Time to plant the tomatoes

Nobody asked me but... I decided to throw a couple cents into this season's tomato-planting discussion. (Whaddaya mean, you weren't discussing it! You have looked at a calendar, yes?)

My best advice on getting tomatoes started is this:

Buy plants that are around a foot tall and that have plenty of suckers growing from the lower portion. This one is around 11 inches, and has plenty of leaves and suckers throughout the entire plant.

Why is that so important? Because the first thing I'm going to urge you to do is cut off all that beautiful growth, about halfway up the stem, in fact.

Then dig a deep enough hole to bury the stem to the first sucker that's left.

Yes, your plants will look pretty scrawny compared to when you bought them at the garden center. But your odds of having a more productive plant just got a ton better than had you dropped the plant into the ground as-is. What's happening here is that all those areas where you pruned will develop into a more substantial root system for the plant, which makes it stronger and, in turn, able to produce better fruit.

One other thing: Tomato plants don't require frequent watering, so unless you live in an extremely dry climate, try and leave the things alone. Under normal conditions I only water my tomato plants (20 or 30 of them, and all different varieties) around once or twice a week.

I'll shut up now.

Mom's left hand

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.

— Oscar Wilde

I wouldn't put this one in the bank.

Because long ago, and in a most important way, I became exactly like my own mother. The woman belonged in her kitchen. She was happiest when preparing tradition-rich foods for the people she loved, and most contented when with them at her three-leaf dining table as they ate and drank and gabbed and laughed and sometimes, yes, even cried.

Sound familiar?

I am especially like my mother in the important business of making meatballs. This is a woman so known for her cooking that, two days before leaving for an audience with Pope John Paul II in Rome, no less a person than my trusted associate thought to ask mom if she had planned on bringing the Holy Father a batch of her meatballs. (For the record, she was planning no such thing. "I'm on vacation," she said. "Besides, he has his own cook. Doesn't he?")

My mother and I did not share the same recipe for meatballs (hard to believe, I know) but the seriousness with which I approach the process (seen here) is a very deliberate nod to the woman who reared me.

"Nobody made meatballs like Aunt Mary," my cousin John has said of my mother thousands of times. "I'd give a lot to have just one more Sunday that had her in it — and her meatballs."

It has been alleged — though never by mom — that the secret lay not in a recipe but in her left hand.

"Your mother wasn't a lefty but she was when she made her meatballs," Aunt Laura has told me. "That's why nobody could ever duplicate them; we were all right-handed. You could follow her recipe to the letter but if you weren't able to comfortably form the balls in your left hand it didn't work."

Mom's sister Anna, also a fine maker of meatballs, tells me that many of the women in our family, as well as others outside of it, often studied alongside my mother trying to mirror both her recipe and her technique. To no avail.

"You want a better explanation than the left hand? Well, I don't have one," Aunt Anna tells me. "What do you want from me? My sister had her own way. She always did."

Should you study the details of my own meatball recipe (principally veal whereas mom's was mostly beef) you will see no mention of a left hand, my mother's or mine. That is because a parent's job is to encourage their children to cut their own path, and in this regard my mother must be judged a success.

Still, confident as I might be in my own kitchen, I stand firmly alongside cousin John here:

This coming Sunday, Mother's Day as it happens, would be a whole lot better if mom and her meatballs were around.

Good men and their sausage

You can't see it here but the stamp on the back of this old photograph reads "July 1969."

A lot happened that month. Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon and the first U.S. troops left Vietnam. New York Mets ace Tom Seaver lost his bid for a no hitter with only two outs left in the ninth. Brian Jones, the original leader of The Rolling Stones, drowned in his swimming pool. And, in a tragedy that would haunt him the rest of his days, Ted Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of a car accident on Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts, an accident where a young woman named Mary Jo Kopechne had died.

Very early that month, July 4th to be precise, something a bit less noteworthy occurred: I learned that if ever I was to grow up and become a man I would need to learn how to build a fire, drink a cold beer, and cook an enormous amount of sausage, peppers and onions for the people I love.

Please don't ask me why. It's just what we're supposed to do. And you know it.

I could look at this picture a thousand more times and every time the tastes inside my head will be the same. Not a red pepper or garlic clove or onion slice or fennel seed's bit of difference.

It's the way I like it. The same. Every time.

Uncle Joe does the cooking because it is his backyard, his makeshift brick-and-cinder block fire pit, and his party. Uncle Dominic consults with his brother and drinks his cold beer. The rest of the family, thirty of us perhaps, wait for my uncles to announce that it's time to eat.

