tomato_kumato

I’ve often heard that the difference between French food and Italian food is the mindset: the French seek to make something incredible out of what seems like nothing. A croissant is just butter and flour, when it all comes down to it. A baguette is yeast, flour, water and salt. For the French, it’s all in the technique.

The Italians, on the other hand, seek to show off the best of the ingredients, barely adding anything at all. Prosciutto è melone is just that: prosciutto and melon. When I used to stay with a friend whose mother was Italian, she always served us an appetizer of thinly sliced cucumbers and salt: one of the best things I’ve ever had.

When I was in Italy, I came upon this phenomenon once again. I was there with a class of Americans, most of which had never been to Italy or tasted true Italian food. My professor usually ordered for us in restaurants, suggesting a dish he had tried in that restaurant, and also ordering an assortment of fried appetizers. I tasted some of the best pizza, spaghetti with tomatoes and mozzarella, and insalata caprese I’ve ever had.

I use the term insalata caprese lightly. We had taken a boat to Capri from our home base of Naples, and after hiking most of the island (whining and moaning the whole way… I won’t lie), we found a spot by the water and ate our lunch. I had bought one tomato and one ball of buffalo mozzarella, and there, with very little ceremony and over a plastic bag to catch the milk from the mozzarella, I created my own insalata caprese.

OK… so here’s the thing. I call myself an Italian-American, but the truth of the matter is, I’m only half. My mother, who does the majority of the cooking in my house, is actually German-Irish, and so she sees no issue with serving cheese with fish-based pasta dishes.

Personally, I never used cheese on these dishes. The only pasta and seafood meal she made was Shrimp Fra Diavolo, and she almost never made it. I worshiped the spiciness of the dish, and I refused to dull it at all with cheese. In fact, as I got older, I would often add more hot pepper.

So it wasn’t until I went to Italy that I realized that you are technically not supposed to eat cheese with these dishes. My brother or sister would order cheese with their Spaghetti con Vongoli, and the server would look at us as though we all had two heads.

I suppose my father never put cheese on his seafood pasta either… I guess I just never noticed. No Italian I’ve ever asked has really been able to explain the reasoning behind this… but then again, no French person can ever tell me why they think peanut butter and jelly is a disgusting combination.

So when I couldn’t tell the Canadian why “you can’t eat seafood pasta with cheese!” he used our brand new cheese grater to cover his liberally with parmesan. I just added extra pepper and shook my head.

Spicy Shrimp and Spaghetti (adapted from Culinary in the Desert)

3 ounces dry spaghetti
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon Cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon chili paste
2 garlic cloves, minced
8 ounces frozen pre-cooked shrimp, thawed
1 28-oz can whole tomatoes
2 tablespoons sour cream
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

In a large pot of boiling salted water, cook pasta and drain, reserving some of the pasta liquid.

Meanwhile, heat oil in a large saucepan. Add Cayenne, chili paste and chopped garlic and cook just one minute. Lower heat and add shrimp. Stir in tomatoes, tomato paste, basil and salt. Simmer 10 minutes until sauce is slightly reduced. Remove sauce from heat and stir in crème fraîche and pasta. Add pasta water if needed. Serve with extra pepper on the side, or cheese for your non-Italian guests.

Serves one and a Canadian.

When I was younger, my father and I used to go to dinner, just the two of us, every Tuesday night. At first, we went to this restaurant called il Pomodoro. I would get rigatoni marinara, and my dad would get linguini Bolognese. After il Pomodoro closed, we started going to a different restaurant called Vico. I was older by then, and ready for a new standard, something my mother didn’t make at home. This time, I went for the Bolognese… and I fell immediately in love.

It’s been a long time since I had this pasta sauce. My mother made a mean marinara, but Bolognese was not on her repertoire. We still go to Vico sometimes, but I’ve expanded my horizons, and I usually opt for a salad and one of the lighter pasta dishes instead of the bowl full of heavy, velvety Bolognese that I adored when I was younger.

But when I saw this recent post on Skillet Doux, I was reminded of my former favorite… and I was up to the challenge of trying to make it.

