Your Italian Grandma

More pesto? Whole wheat gnocchi with zucchini, heirloom tomatoes and pesto

2011-09-23T11:55:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not, this is a perfect week night recipe if you happen to have access to a Trader Joe's supermarket. You can find the vacuumed pack potato gnocchi like these elsewhere, but TJ's imports this one made with whole wheat flour that I find very good. Remember, I said it's a week day recipe. If you have the time or inclination to make gnocchi from scratch, knock yourself out. It actually isn't very hard, but this one is ready in minutes. The baby heirloom tomatoes are also a staple of Trader Joe's . As I did in the previous post, you must start with making pesto. And yes, I realize if you use a mortar and pestle, your pesto will be much better.
Forgive me Grandma, but if you had a food processor you might take the shortcut too.
So, start with the pesto and while it's happening, bring a pot of water to the boil and season it with salt. For both Neeta and I, I used two small to medium zucchini. Using a spoon, I scraped out the seeded middle sections of the vegetables and cut them into 1/2 inch slices (as you can see in the picture above if you look at the zucchini section at the bottom of the plate). Also, I cut 1/2 a small onion into dice and grated a little Grana Padano for finishing.

As always, begin by browning some minced garlic in 2 to 3 tablespoons of olive oil. As soon as you smell the garlic in the pan, add a teaspoon of red pepper flakes.

Now, add the zucchini to the pan, salt it and adjust the heat to medium. Cook the zucchini for about a minute so that it browns slightly.

Now, add the onion to the pan and adjust the heat to medium low. Keep an eye on the garlic. If it looks like it's getting too dark, add a bit of the pasta water to the pan.

As you wait for the zucchini and onion to soften, cut a handful of the heirloom tomatoes into quarters.

Now add the tomatoes to the pan and dump the gnocchi into the boiling water.The gnocchi only takes 2 or 3 minutes to become tender. When they do, they will float to the surface of the water. While waiting, spoon about 3/4 cup of the boiling water into the vegetables. This will create a little sauce with the tomatoes.

As soon as the gnocchi begin to break the surface of the boiling water scoop them into the vegetable pan with a strainer or spider. Stir them briefly into the vegetables and turn off the heat. Now, spoon the pesto into the pan and plate the gnocchi and vegetables finishing with a sprinkle of cheese.

The Good Husband/ Pasta Fagiole with Pesto

2011-09-16T12:55:00.000-07:00

What to do with the abundance of basil leaves growing on my fire escape? My wife doesn't like basil, mint, parsley or cilantro unless the leaves are processed as in pesto.This is mildly annoying since I love all of those herbs as an addition to my dishes. But, being the exceptional husband I am, I try to comply with the peculiarities of her food tastes.Two weeks ago, I found a recipe (on Chow) for a white bean humus which included basil leaves. It was quite good, so I decided to try another bean dish (pasta fagiole) using pesto in place of the usual tomato sauce. The results were equally good and will be added to my repertoire.

So, for the two of us, I used one garlic clove minced, one celery stalk diced, 1/2 a medium sized onion diced, about 1 cup of white kidney beans (I used my own beans with their water flavored with olive oil, red pepper and garlic. If you use canned beans, drain them and add more spice and garlic to the recipe), 1 cup of dried pasta (small noodles or shells suitable for soup) , tomato paste and pesto sauce to taste. If you use canned beans, also have some chicken stock handy or in a pinch, you can use pasta water.

To make the pesto sauce, you need a cup of tightly packed basil leaves, 1 clove of garlic minced, a handful of pine nuts lightly toasted, and about 3/4 cup of grating cheese (Peccorino Romano, Parmigiana or Grana Padano) in the bowl of a food processor, blender or mortar and pestle.

Turn on the motor and slowly add olive oil till the mixture is incorporated. I add a little salt and a sprinkle of Vitamin C powder to keep the color a bright green. Set aside.

Now, you may begin cooking the garlic, celery and onion in a heavy pot over medium heat. Salt it and stir occasionally till the vegetables are soft (approximately 5 minutes).

Meanwhile, add pasta to a pot of boiling water well salted.

Some may argue that it isn't necessary to add tomato paste, but I find it adds to the taste. I also squirted a little hot sauce to the pan. Notice I've cleared a hot spot to allow the tomato paste to toast awhile and remove its' raw taste.

After a minute, I stir the paste into the vegetables.

Finally, I add the beans to the pot. Since I cook my beans in a lot of water and add additional olive oil, garlic and hot pepper flakes at the end of their cooking time, I don't think chicken broth is needed, so I added about 1&1/2 cups of the pasta water to the pot and cook it for about 5 minutes. Then, I add the drained pasta and cook it an additional minute. Finally, I turn off the heat and add the pesto to the pot. The basil pesto is a fresh sauce so don't allow it to cook. I waited about a minute with the pan off the heat before adding it.

I just learned I have a few new regular readers of my blog from the Philippines. Welcome and please feel free to comment or ask any questions you may have. Salamat!

Father's Day and our Anniversary

2011-06-27T13:38:00.000-07:00

Well, first of all there hasn't been too much to blog about, food wise. On Father's Day weekend, we traveled to the Catskills for a birthday party for a good friend. They asked everyone (about 40 people) to bring a dish to share. Naturally, I made something that was enough for at least 10 people as did most other guests. The result was enough food to feed the entire 42nd Division. We had to leave early to travel back to the city because the next day was Father's Day and my granddaughters expected me to come early. They live at the beach

(on Rockaway Peninsula to be exact) so we dined outside on their deck facing the bay which is formed by the peninsula. My daughters (all three of them) are no strangers to the kitchen, so the food was great. Pictured above is an appetizer of fried eggplant rounds with fresh mozzarella, tomato and basil. We also had cheese ravioli, steak pinwheels pictured above, salmon (for Neeta) and a salad I made of cherry tomatoes and watermelon. Oh, did I mention the platter of Italian pastry for dessert? My daughter Patty who prepared the meal used mostly semi-prepared food which she obtained at great cost from Italian delicacy stores which is how you entertain if you juggle two kids with a high powered job that splits you between New York and Boston every week. I couldn't do it.

The following weekend was our sixth wedding anniversary. We ate a quiet dinner together on Friday night with a movie afterwards. On Saturday, we ate out at a noisy restaurant in Brooklyn which served enormous portions to enormous Italians who have never learned the knack of speaking so that only the people at your table could hear the conversation. Sunday, we returned to a quiet dinner in the afternoon and after some exercise, one hour of the Mets game while CW shot the breeze with her sister in the bedroom, then two good movies ala Netflix (which we love) before bed at 10 PM. The food I'd like to share about concerns the salad I made for Father's Day and the salsa I used to dress the fish we ate on Friday night.

Pictured above is a version of a"summer salad" my mom used to make back when the produce stores carried locally grown vegetables. Mom would simply slice a tomato or two and dress it with some fresh basil or dried oregano and olive oil. She would add some sliced onion and let it sit while she prepared the meal, returning to it occasionally to gently mix the tomatoes in the oil and serve it (at the end of the meal) with nice crusty bread. In my hubris, I thought I invented the idea of adding watermelon chunks to the salad to give it a different, sweeter taste. I have since learned that many cooks use a variation of this salad. (Fame alludes me again!) I also had the idea of making a variation of the salad by adding some heat.I tried it for Friday's anniversary dinner by adding some hot sauce and habanero chilies and lime juice to the salad. I actually prefer to make the salad with quartered cherry tomatoes and red onion mostly for aesthetic purposes.The hot version can be used as a topping or as a dip.

I noticed I'm nearing my 100th post and I'm getting a little sick of myself, so don't be surprised to learn that I'm starting another blog. The only trouble is I have no idea yet for what to write about. More later!

You're coming on Tuesday?/ Grilled swordfish on rice salad

2011-06-09T15:11:00.000-07:00

Wait a minute. You're coming Tuesday? You mean, instead of Wednesday? Both days? What the...? OK, I don't like my precious little schedule disrupted. As anyone who reads this blog knows, my Current Wife and I have this "arrangement" where, as I like to put it, we are married only four days a week. The three other days I don't shave, I can eat meat, watch as much baseball as I like, stay up late, eat out of the pot and do other "single guy" things to my heart's content. Now, due to some (temporary) glitch in her work schedule, she's going to be around for the next 3 Tuesdays. What is this?

So I find out about this last Friday. Suddenly, I recalled all the conversations about how she has to cook for her sons on Tuesday. No, she can't on Monday because they need lunch for the week. (huh?) I can't even remember all the stuff she told me when we first were married and(she) decided on all this. That was before all my married friends (those in long term marriages especially) started telling me I should write a book on how to stay happily married. Oddly, I heard this mostly from the women. Anyhow, I've learned what a nice deal it is and have come around to really appreciating our weekly "marriage breaks". Now this! Oh well, I decided to be gracious about it and serve the left over lasagne (which I would have eaten myself) on Wednesday. I looked in my freezer and found two smallish sword fish steaks. I still had a couple of tomatoes and some corn from the Farmer's Market and some avocado from Trader Joe. Easy, I'll make rice salad with guacamole, corn, tomatoes and what's that in the back of the 'fridge? Artichoke hearts. So, in this order, I 1., Marinated the swordfish in lime zest, olive oil and a little salt and pepper; 2., I made a dressing of lime juice, cumin, cilantro and olive oil;

3., Boiled the (abborio) rice in a pot of salted water; 4., Made guacamole with two avocados mashed, one clove of chopped garlic, cilantro, red onion and diced tomato; 5., I cooked the corn, fished out the artichoke hearts and sliced another tomato. After the rice cooled, I combined all but the guacamole, and when my "Tuesday wife" appeared, grilled the swordfish steaks and arranged them over the cooled rice salad with the guacamole on the side.BTW, you don't add the salad dressing till the last moment. You know, I could get used to 5 days a week!

Weekend Update/ Lasagne with mushrooms, peas and "sausage"

2011-06-08T09:15:00.000-07:00

I haven't been posting anything new for awhile, mainly because I do occasionally cook something I've done before, and because I've been spoiled by Trader Joe's Supermarkets. Perhaps corrupted is a better word since I've discovered that some of TJ's prepared meals taste every bit as good as anything I can make, and sometimes it doesn't pay to resist that. Take our Friday meal as a perfect example. TJ's makes a Tuna in Red Panang Curry which is excellent. We have very good Thai restaurants in New York so I can say I know what a good Thai curry should taste like. This meal is every bit as good as anything I've tasted in the better Thai restaurants. It comes packed in tin foil and needs to be boiled in water for 5 minutes before eating. I usually cook some rice on the side and dinner is ready in 15 minutes. And, unlike many prepared meals,it's a perfect portion for two people. At $1.99, why pay a chef to make this? Why indeed? This is why I can't find any work.

On Saturday, we visited the Farmer's Market in Union Square and bought some greens, heirloom tomatoes and Jalapeno Cheddar Bread which formed the basis for our Saturday dinner, escarole and beans in brodo (in this case, organic vegetable broth from Stop and Shop, a bargain at $1 for a 17 oz.container) with toasted Jalepeno Cheddar bread. I made beans earlier in the week, and they've found themselves in many of my dishes.

On Sunday, I made lasagne again incorporating my latest "find" from Trader Joe. This time it was sausage patties made from texturized vegetable protein. I know, not very Italian, but I've been encouraging Neeta to try more protein sources (hoping she might one day dare eat a piece of chicken). Anyway, mixed with the sauce, cheese and vegetables the sausage patties were actually pretty good. I cooked them, then broke them up and layered them with mushrooms, peas and cheese . Very nice, if I may say. The last lasagne I made, I mentioned that readers should try using fresh ricotta instead of the stuff sold in the plastic tubs. I mentioned then that Lynn Rosetto Kasper has a good recipe for making fresh ricotta in her book, The Splendid Table. It's such a simple recipe that I thought I would reprint it to encourage you to try it. One pound will be more than enough to make a tray of lasagne. Remember, you have to mix the ricotta with Parmesana reggiano, one egg, s & p, some grated mozzarella and a pinch of nutmeg.

2 1/2 quarts whole milk
3/4 cup less 1 tablespoon heavy cream (not ultra- pasteurized or sterilized)
5 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/8 teaspoon salt (optional)

Working Ahead: The cheese must be made in one session from start to finish; count on about 1 1/2 hours. Much of this time is semi-unattended cooking.You should be in the kitchen, but you don't need to be hovering over the stove.

Cooking the Milk into Curd: This recipe may seem daunting in its detail, but it is really quite easy. Because cheesemaking is unfamiliar to many, the instructions lead you through the process step by step. Keep in mind that slowly heating the milk mixture develops a soft ricotta curd. Fast heating hardens the curd, producing a very different cheese.

Stir together all the ingredients except the salt in a heavy 6-quart saucepan with a nonreactive interior. Set the pan over medium-low heat. Cook 40 minutes, or until the
milk reaches 170 degrees F. on an instant read thermometer. Keep the heat at medium-low.
To keep the curd large, do not stir more than three or four times. If you lift it with the spatula, you will see sandlike particles of milk forming as the clear whey begins separating from the curd. As the milk comes close to 170 degrees F, the curds will be slightly larger, about the size of an uncooked lentil. When the temperature reaches 170 degrees F, turn the heat up to medium. Do not stir. Take 6 to 8 minutes to bring the mixture to 205 to 208 degrees F when measured at the center of the pot. The liquid whey will be almost clear. By the time the cheese comes to 205 degrees, the curd should mound on the spatula like a soft white custard. At 205- 208 degrees F, the liquid will be on the verge of boiling, with the surface looking like mounds about to erupt. Turn off the heat and let the cheese stand for 10 minutes.

Draining the Cheese: Line a colander with a double thickness of dampened cheesecloth. Turn the mixture into it, and let it drain 15 minutes, or until the drained cheese is thick. Turn the cheese into a covered storage container, add salt if desired, and refrigerate the ricotta until needed.

The finished cheese keeps 4 days in the refrigerator.

Source: The Splendid Table, 1992 by Lynn Rosetto Kasper, William Morrow and Company, p. 454

Memories/ Pasta with Brocolli, Mushrooms and Pesto

2011-05-31T10:46:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure if it's the Memorial Day weekend or what, but my thoughts lately have been on many of the friends and acquaintances in my past. On Mother's day, we visited the grave where my Grandmother, Mom and Dad are laid to rest. How I miss those days when life seemed so simple. I'm old enough that I can look back on my childhood, my early adulthood, my "middle" adult hood and nowadays and see them as distinct periods. There was a "kid" I worked with at the restaurant in Brooklyn that joked about me way back then. " Che is so old,' she said," he played GI Joe with Jesus!"Now that kid is in her 40's and has 3 of her own and I am beginning to feel the weight of the years every morning when I wake up and need to walk around a little so I won't feel quite so stiff.

Anyhow, the friends and relationships from the past have been on my mind a lot lately and while I miss many of those I no longer see much of, I am profoundly grateful that they played a part in my life. Back in 1975, when our restaurant was just getting off the ground, one of the owners was using the kitchen to make food for herself and a few other workers. She put together a simple dish of pasta and broccoli cooked in chicken stock and garlic. The story goes that a customers saw it and asked if she could make some for their table and it became the first entree on the little menu that at the time only consisted of sandwiches made in pita bread. I thought of that the other day when I was considering what to do with the mushrooms and broccoli I had bought earlier in the week.This is my version cooked in pesto. We called it "Pasta con Broccoli". I call it a good memory. Thanks, Andrea.

The pesto came about because I had fresh basil and mint from the salads I've been making with our meals.The Current Wife loves pesto, but painstakingly removes all traces of fresh herbs found in her salad. Go figure. When I prep my broccoli, I remove the stalks, peel and slice them, then cook them in boiling water for 2 and 1/2 minutes prior to cooking the florets.

I remove the broccoli with a metal "spider" after an additional 2 and 1/2 minutes. I use the same water to start my pasta. At the same time, I heat about 3-4 tablespoons of olive oil in a skillet.

Since I'm flavoring my pasta with pesto, I use a few pine nuts in the dish. Here, I'm frying them briefly with some red pepper flakes to begin.

Next, come the mushrooms and after they cook, the garlic which goes in last so not to burn while the mushrooms cook (but you all know that!)

Lastly, the pasta and broccoli get added to the pan to cook for a minute. Reserve 1/2 a cup of the pasta water to add to the pesto. Mix it in and serve.

