Cooking: Pesto alla Siciliana

On a recent trip to the grocery store, I discovered a new sauce that has inspired a couple of new dinner ideas. I have been trying to cook more at home these days, and there is a cookbook on the traditional cucina fiorentina (Florentine cuisine) that is haunting me on the kitchen table with several bookmarks mocking me to venture and make traditional goodies like salsa tartufata (truffle sauce for pasta or meats), fegatino (chicken liver and heart pate) and ribollita ( 2X cooked peasant bread, tomato, veg and bean soup).  But I am too intimidated. Every time I go to  the butcher at my local farmer’s market to brave buying pure chicken hearts and liver, I get scatty as soon as I see the blood covered butcher howling “Prego” at me. I run away and just get my typical dainty fruit and veg and perhaps some cold cuts.

So I end up instead at the grocery store, reducing myself to the pre-made pasta sauces accepting my reluctance to make a salsa tartufata. I see a jar that looks interesting, it’s called Pesto alla Siciliana. It had a nice little picture of ricotta and tomatoes on it and I thought hmmmm this looks adventurous! Until I read the ingredients: Instead of olive oil, there is sunflower seed oil. Instead of pine nuts, there are cashews (anacardi). And to my great disappointment, there is glucose syrup AND sugar! I put my foot down (and the jar back on the shelf) and said: “this avoidance to cook is not to be tolerated any more!” I will make this myself!

So from the label, I gathered more or less what this recipe was asking for. Fresh tomatoes, tomato concentrate (one of my secret culinary weapons), garlic, ricotta, pine nuts (or hazelnuts!!), pecorino (sheep’s milk cheese), herbs and olive oil.

I looked up a recipe just to be sure and I got chopping and grinding away. I used a hand blender to put it all together and voilà! A thick creamy umami nutty goopy pink sauce that will make any pasta more cozy.

My 1st dish was a mock-saltimboca (turkey breast dusted w/ breadcrumbs and pan cooked w/ fresh sage instead of using veal, cheese and prosciutto) with another mock- zucchinighetti.

I love using grated zucchini as a sub for spaghetti. It’s lighter (obviously) but also full of color, fiber and vitamins.  So I cook the zucchetti w/ a touch of olive oil till they are bendy and almost crispy at the tips then toss in the pink pesto.

I top this mock-invention with fresh parsley that comes in with my odori (herb) bunch from my veg guy Leo, who has a strange resemblance to the comic book guy on The Simpsons.

Another night I decide to be more traditional (and decadent) and made the same pesto sauce but this time made a pasta (Tortiglioni) of real noodles and tossed it with fresh sausage cooked in chopped sage, again from odori bunch from Leo. It came out extremely delicious to say the least. The sauce and bits of sage coated sausage coated and filled the big chewy hollow pasta tubes.

If I were drinking this month, I would have paired it with a glass of Negroamaro from Puglia, which is basically Italian for Zinfandel. It tends to be pretty basic yet full and slightly fruity while being high in alcohol. This pasta doesn’t need some complex aged wine with tons of structure. I wonder if a layered white like a Sauvignon from La Maremma (southern Tuscany) would have fared well. We will never know…unless you try.

This sauce is very simple to make and I highly recommend you make it to add some variety to your pasta routine. I think this would make an excellent lasagna base as well. Oh want a recipe? Here ya go!

http://ricette.giallozafferano.it/Pesto-alla-siciliana.html

It’s in Italian so maybe turn on the English version or your go go google translate super powers.

Buon appetito!

La Pentola Dell’Oro- Renaissance fare in 2012

La Pentola Dell’Oro means “A potful of gold.” I live in Florence, the birthplace of the Renaissance (consider the museums like the Uffizi, The Accademia, THE DUOMO,  the Boboli Gardens, etc)  and of the Italian language (remember Dante Alighieri and L’Inferno? Dante was Florentine and Italian was born from his laments on hell and society.) I overheard about La Pentola from a group of locals cooing over their recent experience with renaissance inspired fare describing spices from the orient and other exotic posts that influenced Florentine society during the Rinascimento, Italy’s cultural “rebirth.”

