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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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Risotto with Fennel, Saffron, and Sausage

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 13, 2025| 5 Comments »

Italian Rice Field, by Angelo Morbelli, 1901.

Recipe below: Risotto with Fennel, Saffron, and Sausage

I like a risotto where you can barely see what’s in it, everything cut tiny, no big chunks. When you take a bite, you’re surprised by all the flavor in a dish that looked like nothing much. The complexity of risotto is hidden by its simple appearance. Finely chopped chicken livers, minced porcini, a fine dice of leeks, a melt of gorgonzola, ingredients like those can be hidden away in a bowl of white grains just ready to burst forth in your mouth. This risotto dichotomy reminds of the couple in the film The Big Night who get talked into ordering the seafood risotto and are completely perplexed when it comes to the table looking like nothing more than a plate of soupy white rice. I don’t remember the exact lines, but it went something like this: “I don’t see any seafood,” the woman says, scraping through the plate with her fork. “Where’s the seafood?” “It’s in there, the chef says. “It’s just cut really small.”  They don’t believe him, and to his horror they order a side of spaghetti. Risotto with a side of spaghetti. What a concept.

I love risotto. I love all the stirring. I’m not a fan of  the oven method where you put the thing together on top of the stove and then stick it in the oven with lots of broth until the rice is tender. It works, sort of, but I find you have to do more last-minute fiddling to get it creamy, meaning stirring it once it’s out of the oven, balancing the seasoning, and adding stuff. For me, that all gets accomplished over the 17 minutes or so of stovetop attention. I don’t stir constantly, but I stir a lot. It’s a beautiful process. I get to experience the aroma of the wine cooking out as the steam rises into my face, the changing smell and look of the thing with each addition, and the way the rice swells up and indicates to me that it’s almost time. I don’t want to miss all that. Maybe if I were working in a restaurant and had to make 50 risotti a night, but at home, why bother at all if you don’t want to get involved?

I prefer carnaroli rice to the other risotto rice varieties I can find here. This time around I used  Acquerello brand, from Piemonte, grown by the Rondolino family since 1935. Carnaroli is the only type of rice they’ve ever grown. I order it from Gustiamo. Its color is not chalk white, like most risotto rice, but more golden, and the aroma when cooking seems a bit deeper than other brands of carnaroli I’ve tried. There are reasons for this. The rice is actually aged, which serves to open it up, allowing for more liquid to flow though the grains. Also, they don’t strip it to stark white when they process it, so you get that pretty yellow hue. And they’ve figured out a way to reintegrate the germ back into the kernels, so you get rice that’s more whole and healthy. Nice to know.

Saffron Still Life, by Iris Richardson.

Fennel and saffron make a beautiful flavor combo that you’re familiar with if you’ve ever cooked, or even eaten, a bouillabaisse. It’s also used in the cooking of Sardinia, most beautifully in their sausage ragù served with malloreddus, a gnocchi-shaped pasta. I love that dish, and it was my inspiration for this risotto. I use a fair amount of saffron in my cooking. I’m drawn to its sweetly medicinal flavor, which to me is not at all floral in the usual sense , despite being made from the red-orange pistils of a type of crocus. It’s a unique flavor, hard to describe. Maybe like bitter honey, but that’s not quite right either.  Maybe bitter honey with a hint of barnyard?

In the past I’ve mostly bought Spanish saffron, usually from Kalustyan’s, an amazing spice shop on Lexington above 28th Street. If you’ve never been, visit! The aromas will blow your mind. This time around I bought saffron from Iran, which was beautifully flavored and moist. There’s also such a thing as American saffron. Last summer I met the people at Green Owl Farm, in Rhinebeck, N.Y., who grow saffron crocuses and harvest their own saffron from them. I didn’t know you could grow those flowers upstate, but I guess why not? Regular non-saffron crocuses are popping up all over my backyard as of this writing. Green Owl packs big pinches of saffron threads into little glass bottles. I haven’t yet bought from them, but I will. Theirs is a labor of love to be sure.

Risotto should get to the table pretty soon after it’s done just tender, but you don’t have to get crazy about it. If you need time to get people seated, you can let it sit for 5 to 8 minutes. It will thicken some, but then just add another ladle of broth and stir it in right before bringing it out. It’ll be fine.

