A Handmade Life

In case you don't have a chance to pick-up the Spring issue of Edible Boston (which you really should locate and subscribe to), here's a link to my latest article in that issue:

http://www.ediblecommunities.com/boston/spring-2010/a-handmade-life-mamadous-artisan-bakery.htm

The picture above here shows some of the breads that the artisan baker, Mamadou, hand shapes. These are multi-grain as they are about to enter his spiffy french, multi-decked oven. Mamadou's Artisan Bakery is in Winchester on Stanton St. and is well-worth the trip. There is no website but you can call him: 781-560-8068.

Enjoy!

Porcini at a Farmers Market in Sicily

It was time for a change. Although I love the picture of Procida I've had at the top of this blog since 2008, I was getting a little tired of looking at it. I took it while standing on a cliff overlooking a sweeping view of the island in the Bay of Naples. It's quite a beautiful place. It's a place where mostly Italians go to vacation, and, in 2008, I had the privilege of visiting there with a group of American press and food writers. I reported about that trip in previous posts--just do a search on this blog for Naples and/or Procida.

Except for pictures I've credited otherwise, I've taken all the pictures on this blog, like this new one. The porcini were being sold from a make-shift table set up at an exhaust-clogged highway intersection on the way to Tescastagni in Sicily. There were 3 "farmers" standing around near the table, smoking. I think they were Albanians. Since I didn't have a kitchen to cook the porcini at the time, the best I could do was to take a picture, which I did, the result of which is above. Hope you like it!

Well Put

This is a picture from the Huffington Post. The accompanying article quotes British food critic, Matthew Fort. Matthew says eloquently what I wish I had written about the Italian burger now featured at some McDonalds restaurants in Italy. The burger is called the "McItaly," and it's made with Italian ingredients. In defense of Italian culture, The Post quotes Matthew as describing the burger as, "a monstrous act of national betrayal," and giving this denunciation:

For many Italians, their very sense of identity lies in the food, not just of the region in which they were born, but of the town, village, hamlet, even house. And they hold to the superiority of their local produce and dishes with passion. That is why eating your way round Italy is such a continual delight. Pleasure lies in diversity, not homogeneity. Who wants to eat the same stuff the whole world over? It's boring. It's the kind of global mind-numbing sameness and taste bud-mugging mediocrity that McDonald's embodies. No-one in their right mind can see McDonald's as either a force for good in the world or as representing the sunny uplands of gastronomy.

Pretty good dressing-down, don't you think?

Hearty Irish Soda Bread

Almost St. Patty's Day... Time for Irish Soda Bread. This one is particularly hearty, grainy and substantial, made with part whole wheat flour. Slathered with butter and honey, it's a decadent snack; as an accompaniment to soup, it completes a meal.

The recipe is from the March 2010 issue of Bon Appetit Magazine which I started receiving automatically when Gourmet stopped. BA has some great recipes, but I still miss Gourmet.

Mrs. O'Callaghan's Soda Bread

Ingredients
Nonstick vegetable oil spray
3 cups all purpose flour
3 cups whole wheat flour
1/2 cup (packed) brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) chilled margarine or butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
2 cups buttermilk
Preparation
Preheat oven to 425°F. Spray heavy baking sheet with nonstick spray. Whisk both flours, sugar, and baking soda in medium bowl to blend. Add margarine and cut in until margarine is reduced to pea-size pieces. Add buttermilk; stir until shaggy dough forms. Turn dough out onto lightly floured work surface. Knead until dough comes together, about 10 turns. Shape dough into 7-inch round. Place dough on prepared baking sheet. Cut large X, 1/2 inch deep, in top of dough.
Bake bread until deep brown and bottom sounds hollow when firmly tapped, about 40 minutes. Transfer bread to rack and cool completely.

Night With The Stars

We had a wonderful evening at Pesce Italian Kitchen + Bar last Wednesday night. My nephew, Cliffe Arrand, owns the restaurant along with his mother, who is my sister, Susan DeQuattro. Susan and Cliffe are both front-of-the-house kind of people but they are also good cooks. In our family of 7 siblings, we credit Dad with passing on the cooking gene; we even think Cliffe gets it from him.

Mary Ann Esposito hosts TV's longest-running cooking series, Ciao Italia. In 2009, she published her 11th cookbook, Ciao Italia Five Ingredients Favorites, and is working on her 12th! Mary Ann is a fan of Pesce Italian Kitchen and agreed to hold her book-signing at the restaurant. In exchange, Pesce's chef, James Walters would prepare dishes from Mary Ann's latest cookbook, to serve guests to the special event dinner. A win-win for everyone!



