Simplicity

Posted on December 17, 2023 by dgourmac

Some of my favorite meals are elegant in their simplicity. It’s not that I plan it that way, but sometimes it just seems to work out. Here are some examples from last week.

Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce and Roasted Mushrooms

As always, Ingredients make the dish. In this case the stars were Passata di Pomodoro from Pastaio Via Corta and Gustiamo and Oyster Mushrooms from Fat Moon in Westford, MA.

The sauce (1/2 the jar) was simply poured into a skillet and heated. The mushrooms were slightly more complicated. I trimmed them, tore larger pieces in thirds vertically, tossed them in olive oil, salt, and fresh ground black pepper. and then dusted them in potato starch (you can use cornstarch if you prefer) to make them crispy. They were roasted in a preheated 400° F. oven in 15 minutes, turned over once or twice to brown evenly.

Cooked the spaghetti in well-salted water, drained when al dente into a bowl, and added with a light touch the sauce and mushrooms, tossed it all together and served with a lovely red wine from Val d’Aoste in the north of Italy.

Gnocchi with Spinach and Passata, Side Order of Cauliflower with Mustard-Lemon Butter

The Passata and the wine were back again for a return engagement. Very few ingredients, carefully prepared, and dinner was a delight.

Golden Russet Potato Gratin

We had an abundance of russet potatoes for the upcoming latke party, so I took two of the extras to try out this gratin for supper. With onions and some turkey stock (leftover from Thanksgiving), and some excellent cheese (I used Fontina instead of Gruyère), we had a rich and satisfying meal, accompanied by a lovely Portuguese rosé.

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Late November Meals (and a little Greek Mythology)

Posted on December 10, 2023 by dgourmac

For some unknown reason meals we make after Thanksgiving tend to be very rich in flavor. color and intensity. Here are three examples this year, along with some of the side dishes.

Purée of Gaeta Olives and Whipped Almond Milk Ricotta

Radicchio, Spinach, Tokyo Bekana Cabbage Salad with Ricotta Salata

Rigatoni with Mushrooms, Leek, and Artichokes

Prosciutto Bruschetta on Sourdough with Radicchio Salad Underneath

Squid in Red Wine Sauce with Rice, Beans, and Vegetables

This Birichino California wine, a blend of Carignan and Grenache, is fabulous with squid. The wine is named Scylla, from the Greek legend of Scylla and Charybdis.

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Scylla and Charybdis”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 5 Oct. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Scylla-and-Charybdis. Accessed 10 December 2023.

Thanks to my friend, Jan, I made sure to visit Scilla (as it’s spelled in Calabria) in 2016. Here is my photo of this marvelous sea creature at the high point of the village, with Sicily and the Strait of Messina in the background.

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Small, Simple Vegetable Shrimp Paella

Posted on December 10, 2023 by dgourmac

Until recently I used to be intimidated about making Paella. It seemed complex because there are usually a great many ingredients, it calls for a special pan, it usually makes much more than we can eat, and I always worry about undercooking the rice. The other night I created one that solved all those problems, and now I am more confident when making this dish.

I was in the mood for Paella. Normally, I would have used one of our frozen homemade vegetable stocks for the broth. However, I had a bunch of frozen shrimp shells in the freezer, and I stumbled across an intriguing paella recipe using those shells, so I made the broth first. It was rich, savory, and absolutely delicious.

The next step was assembling the vegetables I wanted to use. This is always a superb opportunity to employ leftovers of all sorts: 1/2 zucchini, a few sautéed mushrooms, a small carrot, and some frozen corn kernels from this summer. I defrosted and shelled 10 EZ-peel shrimp, measured about a cup of Calasparra rice, chopped some red onions and sweet red pepper, and saved 2 cups of the tomato-shrimp shell broth. Now we are ready to cook.

Preheated the oven to 425° F. Using my small (12-inch) paella steel pan, I sautéed the onions and peppers until tender, then added the other vegetables to cook quickly. The next step was adding all the rice and cooking it for a few minutes until well-coated with olive oil and moisture from the vegetables. I cut up half the shrimp and added them to the pan. Finally, I added all the broth at once, turned up the heat to high to get the liquid boiling, and then put the paella pan in the oven (uncovered) to cook for about 20 minutes.

I sliced the few remaining shrimp lengthwise and added them to the pan at about 18 minutes. The only was I know to ensure the rice is cooked enough is to taste it. At the 20-minute mark it was mostly-done, with just a little chalkiness, so I figured it would finish cooking during the last step. Taking the pan out of the oven, I covered it with aluminum foil and left it on top of the stove for another 20 minutes. The rice continues to steam during that time, and it is just the right texture when we are ready to eat.

A 2017 Safra,. a Spanish Garnacha, was a very good match for the wine.

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How to Make Exotic Salads

Posted on December 1, 2023 by dgourmac

Okay, I admit it. I concoct some pretty weird salads.  I search out — or stumble upon — exotic ingredients and put them together in a way that I think will be successful. This post will share with you today’s lunch, and I will use it as an example to suggest how you might be able to create your own unusual salads.

