inch-deep All-Clad.

Add a big drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil and a tablespoon of butter to the pan, and get it warm over medium heat. Add the marrow, and warm it through. As the marrow starts to melt, add the onion, and let it soften for a minute. Add the rice, the bay leaves, the nutmeg, and a little salt, and stir for a minute or so to coat the rice with the fats and flavorings. Pour in the white wine, and let it bubble for a minute or so. I love the aroma of the wine mixing with butter and onion wafting up in my face. That is for me part of what traditional risotto making is all about. You don’t get the full-on experience when you just stick the pan in the oven, a modern approach to preparing risotto.

Now you can start adding the broth. Start with a few ladles, and stir the rice around until you can see the bottom of the pan. Add more broth, and let the pan get almost dry again. You don’t have to go crazy stirring. I tend to stir more in the beginning and then ease up a little. After about 10 minutes, add the saffron broth and stir that in. The rice will turn a beautiful dark yellow.

I find that the entire risotto process takes about 16 to 17 minutes.  So after about another 6 or 7 minutes of stirring, the rice should be tender but still firm and its consistency creamy.

Turn off the heat, and add the rest of the butter, stirring it in. Add about ½ cup of grated Parmigiano and a few big grindings of fresh black pepper, and check for salt. Add a little more broth if the texture has gotten too thick. If you’ve run out of broth, just add a little warm water. I like my risotto Milanese loose but not runny. Ladle it into wide bowls. You can drizzle a thread of balsamic vinegar over each serving, but only if you’ve got the really good stuff. In any case,  serve it right away, with the rest of the Parmigiano brought to the table.

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Women with Fish, The Story Continues.

Posted in Uncategorized on April 23, 2025| Leave a Comment »

This is me. My fish brain. I didn’t paint this, but someone painted it with me in mind.

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Easter Is Almost Here, and Here Are Some Recipes for It

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 15, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Easter is almost here. For me it’s a time to celebrate the rebirth of the earth, a beautiful holiday for a cook. But it all seems rushed this year. I haven’t yet planned. I didn’t invite anyone. I’m only now trying to put a menu together, but I’m not sure what I’ll be able to actually turn out, since last night I messed up the door of my oven in a frantic effort to get my cat Red out from behind it. The cat is out and fine, but the door is hanging by a thread. Hopefully I’ll be able to get someone in to fix it. If that’s not possible, I’ll have to figure out if I can cook a pastiera, my must-have Easter dessert, in the toaster oven. Maybe I can make a shallow one on a pie plate, although that seems diminished and a little depressing. A pastiera should be high and mighty, filled with ricotta and wheat berries and giving off that exotic scent of orange flower water. I’ll see what I can do.

If you have a working oven and would like to make a pastiera, here’s my recipe. I do make it a little differently every year, but this is, I think, I good guide.

And here are some other Easter dishes that I’ve made over the years and everyone really liked. I’m not yet sure what the rest of my menu will be this time around the globe, but somewhere in the mix will be eggs, ricotta, lamb, and asparagus, probably cooked on my stovetop.

Happy Easter cooking to everyone.

Easter Peas with Pancetta, Onion, Mint, and Warm Spices

Frittata di Pasqua with Ricotta, Soppressata, and Breadcrumbs

Warm Asparagus Salad with Dandelions and a Taggiasca Olive Vinaigrette

Strozzapreti with Lamb Ragù, Warm Spices, and Ricotta

Spezzatino of Lamb with Fennel, Carrots, and Peas

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Strozzapreti with Lamb Ragù, Warm Spices, and Ricotta, plus Numero 28, a Great Long-Standing, Not Trendy Pizza Place on Carmine Street

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 30, 2025| 3 Comments »

Flora, Goddess of Spring, a fresco from the Villa di Arianna, Stabia, which was destroyed during the Vesuvius eruption in the year 79 but this gorgeous work of art survived and is now in the Archeological Museum of Naples .

