menu one
Strawberries with Sugar and Cream
menu two
Fennel Soup with a Green Swirl
Pork Scaloppine with Lemon, Capers, and Chopped Arugula
Tangerines
menu three
Pasta “Timballo” with Fresh Ricotta
Fried Puffs with Honey (Sfince)
menu four
Tea-Smoked-Chicken Salad with Ginger Vinaigrette
menu five
Black Sticky Rice Pudding with Coconut Cream
menu one
Strawberries with Sugar and Cream
Chefs nowadays want to dazzle. I suppose they always have. Not to denigrate modern cooking—I don’t mean to squelch the creative urge—but one has to wonder sometimes about what restaurant food has become. Armed with all manner of machinery, it seems the modern chef now wants to do battle with an instant foam maker, a centrifugal food puree-er, a fast-freezing device, and a blowtorch. And a growing number of food professionals favor slow-cooking in plastic pouches. The simple hands-on approach to cooking has given way to the laboratory, futuristic flavored “air,” and edible “art.” To be sure, not all modern chefs have succumbed. But even so, traditional cooks are now seen as backward, and modern diners want excitement—two bites and they’re bored.
Last spring I attended a symposium of chefs from all over Europe who had gathered to explore modern food; la cuisine jeune, they called it—young cooking. This was the Omnivore Food Festival, held at a seaside conference center in Deauville, France. The place was packed, each dish was applauded enthusiastically, and every chef was ovated, sometimes standingly. To a man (and they were all men), the chefs professed a love of simple food, of seasonal ingredients, of traditional cooking. And yet, you just have to hear what they cooked.
An Italian chef claimed his dish delivered a sense memory equal to his mama’s ravioli di zucca: she sweetened a pumpkin filling for pasta with amaretti cookies, added salt with Parmigiano. His updated version involved making a puree of pumpkin and yucca root, seasoned with the Japanese citrus yuzu. This puree was troweled to a thickness of one-sixteenth of an inch and left to dry overnight. The next day, it was ripped into shards, fried lightly in olive oil, and showered with grated Parmigiano. But not just any Parmigiano. His was made from the milk of a special herd of red-haired Italian cattle.
Another dish, the traditional pairing of potato and salt cod (think brandade), was reimagined this way: boil, peel, and freeze-dry purple-fleshed Peruvian potatoes, then grind into a very bright violet powder. Slowly simmer a slice of salt cod in olive oil. Make a smear of yellow garlic sauce on a giant white plate. Roll the warm salt cod in the purple potato powder and place it on the plate. Garnish with violets!
A Danish chef loved the earth and its seasons. For his dish of winter root vegetables, he cooked turnips, radishes, and carrots in butter. Then he made some fake earth with edible ingredients, advising that it should look dark and loose like rich mulch, but warning that its flavor should not overpower the vegetables. He heaped a good shovelful of the “dirt” onto a large slab of slate and laid the cooked root vegetables on top. He placed a dome over the vegetables and piped in a large blast of wood smoke. Presentation? Remove the dome and the dish is smoking, steaming, and earthy.
A very well known English chef showed photographs of his creations. A signature dish is a raw shellfish salad scattered over faux sand and garnished with seaweed. This salad is accompanied by an iPod, hidden in a large seashell and loaded with sea sounds.
Saved for last was the famous Spaniard who has inspired so many imitators and pretenders (and whom, surprisingly, I liked best of all). He was an extraordinary gentleman, completely down-to-earth and engaging. He told us it doesn’t matter what you cook, what your ingredients are, or where you live, as long as you have soul. He seemed to genuinely enjoy his inventions. Some of his dishes were as simple as grapefruit sections, slightly dried to concentrate their centers. Others involved freezing fresh tomato juice in the shape of a balloon.
It was all quite entertaining. But afterward, when I got back to Paris and thought about what I wanted to cook for friends the following night at home, I craved real vegetables and a plain roast. Though perhaps I would splurge on baby spring lamb from the Pyrenees—the butcher had told me it was available. Something simple. With absolutely no foam.
The French often begin a meal with soft scrambled eggs, oeufs brouillés. (In its ultimate rendition, the eggs are scrambled with black truffles.) But I actually discovered this dish in Spain, where it was made with wild asparagus. I love the combination of the bite of asparagus with the soft egg. Use skinny asparagus, or wild if you can find them. Cook this just before you sit down to eat: it’ll be ready in minutes.
2 pounds asparagus
4 tablespoons butter
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
Salt and pepper
8 eggs, beaten
Several sprigs of mint and basil, leaves chopped
Snap off the tough ends of the asparagus. Cut the stalks into 1-inch lengths; if your asparagus are thick, halve the stalks lengthwise before cutting them. In a large skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of the butter over medium heat. Add the asparagus and chopped garlic, season with salt and pepper, and cook until just done, about 2 minutes.
Remove the asparagus from the skillet and set aside. Heat the remaining butter in the same pan. Season the eggs with salt and pepper and add them to the pan. Stir gently until the eggs are barely set.
Fold in the asparagus, then spoon onto a warmed platter. Scatter chopped mint and basil on top.
In France these are called pommes de terres à la fourchette, which sounds glamorous for a dish of humble home-style potatoes mashed with a fork. You can make them as smooth as you like, or keep them rough and chunky.
