Dgourmac's Blog

Good friends of ours took the bold step of inviting us out for dinner tonight, but at the last minute, they had an unexpected water leak in their house and we had to reschedule to next month.   We certainly missed their company and hospitality, and we were left to dinner on our own.

Fortunately, I am constitutionally prepared for such eventualities.  Barbara was happy with her reheated butternut squash soup (to which I added a chopped tomato marinated in oil, red wine vinegar, salt and pepper), and reheated penne with pesto, accompanied by some steamed carrots.

I, however, have been itching to make the Broccoli Rabe I had bought recently on sale ($1.99/lb., about 1/2 price!).  So I had a bowl of the soup, and then made the Broccoli Rabe, boiling it in the pasta water until just barely tender, then sautéing it in garlic, hot peppers, lots of salt and pepper, and about 220 g. of cooked Orrecchiette.  The Calabrian hot red peppers I had purchased at Di Palo’s last week added a marvelous warmth and color without being overwhelming (especially since I removed most of the seeds).  These were sauteed in olive oil with plenty of garlic, and then I added the cooked Orrecchiette plus salt and pepper, and more olive oil.  Perfetto!

Since I was in an indulgent mood, I opened a bottle of 2008 Li Veli Salice Salentino Riserva, Pezzo Morgana, a great find by my local wine merchant, Stephen.  Saluti!

It probably will not surprise you that — after seeing all those marvelous ingredients in New York last week — I couldn’t wait to cook again when I got back home.  One night I cooked the Umbrian lentils with cauliflower, potatoes, carrots, celery, tomatoes and onion.  It came out fine, and it was even better the next day with some cilantro purchased from the Asian gardeners at the Sunday farmers’ market.  Sunday I also baked a very good Tartine bread with Semolina flour (70% semolina, 30% white bread flour).

Nor will you be totally amazed that some of my fantasies about all the terrific dishes I will cook at the next meal are totally unrealistic, given time constraints and my inefficient ways of doing things.  Such was the case tonight: Columbus Day Dinner.  Our friend Laura came for dinner, and my original menu was more ambitious that what we finally ended up with.  However, the Cappellacci di Zucca, made from scratch with butternut squash from her garden, was my main target, and it was very successful.  Here is the final menu, with the wishlist items crossed out due to lack of time and energy.

You can see from the original list of tasks where I ran out of steam and what got dropped.

The Cappellacci recipe was adapted from Bugialli’s cookbook on Pasta.  I love using the fresh butternut from Laura’s garden, and I particular enjoyed reading the descriptions online and in my cookbooks about the origins of this dish in 16th century Ferrara, Italy, where the Jewish community flourished for a period and has been maintained to this day since the Middle Ages.  Of course, one always starts a big cooking day with an espresso, made with Organic Tuku beans from Conscious Coffee in Boulder:

I roasted the squash at 425 degrees for an hour until tender.  After it cooled a bit, I scooped out the flesh and put it through my Mouli with the medium sized holes in the disk.  Then I added my own secret mixture, ground Rancho LaVina organic walnuts, grated lemon peel (no Citron readily available), and a tablespoonful of Corn Butter.

If you are really astute, you may notice that there are several shapes of stuffed pasta in the dish.  The Cappellacci are the most interesting and intricate, but it took me 15 minutes to make a dozen of these, so I switched to Tortelli and Ravioli, which I could make more quickly with the same ingredients.

Appetizers included the fried Padron Peppers and toasted Semolina bread with chopped fresh tomatoes, marinated in olive oil, wine vinegar, salt and pepper.  Li Velli Verdeca was the right accompaniment.

The final discovery of the night was Porcini-Dusted Tofu, sauteed in olive oil and served with salt-roasted red potatoes and beets from Sunday’s farmers markets, plus a few turnip and beet greens salvaged from the tops of that produce used earlier.  Porcini dusting is very easy if you have:

1. high quality imported Italian dried porcini mushrooms
2. an excellent spice grinder

Results look like this:

A box of Poco Dolce Bittersweet Tiles with Burnt Caramel inside provided the perfect dessert with almost no effort.  Once again I drew upon Jan D’Amore for the wine: a 2009 Dolcetto Superiore from Flavio Roddolo in Piemonte.  It went beautifully with the pasta, the porcini, and the chocolate.

I’m on a roll this week.  My turn to make dinner.  I’ve been looking forward to using the block of tofu in the refrigerator, but I want Italian, not Asian style.  As this dinner evolved, it had strong influences from Italy, Spain (Catalonia), Greece, and Costa Rica.

More inspiration from Food52, specifically Roasted Broccoli with Smoked Paprika Vinaigrette and Marcona Almonds.  This recipe was easy to prepare and absolutely outstanding.  It formed one of the cornerstones of the meal.

This summer I had used a lemon-infused Costa Rican pepper rub for making tofu with Italian flavors.  Fortunately, I had replenished my stock and was able to marinate the tofu, after pressing some of the moisture out, with the pepper rub, garlic, and olive oil.

Seeking more protein and greatly enamored of canned giant Greek beans which I had found at Sevan’s Bakery in Watertown, I opened a can of the beans and sauce, added some steamed yellow squash, boiled a leftover half a package of Farfalle, and combined it all for the pasta portion of the meal, baking it a bit in the oven hot from the broccoli.

Finally, I grilled the tofu, plus one small local eggplant and a small bunch of broccolini, to complete the plate.  In fact, this required a chop plate, larger than a dinner plate, so as not to feel crowded.  Colors and textures were just right, except that I noted for next time that the pimenton sauce for the broccoli would be outstanding atop the tofu, as well.  In fact the grilled tofu came out similar in looks and texture to a grilled lemon-pepper swordfish steak.  See what you think.

Wine choices were Italian: first glass was a 2010 Dolcetto d’Alba from Elio Grasso in the Northwest; the second was a very good Negroamaro, a Salice Salentino from my friends at Li Velli in Puglia (Southeast), also a 2010.  Even Barbara liked the meal.

We are in the waning days of sweet corn season, so it’s time to make the most of this delicious food.  Tonight’s blog is about a lunch I made two days ago, featuring something called “Corn Butter” and some sympatico companions in our larder (can vegans use that word?) .

I must tell you that I frequently get ideas from a great food blog: Food52.  As I looked over their page that day, I saw Yotam Ottolenghi’s Sweet Corn Polenta with Eggplant Sauce, and it struck a chord for me.  We had just bought 6 ears of corn from a local farmer, and they were great.  Since I had just made polenta last week, I explored a little further and found another Food52 recipe, one for Creamless Creamed Corn.  Finally, reading through that, I found reference to Whitney Chen’s Amazing One-Ingredient Corn “Butter”.  So we bought more corn and made this cornerstone dish.

Back to lunch on Saturday: Using the corn butter as a foundation, I pulled out the remaining ingredients I wanted to work with:

• fresh beet greens from a bunch of beets I bought at the farmer’s market that morning
• fresh sweet red pepper that I had cut into strips and sauteed slowly in olive oil, finished with a bit of red wine vinegar boiled off at the end
• a couple of slices of my homemade whole wheat Tartine bread
• leftover Moroccan eggplant jam which Aaron had made from a Paula Wolfert recipe

First, I grilled the bread in a ridged pan on a hot stove.  Next, I wilted the beet greens in a bit of the olive oil left in the pan from the peppers.  After spreading the corn butter on the bread, I topped it with various combinations of those toppings, poured a glass of Masseria Li Veli Verdeca, and ate heartily.