Erica De Mane

Still life with plums, 1935, by Georges Braque (I love this painting).

Recipe: Italian Plum Tart with Rosemary and Fennel

My attitude about my blog changes when I’m working on a book. Since a blog is basically a donation, when I’m collecting recipes for a book, in this case a food memoir, giving them away seems counterproductive. But a food blog, in my opinion, needs recipes. I always prefer blogs with more recipes and less food gossip. Gossip is harsh and boring; recipes are voluptuous. Lately I’ve been solving my blogging problem two ways. The first and best way has been by posting excerpts from my essay book. You seem to be enjoying these stories of my emerging cooking self. The second and not so great way is by putting up fewer recipes, which also means posting fewer blogs. So if you’ve noticed longer stretches between postings, that’s the reason why. It’s a dilemma, but I’ve come up with a solution. I’m going back to walking the streets of Manhattan and will be posting observations of Italian goings-on around town, which means posts about new restaurants, wine, cheese, and olive oil shops, more product reviews, feasts, and food trucks. It does seem like a new Italian restaurant or caffè opens up every week. It’s a mystery how they survive, and of course many of them don’t. But the good ones generally do very well, because, no surprise here, everyone loves Italian food.

I stopped posting restaurant reviews a few years ago, because I realized I had no interest in being a critic. After years spent cooking in restaurant kitchens myself, I know how excruciatingly hard it is. As a result, I now feel that if I have something bad to say, I’d rather say nothing. Such a good-hearted girl am I. So you won’t get dish from me, but what you will get are great recommendations. So I’ll start posting these again soon. And I’m looking forward to doing so, since working the city not only keeps me and you up to date on the Italian food scene but it gets me out of the house, something not so easy to do when I’m working on a book. So hopefully we’ll all be happy.

I know I said I wasn’t going to post as many recipes, but this one I couldn’t resist sharing with you. I love the little dark purple pointy Italian plums I’m finding at my Greenmarket right now. They’re good for open-face tarts, since they hold their shape and don’t give off a ton of juice, making the crust soggy. I’ve left this tart quite plain, no custard, no nuts, no eggs, just plums and the beautiful and quite haunting combination or rosemary and fennel. It’s great for breakfast.

Italian Plum Tart with Rosemary and Fennel

For the pastry:

1¾ cups all-purpose flour
A large pinch of salt
2 tablespoons sugar
½ teaspoon ground fennel seed
1 stick plus 2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
3 to 4 tablespoons cold white wine, possibly a touch more

12 to 15 Italian purple plums, cut in half lengthwise and pitted
¾ cup sugar
½ teaspoon ground fennel seed
4 sprigs rosemary, the leaves chopped, plus a few whole sprigs for garnish

Pour the flour into a food processor. Add the salt, sugar, and ground fennel seed, and give it a few quick pulses to blend everything. Add the butter, and pulse a few times to break it up. Add the white wine, and pulse a few more times until the butter is about the size of lentils and the dough is moist but hasn’t come together in a ball. Pinch a bit of the dough. If it holds together, it’s ready. If it’s still dry, add another little drizzle of wine, and pulse once or twice more. Turn the dough out onto a clean surface, and press it together into a ball. Give it a few quick kneads until it comes together relatively neatly. Wrap the dough in plastic, and refrigerate for about 2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Place the cut plums in a big bowl, and toss them well with the sugar, fennel, and rosemary. Do this right before you plan to roll out the dough. If the plums sit too long in the sugar, they’ll make the sugar dissolve and create a lot of liquid, which you don’t want in your tart.

Take the dough from the refrigerator, lightly flour a work surface, and roll it out to an approximately 13-inch shaggy oval. Trim the edges to make it smooth and more or less uniform (if you have a 12-inch oval platter you can trace around that, but the handmade rustico look is very appealing, so don’t worry about it too much). Butter a sheet pan, and place the dough oval on it. Take all the trimmings, and roll them out into a long rope. Wet the edges of the oval, and fashion the dough rope along this perimeter. Pinch down on it, forming a pretty border (see my photo for a design suggestion), making sure it sticks well to the oval base. Place the plums, cut side up, inside the pastry oval in a slightly overlapping arrangement. Scoop up any extra sugar and seasonings left in the bowl, and fill the insides of the plums with it.

