Brussel Sprouts with Parmesan & Pomegranates

Every year when Thanksgiving rolls around, the CC remembers a little too late that he has forgotten to post this recipe. This year he's determined not to repeat the same old error.

This is simplicity itself and yet amazing.

Ingredients

(serves 2)

20-24 brussel sprouts
olive oil
salt
pepper

1 cup coarsely grated parmigiano-reggiano

1/2 cup pomegranate seeds

Note 1: Under-salt the brussel sprouts a little because the parmesan is salty too.

Note 2: This recipe is actually better at room temperature or just warm rather than hot. You can make it ahead of time.

Note 3: Not kidding when saying that it serves 2. The CC has continuously increased the amounts over the years and there are never any leftovers!

Recipe

Shave the brussel sprouts with a mandoline. If you don't have one, cut them real fine with a knife.

In a shallow vessel — a wok works great! — heat up some olive oil. When hot, dump in the shaved sprouts, salt and pepper, and sauté until they are done.

Take off the heat and toss with the grated parmesan.

Top with pomegranate seeds right before serving. Adds both a visual punch and a sweet crunchy counterpoint to the umami and salty flavors.

Asparagus, Peas & Parmesan Purée

This is another one of those magical combos which is perfect for spring and easy to make.

The CC made it with fresh peas because he had some but frozen is fine here.

The CC has served this on a bruschetta topped with the asparagus spears and also as a pizza base. Toss with pasta if you like. It's truly amazing.

Ingredients

1 bunch asparagus
1 1/2 cup peas (frozen is fine)
1 1/2 cup parmigiano-reggiano

black pepper
salt (if necessary)

Recipe

First cut up the asparagus. Separate the tender spears and set aside. Then for each stem decide by pressing where the woody bottom portion is and discard. Set the stems aside.

Steam the stems and the peas for about 8 minutes.

Then steam the spears for no more than 1 minute. Be careful. You want some texture left here. They are very soft and will just go limp and disintegrate.

Blend the stems, peas, parmesan, and black pepper in a blender with some water.

Add some more salt to the paste if it needs it. Depends on the saltiness of the cheese really.

(You can also thin the paste if you like if you want to toss with pasta, etc.)

The paste and the spears are now your friends. Top a toasted piece of bread with the paste and top with the spear. Watch them disappear!

Parsley, Potato & Parmesan Soup

The CC was confused. How come he saw fresh parsley along with the usual panoply of winter vegetables at the farmers' market?

Turns out that parsley is a biennial and has another component that is not generally well known — parsley root which as a winter vegetable is not very different from turnips, parsnips or potatoes.

This French-style soup which uses fresh parsley is just perfect for chasing away the winter blues.

Ingredients

1 large bunch of parsley
2 medium potatoes (peeled and chopped)
1 medium onion
5-6 cloves garlic

butter or olive oil (or a mixture)
4 cups broth

1 cup grated parmigiano-reggiano

salt
black pepper

Recipe

First prepare an ice bath.

Wash the parsley discarding all thick roots. Leave the thinner ones on. In a large bowl, pour boiling water over the parsley and let it blanch for about a minute. Plunge the parsley into the ice bath. This helps preserve the vibrant green color otherwise you will end up with a dull green soup.

Heat the olive oil in a pan. Sautée the onions and the garlic for 6-8 minutes at a low heat. Fry the potatoes for at least 8 minutes till they are fraying around the edges and coated with the fat.

Add the stock, salt to taste, black pepper and bring to a boil. Simmer at a low heat for 25-30 minutes until the potatoes are soft. (It really depends on the size of the pieces.)

Skim the fat as it comes to the surface.

Add the parsley to the soup and blend really fine. Add the parmesan. Bring to a quick simmer again and serve.

You can pass the soup through a fine sieve if you want a really smooth version. A drizzle of crème fraîche works great for serving as would a crumbling of blue cheese.

New Year's Party

It's that time of the year again and the CC is hosting his annual party again after a hiatus of a year.

Four cheeses from Bobolink Dairy
Baguette
♦
Chilli-topped Parmesan Biscuits
♦
Candied Walnuts with Rosemary and Lavender
Almond-stuffed Medjool Dates sautéed with Lavender & Sea-Salt
♥
Champagne

Happy New Year!