2½ pounds yellow-fleshed potatoes, such as Yukon Gold
Salt and pepper
½ cup milk or cream
¼ cup olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
Peel and cube the potatoes. Boil them in salted water 12 to 15 minutes, until fork-tender. Drain the potatoes and return them to the pot. Season with salt and pepper. Heat the milk in a small saucepan until just under a boil.
Pour the hot milk over the potatoes and add the olive oil and butter. Use a large fork to mash the potatoes to the consistency you like, then transfer to a warm serving bowl.
In Spain and Italy, tender, milk-fed baby lamb is well-known and appreciated, and the best French butchers carry tiny agneau du lait from the Pyrenees. Here in the States, lamb that small is hard to find, but some small farms now market midsize spring lamb. The rack of lamb is the tenderest cut of the beast and the easiest to cook. Ask your butcher for the smallest racks. serves 4 to 6
Two 8-bone racks of lamb, frenched
Salt and pepper
2 garlic cloves, smashed to a paste with a little salt
Several sprigs of rosemary, leaves coarsely chopped
Olive oil
Season the racks liberally with salt and pepper. With your hands, rub each rack with the garlic and chopped rosemary and a drizzle of olive oil. Place the racks fat side up in a roasting pan and leave them at room temperature for an hour or so.
Preheat the oven to 400°F. Roast the lamb for about 20 minutes, until the racks are nicely browned, with an interior temperature of 125°F on an instant-read thermometer. Remove from the oven, cover loosely with foil, and let rest for about 10 minutes. Put a serving platter in the oven to warm.
Transfer the racks to a carving board and slice between the bones. Arrange the little chops on the platter and serve.
The tender leaves of spring dandelions make a wonderful salad. Cultivated varieties of dandelion are usually less bitter than wild. In any case, look for the smallest leaves. The larger broad-leafed variety that you often find in the market is better wilted. If you can’t find dandelion greens, you can make this salad with curly endive or watercress.
1 shallot, finely diced
2 to 3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
Salt and pepper
1 garlic clove, smashed to a paste with a little salt
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
¼ cup olive oil
4 large handfuls dandelion greens, about 1 pound
Macerate the shallot in the red wine vinegar with a pinch of salt for 5 minutes. Add the garlic, mustard, and pepper, then stir in the olive oil. Taste and adjust the seasonings.
Put the dandelion greens in a large salad bowl, and sprinkle lightly with salt. Add half the dressing and toss. Taste and add a little more dressing if you think it’s necessary.
Strawberries with Sugar and Cream
The quality of both the berries and the cream really matters here. Giant supermarket strawberries are sure to disappoint, so head for the farm stand or the farmers’ market. You want berries that are deep red, with fresh, bright green leaves and stems. You should be able to smell them before you see them! Use homemade crème fraîche or the best commercial crème fraîche you can find; or use organic cream (avoid ultrapasteurized cream). Use whatever sugar you prefer. I grew up eating strawberries with brown sugar.
2 to 3 pints perfect organic strawberries
1 pint Crème Fraîche or heavy cream, lightly whipped
Sugar
Rinse the berries quickly in cool water, drain well on a kitchen towel, and gently pile them onto a platter. Pass small bowls of the crème fraîche and sugar. Eat the strawberries with your fingers, dipping them first in the sugar and then in the cream—or vice versa.
Crème Fraîche
Heat 2 cups organic heavy cream, not ultrapasteurized, to just under a boil. Cool to room temperature. Stir in ¼ cup plain yogurt or buttermilk. Transfer to a glass, ceramic, or strainless steel bowl and cover with a clean towel. Leave at room temperature for about 12 hours, until slightly thickened. For a tarter flavor, let it stand for 24 hours. Cover well and store, refrigerated, for up to 2 weeks.
menu two
Fennel Soup with a Green Swirl
Pork Scaloppine with Lemon, Capers, and Chopped Arugula
Tangerines
“Oh, arugula!” an Italian friend of mine exclaimed recently. “It is so-o-o tiresome!” I was surprised. “I thought all Italians liked it?” “Yes, I like it,” she said. “It’s just that you can’t go anywhere anymore without finding arugula on everything: pizzas, salads, carpaccio, tagliata. They’ve ruined it for me!”
She had a point. Arugula, once unknown here and now ubiquitous, has become synonymous with elitism and effeteism—a snob’s green. It’s a funny thing to happen to leaves that are fed to rabbits all across Europe.
But wait. Sharp, nutty, slightly spicy arugula is truly a wonderful green. Just a few leaves can pick up any salad. Use it instead of basil for a good pesto over pasta with anchovies. Or wilt it, like spinach, in a sauté of zucchini. Best of all, perhaps, is the simple arugula salad, the leaves chopped and dressed with lemon and olive oil, the way it’s done in Milano.
There are all kinds of arugula. Tiny, tender young shoots; medium-sized “salad” arugula; the large-leafed spinach-like variety you find in New York City; and the small, skinny, reticulated “wild” arugula that’s suddenly showing up in good markets everywhere. Botanically, arugula is a brassica called Eruca sativa, which means it’s related to cabbage, mustard, and broccoli—no surprise there. In Italy, it’s called rucola (among other names); arugula is an Americanization of the Italian word. In France, it is called roquette (or ricchetti, in the South of France). And almost no one uses its English name “rocket,” as it’s listed in The Oxford Companion to Italian Food, with this understatement: “The current overuse of whole rocket leaves as garnish is not as satisfactory as the many unpretentious recipes in which it is added, chopped, to sauces and cooked dishes.” My point exactly.
