Eggplant and Ricotta Sauce

Quick Announcement! For our Delaware readers, Will will be on WDEL 1150 AM on Rick Jensen's "Thirsty Thursday" show, talking about home brewing. The show is conveniently on Thursday at 3:30pm. For those of you not in Delaware the station live streams on their website by clicking the "Listen Now" button. They also post the show for a week after its broadcasting, so check back for the link if you miss it. OK, on with your regularly scheduled blog...

I have been deep in research to unearth the secrets of the cooking goddesses. Women who define their particular regions and styles of cooking, women who have written anthologies of recipes, distinguished books historical record on ingredients and technique. I have already told you about my dabeling in the authentic Indian cuisine of Julie Sahini and my constant adulation of Ruth Reichl. Now, after two months of flipping through her recipes with a quiet awe, I decided to tackle the work of Marcella Hazan.

Marcella Hazan is probably the most celebrated cookbook authors of Italian Cuisine. She is credited with introducing balsamic vinegar to the American household. Yes, she's more important then Giada. The Classic Italian Cookbook was released in 1973 and when that was a hit she published More Classic Italian Cooking in 1976. For those like me with very limited shelf space, in the 90's she revised and updated her recipes and combined them into a single book, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, a treasure I unearthed at the Strand in August, after several visits and much searching. Funny side note: the worst kept secret in cookbook publishing is that Marcella Hazan didn't write any of those books, in the actually writing things down sense. Her husband Victor did, because Marcella doesn't really speak enough English to write a coherent cookbook. Apparently letting the husband near the food is not something I invented.

As was one of my New Year's resolutions, I had decided to learn some Italian cooking, as those lovely tempting dishes have been invading the New York palate, and I can't afford to eat at Locanda Verde every night. This book is a fabulous way to learn, because this woman has OPINIONS, and is not afraid to tell you that you are doing it wrong. For example, you are not going to be patted on the head and praised for always using fresh pasta.

"There is not the slightest justification for preferring homemade pasta to the factory-made. Those who do deprive themselves of the most flavorful dishes in the Italian repertory."

This is not to say that she prefers factory made either, she simply believes the two are different, and should be used for different purposes. The book is excellent at recommending what type of pasta you should serve with the various sauces. I chose two to start with that both called for "factory made" which gave me a break since I didn't have to spend 45 minutes making the pasta. Marcella probably would have still been disappointed in me though...

"Great factory pasta is made slowly: The dough is kneaded at length; once kneaded,  it is extruded through slow bronze dies rather then slippery, fast Teflon-coated ones. It is then dried gradually at an unforced pace. Such pasta is necessarily limited to small quantities; it is made only by a few artisan pasta makers in Italy, and it cost more than the industrial product of major brands."

Oops. I probably wasn't supposed to use Trader Giotto's then.

Eggplant and Ricotta Sauce, Sicilian Style
Adapted (slightly) from the Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking

Ingredients:

- About 1 to 1 1/2 pound eggplant
- 2 teaspoons salt
- Vegetable Oil
- 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
- 1/4 large yellow onion (or half of a small onion) sliced very thin
- 2 small to medium cloves of garlic, chopped
- 1 1/2 pounds fresh, ripe Italian plum tomatoes
- Fresh Ground Pepper
- 3 Tablespoons freshly grated romano cheese
- 8 to 10 fresh basil leaves
- 1 pound pasta (Recommended: Cartwheel pasta. Fusilli or rigatoni also good.)
- Fresh grated parmesan for the table

Directions:


Cut off the eggplant's green spiky cap. Peel the eggplant (or don't, if you don't mind eggplant skin and want to skip that step) and cut it into 1 1/2 inch cubes. Put the cubes in a colander and set over a bowl, then sprinkle liberally with salt. Let the eggplant steep for about 1 hour so that the salt can draw off most of its bitter juices.

While the eggplant is steeping, bring a pot of water to a boil. Cut an X into the bottom of each tomato. Plunge the tomatoes into the boiling water for 1 minute. Remove with a slotted spoon and plunge into ice water to stop their cooking. Tomatoes should now peel easily. Core the tomato like the video below.



God I love Chow Tips. Discard the core (or use it for something else) and cut the tomato into thin strips.

Once the eggplant is done steeping, rinse the cubes under cold water. Wrap them in paper towels and squeeze to remove as much moisture as possible.