Pasta with Asparagus, Lemon and Oregano

This is an wonderful spring dish that sounds like a repeat of the former and guess what?

It is!

Doesn't mean it's not equally brilliant though!


Ingredients

2 cups penne
1 bunch asparagus
1 lemon
dried Greek oregano

parmigiano-reggiano
black pepper
sea salt

Recipe

Cut the delicate tops of the asparagus and set aside. Quickly strip the woody bits with a knife. Cut at a steep diagonal angle into thin spears, and set aside separately.

With a peeler, zest the lemon and keep the strips. Dice finely. Set the lemon aside.

Bring the heavily-salted pasta water to a boil. Cook the pasta until al dente.

Meanwhile, heat some olive oil in a pan. Fry the asparagus strips at a low heat until they are well-done (roughly 6-7 mins.) Toss in the spears for about a minute and add the lemon zest, and the oregano. Toss in 1/2 cup of the pasta water.

Toss in the pasta when done. Squeeze the leftover lemon all over it, and toss. Serve with lots of black pepper and parmesan on top.

Cauliflower Risotto (Risotto al Cavalfiori)

Lust is not easy to portray on a blog but this recipe deserves it.

That it's made out of "winter" ingredients makes it one of the worst portrayals of lust in the repertoire so why not indulge the CC for a change, and trust his judgment?

Parallelization is essential to success here if you plan make this on a weekday. Basically, the cauliflower needs to get in the oven first so that it can start roasting while you chop the rest of the stuff, and do the pangrattato (breadcrumb topping.)

Also, this is one of those cases where a non-stick skillet is your best friend. Of course, you can also go ahead and fry the topping which would be both be super-indulgent and traditional.

Homemade stock is a plus here but you could get away with just water but it won't be the same. The CC recommends that you make a quick dashi while the cauliflower is roasting.

A food processor and blender will make quick work of a few steps if you let it. It's a lot faster than the mortar and pestle, and as you will see, quite irrelevant to the final result.

Just for the record, the CC used a mortar and pestle on a weekday. It takes all kinds to inhabit the world ...


Ingredients

1 head cauliflower (cut into florets)
3 leeks (chopped very fine)
2 cups arborio (or carnaroli rice)
2 sprigs rosemary (finely chopped)

4 cups stock
2 cups water
salt
pepper
1 cup grated parmigiano-reggiano

1/2 cup breadcrumbs
4 anchovies (preferably in salt "prepped".)
2 dried red chillies

1/2 cup pine nuts

Recipe

Toss the cauliflower florets with olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast in a 400°F oven for 35-40 minutes until lightly browned.

Meanwhile, chop the leeks.

Dump the breadcrumbs, anchovies, and red chillies into the food-processor and process. Roast the mixture on a skillet in olive oil, and set aside. This is the pangrattato topping.

While the cauliflower is roasting, roast the pine nuts on a skillet until lightly browned. They are there for texture, and protein.

Take half of the cauliflower, add 2 cups of cold water, and the rosemary and blend to a fine paste.

(Why is the water cold? Because with the hot cauliflower, you will get to blend it quickly without dealing with the blender's heat-explosion. Only people who have never blended will fail to understand this subtle point.)

Keep the stock warm at a barely visible simmer.

Now, make the standard risotto. Fry the leeks, fry the rice, alternately add the hot stock, and the cauliflower paste. Towards the end dump in cauliflower, and the rosemary.

Last but not least, the mantecura. Mix in the parmigiano-reggiano.

Serve with the roasted pine-nut and pangrattato.

All that glitters is ... golden goodness?

MSNBC reports: Parmesan producers bank on cheese.

All that is golden in bank Credito Emiliano's temperature-controlled vault is not precious metal, but something equally prized in Italy: aging Parmesan cheese.

Row upon row of 85-pound wheels of straw-colored Parmesan cheese, stacked some 33 feet high at a secure warehouse, age for as many as two years under the care of bank employees trained in the centuries-old art of Parmesan making.

The program allows Parmesan producers to pump cash into their business by using their product as collateral while it is otherwise sitting on a shelf for the long aging process. While the mechanism was not born out of the current economic crisis, dating rather from Italy's post-World War II years, producers say it is ever more important because it ensures that credit keeps flowing during otherwise tight times.