Make sure you find the freshest, brightest, most fragrant fennel for this soup. Fennel should be firm, shiny, and pale green. Don’t buy fennel that looks withered or brown or stringy. Check the root ends of the bulbs to make sure they’ve been freshly cut. And, since you’ll use the fronds for the pureed swirl, it’s important that they be green, feathery, and abundant.
for the soup
¼ cup olive oil
3 medium fennel bulbs, trimmed and sliced
1 large onion, sliced
4 garlic cloves, chopped
Salt and pepper
¼ cup long-grain white rice
6 cups chicken broth or water, or as needed
for the swirl
1 cup roughly chopped fennel fronds
½ cup parsley leaves
½ cup basil leaves
¼ cup chopped scallions
½ cup olive oil
Salt and pepper
In a large heavy-bottomed pot, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the sliced fennel, onion, and garlic. Season generously with salt and pepper, and stew the vegetables, stirring every few minutes, until they are softened and lightly colored.
Add the rice and broth or water. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to a gentle simmer. Taste the broth, add more seasoning if necessary, and simmer for 20 minutes.
Puree the soup in a blender, then pass through a fine-mesh strainer to remove any fibrous strands. Return the strained soup to the pot. Check the consistency. If it’s too thick, add a bit of water or broth.
Rinse and dry the blender, and put all the ingredients for the swirl into the blender at once. Blend on high speed until you have a smooth green puree. Transfer to a small bowl.
To serve, reheat the soup and ladle it into soup bowls. Swirl a tablespoon of the green puree into each bowl.
We’re talking here about thinly sliced (but not pounded) pork cut from the lean end of a pork loin. Ask your butcher to cut the slices for you. It will cook quickly and stay tender. It is still difficult to find good veal these days, but better pork is happening all across the country, which is why I use it here instead of the traditional veal. serves 4 to 6
12 thin (about ⅜-inch-thick) slices pork cut from the loin
Salt and pepper
About ½ cup olive oil
2 tablespoons roughly chopped parsley
2 teaspoons grated lemon zest
1 tablespoon capers, rinsed and roughly chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
½ pound arugula, chopped
Lemon wedges
Season both sides of the pork slices with salt and pepper and drizzle with olive oil. Heat two cast-iron skillets over medium-high heat. When the pans are hot, lay 6 slices of pork in each pan and let them cook for about 2 minutes, until nicely browned. Turn and cook for 2 minutes on the other side. Remove the scaloppine to a warm serving platter.
In one of the pans, heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat. Add the parsley, lemon zest, capers, and garlic and let sizzle for a bare minute. Spoon the sauce over the scaloppine and top each slice with a handful of chopped arugula. Garnish the platter with lemon wedges.
These light little zucchini cakes are simply grated zucchini bound with egg and a little flour. To me they taste quintessentially Italian, sort of like a zucchini frittata, especially if you add the Parmigiano. They’re also delicious at room temperature, which makes them perfect for a picnic or a lunch box.
8 to 10 small zucchini, about 3 pounds
2 teaspoons salt
2 eggs
½ teaspoon pepper
1 bunch scallions, finely chopped
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
½ cup finely grated Parmigiano (optional)
Olive oil for frying
Grate the zucchini on the medium holes of a box grater. Toss the grated zucchini with the salt and let it drain in a colander for about 20 minutes. Squeeze very dry in a clean kitchen towel.
In a large mixing bowl, beat the eggs with the pepper and scallions. Add the flour, then add the grated zucchini and cheese, if using, and mix thoroughly.
Pour olive oil into a cast-iron skillet to a depth of ¼ inch and heat. Carefully place spoonfuls of the zucchini mixture in the pan, then flatten them to a diameter of about 2 inches. Make only a few pancakes at a time so you don’t crowd them, and turn each one once, letting them cook for about 3 to 4 minutes on each side, until golden. The heat should stay at moderate; if you get impatient and try to cook them too rapidly over high heat, they’ll get too dark too quickly, and you don’t want that.
Serve immediately, or hold in a warm oven until the entire batch is cooked.
This is a dense spice cake that, like panforte, keeps well. Try to wait until the next day to eat it, in small, thin slices. A bowl of tangerines makes a perfect accompaniment.
½ cup sugar
½ cup water
¼ cup honey
1 teaspoon grated orange zest
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
½ teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
A little grated nutmeg
Pinch of cayenne
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ teaspoon ground allspice
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
2 eggs, beaten
½ cup golden raisins
1 cup natural (unblanched) whole almonds
1 cup all-purpose flour
½ cup almond flour
Preheat the oven to 375°F. Butter and flour a 9-inch tart pan; set aside. In a large saucepan, dissolve the sugar in the water and honey and simmer for a couple of minutes.
Remove from the heat and add the citrus zests, the spices, and the cocoa. Add the eggs and mix well. Stir in the raisins and almonds, then gradually stir in the flours.
