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Caponata with Lovage, Thai Basil, and Pear, plus Some Thoughts on a Pizza Truck Called Mommò

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 24, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Recipe below: Caponata with Lovage, Thai Basil, and Pear

If you ever get to upstate New York, you probably notice a lot of pizza trucks rumbling around. They show up at farm stands, breweries, wineries, fairs. They pull up and set up, churn out pizzas for a few hours, and then they’re gone. They’re not all great, but some are.

I often hang out at Slow Fox Farm Brewery, in Rhinebeck. It’s both a brewery and a farm, with its own tomatoes, herbs, cabbage, kale, beets, arugula, and rows of, at the moment, zinnias, cosmos, and celosia that you can pick while drunk. As well as more than half a dozen fine house-brewed beers and ales. You can often eat pizza there. So far they’ve had I think three or four different pizza trucks this summer (this should go on into the early winter, before they close up until the spring). All the pizza has been good, but one stands out for me.

I could tell right away from the aroma wafting out from the Mommò truck that I was going to like its pizza. Mommò, I just learned, is Neapolitan for “right now,” and that’s about right. The pizza takes three minutes to cook. Luca, the owner and pizzaiolo, is from Italy, and he has the Neapolitan flavor down. The crust is yeasty and pully and just a touch salty, with charred but not too charred bubbles circling its rim. That is the taste I want but often don’t get. He’s got wood, but unlike most of the pizza people who drag around a wood burning oven with their truck, Luca had it built right into his truck. It doesn’t seem possible, but I’ve seen it. He explained to me that it’s a stainless steel pizza oven made in Naples for backyard use. It’s a little tight, but he got it to fit. If he turns around without thinking, he can burn his arm. But he’s been doing this for almost three years now, and I guess he’s got the reflex down.

Luca makes an effort to use good ingredients, as not everyone does. He’s got that bright red tomato sauce I always look for, the type that’s ladled on raw but gets flash blasted in the extra-hot oven. So far I’ve tried his margarita, his pizza with shiitake mushrooms, an anchovy and burrata one, and his sausage pizza topped with a nice mellow local sausage. In true Neapolitan style he’s light on the toppings, but you still get that traditional Neapolitan moist spot in the middle that I love. There’s a gorgonzola pizza I’m interested in, too. Next time. If you feel like following Luca around the Hudson Valley, you can track his whereabouts at www.mommopizza.com.

As you probably gather, I do love a good pizza, but what about caponata? Not that they’re related, except for the fact that they’re both Southern Italian. It’s still eggplant season here in New York, so I’ve got to use eggplants every way I can while they’re still young and vibrant. Caponata is of Sicilian origin, one of those full-bodied Spanish- and possibly Arab-inspired dishes with strange lists of ingredients that combine to open up lusciously on the tongue. Eggplant is caponata’s anchor, and agrodolce gives it its swing. It’s an old dish (tomato being a recent addition), which when done up for high-class Sicilians used to include (and sometimes still does) Baroque garnishes such as chocolate, cinnamon, hard-boiled eggs aged in vinegar, and even baby octopus. I kept the cinnamon.

Basil, parsley, and mint are traditional contemporary herbs for caponata. But this September, since I’ve still had tons of lovage in my garden, I’ve decided to add a little of that. And it makes sense, since celery is almost always a component of the dish and lovage has a strong celery-like flavor. If you don’t have lovage, use a palmful of celery leaves instead. I also had Thai basil hanging on, so that went in as well. And since it’s early fall, instead of the more typical dried fruit, usually raisins, I went with pear, just to freshen things up. And I decided on almonds instead of pine nuts because they seemed to go better with the pears. Not sure why. Just a feeling.

And just one more thing about caponata: I don’t care what anyone says, caponata is not ratatouille. It’s not a side dish. It shares basic ingredients, such as eggplant, but the seasoning couldn’t be more different. Its agrodolce boldness steers it toward the antipasto category.  I like it served room temperature, along with bruschetta brushed with good olive oil.

