Erica De Mane

Recipe: Biscotti with Candied Orange and Pine Nuts

I devised these biscotti using the flavors of the Easter Pastiera I love so much but just didn’t have time to make this year. I worked orange flower water, vanilla, and candied orange into these simple biscotti. They’ll give the house the aroma of Easter without the work required for making a real Easter dinner, which, because my mom is sick this year, I’m not finding possible. Friends and family can stop by, have a biscotti and a glass of prosecco, and all will be as well as it can be.

Happy Easter, and grab as much free will as you can.

Biscotti with Candied Orange and Pine Nuts

1 cup all-purpose flour
½ cup sugar, plus a bit extra
A pinch of salt
½ teaspoon baking powder
3 tablespoons cold, unsalted butter, cut into tiny pieces, plus extra for buttering the pan
½ cup candied orange peel, well chopped
1 large egg
The grated zest from 1 large orange
1 teaspoon high-quality vanilla extract
½ teaspoon orange flower water
1 tablespoon orange liqueur
½ cup lightly toasted pine nuts

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter a  standard-size sheet pan.

Place the flour, 1/2 cup sugar, salt, and baking powder in the bowl of a food processor, and pulse briefly to blend. Add the chopped butter, and pulse a few times, just until the butter is broken down into very tiny bits. In a small bowl, whisk together the egg, vanilla, orange zest, and orange peel, orange flower water, orange liqueur, and pine nuts. Add this to the food processor, and pulse very briefly, just to blend. The mixture should be moist but crumbly. Turn it out onto a flat surface and press it together. Press the dough away from you using the palm of your hand once or twice, so everything  is well moistened. Form the dough into a ball. Cut the dough  in half, and roll each section into a 1-inch-thick rope. If the  dough seems too sticky, dust your hands with flour while rolling  it. Place the two ropes on the sheet pan a few inches apart.  Flatten the tops slightly. Sprinkle lightly with sugar, and bake  until very lightly golden, about 25 minutes. Take the pan from  the oven and let sit for about 5 minutes to cool slightly (if the logs are too hot when you try to slice them, they can break).

When the two ropes are cool enough to remove  from the sheet pan without breaking, place them on a flat surface, and cut them into approximately ¼-inch slices, cutting on an angle using a quick, clean stroke with a sharp chef’s knife (don’t try a sawing motion or you may cause the biscotti to break up).  Place the cut biscotti, cut side up, back on the sheet pan, and  bake for about 10 minutes longer, or until they are lightly browned.  When cool, store in a cookie box, or a basket covered with a  tea towel. They’ll keep about a week.

You can easily double this recipe, but maybe don’t double the orange flower water. It’ll be too strong. Add only a few drops extra.

Italian Woman Carrying Fish, by Gerard Dillon.

It’s almost Easter. This will be the first year I don’t make Easter dinner. My mother is sick, and she can’t eat, so it seems a little pointless, or at least the pleasure has gone out of it. Being an atheist, I don’t need much to get my mind off of Easter. The food has always been the thing, so now that I’m free to let my mind wander, I find it moving toward women with fish, as it often does. I’m thinking about Italian women and the sea. This is me with a wooden bowl filled with freshly caught branzino. I can tell it’s me in the painting because I own that skirt (Agnes B., bought on eBay),  and I often wear it when I go fishing near Bari (the cross is an Italian fashion statement). My plan is to give most of these fish away. I’ll keep one and grill it whole, stuffed with marjoram and lemon, and I’ll make a simple sauce with marjoram, capers, and olive oil to drizzle over the top. That will be my dinner, to eat alone, outside, sitting on a busted-up wooden chair, while everyone else in Bari is inside celebrating Easter in the usual Puglian way, with artichokes, lamb, fava beans. For a while I was a bit worried about Easter. It seemed odd not to be preparing something traditional like a pastiera. But now that I’ve got a plan, everything will be all right. It’s nice to mix it up a bit.

Happy Easter to you.

Hello Italian food fashionistas. A profile of me, along with  one of my recipes for spring garlic, is now up on the Fashion Institute of Technology’s website. Before I embarked on my career as a Southern Italian cooking diva, I considered going into textile design and graduated from FIT. I guess they wondered what happened. Well, they finally found me. Take a look.

Hi to all my Italian food loving friends.

I’m now writing a monthly column called “A Meal in Bowl” for Diane magazine, published by Curves Fitness. Just 400 calories a serving. That should be a challenge. Take a look. Next month I’m offering Minestrone with Lamb, Chickpeas, and Spring Greens.

Roses in a Vase, Carl Rohde, nineteenth century.

