Aroma Cucina

Recipe for Sunday Lunch: Slow Roasted Suckling Pig Leg With Friends, Fava Beans and a nice Chianti.

Carpe Diem! Sometimes you have to seize the moment, and when the local EuroSpin had a suckling pig leg on sale, it just had to come home with me.  And you can’t eat pig leg all by yourself, because wouldn’t that just make you a little piggy?  Which meant we had to invite some friends over, which suits us just fine on a Sunday afternoon. See how one little impulse buy has so many pleasant consequences!

I’ll admit to being a wee-wee-wee bit nervous about cooking my baby pig leg. The butcher at the ‘Spin told me to cook in a little wine and it would be buona!
The Euro Spin  is a chain of grocery stores in Italy, but they use local purveyors and have real butchers.  They also have the most spectacularly dangerous parking lot entrances; there must be a franchise rule that states the entrance to all parking lots is to have a partially obscured view of oncoming traffic. Maybe they’ve done research, and a pounding heart and racing adrenaline are good for business.

Roast meat is an Umbrian tradition, and although I trust the butcher at the “Spin,  in the hands of the wrong Umbrian you get very dry, over done roast meat. Or perhaps, that’s part of the tradition and I just haven’t gotten used to gnawing through a breast of chicken?  

Regardless, I was sticking to my American roots and wanted soft, suckling pig. Which meant a long, slow roast (200F/93C for 4 hours) so the leg could bathe in it’s own fat, and the collagen would melt instead of constrict. I put lots of salt on the  thick skin side, some young garlic cloves in slits in the meat, laid the leg on a bed of dried fennel stalks and bay leaves, sprinkled some fennel pollen over the leg, added a few good sized glugs of white wine, and sealed the  roasting pan shut with aluminum foil and a promise not to peak until at least 3 hours had gone by.  I confess I got a little nervous when I couldn’t smell anything after 3 hours, but when I lifted the aluminum seal, there was the leg, all plump and juicy.  About 15 minutes before serving the ‘miaiolino’ I cranked up the heat and browned the skin. This was more for eye appeal, because I really didn’t think any of us would be gnawing on baby big skin when the meat was so tender.

But, man does not live by pig alone, so we needed some side dishes.
Artichoke soup: this is a soup you do not want to make. (Note the soup theme: one you can’t have, one you can easily make and this pain in the neck soup that would be fine if you had unpaid slave labor).  Gently simmer about 8 chopped and cleaned small artichokes, toss in a carrot and some celery and let simmer for about an hour. Puree the bejeezus out of the vegetables and you’ll get a thick, fibrous soup-paste. Yum. To turn the soup from fibrous to velvet, you’ll have to push the soup through a tami or drum sieve. Even with energetic music pumping, rubbing artichoke soup through a tami is just not my idea of a good time. Although the results were lovely served with a juicy lemon slice and some good olive oil.


Cavatelli pasta with spring vegetables. The first step is to make some cavatelli pasta, which is quicker and easier than it sounds. Make a basic fresh pasta dough (2 parts flour, 1 part egg). Let the dough sit for half an hour while you tami that damn artichoke soup.
When you are ready, roll the dough into a long cigar shape, cut off little coin size blobs of dough and press and roll the pasta pieces down the nifty little cavatelli board into little ridged, sauce catching cavatelli. Cover and refrigerate until you are ready to cook them.

For the sauce, caramelize a batch of sliced red onions in white wine, taking care not to let them pass the point of caramel into cinder which is what I almost did! Clean some fava, shell some peas, chop some tomatoes, toast a few pine nuts, toss together in a sauce pan with the cooked pasta and you have cavatelli primavera.

For additional side dishes, invite generous friends who can cook and come bearing romano flat beans with pancetta and tomato and spinach studded with cumin seeds.

Pour some of that nice Chianti, relax and enjoy. That’s what Sunday’s are for.  And being reminded that the next Sunday is now 6 days away, just seems so unfair.

Creamy Red Onion Soup, Truffles Optional

It’s soup season here in Umbria. Chilly days, wind and rain all mean it’s time to get out the soup pot.
Soup doesn’t have to be a long drawn out, multi-hour event.  You can make this creamy red onion soup in about half an hour. That’s about the time it takes for you to realize you are hungry and to have soup in your bowl.