Caponata with Lovage, Thai Basil, and Pear

  • Servings: 6, as an antipasto dish
  • Print

Extra-virgin olive oil
2 firm medium-size eggplants, stripe-peeled and cut into medium dice
Salt
A big pinch of cinnamon (about ¼ teaspoon)
A drizzle of honey (about a teaspoon)
1 red bell pepper, seeded, ribbed, and cut into small dice
1 medium onion, cut into small dice
2 teaspoons Spanish sherry vinegar
3 small inner celery ribs, cut into small dice, plus a handful of celery leaves (especially if you don’t have lovage)
1 firm pear, skinned and cut into small dice
A splash of dry Marsala
1 large, round summer tomato, skinned and cut into small dice
1½ teaspoons sugar
A palmful of salt-packed capers, soaked and rinsed
Black pepper
A handful of Thai basil leaves, lightly chopped, plus whole sprigs for garnish
3 lovage leaves, lightly chopped
A big handful of blanched almonds, lightly toasted and roughly chopped

Have a large serving bowl ready near the stove. In a large skillet, heat a big drizzle of olive oil over medium heat. Add the eggplant, and sauté until it’s tender but still keeping its shape, about 8 minutes. Season it with a little salt and the cinnamon. Add the honey, giving everything a mix. Spoon the eggplant into the bowl.

Add another drizzle of olive oil to the skillet, add the red pepper and onion, and sauté over medium heat until softened, about 4 minutes or so. Add 1 teaspoon of the vinegar, and let it bubble for a few seconds. Add this mixture to the bowl with the eggplant.

Add another drizzle of olive oil to the skillet, and then add the celery and celery leaves, sautéing them until they just start to soften, about 2 minutes. Add the pear, and let it sauté about a minute longer. Pour in the Marsala, and let it bubble away. Add all this to the bowl, and give everything a gentle toss.

Add one more drizzle of olive oil to the skillet, keeping the heat on medium. Add the tomato, seasoning it with a little salt. Add the sugar, and sauté the tomato for about 2 minutes (you want it to remain red and fresh-tasting). Add the other teaspoon of vinegar, and let it boil for a few seconds. Pour the tomatoes into the bowl.

Add the capers and a few big grindings of black pepper to the bowl. Add the Thai basil, lovage, and about ¾ of the almonds. Give everything another mix. Taste for seasoning. The caponata should have a gentle, well-balanced sweet-and-sour taste. Add a little more salt if you need to to bring all the flavors into focus. Let the dish sit and come to room temperature. Then give it another taste, just to check the seasoning. (Dishes taste different at different temperatures, and this one in particular will change flavors as all its various components meld. It might need a little drizzle of vinegar or a bit more black pepper.) Garnish with the remaining almonds and the Thai basil sprigs. Serve at room temperature.

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Rigatoni with Roasted Red Peppers, Crème Fraîche, Thyme, and Basil, plus a Visit to Sullaluna, a New Cafe and Italian Bookstore on Carmine Street

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 12, 2024| 6 Comments »

Recipe in text below: Rigatoni with Roasted Red Peppers, Crème Fraîche, Thyme, and Basil

In the late 1800s Carmine Street and the surrounding blocks of the West Village became a destination for Italian immigrants, mostly from Liguria. Our Lady of Pompeii Church, at Carmine and Bleecker, was their refuge, providing not only spiritual support but also helping new arrivals with housing, jobs, and medical care. It has continued to comfort all the Sicilian and Neapolitan people that followed. My friend Sandy Di Pasqua’s family landed on Carmine. My next-door neighbor on Long Island Lou Mastellone’s older brother was born in a walkup, cold-water apartment on Christopher Street, about five blocks away.

