While in my borrowed body — let’s give me about a year — I’ll do the things that I’ve been thinking about so much lately. I’ll play in the snow with my dog. I’ll organize spontaneous outings with my husband — maybe even hop on a plane for a few days of swimming in the Caribbean. And I’ll definitely partake in the best New Year’s resolution that I’ve ever heard of: Molly Wizenberg’s decision to enjoy more breakfasts in 2011.

With my current body, mornings are a wash-out. I wake up late due to restless nights. I need to stretch, and ice, and pop a pain pill just to sit through my morning coffee and a possible bowl of Raisin Bran. Cooking, if I am lucky, comes later in the day, once I’ve begun to manage the pain.

So this new body is crucial if I intend to wake up and make these griddlecakes as often as I’d like. As yet, we’ve only eaten them for dinner. They transfer flawlessly from breakfast to dinner — made with whole wheat flour for a savory-ness that’s wonderfully dinner-friendly – but I imagine (often) that these griddlecakes would be the perfect pick-me-up early in the morning (the time that I would be waking my new body up), with a cup of dark coffee, slatherings of butter, generous drizzles of maple syrup, caramelized apples, boiled kale, and thick smoked bacon.

We found a bag of the dry ingredients (kind of like gourmet Bisquik) in the pantry at Riverstead bed and breakfast, in Chilhowie, Tennessee, on the final (and favorite) leg of our honeymoon.  I’m not sure why they said the ingredients would make “griddlecakes” rather than pancakes, as all the research I’ve tried to dig up on the subject says the same, ambiguous thing: “American or Canadian pancakes (sometimes called hotcakes, griddlecakes, or flapjacks) are pancakes which contain a raising agent such as baking powder; proportions of eggs, flour, and milk or buttermilk create a thick batter.” A wikipedia search for “griddlecakes” even redirects to the pancake page.

My own understanding of griddlecakes vs. pancakes is that griddlecakes are made with whole wheat flour or some other whole grain flour, and are made smaller and thinner (less fluffy or cake like) than pancakes — but I don’t know where this knowledge comes from, as some things you come to know during your life have hazy, forgotten origins. I do know, though, why they are called Sweet Carolina griddlecakes — the whole wheat flour in the batter is Anson Mills Sweet Carolina whole wheat graham flour. You can buy Anson Mills whole wheat graham flour online, along with a bag of their fine cloth-bolted white flour, which goes into the batter as well.

The rest of the ingredients are the same that you would use for any other pancake, griddlecake, or hotcake batter: milk or water, an egg, baking powder, and salt. You prepare them exactly as you would any other recipe, too, making them as small as silver dollars, or as big as dinner plates. I like to rub butter all over the griddle before ladling on the batter; it browns as the griddlecake cooks, and brown butter is particularly delicious on whole wheat griddlecakes.

With this new body, I’d like to make lots of breakfast recipes, especially those from the new addition to my cookbook shelf, but these griddlecakes would make a weekly appearance on the morning table, at least.

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Whole-Wheat Griddlecakes

Adapted from the Anson Mill’s website, Makes 10-12 griddlecakes
(You can buy pre-made packages of the griddlecake dry ingredients here.)

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1 cup Anson Mills Antebellum-Style Graham Flour
½ cup Anson Mills Fine Cloth-Bolted Pastry Flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 large egg
1 ¼ cups milk or water, or a combination of both

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, or more, as needed

Put all ingredients except butter together in a medium bowl, whisking with a fork until just combined. Set an electric griddle on high, or place a large skillet over high heat. Rub some butter onto griddle or pan. Ladle however much batter you’d like onto the griddle (I usually use about ½ of a ladle-full, for small griddlecakes), trying to make the batter fom a circular shape (though non-circular ones are charming in a adorably-ditzy housewife way). Let cook until the edges are looking cooked and you see a couple of small bubbles rising to the top-side of the griddlecake. Lift griddlecake with a spatula, quickly rub some more butter on the griddle, and flip. Cook for another minute or two, until the other side begins to brown, then rub some butter on the side facing up, flip and repeat. (This butter-rubbing makes for deliciously crisp sides.) Transfer griddlecake to a platter and begin again. (Even though I’m almost embarrassed to admit this, I usually slide a tiny pat of butter above the griddlecake on the platter, so that each griddlecake added to the platter will sit atop some butter, and then have more butter laid atop of it, creating the perfect stack of griddlecakes and pats of butter.)

Serve with lots of good maple syrup.

Note: I don’t have true recipes for the caramelized apples and the kale, but if you would like to make them, follow these loose guidelines.

For the apples:

Peel and chop 4 granny smith apples, then place them in a bowl and sprinkle some lemon juice over them to keep them bright and crisp. Add a good knob of butter to a pan and melt it over medium heat. Add some sugar, about a fourth to a half cup, and let the sugar caramelize in the butter for a while, 10 minutes maybe. Once the sugar turns a nice amber color, add the apples. Cook them, stirring occassionally, until they are tender on the inside, with caramelized outsides — be careful not to break them up while you stir. Use a light hand and a silicone spatula. Add some cinnamon towards the end.

For the kale:

Buy some good kale at a farmers market or decent grocery — nothing with wilted leafs or huge, thick stems. Prepare the kale by stripping the leaves from the stems (my dog loves to eat the stems) and tearing the leaves into small pieces. Wash in a salad spinner and then add kale to a pot or dutch oven. Add water — for a bunch of kale I add about two cups of water or homemade chicken stock — and a good knob of butter and begin cooking kale over medium-low heat. Cover, let cook for a while, 20-30 minutes, then uncover, add a good pinch of salt, and continue cooking until almost all of the water is gone and the kale is silky, tender, and delicious.

Her latest cookbook, One Big Table, is also wildly popular — and for good reason. It was researched over many, many years; Molly visited different regions of the country, spending weeks or months at a time, before retuning home to process, write, and cook. Then she spent years in the kitchens of Americans who’d recently immigrated into the United States, learning how they tweaked their homeland’s recipes to accommodate for the ingredients unknown here, or to allow for the inclusion of New World ones. Finally, she spent a year holding potluck dinners across America, where all sorts of people came to compete in recipe competitions and share their favorite dishes.

