All The Great Things

I've been feeling guilty. This might just be a general condition of my Catholic upbringing, but I prefer to think it is because of some actual transgression on my part. In November, I wrote 16 blog posts, more than every other day. Since baby arrived though, it's been tough. Not only because it is hard to find time to write, but because it even harder to find time to cook something that is worth writing about. I've been dying to try my hand at bread again, there is a can of malt extract that is calling for me to brew more beer, I've got three new cookbooks that are worth my attention and all around me the foodie universe continues to go on without me.

And, as I mentioned recently, there have been plenty of culinary failures in my house. No sense giving you a recipe to something that tasted like crap so there are a few blog posts that could have been but weren't due to performance errors on my part.

That said, there is lots of cool stuff going on in the world, and even a couple of success stories in my own kitchen. For instance, my cyber-buddy Chuck sent me a kick-ass wing recipe. It seems as though everyone and their cousin are discovering Sriracha for the first time, which only confirms my belief that the obscure things that I embrace fully will all sooner or later become super popular (note also that I brought back the high-five, brought back beards, brought back saying "rad", popularized premium tequila around 2002, and made it O.K. to prefer small batch Bourbon over Single Malt Scotch, which, at least in the North-East, was a pretty big deal). Sriracha is just latest example. We used to only find it in Asian specialty stores and the occasional enlightened Whole Foods, now it's on sale at nearly every neighborhood supermarket. Sriracha has now reached the pinnacle of popularity since being featured in the January 2010 issue of Bon Appetit. Since then, Sriracha recipes are everywhere. It's nearly impossible to watch the Food Network for 15 minutes without hearing a mention of Sriracha. So, I decided to give these wings a try, resolved to share my own wing recipe at the next convenient time. In the meantime I'll give you a recipe for crab cakes that, yes, calls for a dollop of Sriracha, but more importantly, will introduce you to Sriracha's more rustic cousin, Chili-Garlic Sauce.



The wings came out great. I ended up using lime juice instead of lime zest, which I think ended up amping up the lime flavor a bit, and not in a bad way. The wings were more or less perfect, any gripe with them would be merely stylistic. Of course, Chuck promised that they wouldn't be very spicy and I do disagree on that count. I loved 'em, but they weren't really for people who don't like spicy food. Just a warning. Then again, almost nothing that I cook is for people who don't like spicy food. Those people should go to Mickey D's for dinner.

Beyond my kitchen, I wanted to alert you to someone who successfully made french bread at home, rather than, like yours truly, merely attempting the endeavor twice and failing both times. OK, perhaps I am being hard on myself. My bread was totally better than store bought. But it didn't look like this! That is what I believe in the journalism business is called being "scooped". Looks delicious though and I think we all have something to learn from Kissmyspatula (not the least of which is that if I ever go to Paris, I should rent an apartment, rather than stay in a hotel).

Last but not least before we get to the crab cakes: These people make sausage! I love them. The world is better place when more people make sausage. And people who cure sausage, there is a special place in heaven for you!

Ok. Crab Cakes. Now, I make traditional crab cakes with the Worcestershire sauce and a bit of mustard served with tartar sauce. And it's great. But I wanted to do something different here. I did a few experiments and I ended up a spicy but slightly sweet teriyaki crab cake. They are necessarily smaller than regular crab cakes, mostly because I crisped the outside by frying them in oil. Normal crab cakes are also fried, but not as hot and not in deep oil. Mine were done in a pan of hot peanut oil. I wanted to crispness to lighten it up bit, which I think it did, although they are only as light as crispy fried food can be. I also tried just broiling the cakes and that worked as well. I served them with a dollop of sour cream and a dot of Sriracha on each cake. The sour cream was a superior choice to mayonnaise since my aim was to make the cakes seem less dense and heavy, which is my usual complaint about good crab cakes. (My complaints about good crab cakes are, obviously, different.) Upon completion, they were fantastic, lighter than normal crab cakes, and had a really unique and interesting flavor. Definitely worth trying if you are tired to the same old usual mid-Atlantic take on crab.

