Dgourmac's Blog

Using What You’ve Got

Posted on December 25, 2021 by dgourmac

One day last week, when I was cooking for myself, I opened the refrigerator and found mostly odds and ends of ingredients, but nothing that suggested a traditional meal. Among the items I needed to use before they went bad were:

1 Asian eggplant
1 medium bunch of Tatsoi
a bunch of partially-dried Shiitake mushrooms
an abundance of pine nuts
a bowl of leftover, braised red cabbage
1 over-ripe plum tomato
1 small block of leftover grilled tofu

So now, my intrepid foodie readers, what would you make of this mélange?

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Well, as it turns out, I had been browsing the internet for Asian eggplant recipes, and I found this one, which looked appealing. Attached is an annotated version, showing the alterations I made.

My trusty wok was up to the task, and I was very happy with the results. It made two portions, and I ate them both.

For the wine choice, I selected a 2013 Nebbiolo, Terrane by Bryan Harrington. It took a bit of time to open up, but then it was delightful. I miss Bryan’s wines, but I’m happy this one survived for me.

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Vegetable Garden Soup

Posted on December 25, 2021 by dgourmac

In the previous post I mentioned the Romagnolis. Franco and Margaret were my earliest teachers of the joys of Cucina Italiana. One of their lesser-known cookbooks is Zuppa!, and that was the source of a simple and delicious vegetable soup from Piemonte, which I made last week.

I made adjustments — adding and subtracting ingredients, and using a vegan bouillon cube and water instead of beef broth, but it was fundamentally the same dish.

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Ravioli – Cannelloni – Chanukah

Posted on December 25, 2021 by dgourmac

Chanukah arrived early this year, which provided a couple of good occasions for making and enjoying fresh pasta. The feature ingredients were fresh-picked spinach from Small Farm and Kite Hill Almond Milk Ricotta from Whole Foods.

The 8th and last night of the holiday was December 5th, so I made Spinach Ravioli.

Spinach, scallion and almond milk ricotta filling

The previous day I had made my favorite Caponata (a la Romagnolis), with the addition of zucchini (not in the recipe, but I like it!). This caponata made a superb side dish with the ravioli, and the pairing with a white Basque wine from Domaine Ilarria was perfect.

The next day I decided to use the remaining spinach-ricotta filling for some homemade cannelloni. That worked equally well. These two pasta dishes allowed me to perfect the pasta dough recipe: 130 grams of flour, approximately 50% each of Caputo “00” and Gustiamo’s Rimicinata Cuore, plus one extra large whole egg and one egg yolk. It also provided enough leftover dough for a fettuccine lunch the next day!

rolling the filling in the cannelloni shell

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Miscellaneous November Highlights in Our Kitchen

Posted on December 5, 2021 by dgourmac

Just for the record, here are the previously-unpublished best dishes of the month, with and without animal protein.

Vegetarian.

Another Beet Salad – with almonds, olives, greens, pickled Swiss Chard ribs, goat cheese, tobiko, and candied ginger

Braised Leeks with Parmesan Toasted Breadcrumbs

Grilled Manouri Cheese with Eataly’s Olive Bread

Finished Dish: Lentils with Roasted Vegetables and Rice

Deep-fried/Roasted Brussels Sprouts, from Brewer’s Tap and Table, Waltham, MA

Seafood

Octopus Appetizer at Sulmona, Cambridge, MA

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White-Tailed Deer in November

Posted on December 5, 2021 by dgourmac

Whether it be woods, parks, or suburbs, most anywhere in Massachusetts, you will see white-tailed deer in November. Opinions vary significantly on whether this is a good thing or not. Pros: they look cute, they are good targets for hunting, and properly-cooked venison is delicious. Cons: they destroy flowering plants in the winter, they harbor ticks and help spread Lyme disease, and they recently have been found to be widely-infected with COVID-19. A recent study found that 40% of those tested in four states had COVID antibodies. https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/white-tailed-deer-found-be-huge-reservoir-coronavirus-infection

With that introduction I will show you the view from my driveway one afternoon a few weeks ago.

