Poor Man's Carbonara

I was too young and dumb to realize it at the time, but years ago something momentous happened in the kitchen of Freak Nation, a big, old Northern Virginia house I shared with three other twenty-year-olds like myself.   They say necessity is the mother of invention, but sometimes hunger can be, too.  You see, one evening after work, driven by a fierce appetite and an extreme economy of means, John quite spontaneously invented cucina povera right there in our test kitchen.

 fig. a:  J & R:  top chefs

I remember Rex and I walked into the kitchen and asked "what's cookin'?" and John rather proudly showed us his latest creation.  It didn't really smell like much, and it just looked like a gleamin', steamin' heap of plain pasta, so we asked him, "What do you call it?"  "Pepper Pasta," he told us--basically, spaghetti, butter, and black pepper, or "Butter Spaghetti with Black Pepper."  Rex and I literally couldn't stop laughing at the time--we still laugh about it just about every time we see each other--but, really, who's laughing now?  Because, you know, John may have just been in early-'90s-postgraduate-bachelor mode, cooking the cheapest, quickest thing he could think of, but he was onto something.

"Butter Spaghetti with Black Pepper" may not have been a thing (although, who knows, it probably is--cacio e pepe certainly is, and burro e pepe sounds like it could be a tasty dish), but cucina povera is as real as it gets.

What is cucina povera?  Well, it's pretty much what it sounds like:  it's Italian for "the cuisine of poverty," "poor food," or "peasants' food."  In other words, it's the term that's often used to describe Italy's most basic, honest, and elemental dishes.  And it's a good thing to know about, because most of the dishes that fall under this category are both simple and tasty, and they're also meat-free.  In fact, with Lent upon us, this is really a great time of year for such dishes.

Michelle and I have a bit of a thing for these kinds of recipes from around the world.  One of our favourite discoveries from a few years ago, back when the subprime mortgages market collapsed and the global economy teetered on the edge, was a recipe that we found in George Lang's The Cuisine of Hungary that seemed ideal for the times.  It was called Caraway Soup, and it basically consisted of water, salt, and toasted caraway seeds.*  Sounds ludicrous, but it was actually pretty satisfying, and if you bourg-ed it up a little with some chicken broth instead of water and some croutons, it was downright delicious.

Anyway, we're still firm believers in such recipes, and our favourite recent cucina povera recipe is a pasta dish that's really not that much more involved than John's Butter Spaghetti with Black Pepper.  This one comes from David Tanis's One Good Dish:  The Pleasures of a Simple Meal, it's called Spaghetti with Bread Crumbs and Pepper, and it's an unbelievably simple weekday stunner.  In fact, Tanis comes right out and states the following:  "For me, this frugal pasta dish ranks among the best things to eat.  It has the same appeal as pasta alla carbonara--and it satisfies even without the pancetta, cheese, and eggs."  And, you know, I think he's right--on both counts.

The secret, in my opinion, has to do with three things:  crushed red pepper flakes, fennel seeds, and using hand-torn bread crumbs whenever possible.  It's these three ingredients that really elevate this dish.

What are the details?

Well, let's just stay you have a day-old leftover baguette end kicking around one day...

 fig. b:  stale baguette

Spaghetti with Bread Crumbs and Pepper 

A 4-inch length of stale dry baguette or a few slices of dry old French bread
2 tbsp olive oil, plus extra for drizzling
3 to 4 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 tsp coarsely crushed fennel seeds
salt and freshly ground black pepper
crushed red pepper flakes
1/4 pound spaghetti
a chunk of Pecorino Romano cheese for grating (optional, but highly recommended) 

With a serrated knife, saw the baguette into thin slices.  Crumble the bread with your fingers, which will produce a nice mixture of coarse and fine crumbs. 

 fig. c:  hand-torn bread crumbs

Heat the 2 tablespoons olive oil in a wide skillet over medium heat.  Add the crumbs and let them fry gently and slowly take on color, stirring occasionally.  When they are golden and crisp, add the garlic and the fennel seeds and cook for a minute or so.  Season the crumbs generously with salt and pepper, and add a bold amount (up to your discretion) of crushed red pepper flakes as well.  Remove from the heat. 

Cook the pasta in boiling well-salted water until just al dente.  Drain and toss with the bread crumb mixture.  Drizzle a little more oil.  Add grated cheese to taste, if you wish. 

Serves 1.