There are a couple of pointers about crab cakes in general that are worth considering. The first is that you get what you pay for with crab (I find this to be true of most food, except at the farmer's market). Want crappy crab cakes? Buy crappy crab meat. Want excellent crab cakes? Buy excellent crab meat. End of story. Second, use too much bread and your cakes can be dry, but use too little and they are hard to cook and don't stay together. If the pan is consistently spitting hot oil towards your eye (yeah, that really hurt) then your cakes are too wet, add more crumbs. Third, here is a great opportunity to use day or two old french bread for breadcrumbs. You can sub with a canister of 7 month old breadcrumbs, but it's better with better ingredients.



Terriaki-Chili Crab Cakes

Ingredients
16 oz. Premium Crab Meat
2 Eggs
1 1/2 cups packed French Bread Crumbs
1/4 cup Chili-garlic Sauce
1/4 cup Teriyaki Sauce
1 Tbsp Fish Sauce
1/2 cup Mayonnaise
2-4 Shallots, minced
2-4 cloves of Garlic, minced

For frying, 2 cups of peanut oil

In a large bowl, combine crab meat, eggs, chili-garlic sauce, teriyaki sauce, fish sauce, shallots, garlic, and mayonnaise. Mix well with a large fork or spoon. Next, mix in bread crumbs with your hands. Be sure all the ingredients are evenly distributed throughout the mixture, especially the bread crumbs and egg.

In a medium-sized cast iron skillet or another pan with high side walls, heat peanut oil to about 300 degrees. Pack the crab mixture into little egg shaped cakes. The cakes should also be approximately the size of an egg. Gently place each crab cake into the hot oil and cook for about 1 minute on each side. Cook the cakes in small batches so as not to cool down the oil too much.

When each cake is crisp from frying in oil, remove the crab cakes and place them on a foil covered baking sheet. Bake the cakes at 275 degrees for about 20 minutes if there is any concern that your crab cake is raw on the inside. This is generally only an issue if you oil is very hot but your crab cake is too large. The outside will be cooked but the inside will be raw.

Serve with sour cream and Sriracha. Alternatively, serve with sliced avocados and whole basil leaves. These make a great appetizer, or will serve 4 as a main course.



P.S. - I finally a logo for the site, I know its not perfect but it's a good start. Hopefully I'll get a chance to clean it up at some point in the future.

Food Co-op

I finally did it. I joined a food co-op. We got our first delivery yesterday, mostly the basics: celery, carrots, some apples, and pineapple among other things. As of right now, we're just trying it out to see if we like it. I kind of like the idea of getting a box of vegetables and being challenged to try new things with it.

I'm also trying to begin doing Meatless Mondays. Lent is coming soon, and I'll be meatless on Fridays too during Lent, but as a general matter I've always found the Lenten Fridays to be precisely the days when I could use a steak. Monday is more a detoxification day. But, to be sure, I'll be doing both this Lent. I've actually given up meat entirely for Lent in the past, but I found that if the purpose of the Lenten fast is to get some perspective, then I somewhat miss the point if I spend 40 days feeling hungry and moody. Yes, I admit it. Going without meat made me cranky.



Anyway, back to vegetables. Once I got all this nice produce, I wanted to put together something that would use some of the veggies that I already had, as well as show off some of nice reds and greens in peppers and leaks (peppers and leaks that needed to be eaten soon, or thrown out). I also got a good deal on some wild caught shrimp at the supermarket, so I wanted to use that too. Of course, Fuchsia Dunlop comes to the rescue again. Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook, people! Get it! You need it!

I just flipped through the index for "shrimp" and found a nice recipe called "Fisherman's Shrimp with Chinese Chives". That was enough to inspire me. I fried up the shrimp in a small cast iron skillet so that I could get the shrimp deep into the oil without using a gallon of the stuff. Oil ain't free you know. I cooked some red peppers and leaks in a separate skillet and combined them at the end. If I had to do it over again, I would have actually never combined the fried shrimp with the veggies. Instead, I should have just put the shrimp on top of the veggies in the dish. Mixing them up with the moist vegetables made the shrimp a little less crisp than they were when I first fried them. It was still pretty fantastic though. Here's the recipe.



