Erica De Mane

You know how sometimes you set out to cook something improvisational and then realize you’re all unfocused? Maybe you have three different herbs on your counter, various alliums, and some stuff you pulled from your cheese drawer. You’ve bought good pasta at the Italian shop, too. But it’s not all forming a pretty picture in your mind’s eye. I find myself at that place sometimes, and it frustrates me. I guess I was subconsciously looking for a way to fix this occasional problem when this New Year I found myself clarifying my culinary head with color. I started making swatches in watercolor and placing them alongside a list of ingredients that seemed right for a dish I had in mind. The colors helped me make purer choices and get rid of excess without leaving my cooking austere. I think with luck they may reveal the soul of a dish.

I started this color matching game when I had made a pasta with chanterelles but wasn’t happy with it. It felt clunky, which was surprising, since chanterelles are so elegant. I had a few chanterelles left over, so I thought I’d try the dish again the next day. I laid out the uncooked leftover mushrooms on my counter. Their peachy beige color was so lovely, I got curious to see if I could match it. I took out my paints, and after some adjusting was happy with the color swatch I made, all at once yellow, brown, orange, and transparent. So I went on, choosing other flavors I was thinking about for the second version of the dish and painting them. I dissolved saffron in a half cup of warm chicken broth and watched the maroon threads blossom in a swirl of pure orange. My head lightened as I stared at the color. It seemed to direct me to construct the pasta in a more pinpointed way. It became apparent to me what ingredients needed to go from my first try. What went were prosciutto fat, leeks, and parsley.  What stayed were what you see below to the right of my color patches.

This exercise reminded me of a few things I know but don’t always remember. For starters, not every dish needs a pork product. When I first made this pasta with chanterelles I included chopped prosciutto fat because I had it, and for no other reason. All it did was pull focus away from the delicate taste of the mushrooms. I have a tendency to enrich food with pork fat when it’s not needed. Lazy.

Not every dish needs a lot of herbs either. I chose thyme for this because I love thyme with mushrooms. But then I added parsley at the end, to finish the dish and to interrupt its more or less uniform beige color. Mistake. It visually muddied everything, making for a confusing photograph while adding nothing. Using parsley as a throwaway is culinary abuse. I know this, but sometimes I do it anyway, probably in a reflex from years cooking in French bistros where they scatter it over everything that leaves the kitchen. Parsley is a unique flavor and should be treated the same as you treat rosemary or any other aromatic. Italians know that. For instance it was the main flavoring in my mother’s pasta e fagiole, and is in my own bucatini with clams, too.

Not every Italian dish needs garlic. I didn’t include garlic in the original version of this dish, but I thought I’d mention it here, since I have sometimes thrown it in without much thought. Since I don’t always love the taste of papery winter garlic, I wasn’t tempted this time. I debated using shallots and leeks. I had both and added both to the first version of the pasta, but they only created an unrefined undertaste. Take one out, I said. I stuck with the shallots, which not only tasted sweet and deep but also had a lovely violet hue, which I think I captured with my paint.

I’m going to make more color swatch recipes, and I’ll keep you posted on my progress. The ingredient list for my tagliatelle with chanterelles and saffron is in order of use on the swatch card, so if you’re interested in trying it you can do a version with your own personal stamp, improvising the measurements.

Happy New Year, and may all your cooking be bright and clear.

Recipe below: Cod Roasted with Orange, Tarragon, and Pastis

Anyone who has followed me on Facebook may know this de Chirico painting. For many years I’ve used a crop of it as the image that runs across the top of my Facebook page. I’ve had no interest in changing it because it keeps feeling exactly right, and I use a different de Chirico at the top of ericademane.com. I hadn’t seen this painting whole in several years, but since it has always reminded me of Christmas Eve, I recently hunted it down again online, and I love it more now than ever. The original is in the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna in Rome. I’ve never been there, but that will be rectified on my next trip.

