Dessert is our house is normally a piece of fruit, perhaps with some cheese, and, in winter, some mixed nuts in their shells. This is why you will not find very many desserts featured on this blog. But there is at least one prepared dessert that makes its way on to our table in the colder months: pere al vino rosso, or pears poached in mulled red wine. The dish is extremely easy to make, but the result is rather beautiful—and elegant enough for an 'important' dinner.
You peel your pears—one per serving—leaving on the stem if the pear has one. Then place them snugly in a saucepan with just enough room to hold the pears in a single layer. Pour on about half a bottle of red wine (or more, depending on the size of the pan and how many pears you have). Ideally, the wine should cover the pears, but if not, you always turn the pears as they cook. Then add sugar—quite a bit of sugar, as you want to create a syrup: about 100g (one cup) or more for 4 pears. Add, too, a stick of cinnamon and some cloves, and if you like, some lemon or orange zest.
Allow the pears to simmer for about 20 minutes, turning them if need be so that they cook and color evenly, until they are quite tender but not falling apart. (You can use a paring knife to check if they are done.) Remove the pears onto a shallow serving bowl or plate, and continue to simmer the wine until has reduced into a syrupy consistency, then strain and pour over the pears. Allow the pears and their sauce to cool before serving.
NOTES: This is a great solution for pears that may not be particularly flavorful by themselves. Use pears that are just ripe or slightly underripe. Very ripe pears will turn to mush. The choice of wine is yours, but personally I enjoy a full-bodied wine for this purpose. Of course, I would not break out your most expensive vintage. In fact, this is a good way to use some already opened bottle that is no longer quite fit to drink.
Some people like to accompany these pears with a bit of whipped cream or some dried fruits, but personally I think that they are perfect served alone, just as they are.
Here's one answer to the perennial post-Christmas question: what to do with the leftover ham? As we all know, pork and legumes have a natural affinity, so why not pair ham and lentils in this rather loose riff on a cassoulet?
First, simmer some lentils—about 100g (4 oz.) per serving—in abundant water (enough to cover the lentils by at least 5 cm/2 inches) together with a clove or two of garlic.
While the lentils are cooking, sauté some onion in olive oil until soft and translucent, then make a roux by adding a bit of flour and allowing it to cook in the oil for a few minutes. Then, off heat, add some nice, rich broth. (Use about one tablespoon of flour and 250ml/one cup of broth per serving.) Put the pot back on the heat and bring it to the boil. It will thicken up as it heats. Once at the boil, immediately lower the heat and allow this sauce to simmer for a few minutes.
Once the lentils are just tender, add them to the sauce and mix well. You should have a rather soupy mixture; if not, add additional broth or water.
Now it is time to assemble your casserole. Rub the casserole (I like often use an enameled cast iron Dutch oven or risotto pot, but a terracotta casserole would also be ideal.) Rub the casserole with a garlic clove, then add in your lentil mixture. Take a few nice thick slices of ham—one or two per serving— and nestle them among the lentils, along with a sprig of fresh thyme and perhaps a bay leaf if you like. Cover with a generous layer of breadcrumbs and drizzle with olive oil.
Place the casserole in a hot oven and bake for 30-45 minutes, or until the top is nicely golden brown and the liquid mostly (but not entirely) absorbed. The breadcrumbs will form a kind of crust as they brown; break the crust at least once during baking to allow the juices to mix with the breadcrumbs—it makes for a much more flavorful and moister crust. Remove the casserole from the oven and allow the casserole to rest for a few minutes to allow the bubbling to subside and serve.
NOTES: As I have mentioned before, lentils are my favorite legume. Angelina's pasta e lenticchie was my favorite pasta when I was growing up. For my money, the lentille du Puy is the ne plus ultra of lentils—it holds up to cooking and retains its shape, texture and flavor beautifully. Ordinary green lentils are easily overcooked, and tend to fall apart, both their texture and flavor become rather stodgy. In Italy, the lentil of choice is the famed lenticchia di Castelluccio di Norcia, grown only in a certain area straddling Umbria and Abruzzo protected by an IGP designation. (Unfortunately, I've not found a source for lenticchie di Castelluccio in the US, but lentilles du Puy are fairly easy to find at better markets.