Instead of following the memoir-cookbook trend, writing a travel journal of her time on the road, Molly chose to stick to the recipes she found, creating a tome of American cookery. The recipes are unadulterated, not tweaked to suite Molly’s own tastes, or changed to make things easy, more accessible. They are the real deal — 100% Americana.

A quote by Clementine Paddleford in 1960 is included in One Big Table’s introduction:

We all have hometown appetites, every other person is a bundle of longing for the simplicities of good taste once enjoyed on the farm or in the hometown left behind.

It’s a quote that sums up the intention of One Big Table – Molly sought out these hometown appetites, expelling the notion that ‘Americans don’t cook’ with the many varied regional recipes, lovingly prepared by second, third, sixth generation cooks everyday. But it’s also a quote that stopped me short.

I’m not sure I have a hometown appetite. I can’t say I’m a bundle of longing for the cuisine of my youth. Save for a few family recipes (tulta and piange, two recipes made with spinach with names made up by our family  — “tulta,” derives from “torta,” which means “cake,” since it is a spinach and rice cake, and “piange” in Italian means “cry,” which I cannot explain save for the spinach stuffing being so good you might cry.)

Molly writes that she has “never known a food-obsessed person who did not have someone in a cotton apron… standing behind them;” but she’s never met me. When I picture the people who guided me toward my obsession with food, it’s the faces on covers of cookbooks, the celebrity chefs on cooking shows, and the men and women in the kitchens at my favorite restaurants.

It perturbed me, reading the introduction to One Big Table. If I have no hometown appetite, will my food be remembered? Will my children, and their children, have a sense of belonging? Will they not have the comforting, cozy feel of history that comes through family recipes? Or, does that not matter so much, when their mother (or grandmother) cooks well, feeds them varied recipes, from all over the world, not just their hometown?

There’s an itchy little part of me that fears something will be missing, if there is no story or sense of place in the food my family will eat.

So I better get started now. I’ve bought a new recipe box, and I’m going to write down our very best, most comforting, tradition-making recipes, to hand down to future generations once I’m too old to cook them. I might not have a “hometown appetite” ingrained in me, but I know I can make one up.

Carbonara, that inimitable pasta covered in a silky egg sauce and garnished with sweet peas, salty pork jowl, and lots of black pepper, is the first recipe to enter the box, for a few reasons: First, I am (in good part) Italian. Or, Italian-American. I have family in Italy, and our few family recipes are Italian. And although I come from Dutch, German, and Irish lines as well, we’ve identified, mostly, with being Italian. (I grew up in North Jersey, after all.)

Carbonara, also, is already a tradition in my immediate family of two. Jim and I make carbonara whenever we return home after a long trip on the road, or when our spirits are down. We make carbonara in the middle of winter, when we need the comfortable feeling that comes with a blanket of creamy egg sauce. And we make it in summer, adding fresh vegetables and loads of herbs, because the comforts of carbonara are useful anytime of the year. It’s become a testament to our cozy, loving home. We will be making carbonara for many years into the future.

And, most importantly, carbonara is just dang delicious.

I’ve talked about this before, but I’ll go over the rules of carbonara again for you here, in case you’d like to enter it into your own recipe box. For a great carbonara, you need to pace yourself. Don’t rush things. First, get your hands on some real guanciale (pork jowl) because bacon is too smoky and usually cut too thin, and pancetta is too salty. Guanciale is cured with salt and black pepper, adding a particular flavor not found in bacon or pancetta and, if cooked slowly over a medium-low heat, it’s high proportion of fat will become golden and crunchy on the outside, with pork-belly-like meltyness on the inside. If you can’t find guanciale, I’d leave out the pork altogether, and try to find some pork lard to cook the peas in.

Once the guanciale is completely cooked, remember to take it out of the pan and let it rest on paper towels before adding it to the pasta. You need this resting time for the crunchy parts to set a little, so they won’t turn to mush in the bowl later.

Now, on the matter of pasta. No matter what any fussy Italian says, it really doesn’t matter what type of pasta you use. I’ve made it with linguine, spaghetti, orecchiette and even, in a pinch, bow-tie. This last time around was my first using Bartiliono’s cirioline all’uovo — egg pasta nests — and it was my favorite pasta yet, though it’s somewhat hard to find. Most of the time however, we just use whatever’s in the pantry. Carbonara is best as a spur-of-the-moment meal. One to whip up after a long day, or during a snow-storm, with items grabbed from the pantry. (Just make sure you have a good stock of guanciale in your freezer at all times!) So, use whatever pasta you like, but, if you want to make it a little more special, use a premium, imported brand from Italy.

On to peas: I use frozen petite peas. They’re teeny and sweeter than garden peas, and worth the few extra cents. You don’t need more than a handful (one bag will provide you many carbonara’s worth) since peas are only in the dish to provide little hits of sweetness (some authentic recipes don’t call for peas, but I don’t see why). Also, even in the spring when fresh peas are available, I tend to forgo them for frozen, since sweetness is key, and I find most fresh peas are too starchy by the time they go from the farmer to my kitchen. (But if you have a good supply of fresh peas, by all means…)

Finally, there’s only two more things to say about carbonara: First, use a lot of black pepper. It’s the flavor that you need to cut through the fat of the guanciale and the sauce, and to flavor the pasta, and compliment the peas. Make sure it is freshly ground. And a healthy amount.

Second, toss the sauce with the pasta in a bowl, off the heat. If you try and add the sauce to the pasta while it’s in the pan, you will end up with a less-than-silky sauce. So, transfer the pasta and peas to a big bowl, and immediately add in the eggs and toss like crazy. I whisk the (seasoned) eggs (one egg per serving) in a small bowl before adding it to the pasta. I know some people break the eggs directly over the pasta — the process is prettier that way, but it makes it more difficult to stir the eggs into a sauce before they curdle. Though, again, whatever works.