Pour the batter into the pan and bake the cake for 35 to 40 minutes, until a knife inserted into the cake comes out dry. Unmold after about 10 minutes and cool on a rack.
menu three
Pasta “Timballo” with Fresh Ricotta
Fried Puffs with Honey (Sfince)
Sicily may be part of Italy, but it really feels like another country altogether. Palermo is crazy! Mountain-like rocky promontories hover over the coastline with castles on their peaks, and little villages climb their slopes. There are ancient caves, and giant wind turbines, sleek and white and modern, their slim blades turning busily. Along the highway, factories and oil tanks stand cheek by jowl with ruins of old stone farmhouses, shabby high-rise apartments, and grand walled villas. Blackened Victorian structures and ornate government palazzi are interspersed with used-car lots. Vacation houses clog every square meter of waterfront; tall cranes hover and bulldozers abound. A billboard advertises a new kind of electric bicycle—Spina e via, it implores: plug it in and go! But everyone is going already . . . cars, trucks of every size, scooters, motorcycles, all headed in every direction in a hurry, weaving between what would be lanes if there were any painted stripes.
But there’s another side to Sicily and that’s where we’re headed. We’ve come to visit Fabrizia Lanza at her family’s estate, the winery Regaleali, about an hour’s drive from Palermo. We gladly leave the urban chaos behind as we head inland, traversing the twisted roads past low stone walls, vineyards, and orange groves. Everywhere are flowering fruit trees, patches of wild fennel, jumbles of cactus, stretches of pasture, and rolling green hills. It’s spring, but the distant mountains are still snow-topped.
Fabrizia, the daughter of the renowned cook Anna Tasca Lanza, is taking over her mother’s cooking school (Anna is retiring after twenty years and four seminal cookbooks). Regaleali, it turns out, is more than the grounds of the estate. The family owns the valley as far as the eye can see: grapevines and olive trees, a small herd of testa rossa sheep, a few vegetable gardens, a little family chapel, two large stone villas, and a scattering of outbuildings. It could be another century but for the automobiles, tractors, and stainless steel wine tanks.
Fabrizia shares with her mother a love of the Sicilian countryside, its history, and traditional cuisine. Sicily, ruled at various times by the Normans, Arabs, Spanish, and French, has taken rich culinary influences from its conquerors. Indeed, the cooking of each village differs from the next. In Trapani, for example, on the northwest coast, the local specialty is couscous (we are African, they told me there); on the opposite end of the island, in Etna, no one makes couscous. Fabrizia, who clearly loves to cook and to share her knowledge in equal measure, has been working on documenting the vanishing traditional cuisine, interviewing and recording the stories of the old ladies from nearby villages as they demonstrate, for instance, the traditional breads for the feast of San Giuseppe, St. Joseph’s Day.
We spend a few days cooking together and Fabrizia teaches me several dishes from her vast repertoire. These are simple dishes, most with ingredients plucked straight from the garden. In her Sicilian kitchen we become fast friends.
a palermo market
Mercato Ballarò, Palermo’s popular street market, is souk-like and plenty old, winding and spilling among narrow streets and alleys, lively and beautiful, twisting and shouting.
We are told we must visit the stand of Joise, whose specialty is quarume. When we order a little plate of it, Joise mimes the parts of veal we’ll be eating. Clutching his breast, tapping his head, holding his stomach, and pointing to his shoes, he says, “Mammalia, testa, trippa, piedo.” We approve heartily of this boiled antipasto he slices cold, to be eaten with salt and lemon. But we have come to sample his tripe specialties, and for this we are beckoned inside the little dining area to two old tables with marble tops (one marked “nonsmoking”). We are given paper napkins, silverware, a small loaf of bread, and a liter of wine. There are two tripe dishes on the menu, and Joise gives us both: one simply boiled with a bit of meat, nervetti, and ventricles and served in its broth. The other is simmered with tomato, thickened with bread crumbs, and sprinkled generously with aged pecorino. Buonissimo!
We leave and venture into the market, as cacophonous as Palermo itself. There we see all manner of fish, calamari, clams, anchovies, bottarga di tonno. Barrels of olives and capers in salt. Masses of lemons and oranges, always with leaves. Forests of freshly cut artichokes, mountains of cauliflower (the local, green-fleshed sort). Stacks of ricotta—fresh, smoked, and baked. Young pecorino with red pepper or black. Piles of spices. Baskets of garlic and pink-tinged spring onions. Bundles of fresh herbs. Pyramids of greens. Jars and jars of deepest red estratto di pomodoro, sun-dried tomato paste. Coils of sausage, pillars of prosciutto and pancetta.
There’s a guy selling sfincione, the Sicilian pizza. Someone else is frying panelle, crisp fritters made from farina di ceci, chickpea flour. And there’s ca’meusa, a local favorite, boiled spleen on a bun. And arancini, fried rice balls, and gelato, always in a brioche to eat on the run—surely the original ice cream sandwich. That settles it, I tell myself. I’m moving to Sicily.
In Sicily, the citrus is so phenomenal even the lemons taste better, somehow more delicious and round. We devised a simple salad—lettuces freshly picked, crisply fresh sliced fennel, young radishes, wild garlic, brown-leafed catmint, fruity olive oil, lemon juice, and orange slices. I said, “This salad tastes like Sicily. I’ll call it Sicilian Salad.” Fabrizia laughed and replied, “No Sicilian would ever eat it!” In Sicily, the preference is for cooked vegetables, not raw.
