Sunday, August 29, 2010

Nonna's Kitchen 16 - Ravioli and Chicken Cacciatore

In an earlier Nonna’s Kitchen about Spaghetti and Meatballs, I recounted a story about having spaghetti for the first time at a friend’s house, and being horribly disappointed because it bore no resemblance to what I thought of as spaghetti. I remembered a similar story from my childhood when I was thinking about ravioli – one about my brother. When I was much younger, before supermarkets became the norm in Missoula, the Broadway Market served less as a source for specialty foods and more like a neighborhood market. In addition to the Italian staples that became the Market’s forte in later years, the shelves were filled with things like cleaning supplies, Wonder Bread, Chips Ahoy Cookies and a wide assortment of canned foods. Three of these cans were particular favorites of my brother, Greg – foods he’d eaten and loved at friends’ houses. They were Chef Boyardee Beef Ravioli, and Franco American SpaghettiOs and RavioliOs. EEEWWWWW! I hated them! Sickly sweet sauce, squishy pasta – I can’t even believe my grandparents had them on the shelves… My brother wanted them for lunch at every opportunity, and he was indulged sometimes. In fact, Nonno was known to have given Greg a can or two in his stocking at Christmas time when he was very young.

I just told this story to Christine, and she states that Franco American and Chef Boyardee are ENTIRELY different things; she admitted to eating Chef Boyardee ravioli cold out of the can in high school. Who are these people?

My mother only has one ravioli story, and it sort of illustrates the same point that I made about spaghetti – that there are as many recipes for spaghetti as there are people in Italy. Every family does something a little different, so that the word has come to mean filled pasta in sauce, whether stuffed with meat, or lobster, or pumpkin, or whatever. When my great grandmother – Bisnonna D’Orazi – made chicken cacciatore and ravioli, the sauce was so hot and filled with peppers that my mother could barely choke it down, and she cried the whole time. My family stopped cooking with hot peppers when my grandfather developed ulcers, so those recipes are lost now, much to my dismay. I add them to most things when I’m cooking for myself.

The recipes this week are for my grandmother’s traditional Chicken Cacciatore and her spinach ravioli – the only kind she ever made, to my knowledge. Ravioli are labor intensive, so they were most often reserved for some sort of celebration, and were always accompanied by Cacciatore; my mother insists that it’s the only sauce to be used with ravioli. However, I experiment with fillings and sauces, and I encourage you to do so once you have the basic techniques down. These are done entirely by hand – no dodgy little rolling pin or press to crimp the pasta shapes – and my mother still rolls the dough out by hand, too. You’re allowed to use a Kitchenaid pasta roller – I do – but don’t bother with the specialized tools – it’s faster by this method. When you decide to experiment with fillings and sauces, you can also play with shapes and sizes – some people’s ravioli are round, and some are nearly as large as potstickers – I like the smaller ones because the ratio of pasta to filling is more to my liking.


The Recipe:
Ravioli
Serves 6-8 as a first course

Pecorino Romano is a sheep’s milk cheese that is quite salty and sharp, where Parmesan is a more nutty flavor. Take the time to look for it but don’t drive yourself crazy – Asiago or Parmesan will certainly work in a pinch.

Total prep and cooking time: about 2 hours

Ingredients:
2 batches of homemade egg pasta (see Nonna’s Kitchen 1)
1/2 C. ground beef
1/2 C. Pecorino Romano cheese, finely grated
1 10 oz. box frozen chopped spinach, thawed and thoroughly drained
1/4 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
salt and pepper to taste
1 large egg, beaten

Brown the ground beef in a large skillet, using a wooden spoon or other utensil to break the meat up into tiny bits. Cook for approximately 10 minutes, until thoroughly done. Allow to cool slightly, then add the cheese, spinach and nutmeg. Mix very well – use your hands – and then season to taste with salt and pepper. (Go easy on the salt, as the cheese is quite salty.) Mix in the egg and then refrigerate until cold. You can make the filling up to three days in advance, keeping it refrigerated until you’re ready to use it.

Divide the pasta into batches and roll into sheets as described in Nonna’s Kitchen 1. You want the pasta to be rolled to the thinnest setting on the machine, 1/16” if you’re rolling by hand. Using a sharp knife, cut the pasta into 1 1/2” squares – first cut long 1 1/2” strips, then cut rows of strips crosswise until you’ve got squares. You’re basically looking for something resembling a checkerboard, if that helps. When you’ve got the sheet of pasta cut, put a dollop of filling into the center of each square – about a teaspoon, slightly flattened. When you’ve got all of the squares covered, start folding – pull a square towards you, dip your finger in a bowl of water and wet three sides of the square, then fold in half - making a rectangle, not a triangle. Crimp the three edges with a fork, push to the side and move on to the next square. When you’ve finished the sheet, transfer all of the ravioli onto a floured cookie sheet and move on to the next batch of dough. I know, this sounds incredibly tedious, but it actually goes pretty fast, especially if you open a bottle of wine and draft a friend or two to help, working in assembly line fashion.

Cook the ravioli in salted boiling water, removing with a spider as they float to the top – about two minutes. Toss with Cacciatore sauce and serve, passing additional grated Romano cheese to be added at the table.

The Recipe:
Chicken Cacciatore
Serves 6-8 as a first course

Cacciatore is literally “Hunter’s Chicken” – recipes are often seen incorporating mushrooms, red and green peppers and red wine. This is my mother’s recipe, which is basically my great grandmother’s minus a few ingredients. The sauce can be used with any short pasta if you don’t want to make the ravioli – rigatoni work quite well. Faithful readers will recognize the method of cooking the tomatoes and chicken separately as the same one used for the crab spaghetti featured in Nonna’s Kitchen 13.

Total prep and cooking time – about 2 hours

Ingredients:
1/2 C. olive oil, divided
1 medium onion, finely diced
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 28 oz. can whole plum tomatoes
1 tsp. granulated sugar
1 frying chicken, cut into pieces, or 2 lb. breasts and thighs
salt and pepper to taste

In a large saucepan, heat 3 Tbsp. olive oil over medium heat. Add the tomatoes and their juice, breaking them up into coarse pieces with your hands or a wooden spoon, add the sugar and stir to incorporate. Cover and continue to cook, stirring occasionally.

After you’ve got the tomatoes going, start the chicken. Heat the remaining olive oil over medium low heat in a large Dutch oven, add the onion and garlic and sweat for about 5 minutes, or until softened but not browned. Add the chicken pieces, season liberally with salt and pepper, stir to distribute the onions and raise the heat to medium. Brown the chicken pieces on all sides, then add the tomatoes, stir to incorporate and continue to cook over low heat for at least one hour, or until the chicken is falling off the bone. Remove the chicken to a serving bowl, correct the seasoning of the sauce and serve with ravioli or pasta of your choice!