This last thing is the most important part of carbonara-making. Don’t be afraid of the eggs being left raw — they will cook, partly, into a silky sauce — though they aren’t supposed to cook fully. If you are feeding someone who shouldn’t eat partially cooked eggs, don’t make them carbonara. However, if you are a healthy adult, you shouldn’t fear eggs cooked this way, especially if you are buying your eggs from a good, local source.

They only thing left to do now, is eat. And enjoy the comforts of carbonara.

Pasta Carbonara

Printable Recipe

serves 4-6, depending on whether it is a first-course, or main

6 ounces guanciale, chopped into thumbnail sized lardons
1 pound pasta, preferably a good, imported brand of you favorite type of pasta (I really liked egg pasta in this carbonara)
1 cup grated parmigiano cheese, or more to taste (you can also use pecorino, which is more traditional for carbonara, though I prefer the taste of parmigiano)
a handful (about 2/3 of a cup) petite peas, preferably frozen unless you have very sweet fresh peas
2 whole eggs
2-3 egg yolks (I usually add the extra yolk)
freshly ground black pepper
kosher salt

Heat a pan over low to medium heat (I have an electric range and set it between medium-low and medium). Add guanciale and cook until they are crisp on all sides. If the pieces begin to cook too fast, and you think they will burn before cooking properly, lower the heat. Low and slow is a foolproof way to cook the guanciale right, so they they are crisp on the outside but easy to chew, and meltingly tender inside. Once cooked, remove the guanciale and let rest on paper towel.

Usually, I will now pour some (not all) of the fat in the pan into a bowl, so I can decide whether I want to use it all or not later. (I don’t use olive oil in my carbonara, because I love the taste of pork fat, but you can use it in place of, or in addition to, the drippings, if you are crazy like.)

Put a pot of well-salted water over high heat and bring to a boil. Cook the pasta according to the package directions.

In a small bowl, whisk the eggs and yolks until well combined. Add half of the cheese and season with a good amount of black pepper and some salt.

Add the peas to the pan you used to cook the guanciale. Cook until they become soft. The pasta should be cooked at this time, so drain and add the pasta to the peas and mix them together with some black pepper and salt.

Get a serving bowl and add in your pasta, peas, the remaining half of the cheese, and crisp guanciale. Drizzle the eggs over the pasta and stir, using a folding, tossing type of motion, to work the eggs into a silky sauce without curdling them. (If the pasta is piping hot, stir in big, quick motions to cool the pasta down as quickly as possible.) Taste and season again with pepper and salt before bringing to the table with some extra cheese for passing around.

]]> http://www.caviarandcodfish.com/2011/01/the-comforts-of-carbonara/feed/ 38 http://www.caviarandcodfish.com/2010/12/a-leap-toward-love/ http://www.caviarandcodfish.com/2010/12/a-leap-toward-love/#comments Sun, 19 Dec 2010 23:11:26 +0000 Robin Salant http://www.caviarandcodfish.com/?p=3840 Hi. It’s been forever since I wrote here. A lot has happened but, most importantly, I got married!

(Photo by Ken Robbins)

To say that I was stressed out in the run up to our wedding would be an understatement. I had just opened my own business, and was in the middle of a chronic pain flare-up that made getting out of bed seem impossible, nevermind being fitted for a dress.

(Photo by Ken Robbins)

So it’s no surprise that my wedding started in tears. Hours (and hours) of tears. I woke up the morning of the wedding exhausted. I hadn’t slept a wink, jittery from the previous night’s partying at the rehearsal dinner (a ten-course meal with lots of beer and wine) and our family-only “official” marriage ceremony conducted by our friend’s mother, a judge, at midnight.

(Photo by Ken Robbins)

The night before, it seemed, was all I could handle. All I needed, too. We’d had a great night with our families and even gotten legally married, the paperwork filled out. And now my back was killing me and my feet ached from wearing heels for the first time in months. I felt bloated, though I had lost enough weight to fit into my high school skinny jeans. Home alone in my apartment, I wanted to stay that way. No matter how much anyone pleaded, I would stay in my pajamas and not leave until this day was over.

(Photo by Ken Robbins)

But of course, after a sobbing conversation with my mother (and a bottle of emergency champagne dropped off by my father), I found myself in the bridal suite having my make-up applied and hair curled by two very enthusiastic sisters, their years on the cheerleading squad finally paying off.

(Photo by Ken Robbins)

I never imagined I’d be this kind of bride. As soon as my sister applied the mascara, tears began to flow again. I completely freaked. When it came time for me to get into my dress, a sweetheart-cut gleaming white strapless number with gorgeous little crystals along the flowing train, my back and hip started screaming. It took about twenty minutes for my mother and sisters to lace up the corset, and then about five seconds for me to hyperventilate and demand that it come off… now. I’ll never forget how amazing my older sister, Janel, was as she cut the corset with scissors and yelled for someone to get Jim.

(Photo by Ken Robbins)

Jim ran into the bridal suite, put a stern end to the back and forth going on about whether we could make the dress wearable, decidedly saying that I would not, that this day wasn’t worth the weeks of pain it would probably turn into if I hurt myself in it, and a lovely hurricane started, with everyone whipping around the suite, figuring things out. I was made to relax in a chair and chug a few flutes of champagne, while my mother-in-law raced back to her house to pull every fancy dress out of her closet, and Jim zipped home to do the same from mine. My father ran to set up a chair for me to sit in during the ceremony, in case I couldn’t stand, and my little sister, Kathy, pulled out her bells-and-whistles make-up case.

(Photo by Ken Robbins)

It turned out I had the perfect dress, a lacy number with sparkles and beads which was perfectly my style. Janel pulled it out of a bag and exclaimed that it was perfect! before recognizing that it was inside-out, and my mother-in-law brought her jewelry box along with her dresses, and we found some pearls that matched the dress — and me — to a tee. I looked around to see so many people pulling for me, trying to make my day wonderful, and everything started to feel better. The champagne may have helped a bit, too.

