So Much More Than Baloney

So, I was out in San Francisco over the long Easter break and got to dine at one of the City's more popular eateries. People say it's impossible to get a reservation, but nobody told me that before I called a few days before my arrival in town. I got a table for four at 10:30 that magically turned into a 6:30 seating within just a few hours of my booking. nopa thoroughly embraces the "local food" ethos. Everything is seasonally fresh, so the menu is continuously changing. It's is in its fifth year and its popularity has yet to wane. I soon found out why.

Good blogger that I am, I had neither camera nor notebook with me that night, so recalling what we ate is proving problematic. I do remember a fire-grilled calamari appetizer that couldn't have been more perfect. Not under-cooked, not rubbery, the chef must have stood over the grill with a stopwatch, that's how tender it was.

There was an amazingly moist rotisserie chicken; a sweet, succulent grilled pork chop with the faintest blush of color - more like steak than pork - and at a Ten Hour Bolognese pasta on the menu that ricocheted round and round my brain pan. I just had to try it. I haven't tasted anything that flavorful, complex and satisfying in a long time.

Ragù alla Bolognese - adapted from the Italian Academy of Cuisine*

¼ lb pancetta, cubed 2 carrots, peeled and minced 2 stalks celery, minced 1 yellow onion, minced 2 cloves garlic, minced 1 lb ground beef 1 lb ground veal 6 oz tomato paste ½ bottle dry red wine 1 cup whole milk Salt & pepper taste

Render the pancetta in a large Dutch oven over medium heat. (I cheat by starting things off with a couple of fat dollops of reserved bacon fat to get everything going in the pot.) Add the soffritto (mirepoix if you prefer) and sauté over low heat until thoroughly soft (20-25 minutes or more). Stir as necessary. Add the ground meat and allow to gently come up to a simmering point, stirring constantly until it sputters.

Stir in the tomato paste and cook through, until the mixture begins to take on a little color.

Add the wine and leave to simmer for at least 2 hours (I had time to kill, so went for four). You can add a bit of beef stock once the sauce is reduced by half, and continue reducing and adding stock for the duration.

While stirring, drizzle the milk into the sauce to incorporate, and season with salt and pepper. For added richness, a recommended option is to add a "a panna di cottura di un litro di latte intero". This is whole milk reduced in a saucepan to at least half its volume. I served my ragù over fat pappardelle egg noodles, but any long pasta will do. The secret is in the sauce after all. Oh, and don't forget the fresh Parmigiano-Reggiano. No cheese in a green container is ever gonna bring honor to your efforts in the kitchen with a sauce like this.

Well, I ended up with one killer Bolognese. Maybe not the 10-hour indulgence that comes out of nopa's kitchen, but damn it was good. Totally rich and fulfilling. I confess, yet again, to licking my plate clean afterwards. (I had the sauce over spaghetti the next night, and dipped toasted French bread into warmed-up leftovers a third.)

You can do this sauce in as little as two hours, but even still it's a time consuming affair. I do this because of a wicked stubborn streak running down my spine. If you decide to give it a whirl, do it for the love!

Thanks for taking the time - Blog O. Food

*The classic Italian Bolognese includes neither garlic nor herbs.

One Pot Wonders

Ugh... Cooking for one again. I should just eat cereal. Or find a husband. Or join a cult. Or open a restaurant. I dunno, I can't decide.

The ingredients:

Boneless, skinless chicken thighs Whole tomatoes Tomato paste Pine nuts Black and green olives Garlic Vegetable stock Spaghetti

Cube the chicken and brown it in batches in some peanut oil and a little butter. Season generously with kosher salt and cracked pepper. Remove the chicken, soften some chopped garlic in the oil, then deglaze the pan with a little white wine. Add the stock, whole tomatoes, tomato paste, toasted pine nuts and the browned chicken.

Bring to a simmer, cover and cook for 30 minutes.

Look how rich the sauce is already getting. Add sliced olives, some dried herbs (basil, thyme, bay leaves, parsley), cover and cook for 20 more minutes or until tomatoes soften.

