Erica De Mane

Recipe below: Rigatoni with Oxtail Ragù

I love a good coda alla vaccinara, a Roman-inspired oxtail, either served in bony hunks or worked into a ragù tossed with a solid pasta. I enjoy cooking the thing. It looks exactly like you’d expect, moveable joints in an ox’s tail (or nowadays more likely a cow’s tail). Oxtails need a long low braise, a cooking method that still amazes me with its transformative power. And the aroma of the cut is sweet as it loosens up and gives off its abundant collagen, producing a sauce with lots of body, a little like beef osso buco but even more unctuous. Roman-style oxtail is traditionally flavored with red wine (sometimes white), clove,  guanciale, often lots of celery, sometimes marjoram, a hit of dark chocolate, and pecorino if made into a pasta sauce. I’ve had versions with raisins and pine nuts, but I consider that too rich for the cut.

The first time I ate oxtail was many years ago, in Rome, at the famous Testaccio restaurant Checchino dal 1887, which is still going strong and run by the same family as always. Checchino continues to serve all the quinto quarto (offal) dishes from the neighborhood’s slaughterhouse days—oxtail in a stew or with pasta, rigatoni con la pajata (stuffed lamb intestines, one of my other favorites), insalata di zampe (a trotter salad) among them. I know a lot of you have eaten at this wonderful place on the Testaccio Hill, such a spooky Romantic walk up there, in the dark, especially in winter, when I most want to eat these dishes. On one visit I even bought one of their Buon Ricordo restaurant plates, corny but so nice to have now hanging on my kitchen wall.  

I’m hoping to get back to Checchino soon, but in the meantime if I want to eat oxtail at a place closer to home (besides my own kitchen), there’s still Lupa, on Thompson Street, one of Mario Batali’s old trattorias, now run solely by his former Bastianich partners, and still, in my opinion, a good place to eat classic and improvisational Roman food. I loved the place when it first opened, in 1999, and soon after when Mark Ladner was the chef. Its coda alla vaccinara served over Roman-style gnocchi, big, round disks made with semolina, was excellent. I went back recently to taste Lupa’s oxtail again. It was good but had a heightened agro dolce taste that for me was just a bit too much, overshadowing the sweet richness of the meat. I was looking for that oxtail signature mellowness. Too much chef’s tinkering, I thought.

When I want to cook oxtail at home, and I often want to, I pick a long, cold day and get myself set up. For this version I decided on a boneless ragù with pasta, but if you wanted you could leave the meat on the bone and serve it with all its dark sauce over Roman gnocchi or polenta. I love it both ways. Here I went a bit untraditional, replacing the clove with the more rounded taste of allspice, ditching the chocolate and the marjoram and instead going with rosemary and fresh bay leaf, a flavor combination I’m wild for, especially in the fall. I still have rosemary in my garden (although it will die off soon, as it doesn’t winter over in my New York climate), and I just brought my bay laurel bush in for the season. It has been doing well indoors, thriving even, for five winters now. I put in against a big window where it gets good sun, and I water it sparingly.

In New York you find oxtails not only at Italian places but, more often, at Jamaican restaurants, where they’re traditionally stewed with butter beans, Scotch Bonnet peppers, allspice, and brown sugar. A great rendition. And I’ve started to see oxtail pizza around town, made mostly at places that are more hipster and less strictly Italian. I haven’t tried an oxtail slice yet, but I’ve seen that Cuts & Slices makes four different types of oxtail pizza, one with curry, another that includes hot chilies, which sounds good to me, and one that’s somewhat teriyaki, which doesn’t sound good to me at all.

Since the weather is changing fast, I hope you’ll give my improvisational Roman dish a try.

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Recipes below, in text: Pistachio Butter, Mortadella Panino

There are times when I want a thick Italian-American hero filled with tongue-numbing salami and provolone and dripping with vinegar peppers. And then there are times I’d rather have something more demur, a panino with a few thin slices of prosciutto, good olive oil, and maybe some spiky arugula, all on a thin, crumbly ciabatta. When I crave this more elegant type of sandwich, I often go to Sogno Toscano, in the West Village, a cozy but not at all cramped caffè a few blocks from my apartment. There’s a lot of light dusty green paint at Sogno, and they’ve got a classic green Vespa in the window, a prop that you’d think would give the place a Disneyland vibe but that somehow feels authentic there. The place has smooth white marble tables that are round and cool to the touch, lovely to land a glass of wine on. The caffè was built by Italians and is staffed mainly by Italians and filled with Italian clientele. It’s a good place to practice your Italian or, in my case, to display just how bad your Italian is.

