Ah, spaghetti with clams cooked with white wine from a Venetian restaurant. There is something to be said for eating clams pulled from the sea that morning. OK, there is something to be said for eating pasta in Venice. Period.

Before my first trip to Italy, I had this image in my head about the pasta. I pictured eating in charming mom & pop trattorias, with mamma in the corner rolling out pasta by hand.

I never saw that image come to life. Most of the time we dined al fresco because the street scenes were too compelling. When we did eat indoors, the kitchen was usually hidden behind closed doors.

There are 350 different pasta shapes and I wanted to try a variety of ones I wasn’t familiar with, but in the end, I ordered more for the other ingredients than the pasta.

Many times, I ordered dishes surely made with dried pasta rather than fresh pasta. Nonetheless, I never ordered a mediocre dish.

Even a simple rigatoni pomodoro from a Roman restaurant in the Trastevere area was sublime. It tasted as if it was finished in a seasoned cast iron skillet with loads of garlic.

When we hit Bologna, I was on the hunt for authentic bolognese, and below is four samples of this classic meat and pasta sauce.

All four were different, yet all were the same. Eat enough bolognese, and you can recognize the taste with your eyes closed — meaty and less tomato-y than you’d think.

One of my favorite dishes was spaghetti carbonara from a Roman trattoria. The egg was barely cooked, resulting in a silky texture, and the salty pancetta cut through the richness.

Siena is known for pici — thick, hand-rolled pasta that looks like bloated spaghetti strands. This version was served with wild boar ragu — and a glass of Chianti, of course.

In Castellina in Chianti, north of Siena, we slurped on spinach ravioli (top left) and in Parma we had the only lasagne (spinach) of the trip.

In Florence, we ducked into a tiny trattoria on a narrow side street and had cheese tortellini with black olives (bottom left), and in Venice, we tried ink squid spaghetti at Alla Madonna, but only because it was what the gondola guys were eating.

I kept wanting to close my eyes to eat it — and it should never be eaten when wearing white — but I would order it again in a heartbeat.

In Vernazza (Cinque Terre), we tried another version of ink squid pasta, only this time, it was black chittara (square spaghetti) made with squid ink, tossed with tomatoes, garlic and minced clams.

At an upscale trattoria in Bologna, we had rigatoni with canocce, a sea creature that resembles a cross between a crayfish and a lobster. The little suckers were chopped with the shells on, so it made eating it awkward. The server assured me that I was to pick them up and gnaw on them. I was more than happy to dive into the deeply flavored dish and lick my fingers clean.

I kept wondering what kind of pasta home cooks used, so in every town, I’d duck into the grocery stores and take a look around.

Every grocery store had rows and rows of shelves dedicated to dried pastas. The brand I saw most often?

Barilla.

Tags: eating in Italy, Italy, pasta, Travel Eats
Posted in Travel Eats | 3 Comments »

Have you ever noticed some bread pudding recipes ask you to press down the top (with weight, no less) so that the bread soaks up the custard before baking? Well, I like my bread to float to the top on this recipe.

That’s because it browns beautifully and crisps up nicely — which offers a wonderful crunch to contrast to the creamy custard.

(And yes, you can substitute challah for the brioche — they are basically the same egg-rich dough, with brioche using butter, and challah using oil.)

The secret to this half crisp-half soft bread pudding is to cut the bread into large hunks (seriously large) … and don’t weigh it down.

Sure, I want you to dunk the hunks of bread down into the custard to soak up the vanilla custard before baking, but don’t I don’t want you to mash the bread down.

That’s because I want you to take a bite of crisp, crunchy bread along with a bite of the soft, bread-soak custard underneath.

If that wasn’t enough, I’m calling for chopped chocolate chunks. Sure, you could use chocolate chips in a pinch, but the rustic, uneven chop here and the high quality chocolate adds so much more to the end result.

Trust me. It’s divine — especially when served with this easy, boozy, butter “scotch” sauce.

[printable recipe]

Tags: bread pudding, brioche chocolate bread pudding, desserts, recipe
Posted in Desserts, Recipes | No Comments »

The difference between caramel sauce and butterscotch sauce? Butter. Lots of it for the latter.

And generally, butterscotch sauce calls for brown sugar while caramel sauce begins with white sugar.

This sauce is almost too easy. No caramelizing sugar first (bonus) yet it tastes rich, sweet, buttery and of course — boozy.

I developed the recipe for the brioche and chocolate bread pudding, but honestly, I love it drizzled over vanilla ice cream. Or straight from a spoon.

