Pranzo Domenica In Astoria!

Old school Italy by way of Astoria. What could be better?

Cockle!

This meal was built around three dishes I have made before and loved, another dish I made before and kind of fucked up, and yet another dish that I ate once, dreamed about for the next four years, and never attempted to prepare until Saturday night. With most dishes like the latter, the longer you dream of cooking it without actually doing so, the more mythologized the dish becomes in your sense-memory.

Sometimes revisiting the Ghost Of Cuisine Past can be a terrible downer -- it turns out that the thing haunting your waking hours is nowhere near as good as you remembered. This was not the case with the "Grilled Onion Salad with Anchovies and Lemons."

I swear to God, I could eat this dish every day of the week, and I just might.

So simple. It's just grilled green onions (the sweet and the char are the hooks,) olive oil, little hunks of lemon, and whole cured anchovies.

The salt, the sweet, the bitter tang of the citrus, the char of the onions... I am telling you, it's BLISS. The last time I ate it was at my friend Victoria's Sicilian Family Christmas 4 years ago. I housed it. I was unable to attend their Christmas for 2 years, and then this year, the only thing I wanted to eat was that damned salad. When I got there, I saw the traditional Bacalao, Bacon-wrapped Scallops, Stuffed Shrimp, Scungili Salad... But, where were the fucking onions and anchovies? Zia Tina (Aunt Tina) had run out of time to assemble it so there the salad sat, deconstructed, in the fridge.

I quickly remembered that it was more than a little rude to obsess over what wasn't there so I shut up. But don't think it didn't kill me a little inside not to ask for it, because it did. So here I am, a month later, making the salad. Thank god Victoria was there to run kitchen interference, because in my memory, the anchovies constituted the bulk of the dish, but in fact, its the exact opposite.

The green onions comprise the majority and the anchovies twinkle on the top like salty little principessi. Deelicious.

We started out with a gorgeous Crudité platter with Hot Bagna Cauda. Again, anchovies took a starring role, this time in a hot bath of butter, garlic, olive oil and lemon. Crazy good.

Then we moved on to cockles, cooked in white wine, olive oil, garlic, chicken stock and a little chili flake.

Added the lardons (BACON!!!) at the end for good measure and served in a bowl with a piece of good farm bread at the bottom. It went quickly.

Next course was the dish that I made and fucked up once before. After my second go around with Two Minute Calamari, Sicilian Style, I have decided that, even though I did not exactly "follow" the directions last time, Mario's recipe, as written, is just plain wrong. I discovered a similar problem with his published Beef Cheek Ravioli recipe a couple of years ago. Now, it helps that I worked for him and know what it his dishes are supposed to taste and look like, so I let memory be my guide this time, and it worked out very well. It is an unbelievably easy recipe, but multilayered.

First you make sauce,

then you sauté currants, pine nuts, chili flake and parsley in olive oil, then you add the sauce and Israeli Couscous that was previously par cooked for 2 minutes,

bring it to a boil, and add the calamari.

Cook for 2 more minutes, add the caperberries and you are set to serve.

We thinned it down with a little water, and used a lot more tomato sauce than the recipe called for. Fine enough. Even after the pasta course, people were still clamoring for more of this! The little 2 minute dish that could...

The pasta was a Buccatini with Walnuts, Chili Flake, Caciocavallo and Bread Crumbs.

Guest prep chef Michelle busts up the walnuts...

Again, simple and ridiculously good. There was a general criticism that it needed a little more cheese, which I agree with. Next time!

Next was Broccoli Rabe with Roasted Shallots, tossed with a touch of balsamic and olive oil,

along with Victoria's Sicilian Orange salad.

This dish is also ridiculously good. Orange segments, (we used regular juice oranges and blood oranges), oregano (dried) and red onion.

The juice of the oranges and a little olive oil make the dressing. Sweet and tart and spicy...everything you could ever want!

Saffron Panna Cotta with Little Red Grapefruit Segments for dessert. Uhh, yeah.

Many thanks to all the helpers I had in the kitchen-- (Victoria and Michelle-- two authentic Italian Ladies!), and of course, my long suffering but always game husband Karl. We had new peeps, old peeps and I think everyone will return.

I guess there is a reason that five million Italian restaurants can survive in this great metropolis!

