Easter is almost here. For me it’s a time to celebrate the rebirth of the earth, a beautiful holiday for a cook. But it all seems rushed this year. I haven’t yet planned. I didn’t invite anyone. I’m only now trying to put a menu together, but I’m not sure what I’ll be able to actually turn out, since last night I messed up the door of my oven in a frantic effort to get my cat Red out from behind it. The cat is out and fine, but the door is hanging by a thread. Hopefully I’ll be able to get someone in to fix it. If that’s not possible, I’ll have to figure out if I can cook a pastiera, my must-have Easter dessert, in the toaster oven. Maybe I can make a shallow one on a pie plate, although that seems diminished and a little depressing. A pastiera should be high and mighty, filled with ricotta and wheat berries and giving off that exotic scent of orange flower water. I’ll see what I can do.
If you have a working oven and would like to make a pastiera, here’s my recipe. I do make it a little differently every year, but this is, I think, I good guide.
And here are some other Easter dishes that I’ve made over the years and everyone really liked. I’m not yet sure what the rest of my menu will be this time around the globe, but somewhere in the mix will be eggs, ricotta, lamb, and asparagus, probably cooked on my stovetop.
Flora, Goddess of Spring, a fresco from the Villa di Arianna, Stabia, which was destroyed during the Vesuvius eruption in the year 79 but this gorgeous work of art survived and is now in the Archeological Museum of Naples .
Recipe below: Strozzapreti with Lamb Ragù, Warm Spices, and Ricotta
I’m stepping into spring here with a dish that’s solid enough for a 42-degree, drizzly, windy, gray, almost April day but gentle enough to include two classic Southern Italian spring ingredients, lamb and ricotta. Our typical pre-Easter New York weather is utterly familiar and also completely frustrating on many levels. I’m chilled to the core and I don’t even feel like moving, which makes me even colder. My bundle of thick black tights is not yet shoved to the back of the drawer. But crocuses and daffodils and even dandelions are poking through the still mostly brown earth. And there’s this sweet spicy ragù simmering on my stove. Warmth can’t be far away.
Strozzapreti with Lamb Ragù, Warm Spices, and Ricotta
Extra-virgin olive oil 1 ¼-inch-thick round of pancetta, cut into small dice 1 Vidalia onion, cut into small dice 2 carrots, cut into small dice 2 inner celery stalks with their leaves, cut into small dice, the leaves lightly chopped 1 ½ pounds ground lamb ¾ teaspoon ground Ceylon cinnamon ¾ teaspoon ground allspice 1 teaspoon Aleppo pepper 2 fresh bay leaves Salt 1 cup dry white wine (I used an Orvieto, but anything that’s dry and not oaky will be fine) 1 cup chicken broth 1 28-ounce can whole Italian tomatoes, chopped 2 tablespoons unsalted butter ½ teaspoon sherry wine vinegar 1 pound strozzapreti pasta A big handful of basil leaves, lightly chopped A chunk of pecorino Toscano cheese 1 pound whole-milk ricotta, sheep’s milk if you can find it
Get out a big casserole-type pot fitted with a lid. Set it over medium heat, and drizzle in a few tablespoons of olive oil. Add the pancetta, and sauté until it’s crisp but not blackened and has given off much of its fat. Add the onion, carrot, and celery plus leaves, and let them sauté until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Add the lamb, cinnamon, allspice, Alleppo, bay leaves, and some salt. Stir everything around, and then let the meat brown lightly. That should take about 5 minutes.
Add the white wine, and let it bubble for a minute. Add the chicken broth and the tomatoes, stirring everything to blend. Bring it all to a boil, and then turn down the heat to low. Cover the pot, and simmer at a low bubble for about 1 ½ hours, stirring occasionally. When that’s done the meat should be tender and all the flavors well developed.
Skim most of the fat from the ragù. Add the butter and the sherry wine vinegar. Taste for seasoning. I found mine needed more salt and a little more Aleppo. The consistency of my ragù was just what I wanted, not too thick, not too loose. Add more broth or water if yours needs adjusting (or cook it uncovered for a bit to thicken it) .
Cook the strozzapreti al dente. Drain it, and pour it into a large, wide serving bowl. Add a big drizzle of olive oil, and give it a toss. Pour on the ragù, and add the basil, tossing well.
Top each serving with a big dollop of ricotta and a generous grating of the pecorino Toscano.
I served this with a Montepulciano d’Abruzzo red wine, which I thought was a pretty good match. After the pasta, I brought out a watercress and radish salad, just because I really wanted it to be spring. You could follow this menu with a pastiera and have a wonderful Easter dinner.
If you’d like to try making your own ricotta for this (or for numerous other good things, such as a pastiera), here’s my recipe. I use buttermilk instead of lemon for the curdling agents, as I find it turns out gentler, creamier curds.
Numero 28
People are always asking me what’s my favorite Italian restaurant in New York. It’s a difficult question for several reasons. I don’t go out to eat that much, and when I do I mostly want to taste stuff I don’t make at home, like Thai or Vietnamese food. Also, as far as Italian restaurants go, there are so many new ones all the time around here, it’s impossible for me to care about all of them. In the last five months, four Italian fish places have opened up within 10 blocks of my West Village apartment. Who needs all those Italian fish restaurants, and how long can they possibly last with such competition? Sometimes I think people who open restaurants are just gluttons for punishment. And now with those likely tariffs on European wines, what is even possible? As it is, the price of a glass of Chianti at a good place is averaging $18 to $20. Soon it might be more like $40. Who’s going to pay that?