Butter “Scotch” Sauce

[printable recipe]

Makes 2 cups

Ingredients
1 1/4 cups firmly packed dark brown sugar
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
3/4 cup heavy cream
2-3 tablespoons Scotch whisky
Pinch salt

Method
1. Melt brown sugar and butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally until the butter is melted.

2. Stir in cream and continue cooking, stirring occasionally until sugar dissolves, about 5 minutes.

3. Remove from heat and stir in Scotch and salt. Cool slightly before serving.

Tags: butterscotch, dessert, recipe, sauce
Posted in Recipes, Sauces, Salsas & Dressings | No Comments »

It’s drizzling and cool. Two weathered men hover over a makeshift roaster on a side street in Rome. They’re smoking and talking, punctuating their conversation with sweeping arm gestures.

They don’t notice that I’m standing in front of them, slightly bent at the waist, sniffing the chestnuts.

A couple of things are wrong with this scene. For one, it’s not chestnut season in Italy. It’s early May.

Two, no one else is buying the chestnuts, although the streets are packed on this unusually cool, wet morning.

Except me. I’ve never seen chestnuts roasting before.

So of course I buy them. Two Euros for a paper cone filled to the brim.

They’re warm in my hand. I crack one open, eager to taste a freshly roasted chestnut. Did I mention I was in Rome? IN ROME! Standing near the Piazza Navona, holding a bag of Italian chestnuts roasted before my very eyes by old men who look like quintessential street chestnut roasters — I’m euphoric.

I pop the chestnut into my mouth, close my eyes and chew.

My heart sinks. The chestnut is mealy, dry and over roasted. Disappointed, I try another one. Ick. And another. The same.

Nearby is a park. A homeless man sits on a bench near a fountain. He looks at me and I hold out the paper cone filled with out-of-season, over-roasted chestnuts.

He takes them, bows his head and mumbles “grazie, grazie.”

For a brief moment, I feel bad handing him these less than perfect chestnuts, but I figure he’s hungry, so it’s better than throwing them away.

I walk away but after a few yards I turn and look back.

He’s feeding the chestnuts to the birds.

Tags: chestnuts, Rome
Posted in Travel Eats | 2 Comments »

Pie. Just uttering the word pie fills my heart with joy.

I love pie. Given a choice between cake and pie, I choose pie.

Pie is soothing. Pie is humble.

Pie makes no judgment of me, so how can I judge pie?

Cake, on the other hand, has style and finesse.

Pie has no finesse.

Even if pie has an intricate lattice top or a fancy crimped crust or wispy meringue peaks, pie is never graceful, never elegant.

Cake is city slicker. Pie is country bumpkin.

But don’t weep for pie, because pie has something far greater than smooth edges or precision piping or a flutter of perfectly coiffed butter cream roses.

Pie has soul.

Pie evokes warmth and comfort. Eating pie is wrapping yourself in a big, warm hug.

Pie is approachable.

Pie is forgiving. Pie doesn’t care if your socks don’t match or if your skirt is wrinkled, or if you’re wearing a wig to hide your identity.

Pie likes you just the way you are.

Pie is sociable.

And that is why on Saturday, I found myself at the Phoenix New Times Chow Bella Pie Social.

To judge a pie contest. Ten pies from ten professional chefs. Four other judges and me.

It was a tough job, but somebody had to do it.

The New Times will print the results this week. To me, it really doesn’t matter who won because in the end, I did.

I ate pie.

Are you pie or cake?

Tags: Chow Bella, Phoenix New Time, pie, pie contest, virtues of pie
Posted in News & Nibbles | 7 Comments »

Flour: Spectacular Recipes from Boston’s Flour Bakery + Cafe

By Joanne Chang with Christie Matheson

photos by Keller + Keller

Facts: Chronicle Books, 320 pages, $35.00 (or $17.99 at Amazon)
Photos: 49
Recipes: Almost 150
Give to: baker friends, budding pastry chefs, cookie monsters

New sweet-treat books are popping up on the shelves and in windows of bookstores across the country – the harbinger of the holidays! While I grind my teeth when department stores jump the holiday gun, dessert books can’t come early enough. Bring ‘em!

When Christie Matheson’s Salty Sweets book hit the shelves last year, she credited Joanne Chang as one of the great pastry chefs who inspired her. The feeling must have been mutual as they decided on a collaborative effort with Flour.

Chang owns Flour Bakery & Café in Boston and has an interesting back-story.

In spite of recognizing an affection for sweets as a child, she was raised in a traditional Chinese home where desserts (other than moon cakes or almond cookies) were foreign to her. Her introduction to desserts began with spending time at friends’ homes.