Smothered Steak & Lane Cake...

“Miss Maudie baked a Lane Cake so loaded with shinny it made me tight.”
- Scout in Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird

I love Lane Cake, and so did Edna Lewis and Harper Lee, apparently. Making Smothered Steak really took me back to third grade. The smell of a cheap cut of meat, dredged in flour and sizzling with onions in bacon fat transported me back to my mother's kitchen, with that shitty-ass electric stove blazing, and my father (the chef) not cooking but occasionally coming over to give instruction. Now that was some good times! Ha. I was relegated to peeling potatoes (hated it) or cutting the bad parts out of the strawberries that were too ugly to sell at our fruit stand. The strawberries would then be cooked down with pectin and made into a jam that got stored in the quilted ball jars with homemade wax on top. We ate it over Ricotta pancakes that my mom made all the time. How funny. I haven't thought about that in about 25 years.

At any rate, making Smothered Steak may not transport you back to your childhood in Phoenix, but it will save your ass even if no one ever taught you to make gravy, because it makes its own. The flour breaks down into the water and bacon fat and meat juices and creates some of the best damn gravy you ever ate... and you didn't have to *DO* anything but cover it and turn on the oven. Praise the Lord and Pass the Biscuits!

Read on....

We started you hungry kiddies off with an old-school comfort food favorite, Deviled Eggs, which gave Karl the opportunity to break out his shmancy new pastry bag and tips... He loves the kitchen gadgets. I'm constantly coming across some new squoosher or slicer in the kitchen drawers...

Despite initial nozzle cloggage, the filling of the egg whites went off without a hitch.

Ahh... Just like they look in the May 1955 Better Homes & Gardens...

Then, we sliced up a fuckload of delicious green market potatoes and turnips, and put them in a pan with chicken stock, butter, salt and pepper. They roasted covered in the oven for 45 minutes...

At some point, we realized we had over-brothed the mixture, so we pulled out some of the delicious vegetable/potato/chicken liquid with a baster, and set it aside.

There were beautiful Chiogga Beets from the Union Square Greenmarket, which we boiled with some other red beets, peeled while hot, and dressed in oil and sherry vinegar. Just gorgeous.

Remember that delicious chicken/potato/turnip water? We mixed it with the last of our beautiful pork pot liquor, onion, garlic and a hambone...

...and simmered up some chard, radish tops and other greens. I love it when a plan comes together.

Oh, Jeebus.

Sometimes, the simpler a recipe, the better it is. I took a few jars of the delicious Jersey Tomatoes I put up back in the summertime, sauteed them with garlic, onions, allspice and fresh grated nutmeg and put them in a roasty pan. I then topped them with slices of buttered farm bread, and baked in the oven until crispy. Voila! Baked Tomatoes With Crusty Bread. Just wonderful.

Then, the Smothered Steak... Dredged the delicious steaks in a flour mixture...

...gave 'em a little toss and a beat down...

...fried 'em up in the pan in some bacon fat left from the bacon I had previously fried...

...arranged 'em in a roasting pan with sauteed onion slices on top and some more of that chicken stock mixture left over from the potatoes. I covered them tightly with tin foil and left them to cook sloooooow in the oven.

Fantastic.

Soak that up with a little bread...

Served them with some warm Roasted Apples for a little sweet/savory, and a gorgeous mixed green salad with (you guessed it! Hot Bacon Dressing), and called it good.

Finally, Lane Cake!

Smashy smashy.

Karl beat the hell out of a couple of coconuts, grated them up in the Cuisinart, and mixed in a few different kinds of raisins and pecans. This got mixed in a hot pan with a dozen egg yolks and sugar, and then cooled with a whole CUP of bourbon. I shit you not.

While the filling/icing cools, we baked three layers of cake that was full of egg whites (you were wondering about all the yolks, weren't you?)

Hot, delicious comfort food, followed by a Bourbon dessert. Good God, Y'All... Thanks, Edna.