Sure enough, less than five minutes after mixing what looked like a watery base of ingredients together, the smells of Bolognese came wafting from the kitchen. It cooked, bubbling for a full hour, before the Canadian and I couldn’t stand it anymore, and we ate it over mushroom ravioli… delicious.

Bolognese (adapted from Gourmet, October 2002)

1/4 cup of olive oil
1 carrot, chopped
2 medium onions, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
3/4 lb. veal
3/4 lb. ground beef
1 cup water
1 1/2 cup milk
1 1/2 cup red wine
6 oz. tomato paste
dried basil
salt and pepper
2 tbsp. creme fraiche
parmesan for serving

Heat the oil over medium-low heat. Add the vegetables and a bit of salt, and cook until soft, about five minutes. In another skillet, cook the meat until all pink is gone. Drain excess fat and add to the vegetables. Add tomato paste, water, milk, wine and basil. Cook down until the sauce is thick, about an hour and a half. Turn off the heat. Add salt and pepper to taste, and stir in the creme fraiche. Serve immediately over pasta (I like mushroom ravioli, but rigatoni are good as well) with plenty of cheese on the side.

Sorry everyone! I’ve been so bad… I’ve been getting back up to speed reading everyone’s updates (sorry for the lack of comments… I had a lot to read) and I feel badly seeing how busy everyone else has been while I’ve been doing a lot of nothing.

Since I’ve been back, the only things I’ve made have been pasta and fried eggs. The Canadian’s birthday was last week, and I bought a cake! Yes, it was an amazing cake, and yes, it was very French of me to pass off the baking to a professional, but still, it was out of character. You see, I’ve had a very busy few weeks back. Upon arriving in Paris, I hardly had a chance to unpack before I whisked myself off to Paris with Britney to see the Spice Girls! I was in the 6th grade the last time they were popular, and so was everyone else there, apparently. Everyone knew all the words, and it was probably the best concert I’ve ever been to.

We stayed in an amazing hostel, St. Christopher’s, which not only was fun and amazingly clean, but also served up a very good (and very reasonable) hummus with pita appetizer in the bar. I got my hands on a Cornish Pasty this time and we got a decent curry at a chain place (I’m sure to Londoners it was awful, but Britney and I loved it), but I still have to go to Goulder’s Green Chinese food. I also introduced Britney to the wonders of Wagamama, and she has come up with a plan that involves a commuting Londoner bringing her Wagamama for dinner every day to be picked up at Paris Gare du Nord.

I got back to Paris with a terrible cold, but I still set off for the other trip I’d planned: Amsterdam. (This was when I thought the Canadian would be in Amsterdam, not sitting on my couch and boiling the plastic cheese grater to get the Comte off it. Mom, please send me a metal one… the Canadian needs special toys for his special needs.) I went with a friend and took advantage of the loose laws there, and therefore ordered the tray of food you see above. (Applesauce not pictured. Mixed with mashed potatoes=heaven.)
Wow… all this is getting very bloggy. The point of the matter is that I’m back now, and I have an antipasto party to tell you about.

This all began, as so many strange ideas do, in my father’s head. He picked me and my sister up from the city and drove us out to Long Island, where we would be met my my mother, brother and sister the following day. He had decided that “we” would be making a typical Italian antipasto. He gave me a sketchy shopping list… things like “eggplant rollatini-eggplant, cheese.” I knew that he couldn’t do this alone, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to take it myself. Grudgingly, I decided to fulfill his wishes, and asked him exactly what he wanted. Long story short, in the end I made everything, and my father ceremoniously plated the braciole, eggplant rollatini, stuffed green peppers, stuffed mushrooms, and stuffed clams. I stood by the side, saying nothing, but as my brother praised the rollatini and my sister gorged herself on mushrooms, my mother leaned over to me and whispered, “Good job.”

This picture is awful, but it’s the only one I got of everything. From the top right, it’s stuffed mushrooms, baked clams, stuffed green peppers, braciole, and eggplant rollatini. And my father was right about one thing: the key is mixing all the sauces (tomato, braciole au jus, and clam juice) on the plate and sopping it up with good Italian bread. (We get ours from Sullivan Street in the Bronx.) Here are the recipes… they’re approximate, but they work. I cheated on the clams and braciole and got them from the store, but you could just as easily make them yourself as well.