Recipe: Penne with Pancetta, Rosemary, Pine Nuts, and a Splash of Cream

I’m not a cream person. I don’t even like ice cream all that much. A few spoonfuls are wonderful, but after that it kind of lumps up in the back of my throat and triggers a gag response. What can I say? For me cream is strange, and I don’t find many uses for it in my kitchen, possibly because my Southern Italian soul runs deep, and there’s no cream at the bottom of the Mediterranean, only volcanic ash, which somehow seems more interesting to me.

A cream-based dish that in my opinion is the worst Italianish creation of all, and I’m not sure if it’s originally Italian or U.S.-born, is pasta with cream and smoked salmon. I find the smell of that utterly repulsive. I can’t even be at the same table with someone who has ordered it. I think it had its heyday in the 1990s. Luckily, you only find it at shopping mall restaurants these days. (Gee, can I be any more of a snoot?)

But there is one pasta-with-cream dish that I adore. It’s pink sauce, a simple tomato sauce with a splash of cream, the sauce of Italian-American restaurants alla the 1960s. At Ricky’s restaurant in Roslyn, Long Island, I ordered giant cheese ravioli bathed in a sauce the color of the vibrant pink roses my father grew along the walkway in front of our house. Sometimes I’d order cannelloni with that same sauce. It had a soft, voluptuous flavor, with only a hint of acidity. Pink sauce wasn’t anything we made at home. There we made red sauce, heavy with oregano and garlic, and usually the color of dried blood. I loved it. But then sometime in the 1970s, penne alla vodka became the craze. Every mom on our block made that quick mix of vodka, tomatoes, cream, and a pinch of hot pepper. They considered it elegant and so did I.

In the winter I crave pink sauce. I think of it in the winter, since it works best when you give it the body that canned tomatoes provide. My approach to creating one of these cream-kissed sauces is pretty rudimentary, but I do have some rules. First off, no garlic shall ever enter my pink sauce. In my opinion, what you want is a base of sweet cooked-down onions or shallots, especially when reduced in a little butter. Then a splash of booze, vodka, or cognac, or, what I prefer, the gentle warmth of Marsala or vermouth. Then the tomatoes go in. You’ll want to cook them quickly over high heat to retain their bright color and taste. Then a drizzle of cream or crème fraîche. I sometimes add pancetta or sausage, or mushrooms. A mild grating cheese like Parmigiano or grana Padano is essential to pull the flavors together in this lush mix. I love adding rosemary or a few fresh sage leaves, too. For this version I’ve also included toasted pine nuts. The gorgeous color and velvety texture of the dish makes me very happy. I don’t usually like that hackneyed description “comfort food,” but I must tell you, pink sauce is truly comforting.

Penne with Pancetta, Rosemary, Pine Nuts, and a Splash of Cream

(Serves 5 as a first course)

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
A drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil
1 ¼-inch chunk pancetta, cut into small dice
1 pound penne
Salt
1 large shallot, minced
1 large sprig rosemary, leaves chopped
A splash of sweet vermouth
1 35-ounce can plum tomatoes, well chopped, with the juice
A good pinch of piment d’Espelette (a Basque dried red chili), or another medium hot chile, such as Aleppo
¼ cup heavy cream
A handful of pine nuts, lightly toasted
A handful of flat-leaf parsley leaves, lightly chopped
A chunk of grana Padano cheese

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

In a large skillet, heat the butter and olive oil over medium flame. Add the pancetta, and let it get crisp.

Add a generous amount of salt to the water, and when it comes back to a boil, add the penne.

Add the shallot and rosemary to the skillet, and sauté until softened and fragrant. Add the vermouth, and let it boil away. Add the tomatoes with their juice, season with salt, and cook at a lively bubble for about 5 minutes. Now season with the Espelette, and add the cream and the pine nuts, giving the sauce a good stir. Simmer for about 2 minutes or so, and then turn off the heat. Taste for salt.

When the penne is al dente, drain it, and pour it into a warmed serving bowl. Add the sauce, the parsley, and a generous grating of grana Padano (about a heaping tablespoon or so). Toss well, and serve, bringing the rest of the cheese to the table.

When Cecilia Gimenez, an untrained art restorer, took it upon herself to freshen up Elias Garcia Martinez’s nineteenth-century Ecce Homo fresco, in Spain, she transformed Jesus into a weird, hairy monkey. The image has become so popular that a bakery in Madrid is now using it to decorate its crêpes.

Recipe: Crespelle with Roasted Peppers, Prosciutto Cotto, and a Red Pepper Sauce

Sometimes I feel that olive oil is what holds my life together. I smell it, I cook with it, I rub it into my hair and hands (so I guess I smell like it, too). Maybe if I had kids I would say they held my life together, but I don’t have kids. I have olive oil. Olive oil is so important to me. I easily go through a 32-ounce bottle every week, sometimes more. I spend a lot on olive oil, but it’s worth it. I especially love the flavor of estate-bottled Sicilian oils such as Ravida or Olio Verde. To me, they have a perfect mix of mellow and biting, often with a lingering taste of almonds. (And to my palate sometimes of bananas, but every time I’ve mentioned this to a producer or seller, he’s looked at me like I’m an idiot. But you know what? I know I’m right. My palate doesn’t lie.)