Dinner for 6, Without Pictures

A blog post without pictures? Isn't that like a song without words? Perhaps it is. Much like the song without words, maybe this will allow you a little... meditation.
I hesitated before writing about this past dinner, as it was part of my "private" life... It was a dinner that did not involve dismantling a wild animal, seething or loathing myself in the kitchen, or more than 6 diners... and that's including Karl and me. It was unbelievably civilized, which, if you read this blog on any sort of regular basis, you know is definitely not status quo... But it was, oh, so nourishing to my soul, and I am not just talking about the food.

It all began about a week ago at The International Meat Market (my local guys who hook me up on a regular basis,) where I was shopping for pig and duck livers to make country paté. I was waiting for my number to be called when I spied it. A wild boar shoulder roast. Wild Boar!!!

I hadn't had wild boar since I was in Portugal about 4 years ago with my friend Cucci, where we ate it in every town we visited. It was The Über Pig, and unlike anything I had ever tasted before. Firm and fleshy and succulent and absolutely... well, pork, and yet somehow more.

I don't kid myself: I acknowledge that almost everything tastes better when you are travelling and eating food prepared by people whose grandparents taught them to prepare it that way. There is something particularly satisfying about food prepared by those who grew or farmed it. That being said, the current "Eat Local" has its rewards, but can also be ridiculously impractical unless you're living in a rural area, or have recently won the lottery... But I digress. Back to Über Pig...

All I knew is that I found myself staring at a gorgeous shoulder of Wild Boar in the display of my local butcher shop, four years and 3500 miles away from Évora, and the effect was so powerful I was momentarily paralyzed. I had already committed to cook for others over the weekend, and the menus had been set, so I left without my little boar. I left that gorgeous cut of meat there and silently prayed that no one else would see it. I thought that if I could render it invisible using only the power of my avarice, then I could come back and carry it home and love it, and prepare it in a manner that would do justice to its deliciousness...

Later in the week, It comes to me: Invite people over for dinner! On a Wednesday! Karl called the butcher. SOMEONE HAD BOUGHT ÜBER PIG. Fuckers. (incidentally, this is where I admit that though I am consumed with jealousy that they bought it before I could, I am equally consumed with curiosity. What are THEY doing with it????????? I wish I knew.)

But wait! John says he has another shoulder that he has *just* put into the freezer. 'Pull it out of there!!!' I say! And off Karl scampers to get it.

We excitedly sent out emails to our guests, with the header: "Wild Boar and YOU." They excitedly responded that, yes... hell, yes... FUCK, yes, they'd like to come help us eat Über Pig.

I cannot decide what to do with this magnificent animal after we slooooow braise it in red wine, onions, rosemary, garlic and pork stock for seven hours at 275 degrees. Karl offers to try his hand at gnocchi. Aha. What a fantastic idea! But what sauce for Über Pig? Tomato reduction? Perhaps it will overpower the boar... A Marsala Sauce? Might be too sweet... Wild Mushroom Sauce.... Delicious, but not quite deep enough.

I decide to combine elements of an old Sicilian fig recipe for boar sauce, and (to satisfy my love of mushrooms) a mushroom sauce.

The gnocchi didn't end up as aesthetically pleasing as Karl had hoped. I explained to him that he had, in fact, inadvertently made a rustic varietal called Gnocchi Malfatti. He bought it, and, malformed or not, they tasted light, butter-potatoey and fantastic.

The guests arrived, bearing copious amounts of excellent wine. It seems that I was not the only one inspired by Wild Boar.

We started things off with our new house cocktail, The Love Shack. The base is the Melissa Clark cordial, with a little added white rum, juice from 1/2 of a lime and a touch of superfine sugar. Shake over ice, and pour into highball glasses, top with seltzer and stir. Perfumed with citrus and spices, the lime gives it a little zing. It is gorgeous, refreshing, and slightly romantic. Just exactly as we aspire to be.

The first course: The Country Paté, but this time, served with gorgeous Saffron Mustard, courtesy of Millisime and some of Karl's homemade pickled red onions.

Fuck, yeah.

We followed it with my old favorite, Fennel & Blood Orange salad.

Then the main event:

Braised Wild Boar over Gnocchi Malfatti.

We served it with Wilted Chard and escarole tossed in a Salsa Verde (anchovies, capers, fresh herbs and olive oil)

Dessert was wheels of Vacherin with sliced Bosc Pears and Late Harvest Gewürztraminer from Holdredge . Delicious...

