Erica De Mane

Recipe: Chicken alla Cacciatora, Late Summer Style

It’s the time of year for tender transitions. Isn’t it that way with your cooking too right now, as you try to integrate a little depth into your dishes without completely relinquishing that summer vibe? This is a cooking truth. We’ve got that settled.

With this little ache in my heart working on my culinary head, I zeroed in on lightening up chicken alla cacciatora, always a winter dish when I was growing up, and still one for me now that I’m more or less an adult. Why now? Because lots of summer tomatoes are still around, and fresh herbs, which I added at the last minute to retain clarity. My winter versions always included canned tomatoes and rich herbs, rosemary in particular but also on occasion thyme. I gave this dish a lift with a little fresh marjoram and a generous amount of Italian parsley. Nice.

Chicken alla Cacciatora, Late Summer Style

(Serves 4)

Extra-virgin olive oil
4 whole chicken legs, separated into thigh and drumstick
A sprinkling of sugar
Salt
Black pepper
1 approximately ¼-inch-thick half round of pancetta, cut into small dice
2 shallots, cut into small dice
1 tender inner celery stalk, cut into small dice, with a handful of the leaves, roughly chopped
1 carrot, cut into small dice
1 garlic clove, very thinly sliced
A few big scrapings of nutmeg
½ cup dry white wine
½ cup chicken broth, homemade if possible
3 medium-size round summer tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and cut into a medium dice (also drained, if very juicy)
5 sprigs fresh marjoram, the leaves left whole
A handful of flat-leaf parsley, the leaves left whole

In a large skillet, heat about 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium flame. When hot, add the chicken pieces, seasoning them with the sugar, salt, and black pepper. Brown them on both sides. Take the chicken from the skillet, and pour off all but about 2 tablespoons of fat.

Add the pancetta, and let it get crisp, about 4 minutes. Add the shallots, celery, and carrot, and sauté a few minutes to soften. Add the garlic and the nutmeg, and sauté briefly, just to release their flavors. Return the chicken to the skillet. Add the white wine, and let it bubble for a minute. Add the chicken broth. Turn the heat down low, cover the skillet, and simmer for about 20 minutes, turning the chicken once or twice.

Add the tomatoes, and simmer uncovered at a low bubble until the chicken is cooked through and tender, about another 15 minutes. Season with a little more salt and black pepper.

Take the chicken from the skillet, and place it on a rounded serving platter. With a slotted spoon, scoop out most of the tomato chunks, and spoon them over the chicken.

Boil down the liquid left in the skillet until it thickens slightly. Pour it over the chicken, and then scatter on the marjoram and the parsley. Serve hot.

Recipe: Ciambotta with Baked Eggs, Savory, and Ragusano Cheese

Does the end of summer scare you, make you feel like diving head first into a big red watermelon and never coming out? I sometimes feel that way.

Got anxiety? I’ve found that a good solution is to gather what I can of the waning summer produce—eggplant, tomatoes, maybe corn, zucchini, sweet and hot peppers—and fashion them into something with a little more structure than your typical freewheeling summer fare, a dish that can address that back-to-school reflux burning up your throat. Cook something that means business. Turning on the oven will help you feel like an adult on a path to a serious life, walking in sturdy pumps, not flip-flops.

So here it is, a ciambotta, a summer dish, yes, but when piled into a baking dish, with eggs cracked on top, and finished with Ragusano, that excellent Sicilian caciocavallo cheese, it’s, well, a casserole, and a casserole always makes me feel as if I’ve really got a handle on the situation. I think.