A cheesemaker turns over a percentage of his production, say 25 percent, to a bank warehouse and is given a certificate which can be presented to the bank to secure the loan, Morini said. In many cases, the cheesemaker then sells title to the cheese to a distributor while the cheese is still aging.

"An advance payment, as the one offered from Credem (Credito Emiliano) is a really positive thing because it gives at least the chance of surviving the lapse of time, hoping that the market will recover in a short period of time," said Cristian Bertolini, a quality check expert for the consortium.

Typically, a Parmesan maker who produces 7,000 wheels a year might put up 2,000 as collateral for a loan. According to Morini's calculations, each wheel is worth as much as 300 euros ($425), valuing the cheese collateral at 600,000 euros. The bank would then issue a loan of 60 percent to 70 percent of the value, so around 420,000 euros.

The Parmesan loan business contributes just 1 percent to the bank's annual revenue — but is critical to its image in the region, where agriculture is a key economic driver, said William Bizzarri, director of the Credito Emiliano subsidiary that deals in Parmesan deposits.

Bizzarri said Parmesan deposits are up about 10 percent due to the recession. At capacity, the cheesy deposits are worth from 120 million euros to 130 million euros.

Only disagreement is that they are surprised that the assets are up. Hard assets always go up relative to financial assets in a deflationary environment.

Go, parm, go!

Asparagus Soup

This is a wondrous testament to Italian cucina povera, cooking born in poverty which produces magic with the most minimal of cheap and throwaway ingredients.

The sore "indulgence" here is the asparagus. The broth is made out of water and the rind of a piece of parmigiano-reggiano.

You'll have to eat it to believe it!

Ingredients

1 bunch asparagus
1 large red onion

1 parmigiano-reggiano rind

4 cups water
salt
lots of black pepper

dried bread crusts to serve

Recipe

Separate the asparagus heads from the stems. Cut the stems into rounds.

Fry the onions and garlic at a low heat. This will take the better part of 12-14 minutes. Fry the asparagus rounds for a while. Add the water, the parm rind, salt and pepper and bring to a slow boil.

Let it simmer for 40 mins or so. Keep skimming the stuff that comes to the top. Remove the rind.

Blend the mixture, and pass through a fine sieve. Bring to a heat again. Add the heads just before serving. Serve over dried bread crusts.

Hors d'oeuvres

canteloupe, prosciutto di parma, parmigiano di reggiano

Pasta con fagioli

The Tuscans really really love their beans. Among the Italians, they are sometimes referred to derisively as mangiafagioli (bean-eaters.)

White beans are not just a dish but a way of life.

We're gonna make a Tuscan classic, and we're gonna do it the Tuscan way, which is the ol'-fashioned anal-retentive way, which needless to say gives superior results.

This one trick over here gives it the serious complexity of a meat sauce, even though this is completely vegetarian. Of course, if you have some prosciutto or guanciale, toss the diced pig in post-soffrito, and pig out afterwards.

There is only one way to describe this dish: effin' delicious.

In fact, serve it lukewarm with some olive oil drizzled on top, and you can dump the pretense of the pasta too.

Ingredients

2 cups white beans (soaked overnight)

3 cloves of garlic

1 large onion† (diced fine)
2 large carrots (diced fine)
1 stick celery (diced fine)

† After they are diced, they must be in a ratio of 2:1:1.

12-16 tomatoes (passed through a food mill)

1 parmigiano-reggiano rind
more parmigiano-reggiano (grated)

1 cup red wine (use drinkable stuff)

1 bay leaf
2 cloves
1 stick cinnamon
1 dried red chilli pepper

1 branch rosemary

extra-virgin olive oil
parsley (chopped fine)
sea salt
black pepper

Recipe

First up, the beans need to be soaked overnight, and the water discarded at 12-hour intervals. The water will turn yellow, and those in the know, refer to it as acqua fartorum. Let it go. For your own well-being, and for those that sleep besides you at night.

The tomatoes need to put in boiling water for roughly 8 minutes each, and passed through a food mill. Yeah, this is hard work but since this is not Rachel Ray™'s Room for Rubes & Retards™, you must pay the price for good food.