Fish and oranges are two foods that always appear on my Christmas Eve table, sometimes in the same dish, sometimes not. As I revisit this de Chirico in its totality, I’m reminded of how much I love its orange colors, the curves of the fish, and its Mediterranean Sea, turquoise and active. His placement of ancient sculpture ties it all into my ancient heritage, making it familiar and comforting to me, even though that’s just a bodyless head made from paint. But there’s also the edge that I’m drawn to. How can something be so both anxiety-provoking and comforting? De Chirico said that “what is especially needed is great sensitivity, to look upon everything in the world as enigma. To live in the world as in an immense museum of things.” I try to think of certain aspects of nature that way, oceans for instance, or animals that are killed so I can eat them, which bring me both anxiety and comfort. A pantheistic approach.

I’ve never fished. Maybe the squirming before the fish dies would horrify me. I don’t know. I might try it someday. I cook a lot of seafood. This de Chirico painting got me combining fish with orange and adding a touch of anise to pull it together, a sort of bouillabaisse-inspired ensemble.  The orange zest is key. You need a good amount. The result will be mellow but vibrant, not unlike the painting. I hope you’ll give it a try.

I still love scungilli on Christmas Eve. It has fallen out of fashion among many italoamericani. It has the strangest taste, always reminding me of musty incense from an old hippy shop. Very unseafoody but so alluring. I need a little scungilli on my Christmas Eve table, even if I’m the only one who eats it.  P.E. & D.D. Seafood, at the Union Square Greenmarket, out of Riverhead, Long Island, is where I purchased the beautiful, thick cod fillets for this recipe. P.E. & D.D. also sells locally caught conch (scungilli) that they precook in the shell so it’s ready for slicing, for a salad, or to mix into pasta. They also make their own scungilli salad, which is good but maybe a touch too garlicky for me. If you want scungilli for Christmas Eve, you can find P.G.& E.E. at Union Square market on Monday and Friday and at Abingdon Square Saturday. They’ve also got beautiful Little Neck clams right now, in case you’re considering linguine and clam sauce for the holiday.

Recipe below: Tria with Cauliflower, Pistachio, and Anchovy, for Christmas Eve

Ever since I was a kid I’ve been drawn to humidity. New York summers have plenty of it. Manhattan streets in August have a disgusting appeal for me. Heat, sweat, and a little grime work wonders, keeping me alert. This is likely one of the reasons I always found commercial kitchens not only exciting but homey. All kitchens, really, but especially busy, hot, hectic ones. A summer street in New York is like a big hot kitchen. A winter street not so much, yet sometimes, if I’m lucky, I’ll look west down 13th Street and see winter fog steaming off of Hudson River. That’s a mood boost.

There’s nothing I dislike more than a clear, crisp winter day, but a good winter rain or snow is a thing of moist beauty. Entering my apartment out of a cold rain is one of my favorite winter experiences, provided the heat is working, especially if I’ve been to the Greenmarket or even a regular grocery store and bought root vegetables, chicories, or cabbage things, and can cook something I love, like broccoli rabe with anchovies, escarole with ceci, or celery root soup with pancetta. Right now I can still find local cauliflower at the Union Square market, sometimes even the orange ones or light green Romanesco spirals, all pretty, with tons of possibilities.

Last week I came back from the market with a big white cauliflower. I love cauliflower flavored with anchovy, so I immediately thought of that combination as a starting point, and I worked out this pasta dish. It came out so well I’m thinking of making it again on Christmas Eve.

Tria is the name of the pasta I made. It’s a semolina tagliatelle-type cut from the Salento area of Puglia. It’s usually made a little thicker than the soft wheat tagliatelle known northward, and it’s often cooked up with chickpeas. It was a good match for my cauliflower, anchovy, and pistachio condimento. If the sauce appeals to you and you don’t want to bother with the homemade pasta, you can make this nicely with a store-bought orecchiette. But, just so you know, semolina pasta is about the easiest homemade type you can turn out. Semolina and water are all it is. It’s smooth to handle and easy to roll, a great pasta with a little chew to it. I hope you’ll give it a try.