Somewhere nearby I am watching and learning.

Summer is coming. Time to man up.

Bubbles make great pizza

The last great pizza I had was at Brooklyn Central, a new Neapolitan-style joint in my old neighborhood. We're talking thin crust wood-fired pizza here. With just the right amount of char and, equally important to me, lots of beautiful bubbles.

"You like these?" I said pointing to one of the three pies on the table, the Margherita I believe. "The bubbles I mean. You think they're a good thing?"

I was speaking to my friends Tom and Beth, fine pizzaioli in their own right and regular customers of the place where we were eating. Tom, the verbose member of the pair, spent the rest of the pie-eating session advocating the bubbles-on-pizza theory.

Not only that, but he actually knew what he was yammering about. Clearly my friend had studied this crucial topic, so much so that I asked him to share his knowledge with all of us here.

Take it away, genius.

The bubble theory
by Tom Strenk

Bubbles are a sign of great pizza, but they're more than that. Bubbles give baked goods their tender character, from the delicate sponge of a chocolate layer cake to the flaky layers of a croissant. Depending upon the baked good, the bubbles come from carbon dioxide created by leavening such as baking powder used in cakes or butter folded into puff pastry dough. Pizza gets some of its bubbles from yeast, a beneficial microorganism that converts fermentable sugars in the dough into carbon dioxide.

But the bubbles our friend Meatball was so fixated on at Brooklyn Central derived from a different source: steam. When vaporized, water expands over 1,600 times in volume, according to Paula Figoni, writing in her book, How Baking Works. For this phenomenon to work, though, the dough has to be wet, soft and loose, and the oven must be super hot.

That's exactly the conditions called for by the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, a group dedicated to preserving the Neopolitan pizza tradition. AVPN sets forth the exacting principles governing the one true pizza, and its regulations are many and persnickety. Dough can only be made from ultra-soft double-zero flour, with 1 liter of water to 1.8 kg. of flour ration, with the flour absorbing 50-55% of its weight in water. That translates into a wet, almost sticky dough, with a soft and elastic texture, says the AVPN. Ovens must be hotter than Dante's Inferno, with a minimum floor temperature of 905 degrees, and a cavity temp of 800 or more degrees; the pizza cooks fast, in 60-90 seconds.

When the pizzaiolo slides that pie (14 inches in diameter, 0.8-inch thick crust, 0.1-inch thick in the center) into the oven, water in the mix vaporizes, the wet glutinous dough is flexible enough to stretch and contain the vapor, then the extreme heat dries and chars the bubbles. The end result: a delicate, light and airy crust.

I got to experience this magic hands-on at Forcella, a New York restaurant devoted to Neapolitan pizza. Under the tutelage of certified pizza master Giulio Adrian, I learned to properly handle the demanding dough, shaping a certifiable crust, topping the classic Margherita with San Marzano tomatoes, mozzarella di Bufala, fresh basil leaves and a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil, and baking it in Forcella's imported Italian oven. I'm sure the AVPN would approve.

Even better, when that blistered, bubbled pie was whisked out on a peel, I got to eat it.

Eggplant in olive oil

Get a good look at this stuff, okay. Because it ain't gonna be around for very long.

No matter how many jars of pickled eggplant that I make, I'm always in the planning stages for the next batch. It's my go-to sandwich condiment. Has been since, well, I can't actually remember when it wasn't. And don't ask how many loaves of crusty bread I'm plowed through with nothing but this stuff on top.

Oh yeah, and it's a snap to make. So let's get going on that, shall we.

Peel and quarter the eggplant, then cut it into half-inch strips. (My advice is to use at least three or four large specimens, as there's a lot of shrinkage—and the finished product usually goes pretty fast.)

Place in a colander and liberally toss with salt.

Weight the strips down as best you can. The idea here is to extract as much moisture from the eggplant as you can (make sure there's something under the colander to catch the liquid). I usually let this go for a couple hours and frequently toss things around and manually press down on the strips during that time.

These strips are in good enough shape to work with.

Place the eggplant strips in a bowl, cover in distilled white vinegar, then place in the fridge for several hours. (I usually let them soak overnight.)

Drain the vinegar and then, using your hands, squeeze the eggplant strips as dry as you can.

Place in a jar, add a couple chopped cloves of garlic and some crushed hot pepper.

Then cover in extra virgin olive oil.

I'll usually wait a week before eating the eggplant but three or four days should be enough time to allow the flavors to develop. And it'll keep in the fridge for a long time.

If it lasts that long.