Add dry spaghetti, stirring frequently until the noodles become pliable, then cover and allow to simmer until pasta is al dente.

Serve with freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano and a bottle of Pinot Grigio to help you forget you're eating alone.

Thankfully, my room mate showed up just as I was browning the chicken and he accepted my offer of a free meal. "It has a real soothing flavor," he announced after the first bite. I didn't press him for clarification, I was just grateful for the company.

Thanks for taking the time - Blog O. Food

Meat & Potatoes, Italian-style!

Let's take the "What Am I Gonna Make For Dinner?" Challenge. You know the drill, whatever kind of day you've had, no matter your mood, sometimes you'd rather sit in a dentist's chair, sans Novocain, than think about putting one more meal on the table. Well friend, I'm here to help.

Surely you have onion and garlic in the pantry. Maybe some canned tomatoes and dried herbs. If you're a true foodie, I'll bet olives and pine nuts are regular items on your shopping list, if not, no worries. I've never been in a house that didn't have pasta in the cupboard, and if you don't have vegetable, chicken or beef stock on hand, well that metal spigot thingy in the kitchen has nature's most readily available cooking liquid: water. But then there's the matter of protein. Here in Belmont, grizzled Italians still stuff sausages the old fashioned way. If you're stuck in a flyover state, even breakfast sausage will do in a pinch, or frozen chicken breasts, hamburger meat, pork chops!!! Dinner has practically made itself.

And here are Blog O. Food's failsafe secrets:

Build a flavor base - sear meat in a heavy sauté pan with a couple tablespoons of good olive oil. Don't fuss with the meat too much, let it develop a nice brown covering. Once browned on the outside, remove meat to a bowl.

Enrich the base - To the same pan, add chopped onion and cook until translucent. Scrape up the brown bits from the pan as you sweat your onions. That's built in flavor right there. Next, toss in a few cloves of chopped garlic and heat through for a minute or two. Caution: if the onions or garlic brown too quickly they turn bitter, and your flavor base is lost. It's like burnt toast. There is almost nothing you can do to correct it, so a little care with this step if you please.

Layer in complexity - Remember those olives and pine nuts? Layering opportunities. Don't like olives? Think pine nuts are a New York affectation? March to your own drummer then. How about celery and carrots? Bell peppers, bitter greens, whatever. The key is, you're building something from the ground up. Be creative. Do not fear failure. Add whole, diced, chopped, puréed tomatoes, or even tomato paste and let things heat up a bit.

Low & slow - Return meat to the pan. Add cooking liquid, seasonings and herbs. Want a one-pot meal? Toss dried pasta right into the liquid. Bring everything to a simmer, Cover and lower the heat way down on your sauce to give all the separate ingredients a chance to meld and combine into something altogether different than a mere sum of its individual parts.

Nurturing - Occasionally stir and taste your sauce. Go easy on salt in the beginning stages. It's easy to add more salt later, and impossible to remove once you've put too much in early on.

And just like that, dinner is done. I texted Jean-9, flipped through the mail, and spied on my Facebook buddies all the while not constantly hovering over a pot on the stove.

See how easy that was?

Thanks for taking the time - Blog O. Food

Snow Day

He's back!!! February showed up with the ol' 1-2 punch last week. I have to admit to throwing in the towel without putting up much of a fight. I tend to get a little dispirited in the teeth of winter anyway and I had what can only be described as the week from hell at my day job. Not that that should interest you, and besides, it's none of your business, so, one soldiers on.

It's a snow day here in NYC. The school is closed. I trudged through deep stuff to the office anyway to update web pages and set up some tournament brackets, then it was right back to the apartment for some bad TV and microwave popcorn. It was Ina who jarred me out of my funk. Guess what she made today? Chicken Bouillabaisse! I'm tellin' ya, it was fate. So now, I'm in the middle of braising some pork and I've dusted off this here bloggy posty stuff (thank you, Sarah Palin).

