It's good!

I'm gonna catch a lot of crap over this one. I just know it.

Canned soup. With meatballs no less.

The hell is this guy thinking?

In my defense (I didn't hear any of you coming to it!), you will witness some important doctoring going on here. Doctoring which, I believe, takes an acceptable mass-market (i.e., el cheapo) foodstuff and moves it toward a legitimate, even crave-worthy lunch item. Besides, I'm away on a shamefully gluttonous food-and-drink ramble at the moment, and therefore cannot prepare for you all a proper meal this week. 

What? I'm your meatball, not your mother.

I have long been a Chickarina fan; in fact, it's the only can of soup I bring into the house. In winter, I open at least one of them a week. (If you are unfamiliar, Chickarina is similar to an Italian Wedding Soup, comprised mainly of broth and meatballs, pasta and vegetables, like that.)

But I am incapable of simply cracking open a can and doing what the experts at Progresso Foods tell me to do. After all, in the not terribly detailed stove-top cooking instructions on the label, I am advised simply to "Heat in saucepan." I am also told, in no uncertain terms, to "refrigerate leftovers." But I have never followed that instruction before either. It's a can of soup. Not a vatful.

I can tell I'm losing you here, so what say we get on with it.

See these pieces of bread? They're stale. Cannot possibly get any harder. I keep stale bread around the house like other people keep crackers in the cupboard or milk in the fridge. I am never without it. Not ever.

The bread, if you hadn't already guessed, is a principal ingredient in the Chickarina soup that I eat. So is a very good bit of freshly grated cheese (Romano here), a healthy pour of extra virgin olive oil, and some freshly ground black pepper.

Go ahead, mock me. It's good, I tell you. 

Oh, boy!

2HPHEZX7BES2

Homemade Nutella

Some things are best left to the cold and faceless experts. Such is the case with Nutella, my favorite before-bedtime spoonful of sweetness.

Ferrero, Nutella's multinational manufacturer, is a far more reliable source for the creamy chocolate-hazelnut spread than I will ever be.

Not that I haven't tried. In the past several weeks I have made two different batches of homemade Nutella, thank you very much. One was a disaster, the other an acceptable imitation but not in the slightest way memorable.

Coincidentally, and as fabulously idiotic luck would have it, I learned just last week that Saturday, February 5, will mark the fifth annual celebration of World Nutella Day. The event, concocted by a couple of Americans living in Italy, appears, as best I can tell, to call upon cooks around the globe to, well, cook something, anything using Nutella. If you are in Texas this weekend, do not be surprised if you are offered a Nutella enchilada, or perhaps a barbecued Nutella cheeseburger. If you are in Krakow, rest assured there is some person nearby who has just slaved over a batch of Nutella-filled pierogi. Traveling the South East Asian Peninsula, are you? Maybe you can score a few bites of banana-Nutella tempura.

I had never heard of World Nutella Day before either, but it seems that a lot of other people have. I checked over on Facebook where, as you might expect, the "event" has its own page; nearly 17,000 people "like" it. Over on Twitter, WND has more than 2,000 followers. (I am positively green with envy on both these points, I'll have you know. As of this writing, a mere 54 Facebook users "like" Mister Meatball and there are even fewer Twitter "followers" than that.)

So, what was the point of attempting a homemade version of the Italian condiment? I could say that the holidays, when the first batch was attempted, might have had something to do with my enthusiasm. But do you want to know the truth? It beats the absolute hell out of me what the point of all this was.

I like the stuff. I saw a recipe. It happens.

You start with lightly roasted and skinned hazelnuts.

Work them in the food processor until they liquify. (This will take some time, so be patient. I was not at all patient the first time and it proved my undoing.)

Vanilla, confectioner's sugar, unsweetened cocoa powder and hazelnut oil are next up.

Mix them together and add to the liquified hazelnut mix.

Process about a minute more.

And there you go, homemade Nutella.

Well, sort of. The real Nutella is on the left, mine's on the right.

Not bad. In fact, pretty tasty, if coarser in texture than the real stuff, and not as sweet.

On the other hand, I still know how to get my hands on the real Nutella, the one that's made in Italy (it's produced all over the world, you know), and so I'm not sure what the point would be of going through all this again.

Maybe I'll just stick with meatballs.

Homemade Nutella

Recipe adapted from the Los Angeles Times

Makes about 1 1/2 cups

2 cups raw hazelnuts

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 cup powdered sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1/8 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons hazelnut oil, more as needed (I had hazelnut oil in the house, but if you don't, and don't want to buy it, I'd think canola oil might do.)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Spread the hazelnuts evenly over a cookie sheet and roast until they darken and become aromatic, about 10 minutes. Transfer the hazelnuts to a damp towel and rub to remove the skins. (I went with already-skinned hazelnuts on my second try, and roasted them a little less time.)