I hope all of you had an enjoyable Memorial Day and found time to remember our fallen heroes, those who died in combat, or in service to our city , and the innocent victims of Oklahoma City, Washington DC , Pennsylvania and New York.

Summer coming on/ Fusilli with Fresh Tomato Sauce and Herbed Feta

2011-05-28T07:47:00.000-07:00

I suppose it's the combination of warm weather and the appearance of abundance in the food markets, but my brain has suddenly clicked into "summer mode". While food shopping the other day, I noticed that plum tomatoes were .79 a pound. That's a good price and while it isn't an indication this early that the tomatoes are local, their deep red color was enough to entice me into buying them. For the two of us, I purchased just 7 of the Roma tomatoes. I mention this because if you're making a fresh tomato sauce, why not eat it fresh? You can feed up to 3 people with the sauce made from 7 of these rather large plum tomatoes. (I notice that when we get local tomatoes from New York and Jersey, I can find smaller plum tomatoes. These were probably grown in Mexico). So, using a paring knife, I cut a small X in the blossom end of each fruit. I put a pot of water on to boil, and at the same time filled a large pot with cold water and a tray of ice cubes. When the water comes to the boil, I put the tomatoes in a few at a time. After 30-35 seconds, you'll notice the skin of the tomato splitting. Immediately, take them out of the boiling water and plunge them into the ice water bath. Then continue till all the tomatoes are done. If you've followed this step, the tomatoes should peel easily and not be cooked at all.

In the picture above, you'll notice that the peeled tomatoes which I've halved have that white core to them which I will remove along with the juice and seeds. If these were backyard tomatoes that were allowed to ripen on the vine, you would see none of that hard white core.

Here are the tomatoes with the seeds and juice scooped out (with my finger) and roughly chopped into smaller pieces.

I started my pan on medium heat (#5 if you have a numbered dial) and added a good amount of olive oil. This is a quick sauce. You want to retain as much flavor as you can so use a good olive oil and low heat. I have also added some tomato paste which I will cook along with 2 cloves of minced garlic.

Here are the tomatoes which I've just added to the pan. I immediately start breaking them up with a wooden spoon. At this point, I also start my pasta.

After about 2 minutes, you can see the tomatoes have broken down somewhat. I can now add some torn basil leaves (about half the amount I intend to use).

After a few more minutes, the tomatoes have broken down more. The sauce is still quite chunky. Turn off the heat. You want the tomatoes to retain their fresh taste, so I omit the usual final step of cooking the pasta and sauce together for a final minute. Now, I drain the pasta and add a little parmigiana to the sauce.

Here is the pasta and cheese added to the pan. Mix them into the sauce , add the rest of the torn basil leaves, and plate the pasta. Top each serving with 4 or 5 pieces of feta with herbs. I should mention, I found the cubed feta and herbs in olive oil at Trader Joe's. You could also use mozzarella or Italian Fontina.

Here Comes Summer/ Rice Salad with Grilled Tuna and Salsa Verde

2011-05-26T09:39:00.000-07:00

The first signs of the approaching season appeared almost simultaneously on my fire escape and in my kitchen. My tomato and basil plants went out recently. I'm not sure what went on last season, but I lost all three plants. This year I shopped around in my favorite garden supply catalog, Spray- n- Grow

If any of you have a garden, you must try Spray-n-Grow. It's a miracle product that will increase the yield of all your fruit trees, vegetables, flowers, even house plants, and it's completely natural. (End of Advertisement) I got some "red mulch" in the hopes of preventing the scorching my tomatoes got last year and a bag of worm casings which work very nicely on tomatoes in addition to the weekly treatment with Spray-n-Grow. I know, it's a lot of fuss for three tomato plants, but we Italians love tomatoes out of the garden.

Another sure sign of summer coming on is the appearance of rice salad on my table. I guess all cooks have go to recipes for dealing with left over salad stuff. Rather than just making another green salad, especially during the summer, I love rice salad. It combines the great taste of rice with the summery goodness of salad and can be a side or main dish. You serve it at room temperature too so you never have to worry about it while you're waiting for those grilled steaks. Like all salads, you can put anything in it, but I always include fresh corn with it.

Begin with abborio rice. I use my wife's method for preparing rice. Start with a larger than you need quantity of salted, boiling water. Add the rice, stirring once and let it cook uncovered for about 15 minutes before you start tasting it. It should be tender, but still have some "tooth" in the middle. While it's cooking, steam an ear of corn. I added some stir fried onion, red pepper seeded jalapeno and mushrooms, but you can put virtually anything in this salad that you can imagine. After adding in the cooked ingredients, I spread the rice out on a large flat dish to cool.

While I'm waiting for the rice to cool, I started my Yellow Fin steaks in a hot grill pan.I brushed them with oil and a little salt beforehand, and turned them to develop grill marks. They need about 2 minutes per side depending on how thick they are.

After the rice had cooled sufficiently, I added olives, tomatoes and avocado to the salad. Since I had those avocado/jalapeno flavors going on, I made my dressing with lime juice, olive oil, oregano and garlic powder. Don't add the dressing till you are ready to plate the salad. Some of Trader Joe's Salsa Verde finished my fish giving a southwestern flair to dinner.

I finally finished the last of that red bell pepper!

Another weekend/ Cabbage Rolls stuffed with Faro, Mushrooms and Spinach

2011-05-25T13:10:00.000-07:00

I love Friday nights. Neeta is home for the weekend and we have 3 nights together. I definitely recommend the 4-3 week to all married couples. As my readers know, I get to sleep alone on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday nights. Not only do I get a better sleep, eat meat and watch all the sports I care to, I can also take two whole days to plan my meals in advance of the Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday wife "visit". Anyhow, it works for us. Stuffed Cabbage is one of those make ahead meals that always seems to be better when you prepare it in advance. I actually made this dish on Thursday, and had it ready to put in the oven when I heard the key in the door on Friday night.I make it vegetarian so it needs the extra day to pick up the flavors. I also make it with and without sauce. It's a great antipasti for company, or a main dish for us. If you look back over the last few posts, you see a lot of the meals I've been preparing use left overs and ingredients from the meal I cooked for Easter. This is no exception. Although I usually stuff my cabbage with abborio rice, this time I decided to use the faro I bought to make the Pizza Gran at Easter. Faro is a cereal grain that in Italy needs no fertilizer or pesticide due to its hardiness. It has a nutty taste and is similar to barley in texture. I guessed that it would mix well with the other ingredients I used and create a very nice stuffing. I soaked it in cold water in the morning. You could soak it overnight as well. Then, I drained it, covered it with fresh cold water and boiled it for about 30 minutes (till it was tender).

My first stuffing ingredient was mushrooms. I like to use them in all dishes that I would expect to find meat. I sauteed them till they browned and began to lose water, then added shallots and garlic to the pan.

Next, I added baby spinach to the mushrooms sauteing it till it was just wilted.

Did I mention the little bit of bell pepper I added to the mushrooms? Never a whole pepper; just enough to add a little color and texture. Here are all my ingredients being stirred into the faro. Looks good, no? Add an egg to hold it together and a nice helping of freshly grated parmigiana reggiano and you're ready to stuff.

I like savoy cabbage for its taste and texture. Cut away the core and carefully unwrap the leaves from the head. Boil in salted water for about 8 minutes. I do it in batches.

After boiling the leaves, you may find it necessary to remove the thick center vein on each leaf or trim them down at least. You place a blob (2 TBS or so = 1 blob) of stuffing in the middle of the trimmed leaf and neatly roll up the leaf tucking in the ends like a spring roll.It's a good idea to set up a work station for this operation. Lay the stuffed cabbages in a baking dish with a little tomato sauce on the bottom to prevent sticking. Then, more tomato sauce over the rolls and top with more grated cheese. When I do this dish without tomato sauce, I use stock, top the rolls with grated cheese and dot them with butter.

Real Italian? /Cauliflower pancakes with shaved Parmigiano Reggiano

2011-05-20T08:11:00.000-07:00

Some time ago, I was entertaining a couple I know who were over my house for dinner. I'm pretty confident in my kitchen , so I didn't feel the need to go searching in a cookbook for something to make, even though these people were rather sophisticated and she had been a resident of Rome for most of her life. Well, they enjoyed what I made and after dinner, the woman said to me, "Joe, you are a fine 'Mediterranean' cook"! I didn't have to ask her what she meant having encountered this attitude before. To some Italians, it doesn't matter that both my parents and all of my grandparents were Italian.To them, I was born and raised in this country so I'm American. Now, I see her point. I am American and I don't speak Italian. I've been there but I never lived there, so I'm not a "real Italian". I get it, but it angers me. I am so proud of my Italian heritage. I feel it. I feel it especially when I cook.I feel the presence of my mother and grandmother when I'm shopping for food and when I'm creating a dish. OK, the meal I made that night wasn't authentic Italian, but if I were a resident of Rome and created the same dish, would someone say "It's Mediterranean"? I don't think so. If I make a dish and I follow the principles of cooking I've learned from other Italians, then it's Italian and so am I! Well my neurosis aside, here's a dish that's authentic from one of the masters of Italian cooking, the Italian, Mario Batali.

This is from the cookbook, Molto Italiano and is listed among the antipasti. The recipe is for six, and the "pancakes" are supposed to be finished by coarsely grating ricotta salata over them. I had no ricotta salata, so I shaved some parmigiana reggiano over them.I also cut the recipe down for CW and I. They were delicious. Here is the original recipe:

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 large head of cauliflower cut into 1/2-inch pieces

4 salt-packed anchovies, filleted, rinsed, and chopped finely

9 large eggs beaten

1/2 cup fresh bread crumbs

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 cup freshly grated Pecorino Romano

4 ounces Ricotta Salata in one piece

1. In a large saute pan, heat 1/2 cup of the olive oil over med/high heat until smoking. Add the cauliflower and anchovies, reduce heat to medium, and cook, stirring frequently, until the cauliflower is very soft yet still holds its shape, 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and allow to cool.

2. Place the cauliflower in a large bowl, add the eggs, bread crumbs, flour, and pecorino, and stir very gently leaving distinct lumps and whole bits of cauliflower.

3. In a 10-12- inch non-stick saute pan, heat 2 TBS. of the olive oil over med-high heat until smoking. Drop the cauliflower batter by the tablespoon in the pan, without crowding the pancakes, and cook, turning once, until golden brown, about 3minutes on a side. Transfer to paper towels to drain and continue cooking the pancakes, adding the remainning oil to the pan as necessary.

4. Coarsely grate the ricotta salata over the pancakes and serve.

Thank you MB!

Leftover Ricotta?? /Swisschard- mushroom lasagne

2011-05-19T11:35:00.000-07:00

Fresh Ricotta comes in overfilled cans with holes in the bottom to allow the cheese to drain. Usually, you can find it in one or two pound cans. When CW said she wanted Eggplant Parmesan for Mother's Day, DH (dutiful husband) went out to buy ricotta during his weekend food shop. Unfortunately,the market I went to only had the two pound cans so I was left with all this left over cheese which doesn't keep very long. One of my inventions for using left over ricotta is to spread it on egg and onion matzoh. Topped with a little salt and freshly ground pepper, this is a real treat. Did you know there is a rather large population of Jewish people in Rome? They have some specialty dishes that are truly wonderful though I don't know if ricotta and matzoh is one of them.

A small problem of cooking with swiss chard is that the stems that are on the vegetable take a longer time to cook than the leaves just like the stalks on the broccoli plant, for example. Simply clean them up, slice them and cook them first and they will be fine. Above, you see sliced mushrooms and the cut up stalks which should be cooked at the same time. By the way, if you see the "rainbow" variety of swiss chard the stems are red, green, yellow and white. It would be a pity to discard them (as I saw Rachel Ray do this morning) and miss all that color.

As soon as the mushrooms and stems are cooked, add garlic and the chopped washed leaves to the pan cooking them about 3-4 minutes longer. Then put them aside to cool while you prepare the rest of the dish.

To the cheese, add salt and pepper an egg, some grated parmigiana reggiano and a grating of nutmeg. If you have a little mozzarella or Italian fontina, you may grate some into the mix as well. Remember though, ricotta is the star. Any additions should compliment the ricotta not overpower it. Now, it's time to construct the lasagne.

This is the first time I've used the "no boil" lasagne believe it or not. I like the curly edges of the traditional lasagne and couldn't imagine the "no boil" stuff could be as good. I was wrong.

The only thing to remember with this lasagne is to make sure their is enough liquid for the noodles to absorb so either dip the noodles in sauce before using them, or make sure you use enough sauce between the layers. Above is my first layer with a good amount of sauce on the bottom of the baking dish.I use an offset spatula to spread the ricotta mixture evenly over the noodles. I also like to line my noodles in both directions from one layer to the next so they hold up better on the plate.

Here's the second layer with more sauce and the mushrooms and swiss chard mix. I had enough vegetables left for about 1/2 a layer, so my third layer was a mixture of cheese and vegetables. The top layer was sauce and grated parmigiana regianno.

Layer 3

Mother's Day/ Eggplant Parmesan

2011-05-17T08:04:00.000-07:00

Mother's Day reminds me of the mixture of guilt and anxiety I would face every year usually one or two days prior to the day. For sure, I would be thinking of the perfect gift for mom weeks before, but invariably I would be buying flowers that morning or trying to find the card I forgot to send or even hoping I could schedule some other appointment after dinner. It took me till she was in her late 80's to realize that all she ever wanted was to be in my company for a few hours. We (CW and I) visited the cemetery on Sunday and I thought of all that as I cleaned up leaves that were stuck in between the stalks of the wild irises I planted there. They need little care and bloom every spring setting the spot ablaze in color. I think she would love them and thank me profusely which of course, would make me feel guilty. In stark contrast, my wife's sons asked her what she wanted for Mother's Day and when she decided she needed a new watch, they told her to pick one out and they would give her the money!On the day, they called. When I asked her if she wanted to invite them for dinner, she said no because they were busy. No fuss from the lady who lost her own mom when she was 12 years old. Her only request was for me to make Eggplant Parmesan, her favorite Italian meal, and one which my mom excelled at making. No problem, hon!

As with most Italian meals, the secret is in getting the finest quality ingredients. Let's start with the eggplant. Buy either small "Italian" eggplants or a mid-sized vegetable. Just be sure the skin is shiny, without blemishes and there is no indentation in the front (which indicates a female). Females have more seeds and are thus, more bitter. You should peel the eggplant, then slice it in thin (1/4 in.) slices. Now, salt each piece with coarse salt and arrange them on a wire rack. Cover with a sheet pan weighted down with a few cans and let the eggplant pieces sit for an hour. Then, wash off the salt and thoroughly dry each piece. This will remove the bitterness.

As for the rest of the ingredients, the ricotta and mozzarella should be fresh if you can find them (If you have never tried fresh ricotta, it's worthwhile making your own), the tomatoes ideally San Marzano and the breadcrumbs Panko ( unless you have a bakery that makes their own) I won't go into how to make tomato sauce. I assume all my readers know how.I fry my eggplant for this dish. My grandmother and mom always fried theirs until mom got health conscious and decided to bake hers. I think you lose something in the taste but you are free to make that decision for yourselves. So, it's only a matter of efficiency in constructing this dish. I flour each piece lightly, dip it in egg then breadcrumbs and lay it on a sheet pan. When all the pieces are breaded, I heat a large skillet with extra virgin olive oil and fry the breaded eggplant till golden. I have another sheet pan lined with paper towels to drain the oil. After that, I put sauce on the bottom of a baking dish and build 3 or 4 layers of eggplant pieces, ricotta (mixed with some parmesan), and sauce. If you have basil, you can add a few torn leaves to your layers. The important thing here is to not smother the eggplant in cheese or sauce. This is the reason I can never order eggplant parmesan in a restaurant . They tend to overdo the sauce and cheese (not the Italian way). Top the eggplant with a few slices of fresh mozzarella and bake at 375 degrees for about 40 minutes. Thank you mom, I will always hold your memory dear.