Spicy Garlic Fried Shrimp with Peppers and Leaks
Loosely adapted from Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook by Fuchsia Dunlop

Ingredients
1 lb. Shrimp, uncooked, cleaned, and de-shelled.
2 Tbsp. Flour
1 Egg White
1 cup Peanut Oil
1 tsp. Apple Cider Vinegar
1 tsp. Crushed Red Pepper
3 cloves fresh Garlic, minced
1 tsp. Fish Sauce
1 Red Pepper
1/2 of a Leak

Gently mix shrimp, egg white, and flour in a medium bowl to coat the shrimp. In a small pot or skillet, heat oil to around 300 degrees. Cook the shrimp in the oil in small batches for a few minutes on each side until the shrimp is crisp and fully cooked. Remove the shrimp from the oil and set aside on a paper towel.

In a separate, larger skillet, saute sliced leeks and thinly sliced red pepper in peanut oil over high heat. When the peppers start to soften up, add the minced garlic. A minute or two after the garlic is added, mix in fish sauce, vinegar, and crushed red pepper with the leaks and peppers.



Remove the vegetables and lay them along the bottom of a bowl or serving dish. Put the cooked shrimp into the large skillet and gently mix around the pan in order for the shrimp to soak up some of the seasoning and juices left over from the vegetables. Arrange the shrimp on top of the vegetables. Do not cover, otherwise the steam is likely to make the shrimp soggy.

I Make Broth and I Take Pictures

I gather that noodle bowls are all the rage at Momofuku, or something like that. I've got the Momofuku cookbook now, but haven't had a chance to take a look at it yet. Anyway, I took some pictures the last time I made ramen and they were probably some of the best pictures I've ever taken of anything, so I had to show you the pictures and tell you about one of my favorite lunchtime treats. I took a bunch of other, unrelated pictures that came out pretty well too and have scattered them throughout the post. Hope you like them!

It all started because whenever I eat something that I really like, I want to make it myself at home. I can't just have a favorite place to get pizza. I eat the pizza, and then I want to go home and make my own. And then, of course, once I make the pizza at home, then I need to make the sauce myself, and then the dough. Before long, I'll be trying to figure out if I can manage to make my own cheese (By the way, I haven't made my own cheese yet, but I'm still young and I emphasize the word "yet").



One reason I seem to keep drilling down to make the ingredients is because I think I can make it better myself. Of course my spaghetti sauce is better than something from a jar in the supermarket! Duh! But I find that I've been doing this more and more often now in order to avoid preservatives and all of the other bad stuff that is in almost anything that is not a fresh, raw ingredient.

Lately, for this very reason, I have been obsessively making broth. No, seriously, I've been tending to my broth almost everyday for months now. I have two batches going now, my Chinese pork broth, inspired by Fuchsia Dunlop's recipe for "everyday broth", and my chicken broth, which I use to make chicken soup and as well as flavor a whole slew of dishes, including one of my favorites: roast chicken with gravy.




Dunlop gives us a vivid description of "everyday broth" in her Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook, my favorite cookbook. It is a broth consisting of all sorts of meats, especially pork, which is kept simmering all day everyday. That's right, all day every day. It gets replenished, and it gets used. Street vendors cook street food in their everyday broth, which adds flavor to the meat, and adds some flavor to the broth, sort of a symbiotic relationship between sauce and entree. Dunlop claims that some everyday broths have been sustained for entire lifetimes, up to 50 years of taking some and giving some. And, of course, it is claimed that the older the broth and the longer it has been sustained, the better the flavor.


As for me, I keep mine in the freezer, and I thaw it and give to it and take from it as needed. It is seasoned with a little soy sauce, some fresh ginger, and five spice powder, then I strain it through cheesecloth to keep it nice looking. Add whatever you want though.

One of my favorite things to make with my everyday broth is ramen. Imagine all of the succulent goodness of a Cup Noodles, with none of the MSG and sodium and preservatives and god knows what else. Once you have the broth, it takes about 10 minutes to have a steaming hot bowl of deliciousness.



Freestyle Ramen

Ingredients
2 cups Everyday Broth
1 Leek
Ramen Noodles (any noodles can substitute)
1 Tbsp Soy Sauce per bowl
1 Tbsp Oil
optional: Chili-Garlic Sauce, Radishes, Scallions, Chicken, Pork, Egg, etc.

This recipe should be more inspirational than instructional. The important thing about freestyle ramen is that the broth be homemade. If you haven't already strained your broth, make sure you do so. It really makes the broth look nicer.

