Erica De Mane

Florida oranges and me.

Recipes:

Orange Sorbetto with Vanilla and Rosemary
Mussels with Orange, Vanilla, Cream, and Rosemary
Lamb Stew with Orange, Rosemary, and Black Olives

Several years ago I jotted down a line in the food notebook I keep on my computer. I wrote, “Think about orange salad with vanilla and rosemary.” This was a dish that caught my attention as I flipped through Daniel Boulud’s Café Boulud Cookbook. A strange mix of flavors, I thought at the time. Then I wrote, “LOOK INTO THIS,” all in capitals. But the thought just sat there on my computer, slightly threatening with its upper-case verve, unexplored until this January, when my mother sent me a box of honeybell oranges from Florida. Continue Reading »

Lobster with tomatoes, cognac, and spaghetti.

Recipes:

Lobster with Tomatoes, Cognac, and Spaghetti
Slow-Cooked Duck with Green Olive Sauce

In the coldest part of every year I pull from my shelf James Villas’s l992 book The French Country Kitchen. I love this book both for what it is as for what it isn’t. What it isn’t is my kind of cooking. It’s eggy and buttery, full of duck fat and sausages. What it is is, among other things, a reminder to cook with turnips and cabbages and apples, things that don’t automatically run through my Italian-American mind. Winter is when my usual array of Mediterranean vegetables and herbs fails me, and this book is there for inspiration. Continue Reading »

Pressed panini with fontina and prosciutto.

Recipes:

Baked Cavatappi with Fennel, Tomato, and Mozzarella
Pressed Panini with Fontina, Prosciutto, and Sweet Green Olivata
Pressed Mozzarella and Salami Panini with Sweet Vinegar Peppers

For years I’ve kept a file on my computer called “Food to Think About.” It’s a running journal of notes on foods or ingredients I’ve become interested in and want to learn more about, or specific dishes I’ve heard of or dreamt of and want to make sure I get around to making. I keep adding to it, and it gets longer and longer. From early November there’s an entry that just says, “tomatoes with fennel. Check Olney for Provencal combinations.” Olney means Richard Olney’s wonderful 1993 book Provence the Beautiful, a big coffee-table thing that is a lot richer and more nuanced than you’d think from its cover, in keeping with the high standards Olney always attained with his writing. I refer to it often for inspiration. I went back and checked Olney for the tomato-and-fennel recipe I thought I remembered, but it wasn’t there. It was in some other Provence book, but I couldn’t figure out which. I think this fennel-tomato idea became a fixation when the weather was turning cold because I wanted to hold onto some summer flavor, but I let the thought drift to the back of my culinary mind until December, when I needed to make a dish to feed a crowd for a fiftieth birthday party I was giving, for my friend Barbara. A baked pasta seemed like a good idea, so I plunged in and gave it the fennel-tomato treatment I’d been ruminating over, and a very good recipe was born (and a good time was had by all). Tomato does something very interesting to the taste of fennel; it cuts its sweetness and adds acidity, blending the best of both vegetables, creating a unique vegetable taste. Basil is a perfect herb to add to this combo since it has an anisey flavor that heightens fennel’s fennely one. Continue Reading »

Buddy samples my homemade ricotta.

Recipes:

Cavatelli with Nutmeg-Scented Ricotta, Thyme, and Pecorino
Homemade Ricotta, New and Improved

Ricotta is one of the loveliest tastes in all Italian food, but when you add a few scrapings of nutmeg to it, it becomes sublime. My mother used this sweet-smelling mix to fill lasagna, big shells, and, best of all, slim crespelle that she’d bake with a topping of Pecorino until they were crisp-edged but still fluffy within. I could eat a ton of them. If you add a little sugar to nutmeg-scented ricotta, you’ve created the filling for cannoli, one of the genius desserts of Southern Italy. For Christmas Eve I often make a ricotta cheesecake seasoned with nutmeg and sometimes lemon or orange flower water, so this mix of flavors really is the aroma of the holidays for me. I also love ricotta in an unstructured state, eating a bowl of it simply drizzled with honey (great with a glass of vin santo), or, if I’m in a more savory mood, with herbs and chopped olives or sundried tomatoes scattered over the top. That’s the beauty of the thing. It can go either way. Continue Reading »

Spaghetti with big shrimp, tarragon, and lemon.

My Birthday Menu 2005

Recipes:

Escarole Salad with Buffalo Mozzarella Bruschetta and Anchovy Vinaigrette
Spaghetti with Big Shrimp, Tarragon, and Lemon

Wine: Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo, Valentini

I know several people who have birthdays in early to mid-December, including me and my idol Maria Callas. It’s a good time for a birthday. Things are just starting to get festive, and Manhattan, where I live, is decorated in sparkly junk, but it’s not close enough to Christmas to get you gypped out of receiving two distinct gifts or great dinners.

