Before My Spring Travels

Posted on May 8, 2019 by dgourmac

I was traveling in Europe for most of March and half of April, and I plan to tell you about food and wine highlights from there shortly.  But before I do that, let me throw in a few food/wine remembrances from the short period after classes ended and before my trips.

First, I need to set the scene.  February was a long time ago.  This is what it looked like from inside the enclosure on my tractor while snowplowing:

Cold, raw winter calls for sturdier foods.  Barbara had a good example, with a vegetable pot pie she made, topped with rosettes of mashed potatoes instead of the usual pastry.

This 2012 Lacryma di Morro d’Alba was just right with the dish.

I did some fresh pasta-making, such as hand-made Cannelloni filled with a fresh Spinach and Almond milk Ricotta blend.  These were baked, with some fresh vegetables strewn on top, along with a touch of tomato sauce.   A 1998 Barbaresco from the cellar was a most enjoyable companion.

Other hearty dishes included some excellent canned Portuguese tuna with beans and red onions, and a Spanish chickpeas, rice and black currants meal, baked in a cazuela.

On the lighter side was a lunch dish, featuring excellent lightly-pickled vegetables, inspired by superb fresh Daikon radish from a visit to Chinatown with student friends.

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Catching Up — Food at Home in May

Posted on May 8, 2019 by dgourmac

I have some catching up to do here.  About three months’ worth.  Forget chronological order.  When you get this far behind, it does not matter.  So I’ll begin with the most recent, with a few meals this past week.

Barbara got us started with a wonderful and simple dinner — soft polenta, topped with zucchini and eggplant in tomato sauce.  It was perfect for one of these cool Spring evenings.

The next night it was my turn.  Pasta, of course.  I found a small package (250 gm.) of Gargagnelli from Abruzzo, for which I made a Ligurian-style vegetable sauce with zucchini, carrots, leeks, peas, and Pecorino cheese.  It was a flavorful as it was colorful.

The wine was a luscious Sangiovese, 2016 Rosso Della Torre by La Sabbiona, one of Nick Mucci’s growers from Emilia Romagna.  In fact, a few nights before I had met the winemaker at a tasting in Cambridge, featuring 7 of the families whose wine Nick imports.

Finally, I can share both lunch and dinner today.  I had cooked two batches of dried beans a few days ago; Borlotti from Gustiamo, and Caballero from Rancho Gordo.  These had been part of several dishes already (especially the white bean purée with the Caballeros), and it was time to finish the rest.  The solution was a Bean Salad, with many of my favorite ingredients, including leftovers that needed to be consumed soon.  Among the ingredients:

  • Caballero and Borlotti beans, cooked
  • raw red onion, chopped
  • Daikon radish, medium cubes
  • celery, thin-sliced
  • chopped mushrooms, marinated previously in olive oil and lemon juice
  • chopped cherry tomatoes
  • sautéed sweet peppers, small chunks
  • Piparras pickled peppers, sliced
  • thinly-sliced Castelfranco Radicchio
  • capers
  • red wine vinegar from Portugal
  • olive oil
  • salt and pepper

These get dumped into a a stainless bowl and tossed together.  The interchange of all the flavors over the next 15 minutes results in a great dish for lunch.

Dinner tonight was built on dinner last night, plus another recipe from Antipasti, by Julia Della Croce.  Each Spring our town library holds a huge used book sale, with contributions from all over town.  Barbara is an active supporter of Friends of the Library, and she spends many hours helping to sort the incoming books.  We bought Antipasti, after a sorting session on Sunday.

In keeping with our recent Emilian theme of Italian food and wine, Barbara had cooked a Swiss Chard and Spinach Pie for dinner the previous night, and we shared some of the leftovers tonight.  To that, I added a variation of another recipe from the book, Zucchini and Eggplant Rolls, stuffed with Almond Milk Ricotta whipped with chopped grilled Vidalia onion, and a little tomato sauce.  The wine was Tollara, also from Emilia Romagna, a white wine I have shared with you before, from Malvasia di Candia grapes.

Castelfranco Radicchio for Bean Salad

Rolled and Stuffed Zucchini

Zucchini and Eggplant Rolls

Swiss Chard and Spinach Pie

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More Tidbits…

Posted on February 17, 2019 by dgourmac

Year end was a busy time for cooking.  Learned how to make pure levain bread — no added yeast.  Made one version with whole grains, plus olives and walnuts.