Beyond that, all there is to it is heating up your broth to a near boil, cooking your ramen in boiling water (not in the broth!), and slice up your leek. In each bowl, I add a dash of soy sauce, a dash of oil, and a dash of chili-garlic sauce (Sriracha is a fine substitute). Then I put in the leaks and any other fixins that I have lying around that might be good. Then I fill each bowl 3/4 of the way up with cooked ramen noodles. Last, add the broth. You can mix up the bowl a bit then to get the chili sauce and everything evenly distributed. Another way to do it is to add a dollop of Sriracha at the end. This not only flavors the broth, but also makes a nice garnish.

If you are using anything that really needs to be cooked before consuming, make sure you do that before adding it to the bowl. Egg is borderline. If your broth is hot enough, it will probably cook the egg, but it is kind of gross if it doesn't, so better be safe than sorry. If you do add raw egg to it, at least take the egg out of the fridge 20 minutes before using it so that its a little on the warmer side.

Epic Failure, but then Brie

Since the arrival of our son, dinner has taken on a whole new meaning. At a time that now seems like distant, ancient history, the Mrs. and I would sit at the table over my painstakingly-crafted meal, say grace, and enjoy a fine meal and polite conversation. That was then; this is now. Now we scramble to make sure that both of us actually got to eat dinner. Usually I stuff my half-assed edible concoction into my mouth quick enough to give my baby-mama enough time to eat her food while it is actually hot. We have tried just having dinner while the little one is sleeping, but in a horrible twist of fate, he has taken after his old man and decided that sleep is optional and, to some extent, to be avoided.

That's not to say that I haven't cooked anything. I've made some stuff here and there when I can. But the stakes are higher now. I have to do more with less. Sometimes, it works. As a present to the Mrs., my mom bought her a small wheel of baby brie. It is a guilty pleasure of ours and something that she couldn't have while pregnant. Something about raw milk, I guess. Well, when we decided to have the brie, I couldn't just bake it and leave it at that. I wanted to make it special. And I did. The recipe below is the story of a long awaited wheel of brie, and a sauce made out whiskey and pecans. Hell yes.



But before we get the recipe, I have to confess of my colossal failure in the kitchen the other night. I had a great idea for a food experiment that I thought my wife would like, and that would have made a great post on the blog: Sweet Potato Pierogies. I'd made the dough, run it through my new pasta maker, and shaped some nice sized dumplings of sweet potato, seasoned with nutmeg and cinnamon. Well, I came, I saw, I sucked. What a disaster. Something was wrong with the dough. The memory of chewing and chewing and chewing and chewing on the same piece of pierogi dough is something that will haunt me for at least another hour and a half.

With the pierogies, I baked a Pollok fillet in red wine,some shallots, and garlic. It seemed that the fish cooked, but the wine didn't reduce, the garlic and shallots were almost raw, and none of the flavors melded together at all. What crap. I ended up just fixing up some mac and cheese out of the box to tide us over.

There are fresh new victories in my future. Of this, I am sure. But that night's meal was no such victory. Makes me want to stick my face in some Brie... Mmmmmm..... Brieeeee.

Baked Brie with Whiskey Pecan Sauce

Ingredients
1 shot of bourbon
2 Tsbp butter
1/3 cup of chopped pecans (mortar and pestle will do the trick)
2 Tsbp brown sugar
1 small wheel of brie

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. While the oven is heating up, now is a good time to chop or crush your pecans if they didn't already come that way. I used a mortar and pestle and it worked fine. A big sharp knife would be fine too. Once the oven is pre-heated, put the brie in an oven safe dish or plate and bake for 20 minutes or so. You'll probably notice the top of brie rise up as the cheese on inside melts. I like it super melty, but if you just want it soft, bake for less time.

While the brie is baking, in a small sauce pot melt the butter over low heat. Add bourbon to the melted butter. Once the whiskey starts to boil, whisk the sugar into the mixture. Next add the pecans. Be sure not to over cook, but boil until it is the desired consistency, say 5-10 minutes.

When your brie is baked, pour your sauce over the brie. Serve with crackers or french bread.

Postpartum Christmas

Long time no post! I know, I know! As you might have guessed by now, the little man with an apron was born. He came home Christmas morning, and is happy, healthy, and HUNGRY!