Risotto with Fennel, Saffron, and Sausage

About 6 cups homemade chicken broth
½ teaspoon saffron threads, lightly dried and ground with a mortar and pestle (see note below)
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
A big drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil
2 cups carnaroli rice
1 Vidalia onion, cut into small dice
3 mild, fresh Italian sausages, the casings removed, the meat pulled into little bits with your fingers
1 large fennel bulb (choose a bulb with lots of fronds), cut into small dice, the fronds lightly chopped
½  teaspoon fennel pollen or freshly ground fennel seed (if you’re sausage is heavily seasoned with fennel, you’ll want to use about half as much)
A few big scrapings of nutmeg
Salt
About ½ cup dry white wine
Freshly ground black pepper
A big chunk of Parmigiano cheese

You’ll want to have ready a wide, shallow-sided pan. I’ve found that that’s best for keeping the evaporation constant and the stirring smooth and easy. I used an 11-inch-wide, 3-inch-deep All-Clad pan.

Pour the chicken broth into a saucepan, and bring it to a boil. Turn the heat to really low, and stick a ladle in the pan.

Put the ground saffron in a small cup or bowl, and add about ½ cup of the hot chicken broth, giving the saffron a stir to dissolve it. The broth will turn a beautiful bright orange. Set it aside.

Set your risotto pan on a burner right next to the chicken broth. Turn the heat to medium. Add half of the butter and a big drizzle of olive oil. Add the rice, the onion, the sausage, and the fennel, holding back the fronds, and stir everything around to sauté it well. Try to break the sausage up into little pieces. Season with the fennel pollen or seed, the nutmeg, and a little salt. When the rice and everything is well sautéed, about 3 minutes or so, add the wine, and let it bubble for about 30 seconds.

Now start adding broth, a few ladles at a time, stirring fairly often (but not obsessively) until the pan goes almost dry. Keep adding more broth and letting the pan go almost dry repeatedly until the rice is just tender. After about 10 minutes, add the saffron broth. I like to add it at this point instead of at the beginning so it stays really fresh-tasting. Saffron has an ephemeral nature and can fade out if cooked too long.

After about 12 minutes or so, you’ll  notice the rice start to swell and the entire dish start to look creamy. I usually give it a taste after about 15 minutes to see where it’s at. In my experience the entire process takes about 16 or 17 minutes for tender but still firm kernels. 

When you’ve reached this point, add the rest of the butter, a good amount of black pepper, and a few big gratings of Parmigiano, and give it a good stir. Turn off the heat, and adjust the consistency by adding more broth if needed. I like my risotto loose but not soupy. Taste for salt, and ladle the risotto into bowl. Top with the chopped fennel fronds and an extra sprinkling of Parmigiano. Serve right away.

A note on saffron: Saffron should be slightly moist and have brilliant red orange color when you buy it. If the threads are maroon and brittle, it’s old. Yet for it to open up and release its essence, it needs to be dried enough to be ground (dropping moist saffron threads in hot liquid is a bit of a waste). What I do is take a small sauté pan and set it over medium heat. When it’s warm, I turn off the flame and add my saffron threads, letting them dry for about a minute, just long enough so they lose a bit of moisture. Then I can grind them to a powder in a mortar and pestle. Now when I add a hot liquid to the saffron, the flavor will open full-force. Not a thread will be wasted.

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Lagane Spagliato with Rosemary, Guanciale, and Ceci, plus the Bar at Gene’s, a Good Place to Sit Alone with a Glass of Wine

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 27, 2025| Leave a Comment »

7 Chickpeas, by Ausra Kleizaite.

Recipe below: Lagane Spagliato with Rosemary, Guanciale, and Ceci

I’ve developed a romance with chickpeas. They’re so solid. I love how they take a while to cook, and how their deep, beany aroma grows stronger as the hour or so slips by. I can see when they’re ready, and I can smell when they’re ready. I’ll never go back to buying canned. Canned chickpeas taste sour and metallic, and their liquid is useless (unless you’re making a vegan meringue). The broth produced by cooking your own ceci is pure gold.

A dish I come back to constantly is pasta with chickpeas. For me it’s perfect. A thing of beauty. Here’s one of my versions of lagane e ceci, semolina pasta with chickpeas, a very old, pre-tomato dish made in various forms in Calabria, Basilicata, Campania, and Puglia (whose version, called ciceri e tria, has a portion of the pasta not boiled but fried crispy—really delicious).

Lagane e ceci is pure cucina povera. What sets it apart from many other pasta-and-chickpea dishes is its homemade semolina pasta, made with only semolina and water. It’s a chewy, sturdy pasta, sort of a shorter, thicker fettuccine. It’s great to eat but for me a little annoying to roll and form, so what I’ve done here is make it considerably less povera by adding eggs and some white flour to the dough. I can’t comfortably call it lagane, since I’ve screwed with it so much, so I’m going with lagane spagliato, false lagane. I’ve also added some rosemary to the dough, to mimic one of the flavors in the sauce.

