Mister Meatball

How to make chocolate salami

2012-01-29T08:20:00.000-05:00

This is not something I dreamed up, okay.

Salame di cioccolato, or chocolate salami, is a traditional sweet in Tuscany. Whatever possessed me to spend a beautiful Saturday afternoon producing such a thing, I do not know.

Nor would I encourage any of you to guess.

You can make this with any combination of ingredients. The traditional Tuscan way is to simply use plain dry cookies as a filling, but I went in another direction: In addition to the chocolate, milk and cookies I added rum, almonds, dried figs and my homemade candied orange peel.

Melt the chocolate and the milk in a double boiler.

Add everything else at the same time.

Mix it all together.

Divide in quarters and roll each salami in parchment paper.

Then toss all four into the fridge to set.

To get the full salami visual effect simply apply a light layer of confectioners sugar to the outside before serving.

Simplest dessert I have ever made.

Chocolate salami

Recipe

24 oz. dark chocolate

14 oz. can of non-fat sweetened condensed milk

4 oz. dried figs, chopped

4 oz. almonds, chopped

4 oz. plain cookies, broken

2 oz. candied orange peel, chopped

Good splash of rum

Confectioners sugar for coating salami.

In a double boiler melt the chocolate and condensed milk.

Add in all the other ingredients (except the sugar), mix thoroughly and allow to cool for several minutes.

Divide into quarters and transfer each batch to its own piece of parchment paper.

Shape into 10- to 12-inch logs, roll, then refrigerate until hardened.

Remove from the fridge, apply a light coating of confectioners sugar, slice and serve.

North China on the Hudson

2012-01-24T07:30:00.000-05:00

If you "like" my Facebook page then you may be familiar with the Meatball News Network. MNN was founded in Rome on January 3rd, not by me but by Joe and Fred. These friends of mine were traveling together, you see, and decided it might be fun to share the trip with others by shipping to me the photos and videos of their favorite Roman restaurants and meals.

It was a lot of fun, actually. But by January 12th, MNN had gone black, the result of its only two correspondents returning to their respective homes in New York.

When the idea was floated that we get together and swap stories of the trip, I suggested what to me seemed an appropriate venue: Maialino, the Roman-style restaurant in Manhattan's Gramercy Park Hotel.

My friends had an entirely different idea. Turns out they had had quite enough cacio e pepe and gnocchi and fried artichokes and Roman-style pizza, at least for a while.

And so on Sunday I found myself at a place called Palace Dumpling, not in the city but about 70 miles to the north, in Wappingers Falls, NY, along the Hudson River. The MNN team was not alone, either. Seated at the six or eight tables which had been joined together were 20 people who, like me, had traveled some distance for the occasion, it being to celebrate Chinese New Year: the Year of the Dragon.

Joe and his lovely wife Joel had got together with Chef Jenny at the Palace Dumpling to plan an elaborate banquet, the likes of which I had not seen before. In all, the chef prepared more than 22 different dishes for our group, virtually none of them found on the menu.

It was an amazing thing to witness, really. Chinese cuisine may not be the subject of this blog, but I'm betting you'd like to see what went on, and so here are just some of the highlights.

Cold meat platters of ham, chicken and sausage started things off nice and slow.

Lamb and scallion dumplings, one of four kinds we sampled. They don't call this place Palace Dumpling for nothing. Amazing.

Cold cellophane noodle "salad" with carrots, cucumbers, pressed tofu and a light sesame dressing.

Five-spice braised beef with hardboiled eggs.

Fresh noodles with meat sauce.

Braised fatty pork. I done died and gone to China!

Tender squid with garlic chives.

Stir-fried vegetables including eggplant, peppers and potatoes.

Stewed fish in red chili oil. Zounds!

Salt-fried shrimp, served in the shell.

Spicy pepper pork.

Caramelized sweet potatoes with peanuts. A real standout.

Whole fried fish in sweet and spicy sauce.

Puffy fried sweet dough, for dessert.

Joe even found a Chinese Riesling — with a dragon on the label no less.

And what Chinese banquet is complete without an Italian liquer?

Oranges for good luck and little windup dragons.

Chef Jenny.

And the (now defunct?) Meatball News Network team.

Never did hear much about the Rome trip, so I'm hoping another MNN "reunion" is in the works.

Candied orange peel

2012-01-16T08:44:00.000-05:00

The holidays do strange things to me. One morning between Christmas and New Year's I decided that I must — MUST — whip up a batch of orange biscotti before house guests Tom and Beth arose. It was 5 a.m. and the worthless slugs don't stir much before nine, so timing would not be a problem.

The problem was the candied orange peel that I needed in order to make the biscotti. There wasn't any. Somehow it had disappeared from the cupboard. I'm not accusing anybody here, okay. I'm just saying.

Rather than do the sensible thing and bake something else instead I became obsessed with replenishing the (purloined?) supply of orange peel. Immediately. Later that day, after it became apparent that there was no candied orange peel to be had locally, I decided (without discussion or debate) to put the house guests to work and make some.

No, I had never candied an orange peel before. (Do I look like a confectioner to you? Well, do I?) Neither had anybody else in our group. A quick consult with Mister Google netted a variety of approaches to the task, this one appearing to be the simplest. Since I had a few extra hands around to do the painstaking knife work on the oranges, I doubled the recipe so as to secure an ample supply.

Hey, I fed these people for six days. They can cut a few oranges for me, am I right?

The first thing to do is peel the orange and cut the rind into manageable pieces that you can work with. Then, using a sharp knife, cut away as much of the pith as you can.

You could leave more pith on the rind than this, or clean it even further. Either way is fine.

Slice the rind into 1/2-inch pieces.

We used 8 large organic oranges and so we filled a pot with 8 1/2 cups of water and 5 cups of sugar. Stir that together and bring to a boil over medium heat, then add the rind and turn the heat down to low. We allowed this to simmer for around 3 hours (without any stirring, per the instructions).

When the liquid has reduced to the point where it's just covering the rind, turn off the heat and allow to cool.

Once cool remove the rind with a slotted spoon and place in a colander to drain.

We saved the liquid, which is basically an orange-flavored syrup.

Tom used some of the syrup to make cocktails one night, but I didn't try any of them. He hates the idea that I don't drink cocktails and thinks I'm a Luddite for sticking with straight whiskey, wine or beer. For the record, I don't care much what he thinks.

After the rind has cooled toss a bunch of sugar in a bowl and then, in small batches, roll the rind around until well coated.

At this point all they need to do is dry. We went the oven-dried route, lining them on parchment and baking at a low temperature (no more than 200 degrees F) for an hour or so. But you can also just leave them out on a counter to dry overnight.

Once dry all that's left to do is rub off some of the excess sugar. How much you remove is up to you; the more sugar left on the sweeter the rind will be.

On the left is the rind with plenty of sugar left on it; the rind on the right has been pretty well cleaned up.

Candied orange peel will keep for some time stored in an airtight container. However, since we made so much of the stuff, I wrapped it up tight and tossed it in the freezer (behind the tripe and the pigskin and the sweetbreads) for safe keeping.

I would appreciate your keeping the whereabout of my orange peel supply to yourself, by the way. I think it best if certain (unnamed) persons do not know its location.

Dominic's famous scones

2012-01-08T06:33:00.000-05:00

Some time ago, decades actually, my uncle Dominic did an uncharacteristic thing. He tore a free-offer coupon from one of his wife Laura's collectible supermarket cookbooks, scribbled his name and address in the appropriate areas, and mailed it off to the company whose promotion so captured his attention.

Weeks later The Quaker Oats Wholegrain Cookbook arrived in the mail. Just 64 pages long, a pamphlet really, it was crammed with all sorts of recipes employing both original and quick-cook Quaker Oats. Some of the recipes seemed innocent enough — Honey Oatmeal Muffins, Toasty Oat Pie Crust — while others may have stretched things just a bit too far — Corn and Frank Chowder, Mexicali Meat Loaves... Saucy Meatballs?

Of the 68 recipes printed between the covers of the little pamphlet, this is the one that caught my uncle's eye. It is found on page 20 and takes up barely half of the 5-by-8-inch space. So far as I know it is the only recipe my uncle showed any interest in. I have asked him many times about his cookbook and its Scottish Oat Scones — his Scottish Oat Scones — but I can't say that I have ever gotten to the bottom of Dominic's fascination with either.

My uncle has made these scones perhaps hundreds of times. Last year I went to visit him the day after a grueling session of chemotherapy had left him quite weakened, and there on the kitchen table was a pile of his freshly made scones. He had baked them at 2 a.m. because he was unable to sleep. And because, I would imagine, doing so made him feel more like himself than his sickness.

"It was free," he has said of the pamphlet he mailed away for, possibly as far back as 1979, when it was published. "What can I tell you. For some reason it interested me."

And the scones?

"They looked so simple to make," he tells me every time I probe the deeper meaning of the mysterious "Scottish" baked good that my Italian-American uncle decided to master. "I'm sorry, me lad. I wish I could be more help to you."

I love it when he calls me me lad.

Lately Dominic has not been feeling so well. We're all quite concerned about him. Just before the holidays he spent time in the hospital, and when he came out it was clear that he had weakened. The day before I drove down to visit I decided to try and whip up a batch of his scones and bring them to my uncle. I had never baked a scone before in my entire life and yet the idea of making them for the master did not concern me in the least.

If you knew my uncle you might understand why the thought of possibly botching his "world-famous" scones could not possibly have rattled me. Dominic has never practiced the art of being unkind. He is what was envisioned when the term gentleman was coined. I would be very happy to be half the man that he is. Or to display the tiniest portion of his warmth, generosity or humanity.

Which is a syrupy way of saying that I knew my uncle and I would have a fine laugh over my taking a crack at his scones. No matter how good or how bad they turned out to be.

The first thing Dominic said after laying eyes on the scones was that they looked beautiful, if a bit overdone.

"Aunt Laura won't let me cook them this way," he confided to me. "She doesn't like these dark spots, the crispy edges, you know? The color has to be very light, not dark like these here, otherwise she won't eat them."

Laura is the woman my uncle has slept beside for more than 66 years, and his careful attention to her comfort and pleasure in all matters is inspiring.

Dominic only managed a couple bites of a scone. He assured me that I had done a "very nice job," but that his appetite just wasn't very good. He apologized for not eating more, and I told him not to worry, they would keep for a few days. Still, I wondered if I had erred in forcing them upon him.

No man should be made to apologize for his affliction. Certainly not this man.

Last spring, on a routine visit to see how he was doing, Dominic handed me this note (click the pic to enlarge), accompanied by a 50-year-old gold wristwatch. The watch, a very fine Longines, had a brand new leather band. It was also just out of the shop for a complete cleaning and a minor repair, things my uncle had gotten done specifically in order to present the watch to me.

It was Dominic's own wristwatch. And now it is mine.

Like the man himself, an extraordinary gift that I will carry proudly until I am gone.

Oh, and here's the scone recipe. My uncle is right, they're a snap.

Just watch out for Aunt Laura's dark spots.

The lightest crepe manicotti

2012-01-02T07:56:00.000-05:00

When I offered to make a batch of manicotti for friends (and weeklong house guests) Tom and Beth last week we had what you might call a breakdown in communications.

"Do we need to go out and buy the pasta shells?" Tom wondered. "Or do you have them already?"

Before I could say anything Beth chimed in from behind the cover of The Joy of Cooking she'd been studying all morning.

"I'm betting the pasta machine's coming out," I heard her say. "Isn't that right, Meatball?"

Lately I have been practicing the fine art of social interaction and therefore refrained from blurting out the sort of snide, hurtful barb that at one time may have been expected of me.

"I'm so very sorry, my dear friends, but neither of you is correct," I managed in as measured a tone as I could manage. "I only know how to make manicotti one way. And I do so hope that you enjoy it."

(Note to regular readers: You believe these people? What kind of a knucklehead doesn't know that the best manicotti are made with crepes? And what are they doing in my house? Jeez!)

The truth is that I have never made manicotti using a pasta shell. I'm not even sure if I've eaten one. The crepe method is the only method that I know. And it's so good that it's hard to imagine another being any better.

Thin crepes are the key, the thinner the better. That means the crepe mix has to be super light and so mixing it in a blender works best. To keep it light I pour the mix straight from the blender into the frying pan. That way I can remix a couple times during the crepe-making process, even adding milk if things thicken up along the way.

A super hot omelette pan doused in butter is the way to a great crepe. I keep a bowl of melted butter next to the stovetop and apply it with a bristle brush before pouring the crepe mix into the pan.

To make thin crepes you must barely cover the surface of the pan with the mixture. We're not talking pancakes here, we're talking just-thicker-than-paper type stuff. After the mix is set and drying flip it over with a spatula. If your pan is properly heated this won't take long at all.

Here's what the cooked side should look like. After flipping the crepe it only takes maybe 30 seconds more to finish the other side.

The great thing about these crepes is that they can be piled on top of each other without sticking. And if you aren't making the manicotti right away the crepes can be refrigerated for a couple days.