The impetus was created by one of my favorite local farmers, Small Farm, in Stow, MA. Their large tunnels provide a much longer growing season, and they are open this week on Friday and Saturday for their CSA customers, as well as occasional buyers like me. Here’s the quote from Farmer Karl:

“These cold, sunny days make me appreciate the magic that’s happening in our high tunnels. It’s 34 F outside and a balmy 60 F and vibrant green in our unheated high tunnels! Tomorrow we’ll be harvesting fresh spinach, fennel, scallions, radishes, mizuna mix, kale, lettuce, cilantro, parsley, and more for you under a clear sky. We’ve moved our winter wash station into the sunny greenhouse, and humans and plants alike are soaking up every hour of sunlight we can get as we near solstice.”

Listed below are the ingredients for today’s salad. The table also shows a variety of alternative ingredients you can choose, either because you prefer them or can’t get the ones listed.

And, of course, here are the photos of what I made. I later realized that I forgot to put scallions and/or diced red onions, but I would include them next time. Another note: the Beet and the Daikon Radish were prepared in a fine julienne cut, using a special mandoline cutter.

A perfect complement to the dish was a Sicilian Rosato, Gurrieri’s blend of Nero d’Avola and Frappato, from Mucci Imports.

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Pasta alla Gricia

Posted on November 22, 2023 by dgourmac

One of my new favorite pasta dishes is Pasta alla Gricia. I made this for myself tonight. I think it’s the perfect Italian pre-Thanksgiving antidote to the traditional meal tomorrow. The best article I have read on the topic is a post on Serious Eats, written by a chef with the un-Italian name of Sasha Marx.

To paraphrase an old hero of mine, the inimitable Yogi Berra, 90% of success is the right ingredients, and the other half is my culinary skill. This dish requires Guanciale, pork cheeks or hog jowls as they are commonly known. On a previous trip to Eataly Boston, I bought a small package and found them to be superb. Here’s what they look like:

This dish can be made with Spaghetti or Rigatoni. I chose Rigatoni tonight, and I was very fortunate to have a package of artisan-made Rigatoni from Pastaio Via Corta in Gloucester, MA. It made a world of difference.

The recipe was not difficult, but the technique was intriguing. The combination of rendered fat from the guanciale, the rich, starchy pasta water, and the grated Pecorino from Basilicata (I find Pecorino Romano too sharp for my taste) blended beautifully to coat the pasta.

The pasta was excellent, but it needed a little accompaniment, so I warmed up leftover braised eggplant, tomato and chickpeas, which added color, flavor, and the magic of vegetables to offset the degradations of unadulterated pork fat.

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Simple Best Octopus Cooking

Posted on November 12, 2023 by dgourmac

Once again, using the techniques from Harold McGee and Jesse Schenker, and three octopus legs from New Deal Fish Market in Cambridge, I was able to enjoy two terrific meals with my favorite mollusk. Best of all, it required minimal labor to make it happen.

Here’s the formula:

McGee

In this instance cook in dry pot for 3.5 hours.

Schenker

  • Buy the octopus on Wednesday. Wash, blanch the tentacles, cook in an empty pot for 3.5 hours at 200° F
  • Wednesday evening, mix the marinade, drain and cool the octopus legs, place legs in marinade in fridge
  • Thursday, remove half the legs from the marinade, cut in 3/4-inch pieces, add olive oil, Pimenton, salt, and enjoy Pulpo alla Gallega for lunch
  • Friday, remove the rest of the legs from bowl, grill until charred on both sides. serve with cannellini beans, chopped Italian parsley, olive oil, and lemon juice.
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Egg Foo Yong

Posted on November 12, 2023 by dgourmac

This is a story about the classic Cantonese dish, Egg Foo Yong. As you often find with my posts, you will get recipes, photos, personal reminiscences, a history lesson, and a chance to try your own hand at re-creating a meal.

My wife is an accomplished cook in many areas. One of her favorites is Chinese food. Ever since we took a series of cooking lessons 40 years ago at the home of her friend, Eugenia, she has been comfortable with a variety of dishes. When we moved toward vegan/vegetarian options, this was especially helpful.

Last week she decided to make fried rice, with a bunch of cooked brown rice leftover from another meal. That decision led her to shop at an Asian food market nearby, where she bought a large bag of mung bean sprouts, cleaner and fresher than anything we would find at other supermarkets. The total price was $1.47. The fried rice was made with other leftovers and the bean sprouts, and it was delicious, as always. However, she still had more than half the bag of sprouts, and she was anxious to use those while they were nice and fresh, so she determined that it was time to figure out how to make Egg Foo Yong as the vehicle to consume them.

To find a good recipe, her first thought was to go to the bookshelf and to examine the Joyce Chen Cookbook, written in 1961. For those of you not familiar with this famous chef, you will find her personal story fascinating. She is best described by this: Celebrity chef Ming Tsai later said of Chen, “She is the Chinese Julia Child […] Joyce Chen helped elevate what Chinese food was about. She didn’t dumb it down. She opened people’s eyes to what good Chinese could taste like.”