Mmmm. Spirit sated, everyone left by 1 am. It was a school night, so I left the kitchen a horrible mess for poor Karl to clean up the following morning, and off to sleep we went, dreaming of boars and figs and pears and friends...

Wild Boar For Your Friends

One shoulder of Wild Boar, 5 -7 lbs.
1 head Garlic, smashed
1 huge Onion, chopped
2-3 sprigs of Rosemary
1 bottle Dry Red Wine
2 pints Pork Stock
Salt & Pepper to taste
Olive oil

Rub the shoulder with salt, pepper, half the smashed garlic and a little olive oil (Use your hands!)
Sear on all sides in a deep roasting pan.
Saute the onion and remaining garlic with a little more olive oil and the residual boar fat in pan.
Add the bottle of wine, 1 pint of the pork stock the rosemary sprigs and the boar shoulder.
Cover tightly, put in oven, and cook at 275 degrees.
Check every hour to be sure liquid remains. If it looks like it's starting to reduce too far, add more pork stock.
Slooooow braise for 5-7 hours.

About an hour before it's done, you can make the

Sauce

5 cloves Garlic, smashed and diced
4 Shallots, diced
6 sprigs Thyme, stripped
1 sprig Rosemary, stripped
Olive oil to sauté
2 cups pan juices from braising wild boar (you can draw it out with a baster)
1.5 cups Red Wine (Ours was Pinot Noir that we had left sitting on the counter)
1/2 cup Dried Porcini Mushrooms
1 package Dried Figs (about 1/2- 2/3 cup) roughly chopped
Splash of Wine Vinegar. (Banyuls Wine Vinegar, again, courtesy of our friends at Millissime.
salt and pepper to taste

Cover mushrooms with boiling water and let them sit. You will use both the mushrooms and the liquid.
Saute herbs, shallots and garlic until translucent.
Add a splash of vinegar.
Add the wine, reduce slightly.
add the stock and figs, simmer and reduce further. The sauce will thicken.
Add the mushrooms and their liquid. Taste for balance.
I added a splash of Worchestshire sauce at this point, to add a little depth.
Taste for balance and let the sauce simmer and further reduce for about 30 minutes.

When the boar is done, remove from the oven. Use tongs to put on serving dish, as it will literally fall apart. Add the sauce and lightly combine.

Serve over hot gnocchi, pasta, rice... you name it.

Hooray, Über Pig!

PS-- this is absolutely NO substitution for actually travelling to Portugal. Especially in rural areas. Go, and go soon. It is glorious.

Old School Edna, Y'All!

Edna knows.

Happy New Year, Hungry Kiddies!

Bush is in Israel (sightseeing), Hillary is shaken but back on top, 2 very white states put Obama in the lead, McCain is somewhere out there and it will be about 73 (?!?) degrees today....It is a New Year indeed!!

And what better way to celebrate the New Year than to go back to our old favorite, Edna Lewis? Gourmet published a recently discovered essay of hers last month... elegant as usual with many literary and old school cultural references. I'll say it; it made me misty. It also made me consider that when I cook from Edna I almost always cook her more "highbrow" recipes-- but why not change it up this time and cook dumplings, biscuits, greens and.... smothered steak? It starts to make me think of the REAL family dinner, as in, the one that I was forced to attend at home because it was the rule that we all eat together rather than me running amok all over the neighborhood with my friends.

So in the spirit of Old School and the great Edna Lewis (the one Unifier I can get behind anytime, anywhere), Join us Saturday, Jan 19th for Sunday Dinner on a SATURDAY NIGHT. Home cooking at it’s finest to warm you on a (presumably) cold winter’s night, including:

Baked Crusty Bread With Tomatoes I Put Up This Summer
Simmered Greens With Cornmeal Dumplings
Wilted Salad
Baked Apples
Brown Butter Creamed Bitter Greens
Smothered Steak
Potato/Turnip Casserole
Some ridiculous Layer Cake (perhaps Lane cake?)

We don’t care what you do for a living or how much you make or who your parents are, were, or will never be. We just want you to come, take a load off, eat some delicious food and meet some new people. Argue it all out, convert unbelievers, tell tales and laugh laugh laugh!

In Love and Garlic,

Tamara (Mrs!!!)