Entries from The Amateur Gourmet tagged with 'pasta'
The First Meal
The first meal that you cook in a new apartment is very, very important. We all remember what happened last time, don't we? I attempted to inaugurate our Park Slope apartment three years ago with Edna Lewis's fried chicken (fried in butter and lard) and didn't get the fat hot enough. The result? Gooey, gloppy, undercooked chicken and a cursed apartment that gave us bad heat over three harsh winters. (OK, I exaggerate: I liked that apartment. But the heat did suck)....
Orecchiette with Broccoli & Pancetta
Here's something for you to cook this weekend, something from the archives. It comes from The River Cafe Cookbook, a book I no longer own, but no matter. It's an easy enough recipe, I have it memorized. So easy: I can squeeze it all into this paragraph. Boil a pot of water, add salt. In a large skillet, add cubed pancetta--about two big slices worth. Add a splash of olive oil, raise the heat and let the pancetta start to brown. When it's getting closer to brown than not-brown, add broccoli florets--about two heads worth--to the salted water. Add 2 or 3 cloves of slivered garlic to the pancetta and some red pepper flakes. (Watch the garlic: don't let it burn.) When the broccoli is just cooked, but still al dente (1 or 2 minutes) lift with a spider into the skillet with the pancetta and garlic. Now drop a 1 lb box of orecchiette into that same salted broccoli water; stir it all around so the pasta doesn't stick to itself. Lower the heat on the broccoli and if the pan is too dry, add some pasta cooking water. Keep it on the lowest flame while the pasta cooks. When the pasta's just al dente (9 minutes later) add with the spider to the skillet with the broccoli and pancetta (it's ok if some pasta water gets in, it helps make the sauce). Toss all around until everything's coated and the pasta's totally cooked through and then, off the heat, add copious amounts of Parmesan cheese and one final drizzle of olive oil. Magnifico! There you have it: Orecchiette with Broccoli & Pancetta....
Pasta alla Norma
Eggplant is a funny vegetable. It’s not a vegetable that inspires passion, the way that asparagus or ramps do in springtime. It’s not a vegetable that anyone would put on a short list of favorite foods. If the farmer’s market held a prom, I’m pretty certain eggplant would be sitting by itself on a bench, chatting uneasily with a turnip, and waiting—hoping—someone might just ask it to dance. Well, eggplant, here I am in my tux: waddya say we ménage a trios with some tomato and basil? No, no, silly eggplant, we’re not going to make love—sorry—but we ARE going to make something better: Pasta alla Norma!...
Marea
It's rare to find a restaurant that strikes a perfect balance between sophisticated grandeur and homey comfort, but Marea is such a restaurant. It's the newest restaurant from Chef Michael White, whose other restaurants--Convivio and Alto--are justifiably revered for their highbrow Italian food. I've been to Alto, and liked it ok, but there was something a little fussy about it. Not so, Marea. The food at Marea is robust and deeply flavorful, as comforting as any Italian food you've made at home, but far more accomplished and enjoyable....
The Big Reveal: Amateur Gourmet on Food2
Remember a long time ago, after I finished The FN Dish, I told you I had a top secret project I was working on, something I couldn't tell you about yet? Well, at last, the project is here and I'm incredibly excited to share it with you: it's my brand new web show The Amateur Gourmet on Scripps's brand new site, Food2. This show--which I co-created with my friend, co-writer and director, Joshua Hume--takes you, the viewer, along with me as I learn how to make classic staples from incredibly talented chefs. In our first episode, for example, we tackle the omelet; Josh Grinker from The Stone Park Cafe demonstrates the right way to do it and then you watch me fumble and flail until I, too, get it right. (Now, almost every weekend, I make an omelet based on the techniques I learned in this episode.) In our pasta episode, Marc Forgione of Marc Forgione restaurant (formerly Forge) gives us his grandmother's recipe for homemade pasta dough (a ratio even Michael Ruhlman might like) so I can appease the evil pasta puppets who attack me vis-a-vis A&E's "Intervention." Yes, it's pretty silly, but that's part of the fun. And in upcoming episodes we learn how to make steak from Chris Lim of BLT Steak, fish from Rebecca Charles of Pearl Oyster Bar and chocolate souffle from Michael Laiskonis of Le Bernardin. So please, by all means, click over, watch the shows, send them to your friends, rate them, leave comments, embed them on your websites and hopefully we'll be able to make more!...