Pompeii is still an Italian church in spirit, having a daily Italian-language mass for the remaining elders, but it also offers one in Tagalog, as the congregation is now heavily Filipino. I took Italian classes at its adjoining school in the 1990s. And for years I would get together with a bunch of friends for its Good Friday Mass. For me, a nonreligious type, the attraction to the vigil was the darkness, the yellow light, the smell of the paraffin candles, and the repetitive, hypnotic song we all sang as we walked over and over around the pews. The refrain “Sono stati i miei peccati, Gesù mio, perdon, pieta” is, I’m pretty certain, stuck in my brain forever. In the old days they even took the song and candles out onto the street. After the vigil we’d all go to Rocco’s for fritto misto and chianti (the old Rocco’s, not the new faux–Italian American hotspot it’s become). Our group has now dispersed, so we don’t do it anymore, but the show goes on, although with fewer participants each year.

There are still a few legit Italian places in the neighborhood. Rocco’s pastry shop (not related to the now trendy restaurant on Thompson Street ), Ottomanelli’s butcher, Joe’s pizza, and Faicco’s Pork shop (which now, unfortunately, has an aggressive MAGAroni vibe to it that I don’t appreciate) are all around the corner on Bleecker.

So for me, it’s a celebration when a new Italian-run shop appears in the neighborhood. Yesterday I went to check out Sullaluna, a just-opened cafe and bookshop combo on Carmine, an offshoot of a place in Venice. They specialize in beautifully illustrated children’s books, all in Italian. I felt peaceful in Sullaluna, and the books are fascinating. A whole new world of literature for me. Here’s a book I just had to purchase:

There’s also good coffee and wine, and a small menu with standard items like gnocchi, arancini, carbonara, and salads. They also do brunch. I cannot yet comment on the quality of the food, since I only had an espresso, but the guy next to me ordered a huge gelato-stuffed cornetto that looked enticing.  This is a sweet little place. I will be back.

Sullaluna is at 41 Carmine Street. It’s closed on Tuesdays. As of now, It doesn’t seem to have a website, but it does have an active Instragram account that you might want to check out.

After my coffee at Sullaluna I made my way over to the Union Square market to check out all the late summer produce there. We’ve still got lots of tomatoes here in New York City, and those dark and dusty-looking pointed Italian plums, my favorites for tarts. And many of the sweet and hot chilis have now ripened to a deep crimson. I bought an armful of sweet ones labelled Giant Marconi. I think I’ve cooked with them before, but I wasn’t familiar with that name. I love a roasted sweet pepper sauce for pasta, so that was my plan.

Here’s how to make my Rigatoni with Roasted Red Peppers, Crème Fraîche, Thyme, and Basil.

You’ll want to start by roasting your peppers. I used 6 of the Giant Marconi ones, which turned out to be dense and rich tasting, but 4 or 5 regular red bell peppers would also work. I like to do them on a charcoal grill, but a broiler or gas flame does a fine job. Just blacken them all over, and then peel and seed them. Then give them a rough chop. (I really don’t recommend using jarred roasted peppers for this. Their taste is always somewhat acidic, which can really spoil this suave sauce.)

Get out a large sauté pan, and set it over medium heat. Add a big drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil and a tablespoon or so of butter. Add a chopped shallot and a sliced garlic clove, and let them soften for a moment. Add the roasted peppers, a little chopped fresh thyme, some salt, and a pinch of nutmeg, and let them cook until the peppers are fragrant and tender, about five minutes. Add a splash of dry vermouth, and let it bubble out.

Purée the peppers in a food processor, adding a little water to thin out the purée. Return the purée to the pan, and add about ½ cup of crème fraîche and a sprinkling of Aleppo pepper. Let it warm through.

Cook a pound of rigatoni or another shape you might have on hand, and drain it, saving a little of the cooking water. Pour it into a large, warmed serving bowl. Add the sauce, a drizzle of fresh olive oil, a good sprinkling of grated Parmigiano Reggiano, and a handful of lightly chopped basil, adding a little cooking water to loosen it if needed. Give it a good toss.

