Dgourmac's Blog

Tapas. Merende. Meze. Merienda. Antipasto.

Whether it be Spain or Portugal, Italy or Greece, France or Turkey — throughout the Mediterranean, these countries have the delightful tradition of small plates and in-between meals. More and more I’m finding that I enjoy eating this way, in contrast to the traditional American dinner plate with the triumvirate of a Protein, a Starch, and a Vegetable. This post shares some examples at home and eating out that illustrate the joy of “small plates”.

Select Oyster Bar, Back Bay, Boston

I often have a small meal now at a restaurant on Monday nights, to avoid the crushing heavy traffic of the drive home. Last week I went to this superb oyster bar in Boston, and I had 3 small plates making a delicious meal. I sat down in a small corner window seat and started with a little antipasto of just 5 raw oysters, accompanied by a glass of a French Chablis. Next, I dove into a plate of a Romanesco Cauliflower with a Toasted Hazelnut Aioli dressing. To complete the evening, I ate a bowl of spicy small clams with Spanish chorizo.

The second glass of Chablis fit well with all the dishes. I also love the trend of the way such restaurants offer excellent boutique wines which complement the food. Many places provide several choices of volume in each glass. This permits trying several different wines in small amounts, and then driving home — still sober.

Barcelona Wine Bar, Cambridge

A similar Monday night story took me to a tapas and wine bar in Cambridge. The first time there I had to small tapas plates, (1) Spinach and Chickpea Cazuela and (2) Grilled Pulpo (octopus) with Cannellini Beans. I ordered 2 different Spanish wines (each 3 oz. pours), so I could match each plate best.

I was back there a week later for two new dishes, Blistered Shishito Peppers and Mushrooms A La Plancha and a glass of red wine from Uruguay — all very good. I especially liked the mushrooms.

Pasta Dishes at Home

We don’t need to go out to enjoy these kinds of meals. Here are two evenings where a pasta dish provided the same satisfaction.

One of the best meals was Pasta alla Norma, a Sicilian eggplant standby which I have made quite often in the past. However, recently I was able to locate this recipe from a chef in Catania. It was featured in an episode of Stanley Tucci’s “Searching for Italy“, and it’s the best I’ve found yet.

Fortunately, I had a bottle of Sicilian Etna Rosso from Quantico, a very good match in both taste and location with Pasta alla Norma.

On another night I was able to make a Baked Pasta dish with cheese, leftover vegetables, and our own dried breadcrumbs, which is always gratifying. It was accompanied by a small salad dish of julienned purple daikon radish, red onion, tomato and fresh basil.

Uncommon Ingredients on Small Plates

Eating at home also offers opportunities to experiment with unusual ingredients. The small scale and privacy enable me to screw up a little meal and not disappoint anyone else. I had two such experiences in October. Fortunately, they both turned out well. The first was with quail eggs, a real novelty. We had read about a local schoolgirl who raised quail and was selling eggs from a stand outside her home. We tried them the first time a month earlier, with positive results. Here was another combination, worth repeating.

Another dish was even more unusual — Burdock Root. I had attempted to use it once before, with little success in texture and flavor. This time was different. I found a recipe online and made a small plate of Burdock Root Jorim, a Korean dish with good flavor and visual appeal.

My only disappointment is that I have no clue what wine to choose with this small plate.

This is an adaptation of a Ranch Gordo recipe, substituting “Marcella” cannellini beans for the cranberry beans in the original post.

I love cannellini beans, and especially the “Marcella” dry beans from Ranch Gordo, named in honor of Marcella Hazan. I soaked a batch of them last night, and I cooked them today, both for bean dishes and for white bean purée to spread on my sourdough bread later this week.

It’s an easy recipe, and when you have fresh Radicchio di Treviso, it’s a real winner. Here are the photos from today’s lunch.

I was fortunate enough to have a bottle of 2020 Pantaleone Onirocep (that’s Pecorino spelled backwards), imported by my friend, Jan D’Amore.

It was the perfect Sunday afternoon lunch. I especially liked the dressing and its robust Garlic Sherry Vinaigrette. Nothing subtle there. Superb!

Back in mid-July I shared my experience restoring the ability to make sourdough breads with good “oven spring” and appealing crumb structure. You can find the story in my post: Repeat Performances. I’m delighted to report that I just repeated that success a few days ago — a real confidence-builder. I want to shout out my thanks again to The Regular Chef, whose 15-minute YouTube video for Tartine bread is so well-made, detailed, and effective.

I want to note here (mostly for my own recollections) that this batch included four small modifications that seemed to work very well:

• For whole wheat I used 100 g of Yecora Rojo flour, milled from Breadtopia’s berries of the hard wheat
• I made three smaller loaves, instead of two larger ones, which had been the norm previously
• The dough were refrigerated for 6 hours (instead of 4), at the high end of his recommended time
• The baking time was increased after uncovering my bread pot and Dutch oven, from his suggested 15-20 minutes, to 25 or 26 minutes, which was more fully baked

Here’s what they looked like when done.

Rich, flavorful, and easy-to-make vegetarian risotti are not so common. Here is one, and it’s another of the superb recipes from Judith Barrett.

I did not have Fontina cheese available, so I used mozzarella instead. The results were absolutely delicious. A 2021 Rosé from Villa Creek in Paso Robles was an excellent match.

Here are some of my favorite dishes from recent home cooking.