Variations: Bisnonna D’Orazi, as mentioned before, used a lot of peppers in her cooking. If you like things spicy, add about 1 tsp. of red pepper flakes to the tomatoes and otherwise cook as described.

Variation #2: Nonna’s traditional recipe – this differs from my mother’s in that it’s got, well, chicken guts. My mother picked them out as a child and gave them to her sister, and I picked them out as a child and hid them in my napkin or under my knife, so my mother leaves them out of her recipe. However, if you’re a chicken giblet and gizzard person, you may want to give this a try, as it changes the flavor significantly and is definitely more traditional. Follow the basic recipe, browning the chicken liver, heart, neck, gizzard and giblets with the chicken. Before adding the tomatoes, remove these pieces, set the liver aside and finely dice the others, adding back to the pot with the tomatoes. About ten minutes before serving, dice the liver and add it to the pot – it breaks down too much otherwise. Don’t be too upset if your kids hide the stray bits…

Mangia, mangia, fatte grande!

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Nonna's Kitchen 15: Antipasti - Appetizers and Party Food

Antipasti is the plural form of antipasto, literally “before the meal” in Italian. It is the first course brought to the table immediately after bread and wine, and signifies the beginning of the meal. The tradition probably started in the Renaissance era, when guests gathered around a communal table where small morsels of both sweet and savory foods were offered to consume after the ritual hand washing and before being seated for a meal. Restaurants in Italy often have a display case of antipasti offerings at the front of the restaurant, and antipasti can include things like olives, cured meats, marinated vegetables and especially seafood in Venice. The intent is to excite the palate, rather than fill up the diner. The French equivalent of antipasto is the amuse bouche – “mouth amuser” – a small, bite-sized offering served as a treat before dining, as opposed to the larger hors d’ouvres more commonly served as appetizers and cocktail party foods.

In common usage nowadays, antipasto has come to mean appetizer. Though it’s still traditional in many Italian restaurants both in this country and abroad to offer a communal plate of salami, cheeses, olives and peppers and such to be eaten with bread while perusing the menu, the term is now somewhat incorrectly applied to individually plated starter courses and Italian-American inventions like fried mozzarella sticks. It’s quite customary for restaurants to serve antipasto portions large enough for a whole meal, and we gluttonous Americans love to eat that way, so the trend will probably continue.

In my family, antipasti made very rare appearances, and were served primarily at holiday meals. For summer birthday and anniversary celebrations, we often had chunks of cantaloupe wrapped in prosciutto – sweet/salty and very refreshing. Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve are the only winter holidays where I can remember antipasti being served. On Christmas Eve, it’s customary to eat fish in Italian households, and The Feast of the Seven Fishes is a beloved tradition. My grandfather always prepared a large platter of smoked fish that was passed when we were seated for dinner, and it usually included smoked baby clams, oysters, sardines, and often eel and baby octopus. All came from small cans and jars sold in the store, preserved in olive oil. Nonno completed the platter with tuna salad with capers, onions and mayonnaise, and it all disappeared rapidly, eaten with bread and crackers.

The New Year’s Eve appetizer also went quickly, though I never actually liked it at all. New Year’s Eve has always been a big holiday in my family, with an enormous dinner served just after midnight; it’s one of my most cherished childhood memories. The tradition started in an unusual way; as my grandfather told it, the first year he and my grandmother were married, they went out on New Year’s Eve. It was 1943, and they decided to have dinner at the Café Montmartre, a swanky restaurant (with the attached Jungle Club cocktail lounge) in the basement of the now defunct Missoula Hotel located at the corner of Main and Ryman. My grandmother grew up in Missoula, and she was – and still is – a beautiful woman; as a result, she was quite popular with the dozens of soldiers and sailors on leave and home for the holidays. After what must have seemed like hours chasing off advances, my grandfather got angry and stated that next year, they’d have dinner at home for New Year’s. From then on, family and friends would gather around 11:30 p.m., snack on the aforementioned appetizer while drinking champagne, and ring in the New Year by sitting down to a full prime rib dinner at midnight. My grandmother would make steak tartare – small toast rounds (made from Wonder bread, for some unknown reason!) served with chopped raw beef and onion, topped with a dollop of caviar. They sold caviar in the store, and how they afforded the rest of it in the lean years I’ll never know. Still, for me at least, it was the perfect appetizer; salty caviar, the metallic flavor of raw beef and the bite of onion certainly excited my palate to eat something else!

I asked my mother about other antipasti served when she was younger, and she could only come up with one, served to dinner guests when she was very young and the Broadway Market was in its infancy. My grandfather would top a Ritz cracker (very popular and hard to find in the early ‘50s) with a thin slice of hard boiled egg and a sprinkle of paprika. These would go on a platter with a mound of olives in the center and rolled up slices of Genoa and wine-cured salami around the edges. This most closely resembles the traditional Italian concept of antipasto, and I’d never heard of it before yesterday; my mother recalls it with great fondness, especially the crackers!

Because antipasti weren’t really traditional when I was growing up, I’ve come to think of them primarily as party offerings – things to be eaten while sitting around chatting (and drinking) as the meal is being prepared. Most of my favorite antipasti hardly require recipes at all – the aforementioned prosciutto and melon being one example of this. In Italy, prosciutto is often served with fresh green figs, and they’re in season right now, making this an excellent time to try them if you haven’t before. Cut fresh ripe figs into quarters along their axis (from stem to end), cutting just short of all the way through. Spread them open a bit to expose the lush, pink flesh and plate with a twist of prosciutto nestled inside.

Bresaola – thinly sliced air cured salted beef, spiced with garlic, cinnamon and black pepper – is essentially the beef equivalent of prosciutto, and it’s an excellent alternative if you can find it. Costo carried it at one point, though I haven’t seen it there recently. Bresaola is best served laid out on a large platter, drizzled with extra virgin olive oil, a squeeze of lemon and fresh cracked black pepper; you can also add parmesan shavings and a mound of peppery arugula dressed with olive oil and lemon. Spear a slice of bresaola and a little arugula and eat it on a slice of crusty bread – YUM!