Ingredients
2 large red onions, peeled and roughly chopped
1 small carrot, peeled and roughly chopped
1 celery stock, roughly chopped
1 bullion cube (optional)
2 T heavy cream
1 t truffle oil
salt, pepper, olive oil

Place the vegetables in your soup pot with a small amount of olive oil.
Lightly brown the vegetables. You want to see a little bit of caramelization on the onions and carrots.
Add 3-4 cups of water and simmer gently until the vegetables are soft (about 20 minutes...less time if you chop the vegetables smaller).

Puree the soup until it is super smooth.
Return to the heat and add the heavy cream.
Let the soup come to a light simmer. 
Add a bit of truffle oil right before serving.

(OK, I confess. I didn’t use truffle oil. I used truffle butter; but outside of truffle areas, it’s hard to find. I know truffle oil is synthetic, but it’s a kitchen secret, just between us.)

Easy-peasy delicious, warm-up-the-body soup!

I served this soup with parmigiana crisps because they are tasty and super easy-peasy!

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. 
In a small bowl combine the grated cheese with a pinch of cayenne pepper and smoked paprika powder.
Make a few mounds of the grated cheese on the baking sheet and flatten them out.
Place in the oven until the cheese is melted and bubbly, about 2-4 minutes.
Remove the crisps from the oven, but don’t try to move them off the sheet for a minute or two because they’ll fall apart.
You can also take them off the sheet and mold them into shapes while they are still soft. It’s always fun to play with your food.

Buon apetito!

Kitchen Garden Gazpacho

Happy World Kitchen Garden Day! 
Here’s hoping that all our family, friends and everyone else can ride out Hurricane Irene with not too much damage.

Is there a more appropriate way to celebrate International Kitchen Garden day than by making a Garden Gazpacho? I don’t think so!

Our tomato plants never grew very high this year, but they have been yielding a ton of delicious fruit.  We’ve got all shapes, sizes and flavors out there, and that’s plenty to choose from when you want make a gazpacho.

Gazpacho is another one of those unclassifiable dishes; everyone has a version. If we can all agree that gazpacho is a pureed salad, served cold, then no one needs to quibble about what an ‘authentic’ gazpacho should be.

This version is a riff off that Ancona baccala dish we were served in Portonovo. Baccala,  salt-cured cod fish, is delicious teamed up with tomatoes and olives, so it made sense to feature a little baccala in the gazpacho.

Garden Gazpacho with Crisped Baccala
Ingredients:
1 small piece of skinned, and soaked baccala, about 6 oz
1 basket of tomatoes, about 1 lb.
2-4 small green and red peppers
1 small red onion
2 cloves of garlic
1 peeled carrot
2 stalks of celery
Salt, pepper, Olive Oil, Balsamic Vinegar

For garnish:
2 T thinly sliced red and green peppers
2 T pitted and thinly sliced black olives


Instructions:
Clean and chop the tomatoes and place in a bowl. Lightly salt the tomatoes, stir and let stand for 1 hour.
After an hour, when the tomatoes have softened and given up some of their juice, pass them through the food mill on a fine setting so that the pulp of the tomato passes through, but all seeds and skins remain behind. Discard the seeds and skins.

Roughly chop the peppers, onion, garlic, carrot and celery, and put them in the blender. Add the tomato puree, add a few tablespoons of olive oil. Taste..and add salt and pepper as needed and a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar. 

Pour the soup into a container and chill until it’s time to serve.

I’ve gone native...Italians don’t like freezing cold anything unless it’s gelato.
Even water is negotiable; beyond determining if your dinner partners like still or bubbly water, you then have to determine if they would like it ‘fresca’ or ‘ambiente’.  In Italy, just ordering water can require the negotiating skills of Henry Kissinger.

So, I didn’t actually put the gazpacho in the fridge, just in a cool, dark part of the kitchen. I think the flavors are more mellow and expansive if the soup isn’t served very cold. But, that’s just me...you serve the soup the way you like it.

To serve:
Crumble the cleaned, soaked, ready to be cooked baccala and saute in olive oil until there is some brownage and crispy edges.
Salted baccala needs to be soaked for 6 hours or even over night to remove the salt. If I don’t have much time, I’ll soak it for at least 4-6 hours with frequent changes of water. Then give the cod fillet a very quick poach in boiling water to remove the remaining salt.
It’s easier to add a little salt than to try and deal with excessive curing salt.