[recipe borrowed almost verbatim from David Tanis's One Good Dish] 

 fig. d:  one damn good dish

I'd made Spaghetti and Bread Crumbs recipes like this before, but this is the very best version I've ever encountered.  For me, the crushed fennel seeds are the genius touch.  Use sweet Italian fennel seeds, if you can get your hands on them, or, my favourite, Lucknow fennel, for a somewhat more exotic finish.

You might think Tanis is exaggerating about this dish, but he really isn't.  Few dishes are as dead easy, or as satisfying.

aj

* Okay, okay--I'm exaggerating a little.  The dish was actually called Caraway Soup with Garlic Croutons, and it involved a simple roux, an egg, and some butter, in addition to those garlicky croutons, but Lang noted:

In most Hungarian families, when the housewife has to make ends meet, the egg would be eliminated and lard would be used instead of butter.  This is a perfect example of the Hungarian talent for making a delicious dish out of meager ingredients.

K.I.S.S. #1

In the spirit of Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers' "Easy" series and John Thorne's "Simple Cooking," sometimes it pays to just keep it simple...

There are countless ways to prepare spinach, and quite a number of them involve garlic. But there aren't many ways of preparing that dynamic duo that are easier than this one, and I'm not sure that there's any other way of preparing them that honors the freshest, crispest spinach and the the juiciest garlic quite like this one.

fig. a: dynamic duo

The recipe comes from our good friend Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, it involves just four ingredients, and her introduction, which captures the entire K.I.S.S. philosophy in a nutshell, reads like this:

If a single Italian vegetable dish deserves to be called classic, it is this version of spinach, which epitomizes the simplicity, directness, and heartiness that know no regional barrier and characterize good home cooking throughout the nation.

In other words, this is a classic among classics and the ne plus ultra of Italian vegetable dishes.

Hazan provides directions for preparing this recipe with frozen spinach, but she does stress the following: "You should not easily settle for anything but fresh spinach, because that is what your really ought to have to achieve the flavor of which this dish is capable." Read between the lines and you can hear Marcella insisting on the very freshest local spinach. Farm- or garden-fresh spinach. Organic, even, if at all possible. After all, what self-respecting Italian cook would use spinach that had been trucked in from 3,000 miles away? The idea here is to start with the tenderest, most delicious spinach and to prepare it in the simplest, but most effective manner possible, so as to release its full potential. We might have just been imagining things, but we also felt as though we heard Marcella calling for the freshest, juiciest garlic, so that was exactly what we used. All I know is that the results were sublime.

Spinach Sautéed with Olive Oil and Garlic

2 pounds, fresh crisp spinach (preferably local farm- or garden-fresh)
1 tbsp kosher salt
2 garlic cloves, peeled (again, preferably local farm- or garden-fresh)
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

If it is very young, snap off and discard just the hard end of the stems. If it is mature, or if you are in doubt, pull away and discard the entire stem. Soak and rinse the spinach leaves in several changes of cold water, so as to thoroughly clean the spinach of any remaining bits of dirt and further crisp the leaves.

Cook the leaves in a covered pan with salt to keep their color bright and no more water than what clings to them from their soak. Cook over medium-low to medium heat until tender, about 5-10 minutes, depending on the spinach. Drain well, but do not squeeze the leaves. Set aside.

Put the garlic and olive oil in a skillet, and turn on the heat to medium high. Cook and stir the garlic until it becomes colored a nut brown, then take it out. Add the spinach, tasting and correcting it for salt. Cook for 2 minutes, turning it over completely several times to coat it well. Transfer the spinach with all its flavored oil to a warm platter, and serve at once.

Enjoy the simplest, yet fullest-flavored spinach you've ever tasted.

[based very, very closely on a recipe from Marcella Hazan's utterly essential Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking (1992)]

As Michelle has been known to put it: "What?!!"

aj

New York Winterlude 2, rev. ed.

Day 2 of our Winterlude began with us roughing it on breakfast (we packed a makeshift Schaller & Weber sausage special), and hitting the pavement. I had some business to attend to, so I dragged Michelle on an architectural tour of Lower Manhattan that began with us emerging from the subway underneath the Municipal Building,

fig. a: up from the underground

and focused on an area around the intersection of Broadway and Wall Street.

fig. b: cloud-scrapers of New York

It also involved me posing Michelle in front of locations from old films and tempting her with hot dog carts.


figs. c & d: Wall Street

By lunchtime, we'd made our way back to Midtown and had the time to check out Raymond Hood's News Building en route to a lunch date Michelle had arranged for us.