Put enough vegetable oil in a large frying pan to come up 1/2 inch on the sides, and turn to medium high. When the oil is quite hot, slip in as many eggplant pieces as will fit loosely in the pan. If you can't fit them all, fry in batches. Fry eggplant, turning often, 2-3 minutes. As soon as eggplant feels tender when prodded with a fork transfer it with a slotted spoon or spatula to a platter lined with paper towels to drain.

Pour off the oil and wipe the pan clean with paper towels. Put in the olive oil and the sliced onion and turn the heat to medium high. (This is another Marcella trick, she usually believed in starting onion in a cold pan and heating them gently, which results in a mellower taste.) Saute the onion until it becomes colored a light gold, then add the chopped garlic and cook for only a few seconds, stirring as you cook. (According to Marcella, this combining of onion and garlic by sautéing is called a Soffritto.)

Add the strips of tomato, turn up the heat to high, and cook for 8-10 minutes, stirring frequently, until the oil floats free from the tomato.

Add the eggplant and a few grindings of of pepper, stir, and turn the heat down to medium. Cook for just a minute or two more, stirring once or twice. Taste and add more salt to taste.

Toss the cooked and drained pasta with the eggplant sauce, add the grated Romano and the ricotta. Toss again, mixing all ingredients thoroughly into the hot pasta, and serve at once. Garnish with basil. Serve Parmesan on the side.

OK, that "until the oil floats free of the tomato" part? I still have no idea what that means, and a google search reveals that the only person to use that phrase is Marcella Hazan. After 8 to 10 mintues the mixture had become a more cohesive form and the tomatoes had relaxed into the pan, so maybe that's what it means. 8-10 minutes, then more on. That's what you should take from this.

The dish was fantastic, delicate but filling, creamy but with substance. I was greedy with it, I wanted to eat it up all at once but then I also wanted to just sit with the bowl under my face and let that garlicky eggplanty smell fill my nose. It is such a perfect recipe for this type of year when eggplant and tomato are so plentiful and fresh. The book has tons of zucchini and peppers too, it begs to be put to use in the early fall.

Marcella is walking me through this Italian thing bit by bit, maybe I'll be ready for the 3 hour Bolognese soon, and not the sausage cheat that I did in January. I'm dreaming of the cold winter day when I let this bubble in on my stove, warming every corner of this apartment. I think Marcella and I will get along just fine.

Goat Cheese Arugala Ravioli with Panchetta Butter

My mother likes the words "Over Programed." A lot. And applying them to me. This is usually due to some insane project I've decided to undertake where I forgo all shortcuts, forsake the premade, and insist on everything being "original" and "from scratch". Personally, I prefer the term Ambitious.

My ambitiousness this past weekend came in the form of trying to kill two birds with one stone. One of my oldest friends was having her baby shower this weekend, so I was Pennsylvania bound. In order to avoid having to go there two weekends in a row, we decided to do Mother's Day last weekend as well. Will and I planned to throw a little dinner party for both moms, invite my Aunt and Uncle, and dazzle all with the cooking and mixology skills that we had been so rude as to move away with. A dinner party, not so bad right? People have them all the time. Except I was going to do it in my mother's kitchen instead of my own. On the same day as the shower. On the same evening as the Kentucky Derby. And we weren't getting into town until 7 p.m. the night before. Guess how many minutes I was in town before my mother and I started arguing over the intricate difference between her terminology and my own?


I wasn't Over Programed really. I was Perfectly Programed, down to the minute, as long as Will and I got out of bed at 6:30 a.m. on a Saturday. He was not pleased, but was a good sport and after a cup of coffee he threw himself into it. We spent the morning picking up baby gifts, selecting vegetables, meats, and seafood. We piled back into my mother's house, I wrote up a list of all the things that needed chopping while I was at the shower and made a schedule of when each dish should be prepared. See? NOT Over Programed. Perfectly Programed. And Ambitious.

For my appetizer I was making my favorite Scallops with Asparagus, an impressive but not too challenging spring dish. That was going to require the most prep work from me, but would be easy to pull off while the parentals watched the ponies in the living room. The biggest challenge to a dinner party is to be able to enjoy the first course with your guests, but not to have the second course come out cold. On this very ambitious day, however, I had one Ace up my sleeve. Most of the dinner was already prepared. Three days before I had stood in my tiny kitchen in Queens, rolling out sheet after sheet of from-scratch-pasta, trimming and stuffing them. I then froze them, and toted them south in a cold bag. The sauce was made just before the guests arrived, so all I had to do was boil the ravioli and warm the sauce! Every bit of the dinner came from scratch ingredients and time consuming hand crafting, but I was able to breeze into the kitchen and come back with dinner with just a five minute lull between courses! Suck it Martha Stewart, I had this thing nailed.