I instantly became curious as I mostly confine myself to eating and experimenting with dinner at home. One because eating in is like 2 euros and eating out is 6 times that plus I can wine and dine into the wee hours of the evening and near the comforts of my just-a-stumble-away den. And then mostly what you find eating out is either Tuscan “delicacies” mostly of animal guts (such as la tripa and il lampredotto, good thing Italian is such a pretty language cos’ we’re talking farm animal  intestines and cow stomach here) or pizza or pasta or some other variation concerning starches, tomatoes, pork product and cheese. Delicious, yes. But I can do that and more at home for like euro pennies.

This “Pot of Gold” was indeed a worthwhile venture. Consider the following:

Le Pappardelle sulla lepre (pappardelle fresh pasta w/ wild hare ragu’ made in the Etruscan “Artusi” fashion)

Le Lasagnole  (lasagna-like cut noodles tossed with ginger, cane sugar, chestnut honey and walnut. Not sweet, but very savory! 

Il Porco Cignale in dolce forte- Wild Boar in a chocolate, cedar & pine nut sauce. Looks like mound of mud but indeed very yum num. Ever had “mole’?” Well, imagine instead,, a melt in your mouth savage forest ranged pork that feasted on chestnuts and filberts in an aromatic olive oil pine nut chocolate spice marinade.

And wine? A Chianti Classico with notes of herbed violet and tobacco tannins to cut through the fat and protein pleasures of the boar in order to radiate this plethora of layered savor.

After this imbibement, my belly was also feeling like a pot of gold. This is definitely off the beaten tourist path and thankfully undiscovered but frequented enough by locals (am I a local yet?) to stay churning slivers of rich, historic gastronomic bliss.

More info here: http://www.lapentoladelloro.it/

You might need a zing bing or go go google translate super powers if you can’t quite decipher the Italiano. BUON APPETITO

Tavolàta- The last of the Ethan Stowell chronicles

If you are a 1st time reader of my musings, consider visiting the following posts before reading on.

http://curiousappetite.wordpress.com/category/ethan-stowell-restaurants/

Well, this is the last Ethan Stowell restaurant I have yet to write about. If I may reiterate, his restaurants are all supposedly “Italian-Inspired” cuisine that I have a lot of carpaccio with. Like each E.S. joint, there is a theme and Tavolàta’s is pasta. According to the website, its name means “to gather around the table.”

No it doesn’t. “Tavolàta” means  ”Tableful.” Seems like an exaggerated translation of a fairly simple concept, I suppose just like your interpretation of Italian pasta.

I was here for Happy Hour, my new rule for trying restaurants the 1st time. You get a taste for what they do and without potential buyers remorse regardless of the results. And I must say, I would recommend Tavolàta for Happy Hour, but nothing more. They select a hefty list of pastas for about $8 and have truly legitimate Italian wines at $5 a glass. But the pastas have some severe quirks that deters me from returning for dinner. As I intensely studied the menu’ waiting for others to arrive, I was confused by some of the pastas. Spaghetti with Chicken Meatballs. How are chicken sausage meatballs Italian?  What is wrong with sticking to the basic cornerstones of Italian Cuisine, and that is a red meat with perhaps some pork (the only acceptable white meat) MEATBALL? So naturally, this is what I ordered

Obviously a generous $8 pasta plate but it was no Spaghetti and Meatballs. 1st of all, this pasta seems more like Bucatini, a very thick stranded pasta that resembles a spaghetti but a true spaghetti should resemble “little cords” usually as uncountable lighter strands. These Bucatini were what I considered “troppo dente”, meaning they were a tad chewy and could have used at least another 2 minutes in a salted water bath. But hey, better than overcooked pasta right? What should have been chewy but ended up mushy were these crispy on the outside chicken sausage meatballs. It seemed like there was a heavy dose of bread crumbs and egg trying to keep it together thus producing a rather bland mealy mush-a-ball. The tomato sauce was thin and flabby. The only thing saving this chewy pasta chicken mush was the generous umami-loaded parmigiana shavings. Such a shame because had this pasta been made with spaghetti al dente, doused with a richer tomato Marinara sauce and juicy herbed meatballs (not made with chicken!), this would have been a classic.