(Photo by Ken Robbins)

The only hurdle left was to walk down the very, very long “aisle” from the bridal suite, across the parking lot, and the lawn, to the ceremony spot by the trees. I made it, thanks to my father, whose seersucker suit looked even better next to my new dress. We decided to nix the long vows that we’d written, since my knees were buckling under the pain, and had a short and sweet ceremony consisting of a poem written and read by our friend Jim, and a favorite poem by Mark Strand read by Jim’s brother, Joe. Then Joe read us the shortened version of our vows, and we answered “We do” to each one in unison.

(Photo by Ken Robbins)

“Do you vow to be “we” rather than “I,” without hesitation, forever?”

“Do you vow to disregard all fantasies of other lives for the rest of your lives whether or not you are lucky in this life?”

“Do you vow to love not only who you are today, but who you will be tomorrow, and the next day, and every day after that for eternity, knowing full well that you cannot know, but doing it anyway, vowing, taking a leap, yes, a leap of faith, the biggest you are likely to take in your lives….a leap toward love?”

(Photo by Ken Robbins)

A moment before we kissed, a second after Joe announced us husband and wife, Jim cupped my face in his hands and stared into my eyes. All of the nerves, the unsettled feelings, the anxiety, melted away. We were married. I’ll never forget that look; I’m amazed we got it on camera. One look showed me that Jim was as into this marriage as I was, and he was willing to take all the bad — the pain, the struggle — with the good. That look was pure love. And it ended with a kiss… a damned good one.

(Photo by Ken Robbins)

After the ceremony, we took the sage advice of our friends Lynne and Mark, and stole off by ourselves for a little while, to high-five and celebrate our marriage with a couple shots of whiskey. I never believed those who told me that I’d feel like a million bucks as soon as the “I do’s” were over, but it was true. I felt better than I had in months. It was amazing.

(Photo by Ken Robbins)

We took photos, and Jim quickly got too drunk to be still for most of them, and then we hung out by the Delaware canal during cocktail hour. Our friend Mattias bartended, serving his original cocktails called “Something Old”, “Something New”, “Something Borrowed”, and “Something Blue”, and the caterers from Jamie Hollander Gourmet Market passed around canapes like yellow-fin tuna tar-tare in savory cones (a wink to our ice cream business). Everyone mingled until the sun began to set, and we entered the mill for our “Fancy BBQ” dinner of barbecued pork shoulder and shrimp and grits.

(Photo by Ken Robbins)

The rest of the evening played out like a party. There was no cutting of the cake (we had seasonal cupcakes) or signature dances that everyone was told they had to watch. It was perfect that way, completely relaxed and so much fun. The basement of the Prallsville Mill, where we did our dancing, houses lots of the old grain machinery, and you can hang over a railing to see the river gushing below. Everyone raved about the place.

(Photo by Ken Robbins)

The wedding ended, as all weddings should, with a dance off. Every good party of the Damstras or Zuffis (my sister’s husband’s family) ends with the wild and zany dancing of the fathers, but I couldn’t believe my eyes when Jim’s mild-mannered friend of the family, Neil, busted out some moves that made everyone’s jaws drop. That man — a dentist, no less – can dance.

(Photo by Ken Robbins)

My father and I danced to Sam Cooke’s Nothing Can Change This Love and then Jim and I snuck out the double doors to dance under the stars to what is probably the most unused wedding song in history: Dennis Quaid’s (yes, the actor) Closer to You.

(Photo by Ken Robbins)

Then I sat on the hood of someone’s car as we waited for a big yellow bus to pick up our guests and drive them to a nearby hotel. Jim gathered all the left-over liquor into a milk crate to bring on our honeymoon, and friends lit sparklers and danced around in the grass. The night was perfectly clear and unseasonably warm, and we walked down the street to the nearest bar with a few of our close friends, to sit out on the porch and drink bourbon and, weirdly, get into a drawn-out conversation about homo-eroticism in the NBA. Near two in the morning, Jim and I clasped hands and walked on the yellow lines down Stockton’s main street, to our home, to collapse into bed.

I know it’s cheesy and cliche, but it was the best day of my life.

(Photo by Ken Robbins)

Lovely Little One

(For Robin Damstra and Jim Salant on the Occasion of their Wedding — 9/11/2010)

Let this marriage be codfish and caviar.
Let this marriage be clumsy and forgiving.

Let this marriage be a mystery and a prize.
Let this marriage be a roomful of women laughing.

Let this marriage be the silvery moon and the singing stars.
Let this marriage be a model and a source of comfort.

Let this marriage be strong in the face of loneliness.
Let this marriage be a haven for Champ, and the friends of Champ.

Let this marriage be a secret and an open hand.
Let this marriage be deep-rooted and persistent.

Let this marriage be a flower beside the road,
grown so common and so familiar

that we forget its name, come to know it
only as lovely little one, good friend.

–Jim Haba

Thanks for waiting around while I took some time off of this blog before finally relaying the wedding details to you. After all the stress of the past months had washed away, I realized, on my honeymoon, that I needed to take it easier. Something had to give and, sadly, something was this blog. I feel, now, that I’m ready to come back but it’s hard to make promises when you don’t know if some days you will be in too much pain to get out of bed, and when you realistically can’t cook much anymore — I haven’t cooked a whole meal in months — so I hope you’ll all continue to be patient with me. And cross your fingers that we’ll figure out how to fix me soon. -Robin

We’ve hammocked. We’ve slept in past breakfast. We’ve swung on a wooden swing atop a high hill. We are actually, right at this moment, sitting in wooden chairs, in a cabin on a mountain — Legacy Mountain to be exact. We’ve left Blackberry and are holing up here in this cabin for a few more days, before heading over to Town House in Chilhowie, then to Washington D.C., to look at art and eat some more.