1 fennel bulb, trimmed
Salt and pepper
Juice of ½ lemon
1 garlic clove, smashed to a paste with a little salt
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 small bunch radishes, thinly sliced
2 scallions, thinly sliced
2 heads fresh-picked tender lettuce, torn into large pieces
A large handful of arugula
2 navel oranges, peeled and sliced into rings
A few mint leaves, chopped
Thinly slice the fennel and put it in a salad bowl. Season with salt and pepper. Whisk together the lemon juice, garlic, and olive oil and pour it over the fennel. Add the radishes, scallions, and greens, sprinkle lightly with salt, and toss gently with your hands to coat the leaves. Put the orange slices on top of the salad and scatter the chopped mint over all.
honest ricotta
At Regaleali, they milk their small herd of sheep twice a day. Three kinds of cheese are made in an old-fashioned traditional cheese kitchen, where the milk is heated in a copper cauldron set over a wood fire. When it clabbers, the milk is drained into baskets to make tuma, fresh curd cheese. The tuma firms in the baskets overnight and then is salted to make primo sale, fresh pecorino; or it’s aged with peppercorns for the hard, tangy pecorino stagioanato. Fresh ricotta (ricotta means cooked twice) is made in the same copper cauldron from the reserved whey drained from the curds. The watery whey is simmered gently for about 20 minutes, until the remaining milk solids almost miraculously coagulate, then the solids are gently salted and spooned into baskets to drain. When you taste it, this ricotta is the best thing you have ever eaten. In Fabrizia’s kitchen, we mixed the fresh ricotta with tomato sauce for a pasta; stuffed fried cannoli shells with ricotta cream; and made a sweetened ricotta cake called cassata alla siciliana. For breakfast we ate warm ricotta with honey.
Pasta “Timballo” with Fresh Ricotta
A timballo is a classic Sicilian pasta dish reserved for formal occasions. Baked in a deep pan and covered with bread crumbs, flaky pastry, or slices of eggplant, it is impressive: when the timballo is unmolded and arrives at the table, it has the grand presence of a birthday cake. Even a simplified version of the timballo, such as the one that follows, with the pasta piled on a huge platter, is thrilling. And equally tasty.
The dish is made with anelli, a dried ring-shaped pasta made from hard wheat. serves 4 to 6
1 pound anelli pasta
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Red pepper flakes
4 cups Tomato Sauce
1 pound best-quality fresh ricotta, at room temperature
Grated pecorino
A handful of basil leaves, roughly chopped
Bring a big pot of salted water to a boil. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Boil the pasta for 12 to 15 minutes; it should be firmly al dente. Drain the pasta and put it in a large bowl. Drizzle with a little fruity olive oil, and season to taste with salt, black pepper, and red pepper flakes.
Meanwhile, heat the tomato sauce. Have a large, deep ovenproof platter ready.
Spoon about half the sauce into the platter and stir half of the ricotta into the sauce, leaving it rather lumpy. Pile the pasta on the sauce on the platter, and spoon the rest of the sauce on top of the pasta. Top with spoonfuls of the remaining ricotta and sprinkle with grated pecorino. Put the platter in the oven for about 10 minutes, to heat through completely.
Sprinkle with the basil, and serve more pecorino on the side.
Tomato Sauce
Although tomatoes reached Italy only five hundred years ago, Italian—and especially Sicilian—cuisine is unthinkable without them. Conserva, homemade tomato sauce, and estratto di pomodoro, sun-dried tomato paste, are used almost daily in the Sicilian kitchen. Ideally you would have made this sauce in tomato season. makes about 8 cups
¼ cup olive oil
1 large yellow onion, finely diced
6 garlic cloves, chopped
Salt and pepper
8 pounds ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped
A sprig of basil
Heat the olive oil in a large heavy-bottomed pot. Sauté the onion over medium heat until quite soft but not browned, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic, salt, and pepper and let cook for a minute or two. Add the tomatoes and basil, bring to a boil, and let the sauce bubble briskly for about 5 minutes.
Reduce the heat to quite low and cook slowly for 1 to 1½ hours, stirring frequently to make sure the tomatoes don’t stick or burn. The sauce is done when the volume of tomatoes is reduced by almost half and the sauce has a nice consistency—not too thick and not too thin.
Can or freeze the sauce to use throughout the year.
Fried Puffs with Honey (Sfince)
Made to celebrate St. Joseph’s Day, these fried puffs of dough reflect the Arab influence on Sicilian cuisine. Sometimes they can be a little stodgy and doughy, but Fabrizia makes a lighter version with French pâte à choux (cream puff dough), which I think is a very good idea. You can make the dough a few hours ahead, but sfince are best eaten quickly once they are fried.
6 tablespoons butter
Pinch of salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1 cup water
1 cup all-purpose flour
4 eggs
Vegetable oil for frying
Warmed honey for drizzling
In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, combine the butter, salt, sugar, and water and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Add the flour all at once, stirring madly with a wooden spoon until the mixture forms a ball. This will happen quickly, in about a minute.
Transfer the hot dough to a mixing bowl and, with an electric mixer, beat in the eggs one at a time. Then beat for a couple of minutes, until the eggs are well incorporated and the mixture is shiny. What you’re making is a very thick batter.
Proceed to fry the sfince right away, or leave the dough at room temperature until you’re ready to fry them, for up to 2 hours.
