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:
Merriam-Webster Definition of 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.
Grilled Manchego cheeseCannellini purée – with spinach or with pipéradepan-roasted mushroom marinated in lemon juicemushrooms with toasted bread (actually crostino) and Pecorino with Peperoncino and a glass of Birichino Cinsault Rye bread with Manchego and our fresh chives from the gardenBean purée with chopped arugula, along with a glass of Garganega wine
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 FineCooking magazine. I added some Purple Daikon Radish, as well.
Recipe
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…
One of the many foods I like, and my wife does not, is Fingerling Potatoes. Therefore, I don’t make them often, but when I do, I make enough for a couple of days. One night last week I was reheating leftovers for us for dinner. Barbara had a small bowl of steamed Yukon Gold potatoes, so I served those with her plate of leftovers, and I made one of Alice Waters’ simplest and most ingenious recipes: Fingerling Potato Coins, from her book, Chez Panisse Vegetables, to go on mine.
They were very good, and there was a large bowl of very small potato coins left over for the next day. Lunch is one of my best times for culinary invention: fewer time pressures, no one else to please, and a storehouse of this and that which can be combined or re-imagined. Thus was born the Gratin of Fingerling Potato Coins.
I took out one of my favorites — a hammered steel pan from Smithey Ironware Co. in North Charleston, SC, purchased through Food52 (I get no remuneration for any of the products I discuss here. I do this for fun, not money.). After rubbing the pan with a tablespoon of olive oil, I distributed the coins all around, added a little salt and pepper, then generously sprinkled grated cheese on top. I don’t actually remember which cheeses I used. It may have been Montasio and Aged Provolone, leftover from the Lemon Pizzas, or it could have been the Sardinian Pecorino I adore. Or all three. In any case, I mixed in some dried breadcrumbs, too, and then drizzled with olive oil on top. The pan was put in the top third of my oven and broiled until the cheese was melting and browned. Garnished with freshly-snipped Spring chives from our herb garden, and accompanied by a glass of one of my favorite Muscadets, my lunch was complete.
The title is one of my philosophies of life. And it explains why I chose to make fresh pasta with vegetables in the style (and wine) of Campania for dinner one night and a different dish with packaged pasta from Sardinia for lunch the next day.
Making fresh pasta has become easy and satisfying, so I do it as often as possible. The elements are the same: 100 g. specialty flour, one large or extra large egg, a good pinch of salt, and 1-2 Tbs. extra virgin olive oil. This is the perfect amount for the two of us.
Variety is introduced two ways — the shape of the pasta and the accompanying sauce. I do fool around a bit with the flour combinations, but those changes are subtle. On this particular night, I chose to combine 50 g. Molino Grassi “00” soft wheat pasta flour with 50 g. of Gustiamo’s Rimacinata Cuore flour. The taste, texture, and dough “feel” was just right.
My hand-cranked pasta machine has three different attachments for cutting the pasta sheets I roll out into three shapes: spaghetti, tagliatelle, and fettuccine. Since my sauce was made of chunky southern Italian vegetables (zucchini, Japanese eggplant, and San Marzano tomatoes), I initially thought that spaghetti would work nicely. However, after cutting the first half of the dough, I decided the spaghetti was a bit too fine for our taste, so I did the second half as fettuccine. The combination was a testament to free thinking.
It all came together (vegetables, pasta, pasta cooking water, Barbara’s homemade breadcrumbs, and grated Pecorino) very nicely. Remembering that San Marzano tomatoes are from that region, I chose a Mastroberardino Irpinia Aglianico for the wine. Molto bene!
Packaged, Dry, Sardinia
I had been reviewing some old photographic files of previous food triumphs, and I came across this one, and the recipe I originally used to make the dish. These renewed my interest in the iconic Sardinian pasta — known variously as fregola, fregula, or fregole.
Fregola Sarda Pasta with Olives & Tomatoes, January 2015
I was in the mood for pasta for lunch; we had Taggiasca olives in the refrigerator; and I recalled a leftover half-package of the dried Fregula from sometime in the last decade, hiding in the bottom of our pasta drawer in the kitchen. The rest was easy, and lunch was good. The Aglianico worked well with this dish, too.