Bake until the tart is golden and the plums have softened, about 35 minutes. Garnish with the rosemary sprigs. Let cool about ½ hour before serving.

Cauliflower lady with a basket hat.

Recipe: Cauliflower and Fennel Soup with Chervil and Thyme

Lately I’ve been making a lot of puréed soups, mainly for my mother, whose age and aging temperament they sooth. I don’t generally have a plan. That is, I don’t have much in mind when I wander over to the Greenmarket and gaze around. I just look for stuff that seems easily blendable and not too sharp or spicy. This week I grabbed a big cauliflower and a few small bulb fennel and took them home.

It’s strange how a puréed vegetable soup, such as carrot for instance, can sometimes taste weakly of what it is, even when I refrain from adding elements that might get in the way of the vegetable’s pure taste, such as a heavy broth. The essence of carrot I find particularly elusive. I say this because last week I made a soup that was basically just carrot, and it tasted very little of carrot, and these were local, beautiful, dark orange, New Jersey specimens. It’s a mystery. Salt, lemon, a touch of sugar, all my easy-fix remedies, failed to up the soup’s flavor.

I’m happy to say that this week’s cauliflower and fennel pairing produced an exceptionally good soup, both flavors playing off each other to create a taste greater than the parts. I did jack it up with fennel seed and a drizzle of Pernod, but other than that I did my usual, which is usually not to tinker too much. The most important technique when making a good vegetable soup is to make sure you sauté the vegetable well in olive oil or butter to bring out its flavor. I did this with the carrots and still failed to get a result I was happy with, but if you just go and dump vegetables in boiling water without a preliminary sauté, you will fail every time, I assure you.

Cauliflower and Fennel Soup with Chervil and Thyme

(Serves 5)

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus an extra drizzle
2 medium shallots, thinly sliced
2 summer garlic bulbs, roughly chopped
2 small fennel bulbs, trimmed and sliced, including a small handful of the feathery fronds
About a dozen fennel seeds, ground to a powder
1 small branch of thyme
1 large baking potato, peeled and cut into cubes
1 large cauliflower, cut into large flowerets
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
A generous pinch of Basque pimenton d’espelette
1 teaspoon Pernod or another pastis
1½ cups light chicken broth
A handful of chervil sprigs for garnish

Heat the 3 tablespoons of olive oil in a large soup pot over medium flame. Add the shallots, garlic, and fennel, and sauté for a few minutes to release all their flavors. Add the fennel fronds, fennel seeds, thyme branch, potato, and cauliflower, season with salt and black pepper, and sauté a few minutes longer, coating everything well with the oil. Add the pimenton d’espelette, just a touch, and the pastis. Add the chicken broth and enough water to just cover the vegetables. Cook, uncovered, at a lively bubble, until all the vegetables are soft.

Remove the thyme branch, and then purée the soup with an immersion blender or in a food processor, and return it to the pot. Add more water if you think it’s too thick (I like mine a bit on the thin side), add a generous drizzle of fresh olive oil, and check the seasoning. Reheat gently, and serve, garnishing each bowl with chervil sprigs.

Still Life with Squid, a fresco from Pompeii (it actually looks more like a cuttlefish to me).

Recipe: Grilled Calamari with Barley and Warm Rosemary Vinaigrette

Oh, boy, summer and grilled calamari. My Nassau County childhood. Nothing better. I love the way the tentacles curl up when they hit the grill and become alive. Really freaky. Have a salad or a bowl of dressed pasta waiting, throw your squid on the fire for a quick one two, and add them to your bowl. The grill juices will mix with your tomatoes, pesto, or vinaigrette to produce a lovely sauce.

With this creation I cooked up a bit of barley and mixed it with seared cherry tomatoes that I finished with a hot vinaigrette made from the tomato pan juices, rosemary, garlic, and splashes of both balsamic vinegar and red vermouth. I added the grilled calamari and a handful of chicory at the last minute. If I make this again I think I’ll use frisée instead, since it’s a little more tender.