Sogno Toscano is also a market, although at times a somewhat frustrating one. The place is the offspring of the wholesaler Sogno Toscano, which supplies Italian food to restaurants. Nice looking bags of pasta and cans of tomatoes are placed just so, and there’s a glass case with salumi and cheeses of high quality, but you can see that the place wasn’t really set up to move groceries. The goods seem somewhat decorative. You can purchase freshly sliced mortadella, a chunk of guanciale, or a wedge of red wine–washed pecorino, but it’s often hard to find a waiter who has a minute for weighing, ringing up, and packing. Sometimes I give up on shopping and just sit down with a glass of Chianti and one of their excellent panini.

I often order a panino with mortadella, mozzarella, pistachio butter, and arugula. It’s really the perfect sandwich. I love the way the pistachio butter underlines the pistachio element in the mortadella itself.  And Sogno’s bread is just the way I want it, crackling and oily.

I’ve bought pistachio spreads at many Italian shops. The ones called pistachio cream tend to be sweet, more like something you’d layer in a cassata, but for a panino or to fold into a pasta sauce, for instance, you’d want a savory version, something more like a pistachio version of peanut butter. Sogno Toscano doesn’t seem to sell whatever they use on their panini. I did once order a good savory one made by Campo D’Oro, a Sicilian company that used real Bronte Sicilian pistachios. But those little jars are expensive, so I decided to try making some myself, and to my surprise it came out great. Nothing to it, really, except that you’ll want to start out with good pistachios.

Here’s how I made my pistachio butter:

I took two cups of shelled, unsalted Bronte pistachios and poured them into my food processor. I added about two tablespoons of pistachio oil (you can use good olive oil instead), and I added a little pinch of salt. Then I pulsed and whirled until I had a creamy paste. If your pistachios are a little dry, you might want to add a tablespoon or so of water. Just see how it goes. My results were not as smooth as creamy peanut butter, there was still a little texture there, but the taste was sensational. Using fresh Bronte pistachios, my butter came out a rich green. If you use nuts with darker skins, you’ll wind up with a more olive green shade. I guess you could skin the nuts, but that would push my irritability level up to semi max.

After making my pistachio butter, I decided it was only right to use it to make a home version of the mortadella panino I had had at Sogno Toscano. I substituted ricotta for the mozzarella, because that was what I had on hand. I liked it just as much.

Here’s how to put together my mortadella panino:

First off you’ll want a good quality ciabatta, thin, crispy, and a little oily, sliced horizontally.  For a single sandwich, Sogno Toscano uses a 7-inch square ciabatta that they cut, after filling it, into two triangles. That’s approximately what I used. If you can find only a really big ciabatta, just cut it to whatever size works for you. Toast the ciabatta lightly, and then drizzle a little good olive oil onto both insides. On one side I spread on a layer of ricotta (I used a sheep’s milk type I got at the farmer’s market, but high-quality cow’s milk is good too). On the other side I made a slightly thinner layer of my pistachio butter.  Next you’ll want to drape on a few very thin slices of mortadella and top that with a handful of arugula leaves. Give it all a sprinkling of salt and some fresh black pepper. Close up the panino, slice it in half on an angle, and eat it warm. It’s especially good with a glass of Tuscan Vermentino, which is what I ordered at Sogno Toscano (I’d previously tasted only Sardinian versions). Its deep dryness played nicely against the fat in the mortadella and the olive oil–rich ciabatta.

If you’d like to visit the caffè, Sogno Toscano is at 17 Perry Street in the West Village, right off Seventh Avenue and around the corner from the Village Vanguard, the legendary jazz club. They serve mainly their beautiful panini, salads, and salume plates. They also have a few soups, breakfast pastries, desserts, and excellent wine. Their shattering-crust cannoli are filled at your table with sheep’s milk ricotta. So lovely.

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Recipe below: Gemelli with Escarole, Anchovies, and Sweet-and-Spicy Bread Crumbs

The farther along in life’s journey I get, the more I’m drawn to specific foods: sautéed bitter greens, canned fish, good bread, and more and more red wine. It’s not health that drives this, or at least not consciously, but more a desire for solid flavor. I liked all these things when I was a kid, too, but back then I also wanted Ring Dings. I don’t want Ring Dings anymore. I’d rather have a tin of oily sardines than a cupcake any day, even a really good cupcake. And I want a lot of olive oil. It sometimes alarms me how much olive oil and how much wine I can consume, but I try not to think about that too much.