I’m always looking for ways to work olive oil into foods that traditionally would require butter. Many of the pastry crusts I use for savory tarts and even some sweet ones consist of just olive oil, salt, wine, and flour. It’s amazing how flaky  they cook up. I make olive oil biscotti and cakes that are, to my taste, more tender and lighter than butter-based versions. I also use olive oil in crespelle, Italian crêpes. The texture is lovely, and they’re much easier to work with than butter-based crêpes. Olive oil crespelle are a perfect wrapping for seafood or Mediterranean vegetable fillings such as eggplant or the roasted peppers I’ve chosen for this recipe.

Don’t be afraid to make crespelle. They’re not that hard, especially with this olive oil batter, and once you’ve got it down, you can improvise with fillings and sauces to your heart’s content. Getting the rhythm down when you’re cooking crespelle always takes a few minutes. You need the time to regulate the pan heat and come to understand just how  much batter is right to thinly cover the pan. You’ll produce a few lumpy, folded, truly messed-up-looking crespelle before you hit your stride. Don’t worry. That’s just the way it is.

Crespelle with Roasted Peppers, Prosciutto Cotto, and a Red Pepper Sauce

(Serves 4 or 5, making about 12 7-inch crespelle)

For the crespelle:

1 cup all-purpose flour
4 large eggs
A generous pinch of salt
1 tablespoon sugar
3 tablespoons olive oil, plus extra for cooking
1 cup whole milk, possibly a little more
1 tablespoon grappa, cognac, or brandy

For the ricotta filling:

2 cups whole-milk ricotta
1 large egg
1 small garlic clove, minced
½ cup grated grana Padano cheese
A few big scrapings of nutmeg (about ⅛ teaspoon)
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
About 8 thyme sprigs, leaves chopped, plus a handful of tender sprigs for garnish

Plus:

Extra-virgin olive oil
6 red bell peppers, charred, peeled, seeded, and cut into thick strips
1 garlic clove, thinly sliced
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
A big pinch of sugar
½ cup chicken broth
½ cup heavy cream
½ pound prosciutto cotto, very thinly sliced
½ cup grated grana Padano cheese

For the crespelle batter, put all the crespelle ingredients into the bowl of a food processor, and pulse until very smooth. The result should be the consistency of thick cream. If it’s too thick, add a little more milk. Pour the batter into a bowl, and let it sit about 45 minutes before using (this will relax the gluten a bit, so you get a nice tender crepe).

To cook the crespelle, I used a 7-inch omelet pan, but if you’ve got a proper crêpe pan, a little bigger or smaller, use that. Any small sauté pan will do the trick. With these olive oil crespelle, I never find sticking a problem, so you don’t need a non-stick pan. Put the pan over a medium flame, and let it heat up. Pour in just enough olive oil to coat the pan. Pull the pan from the heat, and ladle in a bit less than a quarter cup of batter, tilting the pan quickly in a circular movement to spread the batter. (You’ll get the hang of it. The first few usually don’t come out too well. Once the heat is regulated and you get the feel of it, trust me, you’ll find it fairly easy.) Let the crespella cook just until you notice it coloring lightly at the edge. Then shake the pan, moving the crespella away from you, and slip a spatula underneath. Give it a fast, confident flip. If it folds up a bit, just straighten it out with your fingers (these things are a lot sturdier than you’d think). Cook on the other side for about 30 seconds, and then slide onto a big plate.

Make the rest of the crespelle the same way, adding a drizzle of olive oil to the pan each time. Stack the crespelle up on top of one another (they won’t stick, I swear). If you like, you can refrigerate them until you want to assemble the dish.

Mix the ingredients for the ricotta filling together in a big bowl.

In a medium skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium flame. Add the red pepper slices, the garlic, a pinch of sugar, salt, and black pepper, and sauté for about 2 minutes, just to finish cooking the peppers and coat them with flavor.

Take about a quarter of the peppers out and place them in a food processor, including any juices that are left in the skillet. Work them into a purée. Add the chicken broth and the cream, and give it a few more pulses, just to blend everything. Season with a little salt. Transfer this sauce to a little bowl.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Lay the crespelle out on a work surface. Cover each one with a layer of the ricotta filling, leaving the ends of the crespelle uncovered. Now place a piece of prosciutto cotto and a few slices of the roasted peppers on top. Roll them up, and arrange them in a well-oiled baking dish that will hold them rather snugly (you can use two dishes, if that’s more convenient for you).

