Dgourmac's Blog

I’ve been doing this blog for three years and have been mostly vegan for two.  Tonight’s dinner was pure Italian, more celebrating Marcella’s cooking, touching on Calabria and Puglia as we further explore Italy, and also not-so-vegan.  Since I was a committed omnivore for almost 70 years, I find there are a few times a year when I am happy to have some animal protein — if it’s the right stuff.  While I feel tremendously healthier on this way of eating, I do permit myself small excursions on occasion.

A relatively simple meal, actually: Pasta e Patate from Calabria, and Fagiolini con Pomodoro, Aglio e Basilico, from Marcella’s Kitchen, my rediscovered cookbook.  The Puglia part was the wine selection: 2010 Torre Nova by Natalino del Prete.  Here are the two recipes, one from Marcella’s Kitchen, the other from My Calabria.

This time I remembered to photograph the assembled ingredients for you:

I found it interesting that the recipe said to break the spaghetti in half.  The first steps of cooking took place side-by-side on the stovetop:

The wine choice worked out beautifully — a delicious blend of mostly Negroamaro plus some Malvasia Nera, described nicely in this reference.  And it was only $13.00.  If you are in or near Brooklyn, NY, run right over to Thirst Wine Merchants in Fort Greene, and order some of it — they are probably sold out for the moment.  Tell Michael I sent you.

I learned four things from this dinner:

1. We don’t need all the flavor in the pasta dish; the beans, tomatoes and garlic provided the highlights, with the Pasta e Patate serving as a pleasing background, like a perfect matte for a richly-textured photo.
2. I can be very satisfied with parsimonious choices on the foods I love.  For example, when I shopped today, I decided to buy a small block of Greek Mzithra cheese, which I split with my friend, Hank, and then proceeded to use my piece to replace Ricotta Salata.  In the old days, I would have bought both, but I’m learning.
3. Using whole basil leaves works marvelously well in some dishes.  There is no need to cut or pull them apart.  In the green bean dish, they were simply added and the remaining heat allowed them to curl up nicely and keep their fragrance.
4. There are no practical limits to the myriad of wonderful combinations possible for Italian food and wine.  Salut!

I know it’s only Wednesday, but I am pretty certain that tonight’s supper will stand up as “strangest meal of the week” for at least several more days.

People do weird things when they are hungry.  Tonight I returned home after a three-hour class and an hour commute, caught up on phone calls, emails, and packages, and then found the kitchen again.  But I was hungry, so “quick” and “filling” moved far ahead of “elegant” and “creative. ”

Supper was mostly a replay of recent events:

• pan-grilled multigrain Tartine bread
• topped with black bean and roasted red pepper purées
• three Basque Piparras peppers on the side
• several glasses of Paola Bea 2010 Santa Chiara
• a new entrant in my late-night refrigerator kimchi stash: Wildbrine Arame Ginger Sauerkraut Salad (eaten directly from the container —  I still have dishes left in the sink from lunch)
• a bowl of Collard Greens with Seitan Chorizo soup from a few days ago
• and small amounts of the remaining mushroom pieces, left from my production of an 18th-century British recipe for Mushroom Ketchup — which turned out pretty good.

Unifying themes — if there were any — were full-flavored (understatement), filling, and fast.  I just wanted you to know that I don’t always cook like it’s a special event.  At least this was all vegan.

One of the cornerstones of my cooking for the past 30 years has been Marcella Hazan.  Her first two cookbooks provided many of the fundamentals I’ve used ever since in extracting the essential goodness of wholesome, fresh food.  Yes, I had a jumpstart on that process from Margaret and Franco Romagnoli in the mid 1970’s, with their TV show, cookbook and Boston restaurant.  And yes, I was influenced (as many of us were) by Julia Child (another Bostonian) even before that.  But today the core of my approach is still based on Marcella.

Well, much to my surprise and delight, this past weekend our friend, Laura, invited me over for a marvelous vegan supper at her house, and she prepared three stunning vegetable dishes from Marcella’s Italian Kitchen cookbook, a book I’ve owned for almost 20 years, but one I have just rediscovered, thanks to that meal.  That was the inspiration for tonight’s supper — on my own — as I prepare for two more classes later this week.

The dinner was not complicated:

• my own multigrain Tartine bread, toasted, with black bean puree and roasted red pepper puree, made a few days ago
• Carote e Belga, slowly-browned carrots and endive/radicchio
• Zucchine alla Salvia e Vino Bianco (sautéed zucchini with sage and white wine)

Fortunately, I had the components all ready for the bruschetta, and I enjoyed the deliberate and colorful process of making the two vegetable dishes over the next hour and a half, so I am happy to share these with you.

Not content to follow directions to the letter, I decided to shell some of the fresh fava beans I had bought at the market, for a little contrast to the sweetness of the carrots and the zucchini.  I blanched them and added to each dish.  I picked some fresh sage in the garden, and then sliced the leaves thinly, along with the garlic.  Great dish, with the white wine to finish the zucchini sticks in the pan.  I used a Laura Aschero Pigato as a starter, then finished with Paolo Bea’s amazing 2010 Santa Chiara from Umbria, an orange colored wine with overtones of Seville orange flavors, fresh and charming.