Insalata Caprese – sliced fresh mozzarella, tomatoes and basil dressed with olive oil, salt and pepper – is another excellent antipasto. A communal platter is quite pretty; alternate slices of fresh mozzarella, very ripe tomatoes and basil leaves on a plate, drizzle with extra virgin olive oil and season to taste. This can be passed around a table before a meal, or even served as a salad course. I recently made it finger-food friendly by taking ciliegine (cherry sized balls of fresh mozzarella, purchased in tubs of water and available in most supermarkets), wrapping each ball with a basil leaf and then skewering it on a toothpick with a grape tomato. When I had a whole platter of these, I dressed them with a quick drizzle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar – the result: salad you eat with your hands!

Bruschetta and crostini are somewhat interchangeable terms used to describe slices of toasted bread served with something on top. Bruschetta generally refers to bread topped with tomatoes, garlic and basil, and is quite simple – small slices of crusty bread are toasted in the oven, then rubbed with a cut raw garlic clove, topped with fresh tomatoes and basil and then drizzled with extra virgin olive oil. Crostini actually refers to the toasted bread itself, and can be served with nearly anything, from a smear of tapanade or a soft cheese like Brie, slices of salami and proscuitto, or my favorite, a salad of tuna and cannellini beans. Take one 15 oz. can of cannellini beans, drained and rinsed well, and toss them with one can of tuna packed in oil – the Italian Tonno brand is readily available (it’s owned by Chicken of the Sea, I think). Add a rib of celery, finely diced, and finish with chopped green onions or chives, fresh-squeezed lemon juice, finely minced Italian parsley and salt and pepper to taste. Mound up on the crostini and enjoy!

I also make a dip with cannellini beans which we often serve during gallery openings. In a food processor, mix one can of beans, drained and rinsed well, 2-4 cloves of garlic (depending on how much you like strong garlic flavor) the zest and juice of one lemon and a handful of fresh Italian parsley. Pulse several times to mix well, then turn the processor on and drizzle in about 1/4 cup of good extra-virgin olive oil until a creamy consistency is reached. Season with salt and pepper – it can take quite a bit of salt – and serve with just about anything – crostini, raw vegetables, pita chips, even tortilla chips.

Vegetables also make great antipasto. Giardiniera – pickled vegetables packed in oil and vinegar – is probably more Italian-American than Italian, but I still love it. Giardiniera usually contains carrots, onions, cauliflower, celery and green or red peppers, and it’s available in both hot and mild versions in nearly every supermarket. I’m sure you can make your own, though I’ve never actually bothered. Giardiniera is great eaten with salami and crusty bread, and it’s used as a condiment in Chicago on Italian beef sandwiches. Think of it as the Italian pickle! I’ve also served the egg-battered cauliflower I described in an earlier Nonna’s Kitchen article; it’s great cold, especially when accompanied by a garlicky mayonnaise. Roasted vegetables like chunks of zucchini and green beans make great starters, too – roast in the oven or on the barbecue with olive oil, salt and pepper and serve at room temperature. Asparagus are great this way as well, and are particularly nice wrapped with a slice of prosciutto.

I hope this gives you a good starting point for creating antipasti to call your own!

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Nonna's Kitchen 14 - Gnocci

The Preamble:

This week’s recipes for Gnocchi inspired me to start off with a small Italian pronunciation lesson. (I’m asking your forgiveness in advance, because I’m using phonetic sounds rather than correct typographical pronunciation symbols.) You see, there’s this very famous chef on the Food Network, quite well known for “kicking it up a notch.” He’s an entertaining guy, and he cooks great things, but over the years he’s done a few different versions of Gnocchi that I’ve seen, and he always calls them “NO-key.” AAARGH! In spoken Italian, the letter “g” is not silent, but adds a slight “y” sound to the consonant it precedes. For example, Pogliaghi - a very famous Italian bicycle builder - is pronounced “pole-YAH-gee,” and not “pogue-lee-AH-gee.” The city of Bologna is “bo-LOAN-yuh.” and Bagna Cauda, the famous Piedmontese anchovy/garlic/olive oil dip – translated literally as “hot bath” – is “BAHN-yuh COW-duh.” Seems pretty simple, right? SO, when you’re telling your guests what you’ve cooked for dinner, please say, “NYO-key.” I know, it’s a little harder because it’s at the front of the word, but I’m sure you’ll master it with a little practice.

In the interest of not boring you all to death, we’ll skip the various ways to pronounce the letter “c” in Italian until much later. Like maybe never…

Gnocchi, literally translated, means “dumpling.” There are many forms of gnocchi; they can be made from potatoes, breadcrumbs or cornmeal. They can be flavored with herbs or cheese, they may incorporate vegetables like spinach or pumpkin, and they can be savory or sweet. They’re generally cooked like pasta and served with a sauce, though not always. In essence, gnocchi are yet another way that poor Italian farmers and laborers stretched a little bit of meat or cheese by adding something starchy and filling, thereby feeding many mouths cheaply.

This doesn’t make gnocchi any less delicious! My family makes two basic categories of gnocchi: potato gnocchi and gnocchi alla romana, which are made with semolina. Gnocchi alla romana – “gnocchi in the Roman style” were always my grandfather’s favorite. My mother traditionally made them at Easter, and often for Nonno’s birthday in October. Potato gnocchi tended to be a fall thing, often eaten during duck hunting season, and as a post-Thanksgiving and post-Christmas meal. Why? Leftover mashed potatoes, of course! The best base for potato gnocchi is cold mashed potatoes; Nonna always served mashed potatoes with roast duck, and with turkey and capon at the holidays. Gnocchi are so beloved in my family that Nonna ALWAYS made many more potatoes than we could possibly eat; if she made a normal-sized batch, at least one of us would admonish everyone else to fill up on bread and not eat the potatoes so we could have gnocchi later!

The Recipe:
Gnocchi
Serves 4-6 as a first course

In my family, potato gnocchi are just “gnocchi” and are traditionally served with chicken cacciatore – chicken stewed in tomatoes. You can use any sauce, really, from simple browned butter and sage leaves to your favorite tomato sauce, though maybe not with a heavy Bolognese. Think of gnocchi as a slightly delicate pasta, and use your imagination.