We opened Christmas presents after we got home from the hospital, but not surprisingly the presents were pretty underwhelming compared to coming home with our baby. Parenthood is kind of like becoming a vampire. I spend a lot of time awake in the night; I'm aware that a very familiar part of my life is now over; but I know that this new state of being has given me some super powers. I am far more efficient now. I was never one for sitting around or not keeping busy before, but now I'm a whirlwind of errand-running, chore completing, home appliance repairing, and diaper changing.

In terms of my foodie life, I continue to need to eat, and I continue to insist on eating good things. So, while I haven't had a chance to bake any more bread, I have made about 5 gallons of sauce, roasted a turkey for (a day late) Christmas dinner, and churned out a steady supply of soup for the Mrs. and my Grandma, who, with 8 siblings and 2 children of her own, has plenty of experience and energy to help us get situated.

I got some pretty cool food related presents, among them a pizza stone, 8" and 6" cast iron skillets, a pasta maker, and two cookbooks, Momofuku and Basic Butchering of Livestock & Game. I'm really pumped try out some Momofuku dishes, and I'll be sure to share pictures and recipes when I do. Admittedly, a book about butchering will cover a lot of things that don't come up for me. For instance, I will likely not slaughter any cattle in my suburban apartment. But I wanted the book to learn about how meat is prepared. Plus there is a recipe for venison pate in there that I'm looking forward to trying.

Last, I have a recipe to share. It's an eggplant parmesan that I've become locally famous for. And by "locally famous" I mean by my friends and family. I like it because if you ever have to deal with vegetarians and omnivores at the same dinner table, this is something that you can serve to everyone without complaint.

As a general rule, I don't like eggplant parm. I find it starchy, difficult to digest, and not particularly tasty whenever I've had it. But this is different. The recipe is my own concoction, developed in an effort to impress my then girlfriend, now wife. She used to be a vegetarian, and suggested that I make eggplant parm. Rather than saying that I didn't like it and didn't know how to make it, I went and did it. It turned out better than anyone else's that I've had.

I say this is my recipe, but it is not as though the ingredients are non-traditional in any way. I think it is the approach to the eggplant that makes it really good.

Before you start though, just a note about the sauce. While I usually make homemade sauce for my eggplant parm, for the most part you can get away with a decent jar sauce. If you do choose to make your own, you'll want to make it a consistency that is similar to store bought. Don't make your sauce too watery, and don't make it too chunky, otherwise the sauce somewhat distracts from the eggplant/cheese interaction. In a bowl of spaghetti, the sauce is the star, but in a plate of eggplant parm, the sauce is a supporting character, and the eggplant and cheese are the stars.



Family-style Eggplant Parmesan

Ingredients
1 large eggplant
About 2-3 quarts of spaghetti sauce
olive oil
canola oil
2 cups of breadcrumbs
3 eggs
1/4 cup milk
1 cup of Parmesan cheese
1 lb. mozzarella cheese

Directions

Skin the eggplant and slice the eggplant longways as thinly as possible. I can't stress how important it is that the eggplant be sliced very thin. That's what makes my eggplant good. In a large bowl, mix the eggs and milk and whisk. Coat the eggplant slices in the egg wash and then coat the eggplant in breadcrumbs by tossing each slice individually in a large bowl of breadcrumbs. You might also add some dried basil and oregano to the breadcrumbs. Be sure to give each eggplant slice individual attention by coating with egg wash, then immediately coating with breadcrumbs. I usually bread the eggplant as space becomes available in the pan, rather than all at once.

Heat a large skillet (or two) on medium heat, add one part olive oil, one part canola oil. Use enough oil to moisten each eggplant slice, but not so much that you're deep frying the eggplant. Be aware that eggplant absorbs liquids, so the eggplant will suck up the oil. This softens the eggplant up, but be careful not to keep too much oil in the pan at once. You'll probably have to add more oil for every five eggplant slices.

Fry eggplant in skillet until golden brown, taking care not to burn the breadcrumbs. While frying the eggplant, preheat the oven for 300 degrees. Put cooked eggplant slices in a large casserole, laying them out in a layer on the bottom of the pan. When the bottom of the pan is covered in a whole layer of eggplant, cover the eggplant with sauce, then cover the sauce with some of the Parmesan cheese, then apply sliced mozzarella cheese on top. Add another layer of eggplant slices on top and repeat until you either run out of eggplant or space in your casserole. When completely assembled, cover in foil and put it in the oven for about 20-30 minutes, long enough to melt all of mozzarella cheese. Serve.