Then, and I’m hesitant even to say this because I really don’t want it to be true, we’ll head back to reality. I’ll be back to show you wedding pictures, and give you all the details from that day, the good food we ate, and the (delicious!) food that we’re eating now on our honeymoon. I just wanted to pop in and say hi before that, though. Because I miss you. And it’s been so long.

See you soon!

I’m don’t dislike beets so much that I’ll skip right past — I’ll read the recipe. Might even make a mental note to try it someday. But in all my years of cooking, I’ve only ever tried one beet recipe. Two, if you count this one today.

It’s not that I hate beets. I don’t. I flew over the moon when I tasted the smoked beets with halibut at Saul in Brooklyn. At Town House, too, the foie gras with beets nearly killed me dead, it was so good. I’m not a hater, no, but a non-lover, which means I’m game to have others serve beets to me, but I’m hard-pressed to exert my own cooking-energy on them.

Milk House Farm, however, has been showcasing beets at their farm stand lately. They grow a handful of different varieties, all gorgeous gems, and all impossible to pass up. Adding to that, I’ve been on a quasi-diet of small-portion, vegetable-heavy dinners, in the attempt to slim down to my ideal weight for our wedding (a hard thing to do, considering I can’t exercise because of my back — though, I’m happy ecstatic to report brag that I’ve lost 15 pounds already) so beets went into my grocery bag recently.

I found a recipe with beets and shrimp marinated in ginger from Jean Georges Vongerichten in the New York Times. New York Times recipes in general prove to be delicious, and recipes by Jean Georges hardly ever disappoint. So I cooked some beets. Roasted them, to be exact.

After they were roasted, I started to tweak the recipe. I added an orange, and swapped balsamic vinegar for the sherry. I sauteed rather than grilled the shrimp (since the shrimp is only cooked for a minute or two, it’s not worth starting up the grill) and dressed the beets a little sooner than the recipe called for.

It came together fabulously — I’d done it! I cooked beets. And I loved them. The in-your-face sweetness of beets works here, since it’s tempered by the ginger — whose pungent flavor lingers in the shrimp, in the dressing. I’d say you could have the salad of dressed beets and orange by itself, with a hefty sprinkling of chives, but the shrimp (browned and crisp, marinated just long enough for the ginger to saturate without overwhelming), perched atop the salad so that the juices drip and mix into the dressing, really completes the dish.

So, here’s the recipe. (For those of you smart people who haven’t skipped past to the next non-beet blog post by now.)

Gingered-Beet Salad

Printable Recipe

serves 4 (small portions)

adapted (heavily) from Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Gingered-Beet Salad recipe

4 medium beets, scrubbed well
1 pound large shrimps, shelled
1 tablespoons canola oil
1 2-inch piece ginger, peeled and grated (divide grated ginger into two lumps)
4 tablespoons balsamic vinegar (1 tablespoon will be used for shrimp, 3 for beet dressing)
2 tablespoons good, fruity extra-virgin olive oil
1 orange, segmented
kosher or good sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
2 tablespoons 1/2-inch-length chives

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Wrap the beets in two layers of aluminum foil and roast until fork-tender, about 1 hour and 45 minutes. Cool, peel and cut the beets into small chunks and set aside.

Toss the shrimps in a mixture made from 1 tablespoon of the oil, half of the grated ginger and 1 tablespoon of the vinegar. Marinate for 1 hour.

Make dressing for the beets: In a medium bowl, add some salt and pepper and balsamic, then slowly add in olive oil, whisking constantly to emulsify. Add beet and orange segments and mix well to dress everything evenly.

Take shrimp from marinade and salt and pepper all over. Heat a pan over medium-high (or a touch higher) heat with a little bit of canola oil. Add shrimp to the pan and cook until well-browned (about 2 minutes per side, or up to 5 minutes total).

Arrange dressed beets on a platter. Sprinkle with chives and season to taste with salt and pepper. Place shrimp on top of beets and sprinkle on a few more chives and some extra salt and pepper (if needed). Serve hot or at room temperature.

So for now, we’ll have to compromise with a summer squash carbonara, since I couldn’t resist photographing these zucchini. It’s not “proper” — far from it — but it does adhere to certain carbonara principles. First, I used guanciale (pig jowl) as the pork ingredient. This rule is often — shockingly! — thrown out the window. I see recipes using bacon and pancetta calling themselves carbonara in cooking magazines all the time. Some of them even mention that if you don’t have pancetta, you can substitute bacon. Pancetta? Pancetta is a substitution in itself. Shouldn’t it read if you can’t, for the life of you, find guanciale you can substitute bacon? Yes, I’ll answer that myself. Yes, that’s what it should say. And while we’re on the subject, I find pancetta too salty for carbonara; I’d rather use bacon, a lightly smoked one.

Here’s what you can do if you can’t find guanciale: buy a fresh pork belly and turn it into bacon yourself, going light on the smoke, or cure it instead with lots of pepper and juniper berries. Or, okay, this is better: find a butcher who can get you all kinds of cuts of meat (or, find a farmer and buy a whole pig — if you have a big freezer — or go in on a share), then use the jowl to make guanciale. Or you could just mail-order guanciale. Don’t worry if you need to buy a whole lot of it at once. It freezes flawlessly. And it’s worth the cost of shipping.

Alright, the second principle, one I’m particularly fussy about: Never let the eggs touch the pan. Whether you whisk the eggs with cheese beforehand or leave the yolks whole to be added to individual bowls before serving, you never want them to touch high heat. High heat ruins the consistency of the sauce or — worse — scrambles the eggs. If you are cooking for someone with a compromised immune system, you could cook the eggs and cheese (slowly!) to 175ºF in a double boiler, like custard, but a compromised immune system is the only excuse for doing that, people. I’ll know if you do it any other way. I’ve got my eyes on you.

By taking your pasta and other ingredients off the heat before tossing with the egg, you ensure that the sauce won’t overcook. Immediately start mixing once you add the pasta and sauce together, and the eggs will cook just the slightest bit, transforming into a silky sauce that’s lighter than a butter sauce, thicker than olive oil.