I  grill these creatures when I can find extremely fresh, small ones. If you only see large calamari at your market, try a slow-simmered approach such as  this braised, stuffed squid I did for an Easter menu last year.

Grilled Calamari with Barley and Warm Rosemary Vinaigrette

(Serves 4)

1½ cups barley
Salt
Extra-virgin olive oil
2 pints grape tomatoes
Freshly ground black pepper
4 large sprigs rosemary, the leaves chopped
2 fresh summer garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon good quality balsamic vinegar
A splash of sweet red vermouth
1½ pounds small calamari, cleaned, the tentacles left whole
1 medium hot fresh chili, such as a jalapeño
1 small head chicory or frisée, torn into small pieces

Place the barley in a saucepan, and cover it with water by about 4 inches. Season with salt, and bring it to a boil. Adjust the heat so the barley simmers at a low bubble, uncovered, and cook until just tender, about 30 to 35 minutes, adding a little hot water if the level gets too low. Drain it well, and pour it into a large, shallow serving bowl. Give the barley a generous drizzle of olive oil, and toss.

In a large sauté pan, heat about 3 tablespoons of olive oil over medium-high heat. When hot, add the tomatoes, the rosemary, and the garlic, and sear until the tomatoes start to burst, about 4 minutes or so. Season with salt and black pepper. Add the balsamic vinegar and the sweet vermouth, and let them bubble for about 30 seconds. Turn off the heat. Add the tomatoes with all the pan juices to the barley.

Dry the calamari well, and toss it with a little olive oil, salt, and black pepper. Coat the jalapeño with a little oil as well. Set up a stovetop grill plate over high heat (or an outdoor grill with a steady, settled down flame). Place the calamari and the chili on the grill, and cook until grill marks appear, about a minute or so (make sure not to crowd the grill, so everything can grill properly). Give everything a turn, and grill the other side, about a minute longer. Add the calamari  to the barley. Mince the jalapeño, and add it, along with the chicory or the frisée, to the bowl. Give everything a gentle toss. Correct the seasoning. Serve right away.

A still life with peaches, found at Herculaneum.

Recipe: Peach Bruschetta with Red Onion, Ricotta, and Basil

The peaches are great this year, so sweet that my mind is trying to turn them savory. I’ve been adding them to salads, arranging them with prosciutto in place of cantaloupe, making peach soup with hot chilies. A pinch of salt does wonders for peaches. Here I’ve chosen red onion, a few drops of champagne vinegar, basil, olive oil, and black pepper to highlight their savory potential, mellowing it all out with a bed of gentle ricotta. Try these as an antipasto offering served with a glass of pink prosecco. The color combination is extraordinary. Such beauty summer sun and rain can produce.

Peach Bruschetta with Red Onion, Ricotta, and Basil

(Serves 4 as an antipasto)

3 ripe summer peaches, peeled and sliced into thin wedges
1 not-too-thin slice red onion, cut into little cubes
Extra-virgin olive oil
About ½ teaspoon Champagne vinegar
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
I baguette, cut on an angle into slices about ½ inch thick
1 cup whole milk ricotta
A dozen basil leaves, cut into chiffonade

Place the peaches in a bowl. Add the red onion. Drizzle about a tablespoon or so of olive oil over the peaches (enough to just coat them well). Add the vinegar, and season with a pinch of salt and black pepper. Toss gently.

Toast the baguette slices on both sides. Top each one with a slathering of ricotta. Spoon on a few peach slices, drizzling some of the peach liquid over the top. Garnish with the basil. Serve right away.

Recipe: Braised Zucchini with Fennel, Black Olives, and Bay Leaves

Rumor has it Sicilians have devised 300 ways to prepare eggplant. That may be. Not so zucchini. Where is all that Sicilian creativity when we really need it? I was rummaging through my old half Sicilian head and also consulting my vast collection of Southern Italian cookbooks in search of zucchini inspiration and wasn’t coming up with anything particularly exciting. So I did what any good cook does. I switched gears and moved my culinary brain over to another venue. I chose Provence, not the real Provence but what my palate tells me is the Provence that should exist (and maybe it does). And I knew I needed to get a move on, since zucchini are everywhere now, getting stronger, bigger, multiplying, and they’re potentially so boring when not in the right hands. I think I have the right hands. Trust me, I’ve come up with something good.