This is a pretty traditional filling, made with ricotta, fresh mozzarella and such (the recipe is below).

A simple fold from one side and then the other does the trick.

Lay a light dose of tomato sauce in a baking pan, line the manicotti side by side, then add some more sauce on top. Cover in aluminum foil and throw into the oven, preheated to about 375 degrees F. Remove the foil after around 25 minutes and continue baking.

After about 45 minutes the manicotti should be done.

And your friends will stop asking you why you didn't use pasta shells.

Manicotti

Recipe

Makes about 24

For the crepe

2 cups flour

4 extra large eggs

2 1/4 cups milk (more as needed)

Pinch of salt

Mix together in a blender until fully incorporated.

For the filling

2 lbs ricotta

1 lb fresh mozzarella

1 extra large egg

1/3 cup grated Romano cheese

Pinch of nutmeg

Salt and pepper to taste

In a large bowl add the ricotta. With a wide-cut grater grate the mozzarella over the ricotta. Add all the other ingredients and mix thoroughly.

Scenes from a Christmas Eve

2011-12-26T16:32:00.000-05:00

These are my aunts Anna and Rita. They cook an amazing meal for at least ten members of our family every Christmas Eve, and all of us love them very much. A lot of my friends ask me to email them photos of our annual feast, and so I decided to make it easy and upload a bunch here. I hope you all had a great holiday. We did.

I came across some lard bread in the morning and couldn't pass it up.

Neither could Joanna and Josephine.

Anna's baked clams. One day I hope to make them as good, but I'm not holding my breath.

Rita's angel hair with garlic, hazelnuts and almonds. Simple and perfect.

Rita and Joan's fried shrimp will make you weep. Two platters and not a single shrimp was left.

It's not Christmas Eve without seafood salad, and Anna's is excellent.

So much so that these two are always sliding it to their side of the table.

These mussels were a surprise dish. Simple and extremely tasty.

Broiled baccala with cherry peppers. Love, love, love it.

Also a baccala salad. Even the non believers were all over this salad; it was terrific.

Cousins Alec and Joan discuss strategy over the next dish to show up. Will they or won't they?

Stewed eel with olives and prosciutto. They did eat it. So did everybody else. One of the best eel dishes I've ever had, and I eat plenty of eel.

And of course a couple baked lobsters. Just in case we were still hungry.

I've said this before: Josephine may be the finest baker that I know. I always look forward to her Christmas cookies and biscotti.

Christmas Eve is also her birthday, and Goombah Joe remembered.

Anna went above and beyond this year and surprised us all with homemade pasticiotti. I damn near cried.

Yeah, we had a little wine. Just ask cousin Frank, he'll tell you.

We'll be back next year. I hope.

A simple Christmas panforte

2011-12-19T06:09:00.000-05:00

If this were television I know just what I would do right now: Rerun last year's Christmas Week story about my family's Feast of the Seven Fishes celebration. I could run it over and over, just like the Yule Log, except not as annoying. (Would it kill them to throw on a couple new logs every once in a while?)

If you have an interest in this traditional Christmas Eve feast, click on the link above and you will be transported to Aunt Anna's and Rita's table. Me? I will grudgingly accept the idea that other traditions exist, and move forward as best that I can.

Panforte may not be the best known Christmas sweet, but it is among Italy's oldest. Basically a round, flat fruitcake, panforte is said to have first appeared in ancient Tuscany, in Sienna, possibly as early as the 1200s. Panforte means "strong bread," referring to its spicey flavor. However, "strong" also describes the cake's sturdiness and, if stored properly, longevity.

Enough with the history lesson, let's make us some fruitcake. I'm not going to lie to you. This is the first panforte I have ever made. Despite this, I decided to wing it. The recipe I referred to, specifically for technique, was from Nick Malgieri's "Great Italian Desserts." However, enough got changed in my version that I doubt Nick would approve and so don't blame him if it doesn't work out, blame me.

Here you have a mixture of hazelnuts and almonds (3/4 cup of each), plus diced candied orange peel (3/4 cup) and citron (1 cup). The nuts get lightly toasted and then mixed together in a bowl with the orange peel and citron. In a separate bowl mix together flour (3/4 cups), cinnamon (1 teaspoon), and 1/4 teaspoon each of coriander, cloves and nutmeg. Now would be a good time to preheat your oven to 300 degrees F. And line a 10-inch pie pan (with removable bottom) in parchment paper. Butter the parchment and an inch or two of the inside wall of the pan.

In a saucepan add honey (3/4 cup) and sugar (1/4 cup). Mix together and then warm at a low flame. Allow this to boil for about 2 minutes.

Pour the boiled honey and sugar over the nuts, orange peel and citron and stir together quickly. Then add the flour and cinnamon mix and stir thoroughly.

Pour into the baking pan and begin to spread evenly throughout.

Using wet fingers complete the even distribution of the mix.

Mix together flour (2 tablespoons) and cinnamon (1/2 teaspoon). Using a sifter cover the entire panforte with the mixture, then place in the oven. Start checking on it after 25 minutes or so, but the panforte could take longer than that.

This one was in the oven for 45 minutes. You can see that the flour-and-cinnamon mix remains; just brush it off. At this stage you've got yourself a completed panforte. All you need to do now is lightly apply confectioners sugar just before serving. If tightly wrapped the panforte will keep for weeks.

Or you might go the nontraditional route, like I did. I wrapped the panforte in cheesecloth, doused it with a serious dose of brandy, then wrapped it in aluminum foil. It will last even longer this way, especially if you add more brandy periodically. (I owe this idea to my friend Tom, a fine maker of all things alcoholic.)

And there you have it. Not exactly the Seven Fishes, but a fine holiday treat nonetheless.

Merry Christmas everybody!

My dinner with Sinatra

2011-12-11T06:48:00.000-05:00

A multi-course meal consisting of Frank's favorite foods, in honor of his birthday.

On the wall in front of me, just above the printer that hasn't worked since the day I plugged it in three years ago, hangs a framed Life magazine from June 25, 1971. "Sinatra Says Good-by and Amen: A farewell to 30 very good years," the headline reads. A silhouetted cover shot shows a fifty-fiveish Frank wearing a powder blue PGA golf cap, waving and looking just a little bit put upon by the camera's presence.

Next to this is another frame. It holds the program from the last time that I saw Sinatra perform, at Radio City Music Hall, in the fall of 1992. The ticket stub is pasted below it and next to that are four torn pieces of notepaper. Scribbled on the sheets, in very precise order, are the titles to each one of the 22 songs the man sang that evening, a thoughtful gesture from the fine woman who accompanied me.

I could go on this way for awhile, but you get the idea.

I liked the guy. Quite a lot.

When the news broke that he had died, in the spring of 1998, I was exactly where I am today. Sitting at my desk, transfixed by the magazine on my wall, the one that documented the (mercifully short-lived) retirement of the world's greatest-ever singer of popular song.

"Good-by and Amen" indeed.

I miss Frank. Not a day passes that I do not hear his voice, if only in my mind. It is a fine voice, at once confident and exposed, reckless and deliberate, bullying and good hearted. The world is better with such a voice echoing through it. I hope that I never stop hearing it.

I often wondered what it might be like to have shared a meal with the man, at a table filled with the foods that he most enjoyed. Such a meal may have taken place at Patsy's in midtown Manhattan. It is here, after all, where Frank and his many friends so often dined, at least at a point in his life. He had a lasting bond with the restaurant's founder, Pasquale "Patsy" Scognamillo, you see.

Why would he not? Once, in the early 1950s, during a dark and lonely time in his life and career, Sinatra found himself all alone and with noplace to spend Thanksgiving. Learning this, Scognamillo, whose restaurant was supposed to be closed for the holiday, decided to open it so that his best customer and friend would have a place to spend the holiday. To make certain that Frank would not be sitting alone in an empty restaurant, Scognamillo gathered the families of his relatives and all his workers, plus as many other people as he could corral, to celebrate Thanksgiving Day at Patsy's. All on just a day's notice, and without his friend's knowledge.

We should all be so lucky to acquire friendships such as this.

To honor Frank's birth, which occurred on December 12, 1915, I set about to uncover the man's favorite foods. The idea was to prepare the dishes in my own kitchen, and then serve them to my friends. I consulted (of course) the "Patsy's Cookbook," which clearly spells out what Sinatra's favorite foods were: Clams Posillipo, Stuffed Artichokes, Arugula Salad, Fusilli with Garlic and Anchovies, Veal Cutlets Milanese and, for dessert, Lemon Ricotta Torte.

I learned a few other things from reading the Patsy's cookbook. Sinatra liked meatballs but insisted (as do I) they be made with veal. He too used the tomato to gauge a kitchen's skill level: "When you go to a new Italian restaurant, you should always try pasta with tomato sauce first," he told his daughter Nancy. "If the sauce isn't good, the rest of the food won't be either." He liked his veal cutlets paper thin, a concept I strongly endorse, and preferred always a light touch of garlic, a notion that I cannot so much get behind. He enjoyed a good sfogliatelle and pasticiotti. You may already know how I feel about good sfogliatelle and good pasticiotti.

On the days leading up to our celebration I imposed upon my friends this question to ponder: If Sinatra were alive today, and you had an opportunity to sit down to a meal with him, what would be the one thing that you would ask him? I received quite an eclectic mix of responses:

JOE: Why did you really retire in '71?

JOAN: Don't you just want to slug the singers who channel your style and make like it's their own?

FRED: Did you really like the ribs at Twin Anchors in Chicago, or did you just stumble in drunk one night after a gig at the Pump Room?

SCOTT: Regrets? Only a few? Really?

JEFF: Would you honor this picker with a duet?

JOE: Why didn't you ever do the album with Ella?

LARRY: Hey Frank, Ava or Marilyn?

RICKLIE: Is it true that the best was yet to come? And if so, what's it like on the other side?

BILL: Did Momo give the order?

DANTE: Mia? Really?

KITTY: Why is it called a rubber tree plant?

MEATBALL: Before we crack open another bottle of Jack, would you mind singing "East of the Sun" for me — with the twice-repeated coda at the end?

Frank's birthday dinner took place last night, at my home here in Maine. So that the foods on our table could closely resemble the ones that Frank enjoyed at his old hangout, every dish was prepared using the recipes from Patsy's restaurant.

Clams Posillipo (basically steamed in a quick red sauce) is how our dinner began. It is said that Sinatra would often order two or even three plates of the clams at Patsy's.

I grew up on Stuffed Artichokes (though always at the end of the meal). Patsy's recipe includes chopped gaeta olives and capers, a nice addition to the usual breadcrumbs and cheese and herbs. I can see why Sinatra liked this so much.

Fusilli with Garlic and Anchovies. What is there to say? If a simpler vehicle for distributing such satisfying flavors exists I am not aware of it.

When I turned to the page in the Patsy's cookbook that marked Veal Cutlet Milanese as Sinatra's best-loved veal dish, I smiled for a very long time. Veal Milanese is a constant in my kitchen. If you have eaten at my home more than three or four times, the odds that I have not made a Milanese for you are approximately zero. You will notice that the Arugula Salad course is served alongside the veal. That's because, in my preparation, the arugula salad is normally served right on top of it.

Based on the rest of the meal its finishing touch, a Lemon Ricotta Torte, makes total sense to me. It is a classic, light, not terribly sweet ending to a pretty traditional and simple Italian-American dinner.

Sure, it would have been just swell to enjoy it sitting across the table from Frank. But a good time was had by all, I am pretty sure.

Oh, and the music playing away throughout the evening was not in any way dissatisfying either.

My best pignoli cookie

2011-12-05T17:57:00.000-05:00

I am not going to bother being humble about this, okay. For some absurd reason I was gifted an ability to produce a fine pignoli cookie.

A very fine pignoli cookie.

As the holidays approach, I anticipate producing several batches of the chewy, almondy things. Just last week a delivery went out to Shyster Jersey Lawyer Friend. She had intervened on my behalf in a matter of (absolutely no conceivable) consequence. Still, my social etiquette-powered GPS pointed me in the direction of reciprocity. Shyster being rather sweet of tooth, cookies seemed the way to go.

A specialty of Southern Italy, pignoli cookies (so named for their outer layer of pine nuts) are a beloved dolce among Italian-Americans, especially around the holidays. It is not always easy to find a really good example of the cookie, as getting just the right texture and degree of sweetness can be tricky. Pignoli cookies must be chewy but not soft; sweet, but mildly so.

On the other hand, I can make a damned good cookie. So how hard can it be, right?

The full recipe for the dough is below, but there is not much to it at all; it is mainly almond paste and sugar, and takes only a few minutes to prepare. Once it's made just put the dough in a bowl so you can start forming the cookies. In a separate bowl you've got your raw pine nuts.

The size of the cookie is up to you, but I make them about two inches around. All you do is pinch a bit of dough with your fingers and begin to form what approximates a cookie shape. You'll see a separate bowl filled with water at the top. It's best to wet your fingers before pinching a piece of dough; things go a lot more smoothly that way, believe me.

