Last month I wrote about an artisan pasta shop in Lexington, MA: La Dolda. Last week I used my second bag of pasta from them — Rigatoni. It worked very well in this dish.
We ate less than half of the complete dish the first evening. I was able to revivify it for additional meals, simply by adding breadcrumbs, grated cheese, a little cream, and olive oil — then cooking under a hot broiler until crispy on the edges.
Lunches these days are usually relaxed and very gratifying. As I’ve written in the past, Lucas Ventresca Tuna Fish from Portugalia is one of my favorites, usually in a salad, replete with vegetables in various forms. Here is a concise summary of the most recent version.
The wine, 7 Fuentes, is Spanish — from the Canary Islands. The producer is Suertes del Marqués. The grapes are Listan Negro, with a smokiness that goes well with the pickled ingredients in the salad.
It’s intriguing that I am inspired to cook specific dishes by a wide variety of stimuli. One recent example is a dinner featuring Indian Dals — lentils of various kinds. The impetus came from opening the main cabinet in our kitchen, which we do multiple times a day. Sitting in a prominent place, at eye level, is a jar of Toor Dal, also known as Split Pigeon Peas.
I had used them in a dish perhaps two years ago, but not since. Now they were staring me in the face with regularity. (Fortunately, these have very long shelf lives in their dry form.)
A quick examination of online recipes indicated that these were best when combined with another lentil. Moong Dal. As luck would have it, those were sitting on another shelf — in my wine cellar.
With some adaptations to eliminate certain herbs and spices which my wife wouldn’t like in the original recipe, I was able to put together a nutritious supper fairly easily, adding green beans for color and variety at the same time.
There was one more example of what can be done with Sable fish. This time it was pan roasted with a touch of soy sauce, and combined with wild mushrooms, given a similar treatment and cooked to a deep, dark color. The umami was more similar to lamb shanks than it was to any fish I’ve ever eaten.
In that same “meaty” flavor range, I paired it with a 2014 Callaghan Vineyards Arizona Mourvedre, and it was perfect. The dark color and dusky tannins met happily with the mushrooms and oily fish.
One of the delicious ironies of this wine choice is that my very first bottle of Arizona wine — 10 years before my son started making wines in Arizona — was a 2002 Callaghan Mourvedre. I still have the bottle. It was an “Aha!” moment, when I realized that some very good wines can be found in many locations I did not know about.
No episode of new blog posts takes place here without some reference to the latest pasta dishes. Here are three recent ones I wanted to share.
Spaghetti with Broccoli Rabe
Barbara won’t eat bitter greens, so I make this just for me. Preparation is straightforward:
La Dolda Artisan Pasta
We recently discovered a small but elegant shop in Lexington, MA. The owner is Italian, and he makes excellent artisanal pasta, both fresh and dried. We bought some to take home, and the first one we tried was the Spinach Radiatore, which I made with a simple sauce of zucchini and garlic, finished with Calabrian Pecorino. It was very good, and was nicely matched with a 2018 La Staffa Verdicchio from the Marche.
Whole Wheat Orzo Pasta Salad
Last week I did my Wine 101 Seminar for my alma mater, and it was delivered online successfully. Two of my friends joined me at home for the event that evening, so I made a pasta salad that we could enjoy while tasting. There was no recipe, but I chose to (1) grill onions, zucchini, and eggplant, (2) chop them all up, (3) add them to the cooked pasta, (4) fillet a few peeled plum tomatoes, and (5) mix them all together, along with cubes of Feta cheese for those who wanted it. Olive oil, salt, and pepper completed the dish. The dish paired well with both white and red wines.
Just a small post, with a few recent examples of vegetables as complete meals for lunch or dinner.
One of the easiest and least expensive ways to enjoy vegetables is to buy a jar of prepared vegetables in your local ethnic markets. In my case that would be a jar of fried Georgian vegetables (mostly eggplant, tomatoes and peppers) from Massis Bakery, an Armenian market in Watertown, MA.
with a glass of my son’s Arizona Tempranillo — OUTSTANDING!
Here is a combination of vegetables and bruschetta, including Halloumi cheese from Cyprus, pipèrade (homemade from a Basque recipe), golden beets heated on the grill, and fresh arugula for counterpoint to the sweetness of the beets.
How about a plate of red beets with chopped Greek pistachios, red wine vinegar, Israeli Feta cheese and chives; plus delicious oven-roasted Butternut squash leftover from a previous dinner?
Another option is a full plate of different vegetables, each prepared in its own best way, offered for a light supper.
What these showcase, I think, is the rich flavors and bold colors not normally associated with “vegetables”. We are entering the season now when our selections and choices will be plentiful, and the preparations from many cuisines are not complicated. Buon appetito!
When you bake bread often, you’ll find that one of the main snacks, appetizers, or small meals that pop up in your kitchen, is centered on Bruschetta:
: thick slices of bread grilled, rubbed with garlic, drizzled with olive oil, often topped with tomatoes and herbs, and usually served as an appetizer
Other than breakfast, lunch, dinner, and in between meals, I don’t eat it that often. Here are some examples over the past few weeks, using either my Sourdough Country Loaf or the Seeded Rye Levain.