Mound the crisped baccala in the center of the plate, scatter the shreds of pepper and olive around the bowl, and gently pour the gazpacho into the bowl. 
Now mangia and enjoy the taste of your garden!

Buon Appetito!

Apple iBooks is featuring Cooking Simply The Italian Way!

Apple likes "Cooking Simply The Italian Way" so much we’re featured as “New & Notable” in the iBook Store! My name is on the same page as Agatha Christie....mamma freakin‘ mia that is amazing! 

OK, I  hear you,  “Uh, what's a CookVook?”
 It’s a cookbook with videos.   "Cooking Simply The Italian Way" is a talking cook book that is designed for home chefs who need a little confidence boost and who like good food.

There is so much hype about cooking, with wacky TV shows that intimidate or entertain, but don’t really show you how to cook.  I just wanted to scale back the noise and zone in on the basics: fresh food, in season. The way Italians eat at home. Warm roast pear salads, lentil stew, steak tagliata, roasted fish in a salt crust, green beans with pancetta, risotto, foccacia, bangin' good tiramisu...all good stuff, all easy to make.

For now, you need an iSomething to buy Cooking Simply: The Italian Way. Its available for iPad, iPod & iPhone. Soon, it will be available as an eBook. For now, download the iBook app and then you can download our CookVook. Or go directly to the Vook website. I haven’t figured out how to do autographed copies, but I’m working on it.  Look, fame has already gone to my head!

Garden Soup

  It’s takes about six months to make this soup. Start in the spring. Eat in the fall.

Step 1: In the spring, plant tomatoes, basil, parsley, leeks, carrots, zucchini, and maybe some onions.

Step 2: Right after the peak of summer, plant some bitter greens like chicory or chard.

Step 3: One gorgeous fall day, go round up whatever you find in the garden.

Step 4: Clean and chop all the vegetables. Reserve the parsley and basil. Gently saute the vegetables in olive oil, then salt and add water, simmer for about an hour.

Step 5: Puree the parsley and basil with a clove or two of garlic.

Step 6: Clean out the random bits of dried spaghetti that you have in the pantry. The odd handful of dried pasta that isn’t quite a full portion but you can’t throw out.... break it up into bite size pieces and toss into the soup. Note: Revel in the moment of satisfaction that comes from finally using up that remnant package of pasta.

Step 7: Now, mangia! Eat the soup! Serve with the parsley-basil-garlic sauce, plenty of grated cheese and enjoy the fruits of six months labor.

Mussel Soup with Lemon Saffron Aioli

Fish soups are called ‘brodetto’ in Italy and every Adriatic coastal town has their own version. Brodetto di San Bendetto is flavored with green tomatoes, Brodetto di Porto Recanati with saffron, alla Fanese with tomato puree, and in Ancona with puree AND fresh tomato.  I don’t live near the coast, I like the French Provencal style of fish soup and I don’t have to play by the rules, so here is Brodetto di Montone.

Warning: it is messy to make, it takes time, the words slow, fast and easy do not appear anywhere within this recipe. However, the words delicious and worth the effort do appear.

The soup has three parts: the soup base, the crunchy garlicky toasts, and the saffron aioli.

Soup Base
1/2 kilo or 1 lb of small, whole fish
1 chopped carrot
1-2 stalks chopped celery
1 chopped onion
4-5 plum tomatoes
1 cup tomato puree
1/2 cup brandy
Salt, pepper, olive oil

1/2 kilo of mussels, or shrimp or clams

Saute the carrot, onion, celery in a few tablespoons of olive oil in the bottom of a soup pot. A little brownage is OK, but not too much.  Add a 1 1/2 liters of water to the pot, bring to a boil, and toss in the whole fishies.
Now, if you can’t get an assortment of small fish, get whatever non-oily fish that you can find that still has it’s head on, or at least has bones. Under no circumstances use frozen fish fingers. Bones are flavor. If you use a fish filet you wont’ get the the depth of flavor. Oily fishes are too strongly flavored, so avoid fish like salmon or mackerel.   Let simmer for about 20 minutes and then turn off the heat.

While the stock is cooking, make the aioli.
 
