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.