This sauce is also very good on mussels or clams. Just open them in a little white wine or vermouth, add the sauce, and toss. Beauty.

Happy end of summer cooking to you.

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Cool Zucchini Soup with Lemon Thyme

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on July 16, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Lemon and a Sprig of Lemon Thyme, by Julian Merrow-Smith.

Recipe below, in text: Cool Zucchini Soup with Lemon Thyme

I never used to love lemon thyme. I found it too air-freshener-y. But the more I’ve learned how to work with it, the more I’ve changed my mind. It’s a matter of application, of handling. Lemon thyme is a multipurpose herb. The thyme feature of its personality can make it work as an anchoring herb, one you’ll want to add during cooking so its peppery, allspice-like, woody flavor can open up with heat. (Ever wonder why Jamaican cooks use allspice and thyme together so often? It’s because they taste alike. There’s an affinity there.) But also you’ve got the clear lemon overtones that provide an uplift, especially if you include it at the end. In the case of this soup, I’ve added it at the beginning of cooking and then chosen to wait and add it again after I’ve chilled the soup, so it stays fresh and relevant. It’s deep and good this way. No air freshener, no stupid scented candle.

To make this soup you’ll want to get out a good-size soup pot and set it over medium heat. Drizzle in a few tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil, and add a large summer onion, chopped, using some of the tender green stem. Add a medium-size baking potato, peeled and chopped. Add some salt, and let it all cook for a few minutes. Then add about 6 or 7 small zucchini, chopped, and the leaves from about 4 lemon thyme sprigs. Let it cook until everything is fragrant and just starting to soften. Add a splash of dry vermouth, and let it boil away. Add 4 cups of chicken broth or vegetable broth and enough water to just cover the vegetables. Bring it to a boil, and then turn the heat down a touch and simmer at a low bubble until everything is tender, about 15 minutes.

Next you’ll want to purée the soup in a food processor, probably in batches, pouring it into a large bowl as it’s puréed. Chill it for several hours. When it’s cold, add a little more salt, some freshly ground black pepper, and the chopped leaves from about 5 lemon thyme sprigs. I like this soup with body but still quite pourable. If you find it too thick, thin it out with a little cold water.

Give it a taste.  I found it needed a tiny drizzle of sherry wine vinegar to bring up its acidity. Your soup may not. Serve cold, garnished with a drizzle of your best olive oil and a few lemon thyme sprigs.

This will make four big portions.

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Calzone with Scamorza and a Spring Herb Pesto

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on June 13, 2024| 5 Comments »

A poster with a calzone on a maiolica plate.

Recipe below, in text: Calzone with Scamorza and a Spring Herb Pesto

The word calzone doesn’t immediately make me think warm weather cooking. It reminds me more of being a broke, hungry 20-year-old, on a freezing day in downtown Manhattan, urgently needing to get hold of the most filling food I can find for the smallest amount of cash. Industrial prosciutto, dough, dripping ricotta, all in a hot, oily package. I worshipped the calzone back then. Still do, but maybe not as desperately.

National Calzone Day is November 1.

A calzone is not a thing of elegance (the word means pants leg, which kind of sums up its clunky look and feel), but as I was thinking about new dishes to make with all the herbs now exploding in my garden, I thought, why not a calzone? Why not lighten one up with fresh greenery?

My Italian parsley was growing fluffy and deep green, and it became the anchor for the pine nut–heavy pesto that got smeared inside my calzone. The rest was just Southern Italian knowhow, meaning I chose my cheeses wisely.

My parsley.

And speaking of Southern Italy, I always knew the calzone had been born in Napoli, since it’s basically a folded over pizza. It completely makes sense to me as a possibly unintended creation. I’ve inadvertently created many calzoni when shooting a pizza with a little too much force off its peel and onto the back of the oven, making a folded up but deliciously messy pocket. This may have also happened in Naples sometime in the eighteenth century, when the calzone became the perfect, self-contained street food.