The only real trick to this dish is to make sure it doesn't dry out too much in the cooking. The lentil mixture should, as mentioned, be rather 'soupy', more than you may think, remembering that the liquid will be absorbed by the lentils and evaporate as it simmers—you need to compensate for both processes. But if you see that the casserole is drying out before it is ready, no worries: just add some simmering water. Of course, like a real cassoulet (which was another favorite dish that I want to blog about very soon) you can nestle other meats into this dish, including sausages or bits of a roast or stew.
This dish is almost a meal in itself—and definitely a piatto unico. Last night we followed it with a green salad, some roquefort cheese, and a dessert of pere al vino rosso.
By the way, if you prefer, you can make a wonderful soup by simply adding more water or broth, and cutting up your ham into bite-sized pieces. Rather than baking, just allow the lentils and ham to simmer together, covered for about 30 minutes and serve, with un filo d'olio on top. (Also a nice way to 'recycle' the casserole if you have any leftover.)
Lentils are closely associated with New Years in Italian cuisine—typically served with a stuffed pig's trotter known as zampone or with a similar sausage called cotechino. But more of that in another post...
As this year draws to a close, and a new year is about to begin, I wanted to take a moment to share with you two important milestones for Memorie di Angelina: this little blog turned six months old yesterday and, almost exactly at the same time, got its 1500th follower! Funny to think that it all started with a few recipes that I wanted to share with friends on Facebook only half a year ago. A real tribute to the enduring allure of old-fashioned home cooking, modern life and its time-robbing pressures notwithstanding.
Let me extend many thanks to all of you who have found these little scribbles of mine worth reading on a regular basis. Here's wishing you the best for the coming year. Do come back soon for more dishes inspired by nonna Angelina! And here's hoping that in 2010 more of us rediscover the joys of real food, cooked at home by loved ones for loved ones. The little bit of extra time it takes to cook at home pays off handsomely in the long run in health and happiness. Just remember, as they say in Italian: A tavola non si invecchia! —you never grow old at the table.
Here's a wonderful way to 'recycle' leftover brasatoor other pot roast—as a filling for stuffed pasta:
Prepare the filling by finely chopping the leftover roast in a food processor together with an egg or two, lots of grated parmesan cheese and, if you like, a few spoonfuls of the leftover sugo (gravy) from the roast. Season, if need be, with salt and pepper to taste. (A bit of nutmeg is also nice.) Make sure the mixture is quite smooth and not too dry. If it is a bit too stiff, add another egg.
Meanwhile, you can make fresh pasta dough and cut it into rounds about 5 cm (3 in) in diameter—or do what I did tonight, and use some 'Hong Kong style dumpling wrappers', ready-made round disks of 'pasta' (see Notes below). Brush them lightly with some water to help them stick together and then place a heaping teaspoon of the filling in the center of each disk, (see photo above).
Fold the pasta disk over and then seal the round edge by pressing down firmly with your fingers, starting at the center and working your way to each end with both hands. (This helps avoid the filling oozing out.) (See photo at left.) Proceed until you have used up your ingredients.
You can cook your mezzelune right away, or let them dry a bit before using. If, however, they are to wait for more than a half hour or so, cover them with a towel to prevent them from drying out too much.
Bring abundant well salted water to a soft boil, then add your mezzelune (being careful not to mangle them!) to the boiling water. Adjust the heat so that they boil gently. Do not allow the water to come to rolling boil or they may break apart. Cook for only 2-4 minutes, depending on how long they have been waiting around.
When the mezzelune are done, scoop them out of the water with a large slotted spoon. You can dress them in a number of ways. Here are three possibilities:
Al burro e salvia: Perhaps the most common (and, to my mind, the best) way is to melt a good amount of butter (say 50g/2 oz per serving) in a skillet with some sage, allowing the sage to 'simmer' in the butter but not allowing the butter to color at all. Then add your mezzelune to the skillet, along with a bit of the pasta water and a bit of grated parmesan cheese. Toss together over medium heat very quickly and serve with additional parmesan on top.
Al sugo d'arrosto: If you have any gravy left over from the brasato, you can re-heat a bit of it in a skillet and toss the mezzelune in it. Serve with some grated parmesan on the side for those who want some.