The one Italian food I do go out for a lot, and I mean really a lot, is pizza, but I don’t have the desire to stand outside on a line for a hour, or sit up all night with my computer waiting for reservations to open up. I like good, solid, consistent, nontrendy places that make me feel comfortable and relatively happy. Numero 28 on Carmine Street is one of those places. I’ve been going there since it opened, in 2012. It’s a sweet little café with a wood burning oven, consistently high-quality ingredients, and right-on pizza every time I’ve eaten there, which has got to be, at this point, several hundred times. I would say their pizza is more Roman-style than Neapolitan. It’s not as wet in the middle as you’d get in Naples, but it’s wet enough so it’s never dry, even if you get one without tomato. I like ordering their long pizzas—18 inches is about right for two, but there’s also a 29-incher, which comes to the table on a really long board. I love those, since you can get, for instance, half anchovy, half prosciutto (they use really good prosciutto), which is often what I go for. I don’t get elaborate with toppings. I like a margarita with maybe one add-on, so I can still focus on the great, yeasty, gently salted, bubbly, slightly charred crust. However, I do love, and I understand this is not for everyone, a mix of anchovy and mushroom with extra basil.
I think almost every time I’ve been at Numero 28 I’ve begun with an artichoke and Castelvetrano olive salad, which also contains arugula and pine nuts. It’s a lovely, well-balanced starter, dressed with good olive oil that you can really taste and not too much vinegar. I really don’t like it when Italian places load on the vinegar.
The only slightly annoying thing about Numero 28 is they only take cash, so you need to stop at a bank before you arrive.
Recipe below: Torta di Cavolfiore with Pistachios, Capers, and Caciocavallo
It’s March, and there’s nothing new yet. I’m talking specifically about local produce. It’s too early even for dandelions. Maybe I could cook daffodils. They’re up all over the place. I’m thinking maybe stuff them with mozzarella and anchovy, twist the tops closed, dunk them in batter, and then give them a fast fry. Doesn’t that sound good? Pretty, too. But I just Googled “Are daffodils edible for humans?” and discovered that they’re not. They contain lycorine, which causes vomiting, diarrhea, and abdominal pain. So no. We can’t deep-fry them. I should have known, since even deer won’t eat them, and deer eat almost anything. I guess I’ll have to wait for zucchini blossom time. It’s not far away.
Cauliflower 2, by Nico Heilijers.
So now I am holding a big, beautiful white cauliflower. My first thought is to just go with a gratin, fairly classic, with béchamel, a few scrapings of nutmeg, a bay leaf, and maybe Fontina and Parmigiano. Crumbs on top. One of my favorites. But then my head swivels over to the torta side, as it often does. You all probably know that I love my pizza di scarola, the double-crusted escarole-filled torta I always make for Christmas Eve. I love it at other times of the year as well, like right now, when chicories are still the best greens in the market, at least in New York.
I’ve patterned this new torta somewhat after pizza di scarola, including some traditional ingredients (capers, anchovies) while leaving out others (raisins) and throwing in new ones (thyme, pistachios, caciocavallo), and flavoring it inside and out with Marsala.
It tastes like Napoli, which makes me very happy.
Torta di Cavolfiore with Pistachios, Capers, and Caciocavallo
2½ cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon sugar ½ teaspoon salt ¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil ½ to ¾ cup dry Marsala
For the filling:
1 medium cauliflower, any color, cut into small florets Extra-virgin olive oil Salt 2 scallions, cut into thin rounds, using much of the tender green part A big pinch of ground allspice A handful of unsalted, shelled pistachios 3 or 4 oil-packed anchovies, well-chopped (I used Ortiz brand) A palmful of salt-packed Sicilian capers, soaked and rinsed (mine were large, so I chopped them a bit) 6 large thyme sprigs, the leaves lightly chopped A piece of a fresh green chili, minced (I used a green Italian long hot, about half of it, with its seeds) A splash of dry Marsala 6 large sprigs Italian parsley, the leaves lightly chopped 1 cup grated caciocavallo or scamorza cheese 1 egg yolk, for the egg wash Sugar
To make the dough, put the flour in a medium-size bowl. Add the sugar and salt. Drizzle in the olive oil and ½ cup of Marsala, and start by mixing everything around with a wooden spoon. If it seems dry, add a little more Marsala. When it comes together into a shaggy ball, dump it out onto the countertop, and knead it briefly, just until you have a nice smooth ball. Wrap it in plastic, and let it sit for at least an hour, unrefrigerated, before you work with it. You can also refrigerate it overnight, but let it come back to room temperature before you start to roll it out.
To start the filling, set up a pot of water, and bring it to a boil. Blanch the cauliflower for about 2 minutes. Drain it in a colander, and then run cold water over it to stop the cooking. Let it drain.
Set up a large sauté pan over medium heat. Add a big drizzle of olive oil. Add the cauliflower and sprinkle in a little salt. Sauté about a minute longer. Add the scallions, allspice, pistachios, anchovies, capers, thyme, and green chili, giving everything a good mix and sautéing about another minute or so to blend all the flavors. Add a splash of dry Marsala, and let it bubble away. Take the pan from the heat, and let it cool. Then add the parsley and the caciocavallo, and stir them in. Taste for salt. You probably won’t need more with all the salt from the anchovies, capers, and cheese, but you never know.
Set the oven to 400 degrees.
For the egg wash, put the egg yolk in a small cup or bowl. Add a drizzle of olive oil, a drizzle of water, a little salt, and a little sugar, and give it all a good mix.
Brush a sheet pan with olive oil. Cut the dough in half. Roll both pieces out to approximately 8- or 9-inch rounds. They don’t have to be perfect; they just have to fit on the sheet pan. This is a rustico kind of tart, so a little uneven is, in my opinion, good.
Place one of the dough rounds on the sheet pan. Top with the cauliflower mix, spreading it out more or less evenly but leaving an inch free around the rim. Cover it with the other dough round. Crimp the edges for a good seal. I usually just make little folds all around, pressing them down to make sure they can’t pop open during cooking. Make three short knife slits in the top. Brush the top with the egg wash.
Slide the sheet pan with the torta onto the bottom rack of the oven. Bake until the top is nice and golden, about 20 minutes or so. Let it cool for about 5 minutes before slicing.