Since we lived in and around Cambridge from 1963, we often went to her restaurants and talked with her in person. One of the last times we saw her was in 1970, when we had a mini-banquet with family to celebrate the completion of my doctoral degree. That dinner was in her restaurant along Memorial Drive in Cambridge, and it remains a powerful memory.

Here are the two recipes which were merged for our dinner last week. The first is from Joyce Chen and the second one, from Kay Chun, via the New York Times Cooking section online.

After a good deal of prep work and skill with a hot wok, here are the results of superb Egg Foo Yong.

Just to be sure we had enough for dinner, she also made Noodles with Oyster Sauce, Garlic, Ginger and Scallions. It’s truly amazing what one can do with $1.47 worth of fresh bean sprouts!

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Kathy Mattea in Concert, and Delights of the North Shore

Posted on October 28, 2023 by dgourmac

Last week I visited the coastal areas north of Boston. I had a ticket for a concert by Kathy Mattea, an American country music and bluegrass singer. She’s been one of my favorite artists for close to 30 years. While I had enjoyed her music for many years on recordings, I had not seen her in concert until four years ago, when she played at the beautiful Shalin Liu Performance Center in Rockport, MA. She was so good that night, I was eager to see her again. Best of all, she closed the show this year with a song I love, 455 Rocket.

Her show was amazing. She was accompanied by Fred Carpenter, who played fabulous guitar, mandolin, and fiddle at various times, and also by an excellent bass player, whose name I didn’t catch.

The drive to Rockport from my home is about 75-90 minutes, depending on traffic. The concert started at 8 PM, so I decided to take the afternoon to explore food highlights along the way, thus avoiding the worst traffic periods as well. Two of the best places I know are in Gloucester, MA, which is just 15 minutes away from Rockport, so I stopped there to pick up fresh pasta at Pastaio Via Corta. I planned it so I could have an early dinner at about 5 PM at Tonno — an outstanding Italian restaurant featuring the local seafood — and it is located only a few blocks up the street from the pasta shop.

The meal was superb. I had tuna tartare (the best I ever tasted) and then a lobster flatbread with two cheeses. A glass of Etna bianco provided the wine.

Tuna Tartare

Lobster Flatbread

One final stop…I had some time to kill before the concert, so I stopped in the bar at the restaurant, Feather and Wedge, a few blocks from the Performance Center. Keeping in mind that I had a long drive home late that night, I ordered 1/2 glass of an Italian sweet vermouth. It tasted good and kept me warm before the theater that chilly night.

Vermouth

While we’re on the subject of vermouth, I want to share a discovery that came about recently in an unusual way. This has little to do with the North Shore, but it doesn’t deserve a separate post, so here it is. I recently went back to the restaurant Atlantico and had dinner with my friend, Chris. We both enjoyed the meal, and at the end, I tried a Spanish vermouth exactly to my taste. It reminded me of the vermouth I had in Falset, Spain, in 2019, when I was traveling the wine country there with my son. Then I looked at the Atlantico menu and reviewed the list of the vermouth choices.

The one I liked was rojo (red) Yzaguirre, from Tarragona! That’s where we stayed overnight before going on to Porto in 2019. And Falset was where we stayed the night before we were in Tarragona. All the pieces matched well. NOW the challenge was finding that vermouth in a retail shop. Mirabile dictu! My South Boston wine store, Social Wines, has it in stock. I went there immediately and am now happy to be able to drink it before or after a meal at home. Best of all, the bottle cost $22 vs. $14 by the glass in the restaurant. Once in a awhile, everything just works out well.

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Salads, and Homemade Spinach Pasta

Posted on October 28, 2023 by dgourmac

One week recently I found myself eating a number of bright, spicy, cheerful salad dishes.

Beets with Pickled Cauliflower, Chopped Onion, Feta Cheese and Pickled Jalapeños

Radicchio with Cucumber, Fresh Shell Beans, Clementines, Olives and Feta Cheese

An Indian Vegan recipe: Kachumber – Cucumber, Red Onion, Tomatoes, Jalapeños, Chile Peppers, Lime juice, and Kala Namak (black salt)

Then we had a good friend visiting us from Italy, up in the mountains. For a change of pace I made a spinach pasta dough, then cut it into Tonnarelli to serve a a first course to the meal. A few days later I used the remaining spinach-infused dough to make cannelloni, stuffed with whipped almond milk ricotta and feta cheese, topped with a little tomato sauce.

Finally, here’s a wide-angle view of our kitchen — spacious and well-equipped. You can see why we enjoy cooking there.

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October Sourdough

Posted on October 28, 2023 by dgourmac

Bakers like to tinker. Even when I get a highly satisfying recipe for my breads, I am often tempted to tweak the components to see if it could be any better. Such was the case a week ago, when I modified my favorite light bread (80/20 with Rye and Spelt), incorporating 50 grams of Type 85 flour and reducing the white bread flour by a similar amount. The recipe made one batard and one boule. It seemed to work well.

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