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Lunch with Friends in Maine

Posted on December 5, 2021 by dgourmac

We have close friends who live in Portland, ME. It’s about a 2-hour drive to go there, so we don’t go often. A better solution is often to meet halfway, which is usually Portsmouth, NH. When we decided to get together a couple of weeks ago, I examined the restaurant choices but found nothing exciting for lunch. Instead, I decided to drive 5 minutes further north, across the bridge from NH, and into Kittery, ME. We agreed to meet there for lunch at Robert’s Maine Grill, and we had a perfect seafood meal and plenty of time to visit with our friends before they leave for San Miguel, Mexico, to escape the harsh New England winter.

Here are the food highlights:

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Another Take on Spanish Octopus

Posted on December 5, 2021 by dgourmac

Here is Chef John’s approach, which I recently applied to 4 octopus legs from New Deal Fish Market:

and the full recipe is here: https://foodwishes.blogspot.com/2017/07/spanish-octopus-now-100-trick-free.html

I made this for lunch one afternoon, as shown below.

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Lunch with Gemma

Posted on December 4, 2021 by dgourmac

Our friend Gemma is one person whose food and wine tastes resonate closely with ours, so I was delighted to get a message recently that she would come for a visit and stay for lunch. Her timing was excellent. I had just been to Eataly for prosciutto, cheeses, and fresh porcini, and I had recently cook some octopus, so we had all the basics.

Gemma generously gave us a sampling of her wines (see Erbaluce posted earlier today), and I assembled lunch easily with what was available.

Sourdough from La Saison in Cambridge, Eataly’s olive bread, and my own white bread

We should do this more often! Buon appetito.

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Krasi – Meze & Wine

Posted on December 4, 2021 by dgourmac

One of my favorite haunts for food and wine is Eataly Boston. It has excellent selections of some of my favorite Italian foods. It’s a large store, and it is often crowded, so as one who despises crowds (even BEFORE the pandemic), I pick and choose my times to go there carefully. My top two choices are (1) holiday mornings when they are open, (e.g. Labor Day), and (2) Sunday mornings between 9 and 10 AM, when they have just opened. Another benefits of those choices is that I can usually park on the street, very close by, for free!

My last visit was Sunday two weeks ago, and I picked up superb cheeses, prosciutto, radicchio Treviso, and my favorite hot pepper tarallini. My plan was to go from there to a wine store in Chestnut Hill that I like (but don’t go near often). That store opened at noon on Sunday, so there was an opportunity to go to a Greek restaurant across the street from Eataly — Krasi Boston. I’ve been looking for a chance to try it, but they are open for dinner every day at 5 pm and brunch only on Saturday and Sunday.

I arrived not long after they opened, and the best seat was at the end of the bar, near the door (social distancing, as always).

I interacted with two servers behind the bar, one about food, and the other — for wine. The food choice was easy:

saganaki fried egg, kasseri, feta, boukovo (crushed red pepper flakes), cherry tomatoes, barley rusk $14

The wine selection was a bit more complicated, but the server — Tasha — was up to the task of dealing with a fussy customer like me. After she provided some tastes of a couple of candidates, I settled on a special Assyrtiko she recommended, and it was perfect!

It was a flavorful, successful interval, and I had plenty of time for my next stop at Winestone. Krasi is the kind of meze place I love, so I will return when I can.

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Erbaluce

Posted on December 4, 2021 by dgourmac

Since I’m a month and a half behind on my blogging, I make no pretense about maintaining chronological order — this is Catch-Up time!

This first post is about two lunches this week, featuring a white wine from Piedmont, a gift from my good friend, Gemma, a wine importer and distributor in Massachusetts.

Yesterday’s lunch was a simple salad of grilled octopus, served on a bed of Castelfranco Radicchio, a delightful heirloom Italian vegetable, and accompanied by chunks of sweet Piquillo peppers, imported from Peru.

We had already tasted this wine earlier in the week, first with a spinach gnocchi and vegetables dish, and then with some grilled swordfish for dinner.

But it was with the two salads that Erbaluce di Caluso really shone. The bitterness of the radicchio somehow matched beautifully with the acidic herbaceous qualities of the wine. It worked equally well today with my eclectic salad — sautéed Tatsoi, julienned raw beet, and Ricotta Salata. I also made a batch of Caponata yesterday, and that completed the lunch today nicely.