Stuffed Green Peppers

Halve three green peppers and lie them in a baking dish. Stuff with a mixture of one part hot Italian sausage and one part ground beef, Italian breadcrumbs, grated parmegiano reggiano, and an egg. Cover with tomato sauce and bake at 350 for 40 minutes.

Eggplant Rollatini (the hit of the night)

Slice three eggplants lengthwise into strips about a quarter inch to a half inch thick. Make sure they’re all the same size. Dredge each slice in flour, then beaten egg, then Italian breadcrumbs. Bake for ten minutes on each side at 375 degrees. In a separate bowl, combine equal parts ricotta cheese and grated mozzarella. Add a few tablespoons of parmegiano reggiano to taste, and season with black pepper and a chiffonade of fresh basil. Place about a tablespoon of the cheese mixture at the end of each of the rollatini, and roll. Place them, seam side down, in a baking sheet. When all of the rollatini have been rolled, cover with tomato sauce and bake at 350 until the cheese is melted.

Baked Stuffed Mushrooms

Remove the stems from about twenty stuffing mushrooms (large white mushrooms) and bake the mushrooms on a baking pan for about ten minutes to dehydrate them. Chop the stems finely and sautee in butter and olive oil with one large onion and a few shallots. Turn off the heat and add enough breadcrumbs to soak up the liquid in the pan, about half a cup to a cup. Add parmeggiano reggiano cheese to taste… a couple of tablespoons. Stuff the mushrooms until heaping with the mixture, and bake for about another fifteen to twenty minutes at 350.

More than any other time of year, I feel like winter screams for a certain kind of food, and that food is made in a deep stock pot. Winter is soup time. The Canadian noticed about as soon as I did. As I was boiling the leftover turkey bones in a pot for stock, he looked over, lifted his eyebrows in his Canadian way, and asked,

“Soup?”

“No… stock.”

“What?”

“Stock. I boil the bones to make stock. It’s a soup base.”

“Does this mean I will eventually be able to eat soup?”

“Yes.”

And he was. A few days later, I took out my stock and decided to make a pot of minestrone, one of my favorite soups. I would have gone with the typical chicken noodle, but the Canadian likes tomato, mushroom and vegetable soups, so I figured minestrone was a good compromise.

A few days later, Britney and I decided we weren’t quite done with the soup thing (plus we’ve both become obsessed with gridskipper.com, and an article a couple of weeks ago touted the local soup bars). We decided to go to Bar à Soupes in the 11th, near Bastille. We showed up at nine, so a few of the soups had run out, but we had the choice of a soup de marché (a vegetable soup), tomato-ginger, carrot-coriander, celery-bleu d’Auvergne, and split pea. As we were trying to decide, the lady behind the bar (literally, Soup Bar is just a bar with soups, salads and desserts and a few tables), let us know that there was a 6.50 option where you could sample three small soups with a roll… perfect for me and Britney who can’t make decisions.

Britney decided on vegetable, split pea and tomato-ginger. I went for tomato-ginger, carrot-coriander and celery-bleu d’Auvergne, which is strange, because I don’t like celery in general, but I couldn’t look away from the pale green, velvety soup. In the end, this one ended up being my favorite: it tasted less like celery than like an amalgamation of fresh vegetables with the definite tang and creaminess of blue cheese. Britney liked the split pea, so I guess the creamy soups were the winners. The other soups were good as well, tasting fresh and of their essential ingredients. We finished by splitting a piece of warm and melty chocolate cake. It seems that others have come to appreciate it as well: as we left around ten, two more groups had come in to sit and eat.