Lemon Saffron Aioli
1 medium egg, yoke only
1 cup olive oil
Saffron threads
Juice of 1 small-medium lemon
1 T mustard
1 medium size HOT chili pepper, minced
3 cloves garlic, minced

In a heavy bowl, add the egg yoke, mustard, garlic and chili pepper.  In a little dish, steep the saffron in the lemon juice.  Now, slowly, slowly, in a thin thread, whisk the olive oil into the egg yoke, mustard, garlic & chili pepper. You are making an emulsion, so the oil must be incorporated fully before you can add more oil. You’re not making that much, so don’t bother with the food processor, a little whisking is excellent aerobic and upper arm exercise, quite whining. If the sauce breaks, which means it doesn’t look like mayonaise, it looks like oil globs in a sea of egg yoke, consult Harold McGee for repair instructions. When you are finished adding the oil, whisk in the lemon juice and saffron.

Store the aioli in the fridge while you finish making the soup.

Strain the liquid from the soup and put it back in the soup pot. What is left in the colander is the vegetables, the fish meat and bones. Pick through the pile, reserving the meat and vegetables, tossing out the bones and skin. This part is yucky, messy and hot. Get over it.

Put the fish meat back and vegetables back into the soup base and then either using a stick blender or a regular blender, puree the soup, adding in the tomato puree. Return to the heat, add the brandy and let it gently simmer. The soup is done. Bravo! Brava!
 Crunchy Garlicky Toasts
1 stale baguette
2 cloves garlic
1/2 or more of a HOT chili pepper
1 T Oregano
1 T fresh chopped parsley
1/4 cup Grated parmigiana cheese
1/4 cup olive oil

Slice the stale baguette...if you only have a fresh baguette, slice it and stick it in a warm  oven until the pieces are hard.

Blend all the other ingredients until you get a fluffy, mousse like consistency.  Spread a bit of the mousse on each slice of bread and bake at a medium oven heat 300F/150C until the mousse is brown, melted, bubbly.  Take out of the oven and let cool. Make more than you think you should because these disappear immediately. 

When you are ready to serve the soup, toss in the mussels or shrimp or clams or whatever you want. When the mussels or clams are open, serve immediately with the toasts and the aioli.


The soup base freezes well, so make a big enough batch that you can freeze it and then you can have this delicious, worth the effort soup, anytime you want. Buon’appetito!

Risi e Bisi Revisited: Farro and Spring Pea Soup

Risi e Bisi is an old dish from the Veneto region in Italy, and it means its springtime if you are eating risi e bisi. Made with rice and fresh peas, and depending on whose recipe you are following, it can be a soup, a risotto or a kind of  warm rice and pea salad.  Early May is the heart of fresh pea season, and I like rice, don't get me wrong, but I really like farro and since I had a load of fresh peas in the house,  it seemed like a natural idea to riff off the ol' risi e bisi.

Mostly, I just like to say risi e bisi (ree-see eh bee-see) and if said properly my cat is highly amused.

This is a soup version that takes advantage of delicious, sweet, fresh, spring peas. Can you tell I like peas? The hard part is shelling them and not eating them as you shell. Sort of like raspberry picking, two for me, one for the bowl. 

Farro and Spring Pea Soup
1 cup of farro (you could also use barley)
1 1/2 cup fresh peas, not the shells, just the peas please
3-4 cups good chicken stock or vegetable stock 
1 carrot, finely chopped
2 ribs of celery, finely chopped
1 small onion, yes, finely chopped
1-2 T heavy cream to finish
olive oil, salt, pepper

In a ceramic pot, or heavy saucepan, with a small bit of olive oil, gently saute the carrots, onion and celery until they are soft and relaxed.  Add your chicken stock and bring to a gentle boil.
While its coming up to a boil, shell the peas. You'll have to figure out how much you need because I have no idea how many peas you'll eat before you cook them.
Shelling peas is sort of mindless work, so this is a good time to start singing 'risi e bisi' in falsetto and entertaining the cat or annoying the dog.

Bring the stock and the vegetables up to a low simmer and add the farro. Let cook until the farro is soft, about 20 minutes. And unless you are one slow pea shucker, all your peas will be sitting in a bowl ready for the soup.  Add the peas and let simmer for 1-2 minutes. If your peas are fresh, that is all it will take. If you have not-so-fresh peas, it will take longer, if the peas in the market look like they've seen better days, use frozen peas.  Add 1-2 T heavy cream right before serving to add a little smoothness to the soup and you are good to go.
Perfect spring soup!
We had our soup with a little rose wine at lunch and I have to say that worked very well.