Ciambotta with Baked Eggs, Savory, and Ragusano Cheese

(Serves 3 as a light supper)

Extra-virgin olive oil
3 red summer scallions, chopped
2 small inner celery stalks, chopped, plus a handful of celery leaves, lightly chopped
1 red bell pepper, seeded and cut into small dice
½ a fresh red peperoncino, seeded and minced
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 medium eggplants, unpeeled, cut into small cubes
2 medium zucchini, cut into small cubes
About 6 large sprigs of summer savory, the leaves lightly chopped
¼ cup dry Marsala wine
Salt
3 medium-size round summer tomatoes, peeled, seeded, chopped, lightly salted, and left to drain in a colander over a bowl for 30 minutes (save the tomato water)
½ cup capers, well dried
6 large eggs, room temperature
A small chunk of Ragusano cheese (a Sicilian caciacavallo), roughly grated
A handful of basil leaves, lightly chopped

In a very large skillet (one you can put in the oven, perhaps cast iron), heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil over a medium flame. Add the scallion, celery, red bell pepper, and peperoncino, and sauté until fragrant, about 4 minutes. Add the garlic, and sauté a minute longer. Add the eggplant, zucchini, and savory, season with salt, and sauté about 5 minutes longer, covering the skillet for a few minutes if the vegetables get too dry. Add the Marsala, and let it boil for a few seconds. Add the tomatoes, and simmer, uncovered, at a lively bubble for about 8 minutes longer, or until all the vegetables are just tender, adding the reserved tomato water if the ciambotta looks dry. The texture should be chunky, not too cooked down, with the tomatoes adding some liquid. Add the celery leaves and the capers, and season with a little more salt if needed. Give it a stir.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Make 6 indentations by pressing a spoon down into the surface of the ciambotta, more or less equally spaced, getting them as deep as you can. Crack an egg into each one. Season each egg with a little salt, and scatter on the Ragusano. Give everything a drizzle of fresh olive oil, and bake until the whites of the eggs are set but the yokes are still a little runny, about 12 to 15 minutes. Garnish with the basil. Serve hot.

Tomato plant, by Picasso

Recipe: Tomato Torta with Crème Fraîche, Parmigiano, and Thyme

Once or twice a year I make a summer tomato tart. It happens when Barbara Calamari arrives at my apartment with a big bag of the Italian heirloom tomatoes she grows each year at her upstate palazzo (except for last year, which was a complete bust because of a tomato blight—so sad). This year, with all the heat, she’s had an especially sweet, rich, early crop. She usually plants a large Neapolitan cherry tomato that I really love in salads or just sprinkled with salt, but when she gives me enough of them they go into my tart, simply cut in half, lined up in circles in my pastry shell, baked to just withering, with a burst of juice still locked into each one. This year she gave me plenty.

I create a different tomato tart each year, inspired by the kind of tomatoes I’m using and, uh, I’m not sure exactly what else—although this year I can say for a fact that the tart was inspired by stuff I had in the refrigerator, which was fresh thyme, a half tub of crème fraîche, some Niçoise olives, a small chunk of Parmigiano, and a few eggs. It tastes a lot like a pizza.

You’ll want a nine-inch tart pan with a removable bottom for this.

Tomato Torta with Crème Fraîche, Parmigiano, and Thyme

(Serves 4 as a lunch or light dinner, or 8 as an appetizer)

For the crust:

2 cups all-purpose flour
5 large thyme sprigs, the leaves lightly chopped
Salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1¼ sticks cold unsalted butter, cut into bits
¼ cup cold white wine, maybe a bit more

For the filling:

⅓ cup crème fraîche
2 large eggs
½ cup freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano cheese
A drizzle of whole milk
About 6 big scrapings of nutmeg
1 small garlic clove, minced
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
A handful of Niçoise olives, pitted and cut in half
5 thyme sprigs, the leaves very light chopped

Plus:

About 2 dozen cherry tomatoes, cut in half
A drizzle of olive oil

Put the flour, thyme, salt, and sugar in the bowl of a food processor, and pulse briefly to blend. Add the butter bits, and pulse quickly two or three times, just to break them up. Drizzle on the white wine, and pulse once or twice more, just until you can squeeze a bit of the dough with your fingers and it holds together. If it’s still dry, add a tiny drizzle of wine or cold water, and pulse again. You don’t want to pulse until it forms a ball; the texture should be crumbly and loose. Turn the dough out onto a work surface, and bring it together into a big ball with your hands. Give it a quick two kneads, just to make sure it’s holding together. Cover it with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for about 2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Take the dough from the refrigerator, unwrap it, and place it on a lightly floured work surface. Give it a few whacks with a rolling pin to flatten its surface. Now roll it out, adding a little more flour if it starts to stick, until you have a round about 2 inches wider than your tart pan. Drape the dough into the pan, pressing it into the sides. Run the rolling pin over the top to cut off excess. Build up the sides a bit, so that the dough extends slightly over the edge of the pan. Give the bottom a bunch of light pricks with a skewer or pointy knife.  Stick the tart shell back in the refrigerator for about 10 minutes, or until the oven heats up.