This tart makes a great antipasto for up to six people. It’s really nice with a glass of falanghina.
An Early Spring Picnic on Gansevoort Street
I like to pick up a mortadella and burrata panino at Sogno Toscano on Perry Street (or maybe instead wrap up a wedge of the cauliflower torta above) and then head west on Gansevoort Street, crossing the West Street highway, where I step right onto the Gansevoort Peninsula. There I find a weird little strip of beach, with actual sand, a few blue Adirondack chairs, and matching umbrellas. At the water’s edge are large rocks. The Hudson gently crashes again them, making a hypnotic water noise. You can’t swim at this man-made little beach, but it’s a good place to sit, eat a sandwich, hang out with the Canada geese, and listen to the rhythm of the tide.
The other side of the peninsula is a stretch of salt marsh planted with native grasses. Good for birding. Last spring I saw a young red-tailed hawk hunting for lunch, and really close up too, only a few feet away. I got a good look at its glassy yellow eyes. If you’re in the neighborhood, you might want to check it out.
Recipe below: Risotto with Fennel, Saffron, and Sausage
I like a risotto where you can barely see what’s in it, everything cut tiny, no big chunks. When you take a bite, you’re surprised by all the flavor in a dish that looked like nothing much. The complexity of risotto is hidden by its simple appearance. Finely chopped chicken livers, minced porcini, a fine dice of leeks, a melt of gorgonzola, ingredients like those can be hidden away in a bowl of white grains just ready to burst forth in your mouth. This risotto dichotomy reminds of the couple in the film The Big Night who get talked into ordering the seafood risotto and are completely perplexed when it comes to the table looking like nothing more than a plate of soupy white rice. I don’t remember the exact lines, but it went something like this: “I don’t see any seafood,” the woman says, scraping through the plate with her fork. “Where’s the seafood?” “It’s in there, the chef says. “It’s just cut really small.” They don’t believe him, and to his horror they order a side of spaghetti. Risotto with a side of spaghetti. What a concept.
I love risotto. I love all the stirring. I’m not a fan of the oven method where you put the thing together on top of the stove and then stick it in the oven with lots of broth until the rice is tender. It works, sort of, but I find you have to do more last-minute fiddling to get it creamy, meaning stirring it once it’s out of the oven, balancing the seasoning, and adding stuff. For me, that all gets accomplished over the 17 minutes or so of stovetop attention. I don’t stir constantly, but I stir a lot. It’s a beautiful process. I get to experience the aroma of the wine cooking out as the steam rises into my face, the changing smell and look of the thing with each addition, and the way the rice swells up and indicates to me that it’s almost time. I don’t want to miss all that. Maybe if I were working in a restaurant and had to make 50 risotti a night, but at home, why bother at all if you don’t want to get involved?
I prefer carnaroli rice to the other risotto rice varieties I can find here. This time around I used Acquerello brand, from Piemonte, grown by the Rondolino family since 1935. Carnaroli is the only type of rice they’ve ever grown. I order it from Gustiamo. Its color is not chalk white, like most risotto rice, but more golden, and the aroma when cooking seems a bit deeper than other brands of carnaroli I’ve tried. There are reasons for this. The rice is actually aged, which serves to open it up, allowing for more liquid to flow though the grains. Also, they don’t strip it to stark white when they process it, so you get that pretty yellow hue. And they’ve figured out a way to reintegrate the germ back into the kernels, so you get rice that’s more whole and healthy. Nice to know.
Saffron Still Life, by Iris Richardson.
Fennel and saffron make a beautiful flavor combo that you’re familiar with if you’ve ever cooked, or even eaten, a bouillabaisse. It’s also used in the cooking of Sardinia, most beautifully in their sausage ragù served with malloreddus, a gnocchi-shaped pasta. I love that dish, and it was my inspiration for this risotto. I use a fair amount of saffron in my cooking. I’m drawn to its sweetly medicinal flavor, which to me is not at all floral in the usual sense , despite being made from the red-orange pistils of a type of crocus. It’s a unique flavor, hard to describe. Maybe like bitter honey, but that’s not quite right either. Maybe bitter honey with a hint of barnyard?
In the past I’ve mostly bought Spanish saffron, usually from Kalustyan’s, an amazing spice shop on Lexington above 28th Street. If you’ve never been, visit! The aromas will blow your mind. This time around I bought saffron from Iran, which was beautifully flavored and moist. There’s also such a thing as American saffron. Last summer I met the people at Green Owl Farm, in Rhinebeck, N.Y., who grow saffron crocuses and harvest their own saffron from them. I didn’t know you could grow those flowers upstate, but I guess why not? Regular non-saffron crocuses are popping up all over my backyard as of this writing. Green Owl packs big pinches of saffron threads into little glass bottles. I haven’t yet bought from them, but I will. Theirs is a labor of love to be sure.
Risotto should get to the table pretty soon after it’s done just tender, but you don’t have to get crazy about it. If you need time to get people seated, you can let it sit for 5 to 8 minutes. It will thicken some, but then just add another ladle of broth and stir it in right before bringing it out. It’ll be fine.
About 6 cups homemade chicken broth ½ teaspoon saffron threads, lightly dried and ground with a mortar and pestle (see note below) 4 tablespoons unsalted butter A big drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil 2 cups carnaroli rice 1 Vidalia onion, cut into small dice 3 mild, fresh Italian sausages, the casings removed, the meat pulled into little bits with your fingers 1 large fennel bulb (choose a bulb with lots of fronds), cut into small dice, the fronds lightly chopped ½ teaspoon fennel pollen or freshly ground fennel seed (if you’re sausage is heavily seasoned with fennel, you’ll want to use about half as much) A few big scrapings of nutmeg Salt About ½ cup dry white wine Freshly ground black pepper A big chunk of Parmigiano cheese
You’ll want to have ready a wide, shallow-sided pan. I’ve found that that’s best for keeping the evaporation constant and the stirring smooth and easy. I used an 11-inch-wide, 3-inch-deep All-Clad pan.