Also ordered was a Gnocchi Alla Romana (pictured) and a spicy Italian sausage Rigatoni.

These Gnocchi alla Romana were scrumptious. I wish I had the brains to have ordered it myself.  But I have a rule to never order the same item as anyone else at my table. This also, was one of the only Italian pasta dishes on the menu’ that didn’t attempt to deviate from its traditional sense. No fancy substitutions or funky experiments, no no, just saucy good rich tomato and gooey crispy mozzarella atop baked fluffy gnocchi, simply no-nonsense goodness as Italian pasta should be.

A wag of the finger goes to the spicy Italian sausage Rigatoni. The sausage was way too spicy, and again the pasta was “troppo dente”. The careless over-spicing created a horrible clash with the wine that would have normally been an amicable pair. I’d like to squash the idea that southern Italian food is picante spicy, its not really. It has slightly more “piquantness” than its Northern members but not mouth-on-fire spice. A good gastronome, like most Italians, knows that too much hot spice ruins a dish, it dominates and detracts from the neighboring flavors and makes a meal slightly uncomfortable and difficult to enjoy with red wine. There is an art to incorporating gusto into Italian sausage and salami, but regrettably not reflected well in this Rigatoni at Tavolàta.

I have to give a tip of the hat to the service. It was a Friday night and these people were short staffed but not short of courtesy and warmth. Plates took a while to arrive, but the bartender made sure our glasses were kept occupied with wine and the time elapsed seemed unnoticeable. They maintained a positive attitude and natural conversation amidst the Friday night pandemonium. At the end, we realized we forgot to order dessert by happy hour’s cutoff, but without even having to ask, our server brought out delicious warm cinnamon Zeppole with a dark (slighly salty) chocolate dipping sauce as if we were still on time. These zeppole were dusted with powdered sugar and fried to perfection. Donuts, zeppole, beignets, whatever you want to call them, are just words for fried sweet delectable dough that I will happily recommend you revel in for dessert.

This is the last review I will write on Ethan Stowell restaurants. Unless he opens a new restaurant, or as Seattle Eater has predicted a new chain of reinvented “fast food”  joints…

http://seattle.eater.com/archives/2011/08/23/restaurateur-ethan-stowell-is-on.php

I will stay firm on my opinion. And that is this guy has a cute idea towards interpreting Italian food, but the proof is in the budino, and the proof is that these restaurants are weak attempts at trying to establish celebrity chef status through a much loved cuisine. Its as if he is trying to be another Tom Douglas.

You say tomato, I say pomodoro.

Emmer and Rye.

Emmer and Rye, ahhhh. A few weeks back I was refused a dining experience due to lack of reservation. I did succeed in getting a table, and miraculously I lived through the icy spine splitting awkwardness of our waitress to tell about it.

Emmer and Eye is a seasonal celebration of the local goodness artful chefs and the Pacific Northwest have to offer, perched on the top of Queen Anne in a cozy 100yr old Victorian home.

Emmer is basically the ancient wheat grain. Like Farro. Which is Spelt. But grown in Washington. Rye is Rye.  Recipes change according to Season. We are now in Spring. So we ordered a bunny. Ill get to that in a sec.

Starters:

These “Farro Fries” basically looked like fish sticks but were made with a farro batter and lightly fried. A tad crunchy on the outside like a crisp fry but saltily buttered texture inside with beads of farro grain to give you some chewage. Then this yogurt sauce that came on top was slightly minty and garlicky. Not too garlicky. I really resent that adj. “garlicky”. But it kinda was.

Oysters. Think lemon spritz mini explosion washed down with a touch of olive oil.