In a food processor, grind the hazelnuts to a smooth butter, scraping the sides as needed so they process evenly, about 5 minutes.

Add the cocoa powder, sugar, vanilla, salt and oil to the food processor and continue to process until well blended, about 1 minute. The finished spread should have the consistency of creamy peanut butter; if it is too dry, process in a little extra hazelnut oil until the desired consistency is achieved. Remove to a container, cover and refrigerate until needed. Allow the spread to come to room temperature before using, as it thickens considerably when refrigerated. It will keep for at least a week.

Saints and sesame seeds

I once lived twelve feet above a church altar.

It was an amazing altar, one where short old ladies who wore black dresses and carried Rosary beads came together to mark all of the major Saints' Days. They would pray, of course, and light candles, lots of candles. Many of the women would linger, speaking Italian to one another and drinking espresso and eating cookies.

I was not a member of a religious order, if you were wondering, and, for that matter, did not live above a church. The altar, a real one, stood in the living room of a small ground-floor flat occupied by a woman known only as Miss Mary. The baker of all Saints' Day cookies, Miss Mary lived alone in the apartment with just her religious articles, her baking tools and, of course, her altar.

I lived in a slightly larger space a flight above, with my parents and my two brothers.

It was a pretty spectacular place to live. I mean, how many apartment buildings do you know of that smell like an Italian pastry store all day long, and for so many days out of the year? (There are a lot of Saints' Days, you know.) More important, how many act as the central gathering place for scores of people who are looking for a warm, welcoming place to spend time with their neighbors?

Right. Not many. Different times.

Anyway, enough with the altar. I was a kid. All that mattered to me was that I could run down the flight of stairs whenever I felt like it and Miss Mary would always give me exactly what I wanted.

Her sesame seed cookies.

Those dry, crunchy, slightly sweet, always satisfying biscuits are as much a part of my childhood as any food I can think of. Even today I can summon their scent in an instant and without the slightest effort. The cookies are inside my head, I tell you. And they ain't-a-gonna get out.

It wasn't until a lot of years later that I learned the cookie's proper name (Biscotti di Regina, The Queen's Biscuit). Not that it mattered. I had probably put away thousands of the cookies by then. Besides, to me they're always going to be Miss Mary's sesame seed cookies. No matter who makes them.

Even if it's me.

The dough feels like a cross between a pasta dough and a pie crust. Just wet enough so that it will hold together to form the cookies, but still on the dry side.

The only other things you'll need: milk and raw sesame seeds.

First you form these thumb-sized pieces of dough.

Dip in the milk.

And roll in the sesame seeds.

Set them down on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, and into the oven at 400 F.

About 10 minutes later you've got yourself a fine mess of cookies.

This is the altar I was telling you about, part of it anyway. Years back, after Miss Mary had died, I helped to clear the place out. She must have had a couple hundred statues of I don't know how many different saints, and the altar was pretty much as I'd remembered. (I came across some recipes, but not for the cookies, and so I've used a family recipe here.)

After the last of her things had been boxed up and the altar hauled away, I went across the street to Vinny Biscuit's grocery and picked up a package of Stella D'oro sesame cookies. I went back to the empty apartment, sat on the living room floor, and ate a couple of the Stella D'oros.

Then I locked Miss Mary's door and headed out, missing the smell of her cookies in the hallway a lot more than I thought I would.

I don't know what happened to the Stella D'oros. I left those propped against the living room wall. Where the altar used to be.

Biscotti di Regina 

Sesame seed cookies

Recipe

Yields around 3 dozen cookies

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp. baking soda

8 Tbsp. butter (at room temperature)

2 egg yolks

2.5 Tbsp. milk

1 Tbsp. Anisette

1 tsp. lemon or orange zest

Combine the flour, sugar and baking soda, then incorporate all the other ingredients.

Mix together until you can just form a ball. (If the dough feels wet add a little flour; if it's dry and won't form a ball add milk, but only in 1/2 tsp. increments.)

Wrap the dough in plastic and refrigerate about an hour.

Preheat oven to 400 F.

Form thumb-sized biscuits. Dip each one in milk and then roll in the sesame seeds.

Put cookies on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

Bake for around 10 minutes, or until golden brown.

How to cure a smelly fish

Sometimes the best things just sneak up on you. Or, they could swim.

Take these mackerel. Furthest thing from my mind when I walked into the fish store the other day. Absolutely the best thing I came out with.

A lot of people don't like the mackerel. "Too oily," I have heard them complain. "Too fishy."

Imagine that. A fish that tastes like a fish!

As my consigliere (of undisclosed ethnic origin) Gloede would say, Ach du Lieber!