Now you’ll want to blind bake (pre-bake) the tart crust. Cover the tart crust with a big piece of aluminum foil, and on top of that put dried beans or those little ceramic thingies some people buy just for this purpose. Bake for 20 minutes. The edges should be very lightly golden. Take the tart shell from the oven, and let it sit on a rack for a few minutes to cool off.

Whisk all the ingredients for the filling together in a bowl.

Line the tart shell with cherry tomatoes, cut side up, working in a circular pattern. Slowly pour the filling over the tomatoes, making sure none of it seeps  between the pan and the dough. Place the tart on a baking sheet, and bake for about 30 to 35 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown and the top is set.  Let the tart rest for about 30 minutes before slicing and serving.

Still life with eggplant, Picasso, 1946.

Recipe: Eggplant Rollatini with Ricotta, Mortadella, and Arugula

Southern Italians love to stuff and roll food. You’d almost think they didn’t have enough fun in their lives and were desperate for entertainment. Making food rolls is fun, and it’s a big feature in cucina povera, since it stretches a meal so you can feed a group. To me, little rolls can be prettier than just plain stuffed offerings, too. Sicily has lots of rolled and stuffed dishes in its fine repertoire, and they usually go by the name involtini. The rollee can be skinny slices of swordfish or tuna, gutted sardines, tough cuts of pork or lamb that need long simmering to become edible, or sheets of zucchini or sweet peppers or, in this case, eggplant. I’ve even made rolls using butternut squash (gotta be careful not to overcook them or they’ll turn into mush; maybe good for a pasta sauce in that case, though).

Rollatini is the usual Neapolitan term for the roll-and-stuff, and eggplant rollatini was the queen of the New York pizza parlor takeout menu when I was a kid, usually filled with ricotta and smothered in red sauce. I did love that dish, but here I’ve done it my way. It’s much lighter, with its uncooked tomato sauce and with baby arugula used more as an herb than as a salad green, giving the completed baked dish a spicy end-of-summer feel. For a completely vegetarian version, just leave out the mortadella. For a stronger, meaty taste, replace the mortadella with a small dice of a soft sopressata.

Eggplant Rollatini with Ricotta, Mortadella, and Arugula

(Serves 4  as a main course)

For the sauce:

2 large, ripe summer tomatoes, skinned, cut into small dice, and drained for about ½ hour
Salt
1 fresh summer garlic clove, very thinly sliced
Extra-virgin olive oil
A few small sprigs of marjoram, the leaves lightly chopped
Freshly ground black pepper

Also:

2 medium eggplants (long and thin are better than round ones for this), partially peeled and cut lengthwise into approximately ½-inch-thick slices

For the filling:

1 packed cup baby arugula, well stemmed
1½ cups whole milk ricotta
¼ pound mortadella, cut into very small cubes
1 fresh small summer garlic clove, minced
1 egg
¾ cup grana Padano cheese
About 10 scrapings of nutmeg
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Place all the ingredients for the sauce in a bowl, and give them a stir. Add about ¼ cup olive oil. Let  sit at room temperature to develop flavor

Brush the eggplant slices on both sides with olive oil, and season them with salt and black pepper. Place them on a sheet pan, and roast them until tender and lightly browned, about 15 to 20 minutes. No need to turn them.

To make the filling, chop about ¾ cup of the arugula, and place it in a large bowl. Add the ricotta, mortadella, garlic, egg, ½ cup of the grana Padano, the nutmeg, salt, and black pepper, and mix well.

Set out a baking dish large enough to hold all the rolls loosely. Coat it with a little olive oil.