The only thing left to do now is roll the dough around in the pine nuts.

Then arrange the cookies on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and toss it in the oven.

About half an hour later you've got these pretty swell cookies to enjoy.

In this particular case it was a shyster lawyer from New Jersey who actually got to enjoy them, but you get the idea.

Pignoli Cookies

Recipe

Makes about a dozen cookies

1 8-oz can almond paste (do NOT use the tubes; the texture is different)

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup confectioners sugar

3 tbsp flour

1 extra large egg white

8 oz raw pignoli (pine nuts)

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F

In a food processor, crumble the almond paste, then add the sugars and flour and mix until fine

Add the egg white and mix until dough forms

Empty the pignoli into a bowl

Scoop out small amounts of the dough (wet hands help and so I keep a bowl filled with water on hand), then roll in pignoli until coated

Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and bake for 15 minutes

Rotate the sheet and bake another 10 minutes, or until cookies are golden

Allow to cool, give a light dusting of confectioners sugar and serve

Homemade muffuletta

2011-11-30T09:14:00.000-05:00

If you are about to get on a plane to New Orleans then I suggest you just move along. An authentic muffuletta sandwich awaits you, at Central Grocery in the French Quarter, and in no way could I compete with such perfection.

But I ain't headed down there, see. And neither are a lot of my peeps. For this reason, along with the fact that none of the foodservice establishments in my vicinity knows how to make a respectable version of the sandwich, I am forced go it alone when the mood strikes.

And it strikes often.

Often enough that I have taken to preparing the most important ingredient of the muffuletta, the olive salad.

These are the makings of a small batch of the olive salad.

And here is the finished product. (See the recipe below.)

As for the sandwich's other ingredients, Central Grocery goes with a combination of salami, capicola, pepperoni, ham, provolone and emmentaler cheese. I am not strict on this point, and you shouldn't be either. My muffuletta rarely is missing a little mortadella, for instance. I find salami to be a critical ingredient as well, along with provolone. Beyond those three things I am pretty flexible.

The bread can be a touchy subject. Tradition calls for a soft, round, seeded Sicilian-type roll, and purists will accept no other. I just go with the best bread that's available at the time.

On the other hand, if you happen to be in the Quarter and want to pick me up some authentic muffuletta bread, I would not be averse to accepting such a kindness.

Olive Salad Recipe

Makes 1 quart

1 1/2 cups green olives, pitted

1/2 cup Kalamata olives, pitted

1 cup Gardiniera

1/4 cup roasted red peppers

1 tbsp. capers

2 garlic cloves, chopped

1 tbsp. scallion, chopped

1/8 cup celery, chopped

1 tbsp. parsley, chopped

1 tbsp. oregano

Red pepper flakes to taste

3 tbsp. red wine vinegar

Salt and pepper to taste

Extra virgin olive oil

On a flat work surface crush all the olives, either by hand or with the flat surface of a large knife.

In a large bowl combine the olives with all the other ingredients except the olive oil.

After all the ingredients have been fully combined, pour an ample amount of olive oil over them and mix.

Empty into a 1 quart jar, close and refrigerate for about a week before using. This will allow the flavors to properly meld.

How to make tortellini

2011-11-27T08:31:00.000-05:00

Standing in my kitchen making fresh pasta is to me what curling up near a fireplace with a good book is to a lot of other people.

Nothing is quite so satisfying.

And so when a cold rain settled in for the weekend recently it didn't take long for me to decide what to do with myself. On Saturday morning I went and got fresh eggs from a nearby farm, because fresh eggs make better pasta than store bought. After lunch I prepared the pasta dough, wrapped it in plastic and set it in the fridge overnight to rest. By Sunday afternoon,when an even heavier storm was moving through, I was ready to get to work.

For the filling I decided to go traditional. Right here we have a raw chicken breast, an egg, a hunk of Parmigiano-Reggiano, breadcrumbs, fresh nutmeg, and a piece of mortadella.

The first thing to do is cut up the chicken and the mortadella (I had that hunk on hand but four slices from the deli counter should do), then run them through a food processor by themselves.

Then add about 3/4 cup of the grated cheese, maybe 1/3 cup breadcrumbs, the egg and a little ground nutmeg, plus salt and pepper.

After running all the ingredients through the food processor pinch the mixture with your fingers. It should be firm but not stiff. If it's stiff add a little milk or cream and process until fully melded.

Since there's raw poultry in the mix it's not cool to taste it to check that it's properly seasoned. So scoop out a little with a spoon and boil it in water a couple minutes. Then adjust seasonings as you like and taste test until you're happy with it.

For tortellini I roll out the pasta sheets with a machine, not by hand; on my machine I find the No. 2 setting to be the right thickness. Here I stuffed the filling into a sturdy plastic bag, cut a small hole in one corner, and am squeezing the filling onto the pasta sheets.

After doling out the filling you need to make the cuts in the pasta sheets; the individual pieces should be pretty much square.

Shaping the tortellini is basically a two-step deal. Here's the square that you start with.

All you do is fold one corner onto another. (If the dough is moist enough then the pasta ends should close up just by lightly pressing down along the edges. Otherwise use an egg wash along the edges before making the fold.)

Hold the filled pasta shell with both hands and then simply bring the two top corners together and pinch them closed.

And that is pretty much all there is to it.

Nine times out of ten I serve these the traditional way, en brodo, meaning simply in broth. Usually that means a chicken broth, and you can boil the pasta right in it rather than first boiling it in salted water.

This particular time a rather forceful companion expressed a clear desire for something a bit more colorful, and so I went with a simple fresh tomato sauce.

At times it is in one's best interest to be accommodating.

How to roast a chestnut

2011-11-21T07:10:00.000-05:00

Saturday food shopping took a decidedly holiday-like turn when I noticed that two of the local food stores that I frequent (Rosemont Market and Micucci Grocery) had gotten in fresh Italian chestnuts.

I was in the middle of making a soup with these chestnuts (note to locals: Micucci's are a lot cheaper) when my friend Joe called. He had wanted to discuss matters relating to his business, except that as soon as he discovered what I was doing, all he wanted to talk about were chestnuts.

"I can't get a good chestnut panettone anymore," my friend moaned in a truly sorrowful way. "For awhile I had an outfit in Italy ship them to me, but I can't get them to do it anymore. I just gotta find another source."

As I know how much my friend loves his chestnuts, both in a panettone and warm out of the shell, this hurt my heart deeply. I do not like to see my friends suffering.

After several more minutes of chestnut talk he asked whether I would be blogging about the soup that I was preparing, but sounded less than enthusiastic when I said that I would.

"Nobody knows how to roast a chestnut anymore," Joe groaned. "All they know is opening a jar or a vacuum pack.

"If it were my blog," he went on, "I would just do that: How to roast a chestnut."

It is helpful to have friends who are smarter than yourself, don't you think?

The first step in roasting chestnuts is a little dangerous, so be careful and work slowly. Using a sharp knife, cut an "X" into one side of the nut.

After all the chestnuts have been scored soak them in water for about an hour. If you're in a hurry, 30 minutes will do, but they should be soaked at least that long. At an appropriate time in the process you'll need to preheat your oven to 400 degrees F and have a roasting pan on hand to accommodate both the chestnuts and some water.

These chestnuts roasted for 20 minutes. There are two things I'd like to bring to your attention. First, you can tell that the chestnuts are done because of the way the skin has curled up where the "X" was cut. If that doesn't happen then they need to cook longer. Second, there is still ample water in the pan. Some people use no water, others use so little that it evaporates entirely. I find using a good quarter inch of water works well.

Here's the soup that I wound up making, by the way. And a recipe from La Cucina Italiana should you be inspired to do so yourself.

I don't expect Joe to make it. He's too busy trying to track down his panettone. Poor guy.

Enjoy the Holidays.

What to drink with the bird

2011-11-15T17:28:00.000-05:00

Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water. —W.C. Fields

I know a couple of other wiseguys who like a good drink.

What's more, if provided just the right amount of inebriant, these friends of mine can be talked into anything. It was only three days ago when I floated the idea that they drop everything and compile a list of Thanksgiving wines and beers we can all enjoy on our holiday. And here we are.

Handling the wine picks is Scott Tyree. A wine professional of some standing, you may recall Scott from the time he expertly paired a bunch of wines with my meatballs. TH Strenk, a very fine home brewer, understands more about beer than anybody I know; he will do the holiday beer pairings.

Me, I'll shut up now. Have a wonderful holiday, everybody.

Cent'anni!

7 Great Thanksgiving Wines

by Scott Tyree

Lini 910 Lambrusco Rosé In Correggio 2010, Emilia-Romagna ($18) I know what you're thinking: Riunite on ice — niiiiiiiice. But one taste of this high-quality dry Lambrusco happily obliterates any memories of the cloyingly sweet, soda pop-like fizzy wine your auntie enjoyed sipping during the holidays. This wine is lush and creamy with rich red fruit flavors, a mineral tang and razor-sharp acidity. Best of all, it's blessedly bone dry. I wouldn't hesitate to drink the Rosé In Correggio throughout the entire Thanksgiving dinner.

Rolly-Gassman Gewurztraminer, Alsace 2009 ($28) Dry Alsatian Gewurztraminer is the go-to white wine that successfully navigates all the big bold flavors of Thanksgiving dinner. Think about it. All those warm spices used in the stuffing, sweet potatoes and sides pretty much reflect the exotic spicy nature of the gewurz grape.

Tenuta delle Terre Nere, Etna Rosato 2010 ($18) It seems most rosé wines are often unfairly marginalized and described as being "rustic" or "simple." The Terre Nere Rosato is neither. In fact, I'd say it's downright elegant. The grape is nerello mascalese, grown in the high elevations of Sicily's Mt. Etna. It's citrusy, delicately spiced and wild berry inflected. A perfect foil for the cranberry sauce.

Moulin-à-Vent Clos du Tremblay, Paul Janin 2009 ($15) All Beaujolais is not of the grapey, purple-hued, tongue-staining variety known as Beaujolais Nouveau. In fact, much of the region produces elegant wines that are soft, supple and excellent with food. Gamay is the perfect grape variety to pair with both dark and white turkey meat, and it will cut through rich sauces and gravy. Janin is a great producer.

Evening Land Gamay Noir Celebration, Eola-Amity Hills, Oregon 2009 ($20) An American Gamay that is juicier, rounder and more fruit driven than its French counterpart from Moulin-à-Vent. Undeniably pleasurable to drink.

Umathum Zweigelt, Burgenland, Austria 2009 ($25) In keeping with the medium-bodied red wine theme. In contrast to the Gamay-based wines, Zweigelt grapes produce wines with an overtly savory character — lots of dark fruit, black pepper and herbal notes. Think a toned down, lean, less alcoholic zinfandel. Both styles work with T-day dishes.

Madeira, New York Malmsey Special Reserve, The Rare Wine Co. ($48) The versatility of Malmsey Madeira (also known as Malvasia Madeira) is impressive. I can't think of a wine that pairs so easily with pumpkin pie, pecan tarts, custard and chocolate. Tailor-made for Thanksgiving drinking.

How to Choose a Holiday Brew

by TH Strenk

Matching beer to turkey is pretty straightforward. The trouble starts at the potatoes and pan gravy, chestnut stuffing, cranberry sauce, buttered parsnips, green bean casserole and grandma's pineapple gelatin mold with cherries on top. No one beer could cover all those bases. This style-by-style guide should help you to keep things balanced.

AMERICAN IPA IPAs are floral and citrusy on the nose, and bitingly bitter in the mouth. The theory here is that bitterness will cut through the heaviness of the unctuous gravy, a refreshing contrast to the big meal. Be careful not to choose a tongue-numbing "extreme" IPA, but one that balances the bitter with some malt. My choice is Southern Tier IPA.

DOPPELBOCK The dark German lager is fairly high in alcohol (6-8%), which will help you keep laughing at Uncle Teddy's bad jokes. It is less bitter than an IPA, but still refreshing. Doppelbocks will complement both the roast turkey and the marshmallow-topped sweet potatoes. There are plenty to choose from, including Ayinger Celebrator, Paulaner's Salvator and the American Troegenator. I'll go with Spaten Optimator.

PUMPKIN BEER This spicy amber ale isn't apt to work with anything on the table, but some people have come to expect it. (Not Meatball; he hates the stuff.) My pick here is Southhampton Pumpkin Ale, which offers good gourd flavor, with balanced spices and a little vanilla.

HARVEST SEASONAL These malty brews tend to work well with dishes that traditionally show up on the Thanksgiving table. Medium-bodied, Marzen and Oktoberfest beers are great with roast turkey and can handle most accompaniments. Top German producers Paulaner and Spaten brew good Marzens. However, my pick is Sierra Nevada Octoberfest.

SAISON This Belgian's dryness and acidity would be good foils for the fatty gravy, drumsticks and creamed onions. Its spice, usually coriander, complements the warm fall spices found in many harvest dishes, not to mention dessert. Saison Dupont is a solid choice, but I would pop for Brooklyn Brewery's Sorachi Ace.