Drizzle the pepper sauce over the crespelle, and sprinkle on the grana Padano. This sauce is not meant to cover the entire dish. It just provides a little flavor boost and moisture. Bake until bubbling and lightly browned at the edges, about 15 minutes. Garnish with the thyme sprigs.

Serve hot. No need to let them rest. They’re quite firm. I like them served with a simple winter salad of mixed chicory-type lettuces, such as frisée and endive.

Still Life with Garlic and Red Wine Vinegar, Julian Merrow-Smith, 1998.

This past August, sometime in the middle of the hot month, my vinegar mother died. That was the gelatinous lump of good bacteria that had formed in the bottom of my vinegar jar and produced excellent vinegar from red wine odds and ends for 18 years. The wonderful vinegar mother had been created, after several failed attempts, at a house my husband and I rented, along with a ton of other people, in Riverhead, Long Island. We were a sometimes high-strung, volatile group, so I often looked for escapist projects, and making vinegar, along with constructing spun-caramel domes, and growing wild Calabrian mint, was one of them.

I first tried making vinegar by simply pouring wine into a mason jar and leaving it on the porch, lightly covering the top of the jar with a slashed-up cloth so it got plenty of air. If there was active yeast in the wine, the enzymes in the atmosphere would help form a mother. My grandfather used to do this, so I knew it could work. Mine didn’t. The wine just soured, and no Jell-O lump developed. A lively red wine vinegar mother looks like a slab of  raw calf’s liver, so that’s what I was waiting to see. Over-pasteurization or crappy Long Island air could have been the problem.

Coincidentally, around the time I first began my vinegar making project, I happened to purchase a copy of Giuliano Bugialli’s Classic Techniques of Italian Cooking, a book of traditional, proper, mostly Tuscan recipes, which also includes photos that look like they could have been shot in Renaissance Florence. It shows you how to reconstruct a cooked, boned pheasant, feathers included. Fascinating, but unless I’m  hired as a food stylist for a movie on the life of the Medicis, I’m not sure I’ll ever bother. One thing in the book that was extremely interesting to me at the time was Bugialli’s advice for making homemade vinegar. Adding the crumbled insides of a slice of good Italian bread to the wine will introduce yeast that can help form the mother. That’s what Mr. Bugialli said, and wouldn’t you know, it worked like a dream. I was so excited that I couldn’t stop talking about it, producing much above-it-all eye rolling from most of my housemates. But I was making the best red wine vinegar I had ever tasted. When the summer was over I took my precious vinegar jar back to the city with me, no regrets.

Being my first and only vinegar mother, it was special to me. And when this August, after so many years of faithful service, I first noticed a buildup of brown, crystallized crud around the lid of my vinegar jar, I became worried. But the vinegar still tasted good, so I didn’t sweat it. Then a few weeks later, to my horror, I saw that the mother had completely broken up and disintegrated, leaving what was now a jar of dark, murky, almost opaque liquid that smelled like nail polish remover. I was heartbroken. I came to the conclusion that my stifling hot August kitchen had been just too much for the grand lady, so she had expired way before her time. I should have prevented it, but since she had made it through 17 city summers unruffled, I hadn’t put much thought into this past year’s intermittently broiling weather and my excessive use of grill pans and other sweltering cooking techniques. I puttered around the Internet looking for remedies, trying a few suggestions such as adding broken spaghetti or sugar to the jar, but the thing was too far gone. I could have just started fresh right away, attempting a new vinegar mother with new bread and new wine, but this was the original, a highly sentimental thing for me. I struggled to bring her back to life, but nothing worked, so I finally threw the murky mess down the drain and decided I needed a period of mourning before starting up again.

In November I happened to be making dinner at my mother’s apartment (not my vinegar mother’s, my biological mother’s). While dressing a salad with a little bottle of vinegar she still had from my last batch, before tragedy had hit, I noticed that her bottle had formed a vinegar mother of its own, a mother spawned from my original vinegar mother, probably because some alcohol or excess sugar had been left in the batch. There it was, a dark red gelatinous disk at the bottom of her decanter. Well, needless to say, I was ecstatic. “Can I have this?,” I asked my biological mother. “Be my guest,” she said, not really understanding what I was asking her for. So I poured what remained of her vinegar into another container, hurried home with my mother clone, and immediately began setting up a new jar, hoping it would take and knowing that if it did, my original vinegar mother would live on.

Here’s a good looking, live red wine vinegar mother.

I topped it with half bottles of Nero d’Avola and Côtes du Rhône wine and let it sit near the window, a place that was pleasantly cool but not drafty. After about two and a half weeks I began getting whiffs of a good vinegar smell when I entered the kitchen, but a closeup sniff told me it wasn’t quite there yet. After another week I smelled it again, and it seemed perfect. And the taste was beautiful, exactly as it had been. Hallelujah. My vinegar mother was resurrected. I’ll never neglect her again.