Recipe below: Strozzapreti with Lamb Ragù, Warm Spices, and Ricotta

I’m stepping into spring here with a dish that’s solid enough for a 42-degree, drizzly, windy, gray, almost April day but gentle enough to include two classic Southern Italian spring ingredients, lamb and ricotta. Our typical pre-Easter New York weather is utterly familiar and also completely frustrating on many levels. I’m chilled to the core and I don’t even feel like moving, which makes me even colder. My bundle of thick black tights is not yet shoved to the back of the drawer. But crocuses and daffodils and even dandelions are poking through the still mostly brown earth. And there’s this sweet spicy ragù simmering on my stove. Warmth can’t be far away.

Strozzapreti with Lamb Ragù, Warm Spices, and Ricotta

Extra-virgin olive oil
1 ¼-inch-thick round of pancetta, cut into small dice
1 Vidalia onion, cut into small dice
2 carrots, cut into small dice
2 inner celery stalks with their leaves, cut into small dice, the leaves lightly chopped
1 ½ pounds ground lamb
¾ teaspoon ground Ceylon cinnamon
¾ teaspoon ground allspice
1 teaspoon Aleppo pepper
2 fresh bay leaves
Salt
1 cup dry white wine (I used an Orvieto, but anything that’s dry and not oaky will be fine)
1 cup chicken broth
1 28-ounce can whole Italian tomatoes, chopped
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
½ teaspoon sherry wine vinegar
1 pound strozzapreti pasta
A big handful of basil leaves, lightly chopped
A chunk of pecorino Toscano cheese
1 pound whole-milk ricotta, sheep’s milk if you can find it

Get out a big casserole-type pot fitted with a lid. Set it over medium heat, and drizzle in a few tablespoons of olive oil. Add the pancetta, and sauté until it’s crisp but not blackened and has given off much of its fat. Add the onion, carrot, and celery plus leaves, and let them sauté until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Add the lamb, cinnamon, allspice, Alleppo, bay leaves, and some salt. Stir everything around, and then let the meat brown lightly. That should take about 5 minutes.

Add the white wine, and let it bubble for a minute. Add the chicken broth and the tomatoes, stirring everything to blend. Bring it all to a boil, and then turn down the heat to low. Cover the pot, and simmer at a low bubble for about 1 ½ hours, stirring occasionally. When that’s done the meat should be tender and all the flavors well developed.

Skim most of the fat from the ragù. Add the butter and the sherry wine vinegar. Taste for seasoning. I found mine needed more salt and a little more Aleppo. The consistency of my ragù was just what I wanted, not too thick, not too loose. Add more broth or water if yours needs adjusting (or cook it uncovered for a bit to thicken it) .

Cook the strozzapreti al dente. Drain it, and pour it into a large, wide serving bowl. Add a big drizzle of olive oil, and give it a toss. Pour on the ragù, and add the basil, tossing well.

Top each serving with a big dollop of ricotta and a generous grating of the pecorino Toscano.

I served this with a Montepulciano d’Abruzzo red wine, which I thought was a pretty good match. After the pasta, I brought out a watercress and radish salad, just because I really wanted it to be spring. You could follow this menu with a pastiera and have a wonderful Easter dinner.

If you’d like to try making your own ricotta for this (or for numerous other good things, such as a pastiera), here’s my recipe. I use buttermilk instead of lemon for the curdling agents, as I find it turns out gentler, creamier curds.

Numero 28

People are always asking me what’s my favorite Italian restaurant in New York. It’s a difficult question for several reasons. I don’t go out to eat that much, and when I do I mostly want to taste stuff I don’t make at home, like Thai or Vietnamese food. Also, as far as Italian restaurants go, there are so many new ones all the time around here, it’s impossible for me to care about all of them. In the last five months, four Italian fish places have opened up within 10 blocks of my West Village apartment. Who needs all those Italian fish restaurants, and how long can they possibly last with such competition? Sometimes I think people who open restaurants are just gluttons for punishment. And now with those likely tariffs on European wines, what is even possible? As it is, the price of a glass of Chianti at a good place is averaging $18 to $20. Soon it might be more like $40. Who’s going to pay that?

