Brasato

Italicious has been sitting in the corner collecting dust for over a month now, and I don’t have much of an excuse for the first week of its neglect, but the best excuse for the past three, the birth of my daughter who made her debut on January 15th. These first weeks have been fairly easy, despite learning a whole new world of things that you can never know until you become a mother for the very first time. I had the help of my mother, which made it all less daunting, but the biggest help of all is having an such an easy baby.

I haven’t done a whole lot of cooking these past three weeks, my mother did most of it and my husband did the rest. Last Sunday he made us a wonderful Brasato, which is beef braised in red wine, vegetables and spices. The wine should be a Barolo, though we have never had the means to cook with a wine that costs $50 plus a bottle, we usually use a decent chianti or whatever else we have at hand. A travesty, I know, they say that you can substitute the Barolo with a Nebbiolo  because they come from the same grape, but we live in South Carolina, if we can find a Nebbiolo here we’d rather drink it than cook with it. I’m breaking Piemontese hearts here, I know.

Brasato has become one of my husband’s signature dishes, it takes about 24 hours to make, at least 12 to marinate the beef in the wine and what seems like another 12 cooking the meat. It comes out like butter, you could eat this meat with a spoon. We hadn’t imagined that we would eat the whole piece of meat, but between the three of us we managed to and it was delicious! We froze the wine and vegetable “gravy” to toss with agnolotti as another meal, and now that my mother isn’t here to cook for us anymore, I am very thankful for a freezer full of food!

Brasato

• 3 carrot
• 2 medium onion
• 5 ribs of celery
• 1/4 lb of mushrooms
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 2 tbsp pine nuts
• a bouquet of fresh and dried herbs and spices: rosemary, sage, parsley, thyme, fennel seed, black pepper (a friend of ours from Torino said that you need to use 21 different herbs and spices for this dish)
• 3 lbs of beef, either a rump roast or a similar cut
• 2 bottles of a dry red wine, or at least enough to cover the meat (barolo & nebbiolo preferred)
• 1 stick of butter

Combine the carrots, onion, celery, mushrooms, spices, herbs, meat and wine in a dutch oven, cover and leave the meat to marinate anywhere from 12 to 24 hours, turning the meat halfway through the marinating time.

After the meat has marinated remove the meat from the wine and dry with paper towels. Strain the marinade, removing the bay leaves and the cinnamon stick, and pour the vegetables in a food processor or blender and mix until smooth.

Melt the butter in the dutch oven, brown the meat on all sides in the butter, about 10 minutes. When the meat has browned, add the purée and the wine to the dutch oven and simmer for about 3 hours or until meat is tender, turning the meat occasionally.

When the meat is done, remove it from the braising liquid and cut into slices. Serve slices with the braising liquid drizzled on top and accompanied by mashed potatoes and a nice bottle of red wine.

One Year Ago: Alici Fritti, Roasted Fennel Gratin, Zucchini Quiche, Polpo Affogato, Pesce all’Acqua Pazza, An Interpretation of La Genovese, Genovese Sauce over Pasta, Farfalle with Roasted Butternut Squash, Roasted Butternut Squash Risotto, & Roasted Chicken with Root Vegetables

Spaghetti e Vongole

We did not have a rockin’ New Years this year, neither of us had any party in us after our move to the new place, my nine months of pregnancy and the fact that my husband was up at the crack of dawn to go to work on New Year’s eve. We decided instead to have a nice dinner at home, Italian style, with antipasto, primo e secondo. We brought out the good china, bought some beautiful cheeses at the health food market close to our new home, heated up a baguette and our antipasti were done. For our second course, we shoved a beer can up a chicken’s butt and roasted it for about an hour in the oven, delish! None of our courses actually went together, but we ate well none the less!

For our pasta course my husband made a beautiful pasta e vongole, the first time he has made this in the States. It was odd having to buy them not at weight, but telling the fishmonger how many we wanted. This confused both of us, but that’s how they do it here, I guess you can also point each clam out and say, no not that one, that one. The clams here are much larger than they are in Italy, so we only bought twelve, we could have probably bought double and would have been happier, though the pasta came out perfectly.

Though a really good pasta e vongole is in bianco, we decided to use the rest of the little heirloom tomatoes that we had in the pasta, adding color and a little more heft to it.

This is such a simple pasta to make, steaming the clams in a few tablespoons of olive oil, they release their juices during this process which is what gives this pasta such a unique flavor. Once they have opened, remove the clams from their shells, throw in a little parsley and you are done! The tomatoes that we added were barely cooked, which added a wonderful fruitiness to the dish.