Puréed San Franciscano beans, topped with sautéed greens with salt and garlic — yummy.

I really love beans, especially in the winter.  This was a mushroom-bean soup that was very satisfying.  Hearty sustenance for wintry weather.

Several glugs of Puglia olive oil are essential to every meal.

How about grilled homemade levain with a red pepper-bean purée and some chopped red onion?

Sometimes I go back to cookbooks I haven’t examined in decades.  One of those was Cirò and Sal’s Cookbook from 1987.  This was from an acclaimed chef of a famous Italian restaurant in Provincetown on Cape Cod.

I had some small calamari to play with, so I made this dish, but without the cream (unnecessary in my view).  It was perfect!

Another day I had some leftover pasta that Barbara had made.  It had butternut squash and a good bit of cheese in it.   I chose to add some contrast to the rich flavors, using radicchio di Treviso and some almond milk, then roasting it in a very hot oven.  Crispy and good.   Barbara decided to add a French chocolate cake to the menu that night.  That was pretty special, too.

Of course, we must remember to stay in tip-top physical condition.  This tea towel says it very well.  Thank you, Lynn and Dave.

 

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Tidbits from the Past Three Months

Posted on February 17, 2019 by dgourmac

I’ve been AWOL (Away Without Leave — military jargon) from my blogging for three months.  You can attribute it to my teaching activities, the holidays, sheer laziness, or all of the above.  In any case, too much has gone by for me to reconstruct any sort of cogent stories about what has transpired in the food, wine, and travel departments during that period.  Fortunately, I saved a few good photos, and an occasional recipe or two, so I will now provide tidbits of some of the highlights.

Portuguese Octopus

Found some at Whole Foods; cooked it as prescribed.  Enjoyed it immensely.

Year-End Goodies

Decorations for the holidays:

Turkey Pot Pie by Barbara, leftovers from Thanksgiving.

Baked Mussels with Tomatoes

With some Roasted Monkfish

Accompanied by a remarkable Sicilian white wine — recently discoved in my cellar, about 20 years past when it was supposed to be drunk.

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Cross-Cultural Flavors

Posted on February 17, 2019 by dgourmac

One of the activities I love best is matching unusual combinations of food and wine across different countries and cultures.  I love it when it works well.

Such was the case with my lunch this afternoon.  The components were:

  • Leftover homemade Curried Chickpea, Lentil, and Spinach Soup
  • Leftover Korean Kimchi Soup from Osawa Bistro
  • toasted homemade levain
  • tapenade
  • Pinot Bianco from the Alto Adige

Two nights ago I made a soup from this Patricia Wells Provençal recipe, substituting Spinach for the Swiss Chard, and languishing in the wonderful Portuguese chickpeas I’ve been using:

To this I added a small amount of leftover Spicy Korean Kimchi soup with Tofu, remains from last night’s dinner at Osawa Bistro.  The dark, rich flavors of the reheated soup evoked images of a rich whole grain bread and a wine from Northern Italy, so I opened a bottle of Pinot Bianco from the Alto Adige. a Glassier wine imported by Mucci Wines.  I toasted two slices of my whole grain levain and topped it with a garlic/Kalamata olive Tapenade.

Mirabile dictu!

 

 

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Friday Night Pasta

Posted on November 18, 2018 by dgourmac

I spent a very frustrating day Friday, during which I was wrestling unsuccessfully with the idiosyncrasies of iTunes on my Mac — attempting to transfer a Playlist and the accompanying 290 songs to my new iPhone.  By 7:00 PM I was fed up, so I retreated to the kitchen to make dinner.  Barbara was out the the evening, so I went to my comfort food — pasta.

Unsure of where I was going, I started by gathering ingredients I wanted or needed to use, and began to cook.