Penne with Broccoli Rabe
Broccoli rabe is usually the first thing I buy at the farmer's market when the weather gets warmer. It's a transitional vegetable: something that bridges us from the dark and murky vegetables of winter to the bright and sprightly vegetables of summer. Raw, it tastes rather fresh and green, but cooked, it takes on all these wonderful qualities--it becomes bitter and complex and, as Lydia Bastianich says when she cooks with it on this old episode of Julia Child: "almondy."...
Pasta alla Puttanesca
I hope you don't consider it uncouth for me to talk about whores at such an early hour, especially on a Monday, but it's impossible to write about Pasta Puttanesca without sounding like a cast member of The Sopranos. (If that's the case, I should pronounce the word: "whoo-ore.") You see, Pasta alla Puttanesca translates in Italian to: "Pasta the way a whore would make it." The reasons are often disputed: some say it's because this is the pasta whores would make in Italy to lure in potential customers, others say it's because the strong smell--anchovies, garlic--made the pasta itself "smell like a whore." Either way, this is a delicious pasta and extremely easy to make: in fact, last night, it was Easter and all the grocery stores were closed. So I ran to the corner bodega and bought one box of ziti, one can of tomato puree, and used the garlic and anchovies and capers I had on hand to whip up a potful and it was a big hit: the Julia Roberts of whore pastas....
Gourmet Tuna Casserole
I found it. After my first attempt at tuna casserole, I finally found a worthy alternative. I was at the Community Book Store in Park Slope and there on the cookbook shelf was Andrew Carmellini's Urban Italian, a pretty dazzling book of recipes from the former chef of A Voce. I took the book to the grimy couch and sat down next to a cat, a dog and an iguana (this store has pets) and began flipping through it and there it was: "Ziti with Tuna, Red Onions and Cannelini Beans." Was it a casserole proper? Absolutely not. But it had many of the components of a tuna casserole--noodles, tuna, onions--and assembled them in a way that made much more sense to me. I quickly took out a pen and my secret little pad and copied down the recipe, hoping the iguana wouldn't rat me out to the store owners. On my walk home I picked up the ingredients and cracked my knuckles, ready for Italy to conquer America in the battle of noodles and tuna....
Penne Alla Vodka
So, in buying alcohol for our New Year's party, I either overdid it or I didn't overdo it in the right way. Meaning: we couldn't have had enough Champagne or Prosecco (bottles disappeared in less time than it took to open new ones), but--for some reason--the two giant bottles of vodka I bought (in mirrored disco-ball packaging) went mostly unconsumed. Which meant, the next day--Thursday--after we cleaned up, I stood face-to-face with more vodka than I knew what to do with. Actually, it didn't take long to figure out what to do with it: as the saying goes, "When life throws you vodka, make Penne Alla Vodka." I love Penne Alla Vodka. I once walked from the East Village to the West Village in 8 degree weather to get a bowl at Pepe Rosso. Their Penne Alla Vodka has pancetta in it, and may be one of the best and fastest foods to eat when you're freezing and starving in the West Village. But now I was home, hungover, and eager to use up as much vodka as I could on a classic American-Italian staple. In terms of using up vodka, I didn't do too well--it takes only 1/4 of a cup to make the recipe; but in terms of making dinner, I hit the ball out of the park....
Rigatoni Bolognese
December marks the transition from the sweet confections of Thanksgiving to the more complex, rewarding foods of winter. Sure, there's still Hanukkah with its fried latkes and apple sauce (an easy thrill) and Christmas with its sticky, gooey ham (which could fit comfortably on the Thanksgiving table) but, for the most part, when the weather gets cold, the food gets better. Case in point? Marcella Hazan's Rigatoni Bolognese....