What I do like to think about is a dinner that comprises these elements. It’s my favorite kind of meal. Many combinations of pasta, preserved fish, and green vegetable make me happy. Variations on escarole, anchovy, and pasta have been in my life for a long time, and lately they’ve been around more than they used to, crowding out nice things like a good roast chicken or a meat-rich lasagna.

I spend a fair amount of time running around New York City searching out good bitter greens, especially Italian chicories. This search frequently takes me to Campo Rosso Farm’s stand. If you’ve ever stopped into the Union Square Greenmarket on a Friday you may have noticed a farmer selling beautiful, flowerlike Italian chicories, pink, white, burgundy, lime green. That’s Camp Rosso, from Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania.  They specialize in these bitter greens. At various times I’ve seen tardivo, Treviso, radicchio bianco, Castelfranco radicchio that looks like giant pale pink roses, frilly-edged Italian endive, escarole, frisée, and puntarelle, which is hard to find even in Italian specialty shops like Eataly. If you love these bitter lettuces as much as I do, you should get yourself over to Campo Rosso’s stand and see for yourself. Fall is a great time to go. This time I purchased a wide-open escarole and the palest pink Castelfranco radicchio. The escarole went into this pasta.

If you’d like to make this dish, here’s how:

The first thing you’ll want to do is to gather about a cup or so of homemade breadcrumbs, ground, not too finely, from good bread. Take out a small sauté pan, and set it over medium heat. Add a tablespoon of olive oil, and let the oil warm through. Add the breadcrumbs, a teaspoon or so of sugar, some salt, and a big pinch of crumbled hot dried chili. I used piment d’Espelette, but peperoncino or Aleppo would work. Stir everything around until it starts to smell like sweet toasted bread. That will take only a few minutes. The crumbs should turn just lightly tan. Pull the pan from the heat to stop the cooking.

Next you’ll want to take a large head of escarole, or several smaller ones, chop it all up, wash it, and then blanch it for about 2 minutes in a big pot of boiling salted water. Drain it into a colander, and run cold water over it until it’s completely cool. I do this not to lessen its bitterness, which doesn’t happen anyway, but to preserve its bright green color. I want to see the clear green mingling with the white pasta. Squeeze most of the water from the escarole.

Put up a pot of pasta cooking water, and bring it to a boil. Add salt, and drop in about ¾ pound of gemelli, giving it a brief stir so it doesn’t stick.

Get out a large sauté pan, and set it over medium heat. Drizzle in about 2 tablespoons of good olive oil, maybe not your best olive oil but the best you use for cooking. Add two thinly sliced garlic cloves, the fresher the better, about 6 very high quality oil-packed anchovies, roughly chopped (I used Ortiz brand, but Donostia’s Cantabrian anchovies are even better), and half a fresh green jalapeño, seeded if you like. Sauté all this for about a minute, just to release all its flavors. You don’t want the garlic to color very much, so keep an eye on it. Add the escarole, stirring everything around to blend the flavors. Add the grated zest from a small lemon, and sauté a minute longer. Add a splash of dry vermouth, and let it bubble away. Turn off the heat.

When the gemelli is al dente, drain it lightly, leaving some water clinging to it, and add it to the escarole pan. Turn the heat back on, and toss everything around for about a minute. Taste for salt. You may or may not need it, depending on your anchovies. Add a drizzle of fresh olive oil, stirring it in.

Plate up three servings. Top each one with a generous scattering of the breadcrumbs. Serve right away.

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A Sleepless night and my head emerged like this. Creepy but happy.

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Recipe below: Summer Tomato Tart with Tarragon and Fontina

An incident involving summer tomatoes has stayed with me for more than 50 years. One summer in the early seventies, my sister and I decided we wanted to have a party. The theme would be hits of the 1950s. We didn’t really know that music, but we sensed that its danceable rhythms would get the party moving. And the outfits—ponytails, bobby socks, saddle shoes—were a big draw. 

We went to our local record store in search of 45s. The guy behind the counter was of that era and steered us immediately to what we needed. “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” “Tutti Frutti,” “Peggy Sue,” “A Teenager in Love,” “Blueberry Hill,” “Lollipop,” “Rock Around the Clock,” “Wake Up Little Susie,” “Shake, Rattle and Roll.” A song called “Patricia,” by Pérez Prado, became my favorite. We were in business. We set up a string of lights in our little backyard, got our dopey outfits together, and let it be known this was happening.