fig. e: under the Hood

I'd read a fair bit about Tudor City over the years, but I'd never seen it up close until this visit, in February 2009.

fig. f: cloud-scrapers of Midtown

It took a reservation at Michael White's Convivio to finally get up close and personal with Fred C. French's strange Tudor Modern (Early Modern Modern?).

fig. g: Early Modern Mod

New York magazine described White as "the Mario of Midtown." As much as we may be big fans of Mario Batali's cookbooks, we wouldn't know. One visit to Batali's Otto hardly seems like enough of a measuring stick. What we can tell you, however, is that Convivio is a true jewel.

fig. h: the writing is on the wall

In fact, it's quite likely the finest Italian restaurant either of us has ever visited. Expert antipasti featuring house salumi, a supernaturally plump, juicy grilled quail appetizer, homemade pasta with crab and a truly luscious sea urchin-based sauce, and a utterly superior grilled bistecca were just some of the pleasures of one of our absolute top meals of 2010.

The lowdown:

sfizi: marinated shitaakes, mellow pickled cucumbers, spicy olives w/ spicy salami, burrata with tomatoes and herbed oil w/ toasts

antipasto: grilled quail skewer, bacon, onions, shitakes, chives, vin cotto

primi: cod-stuffed ravioli, many egg-yolk pasta, sausage, rapini, herbed oil; saffron gnocchetti, crab, sea urchin, breadcrumbs

secondo: bistecca, grilled, w/ winter vegetables (carrots, brussels sprouts leaves, etc.) and a peppery wine sauce

dessert: lemon semifreddo, pistachio sablé, candied pistachios, acacia honey wafer, candied citrus peel, acacia honey ring with vanilla bean

fig. i: Convivio dreaming

And while on this particular occasion we'd decided to cut loose and splurge a little, we realized that lunch at Convivio had the potential to be very affordable indeed. Portions were surprisingly generous, and we pictured ourselves returning and having a (transcendental) pasta lunch at Convivio's bar.

fig. j: exterior, Bonnie Slotnick

As you know, we've scoured other New York bastions of culinary arts & letters before, but, oddly, this was the first time we'd visited Bonnie Slotnick. Not for lack of trying, though. We'd tried to visit on two or three occasions, but had always managed to swing by on days where the store happened to be closed (in spite of its well-deserved notoriety, Bonnie Slotnick remains a very small operation, so hours can be irregular).

fig. k: interior, Bonnie Slotnick

Anyway, we were happy to finally get a chance to explore Bonnie Slotnick. Not surprisingly, we found plenty of material to keep us occupied and broaden our horizons, so we ended up spending about two hours there. We also had a long conversation with the chatty, gracious clerk (Bonnie passed through at one point to drop off her latest haul of books, but otherwise she was on the hunt). We could have easily spent another two hours. It felt like a home away from home.

fig. l: electric Company

That night we met R & M at Jim “Our pies are not always round" Lahey's (then) newly opened Company (a.k.a. Co., but not to be confused with David Chang's Ko). We'd heard great things, our Sullivan Street slices the day before had gotten us good and primed, and Co. didn't let us down in the least. Okay, so the pies weren't always round, but we found them perfectly cooked with great structure and just the right amount of blistering, with a tomato sauce that was tangy and bright, and toppings that were novel without being too "fusion." As is so often the case with top-notch pizza (and the pies we had that night were definitely top-notch), the simplest pies are often the most satisfying. So, for instance, as much as we appreciated Co.'s Flambé, with béchamel, lardons, and caramelized onions, it was their Margherita that really stood out for us. In fact, Co.'s margherita was so lovely, so perfect, we opted for a second one "for dessert." We loved the space, the service, and the buzz of the place too.

The lowdown:

appetizers: pizza bianca; toasts, e.g. with lemony chicken liver paté; butter lettuce salad w/ roasted squash, pumpkin seeds, lemon, olive oil

mains: 2 x margherita; 1 pie w/ anchovies, green olives, olive oil, tomatoes; 1 "santo" w/ shaved radicchio, parmesan, taleggio, mozzarella; 1 special w/ bechamel, leek, spicy sausage

desert: homemade blood orange gelato; homemade chocolate gelato; a generous banana split w/ homemade ice cream and candied walnuts

We haven't to spend a lot of time on this stretch of 9th Avenue when we visit New York, but, here too, we swore we'd be back.