Pour the chicken broth into a saucepan, and bring it to a boil. Turn the heat to really low, and stick a ladle in the pan.
Put the ground saffron in a small cup or bowl, and add about ½ cup of the hot chicken broth, giving the saffron a stir to dissolve it. The broth will turn a beautiful bright orange. Set it aside.
Set your risotto pan on a burner right next to the chicken broth. Turn the heat to medium. Add half of the butter and a big drizzle of olive oil. Add the rice, the onion, the sausage, and the fennel, holding back the fronds, and stir everything around to sauté it well. Try to break the sausage up into little pieces. Season with the fennel pollen or seed, the nutmeg, and a little salt. When the rice and everything is well sautéed, about 3 minutes or so, add the wine, and let it bubble for about 30 seconds.
Now start adding broth, a few ladles at a time, stirring fairly often (but not obsessively) until the pan goes almost dry. Keep adding more broth and letting the pan go almost dry repeatedly until the rice is just tender. After about 10 minutes, add the saffron broth. I like to add it at this point instead of at the beginning so it stays really fresh-tasting. Saffron has an ephemeral nature and can fade out if cooked too long.
After about 12 minutes or so, you’ll notice the rice start to swell and the entire dish start to look creamy. I usually give it a taste after about 15 minutes to see where it’s at. In my experience the entire process takes about 16 or 17 minutes for tender but still firm kernels.
When you’ve reached this point, add the rest of the butter, a good amount of black pepper, and a few big gratings of Parmigiano, and give it a good stir. Turn off the heat, and adjust the consistency by adding more broth if needed. I like my risotto loose but not soupy. Taste for salt, and ladle the risotto into bowl. Top with the chopped fennel fronds and an extra sprinkling of Parmigiano. Serve right away.
A note on saffron: Saffron should be slightly moist and have brilliant red orange color when you buy it. If the threads are maroon and brittle, it’s old. Yet for it to open up and release its essence, it needs to be dried enough to be ground (dropping moist saffron threads in hot liquid is a bit of a waste). What I do is take a small sauté pan and set it over medium heat. When it’s warm, I turn off the flame and add my saffron threads, letting them dry for about a minute, just long enough so they lose a bit of moisture. Then I can grind them to a powder in a mortar and pestle. Now when I add a hot liquid to the saffron, the flavor will open full-force. Not a thread will be wasted.
Recipe below: Gorgonzola, Green Grape, and Pine Nut Torta
Winter has always made me want strong cheese. Even when I was a kid I’d eat a lot of provolone, which was always, and I mean always, in the cheese drawer in our refrigerator. I loved the way it peeled into layers, a characteristic that, as I learned later in life, made sense, since provolone is essentially a dried-out, salted version of mozzarella (which is a pasta filata, meaning a cheese that’s stretched and pulled). I never paid much attention to provolone on warm days, even though there it was in the cheese drawer, same as ever. In summer it just seemed like pure stink. In the middle of a New York winter, that stink called to me.
Blue Cheese and Grapes, by Bondareva Nataliia.
As I got older and was in charge of buying my own cheese, gorgonzola became my stinky cheese focus. I love the good strong one that is sometimes labeled mountain gorgonzola. Its texture, a mix of creamy and crunchy, really is alluring. And then there’s gorgonzola dolce, the milder, creamier version that’s so good smeared on a hard-crusted piece of bread. When I cooked at Le Madri restaurant many lifetimes ago, I’d reward myself for surviving another late night shift with a gorgonzola and pear sandwich stuffed into the restaurant’s lovely focaccia. That and whatever wine came back undrunk by the customers was a fine top off to the night. I picked up much of my Italian wine knowledge finishing off those often extremely expensive bottles.
So on a recent close-to-zero-degree day here in gray old New York City, I bought myself a thick slab of gorgonzola dolce simply because it was so cold and I knew the cheese would taste amazing. I ate half of it as is, hanging off my finger. With what was left I decided to make this tart.
I used a 9-inch straight-sided tart pan with a removable bottom. I use these pans when I want an informal look to my tart. You can also use a tart ring for a similar effect.
For the crust:
2 cups unbleached white flour, plus a little extra for rolling out the dough 1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon sugar The leaves from about 6 thyme sprigs 1¼ sticks cold unsalted butter, cut into little pieces ⅓ cup dry white wine, well chilled 1 teaspoon rice wine vinegar
For the filling:
A bunch of green seedless grapes, stemmed (you’ll need around 25) Extra-virgin olive oil Salt Black pepper 1 large egg, plus 1 yolk ½ cup crème fraîche A big pinch of nutmeg The leaves from a few large thyme sprigs, lightly chopped A drizzle of whole milk About ⅓ pound gorgonzola dolce cheese A handful of pine nuts
To make the crust, put the flour in a food processor. Add the salt, sugar, and thyme, and pulse a few times to blend. Add the butter, and pulse three or four times, to break it up a little bit. Drizzle in the wine and the vinegar, and pulse a few more times, just until you have a moist, crumbly mass. If it seems dry, add a tiny drizzle more wine or cold water. Turn it out onto your counter, and press it together into a ball. Flatten out the ball so you have a thick disk. Cover it with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least an hour, or overnight if that works for you.
I found that with the juiciness of the grapes, I needed to blind-bake the crust, cooking it first without its filling. A drag, I know, and something I usually try to avoid, but unfortunately it was really needed. Not such a big deal really. You just have to remember to build up the sides to allow for shrinkage.
Roll out your dough onto a floured surface, and drape it into a buttered tart pan. Press it against the inside of the pan. Trim off the excess dough, leaving enough to build it up all around so it comes up a little over the rim. Prick the inside lightly all over with a fork. Stick the pan back in the refrigerator for at least another 45 minutes to firm up (you can let it go overnight, if need be).