Rotate, baby, rotate; get those triceps a movin'. Yeah, that means you.

The recipe is quite simple but needs patience.

First up, the soffrito of the Holy Trinity (just like the French mirepoix.)

At a low heat (you knew that, right?) fry the onions and garlic, then the carrots, finally the celery. If this doesn't take the better part of 20 minutes, you're doing it wrong, and you will pay the price in taste.




Add the cinnamon, cloves, red chilli pepper, and bay leaf, and fry for a bit.

Add the wine, and scrape the bottom to deglaze the pan. This is the last of the "hard work" so just scrape properly, okay? OKAY.

Just make sure you use a good Italian red, and the CC ain't talking about Roberto Rosselini neither.


Ignore the spillage at the left hand side of the picture. That's what happens when you try and cook and take pictures at the same time.

Add the beans, and the tomatoes, and the salt and pepper, and the rosemary and the parm rind.





Let it simmer (at a low heat) until the beans are soft. Timings are hard because they basically depend on the age of the beans but we're looking at the better part of 2 hours here.

Yes, this matters, it matters, it matters. Don't argue. Make it first the CC's way; talk back later.



You may need to add some water from time to time if the stuff starts sticking.

Now, it's time for a visit to the confessional. After about 2 hours, the beans hadn't even started softening while the tomato sauce was getting nicely caramelized. Outside, the hungry hordes were pawing at the kitchen door. The summer heat and the kitchen heat and the stomach heat was getting to everyone concerned. Tension was mounting.

So the CC unceremoniously dumped the entire melange into his pressure cooker, added some water, and the beans were ready 10 minutes later.

Serve with parsley, the grated parm, lots of black pepper, and an Italian red.

Mangia bene!

Pasta con fagioli

La cucina di povertà

All cooking starts in poverty, and ends up in a fancy restaurant.

The above quote, unhumbly concocted by the CC, so accurately sums up the idea behind so many dishes around the world that we may safely take it to be the First Principle of World Cuisine™.

Featured below is the rind of parmigiano-reggiano. What's left behind after all the cheese has been grated away. (Please note that you can still see the characteristic stamping of the name.)

This humble rind, negligible to look it, is still filled with enough "flavor" that it is traditional to add this to pasta sauces and broths to give them a little "something" extra. (The rind is fished out at the end, and tossed.)

That "something" is amping up the umami if you want to get all scientific about it. Parmigiano-reggiano contains the much desired isosinates in off-the-chart quantities.

Also, put this in your sauces, and your friends will swear that this is a meat sauce. Why? Because one of the purposes of the prosciutto, guanciale, etc. is to get you the afore-mentioned isosinates.

If there was one trick that fancy chefs use over and over and over and yet over again until the CC is ready to scream at the top of his lungs, this is it. Why it's not commonly known is a bit of a mystery!

So save your rinds, and watch your broths and sauces bloom. (ziplock + freeze works exceptionally well.)

Speaking of saving private rinds (har-de-har), now that it's summer and all, you should learn to save your watermelon rinds too but that, of course, is a tale for another day.

More Musings on Umami

There are three sources of umami known.

The ones that were first discovered historically were glutamates (present in konbu, parmesan, sun-dried tomatoes, tomato paste.) Others found in short order were various isosinates (present in broths made of dried bonito flakes,) and guanylates (found in high concentrations amongst shiitake mushrooms.)

The key idea here seems to be a sort of synergy. A small amount of any of them enhances the small quantities of natural umami substances already found in hundreds of foods, and the most important point is that when glutamates and isosinates are combined, they have a powerful multiplier effect, which enhances the umami-ness of the underlying food.

This pretty much explains a huge number of historical phenomena, from all over the world.

Consider the Japanese dashi. It's made from both konbu, and dried bonito flakes (katsuobushi.) You're getting a potent mix of glutamates, and isosinates. Sometimes, they add shiitake mushrooms to further enhance the mix.

Same goes for the simple pasta sauce recipe of fried pancetta, tomatoes, and dried porcini mushrooms. Talk about a triple whammy!

We can also explain the powerful spread of the tomato. In a few hundred years, it radically transformed ancient cuisines (Italy and India.) The point is that the local recipes were already very attractive before the tomato, but the addition of the tomato unleashed more of the umami qualities that were already present in minute quantities in the underlying substances.