When the eggplant is cool enough to handle, lay the slices, browner side down, on a work surface. Spoon about a tablespoon of the ricotta mixture onto each slice, and roll them up. Lay the rolls, seam side down, in the baking dish. Pour on the tomato sauce so it falls mostly between the rolls. Scatter on the remaining grana Padano, and bake until bubbly and lightly browned, about 20 minutes. Garnish with the remaining arugula leaves, and serve hot or warm.

Recipe: Pomodoro Crudo with Capers, Almonds, Peperoncino, and Basil

I was recently talking with my friend Eddie, who’s just started doing some serious cooking, about good things to do with summer tomatoes. He wanted to make something impressive but relatively effortless, and pomodoro crudo, a raw tomato sauce, was the first thing I thought of. Not only is it easy, but it highlights summer tomatoes like nothing else. The secret, I believe, is in the chop, and in the bath of good olive oil I give them. A small dice (I don’t even bother to skin them) is essential not only for texture but, it seems to me, for flavor too. Sliced tomatoes can sometimes have a slight sea taste. (I have no idea why this would be. Any ideas out there?) A small dice, to my palate, produces a full blown sweetness that just bursts forth. And then, to expand the flavor even further, you want to let the tomato cubes sit in some really good olive oil, so the oil can mingle with the tomato essence to create a beautiful sauce for pasta or fish, or bruschetta, or any number of things. (For mozzarella? Definitely.)  And if you do toss it with pasta, like I did here, you’ll notice the heat from the pasta opens up all the flavors in the sauce even further, so maybe that’s the best way to enjoy its fragrance.

Tomatoes and olive oil are the starting point. If you want you can just add a little salt and leave it at that. Lovely. But since I always want to play with my food, I like to include a few flourishes. I make this sauce several times each summer and never the same way. I gave Eddie a few suggestions for add-ins, and I think he wound up including red onion, parsley, a little dill, pine nuts, and olives of some sort. Sounds good. I can never resist adding summer garlic, so that was a given for the version I made last night; then I threw in toasted almonds, good Sicilian salt-packed capers, a fresh, minced peperoncino, which added a subtle heat that didn’t overwhelm the goodness of the tomatoes. And for herbs I went with tarragon and basil. I used this on pasta, but these flavorings to me also suggest seafood. Had I had a few catfish fillets on hand, I would have sautéed them up crispy and spooned the sauce on them.

No matter what you decide to include in the personal touch department, a crucial step with pomodoro crudo is draining your tomatoes. Summer tomatoes, unless you work with the plum variety, give off tons of juice, and you don’t want all that liquid in your sauce. So after you chop the tomatoes, sit them in a colander or strainer, toss them with a little salt, and let the tomato water collect in a bowl. And keep that gorgeous, delicious water, especially if you’re planning to use the sauce to dress pasta. It’s the perfect thing if you find the finished pasta dish a bit dry. I wound up using about a quarter cup of it to loosen my sauce, and it had the added bonus of making the whole thing even more voluptuous.

If while trying to fashion a pomodoro crudo you feel a little stuck, creatively speaking, here are a few other flavor combinations I’ve had success with:

—A small dice of cantaloupe, basil, red onion, mozzarella
—Thyme, parsley, orange zest, black olives
—Fresh mint, pine nuts, grated mild pecorino, garlic
—Pistachios, green olives, scallions, fresh marjoram
—Peperoncino, diced anchovies, garlic, baby arugula
—A small dice of both soppressata and caciocavallo, basil, garlic
—Red shallot, tarragon, chervil, capers, lemon zest
—Canned Italian tuna, capers, green olives, garlic, parsley
—Chopped speck, a small amount of sage, parsley, scallions
—Walnuts, garlic, crumbled ricotta salata, basil

Pomodoro Crudo with Capers, Almonds, Peperoncino, and Basil

(Serves 6 as a first course)

5 round summer tomatoes, cut into small dice
Salt
Extra-virgin olive oil
About ⅓ cup salt-packed capers, soaked, rinsed, and drained
About ⅓ cup lightly toasted slivered almonds
2 fresh summer garlic cloves, very thinly sliced
1 fresh red peperoncino, minced
A big handful of basil leaves, lightly chopped
A few tarragon sprigs, the leaves lightly chopped
1 pound fusilli, penne, or ziti

Place the tomatoes in a colander or strainer over a bowl. Sprinkle them with a little salt, toss, and let them drain for about a half hour. If they are extremely juicy, you might let them go a little longer. Save the tomato water.