Convivio, 5 Tudor City Pl., New York, NY, (212) 599-5045

Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks, 163 W 10th St # Ge, New York, NY, (212) 989-8962

Company, a.k.a. Co., 230 9th Ave., New York, NY (212) 243-1105

aj

Italians Do It Better,* 4th rev. ed.

fig. a: Italians doing it better

There were all kinds of surprises waiting for me when I got home from work the other day.

fig. b: Atwater flowers

First off, no one could accuse Michelle of not bringing me flowers anymore because she'd visited the Atwater Market early that afternoon and picked up these beauts. Okay, they weren't exactly for me, but still...

Her real adventure, though, began not long after her trip to the market. That was when she made arrangements to visit Antonio Pettinicchi all the way out on Sauvé East. That was when she got the real treats.

fig. c: olive tree

Now if you're not familiar with Antonio Pettinicchi (we sure weren't until about a week ago), all you need to know is that on his farm in Molise he produces exceptional olive oil strictly according to traditional methods (hand-picked olives, cold pressed, stone millstones, etc.), all of it is absolutely organic, his only North American outlet is in Montreal, and the quality/price ratio is such that many of the city's finest kitchens have taken note. Every year he comes to town for about a month so that he can do a little wheeling and dealing, and every year he sells out swiftly.

Antonio was there to greet Michelle and he immediately took a shine to her--the fact that she'd arrived by bike didn't hurt. He let her sample both his extra-virgin olive oil and his extra-virgin wild olive oil and Michelle was suitably impressed. Both were outstanding--light, yet intricate--but the extra-virgin wild olive oil was the one that really blew her away--it had a wonderful pepperiness to it the likes of which she'd never encountered before.


fig. d: olive oil bottle composite

Then Michelle got introduced to the rest of the Pettinicchi line, including...

fig. e: green olives

...beautiful, plump green olives...

fig. f: canned pomodorini

...lovely canned pomodorini, artisanal cavatelli, heaven-sent balsamic vinegar and vin cotto, and a gorgeous array of confettura, including quince-apple, Barbary fig, and...

fig. g: confettura di melone

...this exotic white watermelon number. In other words: abbondanza!

It didn't take us long to begin enjoying our spoils. We uncorked a bottle of wine and opened up the green olives, and a little later we transformed one jar of pomodorini into a simple, delicious sauce for the cavatelli that highlighted the natural sweetness of the tomatoes. We were going to just wing it, but then we decided to see what Marcella Hazan had to say, and we found this comment introducing her Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter: "This is the simplest of all sauces to make, and none has a purer, more irresistibly sweet tomato taste." She adds that this sauce is "unsurpassed" for potato gnocchi, but that it's also excellent with certain factory-made pastas, such as spaghetti, penne, or rigatoni. We took liberties and had it with the cavatelli.

Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter

1 cup canned imported Italian pomodorini, with their juice
2 1/2 tbsp butter
1/2 medium onion
salt to taste
1/2 - 3/4 lb pasta
freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese

Put the canned tomatoes in a saucepan, add the butter, the onion (don't chop it), and the salt, and cook uncovered at a very slow but steady simmer for 45 minutes, or until the fat floats free from the tomato. Stir from time to time. Taste and correct for salt. Discard the onion before tossing the sauce with the pasta. Serve immediately, sprinkling liberal amounts of parmigiano-reggiano overtop. (You'll find that the cheese marries particularly well with this sauce because it's one of Hazan's specialty butter-based pasta sauce recipes.)

Serves 2.

[based on a recipe from Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking]

Marcella was right about that sauce, but then she's never led us wrong. And its butter base allowed us to keep Antonio's olive oil strictly for bread-dipping.

The next morning we trotted out the white watermelon preserve and discovered that it has these incredible caramel notes to it and that it's equally good on toast or on yogurt.

Antonio is only in town for a couple of months, he's rapidly running out of some of his products already, and once he's gone he won't be back again until next year, but if you'd like to get in on the action you can contact him and arrange your own personal rendez-vous. Of course, certain specialty food stores in Montreal and environs carry Pettinicchi products, but wouldn't you rather buy your olive oil from the man himself?

Les Importations Antonio Pettinicchi
1579 Sauvé East
Montreal
Ph: (514) 996-1900
email: info@pettinicchi.com
www.pettinicchi.com

Personally, I was so impressed and so eager to meet Antonio that I convinced Michelle to take me to Sauvé East just two days later.

fig. h: Pettinicchi's Montreal offices

Once again we took our bikes (that's Michelle's there on the right).

fig. i: Pettinicchi's wild olive oil

And when we got back home we sampled some more Pettinicchi wild olive oil.