The important thing about the treatment of the eggplant is that you want to really break the eggplant down. You slice it thin, fry it thoroughly, then bake it. By the time you eat the eggplant, you get the flavor of the eggplant, without any of the starchy-ness.

Lost in the Sauce

Here in New Jersey, Italian-American culture is somewhat ubiquitous. Growing up, I didn't know that most people aren't Italian-American. I just figured I was one of a small minority of non-Italians in the whole country. I never really came to terms with how different that is with the rest of the country until I tried to make Eggplant Parmesan in Texas. Finding Mozzarella cheese was a major ordeal. And, the meal was well-received, but thought to be somewhat exotic. Italian food, exotic? It was an eye-opening experience and made me a little sad to find out that people have been deprived of mozzarella cheese for so long. Then again, it comes right back around because the only place I know of to get really great Mexican food outside of Texas is in Mexico. I'm sure California and Arizona and New Mexico do fine too. Makes me think that there should be some sort of system whereby we send some Italian restaurants down there, and we get some Mexican ones in return.

This past week with me being busy for finals, and the Mrs. patiently waiting for the little man to arrive, I put together a lot of comfort food type dishes. Nothing fancy, but the kind of food that keeps you full and warm. One of my favorites is Lasagna. But we also had a really outstanding Spaghetti and Meatball night recently. On Meatball night, I baked some of the fresh homemade bread dough that I had living in my fridge.



The good news about my bread was that it was beautiful and delicious. The outside had that incredible crunch-crackle sound that only good bread can produce. The bad news is that I still haven't mastered getting it to be as light as a real loaf of french bread. Still beats the store bought stuff though.

So, with all of that said, I wanted to share with you a little bit of New Jersey's home cooking. I saw that the Amateur Gourmet recently gave a recipe for Sunday Gravy, a meaty version of your basic marinara sauce. It goes by a lot of names, but for simplification sake, I generally refer to it as spaghetti sauce (which is made of but not synonymous with tomato sauce). Some people call it gravy. Some people call it Ragu, or Marinara. You can call it whatever you want, but I usually either say red sauce or spaghetti sauce. Or, as my Grandpa used to say, "sketty sauce".

Anyway, Amateur Gourmet just gave you a pretty good sauce recipe, so I'm not going to do that. I wanted to do something a little different. The fact is, you don't really need a recipe for spaghetti sauce. I don't think I've ever actually measured anything while making red sauce. My recipe often consists of whatever I find in my closet and fridge. Sometimes I put wine in it, if I have some open red wine. Sometimes I don't. Sometimes I've got lots of peppers but not enough onions, other times, its the other way around. Either way I'm eating red sauce, and either way I'm putting in whatever I have. Sure I'd prefer to have this or that every time, but red sauce isn't the sort of the thing that I tend to plan out ahead of time. It's just something I throw together on a Sunday afternoon.

Instead of a recipe, I'm going to go over some basic principles that you should know about making the sauce. These are either common pitfalls, or little tricks that I've learned, or suggestions to make the sauce better. Much of it is common sense, but if you think I've missed anything, that's what comments are for.

1) The better your ingredients, the better your sauce.

Ok, this might be fairly obvious and truly does apply to all cooking, not just sauce. I bring it up though to remind you to try to strike the right balance between quality and price. Don't just buy a jar of pre-minced garlic, some dried out basil, and expect to have a noteworthy red sauce. You won't. But, on the other hand, we could blow $50 on red sauce ingredients if you got the best tomatoes in the store and had everything fresh and perfect. I don't think you want to do that either. You don't need organic shallots in your red sauce. Onions are just fine.

2) Don't use a cooking wine that you wouldn't drink yourself.

If you have "cooking wine" from the supermarket in your house right now, I want you to open up the bottle, and pour yourself a nice big glass of it. Have a sip. Disgusting, yeah? Why would you put that in your food if you can't stand the taste of it? I guess we're back to balancing quality ingredients, but this just had to be pointed out. Buy a bottle of red wine that is less than $10, and use that.

3) Treat your garlic the way you want to be treated.