Leftovers /Lamb Soup

2011-05-13T14:00:00.000-07:00

What do you expect? Make a leg of lamb for a party when three of the guests cancel and you get a lot of leftovers particularly in the Ambrosino home where CW doesn't eat meat, and grandchildren don't eat! So apart from the usual lamb sandwiches and Shepard's Pie which I made, I thought I would share an old family recipe of mom's. We had a few days last week when the temperature was in the upper 50's but the humidity was up, the days were cloudy and the air felt cool because of the wind. In other words, perfect soup days. I remember my mom making soup like this using left over lamb. She didn't make it often so when she did , it was memorable. There is something about the taste combination of lamb, carrots and barley that I have always loved. When I was a kid, I often asked mom to buy Campbell's "Scotch Broth". I don't know whether Campbell still makes it, but I liked it because it tasted like mom's version. This is Joe's version.

Start with cubes of lamb carefully trimmed of fat (mom insisted on that), onion, celery and carrots, garlic a few mushrooms and barley. My mom also used a bouillon cube and a little tomato sauce. Instead, I substituted a Canadian product, "Better Than Bouillon" which I found in my local Stop&Shop. It had reduced sodium and comes in beef or chicken base. One teaspoon of this jelled liquid is equal to one 8oz. can of broth. Instead of tomato sauce, I substituted a few shots of Sriracha hot chili sauce.

I began with about two tablespoons of olive oil. When it was hot, I added the "aromatics", that is the carrots, onion and celery. Cook those over medium heat for about 5minutes till softened but not brown.

Next, I added the mushrooms and cooked them till they began to color (another 2-3 minutes). At this point, you can add the garlic. When you're cooking vegetables this long , you don't want to take a chance that your garlic may burn and get bitter.

Now, I add the barley and begin to stir that into the vegetables.. Notice I haven't added the meat yet. Since it is already cooked, adding it before you introduce liquid to the pot in my opinion, does nothing but overcooks the meat. If I were making this with raw meat, I would brown the meat first, then remove it and cook the vegetables as I have shown.

Here you see I have added a few shots of the Sriracha prior to adding the meat and broth. Please let me emphasize that there are a number of possibilities when making a soup like this with leftover meat. I believe celery and onions are essential, but anything else like beans, pasta (instead of barley), potato, spinach, or tomato sauce can be added or substituted. Next, add the broth or bouillon and water. Add enough because the barley needs about 40 minutes to cook.Copy what you have learned or seen others do or experiment. It's your dish, your cooking. Buon appetito!

The Easter Menu

2011-05-10T13:53:00.000-07:00

The date of Easter was always a controversy in the early church and after the split between the Roman and Byzantine churches, it became more complicated by the fact that there were two different calendars being used. That controversy continues today resulting (often) in separate dates for Easter depending on whether you are Greek Christian or Western Christian. In the Ambrosino family, it wasn't a real problem while my parents were still alive. FW and I simply alternated whose parents we would have dinner with every year even after the "Separation"- ours, not the churches. After our moms' deaths, by some unilateral decision, Easter became the province of FW. After CW came along, I began inviting my kids the week after Easter and that's how it has stayed. My grand kids have become accustomed to two Easters to go along with the two Christmases they celebrate.They may start their own sect in the future!

While Christmas Eve is never traditionally a meat day, Easter always is, but I make sure there are always plenty of meatless dishes for CW to choose from. This year, I decided on a boneless leg of lamb as the meat course with shells stuffed with three cheeses and spinach as the pasta course. Vegetables included grilled eggplant, asparagus with parmigiana reggiano and green beans with tomatoes for the salad. I made a pizza grana for dessert and each guest took home a small loaf of Easter bread.

So here are those Easter breads which came out quite nicely thanks to the recipe I found on The Italian Dish, a terrific blog, by the way.The "pizza grana" pictured above is from a recipe by Mario Batali in his cookbook, Molto Italiano. It combines fresh ricotta (not the kind in plastic tubs) sugar, cinnamon, orange liquor, eggs and farro, a cereal grown in Italy and is traditionally served at Easter. We are fortunate in New York that such specialties can still be found in Italian neighborhoods, but this year I thought I'd try making them myself

The first course of stuffed shells, I made with this (ridiculously) high priced pasta I found in Eataly.
I certainly don't recommend doing your shopping there, but I would recommend you visit there at least once just to get a taste of what Italians are accustomed to in food quality.

The pasta is stuffed with a combination of grated parmigiana, grated mozzarella and ricotta. I added a package of cooked chopped spinach which I squeezed dry before adding, some nutmeg and an egg. I baked the stuffed shells over a layer of sauce for 30 minutes in a 375 degree oven. Sorry, no pictures-

the kitchen got a little busy.

We cut slits all over the boneless leg of lamb and stuffed, fresh rosemary, prosciutto and slivers of garlic into them. Then we bathe it in olive oil, poured some red wine in the pan and roasted it for 30 minutes at 425 degrees then lowered the oven to 375 degrees and cooked it till an instant read thermometer read 140 degrees which is rather well done for lamb (the way we weird Italians prefer it).

The only thing CW couldn't (wouldn't) partake of.

While the lamb and shells were in tho oven,I made a salad of green beans and grape tomatoes in a balsamic vinaigrette

I also made some grilled Italian eggplant which involves cutting the eggplant thinly, then sprinkling it with coarse salt. I laid the pieces out on a rack which I placed over a sheet pan.

Next, I used another sheet pan over the salted eggplant and weighted it down for an hour to release any bitter juices. After that, I rinsed the salt and dried the eggplant.

Here's the finished eggplant grilled over the stove.(This is a wonderful treat on an outdoor charcoal grill)

We also served a dish of asparagus which I blanched then shocked in ice water. I finished them in a skillet with butter and parmigiana reggiano!

It all went very smoothly and we even had energy after dinner to walk to the neighborhood playground for a little fun. I hope everyone's Easter was as sweet.

Easter Dinner/ Rigatoni with scallions and asparagus

2011-04-25T11:08:00.000-07:00

I watched Mario Batali on ABC's Good Morning America create a dish with ramps and asparagus. I've never seen ramps in any of the markets I shop in, so I substituted scallions (green onions) and created an Easter dinner for CW and me. We'll have family and friends next week for a big feast, but this meal became a perfect dinner and expression of spring for the wife and me. Mario mixed his veggies with a cheese stuffed pasta,but I decided to make mine with a pesto flavor.

First prepare your asparagus by peeling the stems, then cutting them

into pieces about one and a half inches long. Trim the root end of the

scallions and cut them similarly discarding any green ends that appear wilted.

While your pasta is boiling, blanch the scallions in boiling salted water for

about a minute, then plunge them into cold water to preserve their color

and to stop the cooking process. They should still be firm but not taste raw.

The combination of choosing thin asparagus and peeling them before

blanching makes them cook quickly, so watch them. Drain them into

a cold water bath, and prepare the pan for the pasta. Dry it and set it

on high heat. I used Trader Joe's frozen basil cubes which are great to

have on hand. Simply fry a clove of garlic and add the veggies, pasta

and a few cubes of basil to the pan with a half cup of cooking water.

Sorry, no pictures because I only have two hands and I also prepared

the salad at the same time as the pasta (I know, I'm a wonder!). You've

seen me do this before, haven't you? The pasta cooks for its last minute

in the pan absorbing the flavors of the veggies and basil and becoming

perfectly al dente. Then, off the heat, add about 2 or 3 tablespoons of

your finest extra virgin olive oil and some beautiful fresh grated parmogiana

reggiano!

A blessed Easter to all!

Chef Stellino's Seafood and Mushrooms

2011-04-21T07:28:00.000-07:00

I don't usually post recipes I've taken from sources other than my own or my family's, but yesterday I happened to be watching an episode of Nick Stellino's cooking show. I was making a batch of tomato sauce and while it was simmering on the stove, I turned on the TV. Wednesday is our date night, and I like to create a special dish for when the Current Wife returns home. I've posted about our living arrangement before, so you know that CW spends Monday and Tuesday nights doing shopping and cooking for her two sons who apparently would die of hunger were it not for her intervention. So Wednesdays are special because it's my turn. Anyhow, Nick Stellino (whose show is fun) was preparing a mushroom and shrimp dish, and because I didn't have an idea on what to make for dinner that evening, I decided to copy the recipe since I had the sauce and some shrimp and scallops in the freezer. All I needed were the mushrooms and some lettuce for salad which I had intended to buy anyhow. I only mention this to point out that I had most of the requirements for this dish on hand. I didn't write down the recipe from the show but this is pretty much how Chef Stellino prepared it, except that he used only shrimp.

To begin with, clean the shrimp and scallops and prepare a mixture

of flour, paprika, cayenne pepper, salt and thyme. You'll need a hot

pan so I mixed extra virgin olive oil and vegetable oil. With the oil

shimmering, lightly dust the scallops in the flour mixture and sear

them on both sides. Remove them from the pan and repeat the process

with the shrimp. They will not be fully cooked but will have nice color.

Here are the shrimp and scallops draining on a paper bag, Meanwhile,

empty the pan leaving any browned bits on the bottom. Replace the oil with

extra virgin olive oil and put on a lower flame.

Place two sliced cloves of garlic and some red pepper flakes on to

lightly brown (too much and the garlic will be bitter). Then add

sliced onions and salt. When the onions turn translucent, add sliced mushrooms.

Allow the mushrooms to cook till they start releasing water, then

put some chopped parsley in the pan and cook a few minutes

longer till the mushrooms are done. I used crimini mushrooms .

The original recipe called for a mixture of crimini (baby portobello),

white button and shitaki (without their stems).

Now add about 2 cups of prepared tomato sauce and about one

and a half cups of stock. Raise the heat and cook for 15 to 20 minutes

or till the sauce is reduced by about half.

When the sauce thickens to your liking, put the seafood back

and cook till heated through and fully cooked (2 minutes).

Plate and serve with some nice bread and a salad. Thank you

Chef Stellino. The wife was very pleased!

Remote Wars in New York/Fallafale with artichoke hearts and peas

2011-04-18T13:02:00.000-07:00

It's spring in New York. Don't put away your winter clothes. Following a night of wind, rain and lightening, I wanted a dish that reminded me of spring. These are spring vegetables, but like the weather we've been having, they are frozen. I'm sure we'll get a few days of spring and I'm always hoping the summer won't be unbearable, but right now, these frozen spring vegetables were the best I could muster on a weekend better suited to staying in and fighting over the remote.

Let me set the picture for you. Neeta (Current Wife), is huddled on one side of our thankfully large couch wrapped in a blanket with only a few fingers showing vacillating between Channel 77 and Channel 96, the two "Indian music" stations on our Brooklyn Cable Channel network. One is for the "Caribbean Spotlight", a station of seemingly endless commercials for immigration lawyers, Guyanese or West Indian grocery stores, restaurants and bars whose owners save cash by producing, directing and starring in the commercials and occasional songs of aspiring dancers/singers who mimic the music of India's Bollywood. The other station is usually "Namaste America" consisting of endless commercials , shout-outs, death announcements and occasional songs from Bolywood which used to be quite charming to me and now increasingly mimic MTV. They are loud, the dances are more hip hop than Indian and the women are scantily clad. (It's wonderful to see how the "best" of American culture gets around.) So generally, I try to busy myself doing other things around the house. Since the rest of TV on the weekends consists of sporting events I don't care about (with the exception of college basketball, Met baseball and a few championship games), I'm content to let her have her way with the remote. Invariably though, one of the 15 minute long commercial breaks begins to get on my nerves. Then we start with how long we are going to listen to "the same damn songs over and over", countered with " you listen to the same damn baseball over and over" (CW sees all baseball as endless repetition) Ha,ha,ha! If you stand apart from it, it's actually quite funny listening to us trying to defeat the other one's arguments. Eventually, I give up on trying to win her over to my pov. (I'm not content with just being able to see my baseball game. I want her to enjoy it with me!) As I say, eventually I retreat to the kitchen where I am undisputed king and make dinner.

I start with two cloves of garlic and some red pepper flakes.

And yes, I use extra virgin olive oil and I've started the pasta

in boiling salted water before hand. As soon as the garlic releases it's odor,

add the frozen artichoke hearts and a ladle of the pasta cooking water.

After a minute or two, I add frozen peas to the pan and some toasted pine nuts.

The pasta takes 10 minutes according to the package. I've set my timer for 9

minutes, so about 5 minutes have expired at this point.

At 9 minutes, I drain the pasta and dump it into the pan along with some

sliced grape tomatoes. The pan goes on high heat and the pasta is stirred so it

absorbs the flavors in the pan and the remaining moisture. At 10 minutes the

pasta is ready. I turn off the heat and stir in about 3-4 tablespoons of my best

extra virgin olive oil. (It happens I have some leftover ricotta cheese in the

fridge, so I added it (about 2 tablespoons but not necessary to the dish) .CW

doesn't like parsley, but definitely add it if you have.

New grasshoppers to my blog are reminded of the "Your Italian Grandmother" commandment, "Thou shalt not let the pasta wait for the sauce!

A Review For My Niece / Seafood Stew

2011-04-15T08:43:00.000-07:00

There isn't too much happening in my exciting life this week, so it affords the opportunity for me to revisit some old principles of mine regarding cooking and food preparation. I should emphasize here that the 100% Italian portion of my family is rapidly diminishing. I was born into a family that was all Italian including aunts, uncles and cousins. Over our years in America, we all married people who weren't Italian or were only partially Italian so that now I have daughters, granddaughters, cousins, nieces and nephews that range from being half- Italian to not being Italian at all. Indeed, the reason for this blog in the beginning was to put down some of the principals of Italian cuisine that I learned from my parents and grandparents generation for those family members and friends that would not have the benefit of having an "Italian Grandmother".Since I married my Guyanese Indian wife, the blog has become more about living with and cooking for her, since, well, that's what I do.I say all this because one of my non-Italian nieces just became a follower of my blog and asked the question of me, "What should I cook tonight?"

Well first of all, I really don't intend for my blog to be just another cook book that one pages through to find recipes. Rather, it is more of a food diary which I hope will elucidate the principles of shopping, cooking and pantry development that my grandmother and mom used in preparing food for their households. There is nothing inherently Italian about these principles. It's just that in today's culture, people seem to rely on finding recipes from TV or cookbooks rather than using the principles I learned. One of my kids recently remarked to me that I have tons of room in my refrigerator. That's because I plan my meals on what I find to be freshest, and most appetizing in the market, and I store certain ingredients on a constant basis, so I'm never buying things for one meal only and wasting the food that's left over. So, for example the escarole I put in my pasta fagiole will be part of the greens, pork and pasta I cook for dinner the next day. These meals don't always find their way into my blog, but my readers should know that using the food I have on hand is what guides the decision on what to cook for dinner tonight . That's the main reason my recipes often seem"unique". I'm not trying to be different. I'm just cooking with what I have.

So this dinner of Seafood Stew comes from the fact that Trader Joe's and Stop and Shop had some nice frozen seafood in recent weeks and I've been stocking up. We eat fish once or twice a week so there is always some kind of seafood (usually shrimp) in my freezer, but this week I had in addition, scallops and yellow fin tuna. I had to buy one addition to the meal which I usually don't include in my pantry, that being fish stock which I found under the "Kitchen Basics" brand in my local KeyFood.

As you've seen me do often, I start as I would for any soup

combining onion and celery in the pot and letting them cook lightly

with salt and red pepper flakes till they soften. Then I add garlic

and cook it till I can smell it. After that, I mix in my carrots and

diced potatoes and let them sweat covered under a low flame for awhile

depending on how finely you cut them.

To these I add some dried thyme ( about two teaspoons)

Now I add about one and a half to two cups of the seafood stock

(remember this is for two of us with enough left over for my lunch),

and a 1/2 can of tomatoes (28 ozs.) hand crushed. Bring everything to a

boil and add some fresh basil, then start adding the seafood. I added the

cut up tuna first, then the scallops and finally the shrimp waiting for the

soup to come back to the boil before each new addition. For this dish, I

used one of the tuna fillets (about 6 ounces), 10 scallops, and 10 of the

large (21/25) shrimp. Bon apitito!