Need one last final push? Check out what Nancy Hinton of La Table des Jardins Sauvages & SoupNancy has to say about Antonio and his olive oil.

aj

* Of course, there are exceptions to this rule:

Those of you with an interest in Patience Gray, edible weeds, Tuscany, Italian cuisine, and Italian culture more generally might want to check out Adam Federman's "Paradise Lost" at The Whetting Stone, which chronicles the melancholy story of Carrara, its fabled marble, and those who sought it (including Gray and her partner, the sculptor Norman Mommens) through the ages.

File under: "It's a strange and beautiful world"

La Caprese

fig. a: torta alla caprese

Recently we started working through Josée di Stasio's à la di Stasio: Les Saveurs de l'Italie DVD collection. We watch a great deal of our television programming not when it actually airs, but later on DVD, and à la di Stasio, the local cooking show sensation, is no exception. Occasionally we happen upon an episode of à la di Stasio as it's airing, but for the most part we've watched them commercial-free on DVD. We were particularly excited, particularly eager about the Italian series, though. We'd heard all kinds of promising tidbits about the series' production from Elena Faita, who was part of the consulting team--we had a feeling we could expect good things and, as you might have gathered over the last three years, we're crazy about Italian cuisine.

The set consists of six shows, four on specific Italian cities and their environs (Rome, Modena, Naples, and Palermo), one on a crucial geographic region (Chianti), and a final episode dedicated entirely to the famous Don Alfonso 1890 restaurant. Naturally, given our ongoing obsession with pizza napoletana, we started with Naples. We had a feeling that at least one of Napoli's famous pizzerias would get highlighted, and we were right--an early section of the episode consists of an interview with an octogenarian pizzaiolo at Da Michele, the camera simultaneously giving us a sense of the lively atmosphere there, as well as glimpses of Da Michele's transcendent pies.

The remainder of the Naples episode features quite a few utterly tantalizing recipes, including two by Irene Mucilli of the rustic La Pignata à Pontelandolfo that really knocked us for a loop: Polpette con cacio e uova (egg and cheese croquettes), which looked particuarly good when served with a tomato sauce, and Cavatelli with Rapini and Pancetta. Funnily enough, though, it was the episode's last recipe, its only dessert--Torta alla Caprese, the torte of the island of Capri--that we ended up making first, and it wasn't Michelle who led the charge on this cake, as you might have expected, it was me. I say this not to brag about having made the torta, a cake known simply and affectionately as La Caprese in the region, but only to emphasize that if I can make it, you can make it.

The recipe is presented by one Edda Bini Mastropasqua--of Ischia and Montreal--and she stresses that although she gets many requests from family and friends to make her Torta alla Caprese, all the glory must go to this fabulously simple and rewarding recipe because otherwise her talents in the kitchen lie almost completely with savory foods and not with sweets. I'm more or less the same--I've got a strong sweet tooth (very strong, in fact), but when it comes to cooking, 99% of the time I lean towards the savory side of things. But having made the recipe four times since first discovering it, I, like Edda Bini Mastropasqua, am tempted to call this La Caprese recipe foolproof. The cake that results is a moist, luxurious chocolate-almond torte that only needs a light dusting of confectioner's sugar (patterned or not) to complete the scene, although I highly recommend accompanying it with vanilla ice cream or, even better, a delicate milk gelato.

Torta alla Caprese

1 cup sugar
5 large eggs
9 oz almonds with skins, ground*
1 tbsp baking powder
7 oz 70% cacao chocolate
7 oz unsalted butter
1/4 cup espresso coffee, brewed
confectioner's sugar

Preheat the oven to 350º. Butter the interior of a 12" circular baking dish.

In a mixer, beat the eggs and the sugar for 5 minutes at medium speed. Fold in the almonds and the baking powder.

In a bain-marie, melt the butter and the chocolate together over medium-low heat. Add the coffee and mix well. Add this mixture to the almond mixture and mix well.

Pour the batter into the baking dish and bake for 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool on a wire rack for about 10 minutes. Turn the cake out onto a plate and let it cool fully. When it is no longer warm, dust it with confectioner's sugar.

fig. b: giving the torta a right dusting

Serve, cutting the cake into long, thin wedges.

* Use a nut grinder, a spice or coffee grinder, or a food processor. Make sure they are very well ground. We prefer a hand-cranked nut grinder because it gives the almonds a lighter, fluffier texture that we feel produces a better Caprese.

aj

Dedicated to JK.