She wasn’t thinking about being a chef, however, as she worked on her Harvard degree in mathematics and economics. After a year of working in Cambridge, her dreams were pulling her to relocate — to the kitchen and to baking. After two years in corporate America, she did just that.

With no formal culinary education and willing to start at the bottom, she worked her way through commercial kitchens, learning and improving techniques until she landed a job with Francois Payard in Manhattan. Her appreciation of beauty and precision of the French approach to pastry notwithstanding, she wanted to open an all American bakery and in 2000, she did. Flour Bakery now has three locations.

Does it sound weird for me to say the book felt “comfortable” from the first time I picked it up? The orderly table of contents is followed by her story and I found myself smiling, thinking she could be a friend. The techniques section is gangbusters – I’ve been fraisaging for years but now I know another word for kneading. And before getting on with the recipes, she shares her top 12 baking tips.

A lot of recipes were calling to me. How does one choose between Bittersweet Chocolate Truffle Tart and Roasted Pear and Cranberry Crostata? Is the Crispy Magic Frosting on chocolate cupcakes really magic? And how can it be crispy when it looks so smooth? How about the sticky buns she made to best Bobby Flay in the Food Network’s Throwdown?

In the end a youthful yen won: Homemade Oreos. Delicious! If you put these on a cookie tray, they’ll be gobbled up in minutes.

Two comments: my cookie dough never seemed “too floury” as the directions indicate, so I never had to put my hands into it. I was concerned, but after letting the dough sit for an hour as directed, there was no problem shaping the dough into a log.

Also, when I make these again, I’ll make the diameter of the log smaller – perhaps 1-1/2 inches rather than 2-1/2 inches the recipe specifies.

That’ll take the guilt out of having more than one.

– Linda Avery

© Keller + Keller

From Flour: Spectacular Recipes from Boston’s Flour Bakery + Cafe

Homemade Oreos
Makes 16 to 18 sandwich cookies

Oreos used to be a mystery to me. The debates about splitting them and eating the filling first, eating them whole, or dunking them—none of it made any sense. My mom never bought commercial sweets, and she certainly never bought the almost-black cookies that looked burnt to her. For the same reason, they never appealed to me either— until one day when i finally bit into one at a friend’s house. Wow. 1 tried to convince my mom that they were fantastic and that we really, really needed to buy them for after-school snacking. She refused, only saying that they looked too black to be good. Years later, I created my own version of an Oreo, made with real chocolate and bittersweet cocoa and filled with a creamy mixture of sugar, butter, and a little vanilla. It’s a decidedly grown-up version of the treat I fleetingly remember. And they are delicious. Flour customers go crazy for them. At first, they expect a very sweet, vaguely chocolaty treat. Instead, they get an intense, rich chocolate cookie with a buttery vanilla cream filling— an Oreo like no other. Even Mom approves. When she visits, she always requests them for the care package I send home with her.

For the cookies
1 cup (2 sticks/228 grams) unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
3/4 cup (150 grams) granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup (200 grams) semisweet chocolate chips, melted and cooled slightly
1 egg
1 1/2 cups (210 grams) unbleached all-purpose flour
3/4 cup (90 grams) Dutch-processed cocoa powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

For the vanilla cream filling
1/2 cup (1 stick/114 grams) unsalted butter, softened
1 2/3 cups (230 grams) confectioners’ sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon milk
Pinch of kosher salt

Make the cookies
1. In a medium bowl, whisk together the butter and granulated sugar until well combined. Whisk in the vanilla and chocolate. Add the egg and whisk until thoroughly incorporated.

2. In another medium bowl, stir together the flour, cocoa powder, salt, and baking soda until well mixed. Using a wooden spoon, stir the flour mixture into the chocolate mixture. The dough will start to seem too floury, and you will find it easiest to switch to mixing it with your hands until it comes together. It will have the consistency of Play-Doh. Let the dough sit at room temperature for about 1 hour to firm up.

3. Transfer the dough to a 15-inch square sheet of parchment or waxed paper. Using your hands, shape the dough into a rough log about 10 inches long and 2 1/2 inches in diameter. Place the log at the edge of the sheet of parchment paper, and roll the parchment around the log. With the log fully encased in parchment, roll it into a smoother log, keeping it at 2 1/2 inches in diameter. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours, or until firm. The log may settle and sink a bit in the fridge, so reroll it every 15 minutes or so to maintain a nice round log. (At this point, the dough log can be well wrapped in plastic wrap and stored in the refrigerator for up to 1 week or in the freezer for up to 1 month. If the dough is frozen, thaw it overnight in the refrigerator before proceeding.)