Goat Cheese Arugala Ravioli with Tomato-Pancetta Butter 
Adapted from Bon Appetit

Ingredients:

Ravioli:

-2 tablespoons olive oil
-3 large shallots, minced
-8 oz arugula, roughly chopped
-6 oz soft goat cheese, crumbled
-1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
-2 pounds of pasta dough, rolled into 3" wide sheets
-2 large egg whites, whisked just until foamy

Tomato-Pancetta Butter

-6 oz sliced pancetta, coarsely chopped
-1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
-6 large plum tomatoes, seeds and membranes discarded, tomatoes diced
-1 tsp chopped fresh thyme

Directions:

Make Ravioli:
Heat oil in heavy large skillet over medium heat. Add shallots; saute 10 minutes. Add arugula; toss until wilted but still bright green, about 3 minutes. Transfer arugula mixture to a large bowl and cool. Mix in goat cheese and Parmesan cheese. Season filling with salt and pepper.

Take a sheet of pasta sheet, spoon 1 generous teaspoon 1 and 1/2 inches apart on the sheet, about 1/2 an inch from the edge of the sheet. Brush a little egg white around each dollop, and fold the sheet over, pressing the pasta together firmly to seal. Cut into individual ravioli with a pizza cutter or pastry wheel. (If making ahead of time, arrange ravioli on a cookie sheet and freeze. Then place in plastic freezer bag for up to 1 week. If pasta is still somewhat moist, let dry on drying rack before freezing, or they will freeze to the cookie sheet.)

Make Tomato-Pancetta Butter:
Cook chopped pancetta in large skillet over medium-high heat until crisp and brown. Using slotted spoon, transfer pancetta to paper towel; drain. Set aside. Pour off all but 1 tbsp drippings from skillet. Add butter to drippings in skillet; melt over medium-high heat. Add tomatoes and thyme; saute until tomatoes are tender, about 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. (Can be made 2 hours ahead. Let stand at room temperature.)

Cook ravioli in a large pot of boiling water until just tender, 4 minutes if fresh or 5 if frozen. Drain. Rewarm tomato butter over medium heat. Add reserved pancetta, saute 1 minute. Spoon sauce over ravioli; garnish with thyme.

The mothers seemed to think it went pretty well. As the candles burned down and we whisked away dishes, I overheard the group discussing next year's party. That is the curse of the ambitious--you pull it off, and suddenly you have an annual event on your hands...

Why is There Pasta in the Shower?

With my resolution to learn decent Italian cooking this year (and thereby resist the temptation of dining out every night as the Italian trend sweeps NY) I decided that in order to make truly authentic dishes, I would need to be able to create my own pasta. Since I already owned a Kitchen Aid mixer, the pasta roller and cutter attachments were the obvious choice, and I ordered a set. They arrived last week, and I have been plotting how to use them ever since. Now for pasta you need dough, and since dough is related to baking, things did not go smoothly at first. As I did my research, many websites talked about and Italian 00 flour, hard to find but ideal for true Italian pasta. "Ha!" I thought. I live in NY City. "I'm going to an Italian store to buy other ingredients anyway! I'll find the flour I need!"

Well... I couldn't find it. And then I found Semolina, which I remembered seeing on another pasta website, so I thought maybe that would work. I got home and found a recipe for that kind of pasta, and after I had all of the eggs and salt and oil in the bowl, I discovered I needed 3 1/2 cups of Semolina. I had only purchased a bag with about 2 1/2 cups in it. Well.... another recipe in the book combined another flour with All Purpose, maybe I could just fill in the rest with All Purpose.... You can see where this is going. I ended up with hard rock like clumps, and adding a little bit of water gave me some sticky hope, until I tried to put it through the roller and it crumbled. The moral of the story is never compromise your vision--not when dough is involved. The stakes are too high.

You know that scene in Julie and Julia, where something going wrong and she collapses spread eagle on the floor of her kitchen sobbing? During that scene my mother was elbowing me going "That's you!" "Shut up!" I said. "It is not!" In the months since this movie has come out, other people have managed to combine it and me in the same thought. I protested immediately, for I am a mature, poised woman, an accomplished chef and self possessed woman. I am not the kind of person who would, say, throw and unusable ball of pasta dough across the kitchen and start crying. And then sit in the living room and pout as her husband very calmly goes for the broom. Ooops. God Dammit.