Heat 2 inches of oil in a wide deep skillet until it reaches 375°F on a deep-fry thermometer. Using a teaspoon, make little blobs of dough and put them carefully into the oil. Do this in batches, frying only 8 or 10 puffs at a time so you don’t crowd the pan. The sfince will puff up immediately, but you have to nurse them and turn them over so that they cook evenly. Fry until golden brown, about 5 minutes. Lift the puffs from the oil with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels. When all the puffs are fried, transfer to a platter and drizzle lightly with warmed honey.
menu four
Tea-Smoked-Chicken Salad with Ginger Vinaigrette
Once upon a time, before factory farming, chicken was a luxury, signifying prosperity—a treat that marked special occasions. And it tasted like something. In nearly every culture, chicken had iconic significance, and, in many, it still does. The smell of chicken roasting, boiling, or simmering always conjures a sense memory for me. Perhaps I inherited it. My great-grandmother, a tough bird herself (or so the story goes) was a professional chicken wrangler. She had a stand in the market selling live chickens in Dayton, Ohio, much to the horror of her twin granddaughters, little Marjory and Dorothy. But she was from the old country, and it didn’t bother her a bit to take a chicken by the legs from a wooden crate, slit its throat, quickly pluck the feathers, and remove the guts. And if gutting an old hen happened to reveal an unborn egg or two, so much the better. People paid a bit more for these shell-less delicacies, so good in a bowl of chicken soup. She didn’t get rich in the process, but she eked out a living, and there was usually chicken for the family.
In those days, every little mom-and-pop farm in America would have, in addition to a chicken coop, a few guinea hens in the yard. You didn’t really have to care for them because they like to perch high, in the eaves of a barn or the branches of a tree. They made good “watchbirds” because, like geese, their habit is to scream, loud and often. It’s a pity that more people don’t know about guinea hens, because if you are at all an aficionado of roast chicken, you’re sure to be thrilled by the flavor of roast guinea hen.
There is one farm that raises guinea fowl, run by French people, in northern California. The French love their pintades and the Italians, their faraona. In Europe, guinea fowl are even cheaper than chicken. These birds have goodness bred into them. I think of them as the über-chicken, because they have so much flavor, but they are actually related to pheasants. You wouldn’t call their flavor gamey, but you would call it deep. A little garlic, rosemary, salt, and pepper are all you need for a true feast.
As long as we’re talking about tasty birds, let’s not forget the duck (Chinese roast duck; rare-grilled duck breast in the French manner!), nor the quail (and quail eggs!), best nibbled with the fingers. But especially, let’s toast the young farm-raised pigeon—or squab, if you’re squeamish. Squab has the most divine flavor of any bird, and that goes double for squab liver.
I once moved into a house in the country near Pecos, New Mexico, with an abandoned pigeon coop in the back. By coincidence, one day some Texan friends came to visit with a cage full of live pigeons. By the time dinner was over, they had persuaded me to install a dozen pigeons in the old coop.
The pigeons did what pigeons do, and soon began laying eggs, always two at a time. In a few weeks I had about four dozen young squabs. Then one afternoon I did what cooks do: I killed them all, then sat in the grass and plucked them. There’s a photo of me somewhere wearing a big smile and a lot of feathers. I invited a big group of friends to a pigeon feed. I braised the legs, grilled the breasts, and made pâté from the livers.
I thought of my great-grandmother, the chicken lady, and wondered what she would think of her great-grandson, plucking pigeons in Pecos.
You need to simmer the chicken legs before you smoke them for the chicken salad in this menu. In the process, you obtain a tasty light broth to serve as its own course or, even better, in a little bowl along with the salad.
6 chicken legs
Salt and pepper
8 cups water
One 1-inch piece ginger, peeled and sliced
2 garlic cloves, sliced
4 scallions, roughly chopped, plus 2 tablespoons slivered scallions for garnish
3 star anise
Season the chicken legs generously with salt and pepper. (You can do this a couple of hours ahead, or even the night before, and refrigerate them.) Put the chicken legs in a heavy-bottomed pot and cover with the water. Add the sliced ginger, garlic, roughly chopped scallions, and star anise. Bring to a boil, then turn down to a gentle simmer. Check the legs at 30 minutes.
When they’re done, remove them and set aside for the salad. Simmer the broth for another 30 minutes.
Strain the broth, skim off any fat, and check the seasoning. The seasoned chicken legs will have added their salt and pepper to the broth, but it might need a little salt. Refrigerate the broth until you’re ready to use it, for up to 2 days.
To serve, reheat the broth, pour it into small bowls, and garnish with the slivered scallions.
The Chinese technique of tea-smoking is utterly simple, but the results are complex and delicious. No other smoking smells like tea-smoking or gives food that signature slightly glazed look. Many kinds of salad greens will work here, from watercress to curly endive to tender mustard greens, or even young spinach. serves 4 to 6
½ cup black tea leaves
½ cup raw white rice
½ cup packed brown sugar
2 or 3 star anise, crushed
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 teaspoon whole cloves
6 cooked chicken legs from the previous recipe
12 quail eggs
4 to 6 handfuls salad greens
Salt and pepper
To smoke the chicken, you need a closed pot such as a Dutch oven or a roasting pan with a lid. Line the bottom of the pot with foil. Mix the tea, rice, sugar, and aromatics in a bowl, then spread the mixture right on the foil. You will need a little rack above it for the chicken. Put the chicken legs in one layer on the rack, then put on the lid.
