Quasi L'estate

About a year and a half ago, I went to Italy with my grandparents. Lake Garda – Gardasee –, at the edge of the Dolomites, is about a four hour drive south-east of their house in Bavaria, where I was visiting, and Monika suggested it would make a nice excursion. Y’know, just pop down to Italy for the weekend, like you do. Not a suggestion I’m apt to turn down. So we did, and it was indeed a lovely weekend. I discovered I’m terrible at windsurfing – Garda’s apparently a mecca for it, with reliable winds off the mountains, but I spent more time in the lake righting my board than upright on it, and kudos to my instructor for his patience with that. I got caught on the summit of Monte Baldo in a thunderhail storm, and made it to shelter soaked through, muddy, and barefoot – slippery wet sandals are slippery – just as the deluge let up. (Did I mention this was August?) And on our last day there, Monika decided we should drive out to Valpolicella to find a vineyard and taste/buy some wines. After a lot of winding down dirt roads through rows of vines, we found a guy who said he’d let us into his winery, just let him drive home and get the key to open the place up. So we had our own private tasting, except he poured us nearly full glasses instead of tastes, and the wine was delicious, and Monika bought a case. Driving back to Torbole, where we were staying, it got to be around dinner time, so we stopped at a hotel on the mountainside to eat. I ordered a pasta dish with roasted tomatoes, sausage, and sage. It was phenomenal.

Skip ahead to January, in the depths of a Philly winter. I have in my fridge a jar of roasted tomatoes preserved in olive oil that my mother made last summer, when the garden was popping out tomatoes faster than they could possibly be eaten, and a box of really good pasta in the pantry. Time to recreate the Valpolicella dish. It’s not quite the same as August in the Dolomites, but damned if it doesn’t brighten up a grey East Coast afternoon.

Valpolicella Roasted Tomato-Sausage Pasta

2 links Italian pork sausage

Roasted tomatoes, roughly chopped**

Fresh sage, chopped

Garlic, minced

Olive oil

Salt & pepper

Grated Romano cheese

Good-quality short pasta, like cavatelli or orecchietti

1) Heat a bit of olive oil in a pan. Crumble in the insides of the sausage, and brown.

2) Meanwhile, set some pasta water to boil. Cook the pasta to al dente while sauteeing other things.

3) Add the chopped tomatoes and garlic. Sautee until soft & fragrant. Add the sage, and cook a minute more. Put in a good dose of cheese, then salt & pepper to taste.

4) Add the cooked pasta and a splash of its water to the pan and toss everything to combine. Serve with more grated cheese, olive oil for drizzling, and Italian wine.

Stuff in a pan, before it becomes stuff on pasta.

**Roasted Tomatoes, or Summer in a Jar

Basically just follow Smitten Kitchen’s recipe:

In August, when there’s more tomatoes than you know what to do with, slice a pile of plum, cherry, or normal (not gigantic heirloom) tomatoes in half. Set them on a baking sheet and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and a bit of oregano or marjoram. Add a few whole smashed garlic cloves. Drizzle the whole thing with olive oil. Bake at ~225 for about three hours, until things get all caramelizedy around the edges. Store in a jar in the fridge, with olive oil high enough to cover everything.

If you didn’t plan ahead, or used up all of your tomatoes already, or whatever, you can use store-bought jars of tomatoes in oil  or sun-dried tomatoes soaked a for a bit in hot water to soften.

Making Nice

Ok, I realize I may have freaked some of you out a little with that last post. Apologies. (That said, can't promise I won't do it again.) But you can come back now, it's safe, no furry head-on critters this time around. This recipe is so normal I got it from the Times. And you know what? It's really good.

See look, no ingredients with claws or ears.