It also explains certain truths that chefs hold dear -- young peas over older ones, ripe tomatoes over fresh ones, aged cheeses over unaged ones, and oysters in winter over summer (the latter has a health component but one that has been irrelevant for at least half a century.) Same with aged hams, and dry-aged beef, and sun-dried tomatoes (even when fresh ones are available.) Your palate is selecting for the more powerfully concentrated glutamates (and drying is just one way of achieving that.)

It should be clear why fermented fish sauces (garum/liquamen in Roman times, nahm pla in Thai food, nuoc mam in Vietnamese food), fish pastes (allec in Roman times, gkapi in Thai food), dried shrimp, and intense meat products have been popular for millenia. Likewise meat extracts (Bovril), and autolyzed yeast extracts.

This is why pizza (tomato paste and parmesan), and hamburgers, french fries, and ketchup practically constitute two religions in and of themselves.

Free glutamates are most commonly found in vegetables. Isosinic acid most commonly in meat, and animal products. This is responsible for the strong intensification when meat and vegetables are cooked together.

This is why certain Italian recipes start with "fry the pancetta, or the prosciutto" even when the ingredients are all vegetarian, and the instructions call for the pancetta to be fished out after the frying. Even a relatively poor family could afford the modest amount of meat required, but the combination of meat and vegetables is a powerful one.

That's why anchovies have been popular through the millenia, and why Thai curries and pastes can never truly be approximated in vegetarian terms. They are too dependent on the grammar of seafood and its umami. There is simply no mechanism to substitute the intense mouthfulness (= umami-ness) of gkapi (shrimp paste.)

Umami

The fifth flavor; it is sensed by specialized receptor cells on the tongue which detect the presence of glutamates.

The best way to describe it is "savory" or "meaty", and it is a major part of virtually every world cuisine except it took till 1908 to identify it conclusively.

Here's a brief list of foods high in "umami":

aged Parmigiano-Reggiano (off the charts, actually!)
aged blue cheese (in general)
anchovies
nam pla (Thai fish sauce)
fresh tomatoes
tomato sauce (with salt -- read below)
boiled potatoes
mushrooms (particularly shiitake)
fresh oysters
fresh clams
dry-aged steak (the only kind the CC will eat)
kelp (konbu -- which is where this was first detected.)
katsuobushi
soy sauce

The flavor is particularly enhanced in the presence of salt, the glutamate ions, and the Na+ ions work in conjunction.

Hmmm... looks like the CC's taste buds are particularly zoomed in on this taste.

Instruments, fatties, and other musings

So every once in a while, the CC gets into the mood, and into the nude, and into the...

Hang on! That's not what I wanted to talk about.

Anyway, every once in a while the CC gets into the mood of possessing a kitchen instument that he needs, but since the CC is mortally afraid of becoming one of the Williams-Sonoma crowd, the CC shies away from mortal possession of true-and-tried tactical tools.

The CC happens to be just wrong!

Hail Italy!

We should never have doubted you (as far as food is concerned.) Your governments suck, and have sucked since WWII, but why doubt your food?

Anyway, back to the point.

The CC bought a cheese grater for a party.

The CC also bought some kick-ass parmigiano-reggiano to serve over the risotto.

The CC has been humbled, and acknowledges his need for instruments after understanding the true nature of a cheese grater.

The combination of cheese grater and authentic parmigiano-reggiano over fresh risotto is something to behold!

Here's how it works:

The risotto is served rather warm, the "parmesan" (pardon the Americanism) is shredded fresh with an instrument into such tiny threads that it falls over the rice, and instantly "cooks". The threads of cheese (and they are truly tiny) are so divine that the CC is shocked.

And for you fat-phobic fatties, true parmigiano-reggiano is a hard, skimmed cheese. You probably eat more ten times more fat in one of those crappy "fat-free" yogurts because the US FDA allows companies to advertise "zero" fat if it contains less than one gram of fat per serving.

Even a tablespoon of pure oil is "zero" fat if the CC defines 100,000 servings per tablespoon (get my drift, fatties?)

Consider this a plug for authentic parmigiano-reggiano (and only incidentally, a plug for a good cheese grater.)