4. Position a rack in the center of the oven, and heat the oven to 325°F. Butter a baking sheet or line it with parchment paper.

5. Cut the dough log into 1/4-inch-thick slices. Place the slices about 1 inch apart on the prepared baking sheet.

6. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until the cookies are firm to the touch. Check them frequently after 16 or 17 minutes, poking them in the middle. As soon as they feel firm to the touch, remove them from the oven. You can’t judge by color because they start out black. Let cool on the baking sheet to warm or room temperature. They don’t have to cool completely before you fill them, but you can’t fill them while they are hot.

Make the filling
1. While the cookies are cooling, using a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or a handheld mixer), beat the butter on low speed for about 30 seconds, or until completely smooth and soft. Add the confectioners’ sugar and vanilla and beat until the mixture is per¬fectly smooth. Add the milk and salt and again beat until smooth. It will look like white spackle and feel about the same—like putty.

2. Scoop about 1 rounded tablespoon of the filling onto the bottom of one cookie. Top with a second cookie, bottom-side down, then press the cookies together to spread the filling toward the edges. Repeat until all of the cookies are filled.

Note: You can also mix this filling by hand. Make sure the butter is very soft, and use your hands to mix and knead the sugar into the butter. You should have about 1 cup. (The filling can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 2 days or in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks. Bring to room temperature before using.)

Tags: cookbook review, Flour Bakery + Cafe, homemade oreos recipe, Joanne Chang, Linda Avery
Posted in Book & Product Reviews | No Comments »

Okra — like Brussels sprouts — is one of those love-it-or-hate-it vegetables. There isn’t much wiggle room in between.

I love okra, but not unconditionally. It must be fried. What I really like — more than the okra itself — is the crunch.

But let’s just say for argument’s sake, I want crunchy okra but I don’t want the extra calories from frying.

What if we could get the crunch without the fat? And, if in the process we mitigate the slime factor? Even better.

We can do all three. All we need is a a sharp knife, a breading station and a very hot oven.

Recently, I tasted ethereal fried okra topped with a sous vide duck egg at Cafe Bink.

I loved how they split the okra in half lengthwise, instead of crosswise into circles.

But the okra planks were still fried. Gloriously fried — and unfortunately, gloriously full of extra calories.

So I set about trying to recreate the crunchy spears without frying.

(A side note: wondering why on earth I’m writing about okra in November? Our farmers markets have been flooded with okra in the past couple of weeks and I’ve never been one to look a gift horse in the mouth — if it’s there, I’m buying.)

I sliced the okra in half lengthwise. Then I set up a breading station, first dusting the slimy okra in flour, which helps make the egg batter stick, which in turn helps the breading stick.

Flour + egg wash + breading = crunch.

Southern fried okra is made with cornmeal. I wanted some of that corn flavor, but since I was going for maximum crunch, I also used panko.

For extra flavor, I tossed in Jamaican jerk seasoning along with the cornmeal and the panko.

Next time, I might add ground pecans into the breading mix instead of the jerk seasoning. I’m reckless that way.

Next, I set the breaded okra on a rack set in a baking sheet, which helps the hot air circulate and keeps the okra from getting soggy on the bottom.

Pop the sheet into a very hot oven — 500 degrees F, and 13 to 15 minutes later, the okra is crisp and golden brown.

Now, what to do with this extra crunchy okra without the extra fat?

Serve it as a side dish to grilled chicken or pork chops. Or serve it as an appetizer with tomato jam.

If you want to make a light dinner, say for Meatless Monday, serve the okra fries with a salad and a poached or fried egg, like I did last Monday. (I took the picture below with my phone camera.)

The red tomato drizzle is a simple reduction of some overripe tomatoes. I grated the tomatoes (tossing the skins, and straining the pulp to get rid of the seeds) and cooked the puree until it was reduced by half.

Then I just seasoned the sauce with salt, and a touch of chile garlic paste for spice.

And there you have it:

Oven baked okra fries full of crunch, but not full of fat.

What do you think?

printable recipe

Tags: jerk seasoning, jerk spiced okra fries, okra, okra fries, oven baked okra
Posted in Recipes, Side Dishes, Vegetarian | 6 Comments »

I’m working on a post about pasta in Italy from my recent trip, and I came across this photo I took in the seaside Cinque Terre town of Monterosso al Mare.

He’s just a stray cat fed on a sea wall — spaghetti alla Fancy Feast.

Even the cats love pasta in Italy.

Tags: cat eating pasta, Italy, pasta
Posted in Travel Eats | No Comments »

The Great Ranch Cookbook

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