  • partially used package of spaghetti — take out 130 gm.
  • red onion, garlic, and leek — sliced into small chunks
  • less than 1 cup of leftover, cooked Rancho Gordo Vallarta beans
  • 8 medium sized white mushrooms, sliced
  • 2 Tbs. truffle/mushroom sauce in a jar (from Eataly)
  • a handful of fresh basil leaves, cut into a chiffonade
  • 1/2 tsp. hot chili flakes, from a Small-Farm dried hot pepper (seeds removed)
  • 1/2 cup white wine
  • 1 chunk of Marsalino Pecorino with Truffles, for grating on the cooked pasta

Things came together pretty quickly:

  1. bring large pot full of water to a boil, add Kosher salt, then add pasta, cooing until just al dente, reserving up to one cup of pasta water.
  2. sauté leek and onion in olive oil, then add garlic and hot pepper when vegetables are tender, cook another 4-5 minutes, add Vallarta beans and heat through, then set asside
  3. in another skillet add more olive oil, and sauté mushrooms until medium brown in color.  add white wine, then boil it off, adding salt and pepper when mostly evaporated.
  4. combine mushrooms with onion mixture, then add cooked spaghetti to the skillet.
  5. finish the spaghetti sauce with the addition of the basil and truffle/mushroom sauce,  followed by the pasta water
  6. serve in pasta bowl, adding the grated cheese and 1-2 Tbs. of a fruity Sicilian olive oil

The wine was a 2012 Ancarani Centisimino, from Jan D’Amore’s marvelous portfolio.  The earthiness and warm fruit were a superb complement for the onion-mushroom-bean sauce.  By the end of the meal, I was smiling again, so I called Jan to thank him and at least share the photos with him.

Best of all, I was invigorated enough to schedule a 1/2 hour with a very effective Apple representative (very much better than the one I spoke to in the afternoon), and we solved my iTunes problem.  Thank you, James.

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Inventing New Pasta Dishes

Posted on October 17, 2018 by dgourmac

This has been an interesting food month so far.  We still are getting late summer vegetables from Small Farm, including excellent tomatoes and corn.  It’s also a time I go exploring in the city for wine, cheese, bread, fresh pasta, and specialty items.

There are two newly-created pasta dishes I wanted to share with you.  Tonight I made a Baked Fettuccine with Tomatoes, Lentils, Burratina, and Gaeta Black Olives.  Somehow, the texture of the lentils, the sweetness of the tomato sauce, and the contrasts of the cheeses and olives worked beautifully.  The fresh tomato fettuccine from Monica’s pasta shop on Richmond Street in Boston’s North End was also excellent, as was the Burratina imported from Puglia by that same shop.

The second pasta dish was inspired by a recent purchase of littleneck clams.  I had not been attracted to these wonderful bi-valves for several months, which is probably good, but now it was time again to enjoy them.  I called the dish Clams and Pasta in the Style of the Amalfi Coast, although I might be hard-pressed to document that title’s authenticity.  Anyway, I love the region, its food and wines, so that’s what I will call it.

The final dish I wanted to tell you about was a salad: Black-Eyed Pea Salad with Tomatoes.  I wanted to do something with Black-Eyed Peas.  I had some lovely dried Portuguese black-eyed peas that I bought along with terrific Chickpeas at a local Portuguese grocer, so here was my chance.  On a recent Sunday afternoon I cooked the beans.  While they were in process, a little online research produced a good-looking recipe, so I used that as a model and adapted it to what I had available.  Here’s the recipe online:

I had no fennel, but most everything else, including top-notch farm-fresh tomatoes, dill, and good Greek Feta cheese.  I also had some sweet red peppers I had previously roasted and peeled, so I added them in to the dish.  Color and flavor were all I could hope for, and I got 2 or 3 lunches out of the effort.  If I recall correctly, a 2017 Muscadet Les Houx was an effective pairing.

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Farmers Markets, Whole Grain Rye Levain, Bulgarian Cheese, and Italian Wine

Posted on September 10, 2018 by dgourmac

Two weekends ago I was able to delight in fresh vegetables from nearby sustainable farms, bake some fresh breads, and drink favorite wines from Italy.  What could be better than that?

Here is some of my haul from the farmers:

Yellow Zucchine, white turnip, and rare red eggplant (Melanzane Rosse di Rotonda)

For bread I made two loaves of  my Whole Grain Rye Levain.  This went beautifully underneath slices of Kashkaval, a sheep’s milk Bulgarian cheese.  The wine is a Calabrian red, Savuto by Odoardi.

Since I had extra levain to play with, I decided to experiment with a sourdough flatbread a day later.  Man, it was sour!  The sheep cheese smoothed it out a little, and a glass of Sauvignon Blanc from Andrea Fendi did a nice job. as well.