Place the drained tomatoes in a serving bowl. Add ⅓ cup of olive oil and all the other ingredients for the sauce, except for the basil and tarragon. Let sit for about 20 minutes, unrefrigerated, to develop flavor.

Cook the pasta al dente, and drain it well. Add it to the bowl. Add a little extra salt, and give it all a toss. Add the basil and tarragon, and toss gently. If the pasta seems dry, add a bit of the tomato water. Serve right away. To my taste, pasta with hot chilies tastes best without grated cheese, but that’s up to you.

I served my Sambuca shrimp along with a salad of string beans, shallots, and toasted almonds.

Recipe: Shrimp with Sambuca, Summer Garlic, and Basil

For years I’ve been spending occasional weekends at La Duchesse Anne, a boho inn in Mt. Tremper, New York, a town near Woodstock. It is one of the last or possibly the very last of the inns and restaurants in what was once called the French Catskills that were originally run by people from Brittany who came to New York in the 1940s and ’50s. Most of those people opened restaurants in Manhattan, but some who didn’t like the vibe there wound up clustered together in the rather run-down (at least today) mountainy resorts along Route 28.

Fifteen or so years ago, when I first visited the area, there were a handful of those cute French places left, but little by little they closed. La Duchesse Anne seems to be the one holdout. Its original owners packed it in a few years ago, but they leased the place to a young Breton chef named Fabrice. He and his wife, mini dog, giant cat, and now little boy moved in to get the place back on its feet. I was at first heartbroken by what he had done to the menu. Gone were the kidneys in mustard cream, sweetbreads sautéed in tons of butter, chicken gizzard salad (a great hangover helper—it was on the breakfast menu), crêpes with Gruyère, and the previous owners’ famous game dinners with platters of things like venison, house-made wild boar pâté, and ostrich. Those quirky French specialties were mostly replaced by more standard fare that you might find on a country club menu, such as seared salmon, roast chicken, and steaks. Everything was nicely done, and Fabrice does have more up-to-date ideas about vegetables, actually serving them in pieces and slightly crunchy (the old owners puréed every vegetable to death). I missed the old funky menu, but I liked Fabrice and the energy he brought to the place, so I’ve kept going up.

Fabrice does occasionally come up with something earthy, like the local chanterelle salad I ordered last time, which was loaded with flavor. And there’s one dish in particular I absolutely love, his snails sautéed in Pernod. It’s a lovely change from the usual ramekin of snails in garlic butter, a staple on the old menu. He sets the Pernod snails on a salad, and their anisey juices create a beautiful dressing for the greens. That is a really great flavor combination. Fabrice, now just give me back my sweetbreads, and I’ll be very happy.

I recreated Fabrice’s snails with Pernod at home, and they turned out very nicely, so I started playing theme-and-variation and came up with an Italianized version, substituting shrimp for the snails, Sambuca for the Pernod, and basil for the parsley.

The main difference between a French pastis like Pernod and an Italian anise liquor is sugar content. Sambuca and anisette are sweeter than Pernod or Ricard, so you will get a slight sweetness in this dish, which I really like. I prefer Sambuca to anisette, which I find just too sweet, so for cooking I’d go with the former.

This dish cooks in about two minutes, so have everything you’ll need right next to the stove, jack the flame to very high, and go for it.