In New York it was always a pizza shop option, and when a slice wasn’t enough I’d chose the calzone. In my experience, the New York versions were larger than Southern Italian ones, which is typical of Italian-American food in general, where more is somehow considered better. I certainly felt more was better as a starving 20-year-old.

For this version of calzone I went with a no-knead dough that spent an overnight in the refrigerator. It was soft but not hard to work with. I just pressed it out with my fingers into a round.

My calzones.

To make the dough, shake a package of dry yeast into a large bowl. Add a cup of warm water (110 degrees is ideal), a tablespoon of honey, and 2 tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil. Give everything a stir, and let it sit and bloom. That should take around 6 minutes. The surface should be a little bubbly.

Add 2½ cups of regular flour and about a teaspoon of fine sea salt. Stir everything around with a spoon until it comes together into a sticky ball, adding a little more flour if needed to make it easier to handle. The dough will be soft. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface, and form it into a ball.

Get out another bowl, and coat it well with olive oil. Drop the dough ball into it, turning it around once or twice to coat it with oil. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and stick it in the refrigerator overnight and into the next day, for at least 18 hours. By then it should have doubled in size.

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface, and punch it down. Divide it into four pieces, and roll each piece into a ball. Place the balls onto a floured surface, and let them sit, unrefrigerated, for about an 1½ hours. By then they will have puffed up a bit.

In the meantime, make the pesto. You can use whatever herbs you have or like, but what I did was grab a handful of parsley and basil leaves, a smaller one of tarragon, and 2 lovage leaves, about 2 cups in all. I blanched them for about a minute in boiling water and drained and then shocked them in cold water to set their bright green color. When you’ve done that, squeeze out most of the water. If you want to include stronger herbs such as rosemary, thyme, sage, savory, or oregano, use only a little and bulk them up with basil and/or parsley.

I put a palmful of pine nuts, along with 1 spring garlic clove, into a food processor and pulsed a few times. Then I added the blanched herbs, salt, and good Sicilian olive oil (about ½ cup), processing until it was all fairly smooth.

Then I put about 2 cups of whole-milk ricotta into a bowl, added a cup of grated scamorza cheese, salt, black pepper, a  few scrapings of nutmeg, and a drizzle of olive oil, mixing it all together well. If you can’t find scamorza, caciocavallo is similar and will make an excellent substitute.

About an hour before you’d like to cook your calzoni, put a pizza stone in your oven, and turn the heat up as high as it goes.

Pour about ½ cup of good olive oil into a small bowl. Add a pinch of sugar and a more generous pinch of salt. Stick a pastry brush into the bowl, and keep it nearby.

When your oven is hot, flour a work surface, and press out one of your four dough balls to about a 6- to 7-inch round. Flour your pizza peel, and transfer the dough round onto it. Smear pesto all over the dough, leaving a little rim around the edges. Blob some of the ricotta mix onto one side, smoothing it out. Fold the dough over into a half moon, and crimp the edges.  

Brush the top of the calzone with the olive oil mix, and slide it on to the stone. With this method you really can bake only one at a time. Bake it until it’s golden brown. This will take about 7 or 8 minutes, depending on how hot your oven is.  I like eating these just out of the oven, with a glass of dry Italian white wine, such as a Greco di Tufo. They also reheat well.

Note: If you don’t have a pizza stone, just prep each calzone on an oiled sheet pan, and stick the pan in your hot oven. The stone will give you a quicker cook time and a crunchier crust, but both ways work fine. Just leave the calzone in until it’s good and brown.

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Black Fettuccine with Calamari, Jalapeño, Basil, and Miso: A New Take on a Favorite Theme

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 19, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Our Unfinished Revolution: Octopus/Squid, by Alexander Calder, 1975-76.