Total prep and cooking time: about 45 minutes

Ingredients:
2 C. cold mashed potatoes (two medium Russet potatoes, roughly)
1 egg, slightly beaten
1 1/2 - 2 C. flour
salt to taste

Place a small saucepan of water on the stove and bring to just below a rolling boil. Mix the potatoes, the egg, a liberal dash of salt and 1 cup of the flour in a large bowl with a wooden spoon; turn out onto a well-floured surface and start to add additional flour, kneading with your hands as you incorporate enough flour to get a cohesive mixture. The final amount ultimately depends on how “wet” your mashed potatoes are; the texture you’re aiming for is somewhat softer than Play-Doh, like a good biscuit dough. When you think you’re close, pinch off a bit of dough about the size of a grape and drop it into the simmering water. When it rises to the surface, it’s cooked. If it disintegrated and totally lost its shape, you need more flour. If it’s gummy and practically chokes you, then you’ve got a little too much flour; incorporate a tablespoon or two of olive oil and try again. Though it sounds odd, you’ll know the correct texture in your mouth, and the trial and error method isn’t as intimidating as it may sound.

When you’ve got your dough at the desired consistency, bring a large pot of water to boil and begin to shape the gnocchi. Take a lump of dough and roll it out on your cutting board into a “snake” roughly the diameter of your thumb, then cut into 1” long pieces. The gnocchi need a little texture to hold the sauce; Nonna and my mother simply roll the pieces with a thumb, adding a small crease. You can roll them across the tines of a fork to make little ridges (they even make a wooden gnocchi paddle specifically for this) but we never bother.

Put the formed gnocchi on a cookie sheet dusted with flour and proceed with another lump until all of your gnocchi are formed. Cook them in batches in salted boiling water, removing them with a slotted spoon or spider as they rise to the surface, and toss them with your choice of sauces. Serve piping hot!

The Recipe:
Gnocchi alla romana
Serves 6-8 as a first course

This version of gnocchi is very rich, so small portions are a must!

approximate prep and cooking time – 1 hour plus 2 hours cooling time

Ingredients:
3 C. milk (don’t use skim!)
1/2 tsp. salt
liberal grating of nutmeg
1/2 tsp. finely ground pepper – white if you have it
3/4 C. semolina flour (available in most supermarkets)
7 Tbsp. butter, divided
1 C. grated Romano cheese, divided
2 eggs

Bring the milk to a boil (don’t let it scald) in a saucepan over medium high heat. Add the salt, pepper and nutmeg, then add the semolina in a slow stream, stirring constantly and not letting the temperature drop below a boil. When all of the semolina is incorporated, reduce the heat to medium and continue to cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture (which resembles Cream of Wheat) is thick enough that the spoon will stand up on its own – about 10 minutes. Remove from the heat. Stir in 2 Tbsp. of butter and allow the mixture to cool slightly. Beat the eggs with 3/4 cup of the Romano cheese and add slowly to the semolina mixture, stirring constantly; the fat in the butter and the cheese will keep the eggs from curdling if you go slowly enough.

Grease a rimmed cookie sheet or jelly roll pan with 1 Tbsp. of butter and pour the mixture out onto it, smoothing it into an even layer about 1/4” to 1/2” thick. Cool in the refrigerator for at least 90 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Grease a shallow oval or 9” x 13” rectangular baking dish with 1 Tbsp. of butter. Using a small glass, a cookie cutter or a sharp knife, cut the cooled semolina into 1 1/2” rounds and layer them in the baking dish, overlapping slightly. Neatness counts here, so layer evenly and make a pretty pattern! Melt the remaining 3 Tbsp. of butter and drizzle evenly over the top, then sprinkle with the remaining 1/4 cup of Romano cheese. Bake for 15 minutes; if you’re brave and willing to be constantly attentive, you can finish the dish by browning it slightly under a high broiler. Be careful, as there are only seconds between pretty and burned! Allow to cool for 5 minutes before serving.

Mangia, mangia, fatte grande!

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Nonna's Kitchen 13 - Crab Spaghetti

My Uncle Denis' birthday was earlier this week. My mother’s only brother, Denis was a fixture in the Broadway Market for the last ten or so years that it was open. My grandmother basically stopped working in the store in the mid ‘90s, after her doctor told her she needed to rest a little more and not spend so much time on her feet. She took this as a prescription to not wait on customers unless absolutely necessary; both she and my grandfather were in their 80s at this point, and I think maybe she also lobbied to close the store around this time. My grandfather would hear nothing of it, and so he soldiered on with Denis shouldering most of the burden of the day to day operations. I don’t think Denis was particularly upset when the store finally closed in 2004, as he never really shared my grandfather’s love of the business and the interaction with the customers. Still, he faithfully worked every day, allowing my grandfather to keep the Broadway Market open much longer than he could have on his own.

The main recipe I’m sharing this week - crab spaghetti - isn’t particularly timely, since the best season for Dungeness crab is generally thought to be from November through June. Still, I saw crabs in the supermarket just the other day, and when I think of Denis and food, this is the first thing that comes to mind. We never had crab spaghetti for his birthday celebration, but I bet he would have chosen it if he could. I told the story of this messy meal in an earlier article; it was the second meal served to my father when he and my mother were dating. The crab is stewed in tomato sauce and served in the shell, and the generally accepted way to eat it is with one’s hands – you slurp off the sauce, break the shells with your teeth (or a nutcracker if you’re dainty) and then suck the sweet meat out of the shells. The shells get tossed into bowls on the table, and you move on to the next piece. Piles of napkins are a must, and when we were kids, there were plastic bibs, too – the disposable ones like you sometimes get at barbecue joints now.

Denis had an entirely different method of eating crab. He slurped the sauce off like everyone else, but then picked the meat out with the end of a leg, making a small mound of it on his plate. He’d clean his allotted portion (my Aunt Helen always counted legs, claws and stomachs and told everyone how much they were allowed to have) and ended up with a large mound of crab to which he’d add some reserved tomato sauce. At this point, the rest of us were just finishing up, wiping our hands, eating a little salad if we had room. Denis would then eat his crab slowly, with a fork, gloating while we looked on jealously. I tried to emulate his method a few times, but I lacked the patience, just like everyone else. Now that I’m older, I realize that the crab must have been completely cold by the time he was ready to eat, but that didn’t stop him. He always took full advantage, oohing and aahing and smacking his lips, hamming it up to the extreme.

The second recipe this week – Polenta Pie – is an easy, shortbread-like dessert that has always been one of my father’s specialties. Unlike Denis’ crab, this must be eaten warm; if it cools too much, it’s harder on your teeth than the crab shells!


The Recipe:
Crab Spaghetti
Serves 6

Like spaghetti and meatballs, this combination of pasta and accompanying protein needs only crusty bread and a nice salad to make a complete meal. If you’re celebrating a birthday or other occasion, start off with an appetizer of prosciutto and melon; cut a cantaloupe or other melon of your choice into large bite-sized chunks, wrap each chunk with a half slice of prosciutto and secure it with a toothpick (my grandmother always used the cute frilly ones.) The combination of salty and sweet is a great starter, and it’s not so rich as to compete with the crab.