Sundays: exercise, nap and cook. Pasta Fagiole with Escarole

2011-04-12T08:35:00.000-07:00

Since my illness, I've been trying to exercise more. On weekends that involves talking the wife into coming along. Yes, I could just go out by myself, but truth be told, we both need it. Usually we incorporate the plan to exercise with some other activity since it's hard for some to just exercise as an end in itself. (Jack Lalaine I'm not). Last weekend, we took the subway into the city and walked to and around "Eataly", Mario Batali and Lidia Bastianich's incredible but really expensive food market. Fortunately, I had a gift card from one of my daughters and we had a good time sampling some of the food and picking out some items for the pantry. I found this "Tubetti" pasta which at $4 was very expensive, but made in a way that rendered it thicker than regular supermarket pasta. Whether that made it "worth" $4 a pound I'm not sure. I bet it wasn't sold in Italy for the equivalent of $4, but this was after all, Manhattan so I bought it.

This Sunday, we went to a few of my wife's favorite dress shops at the mall. That tired me following her around while she looked at clothes with no plan to buy. I spent some of the time looking at the latest models of food processors, or Rachel Ray cookware with no plan to buy.By the time we arrived home, I needed to "rest my eyes" on the couch while she watched Namaste America, an Indian version of American Bandstand if you're unfamiliar with it. I awoke at two and went in to make Sunday dinner while she lounged. So this whole prep and cooking took 60 minutes from start to finish.The pasta was perfect and the meal delicious.Here's my recipe.

For the two of us, I started out with two cloves of garlic chopped, a medium onion diced, about two stalks of celery diced, a cup or less of prepared tomato sauce, 3 tsp. of chopped basil (Trader Joe's makes frozen chopped basil in handy one tsp. cubes), about half a small head of escarole, 1/2 a can or less of white kidney beans and about 3/4 cup of tubeti or other small pasta.

Begin by gently sauteing the celery and onion in olive oil along with

salt and red pepper flakes. When the vegetables soften, add the garlic.

After about 5 minutes, add the basil (or fresh parsley) to the pot. Then, cook

two minutes and add the tomato sauce. Notice the vegetables haven't browned

and the tomato sauce is not overwhelming the pot. The finished dish is a thick

soup. At this point, you can add the pasta to a pot of salted, boiling water. It

takes about six minutes for small pasta like Tubeti to be al dente.

Add the beans and a 1/2 cup of water or vegetable stock to the pot.Cook a

few more minutes to incorporate the flavors, then add the torn escarole leaves.

Cook till the escarole leaves are wilted, then add the cooked pasta to the

pot with a little of the cooking water.

Stir for one more minute, then plate the pasta and pass the cheese!

Notice again, the finished dish is dense-less like a soup than a stew.

I AM REALLY BACK- Stirfry with Shrimp, Vegetables and Pasta

2011-04-07T06:57:00.000-07:00

I have been cooking. I just haven't been up to taking pictures and sitting down at the computer to write about it. I also haven't been interested in reading other food blogs. Part of it was that I was ill. Without realizing it, I haven't been right since the holidays. All that is behind me now and I am looking forward again, to sharing my recipes and reading what others are writing about. End of story.

So, as my regular readers know, my cooking is generally connected to my roots as an Italian immigrant's grandson and as a New Yorker exposed to the diverse cuisines I have around me here in the Big Apple. I am extremely confident in my ability to cook without following recipes. Nowhere is this more evident than in my rendition of Asian food. The following is a recipe for stir fried shrimp and vegetables made up entirely from my weekly shopping and the pantry items I always have on hand. My Asian readers will realize immediately that this is not an authentic recipe, but it was delicious which is my criteria for success. I hope you will try it, even if you are Asian!

For two of us, I used two portions of whole grain pasta, 10 pieces of large (25-20) shrimp, 1 clove of garlic, 1 tablespoon of grated ginger plus another tablespoon of diced ginger, 1/2 a medium onion cut into thin slices, 2 stalks of broccoli (I remove the outer peel on the stalk and cut it into thin slices), 4 crimini mushrooms sliced, a teaspoon of corn starch mixed with cold water, low-sodium soy sauce and my "secret" ingredient, sweet chili sauce for chicken (used as a dipping sauce for dumplings), easily found in most Asian markets, and a diced papaya or some diced pineapple.

Begin by sauteing the garlic, ground ginger and onion

till they are fragrant and softened somewhat.

Next add the broccoli. Since this takes longer to cook,

I generally saute it briefly in the oil, then add a bit of water

to the pan and cover it till it is tender. At this point,I would

also begin cooking the pasta which takes about 10 minutes.

As soon as the broccoli absorbs all the water in the pan, I add

the mushrooms with a little more vegetable oil cooking them till

they begin to soften and brown.

Now, I add the chili sauce and soy sauce. mixing to

incorporate all the vegetables.

Next, I add the shrimp, diced ginger and papaya

cooking them about 3-4 minutes till the shrimp are cooked.

At this point, I add in the corn starch and water which quickly

thickens the sauce. By now, the pasta is done so I plate it and

distribute the shrimp around the plate. Then I pour the rest

over the pasta! I hope you'll try it and like it. It's good to be back.

Thanksgiving Sides/Roasted vegetables

2010-11-15T08:19:00.000-08:00

I often work on Thanksgiving. For one, I can use the money for Christmas, and two, CW doesn't eat meat so what's the use of staying home? This year, unless someone calls me very shortly, we are cooking at home and I'm considering a turkey breast for me and vegetarian sides (with the exception of stuffing which I'll have to cook two versions of) for the rest of the meal. If you need any ideas for side dishes, I made this for a client last year, and cooked it for us yesterday as a complete meal while we vegged (literally and figuratively) in front of the TV. Roasting orange root vegetables with a variety of others are a great alternative to the customary candied sweet potatoes and look great on the table. This recipe would do well as a side for three or four diners.

To begin, preheat your oven to 375 degrees. On a sheet pan, peel and cut up 2 carrots, 1 1/2 onions, 1/2 acorn squash, 1 parsnip, 2 sweet potatoes, 1 white potato and 5 unpeeled cloves of garlic. Sprinkle olive oil over the vegetables and a TBS of coarse sea salt. Toss and bake for one hour stirring them once. The combination of flavors and textures are great. Try this as a change of pace.

TJ's Basil Ciabatta Flat bread Guacamole Pizza

2010-11-11T05:00:00.000-08:00

Sunday night, around 8:00 PM. We eat dinner around 2:00 in keeping with Ambrosino family tradition. I remember coming home from 12:30 Mass and lying on the living room floor with the Sunday funnies while Mom put the finishing touches on dinner-usually pasta with meatballs, sausages or a variety of other meats depending on her budget, followed by salad and fruit. If we had company, Dad would make an antipasti and there might be a coffee ring from our neighborhood German bakery for later. So, not much room for anything else except maybe cold cut sandwiches later in the day. Neeta and I don't eat that much for dinner usually, so at 8:00 we were both hungry again. I asked her what she "felt like", and got the usual reply,"Anything". Grrrr!

A trip to the kitchen turned up a not so ripe avocado, garlic, the ciabatta flat bread from Trader Joe's , a tiny bit (about 4 TBS) of tomato sauce, three of those small golf ball size tomatoes, a jalapeno pepper and a wedge of fontina cheese. The photo shows the "pizza" before going into a preheated 425 degree oven. Assembling it was easy, brush the edges with olive oil, spread the tomato sauce and garlic, add the sliced avocado, the jalapeno, tomato slices, and cheese. The only caveat I would add is to try and keep the avocado slices covered with the other ingredients as the hot oven can discolor the edges. I put the ciabatta which is already cooked in the oven just long enough for the cheese to melt (about 6 minutes). The result was actually quite good, not really guacamole but very tasty none the less. Try it!

Diwali Diva/Sweet potato Curry

2010-11-08T17:32:00.000-08:00

This is the little make shift altar I made my wife so she could say her daily prayers. It used to be bigger , but it was in the spot I use for my Christmas "diorama", and she objected to me finding a temporary home for Lord Hanuman once a year. The plate on the floor has a clay ghee lamp sitting in it to mark the Hindu feast of Diwali, or Festival of Lights. According to my wife, the god Ram was in exile for 14 years rather than take his rightful place as heir to his father's fortune from a younger brother- sort of an Indian version of "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods". So, when Ram picked the darkest night of the year to return home, the people responded by marking the path through the forest with clay lamps. On a larger scale, the feast marks the triumph of good over evil and so becomes a Hindu combination of Christmas and Easter. In Guyana, Neeta tells me, people decorate their steps and either side of the path leading to their front door with lamps like these which they keep refreshed all night long. My wife prides herself with not being a "holy soul-ee" which I imagine to be someone who flaunts their religion in another's face, so this was a rather modest display. In India, the feast is celebrated for five days.

So, in spite of not wanting to appear too extreme in her devotion, she did make sure to remind me not to cook any meat, fish or egg for dinner on Friday in preparation for the holy day. This, therefore is my rendition of potato curry which I dutifully prepared.

Indian grocery stores in New York are filled with variations of vegetarian dishes like this. This is my Guyanese/Italian version. The first thing you will notice amiss from traditional fare is the use of sweet potatoes which we both prefer and which lends a nice sweetness to the dish.The ingredients are simple as is most Guyanese food. Diced sweet potatoes, peas, diced onion, garlic, a hot chile, curry ( about half a teaspoon) and Guyanese Garam Masala.(a teaspoon). First I fry the garlic and onion in butter, then add the chile, curry and garam masala. When the onion is soft, I add the sweet potato and stir to coat with the butter and spices. Then, I add some water or vegetable broth to the pan and cover till the potato is soft. The last 5 minutes, I added a handful of frozen peas.I would use this method to prepare any vegetable curry.

Happy Haloween/Trader Joe's Southern mixed greens variations

2010-10-29T11:30:00.000-07:00

Those two cuties are my grand kids who mostly eat a raw vegetable diet mixed with Chicken McNuggets. Rather frustrating for Grandpa who would like to be remembered one day for his cooking, but I've been told to be patient. I hope they will one day graduate from butter to tomato sauce on their pasta or enjoy a meal like the following, a product of my searches in the remarkable Trader Joe's. While I still prefer other sources for fresh produce, TJ's is continuing to surprise me with its interesting selections like this packaged "Southern Greens Blend" consisting of mustard, turnip, collards, and spinach greens.In the picture below, you see another variation of my greens and beans recipe for pasta.

In this variation, I cooked the greens with garlic, sun dried tomatoes in olive oil and white kidney beans and then added the pasta to the mix in the manner you've seen here ad nauseum. I finished the dish with grated parmiagiano and slivered toasted almonds.

In another variation, I've cooked these greens as above only this time with garlic,hot pepper flakes, raisins, olives and capers -Southern greens with a Southern Italian approach!

I have also tried the greens with pancetta (You could use bacon too) in a more American variation. I served them with barbecued baked beans.

Three different variations of these remarkably versatile greens, none of which the granddaughters in question will touch with a ten foot pole. I hope their palates grow more sophisticated while I still have the pleasure of seeing them enjoy my food. Otherwise, there will always be the blog. Friends, teach your children to eat at the dinner table whatever you eat. It requires patience and steadfastness. You will be faced with the fear they will starve to death, but take it from me. No kid ever starved themselves with food in front of them!

I'm Back! Neeta's Roti

2010-10-21T06:25:00.000-07:00

Well my friends, it's been a long absence. I wish I could offer a cogent reason for being away that I could successfully communicate. However, as with all crisis, my will to reach out during my tumultuous time was diminished, and now reflecting back, I think it better to just move on. I thank those of you who were kind enough to write expressing your concern and offer your prayers, and to those who simply wondered where I was, I also say thank you for thinking of me.

It's fitting after this long hiatus to offer a rare glimpse at one of my wife's specialties. Whenever we meet with members of her family, they always seem in awe that I do most of the cooking at home since in their world, it's part of the duty of a wife to cook for her family. The idea that I might actually enjoy cooking never seems to enter their heads. So, last week my wife suggested I make pumpkin curry a favorite of both of us. Normally, we eat it with one of the many flat breads available in our area .This time however, Neeta (the current wife) suggested she make roti for the meal. When I asked why this strange change of heart about cooking she said, "So next time someone asks you if I cook, you can say yes". And all this time I thought she was immune to family pressure! I should take advantage of it, but hey, I do love to cook. In any case, here's my wife's method for making roti or nan or what the Trinadadians call "Bus' up shot"

A good clean space is essential. We use our Formica counter top cleared of its' usual debris.

Measuring for one roti. In a meal for the two of us, she will measure out 3 &1/2 handfuls.

For each handful, she pours a generous pinch (?) of baking powder. This recipe is rather forgiving. Don't worry too much about getting the measurement correct. Learn by doing.

Add water slowly, kneading the mixture as you go.

When the dough comes together, it will be a somewhat elastic and dry mass almost like pizza dough.

Form it into a ball, sprinkle the top of the dough and the rolling surface with flour and roll the dough into a flat, thin oval. If you've done the previous step correctly, the dough should roll out quite easily. Turn it once or twice as you are rolling it.

Here is the dough fully rolled out (enough for 3 regular and one small roti). Before preceding, add a small amount of vegetable oil and spread it over the top of the dough.

Starting at the top, carefully roll the oval as tightly as possible.

Now cut the roll into the desired number of roti pieces (in this case, 3 regular size as measured by Neeta's hand and 1 smaller one.

Using your fingers push down on the ends of each roti to form a somewhat compact roll pushed in at the top and bottom as shown. Dip each finished roll into the flour coating them lightly.

Now, let them rest for about 5 to 7 minutes.

To continue, form each roll into a flat oval shape with your hands. This is the tricky part because it involves timing. Neeta makes each roti individually. As the first is cooking, she will quickly roll out the second. There are five steps: Shaping the rolls as shown, rolling them, cooking one side on a heated griddle while you dab oil over the uncooked surface, flipping the roti and oiling the cooked surface, then clapping the finished roti in your hands till it shreds a little.

Step 2: Rolling out the individual roti. (If this were not the first one, the previous one would be on the griddle)

Step 3: The rolled roti is placed on your open palm and slapped down onto the heated (dry)griddle. (not as hard to do as it sounds. Practice makes perfect!) Then using a brush or a bunched up paper towel dab the surface with oil. The first side will cook less than a minute (40 seconds?), so quickly turn your attention to the others.

Step 4: You can use a spatula or simply pick up the edges of the roti (carefully) and turn it. Then, dab oil on the surface as in Step 3. Almost immediately you will see the roti start to swell and puff up. Notice the browning of the cooked side. These are thin and lightly cooked.

Step 5: This is the step that takes a little practice to get right. Using a spatula, remove the finished roti from the griddle and bring it over to the mixing bowl. Notice, Neeta has moved the bowl into the sink as she finds it easier to work this step with the bowl in a lower position. You must take the finished roti in your hands folding it once and clapping the roti between your hands alternating from side to side till the roti takes on a raggged appearance specially at the edges. Perhaps 5 or 6 claps are necessary and you can drop the roti into the bowl if it gets too hot to handle. The finished roti is folded twice and placed in the bowl till all four are done. Back home in Guyana, roti is the preferred utensil for eating all curries. Get adventurous! Try this recipe.

You say toMAHtoe, I say taMATE o/ Summer salad

2010-08-19T09:25:00.000-07:00

Last week, Neeta and I were invited to go to a memorial service for the father-in-law of one of Neeta's nieces. This young lady happens to be married to a Guyanese man of Indian descent who is Christian. It's a little unusual since most of the Guyanese people I know are Hindu. The service was held in the backyard of our niece and we attended along with the two of Neeta's sisters here in the US and their families. I felt uncomfortable listening to the preacher and having to take part in the ceremony. I was raised a Catholic, so it's not like I'm unfamiliar with the New Testament or Christian thought, but I couldn't help but feel a little imposed on. Ok, maybe it was because the pastor who led the service was in the mold of the tent preachers whose voices quavered every time they spoke of the "Lord", or maybe it was the fact that the deceased wasn't as devout as he was made out to be. Or, maybe it was the whole idea of the thing. Here was a group of people (the pastor included), all of whom were of Indian descent and born as Hindus, who were converted to Christianity through the work of some white English missionaries. Now I know,the gospel command to "go forth and preach to all nations, etc", but I couldn't help but think in this company, that the "nations" would be much better off if everyone were just left to worship God in their own style. I'm coming from a place where as a young "new age seeker", I studied with teachers from many different faiths. The thing I took away from all that "seeking" is that their are extraordinary people who lead exemplary lives who are Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Moslem, and even shamans from earth religions. Not to denigrate anyone's faith, but it's a little like my salad. There's a harmony to it. There are different textures, different tastes, but underlying all , it's salad. It's all good for you, all nourishing. Some things in it, you may like more than others, but all in all, it's a great meal!