How to make cheese gnocchi

This recipe originally appeared in "Mister Meatball's Sunday Gravy."

I'm not going to lie to you, okay. It takes patience to make a really good gnocchi.

Fortunately I have a bit of that. Put me in the kitchen with a bucket of fresh ricotta, a bit of flour, and a little something to sip on while I'm working and I am all set, thank you very much.

Gnocchi are not supposed to be dense or heavy; they're supposed to be light and airy. The best ones practically melt in your mouth. I find that the most delicate potato gnocchi are made with baked—not boiled—potato. The lightest cheese gnocchi? They're the ones made with ricotta, as little flour as you can get away with using, and very little handling. 

You probably can't tell from the photo, but these are the melt-in-your-mouth type. 

Like I said, I am a patient man.

RICOTTA GNOCCHI
Recipe

1 pound ricotta (fresh or good-quality packaged)
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano or Romano cheese
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (more as needed)
1-2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 extra large egg

Drain the ricotta of any excess moisture.

In a large mixing bowl combine the two cheeses and 1 teaspoon of the salt. Taste. Add more salt, or cheese if you wish, if needed. (The saltier the cheese you use, the less salt you'll need to add.)

Add ¾ cups of the flour and the egg. Start mixing together with a wooden spoon or spatula, adding small amounts of additional flour until it begins to act like a very light, very moist dough.

Empty onto a work surface and begin lightly kneading. You may need to add a little more flour but be careful not to add too much. The dough SHOULD NOT be the consistency of, say, a bread or a pasta dough; it should be moist and held barely enough together in order to work with.

Once the dough is ready cut it into several pieces. One at a time lightly roll each piece with the fingertips of both hands until the pieces are around ¾-inch thick.

With a knife or pastry cutter cut the pieces into 1-inch gnocchi.

If you have a gnocchi board roll each gnocchi lightly along the board to form faint ridges. If you don't have this tool, just roll the gnocchi along the back side of fork.

These can be eaten right away, refrigerated for later use, or frozen.

TO COOK THE GNOCCHI
These gnocchi are extremely delicate and require some extra care when cooking. Make sure to use as wide a pot as you have to boil the gnocchi; that way they can spread out and not cook two or three deep in the water. Quickly place the gnocchi into the (well-salted, rapid-boiling) water one or two at a time until they're all in.

In about 4 minutes test one gnocchi for doneness. When you cut into it the color should be uniform; if you detect a white center that means it isn't fully cooked and might need another minute. What I do is boil just one or two gnocchi first in order to get a sense for how long they'll take to cook, THEN cook the entire batch.

Also take care in handling the finished gnocchi. DO NOT dump into a colander as you would a cooked dried pasta. Instead remove the gnocchi from the water using a large slotted spoon. They can be placed directly into individual plates and then sauced. Or, as I often do, have a sauce ready in a very wide saute pan, gently place the gnocchi into the sauce, and then into individual plates.

Italian egg drop soup

Okay, so it's actually stracciatella. I went with the "egg drop" headline figuring that it might draw some more people in. What do you want from me?

Other than making your own chicken broth, which I highly recommend, there really is nothing to preparing this soup. In fact, with the holidays coming up this weekend, it would make a lovely beginning to the family meal.

Stracciatella (yes, chocolate chip ice cream goes by the same name in Italy) definitely ranks high on the comfort-food scale. I mean, c'mon. It's eggs, broth and cheese. What's more soothing than that?

I've always made this soup by instinct, not by recipe. But. Since I am suggesting that you serve it to your loved ones this holiday weekend I decided to play it safe and let somebody else stand in on the recipe front.

You're welcome.

And have a good holiday.

RECIPE
Stracciatella
Roman Egg-Drop Soup
Adapted from Cooking the Roman Way, by David Downey

8 cups homemade chicken broth (you can use store bought but only do this if you're in a real hurry)
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
1/2 cup freshly grated Pecorino Romano
2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
Kosher or coarse sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Pinch of nutmeg

Bring the broth to a slow boil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Reduce heat to low and simmer.

Beat the eggs in a mixing bowl. Add the cheeses and stir in the parsley. (I know people who also add a little breadcrumb at this stage.)

Whisk the boiling broth so it swirls clockwise. Pour in the egg mixture and whisk vigorously until the eggs tear into tiny shreds, about one minute. Add the lemon juice and season with salt and pepper to taste and also the nutmeg.

Ladle into soup bowls and serve immediately. (I'll often sprinkle some more cheese into the bowls, and always broken pieces of stale bread if I have it around.)