Calm down, Glodes, pour yourself another Strega. I got this one.

See, I happen to like a fish that tastes like its oily, smelly self, and am specifically fond of the mackerel (saba at the sushi bar; possibly my fave, but don't tell that to the uni).

If you are a fan of the fish (and the olive oil and the garlic), then you will want to try this recipe for "oil-cured" mackerel. It is shockingly easy to prepare (trust me on this), and will keep in the fridge for awhile.

Best of all, it will be of no interest whatsoever to people who want their sea creatures to taste like land-based proteins that reside in coops or, if they are lucky (the protein sources, I mean), roam "free" in "ranges." Which will mean more of the tasty fishes for you.

Though not, evidently, for me. I put these mackerel out as an hors d'oeuvres the other night, along with a whole bunch of other cool stuff, and they were the very first thing to disappear. They went so fast, in fact, that all I got to do was dip a couple hunks of bread into the olive oil where the fish had once been swimming. Which is not such a bad thing, I'll admit, but still...

Just my luck to be running with a bunch of smelly fish eaters.

I need some new friends.

Oil-cured mackerel

Recipe from La Cucina Italiana

1 medium onion, quartered

1 medium carrot, halved widthwise

1 celery stalk, halved widthwise

5 sprigs fresh marjoram

2 sprigs fresh rosemary

1 bay leaf

1/2 cup dry white wine

2 1/2 pounds whole mackerel, heads and tails removed (I left them on)

1/3 cup finely chopped flat-leaf parsley

1 garlic clove, finely chopped (I may have upped this a bit; okay, I did)

3-4 cups extra-virgin olive oil (I used less)

Cover onion, carrot, celery, marjoram, rosemary and bay leaf with cold water by 3 inches in a 4- to 5-quart pot; add wine. Bring to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes. Add mackerel, return stock to a simmer and cook for 5 minutes more. Remove from heat and let mackerel cool to room temperature in stock.

Transfer mackerel to a cutting board; remove and discard skin and bones. Transfer fish to a bowl. Sprinkle with parsley and garlic, then add oil to cover by 1/2 inch. Chill in refrigerator, covered, for at least 12 hours and up to 10 days. Bring to room temperature before serving.

How to make sausage

There was a Mutiny on the Meatball a couple weeks back, and it was all because of a sausage. Not the sausage you're looking at, another one. Guess I'd better explain.

See, every New Year's, Tom and Beth hop a bus from New York (they don't care much for flying) and spend about a week or so at the house. It's pretty much nonstop eating and drinking, with at least one or two big projects on tap to keep everybody sharp. Since no particulars were discussed ahead of time (unusual for this crowd) I had decided on my own that one of this year's group undertakings might be to produce a mortadella, a first for any of us, to be sure.

Mortadella, if you are not aware, is a sausage. My friend Joe (aka Mister Bigshot World Traveler and uomo about Rome) callously refers to this glorious Italian salumi as boloney or cold cuts or, worst of all, lunch meat. He does this, I am pretty certain, to hurt me, as he knows how much I love the fatty stuff. But this is not the place to get into all of that. (Note to Joe, though: I was out of town. It was 25 years ago. Get over it!)

To be truthful, I could not recall either Tom's or Beth's position on the sausage. However, before their arrival, I went ahead and secured the ingredients required to make it nonetheless.

Big mistake. For, as it happens, my normally fit and ready crew, comprised of individuals whom I have relied upon in many a difficult culinary challenge, shattered a deep trust by staging a quiet yet powerful coup that proved far too great for me to overcome. (You don't see a freaking mortadella here do you?)

I could list the many objections put forth — neophytes ought not mess with PhD-level sausage-making projects; strict temperature requirements were far too demanding given our facility; you (that would be me) are not the most reliable follower of recipes, and in this case following directions is crucial — but I won't. Suffice to say I was aghast. And wondered if I might learn to trust these people ever again.

Please. I need a moment.

Okay, so we polished off a couple bottles of vino and decided to make a batch of sweet Italian sausage instead. Way simpler. And, most importantly, my mutinous, scurvy kitchen crew seemed entirely willing to lend a hand.

Whaddaya gonna do?

The pork butt that was at the center of it all (yes, you use it to make mortadella). It's about four pounds, and gets cut up into one-inch cubes.

The back fat also gets cubed; there's about a pound of it here. (The full recipe follows, by the way, in case you were taking notes.)

The spice mixture: Kosher salt, sugar, minced garlic, toasted fennel seeds, ground black pepper and paprika. (There's also vinegar, but that goes in later on.)

The cubed butt, back fat and spices are mixed together, then put into the fridge before grinding. (Note to novice sausage makers: It's important that everything be cold when you're grinding. We even put the grinding attachment and the die in the freezer before using it.)