I make it by first building a base of greens to which I add red onion, tomatoes and olives. I dress this base with a sprinkle of dried oregano or fresh herbs, vinegar and extra virgin olive oil. I always try to make the base with the best and freshest ingredients I can find. Then, I mix it well and lay it out on the platter. The next part is up to the Creator, uh creator that is. This one has in the middle some yellow fin tuna mixed with capers, celery and mayo, two portions of my home made white kidney beans with a soffrito of garlic and red pepper, two portions of caponata I had left over, and some chunks of Swiss cheese. I might also have put in roasted peppers, salami (if I weren't serving my wife), hard boiled eggs, potato salad, anything, in fact, I had handy that I knew to be delicious. Together, it's a beautiful thing. Just like people.

Summer desserts/Yogurt panna cotta with blueberries and Banana nut bread

2010-08-13T14:01:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's lopsided. I made this for Neeta and I. Since panna cotta is traditionally served with fruit, I decided to add in the fruit (blueberries) with the pudding. Well, they take up a lot of room so the ramekins I would normally use to mold this delicious pudding were too small. Instead, I used larger cups which when de-molded caused the panna cotta to tilt slightly. If you would like to try it, I suggest you make it in ramekins and serve fruit on the side the way it is traditionally done unless you want to experiment like me. Panna cotta is a delicious custard like dessert made normally with heavy cream. Somewhere in my reading, I learned that Greek Yogurt could be substituted for some of the cream in the recipe. Armed with this idea but unable to find the original recipe, I decided to adapt a recipe I had used before from Cook's Illustrated magazine (my go to source for anything I haven't done before). The original recipe calls for a cup of whole milk, 3 cups of heavy cream and 6 tablespoons of granulated sugar. Because I was using 2 cups of 2% Greek Yogurt instead of heavy cream, I substituted using one cup of half and half with the yogurt, and to make up for the tartness of the yogurt added 2 more tablespoons of sugar. So, the adjusted recipe for this panna cotta is:

1 cup whole milk

2 3/4 teaspoons unflavored gelatin

1 cup Half and Half

2 cups 2% Greek Yogurt

1 piece vanilla bean slit lengthwise with paring knife

8 tablespoons granulated sugar

pinch of salt

Pour milk into med sauce pan and sprinkle surface evenly with the gelatin. It's important to let the gelatin hydrate for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, set up an ice water bath with a bowl of ice cubes and water which can fit a smaller bowl big enough to hold 4 cups of liquid . Whisk together the yogurt and half and half and scrape the vanilla bean seeds into the mixture. Also, put the pod in and set it aside.

Because Neeta was intently watching one of her Bollywood movies, I didn't dare ask her to help therefore, I have no pictures of the next steps which require a lot of stirring and taking of temperatures.

Next, heat the milk and gelatin mixture over high heat stirring constantly until gelatin is dissolved and mixture registers about 135 degrees on an instant-read thermometer, about 2 minutes. Off heat, add sugar and salt and stir until dissolved , about a minute more.

Stirring constantly, slowly pour yogurt/cream mix into sauce pan with the milk then carefully transfer the mixture to the bowl floating in the ice bath. Stir frequently till mixture reaches the consistency of eggnog and registers a temperature of 50 degrees, about 10 to 12 minutes. Take out the pod and strain the mixture into a large pitcher, then distribute it among 8 ramekins or wine glasses. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate till just set. (about 4 hours) (mixture should wobble when gently shaken).

Serve, panna cotta as is in wine glasses or carefully unmold ramekins by dipping them in hot water for 3-4 seconds then loosening with a wet finger and inverting onto a plate.

Serve with a berry sauce or with sweetened berries and a sprig of mint for company or like I did, add some top of the season blueberries to the panna cotta beforehand. It's a really lovely dessert. Oh,and don't throw out that vanilla bean pod after you strain it out of the mixture. Allow it to dry, then drop it into your sugar bowl for beautifully scented sugar for your coffee.

While I can take credit for adapting the panna cotta recipe, the lovely banana nut bread above was the recipe of my fellow blogger, Gnee who writes the very professional and beautifully photographed, "Singing With Birds".

If you navigate there, you will see why I was inspired to try the recipe, which I can assure you will not disappoint. I used 2 cups of dry toasted pecan pieces and produced 2 loaves of truly delicious quick bread, perfect served as is, or with marscapone or a dollop of whipped cream. Try these desserts. You will really like them.

                       Joe Ambrosino

More summer cooking/ Caponata

2010-08-10T11:20:00.000-07:00

This has been the most disgusting summer I've ever spent in New York. I can remember back to times there was no air conditioning in the subways; back to when I had to ride those subways back and forth to work in a suit. I remember sweating through summer school in high school, army boot camp at Fort Dix, and National Guard summer training at Camp Drum. None of it prepared me for this summer in New York.The only saving grace is that being semi-retired, I can choose the days I have to go out. I don't even like to eat much when the weather is like this, but I do cook. My theory is you cook a lot of stuff so if the mood to eat should come upon you, there are choices. Also, with produce being more available and cheaper I tend to buy more and hence, cook more.

Caponata is a great choice for summer food since it needn't be eaten hot and it keeps well in the refrigerator. It's great as an antipasti, or as part of a salad or side dish, or even with pasta. If you've never had it, it's different than a lot of Italian food in that it is fairly complex compared to the way most Italian food is prepared. Don't let that discourage you, however. It is delicious. And if you are afraid you won't like it because it is made with eggplant which some people think they don't like, try it anyway. This is a very different kind of eggplant dish with great flavors and contrasts. Here's my recipe:

4-5 baby Italian eggplants or Asian eggplants if you can't find the small Italian variety

garlic

onion

celery

olives (pitted and chopped)

capers

golden raisins (optional)

tomato paste and/or tomato sauce

red pepper flakes

red wine vinegar

granulated sugar or honey

cocoa

First, you must cut the eggplants into a dice about the size of a thumb nail. Then spread the pieces on a raised mesh screen or wire rack with a paper towel underneath it. Sprinkle the pieces with salt and place a sheet pan over them. Then put a few heavy cans or a brick or two in the sheet pan to press on the eggplant pieces. Leave the eggplant for an hour while you assemble the rest of the ingredients and do whatever else you do. During that time, the eggplant will release its liquid onto the paper towel and with it, much of the bitter taste associated with it. After an hour, dry the eggplant pieces in additional paper towels. I have experimented with omitting these steps. In my estimation, it makes a big difference in the way the eggplant tastes.So do it!

To fry the eggplant, you will need a hot pan of oil half extra virgin olive oil and half vegetable oil. Fry the eggplant in batches so it fries quickly and browns in the pan. Remove, drain the pieces and set them aside.Save the oil for another use. Then, saute the onion, celery and garlic till soft in olive oil. The onion and celery together should equal about half the volume of the eggplant. After the onion turns translucent and the celery begins to soften, add the capers, olives and raisins to the pan along with red pepper to taste. Saute for another minute, then add the eggplant back to the pan. Now, add about 2-3 tablespoons of tomato paste or half that amount and a few table spoons of tomato sauce. (The finished dish will resemble a jam or curry, so judge accordingly when you add liquids.)Next, add about 1/4 to 1/3 cup of red wine vinegar to the pan and about 2 tablespoons of granulated sugar or honey. You are trying to achieve a sweet and sour taste so at first, be conservative and add more vinegar or sugar as you see fit. Finally, add the secret ingredient: a heaping teaspoon of cocoa which will darken the color and deepen the taste of the dish.

Caponata should be eaten at room temperature over grilled Italian bread as pictured or on crackers or by itself. Please try it. I think if you are not an eggplant eater, you will be happily surprised.

Blogging during the summer/ Trader Joe's Pizza

2010-08-06T08:22:00.000-07:00

I do not like to sit at my computer during the summer. In fact, I don't like to do much of anything during the summer. If we lived at the beach, you would catch me lying under an umbrella doing as little as I could with no thought in my mind other than the book I'm reading and some vague notion of what I am going to cook that evening.Take that as an apology for not posting much of anything during the season. If you check back to last summer, you will find pretty much the same thing. Alas, we do not live at the beach, but I spend my days in that half comatose state anyway. I had to rouse myself last week because my wife got an invitation to my daughter's shower. My youngest daughter lives in Washington DC. If you've never been there, Washington is one of those places you should definitely stay away from during the summer, particularly if you live in New York and have to drive the dreaded Jersey Turnpike and I-95 to get there. I do not say this without experience. Not only has my daughter lived there since she attended American University sometime in the late 80's, but my sister's family has lived in the Washington/Maryland area since the early 60's when my brother-in-law, a film editor for NBC News, moved there to be part of David Brinkley's news team. Since that time, our family pilgrimaged to the area at least twice a year. At first it was via Greyhound bus, a truly disgusting experience, and later on by car. On paper, it's about a 4 and 1/2 hour drive. On paper. In reality, it's a death defying hurtle down the turnpike fighting buses and trucks, traffic from the Jersey Shore, back ups at the Delaware Bridge and natural disasters like torrential rain storms. Add to that , the interminable waits at the crossings to New York and you have an idea of the experience. If you think I'm exaggerating, this last trip to return from the daughter's wedding shower took 81/2 torturous hours! We sat at the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel for the better part of an hour moving like snails. Forgive me. I love my family. It's always wonderful to see them, but the trip is like some mythical rite of passage through Hades.

Thank God for cheap Jersey gas.

Anyway, here's a quick lazy summer meal made up almost entirely of Trader Joe's products. You will need a herb and garlic pizza crust, a package of frozen grilled zucchini and eggplant, grated mozzarella cheese, grated Romano cheese and a little tomato sauce (I always have 2 cup containers of marinara in my freezer). Simply, roll out the pizza dough which you need to take out of the fridge a half hour before, spread out a layer of sauce lightly, sprinkle on a little oregano, top with pieces of the grilled eggplant and zucchini, then layer the mozzarella and Romano cheeses. Cook it on a pizza stone at 450 degrees till the cheese is bubbley, and serve it with a nice summer salad.

If, in fact, you are so blessed that you can spend your summer lazing at the beach, I recommend Anne Tyler's Noah's Compass as a good read.

Cooking Day and Mom's Pasta fagiole

2010-07-20T14:12:00.000-07:00

Whenever I give lessons, I always recommend that students take one day a week when they can spend a little extra time to make something which they can use in preparing daily meals during the week.Marinara sauce is the example I usually give as it can be used in so many different ways in the Italian kitchen. Today's meal is a good example. In New York there are so many different places to buy Italian pantry items that I don't have to travel far from my own neighborhood. Still, D.O.P. tomatoes are expensive no matter where you find them. If you are unaware of the term, D.O.P. is the Italian equivalent of the European food designation, "Protected Designation of Origin" which means that the product bearing this designation comes from a special area and is made following a particular artisan method (like for example, Prosciutto de Parma). So, in the case of Italian tomatoes, only tomatoes of a certain quality grown in the San Marzano valley in Sicily can bear this D.O.P. designation. Other tomatoes grown in Italy can be advertised as San Marzano (type) tomatoes, but only the actual tomatoes from the region can be labeled D.O.P. As I said, they are more expensive, but there is a decided difference in taste. So recently, I discovered an online source for them and counting in the shipping costs found that a case of 90 ounce cans was cheaper than the price I could buy them for from my local sources. So, my marinara recipe calls for olive oil, garlic, red pepper flakes, basil and whole tomatoes which I mash up while they cook. I let them simmer at this point for about 20 minutes and they're done. A 90 ounce can makes a little more than 10 cups of sauce which I divide into 5 containers. I will use a 2 cup container for about 2 to 4 meals during the week depending of course, on whether I am cooking for just Neeta and me or more. I also happened to be in one of my favorite local stores last week that sells imported Cannelloni beans in bulk. During my "cooking day", I started the beans (about 1 pound) in the morning by covering them in cold water and letting them soak for about 7 hours. Later, I drained them and covered them again in fresh water letting the water be about 3 inches over the beans. I added a couple of bay leaves and some olive oil to the water and brought the beans to a slow boil letting them cook just above the simmer (partially covered) till they were tender. With fresh dry beans, this should take about one hour. Once tender, I salt them and let them simmer for another hour. Meanwhile, I lightly fry about 5 to 6 sliced cloves of garlic and a measure of red pepper flakes in 3 to 4 tablespoons of olive oil till the garlic softens (It should not brown) and the oil becomes fragrant. I add this to the beans for the last 5 minutes.

Thus armed, I made beans and shrimp one evening which were delicious but I took no pictures, and even though it was hot, made my mom's version of pasta fagiole which many think of as more of a soup but the way she made it is more like a stew. (still hot for the weather we've been having here, but I love it and so does TW).

To begin with, I sauteed onion and celery in a sauce pot. Since I'm not using canned beans or store bought tomato sauce, I eliminated the garlic. I recommend you use garlic if you are making this dish with canned beans.You must let the onion, garlic and celery get soft but not burned, so about 5 to 6 minutes at med. low heat. To another pot of salted, boiling water add your pasta (Mom always used small shells which I think are perfect for this dish)

Next, add a little chopped fresh parsley or basil and some dried oregano and cook it for a minute more.

Then, I add about 6 to 10 ounces of tomato sauce to the pot stirring it with the vegetables and letting it come to a simmer. Let everything cook for 5 minutes.

Since I made the beans myself, I add 8-10 ounces of beans and their cooking water (which has the garlic and olive oil in it). If I were using canned beans, I would first drain them and add a little of the pasta cooking water to the pot. Notice my proportions. Getting them right is an important part of learning how to cook.

Finally, the drained pasta is added to the pot after perhaps one minute of adding the beans. The beans have lightened the color of the tomato sauce and caused it to thicken. If you like the dish more soupy, reserve some of the pasta cooking water and add it.

Before plating, stir in some Peccorino Romano grating cheese and a little more olive oil off the heat.The ingredients as in most Italian cooking are simple. The method direct. What makes this meal delicious is the quality of the products you use. Try it and I think you will love it. Thanks,mom!

Pleasing The Wife/ Scrambled eggs with avocado and tomato and Toasted Jalepeno cheddar bread

2010-07-19T09:35:00.000-07:00

This is the kind of thing that when I tell people (women), they always say something like,"Oh I need to have a talk with your wife!", meaning they have to convince her that she should mend her ways. Other people (men) always look at me with a kind of forlorn look as if to say, "Why can't I be you?". The thing about TW is she has to be talked into gifts. I have to literally press her into receiving birthday gifts for example. Since Christmas is such a huge deal in my house, she's resigned herself to that, but for anything else, she's happy if I make her a handmade card (She thinks store bought cards are a waste of money), and on days when you would expect to exchange gifts like Valentine's Day or our anniversary, she is perfectly content if I suggest a dinner or even a movie instead. Now, don't think I take my good fortune lightly. I realize that this rare blend of frugality and simplicity is not to be taken for granted, so when TW makes a request, I am quick to fill it if I can. Like when she got home from work on Friday last and asked if we could go to the farmer's market for jalapeno cheddar bread, I made plans to rise early so we could drive into the city and visit the weekend farmer's market in Union Square. Unfortunately, we didn't get up early enough so by the time we reached the city, it was impossible to find free parking. After 20 minutes of driving around, I settled for a metered parking spot, threw four quarters in for 40 minutes of parking and we hustled the two blocks walk to the farmer's market. Luckily, we were able to find the stall that sold the bread (Sorry, I didn't get the name of the bakery) and bought a large loaf of this delicious stuff that has flakes of jalapeno pepper, cheddar cheese and corn nuggets baked in. We love it toasted and used to eat it for breakfast all the time. Last year, the bakery wasn't at their stall, so it was great to see them back in business this year, even though they now sell a large loaf of the bread for $12. Anyhow, we bought it along with some tomatoes and basil and got back to the car in time.

For breakfast on Sunday morning, I fried some chopped onions, then scrambled 3 eggs and added them to the pan. When the eggs were still quite moist, I tossed in a diced avocado and a tomato (also diced). I then plated the eggs along with buttered jalapeno cheddar bread which I had toasted to a golden brown. TW was very happy! And no, I do not brag to women I know (including my daughters) that my wife is so unlike her American counter parts. Hey! I cook for her.