When I make semolina pasta I usually use Bob’s Red Mill Semolina Four. It’s finely ground and easy to work with. Semolina has a higher gluten content than soft white flour, so you’ll be using a little push and pull to knead it into shape

This time around I tried a new to me chickpea brand called Cece di Poggio Aquilone, grown on the Alberti family’s organic farm in Umbria. I was really happy with how it cooked up. The chickpeas are slightly smaller than the usual ones we all know, and their flavor is rich. I got them from Gustiamo.

Lagane Spagliato with Rosemary, Guanciale, and Ceci

  • Servings: 4 as a main course
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For the pasta:

2 cups unbleached white flour
½ cup semolina flour
A large sprig of rosemary, the leaves minced
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
3 large eggs
2 egg yolks
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
A drizzle of water, if needed

For the sauce:

A 1-inch chunk of guanciale, diced (about a cup)
Extra-virgin olive oil
2 celery stalks, cut into small dice, including the leaves, lightly chopped
1 Vidalia onion, cut into small dice
2 fresh bay leaves
About ½ teaspoon allspice
A few sprigs of rosemary, the leaves chopped
½ a green medium-hot chili (I used an Italian long hot), chopped
Salt
2 to 2½ cups cooked chickpeas, preserving the cooking liquid (see note on cooking them below)
About ½ cup dry white wine (I used a Fiano di Avellino)
About ½ cup good chicken broth
A few large sprigs of flat-leaf parsley, the leaves lightly chopped
A chunk of Pecorino Sardo, if you’d like some cheese (I can go either way with this—with the hot chili I’ve used here, most of the time I don’t want cheese, but when I make it without the chili, maybe just with black pepper, I almost always add cheese)

To make the pasta:

Start by putting both flours into a food processor. Add the rosemary and the salt, and pulse a few times to blend. In a small bowl mix the whole eggs, the yolks, and the olive oil. Pour this over the flour, and pulse a few times to blend everything well. The dough should  clump together in a shaggy ball. If it seems dry, drizzle in a little water, and pulse again.

Dump the dough out onto a work surface, and knead it until it’s smooth, adding a little white flour if it gets sticky. You’ll notice that the dough is a little stiffer than one made with all soft flour, so it will take about 5 minutes of kneading to smooth out. When that’s done, cover the dough with plastic wrap, and let it sit at room temperature for at least an hour so the gluten can relax, making it easier to roll out.

Cut it in quarters, and run each piece through a hand-cranked pasta sheeter to the fifth setting, not super thin, in keeping with the lagane tradition. If the sheets get longer than about 6 inches, cut them in half. Place the sheets on a lightly floured surface, and let them dry for about ½ hour, so you can cut them without sticking.

After that, loosely roll up each sheet and cut it into approximately ¼-inch sections. Unroll the lagane, and toss them in a little flour. Let them sit until you’re ready to cook them.

To make the sauce:

Get out a large sauté pan, and set it over medium heat. Add the guanciale and a tablespoon or so of extra-virgin olive oil, and cook until the guanciale has given up much of its fat and started to crisp. Add the celery, onion, bay leaves, allspice, rosemary, and chili. Season with a little salt, and sauté until everything is fragrant, about 5 minutes.

Set up a pot of pasta cooking water, and bring it to a boil. Add salt.

Add the cooked chickpeas to the pan, and sauté for a minute or so. Add the white wine, and let it bubble out for another minute. Add the chicken broth and about ½ cup of the chickpea cooking liquid, turn down the heat a bit, and let simmer to blend all the flavors.

While the sauce is simmering, drop the lagane spagliato in the water, and cook it for about 3 minutes. Drain it, and pour it into a wide serving bowl. Drizzle on some good extra-virgin olive oil and give it a toss. Add the chickpea sauce and the parsley, and toss gently, adding a little more chickpea cooking liquid if the dish seems dry. Check for seasoning. Serve hot, with or without pecorino.

A note on cooking chickpeas for this dish:

For this recipe I added a few bay leaves, a rosemary sprig, a smashed garlic clove, a slightly soft whole shallot, and a  drizzle of olive oil to flavor the water I boiled the chickpeas in. About halfway through the cooking, I added some salt and a thread of red wine vinegar. I didn’t pre-soak these Umbrian chickpeas, and they wound up taking about 1½ hours to get tender. I always cook the whole bagful when I make beans. I used about 2 cups or so of the bag for this pasta, and the rest went into a chickpea-and-escarole soup. For this pasta, make sure to keep the chickpea cooking liquid, since you’ll want some of it for the sauce.