Pasta e Vongole

• 12 clams in shells (though I would actually recommend buying a few more for two)
• 2 cloves of garlic, peeled and left whole
• 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• a few sprigs of parsley, stems removed and chopped
• 6 or 7 cherry tomatoes, quartered (optional)
• 1/2 lb of spaghetti (this is a dish that can only be served with long pasta, it would just be wrong with penne)

Fill a large pot with water for the pasta. Bring to a boil over high heat.

Heat oil in a wide saucepan over medium-high heat and add the whole cloves of garlic. When garlic starts to sizzle add the clams and close tightly with the lid of the pan. Toss them in the olive oil and garlic for a few minutes until they have all opened. Once they have opened, lower the heat to low and remove the clams from their shells, being careful not to burn your little fingers.

Leaving the flame very low add the tomatoes and the parsley, tossing occasionally, but avoiding a simmer, you don’t want the clams to overcook.

Once the water starts to boil for the pasta add a small handful of salt to the water and bring to a rolling boil. Add the pasta and cook until al dente. When the pasta is perfectly al dente, reserve a cup of the pasta water in case the pasta dries out when tossing it with the clams. Turn up the heat under the clams and drain the pasta. Without shaking all of the water out of the colander pour the pasta into the pan and toss it with the sauce. This allows for the pasta to cook a little longer in the sauce and to absorb the flavor. Add the reserve pasta water if needed.

Serve immediately.

One Year Ago: Panettone

Nasi Goreng

For my first post of the decade, I figured I needed to start with something that was timeless, a dish that my mother learned how to cook from her mother, and her mother, well I’m not sure who she learned to cook it from, but it was definitely brought over on a boat from Holland, but probably not on that first journey.

As anyone who has visited Holland should know, some of the best food you can get there is Indonesian, a result of over 100 years of the Dutch occupation of the islands in the South Pacific. Just like our “ethnic food” sections of the grocery stores are filled with taco shells, pasta and lo mein noodles, Dutch groceries have mixes for Nasi and Bami Goreng, Indonesian fried rice and noodle dishes. I can’t say when this was first introduced to my Oma, she had a cousin who moved to Indonesia after the war and lived there until he Dutch were booted from the country in the 1960’s. His wife learned how to cook from the locals and is one of the best cooks that I know.

One of the dishes that my family picked up either from her or elsewhere was Nasi Goreng, which is essentially an Indonesian fried rice. I doubt that anyone in Indonesia would eat my family’s version of this dish considering the fact that we use ham and their veggies are probably more interesting than frozen peas, onions and cabbage, but this is the way that I have always had it and it has become serious comfort food for me.

We have always used shrimp in our Nasi Goreng, an ingredient that I have started to leave out since my husband is allergic, but the shrimp is an ingredient that I wouldn’t skip. The Dutch use tiny cocktail shrimp, but you can use the bug guys too!

Nasi Goreng

• 1 ½ cups of rice
• 1 onion, chopped
• ½ of one small cabbage, chopped
• ½ cup frozen peas, thawed
• 1 cup ham, chopped
• 1 cup of small shrimp, peeled and deveined
• 1 tsp sambal oelek
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 2 eggs (1 egg per person)
• butter for frying eggs

A few hours before you stir-fry the vegetables prepare the rice, since friend rice is usually made from leftover rice that has dried out, it should be cooled and extra sticky.

Heat oil in a wok or a deep skillet over medium-high heat, add onions and cook until they are transparent. Add cabbage and cook for about 5 minutes until it becomes transparent as well. Add ham, toss for a few minutes and add frozen peas. Stir-fry everything together for a few minutes and just before adding the rice add the shrimp, cooking until it turns pink.

Heat a small skillet over medium-high heat, add butter. Once the butter has melted crack the eggs in the pan being careful not to break the yolk. Fry the eggs to your liking, I like my yolks to be runny, it binds the rice together in a delicious way.

While the butter is melting and the eggs are cooking, toss the rice into the wok with the sambal. Fry the rice a bit, but be careful that it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan. Plate the rice and place a fried egg on top. Serve immediately with extra sambal at the table to everyone’s liking.

One Year Ago: Cornetto Salato with Prosciutto di San Daniele

Maple Pear Upside-Down Cake

If you are looking for a less than traditional cake for your holiday table, or for any occasion, I highly recommend this. Mark Bittman is a genius, this cake is so simple and you really can’t go wrong with it. I originally made this cake for Thanksgiving, and since we were staying at my uncle’s house who is touring the States with Wicked, I threw all of the dry ingredients into a zip-lock before heading to Atlanta, not actually reading the recipe and the process of mixing the sugar with the butter before slowly adding the eggs and the other dry ingredients. That was my first misstep, the second was literally throwing it all in the bowl, no process, just plop. The third was not checking to see if my uncle had an electric hand mixer, of course he didn’t and all I had was a small wire whisk to beat it all together. My husband and I traded off the task, making the pain that came later a little less brutal.