Set the oven at 425 degrees. Lay a piece of parchment inside the tart shell and slightly hanging over its edges. Fill it with dried beans or pie weights (I used rice, which worked well). Bake for about 12 minutes. Remove the paper and weights, and bake for another 5 minutes or so, or until the edges are lightly colored. Let it cool.
Now you’re ready to prepare the filling and then bake the torta. Set your oven to 425 degrees. Lay the grapes out on a sheet pan. Drizzle them with olive oil, and season them with salt and black pepper, tossing them around a little to coat them well. Roast them until they just start to shrivel and give off some juice, about 12 minutes. Let them cool a bit.
In a bowl, mix the egg and egg yolk with the crème fraîche, seasoning it with salt, black pepper, the nutmeg, and the thyme. Whisk well. If it seems too thick, add a drizzle of whole milk. It should be thick but pourable.
Break the gorgonzola up into little pieces, dropping them in the tart shell. Scatter on the pine nuts, and finally arrange the roasted grapes on top. Drizzle on the crème fraîche mixture.
Turn the heat down to 400 degrees, and bake for about 25 minutes, or until the center looks firm and the crust is browned. Let cool for about 15 minutes before slicing.
Recipe below: Duck and Cabbage Soup with Flageolets and Marsala
Cabbage. It’s not wildly inspiring. Scrolling through my blog recipes, and I’ve done a thousand of them, I find only two cabbage recipes, both for Italianized versions of cole slaw. I’m a little surprised by that. Cabbage is a good thing. I love all the other farty, gassy vegetables. Why have I been ignoring cabbage? I’ve immediately realized this was a huge waste on my part. Cabbage has potential for beauty. So I’ve gone out and bought myself a big savoy cabbage, sat it on my kitchen counter, and stared at it for a long time. My creative head didn’t churn with excitement, but I figured, well, there’s always soup.
I originally planned on a cannellini bean, cabbage, and sausage–type soup, an Italian winter classic that nobody in my family ever made, but I didn’t have cannellini beans. I did have a bag of Rancho Gordo flageolets, lovely light-green beans that hold their shape nicely after cooking. I decided to go with them, but they seemed inappropriate for an Italian soup, so off I went in an different culinary direction, coming up with something more like a deconstructed cassoulet. I know cassoulet doesn’t typically include cabbage, but the duck, fatty pork, and deep winter herbs I included still made the dish taste like cassoulet. It was declared a success by my sister, my husband, and my friend Jay. That made me happy.
Duck and Cabbage Soup with Flageolets and Marsala
For the beans:
1 1-pound bag flageolet beans (I used Rancho Gordo) 2 fresh bay leaves 1 tablespoon white miso 1 long branch of thyme 1 garlic clove 1 splash dry Marsala Extra-virgin olive oil Salt A drizzle of sherry wine vinegar
For the rest of the soup:
4 duck legs 1 teaspoon ground allspice Salt Black pepper Extra-virgin olive oil 1 ½-inch round slice of pancetta, cut into medium dice 2 carrots, cut into medium dice 1 celery stalk, with its leaves, chopped 1 onion, cut into small dice 2 fresh bay leaves 1 large sprig rosemary, its leaves chopped A few large sprigs thyme, their leaves chopped A sprinkling of ground nutmeg About ½ cup of dry Marsala 1 quart homemade chicken broth About 3 cups roughly chopped savoy cabbage A drizzle of sherry wine vinegar A chunk of grana Padano cheese, to shave over the top
The first thing you’ll want to do is cook the beans. What I did was put them in a big pot and add the bay leaves, miso, thyme, garlic clove, a big splash of the marsala, and a large drizzle of olive oil. I added cool water to cover by several inches, brought it to a boil, and then turned the heat down very low and simmered the beans, partially covered, until tender. Check occasionally to see if they need more water. Mine took a little over an hour. Rancho Gordo beans are usually recently harvested, so they’re not as dry as, say, Goya. They cook quicker. In the final 15 minutes I added salt and a drizzle of sherry wine vinegar. Then I let the beans sit in their cooking liquid. You can cook the beans the day before you make this soup, if you like.
Now for the duck. Score the duck legs in a crisscross fashion, just going through the fat. Rub the duck with allspice, salt, and black pepper.
Get out a big soup pot, and drizzle in some olive oil. Turn the heat to medium. Add the duck legs, skin side down, and cook them slowly until they’re golden brown and much of the fat has left the skin, about 8 minutes or so. Give them a turn and cook the other side for another 5 minutes. Take the duck legs from the pot. Pour off all but a few tablespoons of the duck fat. Add the pancetta, and cook until crisp. Add the carrot, celery, onion, bay leaves, rosemary, thyme, and nutmeg. Let them cook until soft and fragrant, about 5 minutes. Return the duck to the pot. Add the Marsala, and let it bubble for a few seconds. Add the chicken broth, and bring it to a boil. Then turn down the heat, cover the pot, and let it simmer for 2 hours. By this time the duck should be really tender.
Take the duck out of the pot. Spoon off excess fat from the surface and then add the beans, with their cooking liquid, and the cabbage. If the result seems too bulked up, add water, or more broth if you have it. Cook, uncovered, over medium heat, until the cabbage is tender, about 20 minutes.
Take the meat off the duck legs, and pull it into bite-size pieces, discarding the fatty skin. Add it to the pot, and give everything a good stir. If the soup looks too thick (I like a rather loose soup), add water or more broth. Add a drizzle of sherry wine vinegar. Taste for seasoning and adjust. You might want a little more rosemary or thyme or black pepper.
Shave a little grana Padano over the top of each serving, if you like.
By now probably many of you will have have seen A Complete Unknown, the biopic about Bob Dylan, and possibly like me you were angered by the depiction of Suze Rotolo, who was portrayed as a whining doormat. In reality she was the product of a nice Italian communist family from Greenwich Village and grew up to be a civil rights activist and a painter, and she was an early influence on Dylan’s worldview. She also didn’t look anything like the pixie-nosed blonde who played her in the movie.