How To Do A Cooking Demonstration
There a came a moment on Saturday at The Baltimore Book Festival where I looked out at the crowd and down at the food in front of me and realized: "Holy (expletive): I have to cook something for all these people!" It wasn't supposed to be that way. When I was first invited to The Baltimore Book Festival, I was under the impression that all they wanted me to do was read from my book (which, incidentally, comes out in paperback tomorrow!) I've read from my book several times, to various crowds, and the lessons I learned from those various experiences--read slower than you think necessary, lift your head now and again--had little application when I learned that in addition to reading from my book, the Baltimore people also wanted me to cook....
What To Do With Sugar Snap Peas
A mountain of sugar snap peas greeted visitors to the Union Square Farmer's Market on Friday. I was there because on Friday night I was hosting a screening of "Showgirls," a movie that Craig delights in as "sublimely disastrous." Browsing around the market, I was trying to piece together a meal concept and, aware that it was spring, I purchased two bunches of asparagus and then, at the pile of sugar snap peas, I went a little crazy and bought two pounds of them! And would you believe, all two pounds were gone and consumed by Friday night....
Zite with Onions, Sausage & Fennel
It's a big heaping mess, but boy is it good. The recipe comes from "The Silver Spoon Cookbook," a birthday gift from Matthew my show's director and a book that's called Italy's version of "The Joy of Cooking." This specific recipe comes from the special back section where Italian chefs offer up their own favorite dishes and is it any surprise that the chef whose recipe I fluttered to first was Lydia Bastianich? Her Cavatappi with Sun-Dried Tomatoes and Cannellini Beans is an Amateur Gourmet staple--we eat it here at least once every two weeks. Plus, the recipe she offers up in this book--ziti with onions, sausage and fennel--is something I've seen her make on her show and it's a naturally enticing combination. You saw the end result on this week's FN Dish and let me tell you, it was tremendous. The fat from the sausage enriches the pasta, the fennel and onion add a lovely sweetness, and then you douse the whole thing with cheese. It's a crowd-pleaser, and definitely something to make before it gets warm outside. Here's the recipe......
Do better ingredients make a difference?
I make Cavatappi with Sun-Dried Tomatoes and Cannellini Beans on a very regular basis. (Click here for the recipe). It's a great pasta dish because the sun-dried tomatoes make it taste bright and summery and the beans make it hardy (hearty? how do you spell that?) and substantial. Everyone loves it and plus you get to dump a ton of cheese on top, which makes everyone love it even more. Recently, I was at Dean & Deluca in SoHo browsing around when I decided I was going to make my Cavatappi for dinner. I'd just grab the standard ingredients--the garlic, the cavatappi, the sun-dried tomatoes and the beans--shoot home on the subway and make it. But this being Dean & Deluca, it wasn't quite that simple: the sun-dried tomatoes were behind the glass case, they were imported, and a man had to scoop them into a container for me. The beans, too, were imported as you can see in the above photo. And the pasta itself wasn't DeCecco, it was real dried Italian cavatappi that I'd actually purchased at the Italian store in the Chelsea market a few days earlier. So this version of Cavatappi undoubtedly had superior ingredients. Did that yield a superior result? The answer is pretty much: yes. It's almost taken for granted in the chef community that better ingredients make better food, but I hadn't really put that to the test at home. Yet these sun-dried tomatoes were electric, they were so tangy and sweet. The beans had more depth and tasted more convincingly Italian (ok, that's a stretch--but they were certainly more noticeable than my normal canned beans). And the pasta was very good though, I guess, not mind-blowingly different. So, basically, the good sun-dried tomatoes made my Cavatappi a better Cavatappi. Are they essential? Absolutely not. It's just good to confirm that better ingredients can make for better food....
What was the best thing you ate this weekend?