Making your own pasta is one of those things that people say "Is very easy, once you get the hang of it!" And what you hear is "Is very easy!" And by that point you've stopped listening because you're envisioning yourself, every night of the week, with angel hair and fettucini and stuffing your own raviolis, and people come to your dinner parties and ask, "Where did you buy this perfect pasta?" And you smile knowingly and glance across the room at your mixer. Possibly while Frank Sinatra plays in the background. Not that I've ever had this fantasy.

Eventually the disaster dough was in the trash, a nice sized glass of wine was put into my hand, and I reevaluated the situation. I tossed the idea of doing anything fancy out the window, picked out a dough with similar ingredients, and actually did end up with usable pasta. I didn't own one of those fancy pasta racks, and in my four foot by six foot kitchen, I did not have the space to lay all the noodles out on towels. Therefore I did what any intrepid urbanite would, I made do with the tools and space I did have. I took my clothes drying rack, washed it down with dish soap, rinsed, and plunked it in the tub. My husband calmly walked into the kitchen. "Sweetheart, why is there pasta in the shower?" I handed him his own large glass of wine and the Nintendo remote. He nodded and sat down in front of Super Mario. It's a lovely understanding we have.

My noodles were soft, not nearly al dente, and cut a bit too thin, though were still pretty tasty and very fresh. I've decided, however, not to give you any recipes or advice until I really have this skill hammered out. I would, however, like to refer you to this video if you're looking to to try it yourself sometime soon, it's from kitchen aid and shows what it's supposed to look like if you're doing right, which can also be helpful for knowing when you've done it completely wrong.

I am going to let you know about my latest experiment in Italian cooking, though. As I planned my first night of fresh pasta, I wanted to serve it with a sauce that wouldn't overpower, as I wanted to really taste my first noodles. Tomato sauces were out. It was then that I settled on trying my hand at Spaghetti alla Carbonara. When I was searching for recipes, I landed on one by a chef that I ridiculously respect, Ruth Reichl. This woman was the New York Times Restaurant reviewer in 90's, and was the Editor in Chief for Gourmet Magazine for the last ten years. It was her vision that put more emphasis on sustainability and food politics, and when the magazine closed, it was through her determination that the Gourmet magazine and cookbook archive be donated to libraries. She is my food writing idol.

In the 1970's, broke and living in NY (sound familiar?) she wrote a now out of print cookbook, with possibly the most adorable cover of all time. Recipes from this book can now be found on her website. I did a little tweaking, she uses bacon where I subbed pancetta (if I wanted to be super authentic I would have used guanciale, otherwise known as cured pork jowl, but damn do I love pancetta). However, for all my single ladies, all my single ladies, (yeah so that will be in my head the rest of the day) this recipe really is full of things you have in the fridge most of the time. Pasta, eggs, parmesan cheese, a bit of garlic, and if you go this route, bacon. It takes very little time and creates a gourmet meal for a weeknight, or when you impulsively bring a boy home and want to seem like you can just throw a gourmet meal together like the brilliant goddess you are. And if you used boxed pasta you won't even have to worry about them seeing you throw things across the room.

Spaghetti alla Carbonara

Adapted from Ruth Reichl

Ingredients:

-1 pound spaghetti

-1/4 pound sliced pancetta

-2 cloves of garlic, split in half

-2 large eggs

-Black Pepper

-1/2 cup of grated parmigiano cheese

Directions:

Cook pasta according to package directions. If you are using fresh pasta, keep in mind that it will only take a few minutes so cook the pasta right at the end.

Cut the pancetta into strips about 1/2 inch wide. Cook in skillet for about 2 minutes until fat begins to render add garlic cloves and cook five minutes longer, until pancetta is beginning to get crispy. If you wish for a more garlic taste remove one clove and smash the other one to pieces and mix in. Otherwise remove all garlic.

While pancetta cooks break eggs into the bowl you will serve the pasta in. Whisk with a few grindings of pepper.

When pasta is finished cooking, drain, and toss immediately with the beaten eggs. Mix thoroughly, eggs will form a sauce. Add the pancetta with it's fat, and the cheese. Toss again and serve.

This dish was AWESOME. It was creamy, even though I had added no cream, and from the meat it was salty, though I had added no additional salt. It was one of those dishes that is comforting and rich, but had not taken much effort at all. The whole thing will be easy, once I get the hang of the actual pasta.