Instead of reaching for anchovies (why do I always do that?), I chose thyme, bay leaf, a splash of pastis, and Niçoise olives to flavor up a handful of gorgeous, dark green, still relatively small zucchini I picked up at the Union Square market from my friends at Migliorelli Farm. And I decided to use a rather large baton cut (see photo), somehow reasoning that this was more French than the usual thin slices or small cubes I automatically go for when I’m fashioning an Italian zucchini recipe (they were how my grandmother and mother cut it, so I assume they’re the Italian way). Ever notice how vegetables can taste different depending on how you slice them? No? Give it some head thought next time. Zucchini, to my palate, tastes a drop fishy when cut into thin rounds, but in a good way (and, no, that’s not because I tend to add anchovies), but choosing the baton shape for this recipe I felt I achieved a mellower flavor, possibly, I’m thinking, because this cut is meatier, allowing less crispy caramelization and more clean zucchini flavor.

I ate this as a main course with bread, but it would go nicely with grilled fish, maybe a handful of little rougets, seasoned with olive oil and lemon.

Braised Zucchini with Fennel, Black Olives, and Bay Leaves

(Serves 4 or 5)

Extra-virgin olive oil
1 large summer onion, cut into small dice, using some of the tender green stem
2 fennel bulbs, trimmed and cut into not too thin strips
5 medium zucchini, cut into approximately  2-inch batons, not too thick
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 summer garlic cloves, thinly sliced
A drizzle of pastis, such as Pernod (about 2 teaspoons at the most)
2 large round summer tomatoes, peeled and chopped
2 fresh bay leaves
8 large thyme sprigs, stemmed, the leaves left whole
A handful of Niçoise olives, pitted or not

In a large skillet, heat about 3 tablespoons of olive oil over medium flame. Add the onion and the fennel, and sauté until both are just starting to soften, about 4 minutes. Add the zucchini, season with salt and black pepper, and give everything a stir. Let this sauté about 2 minutes. Add the garlic, and let it release its perfume without browning. Add the pastis, and let it boil for a minute. Add the tomatoes and the bay leaves, and simmer at a lively bubble until all the vegetables are just tender and the tomatoes have given off some juice, about 5 minutes longer. Add the thyme and the olives, and give everything a good stir. Turn off the heat, and let the dish sit on the stove for about 5 minutes to allow the flavors to come together. Check for seasoning and add a drizzle of fresh olive oil. Serve hot, warm, or at room temperature.

Note: I put the olives in at the end so they wouldn’t simmer and add bitterness. That’s why you don’t see them in the photo, which I took half way through the cooking.

The Wonder of Gluttony

Here’s another excerpt from my book in progress The Making of an Italian Cook.

Several years of disco dancing beat the cooking bug right out of me. I moved to the city, enrolled at N.Y.U., ostensibly to study journalism, thinking it would be useful to write about cheap wine or human rights abuse, now my two main interests, but I still had no life plan. And now that my cooking was temporarily pushed to a dormant area of my brain, I couldn’t get out of my own way. My teenage cooking gave me purpose, and now it was gone. Confusion set in, but oddly it didn’t even matter to me at that point (maybe not a good sign. I should have picked up on that one sooner). Bars took the place of discos and Mickey Ruskin’s 1 U, as it was called (its address was 1 University Place) was the most alluring place around, and conveniently located about four blocks from my dark, stiflingly overheated, roach infested studio apartment. Scott, attending Parsons School of Design, moved in caddy corner to me, finding a similar studio, but his had sunlight and no roaches. I took a job at Barnes & Noble, wrote journalism as if it were fiction, and got into a rolling rut of drinking tooth staining wine and trying to figure what I was suppose to do with straight men.