Recipe below: Scialatielli with Clams, ’Nduja, Pernod, and Basil

I often walk over to Buon’Italia in the Chelsea market just to look around, not needing anything but wanting something to bring into my kitchen when too many non-Italian ingredients like miso, or chili crunch, garam masala, or grainy mustard start to invade my workspace. When jagged effects intrude (too much soy, too much cumin, too much lime), even if I love the tastes I can get irritable or just messed up. Recently I sensed I needed a drizzle of colatura to fix a gemelli with escarole and almonds that fell flat even after adding anchovies, but to my surprise I didn’t have any colatura. How did that happen? All I had was a bottle of Red Boat Vietnamese fish sauce, which of course is similar but not the same. I added a little, drop by drop, knowing it was stronger and had a different undertaste from colatura. After a few drops I realized I had ruined the dish by complicating it with unclear thinking.

When I most recently went over to Buon’Italia, I actually did need something. I needed colatura, which I bought. I also picked up a big wedge of caciocavallo, which is strangely hard to find even in New York. I grabbed Sicilian salt-packed capers, two bags of squid ink fusilli, some sheep milk ricotta, a jar of bluefin tuna packed in olive oil, amaretti cookies, a can of pomodorini, a bag fennel taralli, a bag of Scialatielle pasta made by the Neapolitan company Setaro, and, since I couldn’t resist, a deep red, bloody-looking hunk of Buon’Italia’s mushy, fatty ’nduja. I figured the haul should set my kitchen straight.

Buon’Italia sells good ’nduja, but as most of my Italian cooking friends know, real Calabrian ’nduja is still not available here. You can get an imported loose, pasteurized ’nduja product in a jar. I’ve tried the Tutto Calabria one pictured in the advertising poster above. ’Nduja light. Not worth it. I’d rather buy a good American-made one. So that’s what I got at Buon’Italia. It’s made somewhere in Queens.  It’s got a flavor reminiscent of the ones I sampled in Calabria, where the soft, spicy sausage was invented, and has no weird added flavors, such as oregano or garlic. Just pure pork fat and Calabrian heat. I also like the version made by Salumeria Biellese, here in New York. Unlike when I first began searching out the American-made stuff, about ten years ago, now I find lots of good versions made all over our country. Have any of you tried the Tempesta brand? I haven’t yet. If you’ve discovered one you particularly like, please let me know. I’m starting to collect them.

With my Queens-made Buon’Italia ’nduja, I decided to prepare a pasta featuring the littleneck clams I buy from a Long Island fish guy who sells at the Union Square market. Spicy pork sausage and shellfish are an excellent match, as Spanish and Italian cooks discovered ages ago. I loved adding only fennel flavors and basil to pull it all together.

And in case you’re not familiar with scialatielli, it’s a thick, chewy, slightly stubbier tagliatelle-like cut popular on the Amalfi Coast and throughout Campania and used mainly for seafood sauces. When it’s made fresh, basil and Parmigiano are often worked into the dough. Dried versions usually don’t have those flavors, but even without them its chewiness is really appealing.

Recipe below (in text): Spaghetti with Bottarga, Green Chili, and Almonds

Bottarga is a salted fish roe sac that has been pressed to compactness and then left to dry. As you can see in the arty photo above, it looks like a big orange tongue. It’s made in various forms in many countries and has an ancient lineage. In Japan it’s called karasumi, in France it’s poutargue. Butarkah is its Arab name, which is where the Italians got the word bottarga from. I first tasted Italian bottarga in Trapani, Sicily, and even I who love all things sea was perplexed. Why didn’t I like it more?  What I ate was Sicily’s bottarga made from tuna roe. It was, I’d say, direct in flavor, a hit of fish without nuance, nothing I’d go on to dream about, the way I dream about the anchovies from the town of Cetara on the Amalfi Coast. Sometime after my first encounter with Sicilian bottarga, I tasted bottarga di muggine, bottarga made in Sardegna from grey mullet roe, not tuna. It still had that characteristic bitterness but also a whiff of sweet sea breeze and a more delicate taste.