Swisschard and Ricotta Pie

2010-07-15T07:28:00.000-07:00

When it's as hot as it has been in New York lately, my urge to eat and consequently, my urge to cook goes south. So, while we haven't been starving, many of our meals have been simple fare not very interesting to write about. Likewise, our daily life has been without consequence, a good thing but again, not very compelling to fill up a page. I actually began to feel a little guilty about it, especially after reading some of my favorite bloggers who somehow never fail to make new posts about the interesting food they eat. (You know who you are) So, while food shopping the other day, I was looking for a vegetable that may be a little unfamiliar to some of my readers. I settled on swisschard which I have written about before ,but I thought would be interesting for readers to see another adaptation of. Of course, the swisschard being relatively cheap, assured me that it was bountiful at this time and perhaps even local. So this recipe calls for garlic, red pepper, golden raisins, swisschard, about 10 ounces of ricotta cheese, approximately half a cup of parmigiana reggiano, one egg, 2-3 Roma tomatoes and a pie crust.

First, it's necessary to deal with the swisschard. Make sure it is totally free of sand by soaking it in a large pot of cold water, then lifting it out of the water (not dumping it out with the water) and repeating the process again. You don't want to bite into this delicious pie and taste sand! Then, divide the swisschard into two piles of mostly stems and mostly leaves.

Now, chop the swisschard into manageable size at the same time discarding any browned pieces of leaf or stem. The stems take longer to cook then the leaves, hence the division. Don't throw away the stems! They have the same flavor as the leaves.

I cut up about 3 or 4 medium size cloves of garlic for that much swisschard and use about half with a sprinkle of red pepper flakes for the stems. Wait for the garlic to start getting fragrant before adding the stems to the pan.

After adding the stems to the pan and salting them, I will cover them and let them steam at medium heat for 5-6 minutes.There should be a little water in the pan from the washed swisschard and the salted stems will release water while they cook, so resist the urge to check by removing the lid.

After 5 or 6 minutes, the stems will be tender. Now, dump the leaves on top of the cooked stems. Carefully, mix the two with a pair of tongs. The leaves will quickly wilt. When they do, add the remaining garlic, a handful of golden raisins, red pepper flakes to taste and a little salt. Cover and let the swisschard cook an additional 5 minutes.

Here is the swisschard fully cooked after 5 minutes. Both the leaves and stems should be uniformly tender. You can now either drain the swisschard in a collander, or use your tongs to remove it from the pan along with the garlic and raisins. Leave the small amount of water which the vegetable has released in the pan. Put the swisschard in a bowl and wait about 5 minutes till it cools.

To the cooled swisschard and raisins, add the ricotta cheese and mix to incorporate.

Next, add the egg and the grated parmigiana reggiano to the bowl and mix well.

Now, press frozen or prepared pie dough into a 9inch tart pan with a removable bottom. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.Then, spoon the swisschard mixture into the tart pan.

Top with slices of plum tomato and bake for about 45 minutes till the center is set. Let the tart rest for 10 minutes after removing it from the oven. Then, carefully remove it from the pan and slice it into wedges.

Plate it with a nice salad and enjoy!

Guyanese Parties- Pasta with escarole and chicken

2010-07-05T15:08:00.000-07:00

We went to a party celebrating the birth of Neeta's ex husband's brother's grandson. The kid's mom calls Neeta chachi signifying she is an aunt on her father's side of the family (I think). I often get taken to these kind of events where I know maybe 5 people and am related to no one. I mean I really don't mind. It's the way the Guyanese party, so I have sort of gotten used to it. There's always an enormous amount of food, loud music and almost complete segregation of the sexes. At least at this one, I could use the excuse that I didn't know anybody, otherwise the men are pestering me to get drunk with them. So I started the night hanging out on the couch with the baby's great-grandmothers watching the Met game, and then sat with my wife and later on her nephew and his girlfriend who have been in the U.S. long enough to speak standardized English and who are both here long enough so they spend at least some of the time together. These events are usually outside where there's typically a tent covering a big part of the back yard, about 20 or more tins (the big aluminum foil kinds that caterers use) of food, a DJ (my stepson as it happened), and most of the party goers. So we arrived ignoring the gaggle of men clustered around a table set with bottles of liquor, and entered the backyard to be met by the lady of the house (Neeta's ex sister-in-law) who Neeta had just spent several hours with helping to make all the food. What kind of food? There was dahl puri which is stuffed flat bread, rice and beans, chow mein, fried rice, chicken curry, duck curry, chicken tandoori and three kinds of fried fish. It was all served cold which to my mind, ruined the flavor, but I ate too much anyway and washed it down with 3 or4 beers. I don't want to sound like I hate these parties. I don't. Except that they get together and talk to each other in their patois which I understand about 20 percent of; the men expect you to drink with them which I don't like beyond a few beers; the music is too damn loud so even if I stand a chance of understanding a conversation, I can't hear it; and I spend a lot of time by myself which is not why I go to parties. At least Neeta will ask me to dance with her (usually after she spends the first half hour or so dancing with the other women) Men don't usually dance after they get married unless they're wasted, but I am the exception. So, on the way home I told TW, " We ought to have your nephew and his girlfriend over for dinner". Now, he's a New York City cop, and she's a nurse so I can definitely relate to them and I know they would enjoy my food, but TW thinks it odd to invite two people without their families to your house. "We don't do that", she says. I'm gonna do it.

This is one boneless chicken thigh, pancetta (Italian unsmoked bacon), garlic, escarole, pasta and four small tomatoes.If I were cooking for two, I would double the amount of escarole and pasta. For four people, I'd use 2 thighs.

Put the water on to boil first. After it comes up to the boil, cut an X into the top of the tomatoes as pictured. This makes it really easy to slip the skins off. Drop the tomatoes in the boiling water and let them go for about 20 to 30 seconds. Have a bowl of ice water standing by.

Remove them from the boiling water with a slotted spoon and drop them into the ice water. After a few seconds in the water, they will stop cooking and they will begin to shed their skins. Then all you need do is peel them, cut them into chunks and lay them aside. Then, drop the pasta into the boiling water.

While you are waiting for the pasta, start the garlic and pancetta over a high flame. When the garlic begins to color, drop the chicken into the pan.

Working quickly so the garlic doesn't burn, brown the salted chicken on both sides. Practice makes perfect, here. You want nice color on the chicken. There should be enough rendered fat and olive oil in the pan so nothing gets burnt but everything has a golden color. The chicken won't be fully cooked yet at this stage.

Next, comes the escarole which gets stirred into the chicken, pancetta and garlic so that the leaves are coated with the fat in the pan. Follow with a ladel full of the pasta cooking water.After that, the tomatoes can be added to the mixture. There should be enough time left for the escarole to get tender and the chicken to become fully cooked before the timer goes off signaling your pasta is a minute short of being al dente.

Finally, add the pasta to the escarole and tomatoes and cook for a minute more. Have a half cup of pasta water on the side if the sauce gets too tight. Otherwise, turn it off after a minute and add grated cheese and olive oil to the pan before plating it.

Happy 4th of July/ My Mom's Jello/fruit drink

2010-07-01T07:13:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lousy picture, but I thought my mom's " recipe" for Jello fruit drink would be perfect for your 4th of July barbecues. A little history: mom was always conscious of our not having too much sugar as kids. I guess the fact that my uncle, her brother was a doctor (studied in Florence, Italy) and always preached eating well made her more conscientious about our sugar consumption. Whatever it may have been, we never drank soda with our meals and rarely had it in the house. Her one concession to sugary drinks came during the summer when mom made her Jello drink. I say "her Jello drink" because as far as I know, she invented this. I would be very interested in knowing if anyone has seen this elsewhere. I do know that it is very refreshing and looks beautiful in a glass pitcher. My sister has the very pitcher mom always used to serve this drink. Every time I'm at her house and see it, I'm reminded of my mom and summer meals at the Ambrosinos.

To make this drink, you will need one pkg. of Jello. My mom always used the "black cherry" flavor, but you can use any one you like. You also need for each Jello package, one or two oranges and two lemons or limes. (very important)

You simply follow the package directions by boiling a cup of water and stirring it into the Jell-o mix for two minutes making sure you dissolve all of the mixture. The Jell-o recipe then calls for adding one more cup of cold water and refrigerating the mix till it sets. Instead of this, mom mixed in two cups of ice water, and added the juice of the oranges and lemons or limes. The citrus not only added real juice to the drink, but the lemons (or limes) also cut the sugary taste and made the resultant "drink" very refreshing. You need to leave it unrefrigerated in the pitcher till you're ready to serve it. At that time, add a tray of ice cubes. Not only is this drink great tasting, mom always left the rinds of the fruit in the pitcher which we kids loved to suck on after we consumed our drinks. As an adult, I still look forward to making this drink for parties and festive occasions especially if there are kids around. Try it; it will bring out the kid in you!

Pasta and black beans

2010-06-29T08:53:00.000-07:00

This has been some week in New York. I don't want to hear anybody telling me that global warming is a hoax cooked up by Al Gore! I have lived in New York my whole life. I remember really hot June days in my youth. I can probably count them on one hand. When I was in elementary school, we had to wear red ties during the month of June for the Sacred Heart. The nuns wore their heavy linen habits as always. Yeah, I remember days it was so hot you didn't want to move, but mostly June was beautiful. It was a time you were allowed to play board games in class, a time Sister would read aloud to us, or hit us fly balls in the school yard. Cool nights and warm days. Humidity was something you worried about in August. And winters? We didn't have "January thaws" back then grasshoppers! I tell you, the world is heating up! It's time for some flying saucer to land and make everything right again. "Klaatu barrada nikto!! (I made TW watch "The Day The Earth Stood Still" with me the other night and memorize Patricia Neal's line to the robot. She thinks I'm odd, but really, something short of a rapture event has to happen grasshoppers!) It's too damn hot.

So yesterday, being a bachelor night with two good ball games on the tube, I set out to make myself something to eat. With the heat being as bad as it has been, I usually eat a good breakfast and skip lunch so I have an appetite for dinner. Before I started to cook, I went down to get the mail and received a welcome surprise. Chef Chuck from the blog ,Chef Chuck's Cucina wrote me last week and asked me if I wanted some garlic from his garden. Of course, I responded that I would be delighted to get some garlic (Hint: Grasshoppers who wish to send me stuff) and two different varieties arrived in my mail box. I used the "Russian garlic" in this recipe. Thank you so much, Chuck!

Here are my ingredients: pasta, sun dried tomatoes in olive oil, one clove of Russian garlic, half an onion, black beans, pancetta and chopped sirloin. After I took the picture, I decided I needed a stalk of celery too.

The pancetta and chopped meat go into a hot pan, first. Add a little salt and cook till the beef is almost completely browned. The pasta water should be boiling and a serving of pasta should be added to the salted water.

The garlic goes in next for just a few seconds till the great smell reaches your nose, then lower the heat and add the aromatics (onions and celery). Add a little more salt and cook everything, stirring till the onion turns opaque and the celery softens. To help it, you may after letting it saute awhile, add a little boiling water from the pasta. (Notice, I always clear a spot in the pan for each raw addition.)

Now, it's time to add the sun dried tomatoes to the pan...

...followed closely by the black beans (which I purchased from Trader Joe's -their Cuban black beans).

Finally, a little more cooking water and the pasta get added and cooked for a final minute or so. Off the heat, I will add a drizzle of good olive oil a little cilantro or parsley and a grating of Parmigiana Reggianno .This dish was quite good . The individual flavors were distinct but complimentary at the same time. The baseball games were less satisfying.

Potatoes and Escarole

2010-06-22T19:52:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I last posted. We've been busy here with life issues and while we have been eating, many of our meals have been repeats of other things you've seen me do. But, now that Father's Day is past and weekends are less busy, I've been thinking about writing again.There's a lot to write about. Last Tuesday, my wife swore allegiance to the United States and became a spanking new citizen. That is a milestone for both of us. Since I've known Neeta, her immigrant status has been a factor in our relationship. I have sat with her through meetings with lawyers, court appearances and interviews with Homeland Security officials, and have spent countless hours filing documents, gathering evidence, writing letters and traveling to different federal buildings. Particularly after we dropped our lawyer (to save cash), our life has been about waiting to hear about our latest appointment, and then scrambling to get finger prints, tax papers and other stuff together for the next round. And, government bureaucrats being who they are, we have had to correct mistakes on documents which always entailed new forms to fill out and regathering and/or updating old information. When she was finally called to take her civics test a few weeks ago, there was a file about eight inches thick on the immigration officer's desk containing, believe me, about 1/3 of the actual documentation we have had to provide. Particularly irksome to me, was having to prove again and again that our marriage was not fraudulent. I'm sure if the shoe were on the other foot and Neeta was sponsoring me, I would have long ago told them to keep their freakin' citizenship! But she hung in there and now, she tells me, she can "talk back to anybody" which is pretty funny if you know my demure, sweet wife. We will be married five years on Thursday. I swore it was seven years. She had to actually show me our wedding license to prove to me it was only five. It occurred to me (later) that some women might be angry that their husbands couldn't remember how long they were married. But not my girl. Take note, grasshoppers. When you have a guy who loves to cook for you, and does a pretty decent job, you can forgive a lot of crap. I hope.

So, today's meal came about because I felt like eating potatoes. I had just been food shopping and had the fixings for one of my greens and beans dishes which I usually make with pasta, but this potato thing came over me and since it's a "bachelor day", I was leaning towards pork and potatoes.

To begin with, I put two small new potatoes on to boil, starting them in cold water. They need to boil about 15 minutes or so till a fork can pierce them, but not so easily that I could serve them at that point. Meanwhile, I diced two cloves of garlic, a sprig of rosemary and a slice of pancetta. I had time to also wash and rip a handful of escarole (about 4 or 5 leaves).

To hasten their cooling, I sliced the potatoes. They can be handled rather quickly while you brown first the pancetta, then the garlic and rosemary. The potato slices should be skinned and cut into cubes. In the foreground is the diced pancetta and the rosemary. Oh, and save the potato cooking water for later on.

I added the cubed potatoes to the pan with the pancetta, garlic and rosemary, salted them and added some red pepper flakes. After the potatoes absorbed the oil in the pan, I added about a half ladle of the cooking water.

Next, I added the escarole to the pan with a little more of the potato cooking water, stirred everything and covered the pan till the escarole was tender (about 5 minutes).

This is how it looked after 5 minutes. Most of the water has been absorbed and the potatoes and escarole are tender. Off the heat, I add about 3 tablespoons of olive oil and taste for seasoning. Perfect! Now it's inside to eat and watch the Met's game!

Pasta with Eggplant- step by step

2010-06-13T16:58:00.000-07:00

This morning, the wife and I are having a breakfast conversation. For someone who is generally very quiet around other people, my wife can definitely talk a blue streak with me. So today, she is telling me in great detail about the first time she had bagels and cream cheese, which is what we were having for breakfast. I learned about who she was with, where they were going, her puzzlement over the breakfast menu and how her nephew suggested she try the bagel and cream cheese. Then she says to me, "Isn't it funny honey, how I was afraid to try it (the bagel) for the first time?" Now here we have someone who doesn't eat pork, chicken, turkey, beef , sushi,clams, mussels, any leaf vegetables that are red, or even slightly bitter, wine, beer or alcohol of any kind, anything but vanilla ice cream, and I'm sure I'm leaving out a lot of stuff. So, no, I didn't think it was funny at all. In fact, it's a miracle and if you don't mind me saying it, a tribute to my cooking skills that I am able to feed her at all. My trick is in sticking to food she is familiar with and hoping she won't dissect the dish too much to remove suspicious items like basil leaf which annoys me but what can I do?

Today's meal illustrates a point I make all the time to grasshoppers who want to know how to put together amounts if I never or rarely follow cookbooks and if I am "inventing" dishes. My secret is that even if I say I don't measure, I actually do. The ingredients for this meal which serves two are:

2- inch thick slices of eggplant, cubed , salted and drained for at least a half hour

2 cloves of garlic sliced thin

red pepper flakes to taste

celery,onion and red bell pepper diced as per instuctions

about a tsp. of capers

grated peccorino romano cheese

about 15 cubes of fresh mozzarella cheese

tomato sauce

red wine vinegar, sugar and good olive oil for flavor

2/5 of a pound of penne pasta or your choice

Take a look at the photo below:

If you notice, the eggplant which is on the left side of the prep area takes up the most room as it is the "star"of the meal. Going counter clockwise from the bottom left, you see garlic (2 cloves), then celery, onions and (skipping the dish of capers) peppers all about the same volume and together taking up about as much space as the eggplant. That's how I measure- in relation to other things in the dish. So, let's get cooking.