Pan-Grilled Sourdough Flatbread with Kashkaval

 

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Food Conversations with My Body

Posted on September 10, 2018 by dgourmac

Some days I wake up with the knowledge that today will not be all vegan or vegetarian.  Fortunately, my body and I have a good relationship after all these years.  Therefore, we have conversations like this:

” How do you feel about a little prosciutto today?”

“Is it the good stuff?”

“Yes, you know me.  Barbara bought a small number of slices from the ends of the prosciutto, but it’s from Parma; none of that domestic product.”

“OK, just keep the quantities small.”

“I think the twinge I felt in my side yesterday was a response to a surfeit of beets recently; am I reading that right?”

“Very likely”

“Great.  I’m planning to make Fettuccine with Prosciutto and Fresh Tomato Sauce.  The tomatoes are from Karl & Elena’s Small-Farm, and they are terrific.  The recipe calls for cooking the prosciutto slowly in 8 Tbs. of butter.  Do you think you can manage if I cut it back to 3 Tbs.?”

“That will work.”

“Cool.  I will make my own fresh Fettuccine.  My master recipe now is 200 gm. flour, 2 eggs, salt, and a little olive oil.  To make it interesting, I am using 135 gm. of Double-Zero flour and I just milled 65 gm. of Triticale for texture and sweetness.  I’ll show you the photos later.  Thanks.”

_________________<><><>______________________________

I rarely eat meat now, and I almost never cook prosciutto when I do eat it.  However, this particular recipe from Cucina Rustica has been one of my favorites for more than 25 years.  It’s a classical example of simple and great Italian cooking: a small number of excellent ingredients plus simple, straightforward preparation.

My old friend, Atlas, for handmade pasta

Fettuccine, from 65% “00” flour and 35% Triticale

trimming prosciutto into small pieces

Peeled, chopped, and drained farm-fresh tomatoes

Pasta in the bowl

Since I can easily imagine the pasta as a dish from Emiglia-Romagna, I chose the wine from that same region, Tollara — a Malvasia di Candia, from importer Nick Mucci.  It was perfect.

I had the time on Sunday, so I steamed some beets, and I also prepared a large version of a baked vegetable dish for Monday’s meals.  The dish is called Tourlou apparently in Turkey, and it is a version of Briam in Greece.

Tourlou Tourlou

 

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Quick Lunch from Components

Posted on August 27, 2018 by dgourmac

When our son was a teenager, he was always hungry (as are most teenagers).   He would stride into the kitchen, day or night, and shuffle the contents around, looking for quick meals (cold pizza, leftover mac ‘n cheese, burgers, etc.).  Usually, he came away empty handed or partially-disappointed.  One day he announced in frustration: “there’s nothing in here but ingredients“, as he stormed out of the kitchen.

That was 20 years ago, and now that he is an accomplished chef, things have changed with him (on rare occasions when he comes home).  The refrigerator, however, is much the same.  The contents are still ingredients, with a fair supply of leftovers as well.  Today I had 25 minutes to make a lunch, and I decided to do something creative with what I could find.  There were a variety of ingredients — some raw, some prepared — plus leftovers I could strip to make an ad hoc salad.  I think I will rename these food elements “components“, since you can configure them flexibly in a variety of ways to make a meal.

Here’s today’s salad concoction:

  • one small raw parsnip, already peeled (and not very crunchy anymore).  I cut it into fine julienne strips.
  • one leftover grilled Portabello mushroom, with roasted Napa Cabbage pieces and garlic slivers on top.  I cut this into 1/2″ cubes.
  • one slice of leftover eggplant in saor, marinated in cooked onions and vinegar, Venetian-style.  This was chopped up and added to the salad bowl.
  • one tablespoon of “sofrito” base for pasta sauce or soup, made from finely-diced onion, carrot, celery, and tomato
  • 3 tablespoons of roasted and peeled, green Hatch (NM) roasted chile peppers.  Usually these come from a can, but Whole Foods had some fresh ones, so several days earlier, I had roasted them on the grill, peeled and chopped them, and covered with olive oil.
  • 2 tablespoons of a Spanish tomato-garlic-cumin vinaigrette I made the previous night
  • olive oil, sea salt and ground pepper

Spanish tomato-garlic-cumin vinaigrette

Quick Lunch from “Components”

This unlikely mélange turned out to be a tasty, healthy, and easy lunch.  Even the parsnip pieces tasted good.

No wine today for lunch.  Had an appointment in the afternoon, so no time for the old-man-with-wine-at lunch nap.

 

 

 

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