Dgourmac's Blog

It was close to 2 PM, and I hadn’t even thought about lunch. My go-to meal in this situation is normally a pasta dish, so I searched the cabinets for a small bag of dried pasta, leftover from a previous larger meal. Success; I found a single portion of Penne pasta. Next step was to concoct some sort of a quick sauce, preferably something unusual — not the prosaic tomato sauce or pesto, which were handy but not interesting. I started with anchovies. One salt-packed Cetara anchovy from Campania was rinsed, desalted, and boned, producing two beautiful fillets, and I was off and running:

Ingredients

• Penne pasta
• anchovies, filleted and chopped
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• 1 tbs. butter
• 1 tbs. olive oil
• 1/2 large tomato. diced
• 1 tbs. Tartufata
• Preserved lemon paste
• Breadcrumbs
• Upland Cress
• Pecorino cheese

Step number one was to start of large pot of water and bring it to a boil. When it reached the rolling boil stage, I added a handful of Kosher salt and then the Penne. This would cook for 14-15 minutes, while I prepared the sauce.

In my favorite sauté pan, I melted the butter, then added the garlic. When the garlic began to get some color, I added anchovies, followed by the olive oil and tomato pieces. When the tomato was fairly tender, I slipped in the Tartufata (mixture of finely chopped mushrooms and truffle), followed by a tsp. of Preserved Lemon Paste. When the pasta was cooked al dente, I added it to the sauté pan, along with 1/2 cup of hot pasta water. A handful or two or homemade breadcrumbs and a small bowl of Upland Cress leaves added texture and flavor. I sprinkled on a handful grated Pecorino and a gratuitous glug of Moroccan olive oil. The pasta was served with a 2017 Pretiosa, Albanello from Sicily. Molto bene!

If you love mushrooms, as I do, at some point you will have the pleasure of eating fresh Porcinis. I have found that the ones from Italy are far better than any others I’ve tried (US Northwest, Slovenia, etc.) Fortunately, Eataly in Boston often carries Italian fresh Porcinis. After a number of marginally successful attempts, I finally cooked them properly. This coincided with my sourdough bread-making in March, and it provided some superb meals.

After several months of Ken Forkish-style breads, I switched back to Tartine Bakery for this effort. I did not get as much oven-spring with these loaves as I had hoped, but they tasted good nonetheless.

I cooked the thin slices of Porcini in olive oil until they started to brown. Then I added some white wine to the pan, and sweet butter and chopped garlic, and cooked the mushrooms until they were rich with flavor. Two slices of toasted sourdough, spread with a mixture of whipped feta cheese and almond milk ricotta, were topped with the mushrooms and consumed with gusto. A glass of 2015 Odoardi Savuto Calabrian wine was the perfect accompaniment.

A pasta dish the next night used the rest of the mushrooms, and it was enhanced with zucchini, beans, Parmesan cheese, and homemade, toasted breadcrumbs. Savuto prevailed again.

Lately I’ve become a big fan of Polenta. It’s a great alternative to pasta and rice, and it matches well with all kinds of vegetables. My wife makes the best polenta dishes I have had, so I’ve been trying to learn from her technique. The most important element, she insists, is keeping a high ratio of water to cornmeal in the mix. Her recommendations are a minimum of 4:1 or 5:1 in favor of water.

Further research online and in my cookbooks revealed another technique that looked intriguing. Instead of slowly drizzling cornmeal into the pot of boiling water, this approach described soaking the cornmeal in a pot of water overnight, and then cooking it all with more water the next day. The advantages suggested were twofold: (1) less likelihood of “clumping” which often occurs when trying to add the meal steadily with the water boiling, and (2) the soaked cornmeal makes for a smoother, less grainy end product.

And finally, I had one more motivation for this meal: a recently-re-tinned and polished copper pot. This pot was made in France for Williams-Sonoma many years ago. It is 9.5 inches in diameter and weighs more than 6 lbs., so it is ideal for a vigorously-stirred polenta.

Now for the ingredients; I wanted to make something with lots of flavor and rich in colors. Here are the elements: (note: Matbucha is a Moroccan/Middle Eastern spicy sauce made with peppers and tomatoes.)

• 1 cup of medium-grain cornmeal
• 5 cups of water
• 1/2 cup Parmigiano Reggiano
• 1/3 cup rice milk
• 1 large sweet potato
• 4 Tbs. sweet butter, half for the sweet potatoes, and half for the polenta
• 1/2 cup of Matbucha from New York Shuk
• two handfuls of fresh black trumpet mushrooms

I must tell you that one of the stars of this show was a Butter-Roasted Sweet Potatoes recipe from the food blog, Kitchn. It has color and flavor that make any dish pop! It was the first thing to cook.

Next task was making the polenta. That took about 45 minutes, stirring often but not continuously. As a last step in the process, I added the cheese, 2 Tbs. butter, and the rice milk, stirring vigorously.

The final steps were quick sautéeing of the trumpet mushrooms, spooning the Matbucha sauce onto the plates, and pouring the wines. Happily, the excitement of the whole experience matched my inflated expectations.