The final principle is that there must be a lot of freshly ground black pepper. You’ve got to taste the pepper, rather than using it as a background seasoning. Black pepper gives kick to that silky egg sauce, really makes it. Without enough pepper, the sauce tastes too eggy, and that’s not what carbonara is about. In the best carbonaras, unwitting diners can’t even taste eggs in the dish.

In this version, though, it’s okay to go a little easier on the pepper (but still use a healthy amount), since you have so much flavor in the caramelized, sweet, soft, beautiful squash. You want to cook the squash until it’s deeply browned. You’re not looking for crisp tender vegetables here; they should be soft, heavily caramelized, and end up tasting almost as silky as the creamy egg sauce itself. My opinion about zucchini and yellow squash is that it’s a vegetable too often served under-cooked. It’s best when you cook it until the insides are soft and fluffy, like vegetal mousse. Cook it with care, or you’ll end up with mush. The less you mess with the squash, the better; using your spoon to mix it around too often will result in broken pieces with all the insides spilling out. Shaking the pan mixes things up gently. Now would be the time to start perfecting that cheffy toss-and-flip thing with the skillet.

I cut these squash on a diagonal, to mimic the shape of the penne pasta (a tip from Jamie Oliver). It proved a good shape to use since it left a lot of surface area exposed for caramelizing and cooking into browned, tasty goodnesss and the small, similar shapes in the pasta bowl made for easy eating. Each forkful had zucchini and pasta both, a bowlful of perfect bites.

Jim’s away for a few days, so I didn’t have anyone to share with, which was a little sad since we share almost every meal together. But, honestly, having an extra serving was a-okay by me.

Summer Squash  Carbonara

serves 4 // adapted from Jamie Oliver

4 small-to-medium summer squashes (preferably zucchini and thin yellow squash, but any will do)
1 small chunk of guanciale (2 – 3 ounces)
2 big thyme sprigs

2 egg yolks
2 heaping tablespoons crème fraiche (and I mean heaping)
1 healthy handful of parmigiano cheese
lots of freshly ground black pepper
kosher salt

1/2 pound penne pasta
more cheese to taste
chives, optional
good olive oil, for drizzling

Cut the squash lengthwise in half, then cut halves at an angle into slices roughly the same size as the penne. Or, you can leave smaller squash whole and cut into round slices.

Cut guanciale into small chunks and add to a skillet over medium heat. Once the guanciale has begun to render its fat and is looking sort of translucent, add in the squash and bump the heat up to medium-high. Strip the leaves off the thyme stems and add leaves to the pan. Cook until squash is totally tender and deeply caramelized, about 25 minutes.

Meanwhile, put up a pot of water for the pasta, adding ¼ cup of kosher salt to the water.

In a small bowl, whisk together egg yolks, crème fraiche, and cheese. Add a lot of pepper and a big pinch of salt.

Cook pasta according to direction. Drain, then add pasta to the pan with the cooked squash (make sure the squash is already browned to perfection before you add the pasta in). Stir everything together gently, then remove from heat.

In a large bowl, add the egg mixture. Now, add in your pasta, gently stirring as the pasta is going in, and keep stirring (or tossing) everything together so that the egg mixture warms up, but doesn’t cook. (You need to keep everything moving so enough air circulates that it begins to cool down the pasta. If you add the pasta and leave it for even 30 seconds to do something else, the sauce is likely to lose its silky consistency.)

Serve with a garnish of chives, a drizzling of olive oil, and pass around extra cheese at the table.

]]> http://www.caviarandcodfish.com/2010/07/summer-squash-carbonara/feed/ 23 http://www.caviarandcodfish.com/2010/06/shrimp-with-soffritto/ http://www.caviarandcodfish.com/2010/06/shrimp-with-soffritto/#comments Thu, 24 Jun 2010 21:16:22 +0000 Robin Salant http://www.caviarandcodfish.com/?p=3603 I haven’t been cooking lately. There’s been a lot of tears, lying on the couch for inordinate amounts of time, missing the sun, and the strawberry picking, not swimming in the river, or going for walks with my dog, but, no, not cooking. There was a birthday, and a bridal shower, but I hardly remember either in the haze of my pain medication. But, still, no cooking.

Some of you know I was in a car accident in 2008 that left me in chronic pain. A few of you know it’s been flaring up lately. And a poor precious bunch of you are around to take care of me. It sucks. There’s no way around it. I’m in it and, try as I might, I can’t do anything about it. So I haven’t cooked. But I’m taking steps to drastically change my life, to make my schedule bend around my pain, instead of trying to keep white-knuckling to do everything like a normal, healthy person would. I’m optimistic about that. I’m excited. Excited to be broken down, to finally accept that I can’t pretend pain doesn’t exist anymore, disabling me. Good things are going to come of this.

One of the most depressing things about not cooking is not having anything to talk to you guys about. I mean, there was this awesome get-well present.

But I haven’t done any cooking past pitting the cherries and apricots as I eat them.

And there was this salad, made with the best snap peas I’ve ever tasted, but that didn’t turn out to be anything special — particularly heart-breaking since I wanted so badly to showcase those peas.

Finally, to top off the extent of my cooking over the past few weeks, there was this shrimp dish. You could call it cooking, to simmer something on the stove top for five hours (even if it took less than five minutes of active prep time). But it didn’t feel like cooking.

The fact that is doesn’t feel like cooking, despite the wonderfully homey, lovingly cooked quality of the dish is probably a good thing, if you aren’t me, and you don’t want so desperately to be able to perform a recipe that has a long do-to-list, spending hours doing your thing in the kitchen.

The “five hour” part of this recipe is for the soffritto. You can do this the day (or week) before, and then the rest of the recipe would come together in about four minutes — maybe six if you need to shell the shrimp yourself.  It’s a good example of how to cook for Anita’s Dinner on a Deadline project, where one of the key ways to keep down your weekday meal prep time is to have a well-stocked larder.  This soffritto is a stand-by in my larder — the star of my larder, really. I use it for countless things beside this shrimp, including mixed in to plain pasta, or in this peperonata rustica. It’s beautiful, full of caramelized flavors, and has luscious, garlicky depth. Having this stuff around has made this painful time more manageable for me. And if it can cheer me up, then you can trust it’s special.