1 U didn’t have much design appeal. It was just a big, low ceiling box of a place, spare, not even dark, no coziness, and no boho trappings, like Max’s, Ruskin’s earlier club, except for the clientele. What it looked like was a suburban living room, but it served as a classroom for Larry Rivers and his fluid table of young and not so young groupies. Mickey Ruskin, with his phenomenally huge nose and famously greasy black hair made sure they weren’t bothered by riff raff like me. I preferred the bar anyway, a good place to bum cigarettes and seek out the gayest or most outlandish looking men in the place, and there were plenty of exotics to choose from (did I say I was trying to focus on straight men? Oh sorry, my mistake).

Even though I had stopped cooking cold turkey (actually up to this point I had never even cooked a turkey), I was still very attuned to flavors and aromas. The differences between the smoke from a Dunhill Red, an unfiltered Gauloise, or a Marlboro Light, the thick, oakey taste of a California Chardonnay, something I hated from sip one, deli salami cured with too much nitrites that choked the back of my throat, or the beautiful taste of cherries in season as opposed to the winter supermarket offerings, all these things I’m sure would have gone undetected before my frantic cooking stint of several years back. I had awakened my palate and, as I’d soon find out, it would never go back to sleep.

Sitting at Mickey’s bar one night with my cruddy glass of Cabernet (one night? For a while it seemed like it was every night), I made the acquaintance of the fattest man I have ever seen. He tapped me on the back, offering me an invitation to join him. “Thank you but I’m happy here,” is what I said, and I suppose that was true enough.  Oysters and Manhattans, he insisted, were a marriage made in heaven and he wanted me to share this experience with him. I think I was fascinated by his girth, maybe over 400 pounds, and, for such a huge man, his elegant gray linen suit and well ironed powder pink dress shirt. I let him take my arm and relocate me to a table right next to the River’s group. The Manhattans and Blue Point oysters came quickly. I had never had a Manhattan before, a mix of Rye, sweet vermouth, and a touch of bitters. I thought it tasted thick, a little smoky, and too sweet, but it was going down well enough even though I seldom drank straight liquor, maybe the occasional martini. I love oysters and ate them frequently with my father when we’d go to steak houses together, but with this particular drink I thought they tasted metallic. He finished his drink in about two gulps, slipping the oysters down quickly too, and they kept on coming, the Manhattans, the oysters.

 From what I remember, he seemed like a very nice man, although I can’t remember his name, possibly John. I told him I volunteered for Amnesty International, something I’d actually be doing since high school, and this began a kind of dry talk about Nigeria and the ban on political activity that had just been lifted, something that tragically didn’t last long enough. And as I recall he was a for real journalist, not a ‘to hell with the facts’ type like I obviously was studying to become. Possibly he wrote for The Wall Street Journal, I think I remember that, and I gathered he was somewhat of a political conservative, except in the field of eating. One thing for certain, he was obviously one of those insatiable people who never got enough, couldn’t put on the breaks, a type I’d heard about but not yet, in my young life, met, except for the few heroin addicts I’d know in high school. Addiction to drugs I came somewhat to understand, having watched several of my young friends deeply immersed, tragically to the point of no return, but to just eat and eat and eat with no fullness ever, this I couldn’t wrap my culinary head around. How is it, I though, that the food just doesn’t eventually fill the belly and start coming back up the throat? I suppose it’s a process that comes about by sheer will. His stomach must have been stretched to breaking. I have, I think, an fairly early cut off point when it comes to food, except for many types of pasta dishes such as spaghetti with clams and possibly penne with lamb ragu, but generally speaking I stop eating when I’m full (and there are still times when I can’t pull the plug quick enough on my red wine consumption, although at least now I drink better wine). This man, it seemed, could never ever get enough. As elegant as he was, he frightened me.

‘John’ must have put an order in for a non-stop flow of this very strange combination of flavors. I would have preferred a vodka martini with the oysters. Why did he like this so much? All in all I had maybe three drinks, possibly four. But he was ordering four for each of mine. A marriage made in heaven, he repeated. Each new marriage was seemingly a drop in the bucket for him. After a few rounds it started to not seem like such a good marriage to me. I stopped eating the oysters, but continued to drink. The Manhattans tasted better without the oysters so I concentrated on those. But then, wouldn’t you know it, I began to see him double, which was quite a shock, since his huge form now seemed to be taking up the entire room. My brow broke out in a sweat. A wave of nausea flooded up from under my rib cage. My heartbeat quickened. And then, of course, I was off, racing to the bathroom, puking so violently, I truly thought I was going to pass out (thankfully this didn’t happen. The thought of being 86ed from 1 U would have been a tragic uprooting).