Shrimp with Sambuca, Summer Garlic, and Basil

(Serves 4 as a first course or side dish)

Extra-virgin olive oil
1½ pounds large shrimp, peeled and deveined
3 fresh summer garlic cloves, very thinly sliced
A generous pinch of medium hot paprika, such as the Basque Piment d’Espelette
Salt
1 shot Sambuca
The juice from ½ lemon
A handful of basil leaves, lightly chopped

Choose a large heavy-bottomed skillet, and get it hot over high heat. Add about 3 tablespoons of olive oil. When the oil is just starting to smoke, add the shrimp, spreading them out as best you can in one layer. Let them sauté, without moving them around, for about 30 seconds. Then scatter the garlic over the top, and give the shrimp a flip with a big spatula. Season them with the paprika and some salt. Flip them again after about a minute. At this point they should be pink and tender and just a touch undercooked at the center. Add the Sambuca, and let it flame up and boil for a few seconds. Add the lemon juice, and give the skillet a shake. Pour the shrimp, with all the skillet juices, out onto a large serving platter. Scatter on the basil. Serve right away.

Cauliflower and radish still life by Bartolomeo Bimbi (1648-1730).

Recipe: Minestra di Cavolfiore with Saffron and Fennel

Whenever I see, taste, or even hear about cauliflower soup, it’s always a creamy purée. There’s nothing wrong with that, and smooth, creamy soups can be quite voluptuous, but the style is essentially French, isn’t it? In any case, it’s not what I grew up with. My family made a Southern Italian soup, a minestra, with pieces of cauliflower or broccoli, sometimes string beans or cubes of potato, tomatoes, often hot chilies, and always some type of small soup pasta. I miss that kind of simple summer soup. Seems like the only place you can find it is at home-cooked dinners where it’s always awful and always has the same boiled, crappy smell and identical taste no matter what kinds of vegetables they’ve thrown into it. I think “thrown” is the key word here.  It’s easy to duplicate that odd dinner taste if you just add vegetables to boiling liquid without sautéing them a little first. Then add a couple of vegetable cubes, and you’ve got it made. I beg you, don’t do it. Cauliflower in particular needs loving care to bring out its beautiful, delicate flavor.

This cauliflower soup I’m offering here is a minestra, not an all-out, slow cooked minestrone. I’ve chosen cauliflower and summer tomatoes, given them a sauté, and then quickly cooked them on high heat in a mix of light broth and water, finishing with fresh herbs and a sprinkling of grating cheese. I’ve added saffron, which I love with cauliflower, possibly because I’ve eaten this combination so many times in Indian dishes, but I’ve taken it in an Italian direction by including fennel, creating a purely Mediterranean flavor.

Minestra di Cavolfiore with Saffron and Fennel

(Serves 4 as a lunch or light supper)

Extra-virgin olive oil
½ cup diced pancetta
1 medium cauliflower, cut into small florets
A generous pinch of sugar
1 summer onion, diced
2 fresh summer garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 fresh bay leaf
1 fresh red chili, seeded and minced
A small palmful of fennel seeds, ground to a powder
2 medium-size round summer tomatoes, skinned and cut into small dice
Salt
1 quart light chicken broth, preferably homemade
About 20 threads of saffron, dried, if moist, and then ground
¼ pound ditalini pasta, cooked al dente
A dozen tarragon sprigs, leaves very lightly chopped
A chunk of grana Padano cheese

In a big soup pot, heat 3 tablespoons of olive oil over medium flame. Add the pancetta, and let it get crisp. Add the cauliflower, the sugar, and the onion, and sauté until the cauliflower is well coated with oil and the onion is fragrant, about 4 minutes. This is an important step for bringing out flavor in the cauliflower, so you don’t get that dreadful boiled vegetable flavor I spoke about. Add the garlic, the bay leaf, the chili, and the fennel seed, and sauté a minute longer to release those flavors. Add the tomato and some salt, and cook until the tomatoes give off juice, about 4 minutes. Add the chicken broth and a cup of water, and bring the soup to a boil. Add a little hot water to the saffron so it can open up, and then add this to the soup pot. Cook, uncovered, at a lively bubble until the cauliflower is tender, about 12 minutes or so. Add the ditalini, stirring it in, adding a little hot water if it gets too thick. Check for seasoning. Add the tarragon. Serve hot, topped with grated grana Padano.

A panino and a gallon of wine. The perfect lunch.