Back in New York City, Il Buco Alimentari, on Great Jones Street, has been serving a good spaghetti tossed with shavings of Sardinian bottarga since the place opened in 2011, adding just lemon and a little parsley. That is my all-time favorite way to eat good bottarga, tossed with spaghetti. You could, I suppose, use a fresh egg tagliatelle instead, but I wouldn’t go with anything like rigatoni, for instance. That would be too robusto for such a delicate dish. I go to Il Buco Alimentari when I want to have this perfect dish in a restaurant and not make it at home. But making it at home is simple. You just have to have the bottarga. I can’t say bottarga is a typical pantry item in my kitchen, but I’ve definitely been buying it more often lately.

I like to purchase bottarga di muggine made by L’Oro di Cabras, in Sardegna, from Gustiamo. It’s the best one I’ve used so far. You can buy it from Gustiamo directly or via Amazon. If I need bottarga fast and can’t wait for a delivery (that’s been known to happen), I sometimes get it at Buon’Italia, in the Chelsea Market. If you don’t know the shop, please try to go when you’re in the neighborhood. It’s home to Latini pasta from the Marche and all sorts of Italian cheeses and cured and fresh meats, including excellent ’nduja and pork sausage, and just about any Italian food item you might be dreaming about, such as fusilli flavored with spirulina algae, which looks intriguing but I’ve yet to actually purchase. And if you can’t deal with the push of tourists lining up for steamed lobsters or tongue tacos on the main floor, there’s a side door you can slip through on 15th Street that takes you directly downstairs to where most of the real grocery stores are. You’ll avoid a lot of backup that way.

For my most recent version of spaghetti with bottarga, I got a little more elaborate than the lemon-and-parsley approach I learned from Il Buco Alimentari. This time I added toasted almonds and found that their richness tempered the slight bitterness of the roe, making the whole thing taste lusher, more rounded. Along with a good amount of lemon, I added a fine dice of green jalapeño, whose gentle heat played against the lemon, charging the dish up from both ends.

To make my spaghetti with bottarga, green chili, and almonds for two, the first thing you’ll want to do is toast a handful of whole blanched almonds and then chop them lightly. The better your almonds, the deeper the taste. I used Sicilian almonds from Noto, which have the aroma of almond extract (I always wondered where they got the idea for that aroma).

Next you’ll need to peel the outer membrane off your bottarga. That is the thin skin that encloses the roe sac. It turns kind of papery after drying. It’s not unhealthy to eat; I remove it mainly because it shreds when you grate the bottarga, and it could get stuck in your throat (which I guess would actually make it unhealthy). It may or may not come off in large pieces, so just do the best you can. Peel off about as much as you think you’ll be using. Grate about ¾ cup of the bottarga onto a plate, using a cheese grater. I used a medium, not really fine, grate since I didn’t want it to turn the bottarga to dust. You’ll ideally wind up with a nice pile a fluffy orange bits. (Please don’t waste your money on pre-grated bottarga—the ones I’ve tried have all been dry. The good news is that bottarga roe purchased whole is so tightly packed it lasts for months and months even after you open it, which is why it was invented in the first place. Just keep it in your fridge, wrapped in plastic.)

Put up a pot of pasta cooking water, add salt, and bring it to a boil. Drop in about ⅓ pound of spaghetti.

Thinly slice two fresh garlic cloves. Seed and mince a small jalapeño. Zest a small lemon, and then cut it in half, since you’ll need some of its juice later on. Chop the leaves from a few large thyme sprigs and a larger amount of flat-leaf parsley. It’s important to get your prep in order before you start cooking, since it will all go fast.

Get out a large sauté pan, set it over medium heat, and add about 3 tablespoons of good olive oil. Add the garlic and the jalapeño, and let it warm through just until you get a nice aroma. You don’t want the garlic to color.  Add a big splash of dry vermouth, and let it bubble for about 30 seconds.

When the spaghetti is al dente, drain it, leaving some water clinging to the strands, and add it to the pan. Toss it briefly. Turn off the heat, and add the lemon zest, a big squeeze of lemon juice, and a little more of your good olive oil. Add the thyme and the parsley. Add all but about a tablespoon or so of the bottarga, and toss again, making sure you’ve turned off the heat. You don’t want the bottarga to actually cook or it will lose its freshness.

Portion out the spaghetti into two bowls. Sprinkle on a generous amount of the almonds, and finish with the remaining bottarga. Serve right away.

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.

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.

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.

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