It seemed I was in that bathroom for quite a long time, but Big ‘John’ never came looking for me. When I finally wrenched my head up from the toilet, a little blood running from my lip (had I slammed my face into the bowl?), I collected myself as best as I could, rinsing out my mouth, running my fingers through my damp hair, putting on a little blush (always makes a girl feel fresh after a bout of vomiting) and started walking toward the door, the nausea still churning, my throat on fire, but there he was, another 2 dozen oysters set out in front of him, two more Manhattans. “Come sit,” he said to me, cradling his arm around my waist, seemingly oblivious to the passing of time and what I might have been up to. But now I viewed him as the devil. What makes a person so insatiable? How is what he does relate to eating as most people understand it? What goes on in his brain that makes him need more and more and more and more, never ending, and why the hell did he think this food and beverage were a marriage made in heaven?

Recipe: Zucchini Soup with Mint and Ricotta Cream

Okay, so zucchini is now here, and it’s just the beginning of a long season with this potentially boring vegetable. But get it now while it’s young and sleek and truly delicious, for soon it’ll be big and starchy and not much good for anything except stuffing and baking with rice, herbs, and sausage (actually a great Southern Italian standard, a real nonna dish).

If you have these things growing in your garden, I know you’re dreading the future, when your zucchini will start to multiply like crazy and grow huge as torpedoes. Don’t worry, I’ll be posting appropriate recipes for dealing with that problem later in the summer (including one for that sausage-stuffed zucchini), but for now, here’s a light and delicate soup to make with the firm little ones I’m now finding at my Greenmarkets.

Oh, and don’t forget the ultimate gift from zucchini, its lovely yellow blossoms. I’ll work on some new recipes for those, too, and send them along to you ASAP.

Happy zucchini season.

And for your listening pleasure, here’s Tim Curry singing “The Zucchini Song.”

Zucchini Soup with Mint and Ricotta Cream

(Serves 4)

Extra-virgin olive oil
1 fairly large spring onion, diced, using some of the tender green stalk
1 large starchy baking potato, peeled and cut into small dice
2 fresh spring garlic cloves, sliced
6 small young zucchini, unskinned and cut into medium dice
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
About 5 big scrapings of nutmeg
1 cup chicken broth
The grated zest from 1 small lemon
1 cup whole milk ricotta
About 2 dozen fresh spearmint leaves

In a large soup pot, heat about 3 tablespoons of olive oil over medium flame. Add the onion and the potato, and let them soften for a minute or so. Now add the garlic and the zucchini, season with salt, black pepper, and the nutmeg, and sauté to release all the flavors, about 2 minutes. Add the chicken broth, and then add enough water to just cover the vegetables. Bring to a boil. Turn the heat down a touch, and cook at a lively simmer, uncovered, until all the vegetables are tender when poked with a knife, about 15 minutes.

Purée the soup in a food processor until smooth, and pour it back into a clean pot. Add the lemon zest, and taste for seasoning, adding more salt and black pepper if you think you need it. The soup should have a medium-thick consistency, so add a little warm water if you have to.

Put the ricotta into a food processor. Add about 3 tablespoons of olive oil, a pinch of salt, and a few gratings of black pepper. Add a drizzle of hot water, and pulse until the mixture is smooth and creamy (it should have the consistency of crème fraîche). Put the ricotta mix in a small bowl. Chop up half of the mint leaves, and mix them into the ricotta.

When ready to serve, reheat the soup gently if necessary. Ladle it into soup bowls, and top each serving with a dollop of the ricotta cream. Cut the remaining mint into julienne, and scatter it on the soup.

Warming up for an evening at Le Jardin.