Almost a week has gone by since the last farmer’s market, and it was time to use up last week’s purchases.  Last night our friend, Laura, had made a spectacular vegan meal for me with a collection of dishes, mostly from Marcella Hazan’s Italian Kitchen cookbook.  I’ve had the cookbook for many years, but she was able to find a number of marvelous recipes I hadn’t seen before.  So last night, I just ate, instead of cooked, except for the fact that my CrockPot was busy making a collard green dish with the collards from the market last week.  They were easily the prettiest I had ever seen.

The basic recipe was easy, and since I know almost nothing about cooking collards, I was open to suggestions.  I made a few adaptations.  If I am to vary from a vegan diet, it will be for pancetta, not bacon, so I had two small slices of pancetta from the freezer, diced for this dish.  Second, I read that the broth from collard greens is very nutritious, so I used that instead of the stock.  Finally, I had some very tasty seitan chorizo from the natural foods market, so I added that into the recipe, and I cooked it all in my new $11 CrockPot from Amazon.com.

The first course was some whole grain bread I made recently, topped with black bean puree from earlier in the week, made in the CrockPot, and Cavolo Nero, or Lacinato Kale, which had been boiled and puréed.  A few thin slices of red onion went on top of the grilled bread.  The collards were pretty spicy, both from the chorizo and a little of the Puglia red pepper paste I had added to the mixture, not to mention the jalapeños in the base recipe..  So I needed a red wine with body and strength to stand up to the collards.  A Laplace Madiran, imported by my friends, the Hurleys, filled the bill nicely.

Since I had some time to screw around and had just been to the market for resupplying the kitchen, I also roasted some grilling peppers and two Portobello mushrooms — just for the helluva it.  The grilling peppers were easy to obtain the soft meat from and puree, and the mushrooms are ready for tomorrow, when I want to use them.  You can see from the photos that umami won’t be a problem.

This afternoon was my first class teaching this semester.  It went well, so I came home, energized for some cooking experimentation.  Yesterday afternoon I stopped by to see Michael and Laura.  They had picked some fresh stinging nettles for me, and I was happy to share a bottle of Villa Creek Willow Creek Cuvée with them, so it was a very fair deal.  Last night I picked off the leaves (wearing rubber gloves, of course) and boiled them, saving the liquid for nettle tea and putting the leaves in the refrigerator overnight.

In my research last night, I found a recipe for Nettle Gnudi, sort of an inside-out ravioli, reminiscent of one of my favorite dishes of all time, Anna Klinger’s Malfatti.  So this evening I adapted the Gnudi recipe for a vegan, substituting my homemade cashew cheese for the ricotta, and using Anna’s technique of swirling the dumpling with flour in a small wine glass.  Here is the result, on a plate, with a bit of Pesto Rosso from a jar — tomatoes, basil, pine nuts, and olive oil.  Molto bene!

The process was pretty easy.  I put the pre-cooked nettles in a small food processor bowl, and chopped fine, with salt and some garlic powder.  Then I added enough of the cashew cheese to make a slightly damp mixture.  I added about 3/4 cup of all-purpose flour and mixed it so some of the moisture was absorbed, then I scooped out a heaping tablespoon of the mixture, and dumped it in a small white wine glass with a teaspoon of flour.  Rotating the glass rapidly in my hand formed a fairly firm dumpling, which I dropped carefully on a plate and repeated the process.

I brought a small saucepan full of water to a simmer, salted it well, and poached the dumplings in the water for about 3-4 minutes.  They start to float in a minute or two, and the additional few minutes seem to cook them sufficiently.  I removed them from the saucepan and placed in a small skillet with some sauce — I used the Pesto Rosso, but any of a number of sauces will work well, simple tomato sauce, olive oil and/or butter with fried sage leaves, etc.  Finally, after sautéing for a few minutes to color the Gnudi lightly, I served then with some pan-roasted parsnips I had prepared the night before, when rescuing a wilting and lonesome parsnip from an ignominious fate.  Serve with a bottle of Coda di Volpe, a stunning, unctuous Campanian white wine made from the grape of the same name.  Another find from my guide Marc Etlin, now stocked in my local general store.  Even better is the fact that it is very reasonably priced to boot.

I’m still benefitting from the farmer’s market bounty of Saturday.  Today’s lunch was a Beet Salad, made of roasted golden and red beets, chopped red onion, fresh arugula from the garden, some chopped young mustard greens, chunks of roasted red Greek peppers, and several dollops of my cashew cheese, topped with chopped pistachios.

I served it happily alongside half an avocado (which Barbara left me), both dressed with a vinaigrette featuring both red wine and sherry vinegar.  The wine was a Pacher Hof Kerner from the Alto Adige, imported by Jan D’Amore.  It was good, but I thought the Vadiaperti Coda di Volpe would work even better; however, that would wait until dinner: Linguine with chopped garlic, parsley, Calabrian hot peppers, and Sicilian Colatura.  Fortunately, I was there for both meals.  Salut!