The one Italian food I do go out for a lot, and I mean really a lot, is pizza, but I don’t have the desire to stand outside on a line for a hour, or sit up all night with my computer waiting for reservations to open up. I like good, solid, consistent, nontrendy places that make me feel comfortable and relatively happy. Numero 28 on Carmine Street is one of those places. I’ve been going there since it opened, in 2012. It’s a sweet little café with a wood burning oven, consistently high-quality ingredients, and right-on pizza every time I’ve eaten there, which has got to be, at this point, several hundred times. I would say their pizza is more Roman-style than Neapolitan. It’s not as wet in the middle as you’d get in Naples, but it’s wet enough so it’s never dry, even if you get one without tomato. I like ordering their long pizzas—18 inches is about right for two, but there’s also a 29-incher, which comes to the table on a really long board. I love those, since you can get, for instance, half anchovy, half prosciutto (they use really good prosciutto), which is often what I go for. I don’t get elaborate with toppings. I like a margarita with maybe one add-on, so I can still focus on the great, yeasty, gently salted, bubbly, slightly charred crust. However, I do love, and I understand this is not for everyone, a mix of anchovy and mushroom with extra basil.

 I think almost every time I’ve been at Numero 28 I’ve begun with an artichoke and Castelvetrano olive salad, which also contains arugula and pine nuts. It’s a lovely, well-balanced starter, dressed with good olive oil that you can really taste and not too much vinegar. I really don’t like it when Italian places load on the vinegar.

The only slightly annoying thing about Numero 28 is they only take cash, so you need to stop at a bank before you arrive.

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Torta di Cavolfiore with Pistachios, Capers, and Caciovallo, plus an Early Spring Picnic on Gansevoort Street

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 24, 2025| 2 Comments »

Cauliflower and Pomegranate, by Auguste Renoir.

Recipe below: Torta di Cavolfiore with Pistachios, Capers, and Caciocavallo

It’s March, and there’s nothing new yet. I’m talking specifically about local produce. It’s too early even for dandelions. Maybe I could cook daffodils. They’re up all over the place.  I’m thinking maybe stuff them with mozzarella and anchovy, twist the tops closed, dunk them in batter, and then give them a fast fry. Doesn’t that sound good?  Pretty, too. But I just Googled “Are daffodils edible for humans?” and discovered that they’re not. They contain lycorine, which causes vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain. So no. We can’t deep-fry them. I should have known, since even deer won’t eat them, and deer eat almost anything. I guess I’ll have to wait for zucchini blossom time. It’s not far away.

Cauliflower 2, by Nico Heilijers.

So now I am holding a big, beautiful white cauliflower. My first thought is to just go with a gratin, fairly classic, with béchamel, a few scrapings of nutmeg, a bay leaf, and maybe Fontina and Parmigiano. Crumbs on top. One of my favorites. But then my head swivels over to the torta side, as it often does. You all probably know that I love my pizza di scarola, the double-crusted escarole-filled torta I always make for Christmas Eve. I love it at other times of the year as well, like right now, when chicories are still the best greens in the market, at least in New York.

I’ve patterned this new torta somewhat after pizza di scarola, including some traditional ingredients (capers, anchovies) while leaving out others (raisins) and throwing in new ones (thyme, pistachios, caciocavallo), and flavoring it inside and out with Marsala.

It tastes like Napoli, which makes me very happy.