Out in Southampton, it was a weekend of extremes. Kitchen-wise, that is. Even though I was able to catch the express train out of Hunterspoint (NYC to SH in under two hours), Lally and Muffy still beat me to the house, setting off the security alarm and scaring them both out of their wits. By the time I arrived, they were like a couple of long-tailed cats in a room full of rocking chairs. I had to shake a cocktail and build a fire just to get them to calm down. And then Lally had to be fed!

Luckily, Mr. Oliver had just the remedy. This is a dish Jamie makes for his kids, but I didn't think we would be stooping too low in serving it up for my two favorite ladies. I know they weren't put off by it.

Mini Shell Pasta with Creamy Smoked Bacon & Peas Sauce - adapted from Jamie Oliver

½ lb mini-shell pasta 1 bullion cube, chicken or vegetable 1 Tbsp olive oil 1 Tbsp unsalted butter 4 oz pancetta 8 oz frozen peas 3 sprigs fresh mint leaves, finely chopped ¼-cup sour cream 1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice 2 Tbsp Parmesan cheese, freshly grated Fresh chopped parsley for garnishing Makes 4-6 servings.

To cook your pasta:

Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil and add the bullion cube. Stir to dissolve. Add the mini shells and cook until al dente, about 6 minutes.

To prepare your sauce:

Heat a large sauté pan over medium heat and add the butter and olive oil. Once butter has stopped sizzling, add the pancetta and render the fat, frying until well browned. Add the peas and give the pan a good shake. After a minute or so, stir the sour cream and chopped mint into the pan.

Drain the pasta in a colander over a large bowl, reserving some of the cooking liquid. Add the pasta to the sauté pan and give a good shake to combine. Stir in the lemon juice. Once everything is heated through, remove from heat. The sauce should be creamy, but if it's too thick for you, add a splash of the reserved cooking liquid to thin it out a bit. Add the grated Parmesan and give the pan another good shake to mix it in.

Spoon pasta into a large serving bowl and garnish with chopped parsley. Serve immediately.

There is a long-standing argument about which Hampton is the real Hampton. I can tell you most assuredly that Southampton is NOT the genuine article, and here's why. Jamie's recipe called for crème fraîche. I tore apart the local Waldbaum's looking for it. Finally, a shelf stocker informed me they hadn't carried it in years. Now you know why Ina lives in East Hampton! Alice Waters has an amazingly simple recipe for making your own crème fraîche, but one needs 24-hours and I had about 30 minutes, so I went with sour cream instead. Not really a problem, as we we were only heating it through. Sour cream, as opposed to crème fraîche, will separate when boiled.

You should have seen Muffy's incredulous look when she read mint as an ingredient, but I think it made the dish sing. The sauce was tangy, salty and rich. The pancetta shined through and the peas were lovely. There were no leftovers to store, I might add. It wasn't until we put our forks down and folded our napkins that I could actually begin to relax. It was gonna be a great weekend.

And it was.

Thanks for taking the time - Blog O. Food

Hard Rock Knocks

Back when I was a struggling crew coach, money was always an issue. In the off season, I invariably had to find a job to support my bad habits. One summer I landed what I thought was gonna be a sweet gig cooking the books for an Italian stone importer (actually, I just paid the bills). He had a smokin' hot French associate who could be heard swearing in her native tongue over the telephone to quarrymen in Europe. We had a tasteful West Hollywood showroom with stunning mosaic granite and marble tile. One heard rumors of the shady antiquity deal, but I never saw anything like that go down. Unbeknownst to me, the owner was looking for a Lloyd to his Ari Gold. After unknowingly failing to pay a parking ticket for him and pick up his Mercedes from the impound yard one afternoon, I was unceremoniously fired about four weeks into the summer. I spent the next two months eating tuna out of the can, riding my road bike and surfing. My credit card balance ballooned and I lost about 15 pounds, but I turned heads when shirtless!