Preheat the oven to 400°F. Put the pot on the stove over high heat. Now you will have to depend upon your ear and your nose to tell you what’s going on, because you can’t peek, or you’ll lose the smoke. What you’ll hear is the sugar beginning to crackle, and you’ll smell the tea and aromatics beginning to smoke. Leave over high heat for about 2 minutes, then turn off the heat.
Put the pan in the oven and roast for about 10 minutes. This should be sufficient to give the chicken the traditional tea-smoked flavor. It’s best to take the pot outdoors before you open it so you don’t fill your kitchen with smoke. In any case, it is important to release the smoke somehow, near a vent or an open window, for example. Open the pot and remove the legs to a platter. Set the platter aside and let the chicken cool to room temperature. The burnt remains of the tea and sugar will be there on the foil, waiting to be thrown away.
To cook the quail eggs, bring a small pot of water to a rolling boil. Put in the quail eggs and keep the water boiling for a minute and a half. Immediately remove them and submerge the eggs in a bowl of ice water. This gives you the kind of boiled egg I like, hard-cooked with a soft center.
To assemble the salad, put the greens in a big bowl and lightly salt and pepper them. Add 2 tablespoons of the vinaigrette, just enough to coat the leaves. Toss the leaves gently, and divide among 4 to 6 plates.
Place each chicken leg in its own little nest of greens, or, if you’d rather, shred the chicken. I like to garnish the plates with the quail eggs in their shells, but if you prefer, you can peel them. Drizzle a little vinaigrette over the chicken and serve.
other birds to smoke
Quail, guinea hens, game hens, and duck legs are also excellent candidates for tea-smoking, simmered first as in the Scallion Broth recipe. I’ve also smoked rare pan-seared duck breasts and rare roasted squab with excellent results.
Ginger Vinaigrette
1 shallot, finely diced
1 garlic clove, smashed to a paste with a little salt
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar or rice vinegar
Salt and pepper
2 teaspoons finely diced or grated peeled ginger
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
¼ cup grapeseed or other mild vegetable oil
1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
Juice of ½ lime
Combine the shallot and garlic in a small bowl with the vinegar. Add a little salt and pepper and let sit for about 5 minutes, then whisk in all the remaining ingredients. makes about ½ cup
These candies are a heavenly cross between meringue and nougat. You can make them a day or two ahead and store in an airtight container.
2 cups raw peanuts
½ cup sesame seeds
1 cup brown sugar
½ teaspoon salt
2 egg whites
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Mix the peanuts, sesame seeds, sugar, and salt in a mixing bowl. Whisk the egg whites into soft peaks. Stir half the whites into the nut mixture, then gently fold in the remaining whites.
Spread evenly on the baking sheet about ½ inch thick. Bake until the brittle turns a toasty brown, about 25 minutes. Cool on a rack.
Peel off the parchment paper while the brittle is still a bit warm.
Allow to cool and harden completely before cutting into small squares.
menu five
Black Sticky Rice Pudding with Coconut Cream
Though I’d often eaten Vietnamese food in California, oddly, it took a bowl of soup in Paris to hook me. After shopping the early morning market at the Place Maubert, we discovered a noodle shop nearby. It happened to be one of those damp, chill spring days the French specialize in, so we sat outside on the sidewalk terrace across from the busy market to seek warmth in a big, brothy bowl of pho. The name is pronounced “feu,” like the French word for fire, and some people claim it betrays the French influence on Vietnamese cuisine; others cite a much older relationship to other Chinese and Japanese noodle soups. No matter—it’s delicious. There are other offerings on the menu, but I always opt for the pho, its fragrant broth layered with fresh herbs, rice noodles, bean sprouts, and sharp hot chiles. We usually start with two other favorites: crispy fried egg rolls (known in France as nems) and vegetable rolls, which are called rouleaux du printemps (“spring rolls”). These are served with a pile of sweet herbs and lettuce leaves. The earthy yet surprisingly delicate ingredients and fresh combinations of Vietnamese cooking always taste healthy, clean, and restorative.
Easy to assemble, these fresh, savory rolls can be a light appetizer on their own, or you can make a platter of them to accompany the soup. Vegetable rolls are typically a little bland, but I like to make a well-seasoned filling sparked with ginger. Sometimes called rice paper, the wrappers are basically disc-shaped dry noodles made from rice flour. I keep a package of them on hand in the pantry. makes 8 rolls
1 small cucumber, peeled and cut into long julienne
1 medium carrot, peeled and cut into long julienne
2 scallions, finely sliced
One 1-inch piece ginger, peeled and shredded
1 serrano chile, finely diced
Salt and pepper
¼ teaspoon toasted sesame oil
8 large rice paper wrappers
Basil leaves
Mint leaves
Cilantro sprigs
1 firm-ripe avocado, cut into 8 wedges
Lettuce leaves and herb sprigs for garnish
Put the cucumber, carrot, scallions, ginger, and chile in a bowl. Season lightly with salt and pepper. Add the sesame oil and toss lightly.
To prepare the rolls, have a bowl of hot water near your work surface. Dip a wrapper in hot water until it wilts and becomes translucent, only about 15 seconds. Lift the wrapper from the water and lay it on a cutting board. Place a few basil leaves, mint leaves, and cilantro sprigs on the bottom half of the wrapper. Then spoon on a small amount of the cucumber/carrot mixture, and top with a wedge of avocado. Fold over the sides of the wrapper slightly, then roll it into a firm cigar shape. Set aside. As the roll cools, the color will return to rice white. Repeat with the other wrappers.