My parents were okay with the party, but my father had one important thing to say: “Don’t let those kids near my tomatoes.” He was in love with his tomato garden. He nurtured the plants, talked to them, touched them. He was out there at odd hours, checking, worrying, smoking cigarettes, watering, looking for bugs. We promised him nobody would touch his red August tomatoes.

So many people showed up for our party, it was actually a little frightening, but we kept cool and got the music on and the Yago sangria flowing. The throb and sweat of all those people dancing in our backyard in the August heat became, I thought, a thing of greatness. But as the party progressed, it turned raucous. I saw people head for the tomato garden, and there a sort of phony tough guy fight broke out. There was stupid drunken yelling. And then I saw tomatoes flying, tomatoes smashed on the patio, ripe tomatoes all over the backyard. A sickness came over me. My father, who must have been watching out the kitchen window, raced out in his boxer shorts, screaming. The party was immediately over, the backyard cleared out. My sister and I stared at the destruction in silence. My father stood shaking his head. My guilt and sadness were profound. I cried that night, and I cried the next couple of nights. I still think about my father and those smashed tomatoes at least once every summer, and even now, so long ago, my father now gone, I feel remorse.

I now grow my own tomatoes. I can’t say I’m as intensely involved with them as my father was, but I treat them with the utmost respect, and I hope they’re happy. If you’ve got beautiful summer tomatoes, here’s a good thing to make with them.

You’ll want a 9-inch tart pan with a removable bottom. You can make this without a tart pan, just laying the dough out on a sheet tray, but I like how the tart pan gives it more structure.

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Recipe below (in text): Fresh Espelette Salsa with Thyme Vinegar and Allspice

I’m growing espelette chilis in my garden this year. They are traditional Basque chilis mainly used dried to produce piment d’Espelette, a sweet and moderately spicy paprika. So far mine are runty and green. Maybe they don’t like upstate New York weather. Considering that it’s already mid-August, I’m not sure they’ll ripen before the first frost. That’s pretty sad. But when I went over to the Union Square Greenmarket the other day, there were bins of espelettes, deep red, shiny, smelling sweet but with that touch of raw spice that glows forth even before you cut into one. Those were from South Jersey. I guess they like it there better.

The espelette pepper at peak ripeness is an amazing color that appeals to me like few others. It’s not a fire engine red, but not dark ruby either, and nothing like a blood-red beet. It’s something in between, closer to the best lipstick shade for me and many Italian American types, and it might be described as rich red. I have synesthesia, and deeply pigmented red has always been the number five for me. This color screams five.

I love making fresh chili sauces, so when I saw these espelette beauties, I knew what I had to do. I always make any chili sauce in a small batch so it will keep about two weeks and stay vibrant. I used a dozen good sized espelettes and got about two cups of beautiful salsa. It didn’t emerge as the Italian American lipstick of my dreams, but rather as a clear, deep orange, also a lovely shade. It had a nice balance of sweet, acid, and heat.

So here’s what I did:

I roughly chopped and seeded my dozen espelettes. I then heated a little olive oil in a good-size sauté pan, dropping in the chilis and letting them sauté over medium heat for a few minutes, to start softening. I added a small, chopped summer onion and a big garlic clove, sliced, plus some salt, and let that sauté for a minute or so longer. Then I added about ½ teaspoon of allspice and a teaspoon of sugar, letting them warm through to release their flavors. I gave everything a splash of thyme vinegar (if you don’t have that, just add a few thyme sprigs when you add the allspice), and let it bubble for a few seconds. I threw in about a half a cup of warm water, turned the heat down a notch, covered the pan, and let everything simmer until the chilis were very soft, about another 8 minutes. Then I turned off the heat, added a drizzle of fresh olive oil, and let things cool off a bit before puréeing the result in a food processor. Taste it after you purée for a good balance of salt, sweet, and acid, adjusting as needed.

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Still Life with Green and Black Olives, Vita Schagen

Often I have a hundred ideas about how to start a meal—and those ideas add up to appetizer chaos. Too many options? I’m not sure. My need to feed from beginning to end is strong, but it’s got to be smooth. Each meal must be of a piece, all the courses fitting together to create a meaningful flow. That’s not so hard in concept, so why do I get confused in my kitchen?