The bar at Gene’s Restaurant.

I don’t go to bars by myself as much as I used to, but sometimes they’re just the thing to settle my head, especially with all the crap going down in Washington lately. The bar at Gene’s is often my place. This West Village restaurant opened in 1919, and it doesn’t look like much has changed since then. The bar is deep and lovely, with dark wood and glowing backlit bottles. I can settle right in and immediately be part of it.

The wine list isn’t what I would call up to date, but it serves the purpose of preventing wine snobs from crowding up the place. The Chianti is good, the Côtes du Rhône, not so much, but the pour is beyond generous, almost a little shocking, considering what you usually get for $18 at a trendy place around here. Franco (see photo above), everyone’s favorite bartender, is there most nights. He’s a kind man.

For years Gene’s seemed to be frequented mainly by old neighborhood types who shuffled in for their martinis and meat ravioli. But recently, maybe with the popularity of revamped Italo-Americano places like  Don Angie a few blocks away, the place has been discovered by a younger crowd, making it seem almost lively, though, believe me, it is not in any way revamped. The bar can get crowded now. I remember going in there with my father years ago, he ordering a Chivas Regal on the rocks, me with my little glass of sambuca. We’d often be the only ones there, except maybe for that old AP reporter who lived upstairs. I don’t mind crowded, as long as I can get a seat, but I’ve found that now it’s best to go at 5:30 or after 10 (10 is considered late in Gene’s world).

The food is standard old-school red sauce. I’ve found the chicken parm and veal piccata and most of the pastas to be just okay, mostly lacking in salt and pepper (easily remedied, you’d think). However, the broccoli rabe with garlic and hot chili is really good. Sitting at the bar, I often just order a plate of that, with some bread, and call it dinner. Oh, and the baked clams are more than decent.

Sitting at the bar getting vaguely high on a glass or two of Franco’s big pours is a cozy feeling. As I get older, men don’t bother me as much, so I often can just sit and let my mind wander, maybe making plans for the future or maybe just thinking about how happy I am that bars exist.

Happy cooking to you. Soon it will be spring.

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Linguine con la Buccia di Limone, plus a Guide to Making Limoncello, plus a Dessert: Lemon Sorbetto with Broiled Lemons and Vodka

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on February 6, 2025| 1 Comment »

A Lemon and a Blacked-Out Eggplant, by Erica De Mane.

Recipes below, in text: Linguine con la Buccia di Limone; Limoncello; Lemon Sorbetto with Broiled Lemons and Vodka

One thing is going well this winter, at least here in New York: We are getting a decent amount of snow. Yesterday we even had a sun snow, where the tiny flakes came down with a crystalline sparkle against an almost completely blue sky. That was unusual. And we’ve got lots of lemons. I mean, there are always lemons in the supermarket, but since winter is citrus season, I like to believe the lemons are at peak right now. Winter and lemon zest are linked in my mind. From around Christmas until March my refrigerator becomes the house of the bald lemon (sounds like a Garcia Lorca play). I sometimes have up to a dozen scraped-down, hardening, microplaned lemons sitting in there at once. Lemon olive oil cake is a big winter thing for me. It requires a lot of zest. Preserved lemons are good to have around this time of year. I just made a batch. Chicken tagine with preserved lemons and almonds. I love that. Limoncello, naturally. And pasta with lemon sauce, in its various forms. I only think about cooking that in the winter.

In the late eighties and into the nineties a lemon pasta full of cream was having a big moment. If you worked in catering back then, as I did, you absolutely had to know how to make it, and in large quantities. I came to hate its cooked down richness, especially when it went cold and thickened into golden glop that needed to be scraped out of  95 pasta bowls. Truly disgusting. I’ve always preferred the olive oil and lemon zest version I learned from Natalia Ravidà, a woman who for 30 years has been working to get the word out about her Sicilian family’s beautiful estate olive oil.  Her recipe for lemon pasta, along with many other classic Sicilian dishes is in her book Seasons of Sicily. A very nice book.