Shrimp with Soffritto

Printable Recipe

serves 2//soffritto adapted from Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc Cookbook

for the soffritto:

3 cups finely diced Spanish onion (about 1 pound)
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
Kosher salt
1 (28-oz) good-quality whole peeled tomatoes, drained, finely chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, finely minced

for the shrimp:

12 – 16 jumbo shrimp, shells and tails removed, deveined
4-6 tablespoons kosher salt
freshly ground pepper
2 tablespoons butter

Combine the onions, oil, and a pinch of salt in a small dutch oven or heavy bottomed pot and set over medium heat. As soon as the oil begins to simmer, reduce the heat to low. The onions should stew slowly but eventually caramelize; adjust the heat as necessary so that the oil continues to bubble gently — never too vigorously. As the onions release their liquid, the oil will become cloudy, but once the moisture has evaporated, the oil will clear. Cook for about 2 ½ hours, of until the onions are a rich golden brown (a shade darker than golden raisins) and the oil is perfectly clear. Check often: if any of the onions caramelize against the sides of the pan, scrape them back into the oil.

Add the tomatoes to the caramelized onions and cook for another 2 ½ hours, or until the onions and tomatoes begin to fry in the oil: the onions and tomatoes will begin to fry in the oil and small bubbles will cover the surface. Gently stir the mixture. Turn off the heat, add a pinch of salt and the garlic, and left the soffrito begin to cool. (You can cool completely, cover, and save in the refrigerator until you want to use. The soffritto stays good for a couple of weeks.)

Meanwhile, mix together 4 cups of cold water and salt in a bowl, stirring to dissolve the salt. Add shrimp to the bowl and let stand at room temperature for 10 minutes. Drain the shrimp, rise under cold water, and pat dry on paper towels. Sprinkle with pepper.

Melt the butter in a frying pan that will hold the shrimp in a single layer over medium-high heat. When the butter starts to foam, add the shrimp. Cook the shrimp for 2 minutes on one side, then flip and cook for 2 minutes on the other side, until the shrimp are browned and cooked through. Transfer the shrimp to a platter.

Ladle a few spoonfuls of soffritto over the shrimp and serve. (You will have a lot of leftover soffritto, but I don’t that’s a bad thing.)

]]> http://www.caviarandcodfish.com/2010/06/shrimp-with-soffritto/feed/ 21 http://www.caviarandcodfish.com/2010/06/steak-with-parsleyed-butter/ http://www.caviarandcodfish.com/2010/06/steak-with-parsleyed-butter/#comments Sun, 06 Jun 2010 15:17:16 +0000 Robin Salant http://www.caviarandcodfish.com/?p=3540 Well, it’s not every day that I open up a cookbook and see my butchers, Emil and Joe, staring back at me (downright dapper in their striped aprons). Such an event is a rare pleasure, really — one that I never imagined (or even thought about) having, but one I won’t soon forget.

And it’s not only Emil and Joe, but the lazy canal that slunks its way through Lambertville, the trout fishermen that I spy sitting along the water on my way to work in the early morning, and a beautiful ode to the Stockton Indoor Farmers Market — my market!! — spread among the pages of the Canal House cookbooks, a subscription cookbook-cum-food magazine, that comes out three times a year.

This is my home, and it’s not just me rhapsodizing about the beauty, and food, and good people along the Delaware River; Christopher Hirsheimer and Melissa Hamilton do too! That’s good company, indeed.

But even if you don’t live here, I imagine the Canal House cookbooks would be a rare pleasure, anyway. You’re invited into the lives of Hirsheimer and Hamilton, to where they live and what they eat; their memories, and snarky sentiments; their metaphors and declarations. The recipes are homey, familiar ones; recipes you can’t read without imagining friends around the table, happy faces, happy bellies; recipes that are a breath of fresh air alongside all of the restaurant chef books that are so popular now.

Take this recipe for steak with parsley butter. It involves little more than mixing some fluffy butter with herbs and grilling a steak. Anyone one can put the whole affair together in mere minutes. All you need is a bowl, a knife and a cutting board, and a grill (or pan) to cook the steak.

The hitch is finding the best the ingredients. It’d do good to search out a nice steak. If you live near me, you could get a rib-eye from Maresca, or a big old cowboy steak from Dee and Ben, which is what we opted for last weekend. Good parsley, too, will pay off big time — try to find some that’s a shade of deep, forest green, with pretty little white tips on each leaf. Homestead Farm Market sells my favorite parsley around here (the cheapest, too: a big bouquet of parsley runs around one dollar).

Without good ingredients, this recipe might not wow you; there’s few flavors here, so they really need to shine. If you have the parsley, but can’t find, or don’t want, the steak, this parsley butter works magic with a bowl of fresh pasta, or topped on fried eggs and toast, or in a myriad of other dishes. With the steak it’s particularly magical, and I’m a little blue that I didn’t invite friends over to share when Jim and I made this, as the cowboy steaks from Highland Farm Market can certainly feed a crowd. Recipes likes this want to be shared with a full table, if only so you can be that enviable hostess, cool as a cucumber after making such a deceptively easy dinner, and soak up all the oohs and ahhs from your guests.

Steak with Parsleyed Butter

Printable Recipe

adapted from Canal House Cooking, Vol. 1

feeds 2-3, with leftover butter

for the butter
8 tablespoons (1 stick) softened butter, preferably from a local dairy, or a high-fat European-style butter
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
1 shallot, minced
Half a bunch parsley, leaves chopped
Salt and Pepper

for the steak
1 large (2-3 pound) bone-in rib-eye
Salt and pepper
An hour or two before cooking, take the steak out of the refrigerator and season liberally with salt and pepper.