When I first read Lulu’s Provençal Table, Richard Olney’s book about Lulu Peyraud, a famous home cook of Provence and a muse to Olney, Alice Waters, Kermit Lynch, Paul Bertolli, and Jeremiah Tower, I was surprised to learn she only had a handful of amuse-gueules, openers she offered on rotation. They inevitably involved tapenade or anchoïade (olive or anchovy spreads) served on little toasts, or buttered sardines served on little toasts, or fresh garlic and olive oil rubbed on little toasts.  That is what happens when you focus your culinary mind exclusively on your region. If you’re a good cook, every dish can be a local jewel.

Being Italian American doesn’t always focus me enough. My soul is purely Mediterranean, but living in Manhattan I’m hit with culinary influences from all directions and frequently derailed. When I’m truly focused I remember that my reason for cooking is to revisit the flavors I grew up with and love, and to let those flavors naturally evolve. I’m not here to create fancy new versions of haikara soba.

So I was recently putting together a little birthday dinner for a good friend. I set out to buy olives but was immediately frustrated to find that my market had only Gaetas, not my favorite olives. I went looking for the smaller, sweeter Taggiasca ones from Liguria, but my shop was out. I bought the Gaetas anyway. They tasted a bit sharp, so I figured I’d doctor them up, settling on the rosemary fennel flavor combination that I wrote about in my last blog and find so appealing. Then I decided to bake the olives, something that I hadn’t done in a long time and had sort of forgotten was a thing to do. It’s a good solution if you ever need to mellow out a batch of sharp olives.

Here’s what I did:

Get out a nice looking baking dish that will fit your olives fairly snuggly in one layer. For this version I scattered on a palmful of fennel seeds and a generous amount of fresh rosemary sprigs. I also added the budding tops from a bunch of garlic scapes I had on hand. Then I drizzled on some good olive oil and added a few turns of coarse black pepper. I gave it all a good toss and then baked it, uncovered, in a 400-degree oven for about 10 minutes, just until the olives were hot through and starting to look a bit puffy. The aroma was intense and really appealing. I let them cool off slightly before serving them, so my guests wouldn’t burn themselves, but they were definitely still warm and juicy to bite into, and that is the beauty of this simple appetizer. It feels more substantial that cold olives, more like real food. Everyone loved it.  And it will be a good thing to remember the next time I freak out trying to come up with a simple opener to get a meal flowing. 

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Recipe below: Roasted Red Snapper with Fennel Rosemary Vinaigrette

It has been pouring here on and off for about two weeks. My basil is flooded and my garlic soaked. I’m worried. My garden needs a dryout. And I’ve been dreaming of fancy outdoor grilling, but due to all this rain, it has not yet happened. I love doing a whole fish on the grill. It’s a romantic experience, and with all the herbs I’ve got growing, providing they’re not all drenched out, it can be high-end fragrant. I will get out there soon, I promise you. In the meantime, I’ve been at my oven, which is also a very good place to cook a whole fish.

As you’ve all heard a zillion times, cooking fish whole brings out more flavor than just doing a fillet. I don’t like to beat you over the head with this, but it’s true. Everything stays contained under the skin—the fat, the natural moisture, the gelatinous stickiness from the bones, plus all the flavors you stuff inside it. I think the hesitation for most people is not knowing when the fish is cooked, but that’s not hard to gauge. I like a high-heat roast, so I’ll go with 425, even 450 degrees. My 3½ pound red snapper took about 20 minutes. I started checking after about 15 minutes by inserting a paring knife alongside the backbone to see if the meat could be lifted from the bone but stay pretty much in one piece. Once it could, the fish was ready. I didn’t let it get into “easily flaked” territory, especially since a fish will continue to cook a little after you take it out.  

I went to the market looking for my favorite little rougets (called red mullets in this country), but my fish guy at the Chelsea Market was all out. I guess I had the color red on my mind, so I instead went with a red snapper, a beautiful fish, very mild and white-fleshed. For flavoring I returned to my much-loved fennel rosemary blend, a tradition for porchetta that works well with all sorts of seafood as well. Fennel alone is, of course, classic with fish, but when you blend it with rosemary the flavor is fuller yet not overly assertive. A deep perfume develops.

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What a prickly beauty. Big tail, small head. Will she ever get out without tiny, bloody scratches? I say, not likely. But artichokes are always worth the effort.

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