My answer's easy: we had leftover basil from a soup I made on Friday night (a Tuscan bean soup that I'll tell you about later in the week). I whipped up a quick pesto--garlic, pine nuts, and salt zapped with the basil and then olive oil streamed in through the tube, grated Parmesan added at the end--and, instead of using dried spaghetti as I normally might, I made linguini from scratch: That might sound incredibly audacious, but it really wasn't. I used a Lydia Bastianich recipe and it was this simple: put two cups of flour into a bowl, add 2 eggs, 1/4 cup olive oil and 3 Tbs of cold water. That's it. Stir together with a fork until it comes together into a ball and then knead it in the bowl. Once it's really together, put on a floured board and need for another few minutes. Wrap in plastic, let rest 30 minutes, and then put through your pasta machine. Now I won't lie, my machine was causing me some frustration. Craig heard me yelling a certain word that starts with "F" from the other room, and that's because: (1) the machine kept hopping around, the clamp that's supposed to stick it to the table wasn't working; and (2) mysteriously, the first setting wasn't flattening the pasta the way it should have, it was making it all dimpled and weird. I resolved this by rolling it out a lot by hand and then feeding it through the machine: once I did that, it was a cinch. I got a big pot of water boiling, cooked the pasta for less than a minute, and then tossed with the pesto. It was fantastic. But enough about me...what was the best thing you ate this weekend?? P.S. My Next Iron Chef post is up on The Food Network site, check it out here. P.P.S. Last week I did an interview with Jewcy, a Jewish website, and if you want to read all about my bris and how the mohel botched it, you can click here. P.P.P.S. You may have noticed my picture quality looks a little funky: that's because my real camera's in the shop, so I've been using my cellphone camera. Hopefully my camera will be repaired and ready this week. Thank you....
My Burnt Foot
Picture it: my kitchen, last Thursday. I'm standing at the stove attempting to make Colman Andrews' recipe for Rigatoni with Chickpeas and Anchovies from Nancy Silverton's "A Twist of the Wrist" and I have a giant vat of water boiling for the pasta. The sauce is simple: you just take 12 anchovies, mash them up with salt, and then add one chopped up celery stalk and the liquid from a can of chickpeas. Only after opening the can and pouring the liquid in do I realize that somehow, quite strangely, I'd purchased kidney beans--even though I recall staring at a shelf of chickpeas at the store--and now the sauce is ruined. Luckily, I have chickpeas in my cabinet (I'd forgotten I had them) and 12 more anchovies and another celery stalk so I start the process over from scratch. I mash the anchovies with salt, I add the celery and the chickpea liquid and then, when the water's boiling, I add salt and half a box of rigatoni to the pot. For the past 365 days, I'd been using Diana's pot to make pasta. It's the perfect size: big enough to let the pasta move around, small enough to maneuver easily. But when she moved out she took the pot with her. So all I have now is a small pot, too small for good pasta, and a giant stock pot. That's what I'm using this night: the giant stock pot. It's enormous, towering on the back of my stove, shaking with activity as the pasta cooks. Here's where I'm an idiot. Colman Andrews says to drain the pasta in the sink and to add the pasta back to the pot to toss with the anchovies, chickpea water, chickpeas, and Parmesan cheese. I like the idea of tossing all this around in the empty pot: the residual heat will cook everything a bit, bring it all together. So I place a strainer in the sink and when the pasta's done I lift my giant stock pot off the stove and move it to the sink. I tilt it away from me, so the boiling water tips out ino the sink, only the pot is so heavy that the motion causes me to lose my grip a bit and I proceed to pour scalding hot water--bubbling, bursting, brusing water--all over my foot. My sock soaks up with the heat and I don't even yell out. I do a sharp intake of breath and put the pot on the floor as I pull off my sock. Then I hop around and yelp: "Ow! Ow! Ow!" I go to the couch and stare at my foot and there's not much to see. But it burns like Anne Coulter's vision for my life after death; and a few days later it looks like this. [WARNING: Do NOT show this picture to small children, bunnies, kittens, or anything else sweet and innocent and in danger of corruption--it will destroy their faith in humanity.] I am proud to say: this is my worst kitchen injury. Isn't it cool? But you must be wondering: how was the pasta? Was it worth it? Well this is what it looked like in the pot when I was ready to mix it all together, like Colman suggested: And here's the finished bowl, garnished with celery leaves: What did I think? Was it worth all the stress? Do I need a podiatrist and/or a pedicurist? The answer: it was ok. I didn't love it, but granted this pasta would have to be pretty fantastic to overcome the emotional strife it caused me. I liked the loud presence of the anchovies, but I longed for the garlic that would've made this "dressing" more Caesar-like. If I did it again, I'd have mashed up garlic with anchovies at the beginning. But chances are, I won't be doing this again: I'm suffering from Post Traumatic Pasta Disorder. Maybe, after years of therapy, I'll be ready to make pasta again. If you see me cooking in rubber boots from now on, though, you'll understand why....