IRISH STOUT Most American stouts are so full of coffee and chocolate they don't pair well with food. But the dry style of Irish stout is more delicate. It's also generally low in alcohol, which means you can quaff it all night. I'd go with the old reliable: Guinness.

SOUR STYLES These ales, fermented with wild yeast and bacteria, have bright acidity that perk up flavors and cut through fat. Traditional sour styles include lambic, gueuze, Flemish red and brown ales and Berliner weisse. Of these, Rodenbach Grand Cru is the easiest to find.

PILSNERS Sure, there's a craft beer revolution going on, but domestic and imported macrobrews still dominate. Not all Pilsners are pallid. The best are bitter, floral and dry with yeasty notes. My choice would be for the original, Pilsner Urquell, from the town of Pilsen in the Czech Republic.

The book on the cook

2011-11-12T15:01:00.000-05:00

I inherited precisely five things from my father after he died. Two of them, and for reasons that are inexplicable to me, are spoons. A big metal one I use for cooking vast quantities of sauces and such; a soup spoon with a black bakelite handle I reserve for comfort foods.

The brass knuckles that he kept in a metal locker in the cellar underneath the apartment building where we lived also came to be in my possession. In winter I used to wear them underneath a black leather glove when riding the A train through Brooklyn to get to high school. I only used the weapon a handful of times, always out of self-defense, though I may be undercounting here just a bit.

There was also a thousand-dollar check from a life insurance policy that was turned over to me when I became eighteen, five years, give or take, after dad died. I used the money, as best I can recall, to buy books and records and black-and-white film and drugs and Chinese food and gifts for a girlfriend or two. Unlike the spoons, which I still have, and the brass knuckles, which I don't, the money never meant much to me.

Then, of course, there is "the book." Like the spoons it has a distinct culinary bent. Also like the spoons, I will never part with it.

"Technical Manual 10-412" was released by the War Department of the United States in August 1944. A copy of TM 10-412, also entitled "Army Recipes," belonged to my father. He was a corporal in the Army, you see, and his station during his tour of duty was that of cook.

I would like nothing better than to tell you some of my father's mess hall stories; really, I can't think of many things that might make me happier. Except that I don't have any of my father's mess hall stories. Because the man never told me any of them.

He was a quiet one, my father. I really cannot say what thoughts he may have had or positions he might have taken on the vast number of matters that make up a man's life.

Searching through his cookbook hasn't shed any further light, for here too he is silent. There isn't a handwritten scribble on any of the manual's two hundred and seventy pages. Not a single one.

I know this because I have gone through the pages hundreds of times through the years, each time searching for him and wishing that I'd missed something the time before.

I looked again just yesterday, in fact.

But he's just not in there.

Chinatown meets Little Italy

2011-11-07T06:35:00.000-05:00

I'm man enough to admit that, under the right set of circumstances, I can be pretty damned childish.

Such was the case but a few evenings ago, when a Chinese-style banquet was to take place at my very own home and I was politely informed that my kitchen skills would not be required.

At all.

This took me by surprise considering how many dishes needed to be prepared: close to a dozen by my count, many requiring a fair bit of prep work.

Instead I was told that I might "pick up an appropriate dessert" should I want to "help out." I was told this, mind you, just a day before the banquet was to take place. A banquet that was weeks in the planning.

I'm no genius, okay. But I know when I'm being dissed. Bad enough that I was not to so much as slice a water chestnut or wash a mustard green. I couldn't even make a dessert, I had to "pick up" one.

It was when my utter lack of necessity sank in that the inner (willful) child emerged.

"Think I'll make some biscotti," I said to nobody in particular. "Yeah, that'll work."

The cupboard was open in mere nanoseconds so that I could ponder which ingredients to use.

"Did you just say biscotti?" (I may have failed to mention that my associate was in the room at the time.)

"Candied orange peel. Perfect," I sang out, removing a container of the sweet citrus rind from beneath a honkin' mess of dark Swiss chocolate.

"You're making an Italian dessert for a Chinese meal?"

I reminded the person with the giant spatula in hand how oranges and crispy cookies are ubiquitous after-dinner treats at Chinese restaurants throughout these United States, and wondered what could possibly be unacceptable about the dessert idea that I had advanced.

"If that doesn't do it for you, then think of it this way," I went on, perhaps too far, I'll admit. "How many times have I dragged you across Canal Street after eating in Chinatown so that I could grab a pastry in Little Italy?

"C'mon, orange biscotti makes total sense."

Suddenly I found myself alone in the kitchen, I do not know why.

Communications between associates can be sometimes difficult, I find, don't you?

Anyway, so I made what I damn well pleased and everything managed to turn out just fine. The candied orange peel made for a really great biscotti, and with a lovely Alsatian dessert wine, it was a splendid end to a pretty amazing meal. Which, as it happens, I've got a few frames of, if you're interested.

After all, nobody showed up that night for the biscuits.

Nope, not olives. Quail eggs marinated in soy sauce.

There were a couple different dumplings but these were the best: Homemade turkey and mushroom shu mai topped with carrot puree. (Both the dumplings and the quail eggs, along with steamed Chinese sausage and soy cucumbers, got washed down with Champagne and other sparklers.)

Szechuan pork and preserved cabbage soup. (We switched to a Riesling here.)

The main meal (which is where we moved on to a Kerner from the Alto Adige) was comprised of five different items. Spicy Napa cabbage and mushrooms was the vegetable dish.

Then there was the steamed pork and water chestnuts with salted duck eggs.

Shrimp and cucumber with cloud ear.

Chicken with walnuts.

Salt fish fried rice.

And, well, y'know...

請享用。

Buon appetito.

How to make pancetta

2011-10-30T17:17:00.000-04:00

I hope that you enjoy looking at pictures and captions. Because I have got an absolute ton of them for you here.

Making pancetta (basically Italian salt-cured bacon) at home is simple. It only takes a little bit of prep time; the rest of the time you are waiting for the meat to cure and then dry. I'm going to run through every one of the steps, if you don't mind.

In case you didn't know, pancetta (just as any bacon) is made from pork belly. You can certainly start out by using just a small slab of belly, but here we are making a big old mess of pancetta. What we have here is a whole belly, with the ribs still attached. It weighed in at about 14 pounds total. (Hey, I have people who have come to expect their allotment of every batch that I make.)

Here is the belly after the ribs have been cut away. You can see by the fold on the left that the skin is on (normally the case when you buy a whole belly), but it needs to be removed.

Once the skin is removed it's time to apply the cure. (Because I am always fiddling with the actual cure, I've decided to reprint the complete recipe and instructions for making pancetta from a reliable source, the book "Charcuterie," by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn; they are at the very end of this post.) This pic shows the cure already spread onto the fat side of one piece of the belly, but the other piece needs it too, as does the meat side of the belly. The reason I've cut the belly in half is because a whole one is too large to roll. If you were not going to roll it, then leaving the belly in one piece would be fine.

After applying the cure all around, place each piece in its own big plastic bag and put into the fridge. They stay in the fridge for at least a week, often longer. And I flip the pieces over once a day. This batch was in the fridge for 11 days.

The next step is to run the belly under cool water and clean off all the cure mixture, then dry it well using paper towels. Once it's clean and dry you put down a good dose of coarse black pepper on the meat side of the belly. Then you roll it nice and tight, the tighter the better actually, to prepare it for tying.

Once it's rolled and tied it's time to hang it in a cool place for at least two weeks.

So that we could also see an example of the slab type of pancetta I didn't roll the other half of the belly. When you do it this way, though, it's good to wrap the belly in cheesecloth before hanging it. The flat, slab-like pancetta hangs in a cool place, just like the rolled, but it's ready quicker.

This one was ready in about 10 days.

Nice, huh? I like this batch a lot. The flavors are both rich and mild at the same time.

Here is the rolled pancetta, ready to be cut down and used. It hung in the garage for about 23 days.

I usually slice rolled pancetta into pieces around an inch thick.

Then I vacuum pack each piece individually. The ones that I don't give away to my demanding family and friends go into the freezer, as the pancetta lasts longer that way.

The only trouble is that I do not get to keep that many of the pieces for myself.

Maybe I should just shut my big mouth the next time a new batch of the stuff is ready.

Pancetta

Recipe

From “Charcuterie”

by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn

For the dry cure

4 garlic cloves, minced

2 teaspoons pink salt (see Note below)

1/4 cup kosher salt

2 tablespoons dark brown sugar

4 tablespoons coarsely ground black pepper

2 tablespoons juniper berries, crushed with the bottom of a small saute pan

4 bay leaves, crumbled

1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

4 or 5 sprigs fresh thyme

Directions

1. Trim the belly so that its edges are neat and square.

2. Combine the garlic, pink salt, kosher salt, dark brown sugar, juniper berries, bay leaves, nutmeg, thyme, and half the black pepper in a bowl and mix thoroughly so that the pink salt is evenly distributed. Rub the mixture all over the belly to give it a uniform coating over the entire surface.

3. Place the belly in a 2-gallon Ziploc bag or in a covered nonreactive container just large enough to hold it. Refrigerate for 7 days. Without removing the belly from the bag, rub the belly to redistribute the seasonings and flip it over every other day (a process called overhauling).

4. After 7 days, check the belly for firmness. If it feels firm at its thickest point, it's cured. If it still feels squishy, refrigerate it on the cure for 1 to 2 more days.

5. Remove the belly from the bag or container, rinse it thoroughly under cold water, and pat it dry. Sprinkle the meat side with the remaining black pepper. Starting from a long side, roll up the pork belly tightly, as you would a thick towel, and tie it very tightly with butcher's string at 1- to 2-inch intervals. It's important that there are no air pockets inside the roll. In other words, it can't be too tightly rolled. Alternately, the pancetta can be left flat, wrapped in cheesecloth, and hung to dry for 5 to 7 days.

6. Using the string to suspend it, hang the rolled pancetta in a cool, humid place to dry for 2 weeks. The ideal conditions are 50°F to 60°F (8°C to 15°C) with 60 percent humidity, but a cool, humid basement works fine, as will most any place that's out of the sun. Humidity is important: If your pancetta begins to get hard, it's drying out and should be wrapped and refrigerated. The pancetta should be firm but pliable, not hard. Because pancetta isn't meant to be eaten raw, the drying isn't as critical a stage as it is for items such as prosciutto or dry-cured sausages. But drying pancetta enhances its texture, intensifies its flavor, and helps it to last longer.

7. After drying, the pancetta can be wrapped in plastic and refrigerated for 3 weeks or more, or frozen for up to 4 months. Freezing makes it easier to slice thin.

Note: Pink salt, a curing salt with nitrite, is called by different names and sold under various brand names, such as tinted cure mix or T.C.M., DQ Curing Salt, and Insta Cure #1. The nitrite in curing salts does a few special things to meat: It changes the flavor, preserves the meat's red color, prevents fats from developing rancid flavors, and prevents many bacteria from growing.

Salt-baked whole fish

2011-10-24T13:04:00.000-04:00

There are fishes buried under there. Three of them. Branzino, if you must know, a type of bass that came from the Mediterranean Sea.

They are encased in a mountain range-like mass of kosher salt. More important, I am pretty certain that these fish are the moistest that I have eaten.

They were baked for about 20 minutes in this wood-burning oven, but any oven will do. The temperature only needs to be in the 400 F range.

The full recipe is below, but this is what you will see after cracking open the salt crust once the fish is cooked.

And if you enlarge this pic you will see how moist the flesh turned out to be.

I had always meant to try this cooking method but was somehow convinced that it would be too big a production. It wasn't, I swear. The only downside, if you want to call it that, is the large amount of salt you'll go through, which does add to the dish's cost.

Other than that, it's a major cool method of preparing a super moist fish. Dramatic, too, if you're out to show off for your friends. (Speaking of friends: Yes, Fred, this might work with one of those big-ass stripers you show off on FishTales from time to time. I'd just cook it longer. And maybe buy more salt. And a giant-sized pan.)

Salt-baked whole fish

Recipe

2 whole 1 lb. fish, cleaned and gutted (branzino is what I used)

4-6 lemon slices, cut crosswise

4 rosemary sprigs

1/3 cup chopped parsley

2 or more 3-lb. boxes of kosher salt

Cold water as needed

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Pour a 1/2-inch layer of the kosher salt onto a baking sheet.

Set both of the fish on top of the salt and stuff each one with the lemon, rosemary and parsley.

In a bowl, pour about a box of the salt, then mix in a little cold water, enough to moisten the salt just enough to hold it together. Don't make it wet; the idea here is that you'll be molding the mix around the fish to create a thick crust.

Pile the salt onto the fish and form a mold around them. If the salt mix isn't enough to cover the fish completely make some more mix with the leftover salt.

After the fish are properly coated place them in the oven for 20 minutes.