Because it absorbs a lot of oil, I start by frying the eggplant in enough olive oil to cover the bottom of the skillet. I salted the cut eggplant first, let it sit for about 30 to 40 minutes on the wire rack above and then squeezed it and dried it in a paper towel. Let the oil get hot over high heat before adding the eggplant. Also, put your pasta water on to boil.

Three or four minutes later, I have removed the nicely browned eggplant to a paper towel. I then discard all but 3 tablespoons of oil and lower the heat of the pan to medium low.

First, I add the garlic and some red pepper flakes and fry them till the garlic begins to color. Immediately, I add the aromatics, the onion, celery and bell pepper with a sprinkle of salt. After a few minutes, the onion will have turned opaque and the celery and pepper will have softened.

Now, I return the eggplant to the pan with the capers and add my secret ingredient: about a tablespoon of red wine vinegar and a generous pinch of sugar.This gives the dish a subtle sweet and sour element (something like the way anchovy or fish sauce is used by Italian and Asian cooks)

Next, comes the tomato sauce- about 4 wooden spoons worth. Look at the picture. It hasn't turned into a tomato sauce with vegetables, but is still mainly about the eggplant.

All this time, the pasta has been boiling and is now about a minute short of being cooked "al dente". Now, I add about 3/4 of a ladle of pasta water to the pan and turn the heat up to high.

Finally, I add the drained pasta to the pan and let it cook for one more minute absorbing the liquid and thus "tightening" the sauce as you have seen me do in countless other posts. When the water is absorbed, I shut off the heat add and stir in the basil leaves (which TW will pick out of her plate), most of the grated cheese, the mozzarella which will immediately start to get "oozy"and 2 tablespoons or so of my finest olive oil. Plate the dish with the remaining cheese.

Summer pasta with broccoli and shrimp

2010-06-07T19:37:00.000-07:00

Friday was the start of a truly disgusting weekend in New York. I have lived in New York my whole life. Aside from being the most vital city in the world, it has four distinct seasons. I do not like it when one season intrudes on another, which is apparently what was going on this weekend. We were having late spring with cool nights and low humidity- a time when the weather here is predictable, a time when people plan weddings because they count on that predictability. Quite unexpectedly, our June became August with its stifling heat and sticky humidity. I had to fish the fan out of the closet, close windows, pull down blinds and run air conditioners. On top of that, Neeta (The Wife) called to tell me...are you ready Mid Westerners? She had her wallet picked out of her pocket book. That's right. Cancel the travel plans. Confirm your worst fears. New York is Armageddon.

So this is what I was up against while preparing dinner on Friday- the prospect of being a prisoner in my own living room for the weekend and a grieving wife $300 and a few credit cards poorer. They (the thieves) immediately hightailed it to our metro system where they bought a couple of the most expensive metro cards, which, I am told is the "MOS" of pickpockets. You just have to swipe your credit card to buy a pass-no signatures required. Live and learn friends. The dinner was delicious. I would like to tell you it completely ameliorated TW's sense of loss and instead, led her to wonder why the gods had favored her with such a wonderful and talented husband. Her actual response was somewhat less enthusiastic, but this meal is still a keeper.

Ingredients: 2/5 of a pound of pasta; broccoli florets from one large stalk; 8 jumbo shrimp peeled and deveined; a large clove of garlic and the white part of two scallions diced ; 1/8 tsp.of red pepper flakes; juice of half a lemon plus additional; a medium sized tomato or 2 small ones diced; 2 tablespoons marscepone cheese. Serves two.

To begin with I started the pasta in salted, boiling water and waited till it was 5 minutes short of completion when I added the broccoli draining them both together.

Since I knew reporting the crime at the local precinct would take time, and owing to the weather neither of us would want hot food, I tossed the finished pasta in olive oil to prevent sticking (after picking out the broccoli).

Then, I sauteed a diced clove of garlic, two scallions (white part) and a little red pepper flakes over medium high heat.

To the hot pan I added first my still crisp broccoli with a little more olive oil, let it cook for 30 seconds, then added the peeled shrimp with their tails still on (for aesthetic reasons).

The juice of half a lemon added flavor and deglazed the pan.

Next, I added the diced tomatoes allowing them to cook just long enough to start releasing their juices.

Finally, I added the marscepone to the pan and stirred to incorporate everything . I then mixed the shrimp and broccoli with the pasta and squeezed a little more lemon juice and the green part of the scallions on top.

The finished dish will keep for some time and can be eaten slightly warm or at room temperature.

By the way, I owe the inspiration to use marscepone cheese to the queen of all things marscepone, Rock and Roll Gourmet. The weekend passed, Neeta got over her loss and by Sunday night it was beautiful again, 65 degrees and low humidity, so come and visit! Just hold on to your pocket books.

There seems no plan because all is plan.

2010-06-04T11:11:00.000-07:00

The Sufis probably didn't know they were talking about my refrigerator when they came up with the title of today's post, or perhaps they did. Anyhow, it illustrates one of my Your Italian Grandmother commandments: Use what you buy. As usual, I shopped earlier in the week for those vegetables I found to be the freshest, ones I haven't bought in awhile and ones that were cheap. By doing so, I believe I also bought food that was local reasoning that food produced far from where I live costs more because of shipping. I always read those little stickies they put on fruit and vegetables- they usually reveal where the food was grown. So to finish up what I have in my fridge, I usually make a frittata or some other dish that allows me to mix a variety of vegies. Owing to the fact that we have been experiencing a lot of uncharacteristically hot weather in New York, I decided on one of my favorite summer dishes, rice salad. Aside from the weather, my other inspiration was the fact that I had corn on the cob in my vegetable bin. I can't remember where the idea for this dish came from originally (probably from one of the Italian cooking shows I used to watch) but for as long as I've been preparing this dish, I have always loved putting corn together with the rice I use as the base of my salad. This time, I also needed to use up some mushrooms and a tomato I had on the counter (I NEVER refrigerate tomatoes). So, I began by boiling some plain abborio rice in water and a little salt (2 to 1 water to rice ratio) for 15 minutes or so until the water is absorbed . You need to cover the rice while it's cooking. This isn't risotto. When it's done, I add a little vinegar to the rice and lay it out on a towel to cool and dry. Meanwhile, I shuck the corn and boil it in salted water for 5 minutes. I also sauteed a little onion and a piece of bell pepper I found in the crisper till the onion was translucent, then added the sliced mushrooms. When they were almost done, I added some frozen baby peas and a little water to the skillet letting them steam for 3 minutes. When everything was cooler, I cut the corn from the cob and added it with the mushroom mix to the rice with a little olive oil. I then plated the rice in the serving dish leaving room around the side and in the middle.

Now, I could let that rest and turn my attention to the other elements of the salad. I cut up the tomato and mixed it with fresh basil, some marinated artichoke hearts I also found in the fridge, olives which I always have, more onion, and capers (another standard pantry item). I opened a can of tuna in olive oil, drained it and replaced it with my good olive oil and let that all sit for the 10-15 minutes it took for the wife to come in the door. I also cut up some cheese to place around the top of the salad. This is how the whole thing looked dressed and ready for serving.

Dessert also followed the plan/no plan rule. I bought some blueberries, black berries and strawberries earlier in the week with no particular plan -again, they looked beautiful and they were cheap. So while out the morning before putting together the above, I found a small angel food cake and a light went off in my head. Again, turning to my pantry, I found some blueberry jam. I took a few tablespoons of powdered sugar and squeezed a whole lemon over it mixing to make a glaze/sauce for the berries. Then, it was just layering everything together.

Cut the cake into 3 layers. Spread down some blueberry jam and top the first layer with blueberries. Lay the second layer over it, spread more jam and top with blackberries.

Put on the top layer, decorate with a few strawberry halves, and drizzle with the lemon glaze.

Dinner with no plan.

More Chicken?

2010-06-03T09:49:00.000-07:00

Yes grasshoppers, Joe has an endless variety of chicken dishes crammed into his overworked brain, but he gets so little chance to cook them because his wife remembers vomiting after eating chicken when she was 3 years old. This apparently was enough to permanently swear her off the poor bird. God! Does nothing get a second chance with her? Fortunately, she isn't as strict with me or else I would be long gone. Of course, I've never made her vomit. Anyway, this was my Memorial Day dinner which I ate alone because the lady of the house was off caring for her little ~~chickens~~ sons and no one else wanted to eat with poor me. Have I mentioned that I love barbecue? If I were still living in Brooklyn, I would by now have definitely broken out the grill. Confined as I am to my apartment in Queens however, I was forced to resort to alternative means. By barbecue, I of course mean barbecued chicken. If I were craving any other, I would go to the city where I can obtain barbecued brisket slow cooked for 16 hours over coals, which IMO is the only way to eat it. (Drool) So, if it's barbecued chicken you want follow this recipe.

Barbecued Chicken with baked beans and corn on the cob.

The most labor intensive part of this recipe is the barbecue sauce which can be made days ahead (it will keep for a couple of weeks refrigerated) if you think of it. Otherwise, you'll need one to three hours depending on how much you make. I also have to apologize because I don't measure.You learn as you cook to add ingredients depending on which flavors you want to emphasize. My Italian Grandma instincts tell me not to use equal amounts. So begin by sweating some onions in the pan. After they are soft, add the main ingredient, tomatoes. I used about half a 28 oz. can of whole tomatoes with about half of a small onion. After braking up the tomatoes, I added a little ketchup to the pot and a few glugs of apple cider vinegar. Start with adding a little vinegar and taste the sauce. If you get a very weak hint of vinegar, add a little more. Then add some dark brown sugar. Think here, you want to balance the vinegar and make it like a sweet and sour taste. I would add about as much sugar as vinegar. Now add a little molasses. Strong taste so go easy. One tablespoon or two at the most. Next, about equal amounts of paprika and chili powder- just a few shakes. I also like a very small amount of a product called "liquid smoke". If you like a smoky taste, try it but not too much. Finish it with some orange, tangerine or apple juice and salt and pepper. Does it have a nice round taste? Nothing too strongly emphasized? Then, it's right. Bring it to a boil, turn it down to a slow simmer and let it be for one to two hours. It will reduce and thicken. I brush this sauce on my cooked chicken and use it on hamburgers, pork chops, in baked beans, or anything I want to jazz up.

OK, now for the chicken. I use a stove top grill pan from Anolon for all my indoor grilling. I heat it on medium for about 10 minutes and use it for all my grilling and for making paninis (I have a heavy cast iron top which I got somewhere else which fits into the 8" square grill pan for the paninis)

Earlier in the day, I took my chicken (two boneless and skinless thighs) and put a dry rub on them after opening them up and pounding them a little. The dry rub consisted (from small to bigger amounts) of a pinch or two of oregano, a little garlic powder, cayenne pepper,brown sugar, salt cumin, chili powder and paprika. I rubbed this on the chicken, covered it and let it sit refrigerated for 2 hours till I started to heat my pan.After my pan got hot, I brushed it with a little olive oil and cooked the chicken for about 4 -5 minutes on a side.After I turned the chicken, I brushed it with some barbecue sauce. The corn was boiled for 5 minutes in salted water (Yeah, I buttered it!) and the beans were a can of B&M baked beans with bacon and onions!

Tomato Update:

Here they are. They look bigger than when I started, but they haven't taken off yet. This is the first time I am growing them in containers and the first time I'm using this variety. I have sprayed them (twice) with Spray-N-Grow which is a miracle "vitamin" for all plants. I will keep you updated on their progress. One thing I'm uncertain about is when and how much I should water. The pots seem to retain a lot of water, so I am hesitant to water them too much.

Are you chicken?

2010-06-02T09:58:00.000-07:00

That was the ultimate challenge when I was a kid. No matter what, you didn't want to be going around with a label that you were "chicken". That led to a lot of broken bones and other stupid behavior on our part. Chicken got a bad rap, because if treated right, it's one of the easiest and most versatile meats to cook with, and while I've never known any live chickens personally for very long, I never found them to be particularly timid or "chicken" in their behavior. Maybe, some of you country people can enlighten me. When I give cooking lessons, I usually devote an entire lesson to chicken because of its versatility, but also because it's easy to get it wrong. Like all poultry, it must be handled right and neither overcooked nor undercooked. New cooks generally overcook chicken because, well, they are usually afraid of under cooking it and killing somebody. To this I say, pshaw! Get a thermometer.

Chicken Cacciatore with roasted potatoes

Chicken cacciatore is one of those dishes made up by Italian American restaurants. In Italy, it would be rabbit, because cacciatore means "in the style of the hunter" and well, you don't hunt chickens.So, anyway I cook chicken when my wife is out so double or triple the recipe as you need to feed more than one. I keep frozen, boneless and skinless chicken thighs in my freezer, but there is no reason why you couldn't cook this dish with a whole chicken, the only caveat being make sure the pieces you use are cut up uniformly.

Before I began my chicken, I put some cut up Yukon gold potatoes and some baby bell peppers (with olive oil and salt) in a 375 degree oven to roast. The idea is to have them ready by the time the rest of the dish is ready. I'm not going to use all the peppers.

After salting my chicken pieces which I have cut up in bite size chunks, I brown them over medium heat with a little onion. If you have a lot of chicken,omit the onion till later and brown the chicken in batches, but remember the idea is to brown the chicken not cook it through.

Now add to the pan some sliced mushrooms and cook them till soft. Notice, nothing in the pan is getting too brown. It's medium heat (#4 or 5).

Next, I'm adding some tomatoes from a 28 ounce can. I wound up using three and a little of the juice. It's a chicken dish. The other ingredients shouldn't overwhelm the chicken.

If you have it, you can add a splash of white wine here. Otherwise, a little juice from the can is fine. Break up the tomatoes with a wooden spoon as you go.

This is how the peppers should look when they are done. I took half of them , cut off their stems and roughly chopped them. They go into the pan for the last two minutes.Remember, the chicken is the star of the dish. Look at the picture above. That's how it should look. You will learn the timing by doing this, but the main concern is not to overcook and dry up the chicken. Use dark meat, or if you use white meat (especially if it's boneless), hold it out(after you have browned it) till after you add the tomatoes and let it finish cooking as the sauce develops.

Fish if you don't really like it / Stuffed Trout and Grilled Tuna

2010-05-27T10:34:00.000-07:00

Fish was a Christian thing from the get go. I recently read a book which explained that the very first Judeo-Christians had issues resolving their Jewish practices and their Christian beliefs. To avoid a conflict, especially when it came to keeping kosher, they ate fish which is outside the kosher laws for meat. Apparently, this became so ingrained that the fish was an early symbol for Christianity. Whether or not you buy that explanation, fish was definitely a part of being a Catholic Christian . The early Church established rules of abstinence to include Fridays, Ash Wednesday and the octaves of most major feast days like Christmas. In Italy, surrounded as it is with the Mediterranean and Adriatic seas, fish is a regular part of the diet , and if you were an Italian American growing up in the 50's (before they changed the abstinence laws), fish was at the very least, a weekly part of your meals. Thankfully for me, fish is also a part of The Wife's diet. Guyana, known as the Land of Many Waters has lots of fish which saves me from having to cook all vegetarian meals for her.I'm posting these two recipes together for those cooks who are timid about cooking fish. The first,stuffed trout is a very sweet and mild tasting fish. I had my fish monger split and remove the spine bone, but you can accomplish the same by buying two fillets.You simply bake this lovely fish for about 15 minutes at 350 degrees. A tip: Use fresh breadcrumbs. Mix the crumbs as you like with a little garlic, some chopped olives, pignolli or sun dried tomatoes, parsley and olive oil. The crumbs should look and feel like wet sand. Put a little olive oil or white wine in the pan. I served mine with yukon gold potatoes which I boiled, riced then mixed with melted butter and seasoning and baby spinach sauteed in olive oil with garlic.

My second dish came about because of the scary unseasonal weather (auguring the destruction of the planet) we had in New York yesterday. I have some pictures to help.