I’ve been playing around with this simple dish, which is essentially lemon zest, olive oil, and Parmigiano. A beautiful trio. I have, of course, customized it a bit, because I can’t leave well enough alone. I added a little nutmeg and basil, two flavors that go so well with lemon I just couldn’t resist. Nutmeg does something beautiful to lemon, it rounds it out, makes it feel both sharp and mellow all at once. I also added basil, which lifts the black pepper flavor in the dish.

To make this lemon liguine for two, you’ll want the zest from 2 organic lemons and the juice from about ½ of 1 of them.  Pour about ¼ cup of your best extra-virgin olive oil (preferably a good Sicilian oil such as Ravidà) into a warmed pasta serving bowl. Add the lemon zest, give it a good stir, and let it sit for about ½ hour, so it can release its essence into the oil.

Cook ½ pound of linguine in salted boiling water until al dente. While it’s cooking, add the lemon juice, a few big scrapings of nutmeg, a little salt, some fresh, coarsely ground black pepper (I used Zanzibar black pepper from Burlap & Barrel), some leaves of julienned basil, and about ½ cup of freshly grated Parmigiano into the bowl. Add a few tablespoons of the pasta cooking water, and give it a good stir.

Drain the linguine, and add it to the bowl, tossing it well until it’s well coated with the sauce. You can garnish it with more basil or an additional dusting of Parmigiano, if you like.

Amalfi’s long, lumpy, lovely lemons.

I’ve forever heard stories about Southern Italians eating raw lemons like they were oranges. Nobody in my family ever did. It seems the lemons in Naples and further south were much sweeter than the ones we have here. I asked about the custom years ago when I visited my ancestral homeland. According to my Uncle Tony, nobody where he lived did that, and if they did they’d burn the enamel off their teeth. That’s what he thought. I’ve eaten Amalfi lemons in Amalfi several times, and I have to say to my palate they’re only ever so slightly sweeter than the ones I buy here in supermarkets. They are, however, longer, lumpier, more lemony, and have maybe more oil in their skins. And like the neighboring Sorrento lemons (also called Santa Teresa lemons), they’re used to make  limoncello. I especially love that Sorrento limoncello. But I make pretty good limoncello using my own supermarket lemons (although I do buy organic, since I’m using only the peel for the limoncello). My secret to a lemony limoncello is just this: Make sure you start with  Everclear, not vodka. Vodka’s not strong enough. You need a super powerful liquor to pull all the lemon essence from the skin. Of course you’ll water it down later, but this first step is essential for intensity of lemon flavor. If you’d like to try it, here’s what I do:

Zest a dozen organic lemons with a microplane zester, and stick the zest in a large glass jar fitted with a tight lid. Pour in a liter bottle of Everclear, close up the jar, and let it steep in a relatively dark place for 2 weeks, shaking it from time to time. Strain it through a fine mesh, and return it to a clean jar. Put 2½ cups of sugar in a saucepan. Pour in 4 cups of water, and bring it to a boil to dissolve the sugar. Turn off the heat, and let it cool completely. Pour the sugar syrup into the jar with the lemon booze, close up the top, and let it sit for another 2 weeks. You can strain it again if you think it needs it. I don’t usually bother.

Now you can keep it chilled in the freezer, where it will keep for about a year.

A lemon tree from a wall in Pompeii.

Another nice thing to do with lemons is slice them into rounds and give them a quick roast or even a broil, either first sprinkled with sugar, or, for a savory treatment, with salt and maybe some chopped thyme. You can eat them straight off the pan or draped over a slice of grilled swordfish, but consider using them for this Lemon Sorbetto with Broiled Lemons and Vodka:

For the broiled lemons, you’ll want to peel as many lemons as you like and cut them into not-too-thin slices (you can, if you prefer, leave their skins on, but I like to be able to eat the whole slice without running into any bitterness). Pit them if you want. Coat a sheet pan with a little olive oil, and spread out the lemon slices. Drizzle them with a little more olive oil, and sprinkle them with a light coating of sugar. Stick them under a broiler about 4 inches from the heat source, and let them cook until the sugar has caramelized and the lemons have softened a bit, about 3 minutes.

When the broiled lemon slices have cooled, grab as many parfait glasses as you have guests, and fill them ¾ full with good quality lemon sorbetto (I used Talenti when I made this). Place three of the lemon slices over the top. Drizzle a shot glass full of vodka over each glass. Or use lemon vodka if you like. Or limoncello. Garnish with mint sprigs or basil. This is a beautiful and almost healthy dessert (or palate cleanser, whichever you prefer).

Happy citrus cooking to you all.

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Women with Fish, the Story Continues

Posted in Uncategorized on February 1, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Stay healthy.