Break open the salt crust, remove the fish and serve whole or filleted, whichever you prefer. You could also drizzle some olive oil or further season the flesh if you like. I didn't. The branzino were plenty flavorful just as they were.

Pasta and chickpeas

2011-10-20T09:36:00.000-04:00

The vegetarian crowd is gonna dig this, I think.

(You with me here, Mavis? Kitty? How about you, Miss Glodes?)

Not only are chickpeas high in protein, meaning that this is a pretty damned solid dinner entree nutrition-wise. But it's also a super tasty and satisfying dish. A lot more so than those bland-as-hell (afterthought) pasta concoctions that I see so many restaurants passing off as legitimate menu choices for non-meat eaters.

No kidding, I am craving a bowl of this stuff right now. It really is that good.

Almost as appealing is how easy it is to make. All I did was prepare an aglio y olio sauce, but with a good dose of hot pepper and, of course, the chickpeas. Hell, I even used the canned chickpeas, that's how fast it all came together.

I keep telling you people that I am a simpleton. Perhaps now you will believe me.

Pasta and chickpeas

Recipe

4-6 garlic cloves, chopped

4 anchovy fillets

1 hot pepper, chopped

extra virgin olive oil

1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed

1/2 lb. rigatoni (or pasta of your choice)

1/2 cup (or more) well-salted pasta water, reserved from rigatoni

In a large pot of well-salted water, cook the pasta until almost done (remember to reserve some of the water).

Saute the garlic, anchovy and pepper in an ample amount of the oil until soft.

Add the chickpeas and saute until warmed through, about five minutes.

Add the cooked pasta to the pan, as well as the 1/2 cup of water, and cook at a high heat for about two minutes more, then serve.

Mr. Potato Head

2011-10-17T17:40:00.000-04:00

Even a meatball knows that this tuber has about as much chance of curing an ailment as the New York Mets have of suiting up for games next October.

Ain't gonna happen.

Facts, however, never were a match for my mother. And I can prove it.

Her middle son, you see, suffered from excruciating, hellish, unbearable, utterly debilitating migraine headaches when he was very young. I know that they were excruciating and hellish and unbearable and debilitating because neither of my two brothers were themselves able to land the number-two spot in our parents' procreative three-pack.

One afternoon, when none of the medicines prescribed by the fancy head specialists on Eastern Parkway were working, mom decided to take matters into her own flour-dusted hands. (She had been in the middle of making her luscious homemade cavatelli for that night's supper.)

The scene, as they say, is etched in my brain. It was a bright, sunny day, way too bright for a migraine sufferer to bear. I was laying in bed, weeping and waiting for the medicines to do their work, even though it was clear to me that the medicines were not going to be doing their work today.

"Any better, hon?"

The wet kitchen towel draped over my eyes prevented me from getting a visual, but the concern in my mother's voice was unmistakable.

"I think I'm gonna throw up," I muttered, and then I did.

A short while later mom brought a baking tray into the room. On the tray was a crisp, very white cotton towel folded lengthways and in half.

"You've suffered enough," she said, sitting on the bed next to me. "This will make you better, I promise."

Quickly she unfolded the towel to reveal its contents.

"Close your eyes," mom told me, "and just be still."

"But ma," I said as incredulously as a young meatball could manage, "those are..."

With an index finger across my lips she gently pressed my head back onto the pillow where, she appeared quite certain, it belonged.

"I know what they are. Just do as I say now and close your eyes and be still."

Of course, this was an impossible directive.

I ask you, what if your own mother had come to your aid in an hour of extraordinary need — packing a goddamn kitchen towel filled with thickly sliced raw potatoes!

Would you be able to close your eyes and just be still?

And so, even in a compromised state, I managed to bully my poor mother into having to defend the kindness and concern she had showed toward me.

"We put the potatoes on your forehead and on your eyelids," she explained, patiently at first. "Then, when the potatoes turn dark you'll be all better."

"How does that make me better, ma?"

"It draws all of the poison out of you, that's how. The darkness is the poison. Inside of you it makes you feel sick, but inside the potato it just makes it black. Understand?"

This might be a good time for all of you parents out there to pour yourself a good stiff one, because I am about to lay bare an inner demon, evidenced in certain young people I am told, that can lay waste to the most loving and selfless of mothers.

"C'mon, ma," I said as sarcastically as I knew how. "After awhile won't the potatoes turn dark anyway, just because they've been out in the open?"

My mother scores major points for refraining from giving her middle figlio ingrato a good smack. As well as for proceeding with the potato-on-forehead-and-eyelids experiment that she so desperately prayed would make her child feel well again.

No, I am certainly not proud of myself, okay.

As for the transfer of dark poisons from my body to a potato that day?

Let's just say that the cavatelli that evening had a far more soothing effect. And that the Mets still aren't going to be playing any baseball next October.

Pumpkin & ricotta gnocchi

2011-10-10T07:14:00.002-04:00

Hey, it's October. What were you expecting, spring peas?

This is the first time I have used a pumpkin to make gnocchi, and so we are flying a little blind here. I also didn't use a recipe. The ingredients seemed to come together naturally.

It started out by clearing away all the seeds. This is a Tonda Padana pumpkin (or winter squash, if you prefer); grown by a friend locally from Italian seeds that I provided her. I planted the seeds also, but didn't get a single pumpkin.

I decided to roast the pumpkin, and to do that I placed the two sides face down in water inside a roasting pan. This went into the oven, at about 375 degrees F, for about an hour, or until the flesh was very soft.

Here's the cooked pumpkin, ready to have the flesh scooped out. (It was on the watery side, and so I let the flesh sit in a colander for about an hour to drain.)

Here's what I wound up with for ingredients (clockwise from bottom left): 3 cups of pumpkin; 3/4 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese; 1 lb. of fresh ricotta; and 1/8th cup of finely processed amaretti cookies (I used the Vitamix on that). There's also some nutmeg sprinkled on top, as well as salt and pepper.

Before adding an egg, taste the mix to see if you like it and adjust seasonings if needed.

Though others would probably suggest adding flour to the entire mixture, I prefer working in small batches. I put a bit of flour on my work surface, scooped out some of the mix, then very delicately worked it all together.

It's critical to not work the dough very hard. My preference is to go as light on the flour (and the mixing and the rolling) as I can get away with while still getting the dough to hold together.

You can see that these gnocchi are barely worked at all. This makes it a little difficult to handle but the payoff, I think, is well worth it.

Here are the gnocchi after they were quick fried in very hot extra virgin olive oil. They are served with just a little brown butter and sage, plus crumbled Parmigiano-Reggiano.

Definitely among the lightest, most delicate gnocchi I've ever had.

From now on I will be supplying these pumpkin seeds to as many friends as I can convince to take them.

PGJ7HJM2E5UV

Mister Mamma

2011-10-03T15:55:00.000-04:00

This might go a lot more smoothly if you closed your eyes and thought about your mother in her most motherly of aprons, not me. We are, after all, discussing one of the top comfort foods of all time: pastina.

To refer to this as a recipe would be an extreme overstatement. The only three ingredients here are pastina, cheese and butter. If you can boil water then you are pretty much good to go.

Parents have been serving bowls full of pastina to their kids for generations. Just look at the stuff, would you: the tiny star-shaped pasta has got bambini written all over it!

But I don't have any kids, see, and still, there is always pastina in the house.

Why? Because it is good for what ails you, that's why. I guarantee you that a bowl of pastina with butter and grated cheese (Romano is best, I think) will make you feel better the next time you are feeling under the weather or simply kinda blue.

It helps if the weather is on the cool and rainy side, and if you are curled up on the sofa underneath a blankie.

I say this because it was under just these conditions that I prepared this magical dish for a not-altogether-well associate of my own just days ago. No sooner had I cleared away the empty bowl off of the coffee table that the mood in the house improved.

And I didn't even have to put on an apron.

White Castle: what I crave

2011-09-27T08:37:00.000-04:00

A way off-topic rant that has no business being on this particular food blog. Apologies. We will return to our regularly scheduled Italo food-focused programming just as soon as the new meds kick in.*

The blue in the upper right corner of the photo is a garment. Blue jeans, actually. They are mine and I am wearing them. The white foreground, a flimsy paper napkin, is held in place by the index finger — also mine — visible at the top left.

The setting is Atlantic Avenue, at the corner of Shepherd, in the borough of Brooklyn, New York, in the summer of 2011. It is the interior of my automobile, the driver's seat, which I am occupying.

A car or a truck's cabin is the ideal place to consume the main subject of this frame: the White Castle hamburger. I enjoyed six of the tasty burgers this day, but many times I have eaten far, far more than that.

Where I come from, "Buy'em by the sack" isn't a slogan, it's a mandate.

I grew up just around the corner from a White Castle, in fact the very one that I visited this summer. Well, not the very one. As with many of the restaurant chain's older stores, this one was rebuilt from the asphalt up some years back, to better accommodate traffic flow for the oh-so-crucial drive-thru trade.

White Castle has always been the most convenient of places to fall into and satisfy your craving, no matter when it might strike. For as long as I can remember the restaurants have been open 24 hours a day, including holidays (yes, the Thanksgiving stuffing is good; I've had it). The only day that the stores are not open is Christmas.

Of course, it's only convenient if you happen to live near one of the 400 or so White Castle restaurants in the U.S., which I no longer do. I have to travel through five states before reaching a store. The nearest locations to my current home are in New York and New Jersey, more than 300 miles away.

This seems to me an unnecessarily cruel and unusual siting strategy for a restaurant company that I have been so loyal to and for so long.

Doesn't it?

I mean, would it kill these jokers to throw a store up someplace in the New England states? We have electricity up here, you know. Indoor plumbing too.

The way I figure, they owe me at least that much. I haven't just spent sacks full of money in their restaurants over the years. What about the ways in which I have fiercely defended their product against those who are so quick to malign it. Doesn't that count for something?

It takes courage to be a White Castle enthusiast, you know. Never has a fast food been more ridiculed than this one has. "Belly bomber" is the most common term used to denigrate the two-bite-and-you're-done little square hamburgers. "Greasers" is another. "Sliders," a term embraced by the company itself, is yet another, however it appears not to carry with it an air of negativity or shame.

That's right, I said shame. You should see the way some people look at me when they find out that I eat at White Castle. You would think that I had just swallowed whole their little darling child's adorable pet golden hamster, Freckles.

You know what, I really don't give a crap what anybody thinks. I'd put a White Castle (the plain single is the only one I eat, by the way) up against any hamburger, any one at all. Yeah, that's right, even those Five Guys characters that everybody is so all hopped up over these days, the ones who are growing like weeds in the gutter.

Get a grip, would you. The burger isn't that good.

As for so many other bastions of burger blandness, the clown's place or the king's or any number of other mediocre restaurant "concepts," as they are known? Hell, Freckles probably tastes better than most of them. (Sorry. The new meds*, remember?)

White Castles are anything but bland. Considering the way they are cooked, how could they be? First the hot grill is covered in finely chopped soft onions and water, which are then topped with little square hamburgers, each with five holes punched into them. (The holes allow steam to pass through the burger; this ensures quick cooking without flipping the patty.) On top of the patty goes the bun, which becomes infused with the steam coming from the onions and the beef as they cook. A dab of ketchup, slice of pickle, and you've got yourself one soft, moist, flavor-rich handful of tasty goddamn goodness — for around 75 cents!

Served in the blue, white and (lately) orange box that I love so very much.

If only the company's knuckleheaded siting team would allow me to love them just a bit closer to home.

[*Shyster Jersey lawyer friend insists that I state publicly that "the new meds" are a literary device only, a fiction designed to justify this unusually out-of-place story's appearance on this particular blog. I am not now, nor have I been treated with prescription pharmaceuticals of a mood-enhancing nature. Not yet anyway.]

Pairing wines with meatballs

2011-09-21T11:18:00.000-04:00

I would much prefer to be boiled in hot oil or eaten by hungry lions than to disagree with my dear uncle Dominic, but I am forced to admit that Gallo Hearty Burgundy is not the only wine worth drinking alongside a good meatball.

Sorry, Unc.

Don't get me wrong. I have enjoyed many a bottle of the Gallo with my uncle. Hearty Burgundy is the only wine that you will find in Dominic's home. Like his son, John, I gave up bringing other bottles for my uncle to sample long ago.

"That's crap," I once heard Dominic say about a more-than-respectable Barolo that my cousin had cracked open for his father's enjoyment. "What do you want to drink that for when this (the HB now in his hand) is so much better?"

I respect a man with strong opinions, don't you?

I hope so. Because you are about to become acquainted with just such a man. He is a friend of mine. Goes by a number of aliases (that's him on the left), but Scott Tyree is the name that would likely appear on an official document; a denied parole request, for instance, or perhaps a bench warrant.

Scott knows his wine. He'd better. The guy's a sommelier ferchrissakes. A James Beard Award-nominated sommelier, thank you very much. He lives just a bottle's roll away from me these days, but last he was seen as the wine dude-in-chief at such notable Chicago dining establishments as Tru and Sepia. (He claims not to have fled that town in a high-speed motorcycle chase involving a somewhat agitated band of dockworkers, and out of respect I will accept my friend's story without further comment or review.)