Minestrone (adapted from Gourmet, March 1993)

rind of parmesan cheese

1 28-oz. can of white beans
1/4 pound pancetta
1/3 cup olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 large carrot, cut into half-moons
1 rib of celery, cut into 1/2-inch dice
3 garlic cloves, chopped fine
2 zucchini, scrubbed and cut into half-moons
4 cups shredded green cabbage (preferably Savoy)
a 28-ounce can tomatoes, chopped coarse, with juice
4 1/2 cups chicken stock

1 cup small pasta
salt, pepper, dried basil

In a heavy kettle cook the pancetta in the oil over moderate heat, stirring, until it is crisp and pale golden. Remove and add the onion, and cook until the onion is softened. Add the carrots, the celery, and the garlic and cook the mixture, stirring, for 4 minutes. Add the zucchini and cook the mixture, stirring, for 4 minutes. Add the cabbage and cook until the cabbage is wilted. Add the tomatoes, parmesan rind and the broth and simmer the soup, covered, for 1 hour. Stir the white beans into the soup. Simmer the soup, uncovered, for 15 minutes, and season it with salt, pepper and basil. Add the pasta and simmer until cooked. Add the pancetta and serve. The soup may be made 3 days in advance and kept covered and chilled. Reheat the soup, thinning it with water as desired.

When I first learned how to cook (that is, cook things besides Kraft Dinner, omelettes and grilled cheese) more than three years ago, one of the first things I learned how to make was tomato sauce. The second was lasagna. What are you going to do with a vat of tomato sauce when you’re just one person?

My mother taught me, as she teaches everything, by speaking, not by showing or writing down, and so I would repeat the instructions to myself nervously as I made my lasagna.

It worked out well. It definitely wasn’t my mother’s, but I was able to feed my friends, and when I finally moved from Toronto to Paris, it was one of the two recipes (along with my guacamole) that my friend Mel asked me for. Well, I have yet to give her the recipe, because I teach by showing, but when I do, it’s not going to be the one I made three years ago.

I’m sorry, Mommy. But to be fair, it was never the same when I made it, and this one comes so much closer to the saucy, crispy around the edges, cheesy, flavorful lasagna that I remember you serving us when we were kids. And I did get it from an Italian… that has to count for something, right?

This lasagna comes from the one and only Little Big Head (Giada de Laurentiis), whom I have hardly ever trusted with anything culinary. I guess she couldn’t have been all wrong… it does take some talent to make your hair stand up that high and to say decadent at a rate of about once every hundred words, but Giada, I’ve made fun of you for too long, and I’m sorry. You’ve proven me wrong with this lasagna, so now I’m sharing it with the world in hopes of redeeming myself.

Classic Italian Lasagna (courtesy of foodnetwork.com)

Bechamel Sauce:
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus 2 tablespoons for the lasagna
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
4 cups whole milk at room temperature
Pinch freshly grated nutmeg
1 1/2 cups tomato sauce
Salt and white pepper1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 pound ground chuck beef
Salt and pepper
1 1/2 pounds ricotta cheese
3 large eggs
1 pound lasagna sheets, cooked al dente
2 packages (10 ounces each) frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed dry
3 cups shredded mozzarella
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.Bechamel sauce:
In a 2-quart pot, melt 5 tablespoons of butter over medium heat. When butter has completely melted, add the flour and whisk until smooth, about 2 minutes. Gradually add the milk, whisking constantly to prevent any lumps from forming. Continue to simmer and whisk over medium heat until the sauce is thick, smooth and creamy, about 10 minutes. The sauce should be thick enough to coat the back of wooden spoon. Remove from heat and add the nutmeg and tomato sauce. Stir until well combined and check for seasoning. Set aside and allow to cool completely.

In a saute pan, heat extra-virgin olive oil. When almost smoking, add the ground beef and season with salt and pepper. Brown meat, breaking any large lumps, until it is no longer pink. Remove from heat and drain any excess fat. Set aside and allow to cool completely.

In a medium sized bowl, thoroughly mix the ricotta and eggs. Season with salt and pepper. Set aside.

Into the bottom of a 13 by 9-inch baking dish, spread 1/3 of the bechamel sauce. Arrange the pasta sheets side by side, covering the bottom of the baking dish. Evenly spread a layer of all the ricotta mixture and then a layer of all the spinach. Arrange another layer of pasta sheets and spread all the ground beef on top. Sprinkle 1/2 the mozzarella cheese on top of the beef. Spread another 1/3 of the bechamel sauce. Arrange the final layer of pasta sheets and top with remaining bechamel, mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses. Cut the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter into 1/4-inch cubes and top lasagna.