Recipe: Eggplant Pesto Panini with Caprino and Basil

Perfect, compact, portable, there’s a certain kind of panini you can pack up and go with, a solid meal, with minimum mess. This type of eat-and-run panini can be  built with low on the fat but flavorful meat (tenderly treated pork loin, for instance) or a frittata, roasted vegetables, some non-gloppy cheese, a little lettuce. Nothing wrong with that. But when a panino is dripping with good olive oil, overstuffed and oozing  it makes great table food eaten with a knife and fork, or just shoved into your mouth while hovering over your plate; the Provençal pan bagnat comes to mind (love this sandwich loaded with wet tomatoes, anchovies, oily tuna, and then mashed down and left to get all soaked), but so does my childhood favorite from Razzano’s shop in Glen Cove, a crusty Italian roll stuffed with hot capicola, old-fashioned Genoa salami, provolone, and mortadella and topped with a big spoonful of dripping, vinegary sweet and hot red peppers that miraculously balance out all the pork fat to create a taste that says Southern Italian perfection. This panino is always a mess to eat, but it’s such a taste memory I get a little choked up just thinking about it. It reminds me of my dad—he loved those vinegary peppers. But this sandwich, with all its salumi variations, also recalls the mid-seventies Donna Summer dance era. Love to love you baby. It’s a great restorative after eight or nine hours of out-of-control disco dancing (and it can soak up White Russians like nobody’s business.)

I do like the pressed panini you find in many wine bars in Manhattan these days. They can’t fit much in them, but they are good and oily and flat. I sometimes like flat, but if I have really good bread, which I think you’ll want when constructing a panino, I say show it off. Sometimes it’s better just to grill or toast the bread and then pile the stuff inside, or on top for an open-face version.

I’ve been making vegetable pestos lately. You might remember my posting of a recipe for a Zucchini Pesto with Anchovies and Summer Savory a few weeks ago. I spooned it onto crostini. Very delicate. This eggplant version is also a great match for bread, but I feel its more robust taste is more suited for an all out big sandwich. I’ve topped it with melted Caprino—fresh Italian goat cheese—but a few slices of tomato would be ideal instead, for a lighter result. Try and include the fresh basil on the panino. It  bring out the cumin and chili flavors in the pesto.

Eggplant Pesto Panini with Caprino and Basil

(For 1 long baguette panino to feed 2, or, spread on crostini, enough pesto for 6 as an antipasto)

3 cups cubed eggplant, partially skinned
Extra-virgin olive oil
1 small fresh green chili, seeded and minced
2 summer garlic cloves, thinly sliced
¼ teaspoon freshly ground cumin
½ teaspoon sugar
Salt
¼ cup lightly toasted pine nuts
A squeeze of lemon juice
A handful of basil leaves, chopped, plus a few whole leaves reserved if you’re making the panino
1 baguette
1 small log of caprino (fresh Italian goat cheese), or a French or American brand, if you prefer

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Lay the eggplant out on a sheet pan. Drizzle it with enough olive oil to lightly coat it. Scatter on the minced chili, and give everything a toss. Spread the eggplant out in one layer, and stick it in the oven. Roast until it’s fragrant, lightly browned, and tender, about 15 minutes, or a little longer. In the last few minutes of roasting add the garlic, cumin, sugar, and salt.

Add the pine nuts to a food processor, and pulse until you have a rough chop. Add the eggplant and a squeeze of lemon juice, and pulse once or twice, just until you have a slightly chunky texture. Spoon it out into a bowl and add the basil. Taste for seasoning. Eggplant can take a fair amount of salt. I like serving this pesto the day I make it. It will keep refrigerated for several days, but the color gets a bit drab.

To make the panino, split the baguette lengthwise, and toast it. Give each side a drizzle of olive oil, and then spread the flatter side with the eggplant pesto. Top with crumbled caprino, and run it under a broiler for a few seconds, just until the cheese is soft and lightly golden. Season with a little salt and fresh black pepper, and scatter on the basil leaves. Put the top on the panino, and cut the sandwich in half. If you’re making crostino just cut the baguette into thin rounds and toast or grill them. Top with some eggplant pesto and a little caprino, which you can melt or not. It’s up to you.