How To Make Broccoli and Cauliflower Bad For You (and utterly delicious)
This is a recipe from The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, a cookbook I've long dismissed as too complex, too fussy, too--well--not me. Flipping through it now, the recipes are long-winded, they go on for pages, and the pictures are too few and far between. And yet this is a cookbook that has something to say--I can't deny that--and every now and then I pick it up and hope that I may stumble across something that will win me over. Tonight was such a night. It's a super simple Zuni recipe ("Pasta with Spicy Broccoli and Cauliflower"), a recipe that spans only two pages, and yet now I will attempt to reduce it to just a few short paragraphs. 1. Take cauliflower and broccoli and slice it into 1/8th-inch slices (about as much as you think can fit in your saute pan). Heat about 1/4 cup of olive oil in the pan on medium heat and then add the cauliflower and broccoli, leaving behind the stray bits for later: Cook until the cauliflower and broccoli are brown on the edges. Don't move them around!! 2. Once browned, add salt (a light sprinkling) and more oil (this is why it's not so healthy, I added a lot of oil) and then the rest of the cauliflower bits from the board. Then add 1 Tbs capers and toss around. Then let cook until the edges begin to brown again. 3. Drop 1 pound (or so) of penne or fussili (or any pasta, really) into a pot of boiling salted water. Try to time it so the pasta will be done when the sauce is done. 4. When the broccoli and cauliflower has shrunken by 1/3rd, reduce the heat, add more oil, and then add chopped anchovy (6 filets), chopped garlic (six cloves), 1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds, and 4 to 8 pinches red chili flakes. This is a highly unusual step--adding the garlic and flavorings AFTER the vegetables have cooked--but it makes the flavors way more pungent. Stir them around and cook for a few more minutes. 5. Taste! Is it tasty? Judy Rodgers says, "Every flavor should be clamoring for dominance." (She also has you add olives and toasted bread crumbs, but I didn't have any on hand). 6. When the pasta is done, toss it with the sauce and look: You've made broccoli and cauliflower oily, unhealthy and terrifically delicious! It's a great pasta dish. You can add cheese if you want, but I didn't have any. And so, the Zuni Cafe cookbook gets a pat on the back tonight. Well done, Zuni. Well done....