Total prep and cooking time: about two hours – 30 minutes less if you have a fishmonger that will clean the crab for you!

Ingredients:
3 28 oz. cans whole plum tomatoes
1 Tbsp. sugar
3 Dungeness crabs, cleaned and broken into pieces (see below)
¼ C. olive oil
5-8 cloves garlic, minced
salt and pepper
1 ½ lbs. dried spaghetti or Fusilli Lunghi (long and curly spaghetti – very fun!)

Heat a large skillet or saucepan over medium heat, add the tomatoes and sugar, breaking the tomatoes up into large chunks with a wooden spoon. Bring to a boil, the reduce to a simmer, stirring occasionally.

Wash and clean your crab, if you weren’t able to buy it already cleaned. Rinse the crab under cold running water, then remove the back (top) shell by holding the base of the crab with one hand and pulling on the shell with the other. Rinse out the mushy yellow stuff and pull out the gills – finger sized pieces that look like latex gloves – and the intestine, which runs down the back. Pull off the legs and claws where they meet the body, then cut the body into quarters with a cleaver or large knife.

Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a very large dutch oven or heavy stock pot and sauté the garlic for three or four minutes, stirring frequently to avoid browning. Add the cut up crab pieces and stir or toss to coat with the garlic and oil, add several grinds of black pepper and a healthy sprinkle of salt, cook for ten minutes. Add the cooked tomatoes to this pot, stir to incorporate, then reduce heat to low and cover. Cook for about an hour, stirring occasionally – be gentle so that you don’t knock too much meat out of the quartered crab bodies.

Prepare pasta according to the package directions. Remove the crab from the sauce and place in a large serving bowl – covered if possible to retain the heat. Taste the sauce and correct seasoning as necessary with salt and pepper. Reserve 3-4 cups of sauce to serve at the table and toss the pasta with the remaining sauce. (Add a few tablespoons of butter if you’re feeling decadent – butter improves all sauces, in my opinion!) Serve and enjoy! If you feel the need to garnish, add a nice sprinkling of Italian parsley, but whatever you do, don’t serve Parmesan or Romano cheese with the spaghetti – it totally overpowers the flavors and makes it, well, weird!

The Recipe:
Pasticcino di PolentaPolenta Pie
Serves 6-8

Experience has shown that the coarse cornmeal used for polenta is a little too rough for this dessert – regular cornmeal from a box is a better choice. Serve warm – we always had it plain, but fresh berries would be a nice accompaniment to dress things up a bit.

Total prep and baking time: 30 minutes, plus an additional 15 minutes to cool

Ingredients:
½ C. butter
½ C. granulated sugar
½ C. yellow cornmeal
1 C. flour

Preheat the oven to 400.
In a saucepan, melt the butter over a very low heat, stirring constantly to prevent browning. Add the remaining ingredients in the order listed, stirring briskly with a wooden spoon until the mixture is evenly grainy and well blended. Place in a lightly buttered, 8-inch pie tin. Smooth the top and press down firmly with the back of the spoon. Bake, uncovered, for 20 minutes, or until golden. Remove from the oven and cool for 10 minutes. Turn out on a plate or wooden board and let stand 5 minutes. Cut into small wedges and serve warm.

Mangia, mangia, fatte grande!

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Nonna's Kitchen 12 - Cool Recipes for Hot Evenings

As I sit at the desk writing this week, the air conditioning repairman is traipsing in and out the back door, rooting around in the crawl space and working to tune up our air conditioner for the summer here at the gallery. Coincidentally, this week’s recipes are things we used to eat in the hot July and August months when nobody wanted to be inside. We’re so spoiled now – the gallery is a constant 72 degrees, and my house is in the trees and stays naturally cool all summer long. The Broadway Market? Not so much. It was and is an old building, built around the turn of the last century; the heat in the winter came from the gas heater in the back of the store (which allowed us to have roast chestnuts all winter long) and was barely adequate. The air conditioning was two open doors and several box fans. Even at that, the house and the store were always hot. The house my grandparents lived in was attached to the back of the store, and its only redeeming feature in the summer was the back yard. My grandfather converted what was a concrete parking space into a sheltered patio with café tables like you see outside trattorias in the summer; there was even a Cinzano umbrella for several years, lending that “just so” Italian touch. Big old box elder trees provided ample shade, and we ate Sunday dinner outside more often than not for most of the summer.

Nonna still cooked almost every night during the summer; the back door was right next to the stove, so she simply left it open and worked her magic in the heat. But there were times, especially on Sunday, when Nonno cooked. I have vivid memories of him out in his giardino (garden – what he called the back yard), grilling chicken attired in a ribbed white tank top that is universally known by a very non-PC name. I’m giving three recipes this week, one for his sublime barbecued chicken, the second for his bean salad, and the third for Ricotta pie – baked by my mother – his favorite dessert in the summer. More often than not, after we all finished our dessert and espresso Nonno polished off the remainder of the pie while watching the nightly news, so if you didn’t get enough right away, you were out of luck! When you serve the pie, be certain to cut yourself a sizeable slab first, just in case…

The Recipe:
Nonno’s Barbecued Chicken
Serves 8-10

The longer this chicken marinates, the better and more intense the flavor will be. Nonno always started it in the morning and let it marinate for several hours before cooking. Ingredients are very approximate – Nonno measured even less often than I do, so use this as a framework and taste as you go. He also used button mushrooms from a can, because it’s what they had in the store, but fresh ones are so much better now that they’re readily available, so I’ve substituted.

Total prep and cooking time: 15-20 minutes to prepare the marinade, 30 minutes active cooking time plus an additional 45-60 minutes additional cooking.

Ingredients:
2 roasting chickens, cut into pieces,
or 4 lbs. chicken breasts and thighs (bone in/skin on makes for better flavor)
1 bottle dry red wine (something you’d drink)
½ C. olive oil
6-10 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed or roughly chopped
2 Tbsp. (about as much as fits into your palm) dried rosemary
3 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
salt and pepper to taste
additional wine and/or chicken stock for braising (optional)
1 small bunch Italian parsley, coarsely chopped
1 lb. small Crimini mushrooms, wiped clean and cut in halves or quarters

Mix the wine, olive oil, garlic and Worcestershire sauce in a large glass bowl or baking dish big enough to hold all of the chicken. Crush the rosemary between your palms to release the essential oils, add this and several healthy grinds of pepper to the liquid. Taste, and then add additional salt, Worcestershire, pepper and garlic to taste. Add the chicken pieces, stir to coat and marinate (in the refrigerator, of course) for at least 4 hours, rotating the pieces occasionally so all are equally soaked. You will be reusing the marinade to braise the chicken, so reserve it when you remove the chicken pieces for barbecuing.