Beat the butter in a bowl with a wooden spoon to make it smooth and a bit creamy. Add the garlic, shallots, and parsley, and season with salt and pepper. Stir to combine. The butter can be used right away, or covered and refrigerated for up to 3 days or frozen for up to 1 month.

Prepare a hot charcoal or gas grill.

Grill steaks on the hottest part of the grill until a good browned crust has developed on the first side, about 8 minutes. To ensure a good crust, resist the urge to move or fiddle with the steaks while they are cooking, but if flare-ups threaten to burn the meat, you’ve got to move it to a cooler spot on the grill. Turn the steaks and grill the second side for 5 minutes.

Move the steaks to a cooler spot on the grill to finish cooking them, turning occasionally, until the internal temperatures reach 120F for medium-rare, and 140F for medium, 5-15 minutes longer depending on the thickness of the steaks and the desired doneness.

Pull the steaks off the grill and let them rest for 10-15 minutes. Cut the steak from the bones and slice the meat. Serve both the bones and the meat, and top with parsleyed butter.

So, I’m popping in to say hi and to tell you to rest assured: Life has not gotten in the way of strawberry season. I have my limits and no one, not Mother Nature, or paperwork, or even The Big Dog in the Sky, who my dog constantly howls at (and who, to me, sounds just like the fire engine), will stop me from eating as many strawberries as I possibly can over the next few weeks.

I tend to go overboard during berry season, which is something I’m totally proud of. I pick and pick. I buy in bulk. I bought this flat from None Such Farm in Buckingham, PA where they were giving away one quart for every two you buy.

I froze four quarts of berries, for strawberry sorbet making later in the year.  I plan to freeze a whole, whole lot more.

Freezing strawberries is quick work. You soak them in cold water to remove any grit. Then hull them with a sharp lil’ pairing knife.

Spread them out on a sheet pan, not crowding the pan. (A quart of strawberries fits nicely on a quarter sheet pan.) Pop the pan in the freezer and let them freeze for about 4 hours.

Finally, divide the frozen berries into freezer bags. I date the bags, though I’m sure I don’t need to; frozen strawberries last (theoretically) for six months. In this house, they’ll be long gone by December.

I want to start talking more about where I live, and the food I eat, out here along the Delaware River. Especially now, and in the coming months, when I eat like a privileged locavore instead of surviving on root vegetables, hot-house lettuce, and canned goods, as I do during those frigid winter months.

Spring in western New Jersey is a fantastic thing. The weather wobbles around for a while — chilly one day, sweltering the next — then, snap, it’s totally spring. The farms start producing and the markets open up. In April and May, there’s asparagus and spinach, and lots of it. Once the month of May rolls on we start to see peas, and finally, strawberries, and then it’s on.

The problem, though, is that nothing tastes good. Okay, that may be an overstatement. But only slightly. Unless you buy your produce from local farms with talented farmers, where you can pick up your fruit and vegetables just hours after they’ve been picked (or pick them yourself), you can’t really understand why the beautiful, organic, local strawberries from Whole Foods just aren’t very that good. Maybe it’s the bone-chilling temperatures of those stores; maybe it’s the large quantities a farm must have to harvest in order to supply a supermarket. Whatever the cause, a strawberry from one of our local farms — Manoff, or Solebury, or Terhune Orchards — is so much better than what you can buy in the Whole Foods, it’s not even a comparison.

However, I do understand that it’s not always easy to shop at small farms, and that for me — of all people — to talk smack about people going to Whole Foods would be ridiculous. I work part-time; I have 3-day weekends, every weekend; the Saturday and Sunday farmers market is right across the street from my house. If you wanted to roll your eyes and tell me to try juggling a full-time job, two kids, and a hungry husband and then see if I can eat local all summer long, you’d have a point.

But I also don’t make much money. Jim, who has a schedule similar to mine, doesn’t either. Since I quit my full-time job over a year ago, I’ve learned to pinch pennies. I buy clothes from consignment shops, I cut my own bangs, and I’ve been known to cruise yard sales at sundown, when people will give stuff away if you’ll just take it off their damn lawn already.

Strata is like the genius love-child of bread pudding and frittata. You add more eggs in a strata than you would in a bread pudding, so the result is less milky and custardy, more eggy. That eggy flavor totally makes me feel healthier too, even though there’s a hell of a lot of cheese and cream in there. And egg yolks in large quantities aren’t all that healthy, I guess, but they are a part of the good old American breakfast. You see, it doesn’t take much to convince me to eat cream.

Mother’s Day brunch would be pretty pleasant with a slice of this strata on each plate, especially with a mimosa on the side. Just remember, if you’re cooking for Mom, you do the dishes.

Asparagus and Sausage Strata

Printable Recipe

recipe adapted from Bon Appetit, June 2009

I used lamb and ramp sausage from Jamie Hollander’s in New Hope, which aren’t cheap. They are delicious though, and wonderfully spring.

Serves 8-10

6 large eggs

2 1/2 cups whole milk
1 cup sliced green onions
1 cup sliced shallot
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup finely grated Romano cheese
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 pound mild sausages, casings removed
1 bunch asparagus, trimmed and large stalks peeled, cut into 2-inch pieces
1 1-pound loaf rustic French bread, cut into 1/2-inch-thick slices
2 cups (loosely packed) coarsely grated Gruyere cheese

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Butter 13×9×2-inch ceramic or glass baking dish. Whisk first 7 ingredients in large bowl; sprinkle generously with pepper. Set aside.

Place sausage in large nonstick skillet; push to 1 side. Add asparagus pieces and sauté over high heat, breaking up sausage with fork, until sausage is cooked through and asparagus are brown in spots, about 7 minutes.

Arrange half of bread slices in prepared dish. Pour half of egg mixture over. Sprinkle with half of cheese, then half of sausage and asparagus mixture. Repeat layering. Let stand 20 minutes, occasionally pressing on bread to submerge. Bake strata until puffed and brown, about 1 hour. Cool slightly and serve.