Before that fateful day however, the owner invited me to his home in Beverly Hills for dinner one night. He and his wife lived in this magnificent old Spanish colonial that I dreamed of owning one day. For the main course, his wife served a crispy roasted chicken, unadorned except for salt & pepper, but what I remembered most was a simple, and simply delicious first course. All it was was conchiglie (sea shell) pasta with onions and peas, a little white wine and lots of pepper. Her secret was sweating her onions on the lowest flame possible for a good 40 minutes or so before adding any other ingredient. I tried it out on my parents one winter, and my stepmother Anita loved it so much that, for a while there, it was all I ever made when I visited. It got to be a running joke after a time.

Conchiglie e Piselli - adapted from an old Naples recipe

1 large onion, thinly sliced 4 ounces pancetta, diced 2⁄3 cup olive oil 1½ Tbsp freshly ground black pepper 1 cup fresh, shelled baby peas 1 cup white wine 1 pound conchiglie (shell) pasta 3 cups water or chicken stock 1 cup parmesan cheese, grated

Sweat onions and pancetta with plenty of pepper in olive oil over low, low heat for 40-50 minutes, stirring frequently. The onions should almost liquefy, but not brown. Add peas and 1 cup of white wine, cover and cook over medium heat about 5 minutes. Add 3 more cups of water or stock to the peas. Bring mixture to a boil and add pasta shells. Reduce heat to medium and cover the stock pot. Stir pasta frequently. Most of the broth should be absorbed, but if necessary, add just enough extra liquid to allow pasta to cook to al dente. Toss with parmesan cheese and red pepper flakes to taste. Serve immediately.

This is a good first course on Italian night, or even a one-dish meal if you're going stag. It's important to keep as low a flame as possible when sweating your onions. I place my stock pot in a large sauté pan and heat that over a medium-low flame. I get great indirect heat that way. Remove the sauté pan once you are ready to boil your liquid and cook the pasta.

Simmering the pasta produces a slightly thick sauce as the starch combines with the wine and chicken stock. The pancetta adds smoky complexity. With a few more cups of stock and maybe some poached chicken breasts, you can stretch your food dollar by turning this dish into a very good soup.

Keep It Fresh: you want the peas (or whatever!) and onions to stand out, so fresh, fresh, fresh from the farmers market when in season. Unfortunately, life often throws you a curve ball. Be flexible. The peas weren't that impressive looking but the string beans were dark green, and plump. I removed the tips and cut them into thirds before adding them to the onions and pancetta. The result was still a bright-tasting pasta sauce.

I cheated.

On my way to the market, I swung by Enzo's and ordered a plate of meatballs and peppers. They were ready by the time I finished shopping. I even sat down for a glass of wine with the waiter before heading home. Totally. Worth. It.

Well, I didn't make my millions importing stone for high-end homes in southern California, but I learned some interesting French cuss words, and walked away with a terrific Italian recipe from the old country. One, I share with you now, the others will have to wait until I'm losing at cards or you're in the passenger seat as I drive the streets of New York City.

Thanks for taking the time - Blog O. Food

Keeping It Real

More cooking by way of the new and improved BOF credo: Keep It Fresh, Stupid! Farm stand basil and more heirloom tomatoes shine in another version of my Pasta Salad.  Intense Cherry tomatoes replace the sundried variety while they're in season. The basil crop is going gangbusters now that the sun is out. Freshly grated parm from the Retail Market and lots and lots of extra virgin olive oil. Adding grilled sweet Italian sausages allows me to retain my Man Tribe membership card.

I could have wallowed in self-pity cooking for one after so many great family meals up in Maine. But summer's bounty (and a new exercise regimen) are buoying my disposition. And this lighter fare is helping to retard wear & tear on the old bathroom scales. Always an ego boost.