My birthday falls on December 3, and a few weeks before it this year I started thinking about what I’d like my special birthday dinner to be. I had no trouble zeroing in on the flavors I most love-pasta and seafood, preferably mixed together. Continue Reading »

Olives to go with Thanksgiving dinner.

Recipes:

Black Olives with Chilies and Cognac
Almonds with Rosemary, Salt, and Sugar
Fennel Baked with Parmigiano and Moscato
Carrots with Marsala and Capers
Pear, Pancetta, and Fennel Stuffing
Endive and Watercress Salad with Pomegranate Seeds

When I was a kid my grandmother always made Thanksgiving dinner into a very complicated affair. Like most Italian-Americans she felt obligated to work homeland dishes like ravioli, lasagne, or stuffed artichokes into the day, out of a subconscious need to inject it with an alternate patriotism, I think. And I still in 2005 feel a strong desire to include garlic, Parmigiano, and olive oil in my Thanksgiving meal, more for spunk than for patriotism. Continue Reading »

Ingredients for my Warm Cerignolo Olive Salad with Celery Leaves.

Recipes:

Pear and Fennel Salad with Asiago and Marsala Vinaigrette
Warm Cerignolo Olive Salad with Celery Leaves
Red Grape and Arugula Salad with Fennel Seeds and Ricotta Salata

My desire to create fusion cooking usually goes just as far as blending flavors from Sicily with those of Puglia or Campania. Not much of a leap. I don’t often venture outside my world of flavors; I just keep reinventing with the tastes that mean the most to me. My flavors are what anyone would categorize as classically Southern Italian, no messing around: Extra-virgin olive oil, garlic, tomatoes, capers, oranges, lemons, anchovies, sweet and hot chiles, black pepper, fennel, saffron, sea salt, all manner of seafood, salami, nutmeg and cinnamon, pancetta, Pecorino and caciocavallo, ricotta and mozzarella, basil and mint, parsley, oregano, marjoram, bay leaves, rosemary, raisins, pine nuts, pistachios, almonds, wine and vinegar, and honey. I think reining in your choices can do wonders for creativity, but even so this basket of tastes from Southern Italy is a lot to work with, really a lifetime’s worth of possible culinary improvisations. Except that now and again I’m tempted to add something new. Continue Reading »

Barbara’s Red Pear tomatoes.

Recipes:

Bucatini with End-of-Season Tomatoes, Mussels, and Pancetta
Farro Penne with Green Zebra Tomatoes, Marjoram, Almonds, and Ricotta Salata

September is a great month for tomatoes in New York, but it’s also a sad one, because you know it’s all coming to an end soon. Once October rolls in I start hoarding the remaining tomatoes at the markets. I don’t bottle and preserve them; that would seem excessive for a family of two, and it’s really not me anyway, but I do try to cook with them as much as possible during those dwindling tomato days. Continue Reading »

New York–grown Italian eggplants.

Recipe:

Erica and Mo’s Eggplant Parmigiano

I don’t ruminate over my childhood now the way I did when I was in my twenties; that type of self-analysis feels more like a dead end as life goes on. But childhood food memories do pop up all the time. I seem to remember tastes and smells more than I do words and actions; maybe that’s one reason I chose cooking for a career. Lately I’ve been thinking about my mother’s eggplant parmigiano. It was my all-time favorite dish as a kid, her version of an exemplary classic of the Southern Italian kitchen. Continue Reading »

Summer cantaloupes at Union Square.

Recipes:

Cantaloupe and Tomato Salad with Black Olives and Tarragon
Cantaloupe Salad with Prosciutto, Frisée, and Basil
Spaghetti with Cantaloupe and Hot Chilies

My grandfather always salted his cantaloupe. As a child I found this weird. It seemed so old-world for an elegantly turned-out man who had in many ways become an urbane New Yorker. When I got a little older and was introduced to prosciutto with melon, I reasoned that his salty cantaloupe was likely a Southern Italian peasant version of this wonderful pairing. There are several dishes like this in the Southern repertoire. One, called pasta che sardi a mari, translating roughly as pasta with the sardines still in the sea, is a cut-rate but delicious vegetarian version of the elaborate Sicilian pasta con le sarde, and it’s a good example of the Southerner’s ability to create elegance from poverty (the pasta includes wild fennel, raisins, pine nuts, and sometimes tomato or cauliflower). Continue Reading »