The point here is that, a) the dude is a bona fide wine professional, and b) he likes my meatballs. So I decided to put the arm on him (people from Chicago are used to being manhandled) and get him to tell us all about matching the right wine with the right meatball.

Actually, he is matching the wine with my meatball. Therefore, it is possible that this exercise will only be of benefit to you personally should you prepare my meatball recipe and, for that matter, the Sunday Gravy that they were cooked in. Alternatively you could invite Mr. Tyree, if he still calls himself that, to pair wines with your own recipes, but that is entirely between you and the sommelier.

I ain't running no social network here, you know.

Anyway, so here is how it all was designed to go down: Me and the sommelier would get together over (what turned out to be a liquid) lunch and map out a few reasonable parameters for a (first ever?) meatball-and-wine tasting. As we both pine for the bustle and noise of a big city we grabbed an outdoor table at a restaurant here in town where the traffic comes so close that you could share a pork bun with the passenger of any vehicle that goes by.

My own view of the task at hand was quite simple: I make the meatballs and supply the wines, he writes about the wines once we have completed our little experiment. I explained this formula to my friend while gulping down the first cold beer of the warm late-August afternoon, then motioned to our waitress that it would be splendid if she might please go ahead and collect me another.

The sommelier, who had barely touched his own frosty beverage, quickly displayed a far more complex understanding of our mission. I became hip to this when he brought out a crisp pad of paper, a pen and a pair of what I would describe as handsome yet rather stern-looking reading glasses. This must have rattled me more than I was aware because as our waitress delivered my newly opened beer I instructed her to please go ahead and bring me another at her earliest convenience.

For the next hour I sat and I drank, but mostly I answered my friend Scott's many questions about what exact flavor profiles he was being asked to pair the wines with: "You use carrots in your sauce; that's interesting, but why?" "How much anchovy did you say is in there?" "So, then, it's mostly veal and a little beef; there's no pork in the meatballs, none at all?" "Butter and pork fat, really?" "Can you taste the heat of the pepper?" "Are you sure there isn't anything else in these recipes that you haven't told me about; I've got all the ingredients, every one, listed here?"

I studied his copious notes and assured my friend that, yes, he had all the necessary information to move forward. "You should be all set, yeah," I said grabbing the check before he could put his filthy paws on it. "Sure you're not gonna finish that beer?"

The meatball-and-wine-pairing event was held two days later, at a lovely spot overlooking Casco Bay that Scott shares with his partner, the insane South African hot yoga practitioner (though otherwise quite level-headed chap) Giovani.

And an event it was. Look at this place setting, would you? My meatballs hadn't been given this kind of high-class treatment since... okay, they've never gotten it. We're talking white linens and fine china, freshly cut flowers and enough Riedel wine glasses to cater an event for 30-plus people (we were only four in our party). There were even printouts at each place setting, containing a numbered list of all the wines we would be sampling and ample white space to scribble our impressions. Hell, we even got our own Sharpie!

See?

Before I hand things over to Scott, just a couple of things. First, I want to thank him for taking the time to do this. I don't know what I was expecting when I showed up at his door with a big pot of meatballs, loaves of bread, and the associate who had dreamed up the event in the first place (thanks, associate), but I got way more than I had bargained for. This was a professional-grade wine tasting, folks. And even though I was already familiar with many of the wines, I learned things from Scott that I had not known before. If you're ever in the market for a wine consultant, trust me, this is your man.

Second, never trust a wine geek to do things the way you want. I had delivered fifteen wines to my friend the day before the tasting, plus offered several more, specifically a few Barolos I thought might be fun to try. And how many wound up on the sheet? Just eight. Oh, plus the gallon of Carlo Rossi Burgundy (no HB to be found here in Maine) that the crazy South African had picked up on his way home from the torture chamber he frequents, the chamber that he naively refers to as a yoga studio.

No wine event can ever top sipping the Gallo with my uncle Dominic while sitting beneath his grapevine on a late-summer afternoon.

Still, this Tyree fellow hosted one hell of a party, and so, without further ado, I give you the man himself. (He's the one in the green t-shirt, but keep that to yourself, would you. Should a member of particular band of Chicago dockworkers happen upon this blog post, well, things could become rather ugly here in our little corner of paradise. And in a hurry.)

Scott Tyree:

On wine and balls

They were delivered to the house on a cool Sunday morning in spring by a courier riding a gleaming red and black Moto Guzzi. Plump, silky and perfectly golfball sized, the juicy veal and beef nuggets were accompanied by a generous portion of rich, tomatoey sauce (carrots in the sauce?!) and crusty country bread from a local bakery. G had the sauce, balls and pasta simmering on the stove faster than you can say spaghetti alla chitarra. After a few silent minutes at the table, we declared Mister Meatball's personally delivered meatballs the most delicious we had ever tasted.

So, when MM suggested that we do this meatball-and-wine-pairing experiment, I responded enthusiastically and without hesitation. "Screw the wine," I secretly said to myself. "Any excuse to enjoy copious amounts of the succulent meatballs and flavorful sauce again is fine by me!"

We had rules for this wine tasting. All the wines must be of Italian origin (che sopresa!) covering the country from north to south, including Sicily. All colors and styles of wine should be included: white, pink, red, still and sparkling; dry, off-dry, youthful and mature. A rendezvous with MM to purchase the wines yielded, as he has mentioned, a great number of bottles. I am indeed guilty of editing this selection, and for this I make no apologies. Even a Meatball must succumb to reason occasionally. If we had tasted all fifteen wines, we surely would have ended up rolling on the floor covered in tomato sauce. (Besides, the event took place in my house, not his. Our friend Meatball may be highly opinionated, but he is also adept at social interaction and I was fairly certain he would not make too much of a scene upon spying my eight-wine final list.)

On a beautiful Sunday afternoon we ladled up sauce, balls and pasta and commenced with the down and dirty work of finding the perfect wine for the perfect meatball. We found that there was consensus about most of the wines, which I find common in these settings; it is very much worth trying at home, especially with like-minded friends. Speaking of which, my impressions of our own group are as such: I found MM's associate to be inquisitive, direct and focused. Giovani was somewhat poetic (though he does mutter naughty things when he is drunk). The Meatball was just a wiseass, as usual.

All in all, a successful tasting. Here is what we discovered.

1. Zardetto Spumante Rosé NV, Veneto

Pity the poor frizzante wines. So often, they are unjustly relegated to aperitif status and rarely taken seriously as worthy of pairing with food. Happily, this dry and fruity raboso veronese-based sparkler, so surprisingly rich and creamy, proved a worthy partner with the prized meatballs. This simple wine actually elevated the sumptuous meatballs to even dizzier heights. The most pleasant surprise of the tasting.

2. Falanghina dei Feudi di San Gregorio Sannio, Campania 2009

Many of my sommelier colleagues swear that a mythical wine pairing love affair exists between the falanghina grape and tomatoes. Lemming that I am, I chose this delicious savory wine with the fennel-y nose believing that, theoretically, it would provide an interesting herbal counterpoint while taming the acidity of the sauce. Unfortunately, the dish obliterated the wine. No love affair here. Myth busted.

3. Offida Pecorino Villa Angela Velenosi, Marche 2009

Despite the cheese-associated name, pecorino is actually an indigenous grape variety to the Marche region of southern Italy. This particular bottling showed aromas of wet stones, honey and citrus. The palate of bitter almond and ripe tropical fruit was worrisomely low in acid and blessedly oak free. On paper, this wine should have been outmatched by the assertive balls. But this was the most interesting and thought-provoking pairing of the day. With the balls, the mineral streak and aromatic qualities of the wine soared. I've developed a little school boy crush on this wine.

4. Soave Classico Inama, Veneto 2009

Yes, there are oceans of characterless plonk from the Soave wine zone. Thanks to Bolla (the Blue Nun of Soave), quality wines from the superior Soave Classico zone of the Veneto have been maligned by association for years. Here's a really interesting version from an excellent producer called Inama, a winery which has been pushing the garganega grape to greater heights in recent years. Round, ripe and enriched with a little dollop of oaked chardonnay, we were concerned this wine might be too big for an already rich dish. Though perfectly pleasurable for sipping alone, the wine became a bit disjointed when paired with the meatballs. Alcohol burned the palate and all that ripe fruitiness disappeared. Ixnay the Inama.

5. Dolcetto d'Alba Paolo Scavino, Piemonte 2008

Paolo Scavino is a modernist who makes wines in an opulent, sexy style. While much of the Piemonte region often produces dolcetto that can be thin and diluted, this guy consistently gives us weighty, silky wines with great structure and layers of flavor. We all loved the vibrant acidity, rose petal and violet aromas and bright cherry and earth palate. In particular, this wine stood up to the acidic tomatoes better than any other wine in the tasting.

6. Montepulciano d'Abruzzo Quattro Mani, Abruzzo 2009

Attilio Pagli's montepulciano has a texture as sleek and smooth as Mister Meatball's red Moto Guzzi. The nose is earthy, dusky and meaty. The palate is a spice rack of savory elements: think blackberries spiked with white pepper and oregano. For me, this pairing elicited the most visceral reaction of any of the others. This was complete wine/meatball symbiosis. These two should just move in with each other and live happily ever after.

7. Colosi Nero d'Avola IGT, Sicilia 2009

Sad. Overly extracted, high in alcohol, lacking in structure, cloying and sweet (no, I'm not talking about Mister Meatball himself). If you're looking for a good wine to spread on your toast in the morning, this is it. I half expected that a nero d'avola might overwhelm the meatballs and clash with the sauce, but none of us were prepared for the train wreck of this pairing. Avoid.

8. Fèlsina Fontalloro, Toscana 1995

For those who find it unfair that we included a mature wine of class and elegance in a tasting of mostly value wines, I agree. But Mister Meatball insisted we open this bottle that he had been cellaring for quite some time. Who am I to argue? The Fontalloro was a classic example of mature sangiovese - all cherry, leather and cocoa powder with fine grained tannins and refreshing acidity. Not only was the wine a pleasure to drink, it elevated the humble meatballs to a thing of shimmering beauty and elegance. Unfair, yes. But at that point, nobody cared.

As for the Carlo Rossi Burgundy, well, let me put it this way: I would much prefer an opportunity to while away an afternoon with Meatball and his sweet uncle under that grapevine of his.

One day, perhaps.

Corn soup with fennel pollen

2011-09-18T19:08:00.001-04:00

Blink and you might as well move along. Because you will miss this recipe entirely, I promise you. It's that quick.

Two hours ago I hadn't even thought of making this soup. And though I just referred to "this recipe," that might be a bit of a stretch. Look, I was at a local farm stand and they had some pretty decent-looking corn. Soon there won't be any corn left around here and so I grabbed six ears.

My associate had already prepared a lovely vitello tonnato for dinner, and so I moved fast to get the corn used while it's still fresh.

I steamed the corn until it was pretty soft, then shaved off the kernels while they were still warm.

Pulverized the corn in the Vitamix, along with a teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of fennel pollen, and that was the end of that. (Here's a source for the fennel pollen if you don't have one.)

And there you go: corn, salt, fennel pollen, that's it.

Gotta go pick out a wine for tonight's veal. Have a good evening.

Pasta fazool

2011-09-14T08:23:00.000-04:00

There is music inside this pot of beans.

If only I could play it.

One line of the lyric is all that I can muster: Pasta fazool-a make-a weak-a man-a strong.

It is my mother's voice that I hear, and she is singing a tune that her father would sing to her. I have added the "-a"s for authenticity. My grandfather, an immigrant, spoke with a very heavy accent, and his daughter, when mimicking his singing, did her best to achieve her father's countenance.

Not even Uncle Dominic can remember more of the song than I can, and so you are hereby spared any further comment on this topic. (You're welcome.)

Anyway, about the dish. It is pasta and beans. Its proper name is pasta e fagioli. It is perhaps the easiest thing to prepare this side of warming tap water in a saucepan. And, according to the people in my orbit anyway, it is the most comforting bowlful of goodness that you will ever put a spoon to.

I put a spoon to the stuff just a few days back. It was already cold — and rainy — here in Maine (don't get me started) and I was staring at the cannellini beans just harvested from my garden. What can I say? The pasta fazool song came bursting into my brain, and so here we are.

If you know the dish, you know what I'm talking about. If you don't, well, everybody could use a little music in their lives, right?

Pasta e fagioli (Pasta fazool)

Recipe

Note: This is a big batch, as I had a lot of cannellini beans this year, so please feel free to halve this recipe. Further, I added sausage meat on this occasion. This is not traditional, and resulted only because there were sausages in the fridge that required cooking.

14 cups water

4 cups fresh or dried beans (I used cannellini but any type will do)

6 garlic cloves, lightly smashed

2 Tbsp rosemary

1 piece of rind from Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

Salt to taste

3 Italian sausage, meat removed from the casings (optional)

1/2 lb. pasta of your choice (I used shells)

Grated cheese and freshly ground black pepper

In a large pot of boiling water add the beans, garlic, rosemary, cheese rind and salt.