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Gorgonzola, Green Grape, and Pine Nut Torta

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 25, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Cheese and Grapes, by Jane Palmer.

Recipe below: Gorgonzola, Green Grape, and Pine Nut Torta

Winter has always made me want strong cheese. Even when I was a kid I’d eat a lot of provolone, which was always, and I mean always, in the cheese drawer in our refrigerator. I loved the way it peeled into layers, a characteristic that, as I learned later in life, made sense, since provolone is essentially a dried-out, salted version of mozzarella (which is a pasta filata, meaning a cheese that’s stretched and pulled). I never paid much attention to provolone on warm days, even though there it was in the cheese drawer, same as ever. In summer it just seemed like pure stink. In the middle of a New York winter, that stink called to me.

Blue Cheese and Grapes, by Bondareva Nataliia.

As I got older and was in charge of buying my own cheese, gorgonzola became my stinky cheese focus. I love the good strong one that is sometimes labeled mountain gorgonzola. Its texture, a mix of creamy and crunchy, really is alluring. And then there’s gorgonzola dolce, the milder, creamier version that’s so good smeared on a hard-crusted piece of bread. When I cooked at Le Madri restaurant many lifetimes ago, I’d reward myself for surviving another late night shift with a gorgonzola and pear sandwich stuffed into the restaurant’s lovely focaccia. That and whatever wine came back undrunk by the customers was a fine top off to the night. I picked up much of my Italian wine knowledge finishing off those often extremely expensive bottles.

So on a recent close-to-zero-degree day here in gray old New York City, I bought myself a thick slab of gorgonzola dolce simply because it was so cold and I knew the cheese would taste amazing. I ate half of it as is, hanging off my finger. With what was left I decided to make this tart.

Gorgonzola, Green Grape, and Pine Nut Torta

  • Servings: 6 as an antipasto offering
  • Print

I used a 9-inch straight-sided tart pan with a removable bottom. I use these pans when I want an informal look to my tart. You can also use a tart ring for a similar effect.

For the crust:

2 cups unbleached white flour, plus a little extra for rolling out the dough
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
The leaves from about 6 thyme sprigs
1¼ sticks cold unsalted butter, cut into little pieces
⅓ cup dry white wine, well chilled
1 teaspoon rice wine vinegar

For the filling:

A bunch of green seedless grapes, stemmed (you’ll need around 25)
Extra-virgin olive oil
Salt
Black pepper
1 large egg, plus 1 yolk
½ cup crème fraîche
A big pinch of nutmeg
The leaves from a few large thyme sprigs, lightly chopped
A drizzle of whole milk
About ⅓ pound gorgonzola dolce cheese
A handful of pine nuts

To make the crust, put the flour in a food processor. Add the salt, sugar, and thyme, and pulse a few times to blend. Add the butter, and pulse three or four times, to break it up a little bit. Drizzle in the wine and the vinegar, and pulse a few more times, just until you have a moist, crumbly mass. If it seems dry, add a tiny drizzle more wine or cold water. Turn it out onto your counter, and press it together into a ball. Flatten out the ball so you have a thick disk. Cover it with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least an hour, or overnight if that works for you.

I found that with the juiciness of the grapes, I needed to blind-bake the crust, cooking it first without its filling. A drag, I know, and something I usually try to avoid, but unfortunately it was really needed. Not such a big deal really. You just have to remember to build up the sides to allow for shrinkage.

Roll out your dough onto a floured surface, and drape it into a buttered tart pan. Press it against the inside of the pan. Trim off the excess dough, leaving enough to build it up all around so it comes up a little over the rim. Prick the inside lightly all over with a fork. Stick the pan back in the refrigerator for at least another 45 minutes to firm up (you can let it go overnight, if need be).

Set the oven at 425 degrees. Lay a piece of parchment inside the tart shell and slightly hanging over its edges. Fill it with dried beans or pie weights (I used rice, which worked well). Bake for about 12 minutes. Remove the paper and weights, and bake for another 5 minutes or so, or until the edges are lightly colored. Let it cool.

Now you’re ready to prepare the filling and then bake the torta. Set your oven to 425 degrees. Lay the grapes out on a sheet pan. Drizzle them with olive oil, and season them with salt and black pepper, tossing them around a little to coat them well. Roast them until they just start to shrivel and give off some juice, about 12 minutes. Let them cool a bit.

In a bowl, mix the egg and egg yolk with the crème fraîche, seasoning it with salt, black pepper, the nutmeg, and the thyme. Whisk well. If it seems too thick, add a drizzle of whole milk. It should be thick but pourable.