Early in the evening, Mary Ann agreed to sit down with me and discuss her life in food. When it comes to celebrities, I'm always interested to know where they've been and how they got there. Mary Ann was gracious and easily shared her story with me.
Stay tuned for excerpts from that interview...

Easy Veal

A stroll through the indoor Wayland Winter Farmers Market (there are more and more of these these days) revealed a farmer selling artisanally-raised veal. If that seems like an oxymoron to you, it does to me too. But as you know I haven't yet reconciled killing these cute little creatures with eating them. Anyway, the farmer explained to me that he has a small herd of hand-tended, grass-and-milk-fed animals here in Massachusetts. We chatted for a while and then he opened his cooler and took out a few packages of cryovac-sealed small veal chops. He almost seemed reluctant to part with them. I bought 4, thinking it would be enough for 2 meals for me and my husband, but ended up cooking all 4 and devouring them (unfortunately, before I had a chance to take a picture). But believe me they looked like any small veal chop, except they didn't taste like that. They were tender, succulent morsels, and not nearly enough.

I prepared them by making a mixture of salt, black pepper, dried thyme and dried sage and sprinkling the mixture on both sides of each chop (these were less then 1" thick). I preheated my spiffy new oven and placed the chops on a rack in the broiler pan which came with the oven, and broiled the chops about 4 inches from the heat source for a total of about 17 minutes, turning once. There are those who have a "meat sense" and can tell when meat is done by pressing their fingers into the meat. Not me--I rely on very careful monitoring and attention to time (it's extremely easy to overcook veal, resulting in a dry, rubbery piece of meat).

It wasn't exactly an economical meal (veal is costly no matter where you buy it--these were about $7 or $8 a lb.), but it was extremely easy and fast.

Excess

Just back from a few days in NYC where we stayed in mid-town (not a great location unless you want Broadway theatres), and visited my daughter who works at the Tenement House Museum. It was so freezing those few days; we mostly huddled around mid-town and ate a few bad meals. Here are some impressions I have from that visit:

* one Scottish bar near the theatre district that carried 250 single malts.

* Delmonico's Gourmet Grocery where the display and variety of prepared foods was almost embarrassing: eggs cooked every way imaginable; oatmeal with whole milk, skim milk, soy milk, no milk; a dozen kinds of cut-up fruit; sushi; Korean; 1/2 dozen kinds of soups--all served 24/7. Guess New Yorkers demand this.

* lots of tourists from Spain

* frenetic energy level on stage in "In The Heights;" but a boring story line

* pizza no better than Pizza Hut

* friendly wait-staff at Nonna

* seeing a movie on the 5th floor of a megaplex

* noticing the impossibly high heels of some passersby (how do they walk in those things!)

* having the worst pasta ever at Fagiolini, disproving the old adage that you can't get a bad meal in NYC

* finding quality, value and good service at Lower East Side restaurants, La Barra Cevecheria and Bruschetteria

* paying $17 for a Diamond Cosmo that tasted like soda pop, and packed no alcohol punch

* leaving NYC in a sloppy snowstorm and returning to Boston where no snow had fallen.

That's excess for you...

Sicily Sites

You may have seen this online but I thought I'd share it here, too. It's my story of my trip to Sicily with my sisters and Mom. The story has been "published" on two different food & travel websites.
One of the sites, the Tripatini site, edited the story quite a bit--in my opinion "dumbed it down." The other site pretty much left it as I wrote it--it's the Global Writes site, a website for food and travel writers. Compare and tell me what you think...

http://blog.tripatini.com/2010/02/08/i-got-all-my-sisters-with-me-plus-mom-in-sicily/

http://www.global-writes.com/chronological/index.html?-Token.article=139&-Token.index=1

Enjoy the story!

The Roasted Pear

I wanted to give you this wonderful roasted pear recipe while I think of it because it makes a delicious, satisfying dessert, is very easy, doesn't take a lot of time and is not laden with childhood memories. It's a simple way, a very Italian way of course, to end a meal with something sweet without that "I wish I hadn't eaten all that" feeling.

My favorite fruit is a pear. I find no other fruit as satisfying as a ripe, hefty pear. I like them equally well poached, dried, baked or fresh. I have several fruit-only dessert cookbooks including one my daughter Anna gave me one Christmas called, simply, "Pears," by Linda West Eckhardt.

But the recipe I turn to most often is one from the Boston Globe, from a time when Sheryl Julian and Julie Riven ran the food pages of the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine (I liked it much better then than now--no offense to Adam Reid...). The recipe lends itself to endless adaptations, limited only by your imagination and your taste preferences.