I highly recommend a 2008 video of her reading from her then soon-to-be-released memoir A Freewheelin’ Time. It was recorded at the Calandra Institute, an organization in Manhattan dedicated to Italian American studies. I often attend programs there. It’s a good resource to know about. Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnG-G99Fhnc. And here’s a link to their website: https://calandrainstitute.org
Recipe in text below: Roasted Sweet Peppers Filled with Leftover Baccalà Mantecato
This was the first time in two years I had a happy Christmas and New Year’s. I was pretty sure it would be good, because the problems that had plagued the previous two years had lifted. It felt like such a luxury that I cooked myself silly, not only making too many dishes, but making a lot of each. As a result I’m a little tired but damned grateful.
When it was all done, I had about three extra cups of Christmas Eve baccalà mantecato, the whipped salt cod that has become a newish family tradition for me. I stuck it in the freezer, thinking I’d deal with it somewhere down the line, but then I got a heavy craving for it the day after New Year’s, so out it came. I also had four twisted red bell peppers. They weren’t ideal for stuffing but were deep red and smelled good, so I decided to stuff them anyway, just shoving the baccalà into all their little nooks.
The colors of my after–New Year’s pepper and salt cod dish.
Taking inspiration from the traditional Basque dish of salt cod stuffed into piquillo peppers—the sweet pointed ones you can buy in jars already roasted—I just winged an Italianized take on that. I was pleased with the way it turned out. If you happen to have baccalà mantecato, or the Provençal version, which is called brandade de Morue, on hand, use it; if you just find this dish as intriguing as I do but need to whip up some creamy salt cod from scratch, here’s a link to my recipe for it.
This photo may look like one of Soutine’s dissection paintings, but believe me the dish tasted very good.
What I did to get the thing together was split the peppers lengthwise, pulling out their seeds, and drizzle them with a little olive oil and a sprinkling of salt. I then sat them cut-side-up on a pan and roasted them until they were just starting to soften but not yet collapsing, about 15 minutes at 400 degrees. I pulled aside one of the roasted pepper halves to use in the sauce, and then spooned the baccalà into the remaining pepper halves, gave their tops a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkling of Parmigiano, and stuck them back in the oven, turning it up a few notches, to roast until their tops were browned (they could have been a touch less browned) and the whole thing was bubbling.
While that was happening, I roughly chopped the saved pepper half and sautéed it in a pan with a little olive oil and a few slivers of garlic. Then I added about a cup of heavy cream, a little salt, and a drizzle of Spanish sherry wine vinegar, and I let that warm through and bubble gently for about a minute or so. Then I poured the sauce into the food processor and whirled it until smooth. The sauce was divine. I can see tossing it with fettuccine.
I served out the sauce onto four plates and placed two peppers on each plate. Actually one plate got only got one pepper, but that one was for me, which was okay, since I’d been eating bits of the baccalà while putting the thing together and was already full. For the final touch I garnished it with freshly chopped thyme and a sprinkling of pimenton d’espelette. A nice little dinner. It felt good to use up leftovers, and it felt good to have peace in the household.
Recipe below: Scialatielli with Shrimp and Miso Butter Tomato Sauce
Recipe below in text: Escarole Salad with Pear, Almonds, and Montasio
My plan was to make this pasta with calamari, but the squid I found was too large. I needed it small because my idea was to cook everything quickly, keeping the taste fresh and the texture bouncy. Bright red sauce, white calamari. Larger squid needs a slow simmer to become tender, and that would have compromised the freshness I was going for. So I went with shrimp instead.
The Lobster Place, in Chelsea Market, has a good retail fish counter. A lot of people don’t know that because they go there only to eat the fancy sushi and steamed lobsters that are mentioned in all the New York City guidebooks. The place is always mobbed with Japanese tourists, who ignore the fish counter, likely having no place to cook, so it stays freed up for the locals. The other day they had good-looking wild-caught medium-size shrimp from the Gulf of Mexico. It smelled sweet, and I could sense that its pretty gray shells would make a nice broth for the pasta. And they did.
The sauce I had in mind for the dish was a little unusual, mixing together miso, ginger, shallot, butter, vermouth, rosemary, and tomatoes. But I tell you it worked. It tasted like Christmas, and I might just go with it for my Christmas Eve fish dinner, maybe with calamari, as I originally intended, or with lobster. My grandfather Erico, who I never met, used to make pasta with lobster every Christmas Eve. I obviously never tasted his version, but that makes the nostalgic pull of the dish even stronger. My mother said he added a lot of brandy.
While I was at Chelsea Market I made my way downstairs to Buon’Italia. If you’ve never been, just think of it as an intimate, more manageable Eataly. I never leave it pissed off, unlike Eataly. And it’s just starting to get its Christmas decor together. I’m not usually big on Christmas decorations unless they have a dark edge, but I do love holiday food displays. Here are photos of a couple of appealing ones at Buon’Italia. I need to go back and get some of that marzipan.
While at Buon’Italia, I picked up a bag of Setaro pasta to go with my shrimp dish. Setaro is a great old pasta company in Napoli. I chose scialatielli, a thick, stubby fettuccine-type shape from the Amalfi coast that I love for its chewiness. It’s used primarily for tomato and seafood sauces. When it’s made fresh, parmigiano and basil are sometimes worked into the dough. Made dry, it never seems to have that flavoring. I have made it fresh myself, and maybe I will for Christmas. If so, I’ll get a recipe together for you.
If you’d like to try my Scialatielli with Shrimp and Miso Butter Tomato Sauce, here’s what you’ll need to buy and do.