Good food inspires all kinds of creative activity for me. Recently, I was looking over new Instagram posts from a few of the people I follow, and I was immediately struck by this one, from Chris Bianco, the founder of Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix. Our good friends, Pat and Pete, introduced us to this place almost 20 years ago, and in my opinion this is still the best pizzeria in the country.
Instagram post from Chris Bianco
I noticed that this unorthodox pie is similar in some ways to the sliced oranges and oil-cured black olive pizza we learned from Caleb Barber and now make frequently in our own oven. I was intrigued by the cheeses (Montasio and Aged Provolone vs. Mozzarella) and by the absence of tomato sauce. From that point on, I was in motion. The next week scheduled a trip to Eataly Boston to obtain the cheeses and best-quality spring onions, and we carved out a day on the weekend to invite Laura and Michael over for the first wood-fired pizzas of the Spring.
It turned out to be a letter-perfect day for the event. Temperature in the low 70’s, no bugs or humidity, the firewood was dry from lack of rain, and I was already in a good mood. Barbara made a bunch of her best pizza dough balls, and we cranked out and shared 5 pizzas among us.
Really hot fireLemon pizza on the peel, ready for the ovenFinished lemon and orange pizzasOrange and Black Olive Pizza — still the best Montepulciano d’Abuzzo | Lemon, spring onions, oregano, chili oil | Orange, black olives | Zucchini, onion |
I have difficulty discarding perfectly good leftovers, even after having had them several times in different forms. Early in April I made two favorite French recipes for a dinner, Zucchini Tomato Gratin and Roast Provençal Tomatoes. We finished the tomatoes the next day, but the gratin lingered for a week, no matter how many times I reheated and ate them. Finally, I settled on a way to re-create the dish and make it still exciting. Here’s the story.
Original dishes
Leftover #1 — spruced up with Pipérade and Ricotta Salata
Leftover #2 – Squash, Pipérade, breadcrumbs, Pecorino — new gratin in a hammered-steel pan
Leftover #3 – Jazzed-up with Prosciutto, Asparagus, and Parmesan Cheese
Leftover #4 – Reprise the Prosciutto, Asparagus, Parmesan
Drink More French Wine with a slice of My Tartine-Style Sourdough Country Loaf
As I’ve written before, traditional salads don’t interest me much. On the other hand, there are occasions and ways in which I take full advantage of how versatile and easy to prepare salads can be. Here are three examples this month.
Spicy Guacamole
One day at lunch I prepared a version of my Spicy Guacamole, inspired by a visit three years ago to abc cocina in NYC. This month’s lunch used a whole avocado, diced jalapeño pepper, diced raw red onion and garlic, lime and lemon juice, and diced fresh San Marzano plum tomatoes. Generous quantities of Maldon salt and freshly-ground black pepper added to the zestiness of the dish, served on my pan-fried sourdough.
glass of Spanish Verdejo — Vevi
Chickpeas and Vegetable Salad with Feta
Another simple meal was created when I needed to use extra chickpeas I had cooked earlier in the week. I simply diced cucumber, plum tomato, celery, black olives, jicama, and red onion. Then I added cubes of Feta cheese, several glugs of Greek olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt and pepper, and grabbed a fork to eat it all right from the bowl. The wine choice was a delightful organic Mourvedre, Grenache, Carignan blend from Southwestern France, je cherche le ciel (“I search for the sun”).
Springtime, and Black-Eyed Peas (or Beans)
Somehow, I have recently associated black-eyed peas with the advent of Spring. That image is mostly from what I read online, since I have no links to the southern US, where these are popular. In any event I recently opened a box of Indian cooking ingredients I had saved, and among the goodies was a bag of Peruvian black-eyed peas (or beans, whichever your prefer). They were small and had been in the box for years, but they looked good, so I cooked them and tried them out in a recipe that appealed to me, Wild Rice & Black-eyed Pea Pilaf, alongside grilled Japanese eggplant with an Asian soy-sesame oil sauce. The results were terrific, and I catalogued this loosely as a “salad”.
The wine was a spectacularly good choice for the dish, a Birichino Cinsault, a floral, medium-bodied French grape from a California producer.
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