Considering the fact that I don’t have much of a knack for baking, and the fact that I don’t really like doing it very much, I was shocked when the cake came out so well. People were asking for seconds after our Thanksgiving feast. So when I say you can’t go wrong, you just can’t, it could have been a total disaster and came out light, fluffy and delicious. Upside-down cakes are also great because the moisture of the syrup and the fruit at the bottom when it bakes, then seeps into the rest of the cake after you have flipped it over, keeping it from drying out. They are also so pretty, no matter how sloppily you arrange the fruit.

I felt like I needed to try this cake again, this time in my own kitchen, with a hand mixer and properly following the recipe. My husband and I had a pot-luck to go to for Slow Food Charleston, which can at times be intimidating, since most of the members are chefs, and though I love to cook, there is nothing professional about my cooking. Of course there is no way of knowing the success of your cake at a pot-luck, but by the time my husband and I left and went to get our plate, there were only a few pieces left, which can’t be a bad sign. I also have to say that having flopped the recipe on my first try, and followed it on my second, there was really no difference in consistency, so throw it all in the bowl, stir and pour the batter over the pears.

Maple Pear Upside-Down Cake from the New York Times

Time: About 90 minutes

• 11 tablespoons butter
• 3/4 cup maple syrup
• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 3 to 4 pears, peeled, cored and thinly sliced
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 large eggs
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup milk.

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Melt 3 tablespoons butter in a small pan over medium heat; add maple syrup and brown sugar and cook, stirring, until sugar dissolves. Bring to a boil and cook for another 2 minutes; remove from heat and set aside. When mixture has cooled a bit, pour it into a 9-inch baking pan and arrange pear slices in an overlapping circle on top.

With a handheld or standing mixer, beat remaining 8 tablespoons butter and the sugar until light and fluffy. Add vanilla and eggs, one egg at a time, continuing to mix until smooth. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt.

Add flour mixture to butter mixture in three batches, alternating with milk; do not overmix. Carefully spread batter over pears, using a spatula to make sure it is evenly distributed. Bake until top of cake is golden brown and edges begin to pull away from sides of pan, about 45 to 50 minutes; a toothpick inserted into center should come out clean. Let cake cool for 5 minutes.

Run a knife around edge of pan; put a plate on top of cake and carefully flip it so plate is on bottom and pan is on top. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Yield: 8 to 10 servings.

One Year Ago: Spaghetti with Calamari and Artichokes

What to do with Leftover Meatballs!

With only five meatballs left over, and no desire to heat them up and eat them as they were, I decided to get creative and make something with them. Since there are spices in these meatballs, I figured that I would take this Northern European dish and make something with a Mediterranean taste, added a little cumin and served it over quinoa, which was really meant to be couscous, but there just wasn’t enough for the two of us.

This is the kind of dish that my kids are going to groan over, just like I groaned over my mother’s creative uses of leftovers. I will have to figure out a way to make it interesting, or convince them that it isn’t leftovers. Poor kids, hopefully with their Neapolitan father, who has a rich history of recycling left over food, they will think it’s cool, then again, who knows.

We are in the process of moving right now, and like my last post, I made this dish with what I had on hand, there haven’t been too many trips to the grocery store this week and I have had a tendency to forget at least three things every time I make a trip, making cooking a seriously creative effort. Thank goodness that when it comes to food, my husband is very easy to please.

Swedish Meatball Mediterranean Stew Creation

• leftover meatballs
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 carrots, sliced
• 2 stalks of celery, sliced
• 1/2 cup of canned tomatoes
• 1 tsp cumin
• 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 1/2 cups of quinoa
• 3 cups of water for quinoa
• salt to taste

Heat 2 tbsp of the olive oil over medium heat in a large, heavy soup pot and add the onion. Cook, stirring, until the onion is translucent, about five minutes. Add the celery and the carrots, cook, stirring, until the carrots and celery are tender, and then add the tomatoes. Cook, stirring often, until the tomatoes have cooked down a bit, about 10 to 15 minutes. Fill the tomato cans with water and add to the pot. Bring to a simmer and turn the heat to low. You can add the meatballs at this point, crumbling them into the stew and stirring to combine.

In the meantime make the quinoa, I tend to make quinoa the same way that I make rice. Throwing it in the pot with water and salt, bringing it to a boil over high heat and then turning the heat down to a simmer and covering the pot. If you have your own method, I say, go for it!

When the quinoa is perfectly cooked, after about 20 minutes. Plate the quinoa and serve with the stew smothering it.

One Year Ago: Ligurian Shop Windows, Puntarelle, & Ristorante in Lavagna