Here’s another excerpt from my work in progress The Making of an Italian Cook.

Disco Pasta

Recipe: Cavatelli with Italian Tuna, Capers, and Celery Leaves

I get the feeling some little hormonal glitch turned me into a fag hag at a relatively young age (although honestly I’m not sure at what age that typically hits). In any case I began collecting boyfriends in school, and in the early seventies they steered me to many of the new gay discos that were opening up in the city. Especially beloved was Le Jardin, at the old Diplomat Hotel on 43rd Street. It became my home away from home.

I never thought post high school would feel so confused, but I suppose that’s what happens when you don’t have a plan. I was still messing around in my mother’s kitchen, which certainly had its rewards, but my heavy cooking in this period was possibly more occupational therapy than anything forward moving, and since nobody at home seemed too concerned about my future, I figured I’d cook and dance my life away, until my true purpose for being stepped up and slapped me in the face.

The starting point for a night at Le Jardin, or the Leisure Den, as we came to call it, was always Mo’s closet. My mother was oddly unperturbed when Liti and the boys and I ripped through her wardrobe several times a week to assemble the most perfect get-ups we could manage. Beauty or even attractiveness were never the point. Our priority was to be whirling works of art. The mix, at least on my end, presented itself as part ballerina, part Mamma Roma, and part Locust Valley socialite, the look tilting more toward one or the other on any given night depending on my mood and what was left after the boys finished their digging.

After achieving the desired effect, costume wise, we’d all down a few gin and Frescas, hop in my rickety Renault 10, with its passenger door roped shut (more or less), and sped away into the city, WBLS cranked to the hilt, the station that played the most fabulous up-to-the-second disco. We usually pulled up to the Leisure Den after about 30 minutes of raucous driving, paid our six bucks cover, which included two drinks—not a bad deal—and no I.D. check required, which was a good thing since my sister Liti was about fifteen. We were immediately pulled in, I’d say almost consumed, by the pounding, screaming, whistle-blowing, slippery bodies, mostly men of course, the vibrating floor, the strobe ball, the mix of everyone’s sweat and perfume. We’d order a vodka and grapefruit juice from Joey or Jackson, the two ultra-cute bar guys, and within minutes I was spinning my equilibrium away with Egon Von Furstenberg, a popper intermittently held under my nose by an anonymous dance floormate (god, what a horrid smell that was, but I suppose the dirty sock aroma appealed to a portion of the clientele).

“Honey Bee,” “Rock the Boat,” “Soul Makossa” (loved that one), “I’ll Always Love my Mama” (oh the boys went ballistic for that tune), “The Theme from Shaft” (an unlikely hit, in my opinion), “Doctor’s Orders,” “Dirty Old Man,” “Love Train,” “Armed and Extremely Dangerous,” “The Love I Lost,” “Corazon” (a personal fave), “Pillow Talk” (not really disco, but it served its purpose), “Never, Never Gonna Give You Up,” by Barry White (he vas a genius), “Love Is the Message,” “Smarty Pants” (cute song), “When Will I See You Again,” by the Three Degrees (usually a winder-downer tune for the after 5 a.m. group). All these songs and a zillion more would throb through my body hour after hour, night after night. My abandon was real. I was extremely grateful to lose my sense of self, much like what happened while I cooked. I’d leave Le Jardin with my head still pulsating, preventing any anxiety from seeping in, and it would continue to do so hours after I left the place, sometimes even after I woke up, which was generally around 1 p.m. and almost always in my own bed, I might add, for in my case, dancing was not about enticing, it was about being isolated and lost, but in a decidedly positive way. This was obviously not the case with everyone there, considering the antics that went on in the bathrooms, but Le Jardin made a place for everyone, Truman Capote, Jackie Kennedy, and even me. As much of a cliché as this is, and it is in certain circles, I felt like a gay man trapped in a woman’s body. Not a bad place to be if I didn’t examine it too closely.