The formula is so simple and delicious:
pane, vino, formaggi = bread, wine, cheese
plus whatever other toppings you wish to use:
e.g. arugula, chard, spinach, hummus, bean purée, tomatoes, grilled onions, zucchini, peppers, mushrooms….almost limitless possibilities.
Once again New Deal Fish market supplied me with a fine Spanish octopus, and I made all of my favorite dishes over the course of a week. Preparation was straightforward, using my standard procedure of dipping the tentacles in boiling water for 30 seconds, cooking the whole octopus in a heavy pot with lid (no liquid in the pot), so it braises in its own considerable juices, for about 5 hours at 200° F. When tender, place the hot octopus into a citrusy, herb-flavored bath of olive oil, and refrigerate overnight. Remove from the refrigerator and use as many tentacles as needed for each meal, saving the remainder for the next one.
Pulpo a la Gallega
The first choice is always the simplest. Octopus, pimenton, sea salt flakes, fruity olive oil, some lemon juice, and a glass of wine.
Grilled Octopus and Potatoes
I had some small fingerling potatoes that I thought would do well in this iconic octopus salad, so I braised them in olive oil and water until tender, and added them to grilled tentacles, cut into 3/4″ pieces. Torn fresh basil, pimenton (picante this time), olive oil and a little lemon….mmmmmmm.
The wine was a big surprise. I had opened a bottle of 1994 Beaux Frères Pinot Noir from Oregon, and thought it might go well with this dish. Indeed it did! Even after spending 24 years in my wine cellar, it was fresh, rich and powerful, a tribute to the winery’s viticulture and fine winemaking.
I enjoyed the Octopus/Potato Salad so much, I did it again the next day, this time with parsley and chives instead of basil.
Salad with Basmati Rice and Sun-Dried Tomatoes
For the Finale on the last day of the week, I grilled the remaining pieces of tentacle and cap, and added it to leftover cooked Basmati Rice (plus chopped sun-dried tomatoes, celery, celery leaves, and parsley), for yet another room-temperature dish for a satisfying lunch.
Whenever I’ve been away from blogging for awhile, I’m never quite sure where to begin to catch up. It’s been a month now, and I have a sizable backlog of meals and photos, so I am exploring ways to share those with you in a way you’ll find interesting.
As I scan through a month’s photos, I find a few themes that emerge, so I’ll do a few posts later around those categories. Right now, though, here is one in the more traditional style of what we were eating, drinking, and enjoying about a month ago.
Beet and Berry Salad Recipe
Barbara made a vividly colorful and delicious salad with this recipe from Fine Cooking magazine. I added some Purple Daikon Radish, as well.
On the platter
Seafood — Sable Fish, Scallops
Occasionally, we buy fresh or frozen seafood from Browne Trading Company in Portland, Maine. They are expensive, but have very high quality products. One of my favorite fish is Sable (or Black Cod), rich in flavor and very high fish oil content. It made a superb lunch when pan-roasted and served with cherry tomatoes and a glass of 2016 Sauvignon Blanc from Andrea Formilli Fendi. The acid from both provided good balance to the fish oil flavors.
Sea scallops are another seafood we enjoy on rare occasions. Our local General Store has a high-quality seafood distributor who is much closer and less expensive than Browne Trading, and they sell fish in town here on Fridays, so I tried their scallops. I bought two pints. The first batch we pan-seared on salt flakes — normally a good method for me. However, this time they were tough and rubbery, so perhaps I overcooked them.
When at first, you don’t succeed….try another recipe. Returning to my comfort zone of Italian cucina, I decided to try Scallops with Capers, Anchovies, Lemon, and Wine, from Biba Caggiano’s book, Biba’s Italy. It was a real winner!! Paired with Jan D’Amore’s 2018 Pantaleone Chicca, it was marvelous and tender.
Spring Flowers
At this point, there was nothing left to do except look out the window at the newly-emerging flowers of early Spring in New England.
Sometimes even the simplest meal is an opportunity to learn. Such was the case with my very limited lunch yesterday. I pan fried the last slices of my sourdough bread loaf, spread a little butter on the toast, covered each piece with thinly-sliced Tuscan Prosciutto, added very thin, mandoline-cut slices of Purple Daikon Radish, and sprinkled lightly with sea salt crystals from the Grenadines. So far, so good…
Now, for the dilemma….I had two open bottles of wine, both from Jan d’Amore. Do I want the white wine (Chicca, from Pantaleone, Passerina grapes) or the red wine (Il Purgatorio, from Federico Curtaz, Nerello Mascalese)?
Side-by-side, these candidates offered their best to me in my comparisons. My conclusions: both were good, neither was a slam-dunk choice, and I felt the Etna Rosso was just a bit better match. Too bad I had no friends with me to join the experiment. My guess is that each would have had his/her own opinions, and so we could have had a lively discussion as a result. Perhaps next time…
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