Scialatielli with Shrimp and Miso Butter Tomato Sauce
1 ½ pounds large shrimp, shelled and deveined, but you’ll want to keep the shells Salt Aleppo pepper A big pinch of sugar A drizzle of olive oil ¾ stick unsalted butter ½ cup dry vermouth 1 heaping tablespoon white miso 2 shallots, diced A 1/2-inch-thick chunk fresh ginger, minced A long stem of rosemary, the leaves chopped 2 fresh bay leaves 1 28-ounce can Italian plum tomatoes, roughly chopped, saving the juice
In a bowl, toss the shrimp with a little salt, Aleppo to taste, a big pinch of sugar, and a drizzle of olive oil. Stick it in the fridge until you’re ready to cook it.
Put half of the butter in a saucepan, and melt it over medium heat. Add the shrimp shells, and sauté them until they turn pink. Add the vermouth and miso and about 2 cups of water. Stir to dissolve the miso. Let the mix simmer, uncovered, until it’s sweetly shrimpy smelling and has reduced by half. Strain it.
In a large sauté pan, melt the remaining butter over medium heat, and add the shallots and the ginger. Sauté until soft and fragrant, about 3 minutes. Add half of the rosemary and the bay leaves, and sauté a minute longer, just to release their essences. Add the shrimp broth, and simmer for about another 3 minutes. Add the tomatoes, and cook for about 5 minutes.
While the sauce is cooking, set up a pot of pasta water and bring it to a boil. Add salt. Add the scialatielli.
Get out a another large sauté pan, and get it hot over high heat. Add the shrimp, and sear them quickly until they’re lightly browned but still a little undercooked. Add them to the tomato sauce, stirring them in. Add a little more Aleppo if you like, and taste for salt. You may or may not need it, depending on how salty your miso is.
When the scialatielli is al dente, tip it into a large, wide serving bowl. Pour on the shrimp sauce, and give it a gentle toss. Sprinkle the remaining rosemary over the top. Serve right away.
To follow this pasta, I served a salad of escarole, pear, almonds, and Montasio cheese (also from Buon’Italia). If you’d like to try it, buy a head of escarole, and pull off the tough outer leaves (saving them for a sauté or a soup). Tear the tender inner leaves into bite-size pieces, and put them in a salad bowl. Scatter on a sliced pear, some lightly toasted whole almonds, and some slices of Montasio. I tossed this with a dressing of sherry wine vinegar, good olive oil, salt, and black pepper. I really like that combination.
Recipe in text below: Roasted Red Onion Crostata with Anchovies, Thyme, and Sherry Wine Vinegar
I took a couple of weeks off from blogging to regain my head after the election. I’ve come out less sad but with a lingering feeling of disgust that has been working its way into my dreams. Obnoxious dreams. Among other things, I’m worrying about immigrant families being torn apart and all the heartbreak that will create. Promises made, promises kept.
And speaking of immigrants, last week I made my way down to Little Italy to check out the newly reopened Italian American Museum, on Mulberry Street. Didn’t know there was such a thing? It opened in 2008 in the elegant nineteenth-century Stabile bank building on the corner of Mulberry and Grand. I visited a bunch of times back then, always expecting it to be something more. Ellis Island ship manifestos are fine, but they’re really only interesting if your own grandmother is on one. I wanted the place to have more. More of what? More of the sounds, colors, and smells that have made up the Italian American experience. Several times I proposed to the director what I thought were fun and exciting culinary programs, but there was no follow-through.
The Stabile building was demolished in 2014 for what looks like purely financial gain for developers. The 1830s building was not protected by the city’s landmarks preservation laws, even though it was structurally intact. There was a lot of protest at the time, but the developers won out. A higher building now stands in its place. In it the Italian American Museum has reemerged.
The main exhibit there now is a collection of puppets made by a Sicilian family named Manteo who settled in Little Italy in the 1920s and began making Sicilian-style marionettes and putting on shows for the community. The things are lovely and funny, with all hand-hammered metal and historical costumes. They are almost life-size. There were a few of the puppets on display at the previous museum, but the new place is showing a lot of them, so a step up, I guess. This new space, which includes a 60-seat theater, looks to be about three times the size of the old one. I’m not sure what they’re planning to fill it with, but I’m optimistic that they’ve got ideas.
In addition to getting mildly excited by the return of the Italian American Museum, I’ve been purchasing a lot of round red onions, a good cool-weather item. I love their deep crimson color, their glossiness, and the pretty rings of red you see when you slice into them. I eat them raw, but they’re also good cooked, as most varieties retain their strength and their sweetness gets concentrated.
Nobody I spoke to at grocery stores or the Union Square Greenmarket knew what varieties they were selling. Maybe Red Bull, or Red Burgermeister, or Giant Red Hamburger. Those are a few names I found on Google. I bought beautiful ones from Madura Farms. The seller, who was not someone who works at the farm, said they were a type of Spanish onion. They were powerful but cooked up sweet, and, importantly, they held their shape after being baked two times. I cut them into thick rings so they looked almost like roses after being baked into a crostata. I’ll be making the crostata again for Thanksgiving.
If you’d like to give it a try, you’ll want to start with the pastry, so it’ll have time to rest. Here’s what you’ll need for that:
2 cups unbleached white flour, plus a little extra for rolling out the dough About a teaspoon of salt A tablespoon of sugar The leaves from about 6 thyme sprigs 1¼ sticks cold unsalted butter, cut into little pieces ⅓ cup dry Marsala, chilled 1 teaspoon sherry wine vinegar
Put the flour, salt, sugar, and thyme leaves into a food processor, and pulse a few times to blend. Add the butter, and pulse a few more times so you break the butter up further. Add the Marsala and the vinegar, and pulse briefly until you have a bowl of moist crumble that holds together when you pinch it.
Turn the crumble out onto a work surface, and press it together into a ball. Next flatten it out into a thick disk. Cover it with plastic wrap, and stick it in the refrigerator for at least an hour or as long as overnight before using it.