Al sugo di pomodoro: You can also dress the mezzelune with a very simple sugo di pomodoro, known in the English-speaking world as a 'marinara sauce'.
These mezzelune are also very nice served in brodo, in homemade broth.
Mezzeluna al sugo d'arrosto
NOTES: Those round Hong Kong style dumpling wrappers were quite a discovery! I found them at H Mart, a Korean-owned Asian supermarket with branches all over the US and South Korea. (Besides these useful wrappers, they have excellent meats, fish and produce at very reasonable prices.) Another well known 'short cut' for making stuffed pasta is to use wonton wrappers, but I generally find these to be just a bit too fine for Italian pasta dishes; they tend to get overwhelmed by the stuffing and/or sauce (though I have used eggroll wrappers to make cannelloni with very satisfactory results). These dumpling wrappers, on the other hand, while still a bit too 'translucent' when cooked, are a nice golden yellow and a bit thicker, and have a rather firmer texture—in short, they look and react to cooking much more like real fresh egg pasta. (The looks are, however, partially deceiving: their yellow color actually comes from using Yellow Dyes #3 and 5...)
In Piemonte, where this dish originates, the usual pasta to be stuffed with this brasato filling is actually agnolotti (aka ravioli) a kind of square pasta. But since I had round pasta on hand, I used made them into another common stuffed pasta shape, the mezzaluna, or 'half moon', made by folding the pasta disk in half as described above. You can also make round ravioli by placing one disk on top of another—with the filling in between them, of course.
Who doesn't love winter squash soup? It is savory yet sweet, warming yet light. It makes a wonderful first course, to be followed by a roast, or a light supper after too many hearty holiday meals...
My version of this soup is extremely easy. You take the winter squash of your choice, cut into wedges and seeded, and roast the wedges on a baking sheet in a hot oven for about 30-45 minutes, until perfectly tender. (You can check them the same way you check potatoes: by sticking a paring knife into the flesh; if you can remove the knife and the squash stays put, then it is done.) Don't worry if the edges are a bit browned—that adds flavor and character. Remove from the oven and allow to cool off a bit.
Meanwhile, in a saucepan, make a soffritto by sautéing a finely chopped onion in butter (or butter and a bit of oil) until translucent and quite tender. (Adding a pinch or salt and a spoonful of water helps things along and prevents browning.) Scoop out the squash flesh with a spoon and add to the soffritto. Allow the squash to simmer gently for several minutes to absorb the flavors of the butter and onions, stirring often. The squash should become even softer and basically 'melt' in the pan into a kind of mush. Then add broth to cover and simmer for about 10 minutes or so.
Pass the squash and broth through a food mill, using the finest mesh disk, into a mixing bowl. Leave behind any fibers and bits of skin. You should have a perfectly smooth and even purée. Add that back into the saucepan and bring to a gentle simmer. Add heavy cream (or milk if you're counting calories or cholesterol), enough to thin out the purée into a beautiful, velvety consistency. Simmer for a minute or two more, so that the cream 'melds' with the squash purée, and serve.
You can top your crema with croutons, some finely chopped herbs, grated parmesan cheese and/or a drizzle of olive oil.
NOTES: This method will work with just about any winter squash including, of course, butternut squash. For this dish, I used a winter squash I found at a local Asian market labeled as 'calabaza', which is Spanish for squash but obviously was some rather specific varietal that I had not come across before. It made for lovely eating, I must say.
While the initial roasting of the squash is not absolutely necessary, I find that it concentrates and accents the flavor of the squash. Winter squashes, as I have mentioned before, can be a bit bland and often need a little 'help'.
There are lots of variations you can try here, mostly involving various herbs and spices that one can add to the soup. One variation I especially like is to add a spoonful or so of curry powder to the soffritto. It lends savoriness and just the vaguest hint of spiciness to the dish. Some recipes call for a potato, which is surely meant to smooth out the texture, but I find this unnecessary. Instead of onion, you can substitute leek or shallot.
By the way, the word crema in Italian means a soup of pureed vegetable. It refers to the texture of the soup and not to the presence of cream. (The word for cream in Italian is panna.) In fact, many creme are made without any cream at all, just broth; this one can, too, and can be 'veganized' simply by using vegetable broth. But I find that cream just naturally goes with winter squashes—it adds to their sweetness and lightens their color and smooths out their texture—so I can never resist adding it.