How To Make Bland Pasta Better
The pasta you see above may call to you and cause you to eat your computer screen, but don't be fooled. Before I put that pasta through Amateur Gourmet Pasta Rehab, it was a bland, boring mess. Two ingredients came from the farmer's market: fresh corn and basil. The corn, as I should've guessed this time of year, wasn't very sweet (even though it was advertised as sweet corn). The recipe (which you can read here) came from Michael Chiarello who is that suave-looking guy on the Food Network. I don't blame him for this pasta being bland, but--strangely enough--I do blame him for the Arab-Israeli conflict. Go figure. So I've had this experience before: the pasta's in the pot boiling away (in properly salted water) and you're making the sauce and you taste the sauce and it tastes pretty excellent and then you take the pasta out just before it's done to finish cooking in the sauce (an essential step, I think, so the pasta and sauce are united as one) and then once you've turned the heat up and let the liquid all evaporate (when the pasta and sauce are united as one, you should be able to drag a wooden spoon across the bottom of the saute pan and just see the bottom of the pan) you taste and it's pretty bland. That's what happened with this pasta. Some might've fallen on their knees and screamed out, "Why!! Why, God, why!?" and then broke out into "Why God Why" from Miss Saigon but not me. Here's what you do to make bland pasta better: 1. Add salt. Well, duh. But this is a tricky step. At this point, there should already be salt in the pasta (from the cooking water) and in the sauce itself because, before you added the pasta, you properly salted it. So if you add too much salt here, there's no going back. So a light sprinkling, a stir and taste: better? Don't overdo it, especially if you're going to add cheese. 2. Grate lots of Parmesan or Pecorino into a bowl. I say into a bowl because if you do it directly over the pasta, it'll quickly melt and you'll forget how much you added. So I grate a big bowl full of cheese and then scatter the cheese over the pasta while it's still in the pan, stir it through and taste. That's key for pasta rehab: taste taste taste after each step! How does it taste now with the cheese? Less bland? Need more salt? After steps 1 and 2, salinity should not be an issue. The rest of the steps will just help with bumping up the flavor. 3. Grind some pepper over it. 4. Sprinkle some red pepper flakes over it. 5. Give it a drizzle of olive oil. Yes, that last step may seem strange but it's a VERY Italian thing to do as I've seen Mario do it on TV, I've read Marcella Hazan's instructions to do that and then, of course, Dominic DeMarco does it to the pizza at Di Fara. The cold olive oil provides an uncooked fruity olive oil finish to what should be, by now, a very delicious pasta. Stir that through and taste again. How did we do? Use any of the ingredients in steps 1 through 5 to fix whatever problems your pasta has. If it still tastes bland, you must've done something really wrong. Maybe pasta isn't your thing. Maybe you should take up knitting?...
Fun with Feta
Oh commenters, you complete me. I did a post last week called Summer Food where I asked you, my readers, what foods really capture the summer season. The responses were great, but one stuck out in my head as I made my way to the grocery store this weekend. That was KatyBelle's. She said, "Anything vaguely Mediteranian or involving Feta cheese basically" and went on to praise watermelon with Feta and a Greek pasta salad also with feta. Well look what I made this weekend: That's hummus on the left--you blitz chickpeas, tahini, lemon juice, garlic, olive oil, salt, and pepper in the food processor (the recipe's on Epicurious: the trick is to reserve the chickpea liquid and then to add it at the end until the hummus is smooth and creamy (which, come to think of it, was another tip from a reader from the last time I made hummus))--and, on the right, watermelon and feta salad. I just bought a watermelon already cut up and cut smaller it into nice squares. I tossed it with olive oil, salt, pepper, some slivers of onion and, of course, Feta. It tasted great and only now do I realize what it's missing: mint. I made it with mint once before and that was over the top. The next day I put the Feta to more good use (do you prefer it when I capitalize or leave uncapitalized "feta" ?) when I improvised this pasta salad: It's sort of based on a Mario Batali dish I made last year, only this time I used cherry tomatoes and I used penne. Essentially, you chop up some garlic and throw it in a bowl with lots of olive oil, a sprinkling of salt, and pepper and, if you'd like, some red chile flakes. Then you take a carton of cherry tomatoes (or grape tomatoes) cut them in half and throw them in with everything else. I added a splash of red wine vinegar and I added even more later: do it to taste. You also add some chopped up some parsley but you could use basil or any other herb you enjoy. And that's basically it. You cook the pasta until just al dente then drain and add to this bowl. And then, of course, you top it with Feta. A simple, easy, and terrific summer dinner. Thanks KatyBelle! You and Feta are my new best friends....