Ever see the movie Goodfellas? There are a couple of lessons to learn about making sauce from that movie. First. Do you see those guys with a jar of pre-minced garlic? Hell no. They have fresh garlic, and they chop it really thin with a razor blade. They take pride in their garlic. They treat their garlic the way that they hope the garlic will treat them: with kindness and respect. You don't have to use a razor blade to chop your garlic, but chop it fine and with love. The Second sauce lesson from Goodfellas is my number 4 on this list.

Another pearl of garlic wisdom is that, like many ingredients in the sauce, they change character the longer they are cooked. Garlic is typically sauteed first as one of the first few steps of making a sauce. I do that too. But, I also chop up a little more garlic after the sauce has been cooking for a while. This garlic has more bite to it. The original garlic that you've added becomes a part of the character of the sauce, and has almost a smokiness to it. The second batch of garlic bites a little bit more and says, "Hi!, There's garlic in this!" You want to give it time to cook, so it won't be like eating raw garlic, but the second batch of garlic is just a little more awake than its long simmering brethren. Of course, if you don't care for garlic, don't bother with the second batch.


4) Stir-it, then Stir-it. Then Stir-it more.

The second Goodfellas sauce lesson is from the scene where Henry is being followed by the helicopter, making a drug run, and worrying about the sauce getting stirred. A good red sauce takes time. It would be a shame to put all that time in your sauce only to get a burnt flavor permeating the whole thing just because you didn't stir it. So, no joke. Stir the sauce. Otherwise, you'll be sorry.

When I start my sauce, I have all of my vegetables ready for sauteing. Prep comes first so that I am free to stir and stir and stir my veggies without risk of burning them.

5) Add your herbs and spices last.

There is a temptation to throw in all of your tomatoes and onions and garlic, then add basil, oregano, and whatever other herbs you plan on using. But save the best for last. Remember I said that garlic changes its character after cooking for a very long time? Well, so do herbs and seasonings. The flavor tends to die out after being cooked for very long. It's the difference between a raw chili pepper and a slow roasted one. Basil and Oregano are no different. If you cook them all day, their flavor will be significantly diminished. This seems to be more true of fresh herbs too. Dried herbs first seem to re-constitute, then eventually diminish too, but their sweet spot is a bit later than the fresh stuff.

6) Tomato Sauce vs. Tomato Paste vs. Crushed Tomatoes vs. Fresh Tomatoes

Always add fresh tomatoes if you can, but you can't, it is not the end of the world. You can still have a pretty good sauce with just the canned stuff. But, first you gotta know what all the canned stuff is. Tomato Sauce is a thin sauce that is very similar to the consistency of V8 juice. You can use this as your base, but you will need to thicken it up quite a bit. Tomato Paste is what you use to thicken the sauce. It is, you guessed it, a paste. A little goes a long way, and it needs to be stirred in order to meld with the sauce.

I rarely use tomato sauce in my red sauce, and instead opt for a combination of fresh tomatoes and a couple cans of "crushed tomatoes". Crushed tomatoes have a slightly chunkier consistency and make the sauce feel more like homemade than regular tomato sauce. I also puree some fresh tomatoes as the first ingredient after the sauteed veggies. With all of these tomatoes, but especially the fresh ones, you have to cook them for many hours in order to reduce their acidity. Don't even taste your sauce until you've been cooking it for at least a couple hours.

Both crushed tomatoes and fresh tomatoes tend to release a lot of water. This is what tomato paste is for. You add it and your sauce is less watery.

7) Meat? Yes. Or not.

Sausage, Meatballs, Pork ribs, Veal Shoulder, whatever. These are all great in your sauce. Try whatever you like. I usually just go with turkey sausage and turkey meatballs. You really can't go wrong.

Vegetarian? Add mushrooms, try eggplant. Zucchini has been done successfully.

8) Tomorrow is another day... to eat sauce.

Make as much of this stuff in one batch as you possibly can. It lasts a long time, can be frozen, can be used on a number of different recipes, and takes a long time to make. But best of all, magically, red sauce is always better the next day. After it has had some time to sit and mingle with itself your sauce will be even more fantastic than it was when you first tried it.

9) Ask your guests how they like it.

Everybody has different ideas about what red sauce should be and how they like it. I like a red sauce that you could pour into a bowl and eat by itself, very thick with lots of peppers, onions, garlic, and meat. The mrs. likes a less chunky, more pasty sauce. Others like a watery sauce. If you're having guests and plan on making some sauce for the occasion, ask them how they like it. Use tomato paste accordingly.