Try to choose local Bosc Pears, that still have their stems intact--it makes a prettier presentation than stemless. Make sure the pears are heavy for their size, a little under ripe but not green--the stem end should not be soft or wrinkled. Any size will do as long as you adjust the cooking time. The finished pears should be soft enough to eat without needing to use a knife--just with using a fork.

Roasted Pears

5 unpeeled Bosc pears, stems attached
4 Tbsp. unsalted butter (or a little less if you want), cut into small pieces
1/2 cup brown sugar
Cinnamon (optional)
Madeira or Marsala, about 1/4 cup or a little more.
A complementary herb such as thyme or sage (optional)
Heavy cream (optional)


Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Cut pears in half the long way (1/2 of them will have the stem; the other 1/2 will not) and place in a baking dish, cut side up. Overlap the pears if you need to.
Dot the pears with butter and sprinkle with the brown sugar and cinnamon. Cover pan loosely with foil. Initially roast pears for 30 minutes.
Remove foil. Add the wine to the pan. Baste the pears with the extracted juices in the pan plus the wine.
Return pears to the oven, uncovered, and roast for an additional 30 minutes or more, basting a few more times, until the pears yield easily to a fork.
To serve, baste the pears one more time with the combined juices, sprinkle with the optional fresh herbs and serve. (You can pool a little bit of heavy cream onto a dessert plate or shallow bowl, and place a pear-half on top of the cream. Top with the herbs and serve.) You will need to serve these at a little higher than room temperature, or warm, or the melted butter may begin to solidify.

Flora's Pasta Sauce

My Aunt Flora was a chain-smoking, cuss-flinging, generous woman who had her share of misery. She was married to my father's brother Arthur, and had three children. Their middle child, my cousin Arthur, died suddenly at the age of seventeen, and after that Auntie Flora was never the same. She lost weight, developed a shake, but continued to curse and shout with the best of them. Before Arthur's death, however, Aunt Flora's second floor tenement apartment was the place to be on a Sunday afternoon when I was a kid, after church. The aroma of tomato sauce bubbling on the stove, enriched with all manner of meat like pig's feet, beef, sausages, made an lasting impression on me and which I came to associate with well-being, abundance and love. To this day I gauge the success of any tomato sauce recipe by how closely it resembles Auntie Flora's. As she lay dying, about 2 years ago, I left her a note she never read, telling her, finally, about how much I loved her sauce and about how Sunday afternoons at her house were some of my best memories of being a kid. I also asked her for the recipe. I left the note on her hospital bedside table. Later, after the funeral, her daughter Beverly, who was a little older than me and with whom I wasn't particularly close (she was closer to my older sister, Joyce), responded.

Dear Rosie,

I saved your note for last because of the special letter you wrote to my Mom. Your letter was written and dated on the day my Mom died and I saw it posted on her bulletin board, and read it after she passed. Your note was very special and heartwarming to me and I will keep it along with some of the other special things I have of my Mom's. Hope the sauce comes out alright. Enjoy it; it should be delicious. ...

I'm a little embarrassed to say I've never tried it; I just know it's good. And I'm sure Aunt Flora didn't use extra virgin olive oil, or fresh herbs, or organic, grass-fed pork, or DOP Parmigiano-Reggiano either. And I wish someday I might get to be the aunt or grandmother all the kids want to visit, whose Sunday dinners they'll remember.

Here is the recipe, so generously shared by Beverly, and which was written in her hand. The comments next to the ingredients are mine.

Auntie Flora's Pasta Sauce

4 large cans Tomato Puree
1 can Tomato Paste (I'm assuming she means one of those small cans)
1 large onion, chopped
4 cloves diced garlic
Olive Oil for sauteing
1 can water (from paste can)
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper
1 tbsp. sugar
1 tbsp. Italian Seasoning
Meatballs (she doesn't say how many)
Sausage (again, no measurement)
1" pieces of pepperoni sausage, peeled
Parmesan cheese (no amount given)

Brown meatballs, sausage, pepperoni. Put aside.

In a deep large pot, heat the olive oil and saute the garlic and onion together. Add the water. Stir until smooth.
Add the puree plus 3/4 of a puree-can of water.
Add salt, pepper, sugar, seasoning.
When sauce begins to simmer, add meats.
Simmer with cover 1/2 on, stirring frequently for two hours.
During last 1/2 hour, add cheese and stir.

If sauce seems bitter, add more sugar. If sauce is too thick, add a little more water. Sauce should be thick not watery.

Here's to a house full of memorable aromas!