Prepare a charcoal barbecue to provide high heat for searing the chicken. Wipe the grill with olive oil and then cook the chicken pieces over direct flame until nicely marked – about 4 minutes per side, depending on the heat. Remove the chicken from the barbecue and place into a large covered roasting pan (a turkey roasting pan is ideal, so long as it fits inside your barbecue). Stir the coals, spreading them out to the edges of the barbecue to reduce the heat level significantly, pour the marinade over the top of the chicken and cook, covered, with the barbecue lid on, until desired doneness is reached, roughly 30-45 minutes. Check occasionally and add more wine, or maybe a little stock, if the pan starts to dry out; this shouldn’t happen if your roasting pan is tightly covered and your barbecue heat is low enough. About 20 minutes before serving, put the mushrooms in the pan, stirring to incorporate. Mix the parsley in just before serving.

The Recipe:
Nonno’s Bean Salad
Serves 6-8 as a side dish

In true Nonno fashion, this salad was slightly different every time he made it. The thing that makes it special is the dressing, pink and sweet from the ketchup. Start slowly with the olive oil and vinegar, tasting often until you like the flavor and consistency of the dressing. This is much better than the jarred stuff alone. Feel free to add fresh green beans or other vegetables to your liking.

Total prep time: 20 minutes, plus additional time for chilling

Ingredients:
1 large jar of prepared 3 Bean Salad, well drained
2 additional 15 oz. cans of beans – your choice of cannellini, kidney or garbanzo – drained and rinsed
3 ribs of celery, diced
1 medium onion (I prefer red ones) quartered and thinly sliced
½ C. mayonnaise
¼ C. ketchup
2 tsp. sugar
1-3 Tbsp olive oil
1-3 Tbsp. red wine vinegar
1 small bunch Italian parsley, finely chopped
salt and pepper to taste

Place the bean salad, beans, onion and celery into a large serving bowl, mix well to incorporate. Mix the mayonnaise, ketchup and sugar in a small bowl and then start adding the vinegar a splash at a time until the desired level of tartness is reached. Add olive oil until the consistency reaches that of heavy cream, then pour over the salad and mix well. Salt and pepper to taste, then chill for several hours. Just before serving, add the parsley and mix well.

The Recipe:
Ricotta Pie
Serves 6-8

My mother’s adaptation of a classic dessert. In typical Italian fashion, this pie is rich and dense, and not too sweet. Traditional recipes include the addition of raisins, candied orange peel and pine nuts, but my mother always omitted them. Best served chilled; fresh berries would be a nice accompaniment, if you wish.

Total prep and cooking time: about 2 hours

Ingredients:
For the crust:
1 C. flour
½ C. shortening (my mother uses lard)
¼ C. ice water
1 tsp. sugar
zest of one lemon, finely grated

Mix all ingredients in a bowl or food processor until well incorporated, roll into a ball and chill at least 30 minutes before rolling. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, then prepare the crust; reserve ¼ of the pastry, then roll the remaining ¾ to form a bottom crust for a large, deep pie plate or springform pan, finishing the edges however you wish. Return crust and reserved pastry to refrigerator while you prepare the filling.

For the filling:
5 C. (about 2 ½ lbs.) Ricotta cheese (full fat is best, of course!)
1 Tbsp. flour
pinch of salt
1 tsp. vanilla extract
zest of one orange, finely grated
confectioners’ sugar for serving

Place all of the ingredients into the work bowl of a food processor or stand mixer and mix until creamy. Pour the filling into the prepared pie crust, smooth out and then roll the remaining pastry out and cut into strips to form a lattice top for the pie. Bake 60-90 minutes, or until the top is slightly golden and a knife inserted into the center comes out completely clean. Some cracks may form in the surface of the filling – this is just fine. Chill for several hours, then dust with confectioners’ sugar and serve in small wedges.

Mangia, mangia, fatte grande!

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Nonna's Kitchen 11 - Spinach Soup and Frittata

If you’ve been reading faithfully for the past few months, you might think that I had an idyllic childhood filled with culinary delights, and never a bad meal. The reality was, of course, somewhat different. Take Wednesday nights, for example. When I was a kid, Wednesday was Liver and Onions night. My paternal grandparents had a small farm in Missoula and raised a cow or two each year, so calves’ liver was fresh and…plentiful. Liver – Fegato – is a Venetian delicacy, most often sautéed with onions, white wine and sage and served with polenta. Not our liver – we had liver, quickly fried with onions, but not enough to disguise the taste. My brother and I would load ours up with ketchup and force it down, practically holding our noses. Clearly, liver is not one of my more fond childhood memories.

The funny thing is that we ate liver for literally YEARS because my parents each thought that the other loved it! My mother prepared it faithfully each week because she assumed that it was one of my father’s favorite foods, and he ate it each week because he thought it was one of her favorites. Much later, when I was in high school and the farm was no longer, calves’ liver became somewhat rare at the supermarket. One Wednesday my mother prepared something else and apologized to my father because we weren’t having liver. His reply was that she must be disappointed, and in true comedic fashion it finally came out that NOBODY particularly cared for liver, but nobody said anything about it! Except maybe my brother and I… (My parents recently celebrated their 44th anniversary, so they obviously learned to communicate at some point!)

Because Sunday dinner at Nonna’s was a pretty big deal when I was younger, undesirable foods seldom made an appearance, but Nonna cooked a few clunkers too, at least for my palate. One of them was tripe; for the uninitiated, tripe is the lining of a cow’s stomach. You might be familiar with it as the basis for Menudo – the Mexican soup, not the singing group. Tripe basically resembles a small volleyball net in color and texture (and probably flavor), and it’s considered a great delicacy in Italy. It’s most often stewed with tomatoes, and the one thing about it is that it’s pretty stinky; when I stopped in the store to say hello to my grandparents as a teenager, the smell would permeate the place and I knew immediately that I needed to fabricate an excuse to turn down the requisite dinner invitation.