About 20 minutes before the beans are cooked to your liking add the sausage meat (if you're using it).

Just before the beans are fully coked, add the pasta and cook until al dente.

In a bowl top with grated cheese and ground pepper and serve.

Sing — or don't sing — my grandfather's song. Makes no difference to me.

Roasted (green) tomato sauce

2011-09-06T07:25:00.000-04:00

Be honest. How many tomatoes do you gardeners wind up with every year that look just like this?

Sure, some of them ripen just fine sitting on the kitchen counter or inside a paper bag. But a lot of them don't, and so they wind up not on a plate but in the compost pile.

I have an intimate knowledge of this topic, believe me. Every year I shepherd two to three dozen tomato plants through the short, confounding Maine summer. And every year I can count on one thing: that I will harvest almost as many tomatoes that look like this as any other.

There's a reason for this, of course. It's too damned cold up here. A proper tomato season is warm and long, and warm and long is something that Maine summers do not do so well. Hell, it's been in the 50s overnight here for a couple weeks already.

Of course, there was also that "weather event" a little more than a week ago. One of the most important things that I did to prepare for Hurricane Irene was not boarding up the windows or tying down the lawn ornaments. It was heading over to my garden with lots of heavy canvas bags so that I could harvest the many as-yet-unripe tomatoes that were at risk of being damaged by the storm. Between Irene and the oncoming change of season I think I wound up with thirty pounds of unripe tomatoes last week.

Lucky for me, I have a friend named Joe, whose mission in life is to spread useful knowledge to anybody who will listen to him. Largely this knowledge centers around world travel, as that is Joe's specialty, but my friend is versed in topics far afield as well.

Joe knows tomatoes, for instance. And he knew what to do with the pounds and pounds of unripe tomatoes that I was saddled with. (I don't do fried green tomatoes, okay, so save the suggestion for somebody else.)

I would never in a million years have guessed it, but Joe told me to make a sauce.

Yes, a sauce. With green tomatoes.

Not only did he tell me what to do, he provided me with a recipe, one provided to him by his lovely wife Joel. It is a good recipe. I know this because I tried it. Twice. Joe wanted me to pass along Joel's recipe to all of you, which I am very happy to do.

I am happy because the recipe allows you to take tomatoes that look like this...

...and turn them into a rich-tasting, very satisfying, all-purpose tomato sauce that looks like this.

Late-season tomato picking here in Maine will never again be the same.

It will be a lot better.

Joel Ann Rea's Roasted Tomato Sauce

Recipe

4 to 8 pounds of fresh tomatoes, cored and quartered or loosely chopped

1 onion, roughly chopped

3 to 4 garlic cloves, peeled and split (Joel uses 5 to 7, but she and Joe love garlic)

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil, or enough to coat ingredients

Salt and pepper to taste

Red pepper flakes to taste

10 to 12 basil leaves, chopped (reserve to add after cooking)

Pre-heat oven to 450 degrees F.

In heavy Dutch oven, place tomatoes, onion and garlic. Add olive oil and stir. Season with salt, pepper and red pepper flakes to taste.

Place in oven and roast for 45 minutes to 1 1/2 hours (check and stir when you begin to smell the sauce, then keep roasting until you like the look and feel).

When sauce reaches desired consistency, remove from oven. Lightly mash tomato mixture with heavy spoon or potato masher, then add basil and stir.

Serve over pasta, to top fish or chicken, or as side dish. Sauce flavor deepens deliciously over 1 to 3 days while refrigerated. Can also be frozen.

Note from Joel: This works well with any variety of tomato and is great with a mixture of types, from fully ripe to green off the vine. Cherry, midget, pear and grape varieties also work well, just add whole.

Note from Meatball: I used a fair number of green tomatoes and found it necessary to add a little sugar to bring things into balance.

Aunt Anna's baked clams

2011-09-01T06:43:00.000-04:00

I'm gonna get smacked for this.

Not for sharing my aunt's recipe, but for showing you her picture. My mother's only sister is not the type to bask in the glow of (loving) attention or praise.

But I can't help myself. Anna makes the most amazing baked clams. They are the first thing we eat at the Christmas Eve dinner table and the most-requested food item when the whole family gets together each August.

What am I supposed to do, pretend that these rituals don't exist? Because my aunt's a little shy?

It's not like she hasn't given me a good head smack before, you know. I can take it.

Besides, I get a lot of requests for my own baked clams recipe. And I'm getting tired of having to explain to people that I don't have one. Come to think of it, I have never baked a clam in my entire life. And if I did decide to bake some, I would just call my aunt and ask her how she makes hers so that I could maybe have a shot at producing the taste that I crave.

These are Anna's clams. Sadly, this August came and went without the annual family weeklong gathering, and so the next chance I will have to enjoy my aunt's baked clams is still another four months away.

I really cannot wait.

Anna's baked clams

Recipe

2 dozen cherrystone clams, shucked (leave the clams whole)

1/2 cup bread crumbs

2 Tbsp grated cheese

2 garlic cloves, minced

1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped

1/2 cup clam juice

2 Tbsp olive oil

In a bowl mix together the bread crumbs, cheese, garlic and parsley.

Place a light layer of the mixture on each clam in the half shell.

In a separate bowl mix together the clam juice and olive oil, then put a scant teaspoon onto each clam.

Place the clams under the broiler for around 5 minutes, or until the topping is nicely browned.

Pig skin braciole

2011-08-22T14:40:00.000-04:00

Hey, wait a minute. Where do you think you're going? Come back here!

Okay, so it's a rolled up, tied down, funky-ass-looking piece of pig skin.

For eating, yes. In red sauce.

No, I'm not kidding.

Of course it tastes good. What do you think I'm running here?

I was at Frank & Sal over in Bensonhurst, and, well, there it was right in front of me. What was I supposed to do? NOT throw it inside the cooler with all the other stuff that I was transporting back to Maine?

You really do not know me at all, do you?

It had been a long time since I'd made these braciole (the singular is braciola, if you wondered) and so I was pretty hot to get going on them. These are the two pieces of skin that were in the package. They have been rinsed under cool water and patted dry with paper towels.

Recipes vary wildly for these braciole (technically the term for rolled thin slices of beef, but adopted to mean rolled just about anything in Italian-American culture). In addition to a variety of herbs and seasonings, my mother always included whole hard-boiled eggs in the filling. I saw someone recently use pine nuts and raisins even! Right here you have your freshly grated cheese (a mix of Romano and Reggiano), chopped garlic, fresh parsley, salt, ground black pepper and breadcrumbs. The breadcrumbs are entirely optional; in fact, I rarely use them. If you are making the braciole for the first time (you are planning on making them, right?), you may want to skip the breadcrumbs.

Once you have mixed all that stuff thoroughly, lay down a light coating on the inner side of the pig skin.

Roll it up nice, like so.

And then commence to tying.

Once you're finished tying, drop each braciola into a simmering pot of tomato sauce.

What! You don't have a sauce working? Here's a recipe that works for me every time. (If you use this recipe, add the braciole at the same time you add the tomatoes.)

It takes a good couple hours for the pig skin to cook properly, but longer won't hurt it either. (Oh, and unless you enjoy the texture of cooked string, allow me to suggest taking a scissor to these babies and removing the tie-downs before serving.)

Look, I know this sounds like one weird-ass thing to put into your mouth. Believe me, I get it. I wouldn't even go near the stuff for years and years and years. And then more years after that.

But it really is a very, very tasty dish. Not only that, I'm pretty certain that the braciole enhance both the flavor (richer) and character (silkier) of the sauce they are cooked in.

Would it kill you to give it a try?

Really?

Fava & cheese salad

2011-08-17T08:15:00.000-04:00

I'm pretty sure this will be the shortest thing that I have ever written.

So, you got your fava beans — your raw fava beans. Since they are not terribly young favas (which I like to keep intact) you extract the beans from their outer layer of skin.

Toss them together with a good extra virgin olive oil, a good bit of chopped hard Italian cheese, salt and freshly ground pepper. On the cheese, I use genuino Romano (produced only in Rome, and not in great quantity) for this salad, but it is difficult to find, and so any good Romano-style cheese that you enjoy should do.

And I am finished scribbling now.

Oh, wait. An extremely hard-to-please associate of mine went positively pazzo over this absurdly simple salad. Just sayin.

X Ray Burns makes a meatball

2011-08-11T16:54:00.001-04:00

I used to fly a lot, but not so much anymore. The place I travel to the most is New York, and that's drivable. (Keep this to yourself, but my fastest time is four hours and ten minutes, including two pit stops. That's 325 miles; do the math.)

Two men accompany me on all of these trips. I have known them for over two decades, spent thousands of hours in their company, and, as you might imagine, know many details of their personal and professional lives.

Odd, then, that we have never shared a meal together.

Or, for that matter, spoken.

They are radio performers, "airmen" as I prefer. Their names: Glen Jones (real, so far as I am aware) and X Ray Burns (not so). Their platform: Aptly, The Glen Jones Radio Programme Featuring X Ray Burns, broadcast live on Sundays from noon til 3 p.m. on WFMU 91.1 FM in New Jersey.

They are a fearsome duo, these two. Both in makeup and appearance. The uninitiated could be easily fooled to reject them as misanthropic oddballs or, worse, aimless clowns who might do better to stink up the nearest ginmill than the public's airwaves.

Such a stance would be both harsh and unfortunate. I have introduced many a discerning ear to the broadcast, and none has failed to appreciate what is surely among the most eclectic bits of disc-spinning you will encounter.

Name a radio program that more seamlessly melds the work of, to name but a few, Tom Jones, Talking Heads, Mendelssohn, Morrissey, Elvis, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Bowie, Beethoven, The Bee Gees, Cheap Trick, Springsteen, Harold Melvin, Jim Carroll, William Shatner (yes, that one), and of course Sinatra.

Don't bother trying, because there isn't one.

Jonesy, as he is known, and Burns must be aware that their style of radio is not for all. The lifelong friends spend much of their three-hour weekly time slot not playing music but riffing on the most esoteric, nonsensical, freakishly strange and often preposterous topics you can imagine.

Burns is the provocateur here. A learned, if not overly schooled fellow, he is equally adept at dissecting complex scientific and political theory as proffering his views on myriad, shall we say, less than sensible topics. Do not get X Ray started on the subject of the giant robots that lay in wait to execute their violent, inevitable plan to conquer our planet. Or, for that matter, how a certain New York news anchor (Ernie Anastos if you must know) is obsessed with seeing to it that Burns expires, in the harshest possible way that can be arranged.

Regular listeners, I am pretty certain, tune in as much for the (usually entertaining) banter as the music. Which says a lot, knowing how satisfying the music can be.

No doubt you are wondering what any of this has to do with a food blog such as this one.

It has nothing to do with it. Except, of course, that Burns happened to mention a certain Mister Meatball on the air recently, and I thought it might be fun to share the snippet with all of you. It is only a minute and forty-five seconds long and can be heard by clicking the triangle on the left below.

I was driving on I-84 in Connecticut when I heard this. Luckily the traffic was light. I laughed so hard that the car, which had been in the center lane when Burns uttered the words "my buddy Mister Meatball," moved completely into the right lane pretty much in an instant.

You may have noticed the mention of spring approaching. That's because I wasn't listening to a live broadcast. Ever since moving to Maine I have stockpiled MP3 files of the shows, available off of FMU's archive page, and listen to them as time permits (sorry, Jonesy). This particular episode was broadcast in mid-June but I did not happen upon it until just recently. You can imagine my surprise. But for a Facebook "friendship" begun only weeks before this aired, I had had no dealings with X Ray Burns whatsoever. None. Hell, even after we became Facebook friends (I initiated, not he), I believe we only had one minor encounter prior to this show, and it was so minor I can't remember what it was about.

I would like to think that Burns enjoys the blog, and that that is why he mentioned it to his friend Jones. If that is so, then I am pretty damned pleased. Thankful, too, that I might have managed to reciprocate, if only slightly, for the good times he has given to me throughout all of these years.

Who knows, maybe we'll even get to enjoy a couple of meatballs together one day.

Flight of the burrata

2011-08-09T13:51:00.000-04:00

If you do not count the wine and the olive oil, dinner last night consisted of just two items: bread and cheese. The bread, an excellent olive loaf, was gotten from the Standard Baking Company here in Portland. For the cheese, there was a bit more travel involved.

See, I drove back from Queens yesterday morning, a trip designed to celebrate my brother Joe's birthday in gluttonous fashion (a success, I might add; I'm still stuffed). Just behind the driver's seat and next to the dog was a cooler. Inside the cooler was, among other things, a plastic container holding a ball of burrata wrapped in green leaf-like plastic and immersed in whey. I bought the cheese in Brooklyn on Saturday, but the day before that it was in the burrata-making capital of the world, the Puglia region of Italy.