For a platter of rolls, cut each one in half. Serve with lettuce leaves, herb sprigs, and the dipping sauce. It’s traditional to wrap each portion in a lettuce leaf with herb sprigs before dunking it in the dipping sauce.
Dipping Sauce
½ cup rice vinegar
2 tablespoons brown sugar or crushed palm sugar
2 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons chopped scallions
Juice of 1 lime
1 serrano or Asian chile, finely slivered (optional)
Mix all the ingredients together well in a small bowl. If you like your sauce spicier, add a little chopped fresh chile. Serve with the vegetable rolls.
In Vietnam, pho is street food, basic, hearty, and filling, sold from a cart with a few little stools in front. Here, you can get pho at little bare-bones sit-down restaurants, where you crowd in for a quick lunch. Platters of mint and basil leaves are stacked up and ready, because they are constantly needed. At such places, there is a rich and long menu of variations, pho with meatballs or tripe, for example. Pho fanatics customize their bowls with all kinds of extras and peculiarities. So you’ll want to develop your own house pho.
Classically the soup is finished with thinly sliced raw beef that cooks quickly in the soup, but your pho can be any combination that pleases you.
The broth is the essence of the soup, so it’s important to take great care with it. It’s not difficult, but it makes all the difference between a pho that sings and one that just sits there.
for the soup
1½ pounds short ribs
1½ pounds oxtails or beef shank
1 large onion, halved
One 3-inch piece unpeeled ginger, thickly sliced
6 quarts water
1 star anise
1 small piece cinnamon stick
½ teaspoon coriander seeds
½ teaspoon fennel seeds
¼ teaspoon whole cloves
6 cardamom pods
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon fish sauce
2 teaspoons sugar
Salt and pepper
1 pound dried rice noodles
½ pound fresh bean sprouts
1 sweet red onion, thinly sliced
for the garnish
Mint sprigs
Cilantro sprigs
Basil sprigs
6 scallions, slivered
2 serrano or 6 small Asian chiles, finely slivered
Lime wedges
Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Put in the short ribs and oxtails and boil for 10 minutes, then drain and discard the water. This preliminary boiling makes a cleaner-tasting broth.
Set a heavy-bottomed soup pot over medium-high heat, add the onion, cut side down, and ginger, and lightly char for about 10 minutes, until the halves are charred but not quite burnt. Add the short ribs, oxtails, and the 6 quarts of water and bring to a hard boil, then turn down to a simmer. Add the star anise, cinnamon stick, coriander and fennel seeds, cloves, and cardamom. Then add the soy sauce, fish sauce, sugar, and salt and pepper and let simmer, uncovered. From time to time, skim off rising foam, fat, and debris.
After an hour or so, check the tenderness of the meat. It will probably take an hour and a half for the meat to get really fork-tender.
When the meat is done, remove it from the pot, take the meat off the bones, and reserve. Put the bones back in the pot to simmer in the broth for about another hour and a half.
When the broth is done, taste it for salt and add more if necessary. Strain it through a fine-mesh strainer. Chop the cooked meat and add it to the broth. Cool and refrigerate. (The broth can be made a day ahead.)
When you’re ready to serve the pho, put the rice noodles in a large bowl and pour boiling water over them. Let them sit for about 15 minutes to soften, then drain.
Heat the soup to piping hot. Prepare a large platter of the garnishes: a big pile of mint, cilantro, and basil sprigs, slivered scallions and chiles, and lime wedges.
Line up the soup bowls (I love the deep, giant Chinatown-style bowls). Put a handful of noodles in each soup bowl and scatter some bean sprouts on top. Add a few raw onion slices. Ladle the broth and a bit of boiled meat into each bowl. Pass the platter of garnishes and let everyone add herbs, scallions, and chiles and a squeeze of lime.
Black Sticky Rice Pudding with Coconut Cream
Even though there are rice noodles in the pho, this extraordinarily yummy rice pudding (which I first encountered in Thailand) makes sense to me as a dessert to follow pho. This pudding is made with nutty, unpolished purply-black sticky rice.
Note: Thai sticky rice (often labeled sweet rice or glutinous rice) must be soaked before cooking.
1½ cups white sticky rice
1½ cups black sticky rice
2 cups coconut milk, fresh or canned
½ cup packed brown sugar or crushed palm sugar
1 teaspoon salt
Put the rice in a bowl, cover with cold water, and soak at least 4 hours or overnight. Drain.
Steam the rice in the traditional way, which is in a basket, fine-meshed strainer, or colander lined with cheesecloth set over boiling water. (It’s possible to do it in an electric rice cooker, but the texture suffers.) Steam both rices together over rapidly boiling water for about 20 minutes, loosely covered with a lid, until the rice forms a solid mass. Carefully flip the rice over, cover the steamer, and steam it for another 20 minutes. When the rice is cooked, spread it out in a low bowl or on a platter and let cool for about 15 minutes.
Heat the coconut milk in a small saucepan with the sugar and salt, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Pour the coconut milk mixture over the rice and gently mix; it’ll be a bit on the soupy side. Spoon it into a serving bowl, cover, and keep at cool room temperature for up to a few hours.
To serve, spoon the pudding into tiny bowls or onto pieces of banana leaf—a beautiful way to eat it. The idea is to have just a small portion to eat with a spoon.