 The first time I had socca (for the uninitiated: a savory chickpea flour pancake from south-eastern France/north-western Italy) was at a restaurant called Nizza on 9th Ave in New York. They serve food from Nice, which is what you would get if you mixed equal parts French and Italian, added a bit of Mediterranean sunshine, a pile of herbs, and then drank a bottle of red wine before cooking it up. In other words, wonderful. I could absolutely live on pistous and pissaladiers and good tapanade on fresh bread, and basically did on my trip to Nice a few years ago (at least when the seagulls weren't stealing the food right out of my hand). And the, gelato, oh the gelato. Of course I got a warm socca to eat at the open air market overlooking the beach, even if it was still way to cold to actually swim, being March and all.

The batter, ready for pouring.

 
 I hadn't thought about socca in a while, til a few weeks ago Mark Bittman did a column in the Times about all the wonderful non-hummusy things that can be done with chickpeas, and included this recipe. Don't get me wrong, lord knows I love hummus, but there's a whole chickpea world out there beyond garlicky spreads on pita. The original called for onion and rosemary for flavoring; I went in a different direction with sage ('cause that's how they make it at Nizza) and Italian sausage (because I had it in the fridge). Think of the batter as a blank canvas to play with as you will. It would be lovely with a handful of mixed herbs (sage, tarragon, and parsley?) and garlic; or onions and olives; a little bacon or prosciutto; some crumbled cheese. Beyond their basic sage/onion/pecorino version, at Nizza they use the socca as a gluten-free crust option for their pizzas, including a margherita; one with tomato, artichoke, goat cheese, and olives; and another with mushrooms, onions, and chevre. A nice ratatouille would be lovely on top too, with some oregano sprinkled over. You get the point - make it perfectly vegan or totally indulgent, whatever your mood. Just do try to have a light hand with the toppings so as not to overwhelm the pancake.

Sauteing the toppings.

 The only thing called for here that's slightly out of the ordinary is chickpea flour. I found a bag of Bob's Red Mill at the supermarket for a few bucks (look in the natural or gluten-free section if it's not in with the regular flour). Indian groceries would also have it, possibly under the name 'gram flour' or 'besan'. Worst case, there's always Amazon.

Socca
(adapted from Mark Bittman)

1 cup chickpea flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
olive oil
1 onion sliced
1 handful sage, chopped
1 link Italian sausage
Romano cheese

1) Mix the chickpea flour, salt, and pepper in a bowl. Slowly whisk in 1 cup lukewarm water, making sure to get out all the lumps. Whisk in 2 tbsp olive oil. Cover and let sit on the counter between 30 minutes and 12 hours.

Pouring in the batter

2) Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 450. Add a little olive oil to a cast iron skillet. Crumble the sausage into the pan and saute with the onions until the sausage is browned and the onions are translucent, maybe getting a little browned themselves. Add the sage and stir a minute more. (If you're using other toppings, cook them now.)

3) Pour the batter over the toppings. Stir quickly once or twive to make sure everything's evenly distributed, and sprinkle a handful of romano over the top. Stick in the oven for 10-15 minutes, until the pancake is set.

Ready to bake.

4) Brush a little more olive oil over the top of the socca and set it a few inches under the broiler. Broil it just until it gets brown in spots. Serve cut into slices with a light salad and some good summer wine.

Done.

While Rome Burns

Sausage + fiddleheads = dinner

It's spring, finally. (Or did we skip straight to summer? It broke 90 up here yesterday.) So after a month or more of reading about all the MIA seasonal delights - ramps, rhubarb, fiddleheads - that ought, according to magazine editors and food bloggers everywhere, to be overflowing at my local farmers' market, I finally managed to find two of the above. No ramps, alas, but the Co-op had rhubarb and ferns. I had no idea what to do with either, so naturally I bought them anyway.

Washed fiddleheads

Google, as usual, was quick to provide inspiration, with a nod to some French blog I'd never heard of for the rhubarb compote and Saveur for a link to a ramp recipe I didn't really follow. I usually go to Saveur first when I'm looking for something in particular, and they rarely disappoint. Anyway I didn't take any photos while making the rhubarb, so apologies for that 'cause it's all bright and colorful (ETA: I've added photos of the finished product), but the fiddleheads should make up for it. They're photogenic little things, that's for sure, all green and smooth and curled up. The ferns I'd eaten in Indonesia weren't nearly so pretty. At some point I'm gonna have to find some to transplant to my garden so I can pick my own - $10/lb at the store, ouch - because this was delicious. The taste of spring, while it lasts.