This zesty cauliflower salad is a fixture on family tables in Naples during the Christmas season. And it couldn't be simpler to make.
You boil or, even better, steam a head of cauliflower, trimmed and broken up into flowerets, until it has lost all its rawness but is still al dente. Place the flowerets in a large mixing or salad bowl, then add a can of anchovy fillets, a handful each of black and green olives and capers. Possible additions include various vegetables pickled in vinegar, known in Italian as sottaceti: peperoni sott'aceto (pickled peppers, also known as 'pimentos') and cetriolini, those tiny pickled cucumbers known in English as 'gerkins' or by their French name cornichons, or baby onions, carrots or celery, also all sott'aceto. Or, if you like, you can use the mixed vegetable preparation called gardiniera, which is lightly pickled and then cured in oil. You can also add some chopped parsley, if you like, for color and some chopped garlic for savoriness. (Personally, I find the salad plenty savory without the garlic.) Dress the cauliflower and other ingredients with abundant olive oil, a bit of white wine vinegar and salt to taste as you would a regular salad, mixing well but taking care not to break up the flowerets. (A curved rubber spatula is ideal for this operation.)
NOTES: Cauliflower, olives, anchovies and capers are the 'core' ingredients of this salad, but the other ingredients—as well as the proportions of all of the ingredients—can be varied as suits your taste. (Of course, the one rule is that cauliflower should predominate.) Use white wine vinegar if you can: red wine vinegar will stain the cauliflower. If using pickled vegetables, go especially easy on the vinegar, as they are, of course, already pickled in vinegar. Of course, if you want a vegan version, all you need do is omit the anchovy.
And while the salad can be eaten right away, I find it tastes better the day after it is made, which allows the different flavors to meld. In fact, the reason why this salad is called rinforzo—'reinforcement'—is because it was customary in the old days to make a first batch as an antipasto on Christmas Eve (which is a day of fasting in Catholicism, when meat is not allowed) and to keep on 'reinforcing' it with cauliflower and/or other ingredients over the course of the holiday season, so there would always be some of it on hand up until New Years. And the flavor only gets better as the days go by!
There's nothing like a good pot roast on a cold winter's day! Though it may come as a surprise to some, Italians also make pot roast, which is known variously as brasato or stracotto, but with a 'continental' twist: the favorite cooking medium for Italian pot roast is red wine.
Although it is not absolutely necessary, I find that the roast has extra depth of flavor if it is allowed to marinate. You place a beef roast into a ceramic bowl or pot into which it will fit snugly, then add the 'holy trinity' of onion, carrots and celery, each cut up into wedges or large chunks, a whole garlic clove or two, some whole peppercorns, a few cloves and a bay leaf or two. Pour over ample robust red wine—usually you'll need a whole bottle. Leave the roast to marinate in its red wine bath overnight or even longer in the fridge. If the liquid does not entirely cover the roast, turn it every so often to ensure even marination. Let the roast come back to room temperature before cooking. (NB: Even if you don't have 24 hours to spare, you can marinate the meat for a few hours, or from the morning to the evening, in which case I'd leave it out of the fridge.
Remove the roast from the marinade and pat dry. Then, in a round or oval Dutch oven, melt about two spoonfuls of lard, add a sprig of rosemary and a garlic clove and brown the roast well on all sides., seasoning well with salt and pepper as you go. (Remove the garlic if it browns too much.) Then straining the marinade liquid through a sieve, pour it slowly over the roast. The liquid should come about 2/3 of the way up the roast. Lower the heat, cover the pot and allow it to simmer slowly until tender, about 2 or 3 hours (depending on the size of the roast), turning the roast every half hour or so to ensure even cooking. (Add some broth or water if it dried out too much, but normally there should be ample liquid without adding more.)
When the roast is done, remove it from the pot to a carving board to cool off a bit. (This will make it easier to slice.) While it is cooling, bind the remaining liquid a bit in the pot either with some beurre manié or with a cornstarch slurry (see below). The resulting sauce should have a nice liaison without actually being thick. Slice the roast on a serving platter and pour over a bit of the sauce. Serve with the remaining sauce in a sauceboat.