We used the KitchenAid grinder attachment, the small one, to grind the mixture. The platter that the ground sausage mix falls into must be cold; this blue one is resting in a pan filled with ice and water.

All ground up and ready to go (after you add the vinegar and some water). This is also the time to pinch off a small bit of the mixture and fry it. That way you can taste, and adjust the seasonings if necessary, before committing yourself.

The casings (which I got from Pat's, a local butcher shop that makes good sausage) need to soak in water for about half an hour.

Then you need to clean them clear through by flushing them with water. The simplest way is to attach one end to the faucet and run the cold water for a couple minutes.

Like so.

Get your mind out of the gutter. This is the sausage stuffing attachment, and we're sliding about ten feet of casings onto it. The idea is to move all the casings up onto the attachment, so that when the meat starts coming out, the casings unfurl along with it.

Sausage mix goes in the top, slides out the side.

And into the casing it goes.

And goes.

Until you've gone through the whole batch of stuffing mix.

Twist into five- or six-inch sausage links and they're ready to cook, freeze or refrigerate.

We were hungry, and so we went the cooking route.

And, yes, they were so good that I almost forgot about the mortadella. And the mutiny.

Sweet Italian Sausage

Recipe from "Charcuterie," by Michael Ruhlman & Brian Polcyn

4 pounds boneless pork shoulder butt, diced into 1-inch pieces

1 pound pork back fat, diced into 1-inch pieces

3 tablespoons kosher salt

2 tablespoons granulated sugar

2 teaspoons minced garlic

2 tablespoons fennel seeds, toasted

2 teaspoons coarsely ground black pepper

2 tablespoons Spanish paprika

3/4 cup ice water

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

10 feet hog casings, soaked in tepid water for at least 30 minutes and rinsed

Combine all ingredients except the water and vinegar, then chill until ready to grind.

Grind the meat through a small die into a bowl set in ice.

Add the water and vinegar to the meat mixture and mix until incorporated.

Saute a small piece to taste it; adjust seasoning if necessary.

Stuff the sausage into the hog casings, and twist into 6-inch links. Refrigerate or freeze until ready to cook.

Roasted eggplant parm

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I grew up in a place where eggplant was breaded and fried.

And it was good.

But while preparing an eggplant parmigiana for some house guests over the holidays, I did not crack an egg or touch a single crumb of bread.

This was also good.

Behold, the best roasted eggplant parm I have ever made. (With apologies to certain members of la famiglia; you know who you are.)

Preheat the oven to 400 F. Peel the eggplant (or not; I go both ways on this) and cut slices that are at least 1/4-inch thick (I go thicker than that even). Then it's onto a baking sheet with a good dose of Kosher salt, ground black pepper and olive oil.

Roast until nicely browned. (I flipped the slices once so that both sides could char a bit.)

Make a simple sauce. This one's got olive oil, garlic, hot pepper, a couple anchovy fillets (yes, anchovies), a handful of basil and some San Marzanos. And it only cooked for about half an hour.

Layer it all up, with fresh mozzarella and grated Parmigiano-Reggiano.

Bake in the oven at 375 F for around 45 minutes and that's that.

I like my eggplant parm at room temperature, so it always sits quite a bit before I'll dig in.

On this particular occasion, a couple of house guests tried to stage a premature and completely unauthorized taste while it was still hot. These efforts, I'm happy to report, were thwarted.

As for the guests, let's just say they won't be trying that again anytime soon. Capeesh?

Pasta and peas

Every time I eat this, and I eat it enough, I am ten years old again. It’s Friday night, I’m just getting home from Little League, it’s starting to get dark outside, and my mother is standing at the stove, a ladle in one hand, my favorite white pasta bowl in the other.

“How’d you do?” she says dusting a little parmesan on top, the way I like. 

Then, a kiss on the head, touch of the cheek. All is right this night here in Brooklyn.

Think I might hang around a while longer, finish what's left in the pot. Make yourself some pasta and peas tonight. You won't be sorry, I promise. 

Recipe

Pasta and peas (pasta e piselli)

2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil

2-4 garlic cloves, chopped

2 anchovy filets (optional)

1 small hot pepper (optional)

2 slices prosciutto (optional)

¾ cups frozen peas

½ lb. pasta of your choice

Parmesan cheese for grating

In a large pot of well-salted water, start cooking the pasta.

Saute the garlic, anchovy and pepper in the oil for a couple minutes, then add the prosciutto and sauté another minute or two.

Add the frozen peas and simmer another two or three minutes.

When the pasta is done cooking (save about a cup of the salted water), toss it in with the peas, etc. Turn up the heat and gradually add some of the pasta water until the moisture level is to your liking. Incorporate fully before plating and topping with grated cheese.