Chunked slices of Pork belly over heirloom beans and Chicory Greens.  The Pork belly looked like slices of pure fat but had a surprisingly meaty punch. The fat was so sweet mesquity that I could swear these pigs grazed on hazelnuts. The texture almost reminded me of Bulgogi beef rib meat, you know the real fatty meaty ribs that melt in your mouth that makes you growl in guilt the morning after for eating 12 of them. The beans? Well we tried to figure out what put the “heirloom” in these beans because they just looked like a mix of pinto and black beans. They probably were but had a better fiber mouth feel. Anything with bacon is a winner. 5 bucks for this locally sourced seasonal happy plate. When i told my So. California based sister about this dish she questioned its seasonality for Fall.  Yep, thats the PNW for you, basically always Fall year round. But if bacon is a Fall food, i’m glad to be in the PNW.

We also got a cheese plate. a Black truffle brie like creme soft gooey cheese. A sharp cabot cheddar from Vermont. Which obviously was not local, and consequently my least favorite cheese, not sharp and a little too hard.  Then a semi hard scotch washed rind white almost cheddar cheese. Smelled like feet, tasted like scotchy nutty cheddery crumbly hard cheese. Yummmm. Then a baby boy blue cheese. Super almost really creamy yet firm, with just a streak of blue (hence the baby) which gave the surrounding a more fresh cream compliment to the aspiring gorgonzola. This plate came centered with an apple cherry conserve and house baked apricot studded whole grain bread. 8 dollars. Take that wolf cooker, Stowell!

These were just apps.

The 1st main: Half Chicken with morel cream, wilted greens and orzette potatoes. They were the happy chickens. They had to be, the skin was so oily and tender yet crispy and the meat moist and beaming with juicy happy flavors. The Morels were perfect, perfect touch of cream, perfect cookature, perfect foraged mushroom earth to compliment the greens and buttery golden tater slice.  I never thought of morels to be so yummy and meaty-like.

Then we ordered the bunny. Actually we ordered the braised rabbit over fresh nettle in-house made pappardelle pasta with carrots and thyme but when the waitress came out she said “here’s your bunny!” Talk about mortified! She said thats what they call it in the kitchen, and apparently thats what they called it on the bill.  It was my 1st time ever eating rabbit and I wasn’t grossed out, it was a very interesting reminder of game and chicken. Shredded and slightly smidgenly juicy. The pasta was interesting, never thought of eating nettle pasta but it tasted like a very grained herbaceous yet almost basilic pasta. Al dente.

DESSERTS! So our waitress was really akward, she maybe warmed up to us after 3 hours, meaning she smiled. is a smirk a smile? She had a real hard time looking at us and i’m pretty sure she cast a spell on us and our bunny. It wasn’t that she gave bad service, I don’t think she was even capable of utilizing any personality except awkward and plain-face stare at a wall while you order.  It was quite the hurdle to get our hands on the dessert menu as a result, but when we did, we let our taste buds play with salted caramel rocky road toasted marshmallow brownie and a mini apple galette with a golf ball of browned butter gelato. I wasn’t a huge fan of the apple tart thing, the crust was good and dense with butter, but the apples were kinda bland. But the brown butter gelato was some story. Flecks of vanilla bean and good burnt butter flavor. Full bodied for just butter and vanilla gelato. But the brownie!!! The caramel was so rich and salty (good) and sweet but tart and dark and of course tasted of butter! Ahhhman it was good! I licked the plate basically! And the hazelnuts were toasted and still super fresh and complemented the fudgey chocolate brownie. The toasted marshmallow was adorable. I spooned it with the brownie caramel and hazelnuts for the best explosion of sweet sour bitter and butter I can put in my memory. Yummy  sticky vanilla chewy goodness. Ahhhh.

So the verdict, with all that food (plus a leek nettle-mint hazelnut soup I left out) plus crisp white wine and a rye manhattan, our bill had us each pay out less than 25bucks. We did make happy hour, but still that was totally worth it and way better than How to Cook a Wolf. The atmosphere was less snooty, more homey, and despite our (new) awkward waitress, the people were pretty nice and unpretentious. I highly recommend this joint. Its some of the best food i’ve had in Seattle yet.