Herbs & garlic

Rhubarb-Berry Compote
1/2 lb rhubarb
6 tbsp orange juice
~5 tbsp brown sugar
2 handfuls mixed berries, fresh or frozen (strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, etc.)
1 tbsp minced ginger
lemon juice to taste

1) Preheat oven to 375. Cut the rhubarb stalks lengthwise, then chop into centimeter-long pieces. Put these in a glass baking dish, sprinkle with 2 tbsp of the sugar and 3tbsp of the oj, and roast uncovered for about 45 minutes, stirring halfway through.

2) Put the berries, ginger, the rest of the sugar, and the rest of the oj into a pot and simmer for about 5 min. Add the rhubarb and all the juices from the pan and simmer another 5-10 min, until things start to thicken up. Mash the berries a bit with a fork.

3) Take a taste. If you want it tarter, add a squeeze of lemon juice. If you want it sweeter, add a little sugar. Let cool until just warm and serve over ice cream, yogurt, biscuits, or on its own with a spoon.

C'est parfait.

Fiddleheads and Sausage (inspired by this)

1 link sweet Italian sausage
1/3 lb fiddleheads
1-2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
1 small handful mixed herbs, chopped (I used oregano, sage, and tarragon. Loooved the tarragon.)

Post-chopping.

1) Rinse & trim the fiddleheads. Make sure to rub the sides of the coil to get the little brown bits off. Set aside.

2) Cook the sausage in a pan over medium heat. (Cast iron works well.) Let it brown well on all sides, then cover a bit so the inside cooks. Cut it open to make sure it's not too pink. Set on a plate, leaving all the juices in the pan.

Mmm, Nica's sausage

3) Add the fiddleheads to the pan with the sausage juices and a little olive oil. Add the garlic and herbs and saute until the ferns are just cooked through but not soft or limp, 5 minutes tops. You want these fresh, not mushy. Add salt & pepper to taste.

4) Serve with the sausage and some good bread to mop up the liquid. If at all possible, eat outside on a patio while slapping away the season's first mosquitos and sipping prosecco.

Mid-saute.

Sausage & Fennel Casserole

Does it count as a casserole if there's no cream of mushroom soup dumped over the top? I dunno. Sausage & Fennel Braise, perhaps? Maybe I should just call this dish 'baked Italian deliciousness', since that's at least accurate (as long as you like fennel, which I really, really do). Add this to the 'make early and often' category.

In other news, I'm going to start adding photos to my posts, since apparently that's what all the cool kids are doing, plus my new camera has a 'gourmet' setting (whatever the hell that means, other than +$20 on the price point), with a little fork and knife icon. We'll see how this goes.

Now excuse me while I go reheat some baked Italian deliciousness for breakfast.

Sausage & Fennel Whatever
A few links of Italian sausage
1 bulb of fennel, with fronds
1 package frozen artichoke hearts
a few springs of parsley and oregano
1 cup chicken broth
a squirt or two of lemon juice
grated Romano cheese
olive oil
S&P to taste

Drizzle a little olive oil over the bottom of a baking dish.

Roughly chop the fennel. Put it in the baking dish.

Roughly chop the herbs. Sprinkle over the fennel.

Roughly chop the artichokes. Layer over the fennel and herbs.

If your sausages are frozen, cut them into inch-long chunks and distribute on top. Otherwise, try bigger pieces, or just score them down the middle so the juices drip down over the veggies while they cook.

Mix the broth and lemon juice. Pour over the whole mess.

Some breadcrumbs scattered on top might be good here, especially if you're running with the casserole idea.

Bake uncovered at around 375 til the sausage is browned and cooked through. Maybe 40 minutes?

Salt & pepper & Romano to taste. Serve with some good bread.