Line a large baking sheet with aluminum foil. Place lasagna dish on top, cover and put on the middle rack of the oven and bake until top is bubbling, about 30 minutes. Remove cover and continue to bake for about 15 minutes.

This keeps well, just reheat it in the oven (or microwave for just one serving). It tastes even better the next day. Serve with extra tomato sauce and parmesan on the side.

I’ve been being a student recently, and thus have had very little time to post. But I haven’t forgotten about you, dear reader! Here’s a recipe for a pasta dish I made last week. I just took some merguez sausages out of their casings and cooked them until brown, cooked a diced onion in the fat from the pork, added some tomato paste and some homemade marinara sauce, the pork, and a little touch of crème fraiche. It was a quick and easy dinner for two, and we both loved it, especially with a little extra cheese sprinkled on top (him) and some cayenne pepper (me).

Don’t hate me… I’ll be back tomorrow with the lasagna recipe that *gasp* blew my tried and true family recipe out of the water!

I know that most people celebrate Halloween with candy… so how in the world did I end up spending my holiday with pasta, cupcakes and Britney Spears? I suppose I should begin at the beginning.

After a “tiring” shopping trip (tiring to the Canadian… I like wandering down the Champs Elysées), we headed back home. I went straight to the kitchen, where I had planned to bake some Belgian Brownies (love this recipe!) and some Chocolate Orange Muffins with Orange Cream Cheese Frosting, from slashfood. I had just started melting the chocolate over the double boiler when the Canadian called out, “You hungry?”

Of course, this doesn’t mean, “are you hungry,” but rather, “I’m hungry. Please feed me.” Because we were drinking that night (and also a little bit because I was already devoting all of my energy to melting chocolate), I suggested pasta. Directly after this, I remembered that a) we had finished all of the jarred pesto, b) I hadn’t replaced the parmesan cheese and c) the vat of tomato sauce I froze was frozen into the fridge and would need to be removed on a rainy day when I had a hammer and chisel. I did, however, have some tomato paste, tomatoes, and a recipe for Quick Tomato-Cream Sauce that was also on my list of things to try from Under the Tuscan Sun. Bingo.

This was one of the best tomato sauces I’ve ever tried, and it was really easy. My only qualm, as you can probably tell from the pictures, is that I made too much pasta and not enough sauce.

Once we ate the pasta, I still had cupcakes to bake. I made the Belgian Brownies no problem: this is one of the easiest recipes in the world and one of my favorites… and I don’t even like chocolate! But I had also wanted to make the Chocolate Orange Cupcakes… seeing as it was Halloween. One problem: no cream cheese. I decided to sub mascarpone, but in the end, the frosting was looking a little funny. I put it in the fridge, hoping that chilling it would help, and continued getting ready for our Halloween party. When my friends got there, I hadn’t had time to frost them, so I left them in the kitchen and just brought out the Belgian Brownies. However, they disappeared rather fast, and my friend Emese found and delivered the Orange-Chocolate Cupcake stash. And you know what? They were good even without the frosting. The mix of chocolate and orange is delicious, as always, and the crumb was dense. They were sweet without being cloying, and basically, just good. Sure, it looked very pretty on the slashfood site, but sometimes you just can’t make everything look pretty.

(The flatter ones are Belgian Brownies, the kind of bulbous ones are the cupcakes.)

Oh… and Britney? That was Emese:

Quick-Tomato Cream Sauce from Under the Tuscan Sun

Cook 4 or 5 slices of pancetta, drain on paper towels, then crumble and set aside. Chop 2 medium onions and 2 or 3 cloves of garlic and sauté in the pork fat for 5 minutes. Chop and add 1 large red pepper and 4 or 5 whole tomatoes from a can. Season with salt and pepper and cook 5 minutes more. Stir in 1/2 cup of creme fraîche and another 3/4 cup of canned tomatoes with juice. Add a spoonful or so of the pasta water to the sauce. Stir the pancetta into the sauce at the last minute to retain crispness. Cook and drain enough pasta for 4. Mix the pasta with half the sauce; serve the rest of the sauce over the pasta.