The first thing necessary is to mix together a marinade. Mine always have oil, vinegar, lemon or lime and flavoring. If I add a sweet element, I like to balance it with heat. So, this has the juice of two limes, about a TBS of brown sugar, Siracha chili sauce (to taste), 4 TBS Canola oil, a smashed clove of garlic, 2 tsp of ginger paste, 2 TBS of soy sauce 2 TBS of white wine and a dash of Worcestershire sauce. It came to about a cup of liquid for 3 skewers of ahi (yellow fin) tuna (about 12 cubes). Keep the tuna covered in the refrigerator for 4 hours or so.

About an hour before TW showed up, I washed and spun dry the lettuce. In a separate bowl, I mixed an avocado,some marinated artichoke hearts, tomatoes,olives, sliced onion and a vinaigrette I made with olive oil, lime, fresh thyme and basil.

Get your grill hot over Medium heat, or if you're doing this over charcoal, wait till the coals are completely white. Then, carefully grill the tuna turning the skewers to get an even browning of all sides. (You may find it necessary at the end to remove the individual pieces from the skewers and cook the pieces that need it a little more) Mix the salad, plate it and place the warm pieces of tuna over the salad. Serve with some nice crusty bread.

If you don't like either of these dishes, stick to chicken.

Bachelor Night Experimentation/ Fusion Pasta Fagiole

2010-05-25T17:56:00.000-07:00

Since most of my readers are women, I thought I might share with you today a rare, privileged look in to the human male mind. You're welcome. Most of you know The Wife spends three nights a week away from home micromanaging her sons' lives. Usually, I drive her to work on Monday mornings, and it's " Good bye honey, I'll see you Wednesday". Because our car just died however, she left Sunday night because if she needs to take a bus, it's a much easier trip from her sons' house. Are you following? So, as she was getting her things together to leave on Sunday, she called into me from another part of our apartment.

"Husband?" Now, she does sometimes call me by the title instead of the name. I think it may be a Guyanese thing, but it immediately caused a warning light to go off deep in the recesses of my brain because it sounded vaguely threatening to me. I mean it's kind of impersonal, isn't it? (Did I leave the toilet seat up?, was my first thought.)

I answered, "Uh, what?"

"Will you do me a favor?", she asked.

I countered with "Uh, what?" (Don't give anything away)

"Will you please clean the refrigerator for Wednesday?" Now, two things crossed my mind in the nano second it took to answer. One was that the refrigerator probably needed to be cleaned. She notices that kind of stuff, whereas I tend to overlook that kind of stuff till it gets much more serious. Second, I thought of mounting the "I do the cooking, so I should be the one to decide" defense, but even as this thought was forming, a more prudent (self- preserving) one was working its way to my speech center.(You have to pick the arguments you stand a chance of winning)

"Uh,OK",I answered.

I forgot on Monday until later that night, so I wrote myself a note. On Tuesday as I was (dutifully) cleaning, I found two tomatillos I had forgotten about, about 4 ounces of white kidney beans, a jalapeno pepper and some basil. So, that's how I came to making this meal which is something like the pasta dish I made above (follow the link) but because of the jalapeno and the tomatillo turns into a kind of Southwestern/Italian fusion dish instead. The reason I'm posting it at all is to illustrate the point that if you master techniques (as opposed to recipes), you can create unique meals with very little imagination.

Ingredients: 1/2 onion minced; 1 clove garlic chopped; 1/2 stalk celery chopped; 1 jalapeno minced; 2 tomatillos minced; 1/4 tomato chopped (because that's all I had), 3-4 basil leaves chopped; and the beans. I also used a squeeze of tomato paste (about a Tablespoon), a fifth of a box of pasta (I get 5 portions of pasta to a pound) and 3 ounces of chopped meat.

I started by sauteing the aromatics (the onion, garlic, celery and jalapeno) till the onions turned translucent.

Next, I cleared a spot for the meat and browned it with a generous grinding of salt, mustard seed, peppercorns, coriander,onion, garlic and paprika (A spice mix from Trader Joe's)

After the meat gets brown, I add the wet stuff- the tomatillos and tomato pieces. It still looks too dry for pasta fagiole, so I decide to add some tomato paste and pasta cooking water.

You should know the drill by now .Let it simmer till the pasta is a minute shy of being al dente.

Finally, I add the pasta and let it cook at high heat for that final minute. Off the heat, I add a couple of leaves of torn basil and some good olive oil. Then, it's to the plate!

Tomatoes/ Backyard Gardens

2010-05-20T07:29:00.000-07:00

The view of the farm and my tomatoes from my bedroom window.

Where I live in Queens, New York there is a mix of apartment houses and private homes. Many of the private homes have small backyards. Now when Queens had an immigrant population of Italians and later Greeks, many of these small backyards had fig trees, grapevines and gardens. For the past thirty years or so these first generation immigrants moved or grew too old to plant their gardens and new residents preferred flowers to eggplants. When I moved back to Queens from Brooklyn in 1995, the neighborhood where my parents lived from 1963 had begun to change again with an influx of new immigrants, this time from Asia. Slowly, I witnessed the return of vegetable gardens as these new residents began buying up the homes in our neighborhood.

I live in a six floor apartment house of about a hundred or so families. We have a strip of dirt bordered by a hedge in front of our building but it was never cared for in any significant way. About the same time I moved here, a Korean family moved down the hall from me. Because they had school age kids and I was still teaching at the time, we grew friendly enough to have short, polite conversations in the hallway. The mother of the family asked for and got the permission of the landlord to improve the strip of dirt which boarders the front and side of our building. Over the course of 3 or 4 years, she paid for and grew several bushes and flowers so that now, we have a very nice garden on the perimeter of the house. In return for all the work she put in improving the soil, buying and caring for the flowers and bushes,she was given permission to grow a vegetable garden in the thin strip of earth which separates the back of our building from the neighboring yards of private houses. This was an area I should explain, that was filled with junk, poison ivy, rocks and cement chunks. Somehow, this woman along with the help of her daughter and two other Korean neighbors have managed to turn this worthless strip of earth into a veritable farm! They cleared the poison ivy (at the expense of several rashes), dug out rocks and used them to form boarders, constructed raised beds, put in new soil and have used every available space to grow lettuces, greens, herbs, hot peppers, squash and eggplant. The garden/farm doesn't get that much sunlight, but these remarkable women have managed to use every inch of space to the best advantage. When I told her I wanted to grow tomatoes, she offered me a plot but I could see that there wasn't enough light available. That's when I got the idea of using my fire escape. Although it's on the same side as the "farm" (facing South East), it has the advantage of being on the third floor thus getting an hour or two more of sun. It should be enough. Burpee makes a hybrid that does well in containers, so although I would have preferred imported seeds from Italy, I'm using them. I will keep you informed of their progress. Also, I'm hoping the landlord doesn't find out and make me remove them.

Shrimp, Scallops and Asparagus/ Seafood Stir Fry 101

2010-05-13T11:41:00.000-07:00

I feel the need to post something even though I'm not that excited about anything I've made lately.This week has been a little hectic here. I'm having car trouble which began with me breaking down on the Long Island Expressway at 7:30 in the morning while driving Neeta to work.This was nothing short of a pain in the ass, not to mention a little scary to feel your car dying under you while you're in the speed lane of a 4 lane highway with everyone going 60 miles an hour. We got out safely, but it messed up my day. So, when Wednesday rolled around and it came time for dinner, I had to resort to what I had on hand since my car may have breathed its last. I had some asparagus on hand so I decided to make something using them and some frozen shrimp I keep in my freezer. My thinking as far as it went, was to combine them in an Asian style.(I remembered I also had limes in the fridge). So this is how it went:

Take out shrimp and defrost them under cold running water. Oh. I have scallops in here too. Add them with shrimp. Chop one clove of garlic, a small bit of onion, one jalapeno and cut asparagus on the bias. Get out limes, curry powder and coconut milk.

I started some jasmine rice which takes about 20 minutes. So while that was steaming, I got some vegetable oil hot and dropped the shrimp and scallops in my skillet. I cooked them minimally (about 1 minute) then transferred them to a dish.

In the same pan, I added the garlic and jalapeno and cooked it just long enough to start smelling it. Then, I added the onions to the pan and lowered the heat a bit. see the brown bits from the seafood? Flavor there.

Add a little salt to the onions to help them give off liquid.

The onions take a minute or so to turn translucent at which time you add the asparagus. They will need about 3 minutes. Salt them a little too. If you see the onions or garlic turning brown lower the heat , otherwise cook them on medium. You can also add a squeeze of lime juice if you see things happening too quickly. As you can see from the photo,things are ok in my pan.

At that point, Neeta walked in and while trying to talk to her, I wasn't paying attention and added a whole can of coconut milk to the pan. (that's right, it was her fault!) About half a can is all that is necessary for this amount of food. Turn up the heat and cook the asparagus a few more minutes till they are almost done. And, add some curry powder to the pan.

Now, mix in the reserved seafood and let it all cook for an additional minute cranked up to high heat. Right before you plate it, add the juice of one lime.If you look at the photo of the dish up top and compare it to this one, you will notice the cook left a good amount of the sauce in the pan. This would be points off if I were grading!

We are going to a wedding over the weekend, so I won't be posting. Friends have asked me to officiate which is very nice. I'm sort of a chaplain for a group of people I'm associated with from Brooklyn. It's a long story for another time. Keep the faith!

Sothwestern Italian Fusion Salad with Jalapeno Corn Bread

2010-05-10T08:30:00.000-07:00

I really like the flavors of Southwestern cuisine, but other than lime, jalepeno hot sauce and cumin, I really don't have a lot of pantry items that can be called Mexican or Southwestern. So, this salad came about because I was craving cornbread and because the avocados at the market are relatively cheap. I guess I'm Italian at heart so putting this together seems more Italian to me than anything else. Anyhow, the bottom line is that it tasted pretty good. I started building the salad by washing and drying some red leaf lettuce which formed the base of the dish. Then, I put together one diced Roma tomato, some canellini beans (yeah, I know -they were left over otherwise I'd have used black beans), a 3 inch piece of cucumber, diced, chopped onion, one diced jalapeno pepper, the juice of one lime, s&p, and olive oil. I arranged this mix over the top of the lettuce, sliced up the avocado, some cheddar cheese and a few baby heirloom tomatoes and placed them around, then added more olive oil and a few more drops of lime juice. If I had remembered, I'd have thrown in a few black olives.To go with this, I baked up my skillet corn bread the recipe for which may be obtained here.

Why another salad? For one, the wife loves avocado, so this is another way I slip greens (the lettuce) into her diet and the beans and cheese are for protein. The corn bread is a no- brainer. It's just plain good. Give it a try.

It's freakin hot ! Let's have a salad.

2010-05-04T09:11:00.000-07:00

We eat a lot of salads in the summer. They are always easy to prepare and perhaps because they are served at room temperature seem lighter and more palatable with the heat of the day. And, in case you don't already know from reading my posts, I am married to a woman with limited tolerance for non Guyanese food which always relies on rice or roti as the starch of choice. (See my Guyanese food post for more clarity) So this one is not necessarily typical of my salads but is a good choice because it highlights the diversity of what can be included in the choices available. Because I am Italian, I eat salads by mixing everything on my fork. Neeta, on the other hand eats in descending order of what she likes. This annoys me, but apart from admonishing her occasionally to "eat everything together" I can't seem to prevent her from making separate piles of her favorites for later consumption. This squirrel like behavior aside, she enjoys salads even if it means having to eat greens.

Here are the key players in my composition. On the top left is a potato salad I put together using sweet potatoes. After boiling them for 20 minutes (Start them in cold water), I peeled them , cut them into cubes and immediately added salt and vinegar. Then I let them sit and absorb the flavor of the vinegar while I made other preparations. After they cooled, I tasted them to see if they had enough salt and vinegar, added a little shallots and tamari roasted almonds (for a hit of added protein) and drizzled on some extra virgin olive oil. In the foreground, you see some cut up slices of cheese and a bowl of tomatoes, olives, avocado and shallots which are marinating together in olive oil. In the top right of the photo is a bowl of cubed albacore tuna which I bought earlier in the week. I gently poached it in salted water with a bay leaf and lemon peel till it was medium rare and marinated it in extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice and parsley for a few days. You will notice the common ingredient in this salad is the olive oil. It is worth mentioning here that without a premium oil, this meal is less than spectacular. I have the wonderful advantage of living in Foodie Heaven here in decadent old New York where we have so many sources for quality ingredients. The oil I used for this dish I found in Fairway Supermarket on the Westside which has a tasting station for its different varieties of oil. My current favorite is a Sicilian bottled "Novello" or new oil from Biancolilla olives which Fairway sells under their own label. I love it. It has the aroma of new mowed hay with a delicate fruity taste. It's the real star of this dish.

Fish Sticks and Pinapple Chutney

2010-04-29T09:48:00.000-07:00

Today, I happened to catch the last minute of Rachel Ray's daily TV show on ABC. At the point I tuned in, the camera was on a sandwich which she had concocted, and Rachel was saying to the applause of her audience, "That's what's for dinner tonight." It made me think of the impact shows like that and blogs too have on the eating habits of their followers. Do people in fact look to television or the internet to decide what to have for dinner? I hope my readers know that this is not the style of choosing what and how to cook I call the Your Italian Grandma method. I'm hoping that even the casual reader of my blog understands that my approach is to first, establish a pantry, then to shop looking for the freshest and cheapest ingredients you can find. Generally, that means you will be buying local since the least expensive food is usually that which is in season (therefore abundant) and nearby so you aren't paying for shipping from Australia. Now, it matters little whether you like Italian, Asian, Southwestern, or Ethiopian cuisine for that matter. The pantry you establish should have the necessary dairy products, spices, dried ingredients and sauces necessary to cook those cuisines. I find it necessary to mention this because recently I read about the tons of food Americans throw away every year. I believe that cookbooks, television and the internet contribute to this waste if cooks are consulting these sources for daily inspiration. No, I say learn the basics of cooking first. That's why my posts are often very detailed. I don't want you to learn to cook my recipes. I want you instead, to understand the method, be it boiling, baking, braising or whatever that I employ . Once you develop the knowledge of how to treat fish or chicken or swisschard or potatoes, you no longer have to slavishly follow recipes. You should be able to take what you have bought, combine it with the pantry items you keep in stock and produce good tasting and different meals every week. Don't get me wrong. I read other blogs. I watch certain TV shows all the time. I even like to aimlessly page through cookbooks. But, I rarely write things down or follow a recipe that requires me to go out and buy an ingredient I will use only once. When I watch someone like Mario Batali as an example of someone who I really admire, it's to see how he employs different methods to achieve the results he desires. It's to see which ingredients he uses to flavor his dishes. I rarely copy recipes. I look always to improve my methods of cooking. I hope my readers do the same.

So today, I would like to show you how to fry a piece of fish. I bought some wild Atlantic salmon which I thought would be nice to go along with the pineapple chutney I had on hand . I had it on hand, because the pineapple looked very nice and was also a good price. I originally purchased it because I thought it would pair well with the strawberries I bought which also were cheap (due to a bumper crop in Florida). Anyhow, there was left over pineapple. I didn't take pictures, but I made the chutney by frying some onion, then adding garlic, ginger paste (discovered this in an Asian supermarket- it's almost as good as fresh ginger), and red bell pepper. For heat, I used one of the fiery hot peppers from Guyana we have frozen. After all that softened, I added raisins and the pineapple and some white wine vinegar and sugar. I then cooked it down till it looked like chutney.

The first thing I did was start my rice. I had some left over canned peas which I wanted to serve with the rice by stirring them in at the end. I always use frozen or fresh peas with this one exception, that is to cook an old Ambrosino family favorite, spaghetti and peas which I will share with you some day. Anyway, I had some left over peas from that recipe.

One of the things you learn by doing this a lot is to set up a breading and a frying station. So here's my breading set up. The salmon has been sliced into "sticks" The paper towel I used to dry off the fish before I dipped it in flour, then egg, then bread crumbs to which I added salt and pepper. As I breaded each stick, I laid it on a paper lined baking sheet (not in the picture)

I fry in extra virgin olive oil over medium heat. You know the oil is hot enough when a few breadcrumbs placed in it begin to bubble immediately. Place the breaded sticks in the pan -don't overcrowd it! Turn them as they brown and have another paper lined plate ready to receive them. That's it. A simple delicious meal. That chutney was really good, by the way.