The other thing of Nonna’s that I was never crazy about was runny eggs. On Fridays, if a good fish wasn’t available, the main course would often be a Frittata – sort of. Frittata is a classic Italian egg dish that incorporates vegetables, meats and sometimes cheese in what is essentially a baked omelet. It’s started in a pan, finished under the broiler or in the oven and wedges of it are often eaten cold or at room temperature. Sadly, Nonna’s frittata was nothing like this. She started with spinach, onions or mushrooms, sautéed in a pan, and a few minutes before dinner she added several beaten eggs and cooked them over very low heat, stirring frequently, until they were just barely set. I think Nonno must have liked his eggs this way, but not me; I’m perfectly happy with a runny yolk to dip my toast into at breakfast, but these eggs were basically raw. I always took as small a portion as possible and filled up on whatever else was on the table.

I actually make frittata pretty often, because it’s a great way to use up leftovers, and it’s quick and easy. For the fillings, you can use nearly anything, so feel free to experiment. Bell peppers – roasted or fresh – are great, as is spinach, or tomatoes and fresh basil, or maybe caramelized onions and a little gorgonzola. My mother’s choice? Leftover spaghetti, fried until slightly crispy, and then finished with eggs and parmesan.

The Spinach Soup would be a good accompaniment to frittata for a weeknight dinner, because it cooks in just as long as it takes to cook pasta. When I was growing up, we usually had it with Cassaoun, the spinach “ravioli” that I described in the article about vegetable sides. The pasta in the soup was the scraps leftover from making the cassaoun. This recipe uses store bought pasta, which is just fine.

The Recipe:
Spinach Soup
serves 4 as a first course

total prep and cooking time – about 30 minutes

Ingredients:
1 medium onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced or put through a garlic press
1 14 oz. can diced tomatoes
1 tsp. sugar (optional)
Salt and pepper to taste
1 small package frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed dry, or
1 bag fresh spinach, roughly chopped
8 oz. egg pasta – country style noodles, broken into small pieces

Put a large pot of water on to boil for the pasta. In a large, deep sauté pan or Dutch oven, heat the olive oil over medium heat and sauté the onion and garlic until translucent – 5 minutes or so – being careful not to let them brown. Add the tomatoes and their juice, the sugar (if your tomatoes are particularly acidic – depends on the brand) season to taste with salt and pepper and reduce heat to low. When the water comes to a boil, cook the pasta – it will take as much as 20 minutes. About five minutes before the pasta is cooked, add the spinach to the tomatoes. When the pasta is finished, don’t drain it! Scoop it out of the cooking water with a slotted spoon or a spider and add it to the tomatoes, stirring to incorporate. Then start adding ladles of cooking water to the pan, stirring until you have a consistency that you like – you could use as few as 3 cups, or as many as 8, depending on how thin you want the soup to be. The starch released from the pasta makes this soup much more rich and silky that you might think. Correct the seasoning and serve with grated Parmesan cheese

The Recipe:
Frittata
Serves 4 as a main course, 6-8 as an appetizer

Total prep and cooking time – 20 minutes

The recipe that follows is for a basic vegetable frittata – feel free to experiment with ingredients as described previously, with one caveat. If you’re using a meat such as pancetta or bacon, be sure that it’s fully cooked before adding the eggs. Beyond that, the only limit is your imagination! If you don’t have an ovenproof frying pan, you can cover the plastic handle of any frying pan with two layers of aluminum foil – this is fine for occasional use. I cook my frittata until it’s thoroughly dry and set, but you can leave the center a little moist if you prefer.

Ingredients:
2 T. olive oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely slivered
1-2 small zucchini, sliced into 1/8” rounds
1 red pepper, cut into ¼” dice
1 tsp. dried oregano
Salt and pepper to taste
8 eggs
½ cup grated cheese – Parmesan, Romano or Asiago

Heat the olive oil in a 12” ovenproof frying pan – preferably nonstick – over medium heat, and add all of the vegetables at once. Cook to desired doneness – anywhere from nearly raw to thoroughly browned – your choice. Add the oregano, season with salt and pepper. In a large bowl, whisk the eggs with about half of the cheese and a healthy grind of pepper – beat them until frothy. Pour the eggs over the vegetables and stir a couple of times to distribute the ingredients, then cook for about five minutes or until the bottom and edges are slightly brown and set – lift the edges with a spatula to check. Sprinkle the remaining cheese over the top and finish in the oven under the broiler – set the rack about 8” from the top of the oven – until set and nicely browned. Serve in wedges. Can be eaten hot, room temperature or cold!

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Nonna's Kitchen 10 - Spaghetti and Meatballs

The vast majority of Americans, when asked about Italian cuisine, would most likely mention Pizza and Spaghetti and Meatballs. Both are thought of as the quintessential Italian food and yet both have their origins primarily in American cuisine. My grandmother used to make amazing homemade pizzas, so that will make an appearance in a later article – this week, we’re talking about Spaghetti. Polpetti – patties or balls made of seasoned ground meat – are certainly Italian, but it was most likely an Italian American in New York in the late 1800s who first paired them with sauce and pasta. Meat based sauces like the one I featured in Nonna’s Kitchen 4 are primarily paired with short, textured pastas like Rigatoni or Ziti, and with long pastas like Tagliatelle – much wider than spindly little Spaghetti. Irrespective of their origins, however, nearly everyone adores Spaghetti and Meatballs, and there are probably as many recipes for it as there are people in Italy (around 60 million at last count.) Chances are that you make it at home already, whether you start from scratch or simply open a bag of frozen Costco meatballs and a jar of Marinara sauce.

I distinctly remember the first time I had dinner at a friend’s house when I was a kid; I was in second grade, so it was around 1975. My friend, who shall remain nameless, was excited because his mom was making Spaghetti, and it was his favorite food. I was excited, too, because Spaghetti and Meatballs was Sunday Dinner at Nonna’s food – my mom didn’t make them at home until I was much older. So here I am, envisioning Nonna’s thick, flavorful sauce and plump, spicy meatballs the size of large plums – man, was I disappointed. We were presented with plates of plain, limp Spaghetti covered with oil (so they wouldn’t stick together) topped with a ladle of what looked to me like chili. I realize now that it was probably something like Hunt’s canned tomato sauce with hamburger added. The Parmesan cheese was in the ubiquitous green cardboard can, which I thought at the time was very, very cool; our Parmesan had to be scooped out of the little bowl with a spoon and at age seven I hadn’t quite mastered the even sprinkle. This stuff you could shake over your pasta with ease! And, of course, it tasted like…salt and sour milk, if I remember correctly – I sorta blocked that part out.