NOTES: The cut of beef I like best for pot roast is chuck, but rump roast or the bottom round are also good cuts. Avoid lean cuts, including top or center round, which are 'prettier' but tend to dry out. What you want is a good, rather tough piece of meat with plenty of fat and sinew that will break down during the long simmering, enriching the meat as it cooks. (I have seen some recipes that call for a sirloin pot roast to be served medium rare, but I have never tried it.) The roast should be tied so it does not fall apart during the braising.
The red wine, as mentioned, should be full-bodied. In Piemonte, the traditional choice is Barolo, but at today's prices you may want to opt for something a bit more modest...
Of course, there are numerous variations, mostly having to do with the aromatics or herbs to be included in the marinade or braising liquid. The addition of pancetta to the braising pot along with the garlic and rosemary is a common addition (and one I usually follow, but not today—as we were snowed in!) Some recipes (including many of the most traditional ones) call for larding the roast with pancetta. Some recipes call for chopping up the marinade vegetables and sautéing them as a soffritto. And some also call adding a bit of chopped tomato to the braising liquid. In some versions, you add just a bit of braising liquid at a time, in the manner of an arrosto morto, rather than all at once at the beginning of the braising. Another variation mentioned In Alessandro Molinari Pradelli's La cucina lombarda is the addition of lots of thinly sliced onion to melt into the braising liquid, a variation called brasato alle cipolle.
Brasato is the usual word for pot roast in Lombardy and Piemonte. I understand that stracotto is the more common name in Tuscany. This recipe is more typical of a brasato. A stracotto alla fiorentina usually includes only a cup or so of red wine, which is allowed to evaporate in the usual Italian way, after which a goodly amount of tomato purée is added in which the roast braises, making it somewhat similar to the southern Italian ragù.
By the way, if you don't use the marinade vegetables as a soffritto, you might want to try glazing them and serving with as a rustic contorno, which is what I did: pick out as many of the cloves and peppercorns as you can find. No need to be too fussy about—it does no harm to leave a few behind.) Then place them in a skillet with water enough to come about halfway up their height, along with a few spoonfuls of sugar, a pinch of salt and a nice clump of butter. Turn the heat up to medium-high and let the water boil down until it has completely evaporated. As the water evaporates, the vegetables will begin to caramelize in the butter and melted sugar. Allow them to take on a nice golden color, without burning of course, and you're done. Serving the glazed vegetables around the sliced roast makes for an attractive presentation.
The braising liquid can be served as is, especially if it's already reduced enough to have reached a 'sauce' consistency. Otherwise, as mentioned you can bind the liquid either with a beurre manié, which is simply flour blended with softened butter, or with a cornstarch blended with cold water to make a slurry. The beurre manié will lighten the color of the liquid and render it opaque, while the cornstarch slurry will thicken it without changing its color or transparency. If you've used the marinade vegetables as a soffritto, then you can simply blend the liquid and vegetables together, or pass them through the finest mesh of a food mill, which will emulsify and thicken it 'naturally'.
Lard is not a necessity—you can use olive oil, of course, or a combination of oil and butter if you prefer. But there is nothing like lard for browing meat and, since we were out of pancetta, I thought that it would add a bit more depth of flavor.
Brasato aka stracotto is often served with mashed potatoes, which make a wonderful foil for that rich, unctuous sauce. If so, I would go a bit more lightly on the butter content of the mashed potatoes, as the sauce is already quite rich. Polenta is also a popular choice. Cipolline all'agrodolce or glazed carrots are also great accompaniments, especially if you want to precede the roast with pasta as a first course.
For the fans of French cooking out there, you will no doubt have noticed how similar this recipe for brasato is the beouf à la mode (see also the Larousse Gastronomique, under "Beef" and Escoffier, Le Guide Culinaire, under Piece de Beouf à la Mode, dite aussi à la Bourgeoise"). I am not sure of the exact relationships, but seeing as Piemonte borders on France and Lombardy borders on Piemonte, the resemblance should not surprise us.
Leftover brasato is wonderful as a stuffing for pasta, known as either agnolotti or ravioli al brasato. (Since I have leftovers, I may blog on that dish soon.) And, finally, you can prepare beef cut into large cubes in exactly the same way, in which case your brasato becomes a stufato (similar to a daube in French cuisine).