Recipe below: Black Fettuccine with Calamari, Jalapeño, Basil, and Miso

The past few weeks have been rough. Family problems have kept my cooking and writing unfocused. That’s just the way it goes sometimes. I had what I thought were a few good ideas for blog posts but they came out garbled. I’m letting them sit in their messed-up state for a future time when I hope I can look at them fresh.  In the meantime, instead of one of my intriguing stories, I’m sharing with you a good pasta dish.

Pasta with calamari in its many incarnations has always been a favorite of mine. I circle back to it often. If you want to call it comfort food, you won’t be wrong, but for some reason I can’t stand that expression. Any food is comfort when I’m hungry. But I do especially like pasta with calamari.

This recipe drifts a bit into non-Italian flavors. I like the taste of jalapeño. It’s obviously not Italian, but its sharp medium spice goes well with seafood, and by extension, with seafood with pasta. I like jalapeño so much I even decided to grow some this past summer, which I never felt compelled to do before, since it’s piled high in every supermarket year round. I saw cute seedlings at the nursery, and I impulsively bought and planted them. They came up in July, firm, dark green, and abundant. I let some go through their natural progression to deep red. Those were an August treat. I never see them red in supermarkets. I used green ones for this pasta. They blend well with miso, again not an Italian taste, obviously, but I’ve found that it can impart a useful umami, not unlike that of anchovies, when used in an otherwise Italian-leaning dish.

I have a strong attraction to squid ink pasta. Often when I see it I buy it. I also make my own, not only with squid ink but also with cuttlefish ink, which seems easier to find. This time I didn’t make my own pasta, as I ran across a new black pasta, new to me and to Citarella, that intrigued me. It’s from an American company called Al Dente. Stupid name aside, the semidark dried fettuccine, made with eggs and semolina, turned out to be a find. It cooked up silky but stayed firm and slippery, which I loved. The color was good too, a greenish black, a bit dusty looking. If you see it anywhere, give it a try.

The colors of my pasta dish.

Altogether the colors of this pasta were beautiful, like the Italian flag but less patriotic with the jalapeño and miso. Cooking it helped my mood considerably. If you’re having trouble of some sort, and who isn’t, I would consider getting a bag of squid ink pasta and some really fresh calamari and just going for it in a free, improvisational way. Cooking is therapy.

Black Fettuccine with Calamari, Jalapeño, Basil, and Miso

Salt
Extra-virgin olive oil
4 scallions, cut into thin rings, using much of the fresh green tops
2 fresh, moist garlic cloves, thinly sliced
½ to 1 green Jalapeño pepper, depending on how much heat you like, well chopped
2 pints grape tomatoes
1 pound squid ink fettuccine or spaghetti
1 tablespoon white miso dissolved in ¾ cup dry Marsala
1 pound very fresh, small squid, cut into rings, the tentacles cut in two
A handful of basil leaves, lightly chopped

This dish comes together fast, so it’s best to have all your stuff prepped and ready where you can grab it.

Set up a pot of well-salted pasta cooking water over high heat. While it’s coming to a boil, get out a large sauté pan, and place it over a medium-high flame.

Put about 2 tablespoons of olive oil in the sauté pan, and let it get hot. Add the scallions, garlic, jalapeño, and tomatoes at the same time. Add a little salt. Let cook, shaking the pan frequently, until the tomatoes start to burst, probably about 5 minutes.

Add the fettuccine to the now boiling water, and give it a stir.

Add the mix of miso and Marsala to the pan, and let it bubble for about 30 seconds, to cook off some of the alcohol. Add the squid, stirring it into the sauce, and cook it fast, just until tender, no more than about 4 minutes. Taste a piece if you’re unsure. It should be cooked through and tender, with a slight bite but not rubbery. Take the pan off the heat.

Drain the fettuccine, and pour it into a large, wide serving bowl. Drizzle on a generous amount of fresh olive oil, and give it a toss. Add the squid sauce and the basil, and toss again.

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