Torta di Cavolfiore with Pistachios, Capers, and Caciocavallo

  • Servings: 4 to 6 as an appetizer
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For the dough:

2½ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon sugar
½ teaspoon salt
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
½ to ¾ cup dry Marsala

For the filling:

1 medium cauliflower, any color, cut into small florets
Extra-virgin olive oil
Salt
2 scallions, cut into thin rounds, using much of the tender green part
A big pinch of ground allspice
A handful of unsalted, shelled pistachios
3 or 4 oil-packed anchovies, well-chopped (I used Ortiz brand)
A palmful of salt-packed Sicilian capers, soaked and rinsed (mine were large, so I chopped them a bit)
6 large thyme sprigs, the leaves lightly chopped
A piece of a fresh green chili, minced (I used a green Italian long hot, about half of it, with its seeds)
A splash of dry Marsala
6 large sprigs Italian parsley, the leaves lightly chopped
1 cup grated caciocavallo or scamorza cheese
1 egg yolk, for the egg wash
Sugar

To make the dough, put the flour in a medium-size bowl. Add the sugar and salt. Drizzle in the olive oil and ½ cup of Marsala, and start by mixing everything around with a wooden spoon. If it seems dry, add a little more Marsala. When it comes together into a shaggy ball, dump it out onto the countertop, and knead it briefly, just until you have a nice smooth ball. Wrap it in plastic, and let it sit for at least an hour, unrefrigerated, before you work with it. You can also refrigerate it overnight, but let it come back to room temperature before you start to roll it out.

To start the filling, set up a pot of water, and bring it to a boil. Blanch the cauliflower for about 2 minutes. Drain it in a colander, and then run cold water over it to stop the cooking. Let it drain.

Set up a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add a big drizzle of olive oil.  Add the cauliflower and sprinkle in a little salt. Sauté about a minute longer. Add the scallions, allspice, pistachios, anchovies, capers, thyme, and green chili, giving everything a good mix and sautéing about another minute or so to blend all the flavors. Add a splash of dry Marsala, and let it bubble away. Take the pan from the heat, and let it cool. Then add the parsley and the caciocavallo, and stir them in. Taste for salt. You probably won’t need more with all the salt from the anchovies, capers, and cheese, but you never know.

Set the oven to 400 degrees.

For the egg wash, put the egg yolk in a small cup or bowl. Add a drizzle of olive oil, a drizzle of water, a little salt, and a little sugar, and give it all a good mix.

Brush a sheet pan with olive oil. Cut the dough in half.  Roll both pieces out to approximately 8- or 9-inch rounds. They don’t have to be perfect; they just have to fit on the sheet pan. This is a rustico kind of tart, so a little uneven is, in my opinion, good.

Place one of the dough rounds on the sheet pan. Top with the cauliflower mix, spreading it out more or less evenly but leaving an inch free around the rim. Cover it with the other dough round. Crimp the edges for a good seal. I usually just make little folds all around, pressing them down to make sure they can’t pop open during cooking.  Make three short knife slits in the top. Brush the top with the egg wash.

Slide the sheet pan with the torta onto the bottom rack of the oven. Bake until the top is nice and golden, about 20 minutes or so. Let it cool for about 5 minutes before slicing.

This tart makes a great antipasto for up to six people. It’s really nice with a glass of falanghina.

An Early Spring Picnic on Gansevoort Street

I like to pick up a mortadella and burrata panino at Sogno Toscano on Perry Street (or maybe instead wrap up a wedge of the cauliflower torta above) and then head west on Gansevoort Street, crossing the West Street highway, where I step right onto the Gansevoort Peninsula. There I find a weird little strip of beach, with actual sand, a few blue Adirondack chairs, and matching umbrellas. At the water’s edge are large rocks. The Hudson gently crashes again them, making a hypnotic water noise. You can’t swim at this man-made little beach, but it’s a good place to sit, eat a sandwich, hang out with the Canada geese, and listen to the rhythm of the tide.

The other side of the peninsula is a stretch of salt marsh planted with native grasses. Good for birding. Last spring I saw a young red-tailed hawk hunting for lunch, and really close up too, only a few feet away. I got a good look at its glassy yellow eyes. If you’re in the neighborhood, you might want to check it out.

Spring is just around the corner.

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