Cream of Cauliflower Soup with Truffles

While summer vegetables get all the gushing praise and glossy photos, what of the lowly winter vegetables? To me, they are every bit as wonderful: all the root vegetables, leeks, cardoons, artichokes, bitter greens, they all lend themselves to hearty preparations.

And now is the season of the cauliflower in all its glory. We love it roasted, sauteed, braised, creamy and in a soup.  Here's a simple cauliflower soup that gets a boost of elegance from truffles.

1 medium head of cauliflower

3-4 cups of good chicken stock

1/2 medium sliced onion

3-4 T heavy cream

Combine the roughly chopped cauliflower with the stock and onion and boil until tender. Season to taste with salt, puree until smooth, adding just enough cream to bring everything together, finish with a swirl of truffle oil. See, told you it was easy.

Tomato Marscapone Soup and a Table for Two

I thought my love affair with tomato soup was a winter thing, but it turns out that it’s pretty satisfying on a coolish summer day when you have an abundance of tomatoes in the kitchen.

1 lb of plum or other meaty fresh tomatoes
1-2 shallots, finely minced
1 T pancetta, finely minced (optional)
4 T marscapone cheese
olive oil, salt, pepper

Garlic toasts
1 whole peeled clove of garlic
4-6 slices of baguette style bread
olive oil, salt

Place the raw whole tomatoes in a saucepan and cover with water, set on the stove to boil, when the water is boiling, shut the heat off and let the tomatoes sit for 10 minutes or until cool enough to handle.  Run the tomatoes through a food mill on a medium coarse blade, this will take off the skins, hold back the seeds and reduce the tomato to pulp. Alternatively if you don’t have a food mill, peel, seed and chop the tomatoes. Try to work over the soup pot so that you don’t loose too much of the tomato water.

In the soup pot, before adding the tomato pulp, gently sauté the shallots and pancetta trying not to brown the shallots. Add the tomato pulp and let simmer for about 20 minutes. When the soup has been cooking for about 20 minutes, using either a stick blender or food processor, add in the marscapone cheese and return to the heat but only for a minute. You just want to have the soup be hot to eat, not to cook the marscapone. Check the flavor and add salt and pepper to taste.

For the garlic toasts: take your slices of baguette, day old bread is best and lightly toast them in the oven, when the bread is toasted, rub the garlic clove over the bread, drizzle with a bit of olive oil and a tiny sprinkle of salt.  This is called ‘bruschetta’ in Umbria and is some of the best garlic bread ever!

Serve the soup with a swirl of olive oil and garlic toast.

And the table for two part? I got tired of eating in the kitchen so I set up a little, romantic table for two at the entrance to our back balcony.  Our balcony is too small to sit on, but its just fine for the two of us to enjoy a tomato soup lunch. Who knew tomato soup could be so indulgent?

Making Soup

I could eat soup every day. And in these days of economic austerity, soup is a good choice. It’s certainly flexible: cheap, peasant, elegant, rustic, you name it and there will be a soup recipe that fits the description.
Recently I’ve been on a tomato soup kick. Hell, Campbell’s made an entire empire out of lowly cream of tomato soup so there must be something soul satisfying about a red bowl of soup.

Here’s my ½ hour to make tomato soup recipe.
Roughly chop up a carrot, a stalk of celery and a medium white onion. Sauté the vegetables in a bit of olive oil. Maybe toss in some bacon or guanciale. Let the vegetables soften and relax, then add a can of tomatoes. Let simmer for about 20 minutes. Use an immersion blender or a regular blender and puree everything. Maybe add a dollop of cream if you want cream of tomato soup. Or a sprinkle of smoked adobe chili powder. Or gently poach an egg in the soup and then break the runny yoke into the soup. Or whatever strikes your fancy. Reheat and serve in a fancy bowl so that it looks like it took you all day to make the soup. Unfortunately, I don’t own any fancy bowls.

Not in the mood for tomato soup? How about leek and potato soup?
Roughly chop up some leeks, a carrot and some celery. Sauté until everything is soft and mushy. Add a peeled and diced potato. Add a cup of water. Let simmer for about 20 minutes. Puree like crazy. Serve with a swizzle of good olive oil and lots of fresh ground pepper.

It doesn’t take hours or days to make a simple vegetable soup, so go take a look in your fridge and let me know what you come up with. I’m thinking a roasted pepper soup would be nice for tomorrow…