Toasted Sourdough Bread with Hummus, Lebanese Za’atar and Quail Eggs

Sautéed Peppers with Arugula and Black Olives

Toasted Halloumi with Barley and Vegetables

Tuna Salad with 2007 i Clivi Malvasia

King Salmon with Red Wine Sauce

Beet Tartare on Endive, Sweet Peppers, and Sourdough with Whipped Feta and Oyster Mushrooms

Orzo with Vegetables

Grilled Sea Scallops with Corn and Vegetables

Beet Salad with Pickled Cauliflower and Ground Cherries

Beet Salads

Cod Cheeks with Blanc de Noir of Cinsault

And tonight’s dinner,

Cocoa Pasta with Eggplant, Peppers, Tomatoes, Basil Pesto, Moroccan Orange and Black Olive Salad

As much as I enjoy cooking, there are times when I go out to eat. This is especially true in the Fall, when I am teaching. Monday nights are often a good time, because I finish work at 5 PM, and it is particularly dreadful driving home at that hour.

Here are three short views of a lunch and two Monday night dinners in the last 10 days.

Legal Seafood – Kendall Square

Legal has been a fixture in Cambridge/Boston area dining since its founding in 1950. I think I’ve been eating at their restaurants since 1966. In recent years we often went to the Kendall Square restaurant with guest lecturers in our classes. However, the pandemic hurt their restaurant business badly, and it was sold two years ago. The Kendall Square site was shut down, but this year it re-opened under new management.

My lunch with a colleague a two weeks ago was a treat. I had a seared tuna appetizer, followed by fried calamari. Good to be back with old friends.

Bin 26 Enoteca

My first Monday night venture was to this small wine bar and restaurant on Charles Street. From my reading online, I was intrigued with their boutique wine selection and their house-made pastas, featuring one made with cocoa powder. The wines were available in a variety of quantities, e.g. 100 ml, 200 ml. 400 ml, etc. This enabled me to have a small glass of a Corsican rosé to start, (Niellucciu, Sciaccarellu, Yves Leccia 2020) and then a red wine (Niellucciu,Grenache, Sciaccarellu, Syrah, Mourvèdre, Domaine Maestracci, Clos Reginu, Corse Calvi), also from Corsica, with my pasta. I enjoyed it all very much.

Bar Enza

The following Monday night was spent at another wine-centric, Italian-oriented restaurant in Cambridge — Bar Enza. This one had been recommended to me by a friend who is a wine importer and distributor in Massachusetts. The dish I ordered was exquisitely-made, Fregola with Clams and Zucchini. It was spicy on the tongue and a treat for the eyes. I was able to get a glass and a half of Punta Crena Vigneto Reine Mataossu Colline Savonesi, one of my favorite Ligurian wines, to go with the meal.

Altogether, this business of eating out at times is a real pleasure. And the traffic going home afterward was much more palatable.

Food & Wine magazine this month featured a recipe for Sweet Plum Focaccia. My wife was attracted by it, and yesterday she set out to make it. It was pretty time consuming, involving several periods of rest and rising for the dough, but she stuck with it, and we were glad she did.

Last night the dish was prominently featured at dinner. She made a miso soup with mushrooms and baby spinach, and we tore through the focaccia for the balance of the meal.

Footnote: I ate some of the second sheet of focaccia for breakfast, reheated in the toaster this morning.

When I don’t know what to make for lunch, I usually decide to do a tuna salad. For me, tuna salad means lots of flavor and no mayonnaise.  The only tricky part is that I invent the tuna salad every time I make it. Today’s version starts — as always — with a tin of ventresca tuna from Portugal, made by Luças.

The remaining ingredients included celery, Radicchio di Treviso, thinly-sliced fennel, chopped arugula, diced red onion, one piparra pepper diced, several kalamata olives, chopped, small chili pepper slice thin, a few Santorini capers, one plum tomato, thinly-sliced and seeded, some chopped sunflower sprouts, and a combination of oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

What made this lunch special is the Georgian wine I served with it, Tsolikouri, made in a Qvevri —  a clay vessel, sunk into the ground, for aging the wine.

“Nage” was a new word for me until very recently. The authoritative Michelin Guide provides a good description: Combining steaming and poaching, the French method of cooking ‘à la nage’ partially submerges seafood in flavorful broth.

If you love seafood, you must one day eat at Le Bernardin in New York. This restaurant, owned by Chef Eric Ripert and Maguy Le Coze, is the penultimate in four-star dining with treasures of the sea. If you can’t get there soon, try their cookbook.

It was this book I opened last week to find a new recipe for some sea scallops I had purchased. There I found a recipe for Sea Scallops in Chive Nage, which — of course — required me to make the time-consuming Nage first.

With some help from my wife, we had a delicious soup, accompanied by a side order of deep-fried eggplant slices and sautéed carrots. The only adjustment I would make next time is to reduce the amount of champagne vinegar a little in the Nage.

I’ve never been a huge fan of Butternut Squash. Perhaps that’s because it was usually puréed, and I found the flavor too bland and sweet, and the texture sort of yucky. That view has been changing for the past few years, as I learned about roasting and caramelizing cubes of the squash and serving it with polenta or other grains.

Now, I have a new favorite way to use it: shredded and made into a risotto, country-style. I found the recipe recently in the book, Risotto, by Judith Barrett and Norma Wasserman, written in 1987. I’ve had the book in my library for more than 30 years. I’ve often consulted it to make risotti, but I had never tried this recipe.

I have known of and admired both authors over the years. Barrett, as a food writer and resident of Cambridge, MA, and one who has written four cookbooks I use regularly, and Wasserman, as the founder and original co-owner of Formaggio Kitchen in Cambridge — which in my opinion, is one of the very best cheese and specialty foods shops in the country. I’ve been a regular customer at Formaggio for at least 35 years, beginning not long after Ihsan and Valerie Gurdal became the owners.