10) There is no wrong way.

Sure, it's possible to screw up red sauce. But there is no right or wrong way to make it. There is always some Italian guy who says "mutz-za-rel" instead of mozzarella and "mani-got" instead of manicotti and will tell you that the only way to make Italian food the right way is to make it the way that his grandma from Avellino used to make it. But, that's all wrong. Sunday Gravy is more about Sunday, spending time with family, than it is about gravy. The sauce is just something that brings you all together. If you like it, you made it right.

Beans are kind of like Meat

People think I am meat obsessed. They are right. But, that doesn't mean I can't enjoy a fine vegetarian meal. Just not everyday please. The problem is that while I will eat nearly anything with fins or feet, my wife doesn't. We eat a lot of chicken at home, and quite a bit of turkey too. But, for the most part, beef and pork aren't what's for dinner at our house.

Most days I can live with that, but sometimes I feel like if I have to eat one more chicken I might explode. It's gets old, even if you love chicken. So, I'm always struggling to find stuff to cook that can break up the monotony without having to make two separate meals. Enter kidney beans.

Kidney beans have significant amounts of protein, which is important both for big men in aprons as well as pregnant women (we have one of each in our house). And, of course, they have no cholesterol and are high in fiber, which regulates blood-sugar, keeps you full longer, and is just all around good for you. Oh, and by the way, they taste pretty damn good.

So, I throw tofu into the mix sometimes to get us away from poultry for a day, and occasionally I just make a vegetable pasta dish, but right now I'm really into trying to find more uses for kidney beans, since they seem to pack a lot of nutritional punch and can be used in some dishes where tofu isn't appropriate. In general, I find that tofu is great when it's done well, but it's very easy to do poorly and that just makes me want to eat the chef who served it. Total dinner guest faux pas.

So, I've already given you a pork and bean noodle dish. But I think this one is better, and it has no meat in it. It is inspired by Orangette's recent recipe for Tagliatelle alla Romagnola, which is essentially pasta, butter, Parmesan, and prosciutto. I was so excited that Orangette had posted something and I really wanted to try it out, but I needed to find something to replace the prosciutto. I also had some leeks that were getting to the "love 'em or leave 'em" phase of our relationship.

Anyway, this dish could be served hot, as I did serve it, or it could be chilled and eaten as a salad. Then again, at 39 degrees outside right now, chilled pasta might not be at the forefront of your priorities right now.



Kidney Beans and Ziti in Butter

Ingredients
1/2 lb. uncooked Ziti
5 Tsbp Butter (4 Tsbp to melt with the pasta, 1 Tsbp to saute the garlic and beans)
1 Tsbp fresh chopped basil
4 Cloves of fresh chopped garlic
1/2 cup of coarsely chopped Leeks
1 15oz. can of Kidney Beans
Grated Parmesan Cheese to taste
Salt and Pepper to taste

Boil a pot of water. You can chop your garlic, leeks, and basil as well as drain and rinse the beans during the time the water is heating up. When the water is near boiling, melt butter in a pan over medium heat. As soon as the butter is mostly melted, add the garlic. Be sure not to let the butter get too hot before adding the garlic, otherwise it will burn. Stir the garlic into the butter for about 1 minute. Add Leeks, stir and cook for about 2 minutes. Add the beans, stir gently and cook for about 5 minutes. By the time you've added the beans, your water should be boiling and ready for the ziti. The ziti is best served al dente, so give it about 6-7 minutes in rapidly boiling water, uncovered in the pot.

When the ziti is ready, drain thoroughly and return to the pot. Put the pot on low heat and add the mixture of beans, garlic, and leeks. Also add the chopped basil and 4 Tsbp of butter at this time. Stir the pot gently, making sure to coat all of the pasta with melting butter, while taking care not to crush the soft kidney beans. As soon as the butter is completely melted, it is ready to serve. Best to serve immediately, since this dish is light and doesn't retain heat the way a heavier dish might.

Add Parmesan if desired. I didn't, but it would be good either way. Resist the urge to add more vegetables or ingredients. The beauty of this recipe is its simplicity. It's nice to actually taste the beans and the leeks. They both have a lot of flavor to contribute that would be drowned out if you added too many other ingredients. Serves 4.