Break the gorgonzola up into little pieces, dropping them in the tart shell. Scatter on the pine nuts, and finally arrange the roasted grapes on top. Drizzle on the crème fraîche mixture.

Turn the heat down to 400 degrees, and bake for about 25 minutes, or until the center looks firm and the crust is browned.  Let cool for about 15 minutes before slicing.

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Duck and Cabbage Soup with Flageolets and Marsala, plus a 2008 Reading by Suze Rotolo

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 11, 2025| 7 Comments »

Cabbage, by Akhilkrishna Jayant.

Recipe below: Duck and Cabbage Soup with Flageolets and Marsala

Cabbage. It’s not wildly inspiring. Scrolling through my blog recipes, and I’ve done a thousand of them, I find only two cabbage recipes, both for Italianized versions of cole slaw. I’m a little surprised by that. Cabbage is a good thing. I love all the other farty, gassy vegetables. Why have I been ignoring cabbage? I’ve immediately realized this was a huge waste on my part. Cabbage has potential for beauty. So I’ve gone out and bought myself a big savoy cabbage, sat it on my kitchen counter, and stared at it for a long time. My creative head didn’t churn with excitement, but I figured, well, there’s always soup.

I originally planned on a cannellini bean, cabbage, and sausage–type soup, an Italian winter classic that nobody in my family ever made, but I didn’t have cannellini beans. I did have a bag of Rancho Gordo flageolets, lovely light-green beans that hold their shape nicely after cooking. I decided to go with them, but they seemed inappropriate for an Italian soup, so off I went in an different culinary direction, coming up with something more like a deconstructed cassoulet. I know cassoulet doesn’t typically include cabbage, but the duck, fatty pork, and deep winter herbs I included still made the dish taste like cassoulet. It was declared a success by my sister, my husband, and my friend Jay. That made me happy.

Duck and Cabbage Soup with Flageolets and Marsala

For the beans:

1 1-pound bag flageolet beans (I used Rancho Gordo)
2 fresh bay leaves
1 tablespoon white miso
1 long branch of thyme
1 garlic clove
1 splash dry Marsala
Extra-virgin olive oil
Salt
A drizzle of sherry wine vinegar

For the rest of the soup:

4 duck legs
1 teaspoon ground allspice
Salt
Black pepper
Extra-virgin olive oil
1 ½-inch round slice of pancetta, cut into medium dice
2 carrots, cut into medium dice
1 celery stalk, with its leaves, chopped
1 onion, cut into small dice
2 fresh bay leaves
1 large sprig rosemary, its leaves chopped
A few large sprigs thyme, their leaves chopped
A sprinkling of ground nutmeg
About ½ cup of dry Marsala
1 quart homemade chicken broth
About 3 cups roughly chopped savoy cabbage
A drizzle of sherry wine vinegar
A chunk of grana Padano cheese, to shave over the top

The first thing you’ll want to do is cook the beans. What I did was put them in a big pot and add the bay leaves, miso, thyme, garlic clove, a big splash of the marsala, and a large drizzle of olive oil. I added cool water to cover by several inches, brought it to a boil, and then turned the heat down very low and simmered the beans, partially covered, until tender. Check occasionally to see if they need more water.  Mine took a little over an hour. Rancho Gordo beans are usually recently harvested, so they’re not as dry as, say, Goya. They cook quicker. In the final 15 minutes I added salt and a drizzle of sherry wine vinegar. Then I let the beans sit in their cooking liquid. You can cook the beans the day before you make this soup, if you like.

Now for the duck. Score the duck legs in a crisscross fashion, just going through the fat. Rub the duck with allspice, salt, and black pepper.

Get out a big soup pot, and drizzle in some olive oil. Turn the heat to medium. Add the duck legs, skin side down, and cook them slowly until they’re golden brown and much of the fat has left the skin, about 8 minutes or so. Give them a turn and cook the other side for another 5 minutes. Take the duck legs from the pot. Pour off all but a few tablespoons of the duck fat. Add the pancetta, and cook until crisp. Add the carrot, celery, onion, bay leaves, rosemary, thyme, and nutmeg. Let them cook until soft and fragrant, about 5 minutes. Return the duck to the pot. Add the Marsala, and let it bubble for a few seconds. Add the chicken broth, and bring it to a boil. Then turn down the heat, cover the pot, and let it simmer for 2 hours. By this time the duck should be really tender.