Set the oven for 350 degrees. For the filling, you’ll want to purchase two large, round, shiny red onions. Peel off their papery outer skin and then slice them into ¼ inch thick rounds. You’ll want a dozen or so slices. Coat a large sheet pan with olive oil. Place the rounds on top in one layer. Drizzle them generously with olive oil, sprinkle on little dry Marsala, and season them with salt and black pepper. Roast them until they’re slightly browned, tender, and fragrant, about 20 minutes. Sprinkle them with drops of sherry wine vinegar, not too much but just enough to balance the sweetness of the onions. Let them cool.
While the onions are cooling, take 8 or 9 good-quality oil-packed anchovies, and mash them up in a mortar. Work in enough olive oil to form a thick paste. Add a few drops of sherry wine vinegar and mix it in.
Turn up the oven to 400. Roll out the dough to an approximately 10-inch round and place it on a buttered sheet pan. Brush the dough with the anchovy paste, leaving about an inch rim all around. Add a thin layer of grated Gruyère, which not only will taste good but will also help hold the tart together. Layer in the onion rounds. They should be a tight fit. I find a spatula works well for getting the rounds off the pan in one piece. Sprinkle the onions with freshly chopped thyme leaves. Fold the edges up all around, so you have an approximately 1-inch border of fairly neat folds. Press the folds down so they stay put, and give everything a drizzle of olive oil and a sprinkling of sugar.
Bake until the crust and onions are nicely golden, about 25 minutes. Let it cool for about 10 minutes before slicing. You’ll now have an antipasto offering for 5 or 6 people.
Recipe in text below: Maccheroni with Baccalà, Black Olives, Pastis, Basil, and Spicy Breadcrumbs
One of the aromas ingrained in my culinary soul is the slightly nauseating but still alluring smell of baccalà standing upright in wooden barrels, looking like snow-covered roadkill and smelling of fishy death. Razzano’s Italian shop in Glen Cove was where I first came up against it, that dark fish smell mingling with a strong hit of provolone. Powerful. As a child I first took it as an assault, but after a few visits to that wonderful food shop, the putrid smell went from a gag in my throat to miraculously good. At some point I stopped telling my father I’d wait in the car. I needed to smell it again and again.
Now I love the aroma of baccalà, and also the ritual needed to prepare it for eating. My recipe here is an improvisation on a Sicilian version of pasta with baccalà usually called alla ghiotta, which translates, I’m thinking, as lady glutton style. Salt cod is rich, especially when brought together with tomatoes, olives, wine, onion, garlic, sometimes capers, and lots of herbs, so I guess the dish was so good you couldn’t stop eating it, or, specifically, women couldn’t stop eating it. Often it includes potatoes, in which case it can be made with or without pasta. I wanted the pasta, so I left out the potatoes.
Southern Italians use baccalà more than they use stoccafisso, the air-dried version of preserved cod. Baccalà tends to be meatier and have a stronger, brinier flavor that I really love. Quite different from fresh cod. A unique taste. When buying baccalà I look for packages that contain thick middle cuts, not just scrawny end pieces. In my experience they take two days of soaking, changing the water repeatedly, to be rid of excess salt. I love the funky, briny smell baccalà releases into my kitchen as it gives up its salt to a big bowl of cold water. You’ll see it’ll start to swell and look whiter.
To make my maccheroni with baccalà, get yourself a one-pound package of salt cod, and start soaking it in a big bowl of water, changing the water a few times. At night, stick it, with its water, in the refrigerator. The next day take it out and let it sit out, changing the water a few more times. By evening, taste a piece from the thickest section. If it still tastes really salty, change the water again and put it back in the fridge for another night. By next morning, after rinsing it again, it should be sufficiently desalted. I’ve never known it to take longer than that.
Place the baccalà in a wide-sided pan. Add water to just about cover, a big splash of dry vermouth, a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil, a few fresh bay leaves, and a few peppercorns. Turn the heat to medium, and get the water up to a simmer. Then turn the heat down a little, cover the pan, and simmer gently until the cod flakes easily when you poke it with a knife. That should take about 8 minutes. Don’t cook it past this point, or it’ll get tough. Take the cod from its poaching liquid, and put in on a plate. Keep the liquid. When the cod is cool enough to handle, break it into 1-inch chunks, discarding any bones or skin you might come across.
Set up a pot of pasta cooking water, and bring it to a boil. Add salt. Add a pound of maccheroni and give it a stir. I used Martelli’s I Maccheroni di Toscana, which is like a ridged, curved ziti (I ordered it from Gustiamo). I’ve also seen this shape referred to as sedani (which means celery, though it doesn’t look like celery to me). Rigatoni or regular penne would also be good here.
While the pasta is cooking, get out a large sauté pan, and set it over medium heat. Add a big drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil. Add a chopped shallot, a chopped fresh red peperoncino, a sliced garlic clove, a fresh bay leaf, and a palmful of ground fennel seed. Let it all soften for about 2 minutes. Add 2 pints of grape tomatoes. Season it with a little salt (keeping in mind how much salt you’ve got left in your baccalà), and let it cook until the tomatoes just start to burst, about 8 minutes. Add a splash of vermouth and a little of the cod cooking liquid. Add the broken up baccalà, a handful of pitted olives (I used Kalamatas), and let it all warm through for a minute or so. Turn off the heat, and add a few drops of pastis.
When the pasta is al dente, drain it and pour it into a large serving bowl. Pour on the baccalà sauce and a big drizzle of fresh extra-virgin olive oil. Add a handful of lightly chopped basil leaves, and give it a good toss. Taste to see if it needs salt.
Top each serving with a sprinkling of spicy sweet breadcrumbs. I made them by crushing a bunch of red pepper taralli with the side of my knife.
I am a chef, food writer, and herb lover who specializes in improvisational Italian cooking. I am the author of The Flavors of Southern Italy and Pasta Improvvisata, as well as Williams-Sonoma Pasta, which is available at Williams-Sonoma stores. A member of the Association of Culinary Professionals, The New York Women's Culinary Alliance, The New York Culinary Historians, The Herb Society of America, and the Italian-based International Slow Food Movement, I live in New York City.
Erica De Mane 