Thanks for taking the time - Blog O. Food

Mac Fusilli-N-Cheese

Before moving along to our favorite topic food, and without getting too sanctimonious, I don't think it inappropriate to remind you, my gentle readers, why we have a Memorial Day weekend in the first place. Memorial Day was originally conceived to venerate Union soldiers killed during the American Civil War. Back then it was known as Decoration Day. After WWI, the commemoration was expanded to recognize American casualties of any war or military action. Traditionally, flags are flown at half-staff until noon, graves at national cemeteries are marked with American flags, and there is a moment of remembrance at 3:00pm local time. These days, Memorial Day weekend marks the beginning of summer and is celebrated with picnics, barbecues and the Indy 500. But pockets of sober reflection still survive. I was in the town of Orient, Long Island one Memorial Day weekend when the villagers held a simple parade and placed a wreath at the foot of a monument commemorating  their fallen sons and daughters. It was the most modest of ceremonies I had ever witnessed, and it humbled me to my core. These days - in my dotage - I take time to demonstrate my gratitude for our liberties and to the young men and women who fight to protect them, whether with beers for sailors at Yankee Stadium during Fleet Week (I love a man in a uniform!), or sitting at attention at the end of The News Hour broadcast when they list the dead in Iraq and Afghanistan. I hope never again to take their sacrifice for granted.

But one cannot remain morose and depressing all day; that's what Republicans are always accusing Democrats of doing. Life is for the living and to truly honor the ultimate sacrifice, one must live to the fullest. That means lots of America's favorite side dishes to go with all those hot dogs, hamburgers and barbecued chicken. And what's more American than macaroni and cheese? As American as French fries!

Baked Mac-N-Cheese

1 lb pasta noodle 3 slices day-old bread 4 Tbsp unsalted butter 2 Tbsp Parmesan cheese (grated) 2 Tbsp all purpose flour 2 cans evaporated milk ¼ tsp dry mustard ½ tsp grated nutmeg ½ tsp salt 2 cups sharp cheddar cheese (grated) ¾ cup Monterey jack cheese (grated) ¾ cup Gruyère cheese (grated)

Start by cooking pasta in plenty of boiling salted water. I didn't have macaroni, so substituted fusilli pasta. I liked the texture even better, but there will always be some purist nut job out there who thinks I'm a heretic. So be it. Cook the pasta to just al dente, but no further. You want the noodles slightly undercooked, as they will continue to soften with the cheese sauce in the oven.

Next make a topping for the mac-n-cheese by chopping bread (I used day-old sourdough), 2 Tbsp melted butter and two heaping Tbsp of grated Parmesan cheese in a food processor. Set the mixture aside.

Reserve about ½ cup of pasta water before draining and rinsing the cooked pasta. The excess starch on the pasta will gum up the finished dish, so rinse away, ignoring the wails of your Italian grandmothers. In the same pot as the pasta boiled, start a roux with 2 Tbsp of flour in the remaining 2 Tbsp of melted butter. Cook for a couple of minutes to get rid of the "raw" taste of the flour. Gradually whisk in two cans of evaporated milk and bring to a simmer. Add the hot sauce (I put in six heavy dashes for medium heat) and spices, and slowly stir in the grated cheeses, melting completely. Add the drained pasta and a little of the reserved pasta water. You're looking for a fluid, but not runny consistency to your macaroni.

Pour the pasta/cheese mixture into a 9x13 baking dish and top with the bread crumbs. Bake for 25 minutes in a pre-heated 350° oven. Allow to cool for at least 20 minutes once the dish is removed from the oven. This will allow the mac-n-cheese to set and prevent you from blistering the roof of your mouth when you shovel noodles and cheese into it.

Using multiple cheeses adds complexity to my mac-n-cheese. There are different cheeses for everyone's tastes. I like the tanginess of Gruyère over American cheese. You might like a milder Swiss cheese, Havarti or even Jarlsberg. It's all up to you. Play with your recipes until you discover something you really like, and then start a blog to brag about it.

Summer is officially here with lots of outdoor eating and one dish meals. Enjoy new and old family favorites this season and check back here often for ideas and tips.

Thanks for taking the time - Blog O. Food