I think of Spaghetti and Meatballs as the perfect meal for a casual dinner party – one where everyone stands around the kitchen drinking wine and snacking while the cook turns a few simple ingredients into magic in just about an hour. My Spaghetti sauce doesn’t have to cook all day like Nonno’s meat sauce – the flavors are perfectly developed in the time that it takes to make the meatballs and cook the pasta. It’s also quite recession-friendly; if you get somebody else to bring the wine, you can feed four people pasta, salad and bread for about ten bucks. Genius!

I feel compelled to get a few ground rules out of the way before we get to the recipe. First of all, the cheese: Just Say No to the green cardboard can – we’ve covered this before. You don’t have to spend $18 per pound on authentic Parmigiano Reggiano; you can get perfectly decent cheese from Wisconsin in your supermarket for less than half as much, and it actually tastes good! Second, al dente – literally “to the teeth” – describes the texture of perfectly cooked pasta, and it’s probably less done than you think. Cook your pasta on the short end of the cooking time recommended on the package, and you’ll be pretty close – when you bite a strand of Spaghetti in half, there should still be a white center showing, and it shouldn’t appear to be cooked all the way through. Obviously, this is personal preference, but perfect pasta should still have a slightly chewy “mouth feel”, if that makes any sense. Third, pasta should always come to the table with the sauce fully incorporated, as opposed to serving naked noodles and pouring sauce over the top. For most authentic Italian recipes, the pasta is often removed from the cooking water when still slightly less than al dente, tossed into the sauce pan and allowed to finish over low heat in the sauce. Finally, Italians use much less sauce than we Americans do. Mario Batali puts it quite well: he says that Italians consider the sauce to be the condimento – the condiment, like mustard on a hot dog. The important thing is the flavor of the pasta itself, and the sauce just “greases it up” and changes the flavor profile slightly. Whenever I serve pasta, I always sauce in the Italian manner and then pass extra sauce at the table. This way, you can please everyone!

The Recipe:
Spaghetti and Meatballs
Serves 4

Total prep and cooking time: approximately one hour

I’m warning you now that this recipe will be a little disjointed, because my version is different from Nonna’s and because there are a few variations that are easier to understand in the body of the recipe than if they’re listed at the end.

Ingredients:

1 lb. dried Spaghetti

For the Sauce:
1-2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 medium onion, minced
3-4 cloves garlic, finely minced (optional)
1 tsp. red pepper flakes (optional)
28 oz. canned tomatoes (see below)
1 tsp. dried oregano (optional)
1 tsp. dried basil (optional)
salt and pepper to taste
1 tsp. sugar (optional)

For the Meatballs:
1 lb. ground beef
½ lb. bulk Italian Sausage (optional – see below)
½ of a medium onion, finely minced or grated
½ Cup dried breadcrumbs (canned are fine)
1 egg, lightly beaten
½ tsp. ground cinnamon
pinch of ground allspice
pinch of ground cloves
pinch of ground nutmeg
salt and pepper to taste
Olive oil for frying
1 Cup flour for dredging

Okay, about the somewhat vague ingredient list, starting from the top – Bisnonna D’Orazi made Spaghetti sauce with so many red peppers that my mother says she couldn’t eat it; both Mom and Nonna don’t use any red pepper flakes, but I do. 1 tsp. is a pretty sane amount. I also use both the basil and the oregano, even though Mom and Nonna leave both out – their sauce is flavored only with salt and pepper. For the tomatoes, one 28 oz. can of whole Italian plum tomatoes – crushed by hand – is traditional. Frankly, I use whatever is in the cupboard – usually organic no salt added diced tomatoes, and occasionally I’ll use one 14 oz. can of those and one of diced tomatoes with tomato puree – this makes a slightly richer sauce. I DON’T use stewed tomatoes, anything with basil or oregano in it, and definitely not canned tomato sauce – it’s best to start with mostly unadulterated tomatoes. The sugar is there if your sauce is too acidic, just as it was with Nonno’s meat sauce. For the meatballs, both Mom and Nonna use just one pound of beef for four people. I love Italian sausage, and I love meatballs, so I’ll frequently mix in the additional bulk sausage and have half again as many meatballs – how could more meatballs possibly be a bad thing? I’ve also been known to make just the beef meatballs, but then cook a package of hot Italian sausages – sliced in half – and serve them with everything else.

Okay, on to the cooking, finally! Start out with the sauce: heat the olive oil over medium heat in a 12” high-sided sauté pan or dutch oven. Add the onions and cook until translucent – about five minutes – being careful not to let them brown. Add the garlic and red pepper flakes if you’re using them, stir to incorporate and cook for two minutes. Add the tomatoes and their juice, the herbs if you’re using them, and a liberal grinding of pepper. Bring the sauce to a boil, then reduce the heat to low and cover it with a lid.

For the meatballs: put the ground meat in a large bowl, add all the other ingredients and mix with your hands to thoroughly incorporate. Some people say that if you overwork the mixture your meatballs will be tough – if you’re concerned about this, mix the onion, breadcrumbs, egg and seasonings thoroughly, then add the meat to the mixture and incorporate. Trust me on the cinnamon/allspice/etc. – it’s very traditional in Bisnonna’s and Nonna’s recipes, and it gives the meatballs a good deal of complexity, even though it might sound a little weird. Form the meatballs with your hands to the desired size – somewhere between golf ball and billiard ball size. Mine are on the large end of that range, and I generally get 12 or 13 out of a pound of meat. When all of the meatballs are formed, heat about ¼” of olive oil in a 10” frying pan over medium high heat, dredge the meatballs in flour and fry for 4-6 minutes, turning to brown all sides. You’re looking for a good sear for color and flavor, not cooking the meatballs through at this point, and you may have to work in batches. As the meatballs are cooked, add them to the sauce, turning them so they’re covered in sauce. If you’re making Italian sausages, cut them in half and brown on all sides in the same pan, then add them to the sauce as well. At this point, Nonna scrapes the remaining cooking oil and the brown bits into the sauce, stirring to incorporate. While I love the flavor this imparts, I find it makes the sauce just a little too oily for my taste. Stir everything well, and then stir the sauce occasionally while the pasta cooks; be gentle so you don’t break up the meatballs.

Cook the pasta according to the package directions. When it’s nearly done, remove the meatballs (and sausage) from the sauce and place them in a covered serving bowl. Check the seasoning of the sauce, adding salt and pepper to taste, then remove about 1 ½ cups of the sauce to a small serving bowl for passing at the table. Turn the drained pasta into the remaining sauce and toss to coat all of the strands. If you feel like there’s not enough sauce, add back in from the reserved portion until it meets your approval. Serve with good crusty bread and a green salad!

Mangia, mangia, fatte grande!