“Festina tarde was a renaissance concept: make haste slowly.”

It’s taken me a long time to get to Under the Tuscan Sun, but it’s not for lack of cooking. On Saturday night, I threw a massive dinner party at my house. I invited ten people, and crafted a perfect menu: apératif of Tomato Bruschetta and Wild Mushroom Crostini, Risotto with Parmeggiano-Reggiano for a starter, and then Under the Tuscan Sun’s Chicken with Lemon and Basil. The dessert was tarte tatin. I spent all day Saturday prepping, making sure that everything would be easy once my guests arrived. I made the tarte dough, precooked my risotto (a restaurant trick I learned while waiting tables), made my salad dressing, tomatoes, and dressing for the chicken, and precooked the mushrooms. I had very little to do once my guests arrived.

… If they arrived. I guess one of the drawbacks of having so many international friends is not being aware of their customs. Example? Apparently, in a lot of South America, it’s considered rude to show up somewhere on time. So while my American friends arrived about ten to fifteen minutes late (like my mother told me, and apparently their mothers told them, you are supposed to do), the others didn’t show up for two hours.

Bear in mind, also, that this is rugby night in France, and France is playing England for a chance in the semifinals. We’ve opened the wine, eaten all the bruschetta, and the five of us have gotten quite tipsy while trying to find a way to watch the game online. When my friends finally arrived, I managed to get everything on the table (I forgot about the salad though), but my chicken didn’t brown the way I wanted to because I’d lost my sense of timing (thank you, Bordeaux), I didn’t have time to take any pictures of the plated dishes, and by the time we’d finished with the risotto and the chicken, we wanted to watch the rugby game, so we abandoned the finished pie in the cold oven and went down to the Champs de Mars.

The French lost, and the next morning I had to wash essentially all the dishes in my house. But later that evening, my friend Emese came by to help me finish the tarte tatin, and as we sat together on my couch, sharing half a pie between us, I realized that this was what I had wanted. Just to haves some friends, even one friend, over to my house, to cook something delicious, and to talk for awhile. I don’t know if I’ve learned how to make haste slowly, but I know that eating that one pie slowly was much more fun than any dinner party could have been.

The Menu:

Tomato Bruschetta

Wild Mushroom Crostini

Risotto with Parmeggiano-Reggiano

Basil and Lemon Chicken

In a large bowl, mix 1/2 cup each of chopped spring onions and basil leaves. Add the juice of one lemon, salt, and pepper. Mix and rub onto 6 chicken pieces (I used chicken thighs) and place in a well-oiled baking pan. Dribble with a little olive oil. Roast, uncovered, at 450 for ten minutes and at 350 for about an additional twenty, depending on the size of the chicken. Garnish with more basil leaves and lemon slices.
Tarte Tatin

All this talk about comfort food from last month’s book of the month (stay tuned for this month’s, coming up shortly), has started me thinking about what comfort food means to me. It’s actually always kind of been an obsession of mine… finding out what other people’s comfort foods are. It has a lot to do with what we were raised with, and it’s usually served hot. Comfort food also usually not good for you, but whatever… it’s good for the soul.

I always thought my comfort food was spaghetti and meatballs… and on some days, it is. But I think that skirts the definition of comfort food, which, to me, is something that makes you feel better no matter where, no matter when. And for me, that’s lasagna.

To break in a new house, I always make a huge pot of tomato sauce. The thing is, when I live alone, I don’t end up eating as much pasta as I thought I would, so my vat of tomato sauce excursion is almost always immediately followed by a lasagna-making extravaganza. After years of doing this, lasagna has slowly become my comfort food… easily grabbed, reheated, and served with extra tomato sauce and parmesan cheese on top. Preferably eaten out of a bowl… I have a thing about bowls. I find them far superior to plates. Come to think of it, I like spoons better than forks… only the little ones though. But I digress… (and make very frequent use of the ellipses…)

For the past two years, all of my friends were vegetarians, so I made lasagna with a layer of spinach instead of meat. In Paris, however, meat is definitely fair game, and so I’ve started making traditional meat lasagna… the way my mom makes it. And it’s even better with fresh basil from my basil plant scattered over the top.