Take the duck out of the pot. Spoon off excess fat from the surface and then add the beans, with their cooking liquid, and the cabbage. If the result seems too bulked up, add water, or more broth if you have it. Cook, uncovered, over medium heat, until the cabbage is tender, about 20 minutes.

Take the meat off the duck legs, and pull it into bite-size pieces, discarding the fatty skin. Add it to the pot, and give everything a good stir. If the soup looks too thick (I like a rather loose soup), add water or more broth.  Add a drizzle of sherry wine vinegar. Taste for seasoning and adjust. You might want a little more rosemary or thyme or black pepper.

Shave a little grana Padano over the top of each serving, if you like.

By now probably many of you will have have seen A Complete Unknown, the biopic about Bob Dylan, and possibly like me you were angered by the depiction of Suze Rotolo, who was portrayed as a whining doormat. In reality she was the product of a nice Italian communist family from Greenwich Village and grew up to be a civil rights activist and a painter, and she was an early influence on Dylan’s worldview. She also didn’t look anything like the pixie-nosed blonde who played her in the movie.

I highly recommend a 2008 video of her reading from her then soon-to-be-released memoir A Freewheelin’ Time. It was recorded at the Calandra Institute, an organization in Manhattan dedicated to Italian American studies. I often attend programs there. It’s a good resource to know about. Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnG-G99Fhnc. And here’s a link to their website: https://calandrainstitute.org

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Roasted Sweet Peppers Filled with Leftover Baccalà Mantecato from Christmas Eve

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 3, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Four Peppers, by Olga Koval.

Recipe in text below: Roasted Sweet Peppers Filled with Leftover Baccalà Mantecato

This was the first time in two years I had a happy Christmas and New Year’s. I was pretty sure it would be good, because the problems that had plagued the previous two years had lifted.  It felt like such a luxury that I cooked myself silly, not only making too many dishes, but making a lot of each.  As a result I’m a little tired but damned grateful.

When it was all done, I had about three extra cups of Christmas Eve baccalà mantecato, the whipped salt cod that has become a newish family tradition for me. I stuck it in the freezer, thinking I’d deal with it somewhere down the line, but then I got a heavy craving for it the day after New Year’s, so out it came. I also had four twisted red bell peppers. They weren’t ideal for stuffing but were deep red and smelled good, so I decided to stuff them anyway, just shoving the baccalà into all their little nooks.

The colors of my after–New Year’s pepper and salt cod dish.

Taking inspiration from the traditional Basque dish of salt cod stuffed into piquillo peppers—the sweet pointed ones you can buy in jars already roasted—I just winged an Italianized take on that. I was pleased with the way it turned out. If you happen to have baccalà mantecato, or the Provençal version, which is called brandade de Morue, on hand, use it; if you just find this dish as intriguing as I do but need to whip up some creamy salt cod from scratch, here’s a link to my recipe for it.

This photo may look like one of Soutine’s dissection paintings, but believe me the dish tasted very good.

What I did to get the thing together was split the peppers lengthwise, pulling out their seeds, and drizzle them with a little olive oil and a sprinkling of salt. I then sat them cut-side-up on a pan and roasted them until they were just starting to soften but not yet collapsing, about 15 minutes at 400 degrees. I pulled aside one of the roasted pepper halves to use in the sauce, and then spooned the baccalà into the remaining pepper halves, gave their tops a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkling of Parmigiano, and stuck them back in the oven, turning it up  a few notches, to roast until their tops were browned (they could have been a touch less browned) and the whole thing was bubbling.

While that was happening, I roughly chopped the saved pepper half and sautéed it in a pan with a little olive oil and a few slivers of garlic. Then I added about a cup of heavy cream, a little salt, and a drizzle of Spanish sherry wine vinegar, and I let that warm through and bubble gently for about a minute or so. Then I poured the sauce into the food processor and whirled it until smooth. The sauce was divine. I can see tossing it with fettuccine.

I served out the sauce onto four plates and placed two peppers on each plate. Actually one plate got only got one pepper, but that one was for me, which was okay, since I’d been eating bits of the baccalà while putting the thing together and was already full. For the final touch I garnished it with freshly chopped thyme and a sprinkling of pimenton d’espelette. A nice little dinner. It felt good to use up leftovers, and it felt good to have peace in the household.

Happy New Year.

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Women with Fish, the Story Continues

Posted in Uncategorized on December 31, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Happy New Year’s Eve to all my readers. Let’s keep cooking beautiful food and feeding as many people as we can. A longer table, not a higher fence. XX Erica

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