I don't know why but this cheese has attracted quite the following of late. In the past few months alone, and right here in Maine, I have sampled burrata from both a California cheesemaker and, more recently, one in Vermont. Why it has taken so long for the cheese to draw attention here in the U.S. I cannot say. A well-made burrata is one of the finest things that you will ever eat.

Basically, burrata is a ball made of thinly stretched mozzarella on the outside and a mixture of curd and fresh cream on the inside. Though it used to be made with milk from water buffalo, now it's mostly cow's milk that is used. (Traditionally burrata is wrapped in the leaves of the asphodelus plant, not the plastic you see above.)

In Italy burrata is eaten within a day or two of its manufacture. Though the cheese I bought on Saturday would have been okay to eat for about a week, I wanted to have at it as soon as I got home, which would put it at just three days from the time it was made.

To make things interesting I decided to do a little cheese flight of my own. I stopped by my local Italian grocery and picked up a burrata made in Vermont, from Maplebrook Farm in Bennington, to taste side-by-side with the Italian version. Maplebrook takes some pride in its hiring of an Italian cheesemaker to make its burrata, and I have found the product to be pretty good since becoming available up here a few months ago.

The cheese on the left is from Italy (via D. Coluccio & Sons in Brooklyn), the one on the right from Vermont. Other than the shape you'd be hard pressed to tell the two apart at this point. It's when you cut into them that the differences become very apparent.

This is the cheese from Puglia. The outside layer of mozzarella is thin and delicate, the inside rich and voluptuously creamy. Look at how that rich, unctuous cream oozes from the ball when it's cut open. Taste? It's like eating thick cream-flavored velvet. There is just absolutely nothing like it.

Here is the Vermont-made cheese. Different story entirely. The outer shell of mozzarella is much stiffer and more chewy than the Italian cheese. The center, though moist and creamy, is far more solid as well. The creaminess factor is entirely different. Not only does cream not ooze out; whatever moisture is released is much more whey-like. As for the taste, it is a little on the sour side (but in a good way), and not nearly as luscious.

This is how I eat burrata, topped with a good extra virgin olive oil and some sea salt and fresh ground pepper. The cheese shown here is the one from Puglia, and so I guess you now know which of the two I preferred.

Some things are worth going out of your way for.

Zucchini fritters

2011-08-02T10:32:00.000-04:00

I think we're gonna need a bigger frying pan.

The zucchini plants have taken over the garden. I cannot possibly keep up. Already, just three plants have produced dozens of zukes. And many more are on the way. If you are local, and enjoy the green things, you would be doing me a tremendous kindness by raiding my plot of earth and taking some of the things off my hands.

What, you thought I was kidding?

Anyhow, here's something to ponder as you're making your way to the garden. They're zucchini fritters that I've made a bunch of times, and usually they turn out pretty well.

You start by shredding some zukes with your instrument of choice.

Then toss the stuff into a colander and lightly salt it. There are four cups of shredded zucchini here, and I always use Kosher salt.

Put a plate on top of the zucchini and weight it down for a couple of hours. The idea here is to drain out most of the water that's in the zukes.

I don't just let the weighted plate do all the work. Several times while I'm waiting I will toss the zucchini by hand and then manually press down on the plate to remove as much moisture as possible.

To dry it out even further I go a couple rounds with paper towels.

After which, the four cups of zucchini winds up being around two-thirds of a cup, or less. (The liquid you see is about two cups, and it's not even all of what leeched out of the zukes.)

In a bowl you put the zucchini, an egg, a good dose of grated cheese (Pecorino here), maybe a tablespoon each of flour and breadcrumbs, and salt and pepper.

Mix it all up and you're ready to go.

It's important that the oil (olive oil here) is very hot before dropping the fritters into the pan. These were only put in about thirty seconds ago and you can see that they're ready to be turned.

This batch turned out pretty good, but fritters are the kind of thing that can go either way. My advice is to be patient, and practice.

We've got plenty of zukes to go around. Remember?

Leftovers: Tomato pesto sauce

2011-07-27T07:24:00.000-04:00

I came across a quart of frozen tomato sauce in the freezer yesterday. (This shocks you, I know.) I had made the sauce (with sausage meat, said the masking tape label on its container) some time ago, and so it seemed a good idea to defrost the stuff and have at it.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Spaghetti and Red Sauce dinner. I ran into a bit of leftover pesto in the fridge and, well...

Next time I shall have to plan this meal in advance.

I strongly urge you to do same.

How to make Sunday Gravy

2011-07-21T16:07:00.000-04:00

It's not as easy as it looks, okay.

Trust me. I've had a lot of mediocre Sunday Gravy (that's tomato sauce to you civilians). Hell, I've made a lot of it myself.

Not lately, though. It appears that I have gotten the Red Sauce thing down pretty well. It is not the sauce that my mother prepared each week of her adult life, no. But it is a good sauce. Worth sharing, I think.

This is how I start most every Sunday Gravy these days: an onion, a couple celery stalks, two or even three small carrots, maybe four large garlic cloves, a little hot pepper, three or four anchovy fillets, and about half a dozen each of pork ribs and sweet Italian sausage.

You have questions, yes? I thought so.

Okay, about the anchovies. If I hadn't mentioned them you might never have known they were in there. To me the fillets are like using salt, except they also add a little depth to the flavor. I still use salt in my gravy, just not as much as I would if the anchovy wasn't in there. Just try it. It ain't gonna kill you.

Next. This is not a spicy sauce, not at all; the amount of hot pepper provides only the slightest hint of heat, and so it is easy enough to not use if you choose.

What else? Oh, the carrots. That's just my way of adding a little sweetness to the sauce. Many people add sugar, but I started using carrots some years back and like this way a lot better.

I don't mess around when starting a sauce. I use a lot of extra virgin olive oil to saute the vegetables, plus some butter. The anchovies are in there too, and I used some fresh oregano and even a little fresh rosemary this time. (Just so you know, I've been known to add some diced pancetta or guanciale at this stage, or even prosciutto. I even threw in some chopped fennel a couple times.)

Once things have sauteed awhile you add the ribs and the sausage and let them brown a bit. You're not cooking the meat here, just rendering some of the fat. As soon as you've accomplished this remove the meat and set it aside in a bowl or on a plate.

After the meat is removed I add maybe a cup of red wine and allow it to reduce by at least half, if not more. I don't do this step all the time, but do think it adds a little complexity.

Then it's time for the tomatoes. I use peeled whole Italian tomatoes (108 ounces here, as company was coming over), then break them up, first with a potato masher and then with my fingers. (Right inside the pot, yeah.) Turn up the heat to medium high and bring to a boil.

Once the tomatoes start to boil, add the ribs and sausage, along with whatever juices have collected in the bowl, then lower the heat to a slow simmer.

You made meatballs for your Sunday Gravy, right? Of course you did. Well, toss them in too. (If you didn't make them, here's my meatball recipe. I'm told they're not half bad.)

At this point I toss in three, maybe even four tablespoons of butter. I find that this mellows the sauce a bit, plus it adds richness. Then I add salt and pepper to taste and let things simmer (using a very low flame, so that you barely see a boil at all) for a couple hours.

This is what was left of last Sunday's Gravy at Casa Polpette, after the imaginary couple from Illinois, The McTinderdonks of Holy Loch (don't ask), helped to lay waste to an enormous pot of the red stuff.

I am happy that my guests enjoyed themselves so much, of course. But my own Monday night dinner did not, shall we say, quite go as I had imagined.

Capeesh?

Fennel frond pesto

2011-07-20T10:47:00.000-04:00

I killed a whole mess of plants the other day.

On purpose.

No, I do not feel good about it.

"Crop thinning," it's called. Vegetable gardeners do it all the time, the good ones do anyway. They yank from the ground perfectly healthy seedlings so that other seedlings, a proper number for the space alloted, may prosper and grow.

I must not be a very good vegetable gardener. For rarely, if ever, do I summon the courage to launch such a killing spree.

I simply don't have the heart.

And so, it is with trepidation (and an ample amount of shame) that I present to you this particular item: A very lovely pesto made with the fronds of scores of baby fennel seedlings that I ripped from their Mother Earth one dark day last week.

It was a simple matter of substituting the fennel fronds for the basil; that's it. The recipe is the same pesto recipe that I have used for a couple decades now, courtesy of Marcella Hazan.

It was delicious, yes, tasting remarkably like a basil pesto, just a bit milder, softer even.

Sadly, I may find myself on another killing spree next year.

"Blender Pesto"

Recipe

Adapted from Marcella Hazan's "The Classic Italian Cookbook"

2 cups fresh basil leaves (or, in this case, fennel fronds)

1/2 cup olive oil

2 Tbsp. pine nuts (I used walnuts this time)

2 garlic cloves, lightly crushed and peeled

1 tsp. salt

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

2 Tbsp. freshly grated Pecorino Romano cheese

3 Tbsp. butter, softened to room temperature

Put the basil (or fronds), olive oil, pine nuts (or walnuts), chopped garlic, and salt in the blender and mix at high speed.

When evenly blended pour into a bowl, and beat in the two grated cheeses by hand.

When the cheese has been evenly incorporated with the other ingredients, beat in the softened butter.

Before spooning the pesto over pasta, add a tablespoon or so of the hot pasta water.

When freezing pesto do so without adding the cheese and butter. Add the cheese and butter when it is thawed, just before serving.

Thirty cannoli and a funeral

2011-07-10T15:46:00.000-04:00

The sweetest pastry that I have ever had was a gift from a woman whose name I do not know, face I did not see, and kindness I cannot possibly repay.

This pastry, a miniature cannoli, came to me in the most peculiar way and in the unlikeliest of settings. It was tossed into the limousine that I was riding in. On the way to my mother's burial.

You can't make this stuff up.

My brothers and I are not the limousine type, but we had sprung for two cars that morning so that the elders in the family, my mother's brothers and sister and their spouses, would not have to drive. Once the funeral service at the church was over and the aunts and uncles were safely inside their car, my brother Joe and I took our places in the other limo. I was on the driver's side, at the door. My brother Michael was in front of me, and so he was at a door as well.

It all happened so fast. Just as the driver began to move away from the curb Michael's door swung open and I could see two hands and a white box thrust towards him. An instant later I saw the hands retract but not the box. Then the door slammed shut and the driver went on his way.

"What was that?" I heard Joe say as I looked to see the back of a woman's figure moving slowly away from the car.

I could tell by the way her hands were cupped over her face that she was weeping.

"Weird," said somebody else, one of my young nephews no doubt.

It was several minutes before anybody addressed this strange occurrence again. The church, you see, was around the corner from where my mother had spent much of her life, and so driving along these streets, behind a vehicle carrying her casket, was a notable event for us all. We went past the apartment house where she had lived as a girl, then a wife, and finally as a mother. We drove past the candy store that was first my grandfather's and then my parents', until my father died and mom could no longer run the business by herself.

It was a planned post-funeral procession which we family members had steeled ourselves for the entire morning. We were not about to allow a stranger's unwanted interruption impose upon so poignant a moment in our lives.

A few minutes later, after we had cleared the last memorable site along the narrow pathway of my mother's life, Michael began to laugh.

"Cannoli," I heard him say. "A whole box of them. Look."

He raised the white box to show those of us behind him. It was a pastry box, I now could see.

"Probably one of the ladies from the Rosary Society," Joe offered, a wise deduction as our mother, a pillar of her church for 60-plus years, would be badly missed by its constituents.

"I'll be damned," was the best I myself could add to the moment.

Unlike the rather grand funeral my mother's church presented her with, the graveside service was quite brief. Though sunny and clear, that February day was bitterly cold. As the priest read passages from a book he held in glove-covered hands I noticed some of my cousins huddling close by their elderly parents, trying to warm them no doubt.

Everyone looked so awfully grief-stricken and sad. My mother had been blessed by a family and many friends who loved her very much.

I imagined that as soon as the service had ended people would move quickly to their cars seeking warmth, but the opposite happened. We all stood there. Silent for the most part, except for the soft sounds of weeping and the occasional chattering of teeth.

Nobody, it became clear, wanted to leave my mother in the cold all by herself.

Then suddenly Michael went to the limousine, reached inside and took out the box of cannoli. He lifted the top, made a rough calculation as to how many pastries there might be (two and a half dozen, he later told me), then moved about offering cannoli to the people in our group.

Even my mother got one, as the last cannoli was laid to rest alongside her.

If you knew my mother you would appreciate how fitting a gesture this all was. Throughout her life the woman was happiest when she could feed people. Nothing came remotely close to pleasing her as this. In her final days, I am certain that her inability to cook even simple meals for the people she loved brought her far more pain than any ailment she endured.

And so I will forever be grateful to the churchwoman I never knew, but also to my brother for his quick thinking that day about how best to use her gift. In an instant a box filled with 30 miniature cannoli turned painful sobbing into joyous laughter, and the mood on a cold winter's day from darkness to blistering light.

Just as mom would have wanted.