All that gyrating really got me hungry. While dancing I never noticed hunger, that’s how transfixing disco was for me, but coming home to Greenvale at 5 a.m., starving, makeup smeared, and freezing with dried sweat (“my chiffon is wet, darling, my chiffon is wet”), was a catalyst for a new branch of my self-imposed cooking class, an opportunity to learn how to cook pasta, improvisationally and very quickly. The opening of a 24-hour Pathmark right near our house made post-disco shopping a dream (sure felt like a dream). That and Mo’s well-stocked Italian pantry, and in summer Dick’s vegetable garden, had me covered. I can trace some of the best food aromas of my life back to those giddy, urgent olive-oil-laced 5 a.m. cooking forays.

At that time, culinarily speaking, I made many grave mistakes. For instance I learned that spaghetti, semi-raw green bell pepper, gorgonzola, and anchovies were not, at least in my young hands, a successful combination. There were other creations as dreadful and now thankfully forgotten, at least by me. I don’t know if any of my long lost boy pals are still harboring resentment, but if they are, all I can say is, hey, it was a beginning. I came a long way. I did learn how to use flourishes with some skill and  made great strides in incorporating lemon zest, capers, prosciutto, wine (adding it early on, not at the end), leftover bits of salami, capicola, olives, and hot chilies into my pastas with good results. I finally understood how to control my garlic, an ingredient that at the time was sorely abused by both Italian-Americans and hippies running health food restaurants.

Constructing a well balanced pasta sauce, as I soon discovered, was not as easy as it looked. Throwing a handful of raw vegetables into a pan of bubbling tomatoes resulted in something that tasted like a really bad diner version of minestrone. This was when I learned to sauté to coax out flavor from broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, all the vegetables that can be so insipid unless lovingly tended to.  And in my haste to get the food on the table I came upon a truism: Canned tomatoes were at their best when cooked boldly and quickly over a high flame. This was something not practiced by most Italian-Americans at the time. The slow simmer was the usual approach, which is fine for a ragu but not when you want to turn out a fresh little tomato sauce. I also found little use for tomato paste, a household staple. Years later I would abandon it altogether. I realized that underpinnings for pasta sauces—onions, celery, carrot, even frantically thrown together ones—needed to cook in olive oil or butter before anything else got added, so they could release their beautiful sugars and aromas. Cooking was a complicated business, and being my own teacher made me at times feel both stubborn and retarded, taking ten times longer to understand basics than if I were at a real school, but that’s were I was at that time and place. I was starving, and I wanted to cook nice things for all my hungry friends.

Cavatelli with Italian Tuna, Capers, and Celery Leaves

(Serves 4 or 5 as a 6 a.m. pick-me-up)

Extra-virgin olive oil
A small piece of fatty prosciutto end, chopped (about ½ cup)
2 small, tender inner celery stalks, cut into small dice, plus a handful of celery leaves, stemmed but left whole (you’ll want about ½ cup)
1 small onion, preferably a fresh summer type
A small palmful of fennel seeds
2 garlic cloves, peeled and thinly sliced
A tiny splash of Sambuca
4 large, round summer tomatoes, peeled and diced, or 1 35-ounce can of plum tomatoes, well chopped, with the juice
Salt
A small palmful of dried chili flakes
1 pound cavatelli pasta
1 can Italian tuna packed in olive oil, drained
A big palmful of salt-packed Sicilian capers, soaked for about 10 minutes, rinsed and dried

Set up a large pot of pasta cooking water over high heat, and bring it to a boil.

In a large skillet heat 3 tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat. Add the prosciutto, the celery, the onion, and the fennel seeds, and sauté until everything is soft and fragrant, about 3 or 4 minutes. Add the garlic, and let it cook for about a minute without coloring. Add the Sambuca, and let it boil away. Add the tomatoes, season with salt and the dried chili flakes, and cook, uncovered, at a lively bubble for about 10 minutes. Turn off the heat.

Add a generous amount of salt to the boiling water, and then drop in the cavatelli, giving it a stir to make sure it’s not sticking.

When the cavatelli is al dente, drain it, and pour it into a large serving bowl. Drizzle on a generous amount of fresh olive oil, and add the celery leaves. Give it a quick toss. Add the tuna and capers, leaving the tuna in biggish chunks. Add the tomato sauce, and toss again gently. Serve right away.