Get yourself a quart of heavy cream. (There’s a dairy farm a short drive from my home and so what was I gonna do, NOT use the freshest cream I could get my hands on?)
And while we’re on the topic of cream, a lot of recipes call for just a pint of it, likely because that’s the most common container found in supermarkets. Forget that. The yield from a pint is just too small for the amount of time you’ll put in.
Speaking of yield, it is widely held that a quart of cream nets out at a pound of butter. You won’t hear me claiming that, though. Because all I ever get is around three-quarters of a pound of butter. No matter what type of cream I use.
Hand-churning butter may sound quaint and nostalgic and all that, but there’s a reason why God made the electric mixer. So use it.
Run the mixer at medium speed or so and when things get to the whipped cream stage make sure to scrape the sides of the bowl with a spatula once in a while to keep things all nice and mixed.
Once you’ve entered the post whipped cream stage you can ditch the spatula.
And I would highly suggest–actually, let’s make that strongly urge–that you cover the mixer and bowl with a towel or two. Because at this stage there’s gonna be some serious separation of solids and liquids, believe me.
What’d I tell you?
Here’s your almost finished product.
Place a fine strainer in a bowl and then empty both the solids and liquids into the strainer.
The reason you want to catch the liquids is because now you’ll have yourself a nice glass of cold buttermilk. And who doesn’t want a nice glass of cold buttermilk?
Press as much liquid from the solids as you can.
Then add some salt and mix things up (with your fingers is fine). According to the folks at King Arthur about 1/4 teaspoon of table salt (I use kosher though) is about right, but I say just taste along the way and add what seems right to you.
Of course if sweet butter is what you’re after then forget about this step entirely and just form the butter whichever way you like..
Pay no attention to the homemade passatelli that I slaved over. Avert your eyes from the diced mozzarella, the fresh garden tomatoes, the chopped basil leaves and the light dusting of pecorino up top.
It’s summer tomato season for many of us. We are here not to make a sauce but to extract the liquids from uncooked tomatoes, commonly referred to as tomato water.
That’s the “sauce” you see above. It is not cooked, only heated and ladled over the passatelli before serving. Not heating the tomato water and simply serving it cool would have worked too. Just saying.
Anyhow, tomato season is ticking away, so let’s get to it.
This is around eight pounds of fresh garden tomatoes. Obviously you can work with smaller amounts, but I wouldn’t suggest fewer than three pounds.
Either chop the tomatoes by hand or pulse in a food processor to break them down a bit.
Get yourself some fresh basil leaves and a clove of garlic (both are from the garden) and chop finely.
Add the basil and garlic to the tomatoes, douse with a generous amount of kosher salt, and mix thoroughly.
Place the tomatoes in a colander lined with cheesecloth, positioned over a bowl that can capture the liquid as it drips.
Okay, here’s where my way differs from other tomato water recipes you’ll no doubt search around for. I’m not concered with the water being clear and pretty; I only care about the fresh tomato flavor, and extracting as much liquid as I can.
To wit: I weigh down the tomatoes for several hours, and even use my hands at the end to squeeze out as much liquid as possible through the cheesecloth. That makes for a cloudy product but it more than doubles the yield. If you want clear water then don’t do it my way; just allow the water to drip on its own, overnight even. I’d even suggest breaking down the tomatoes in a food processor instead of by hand.
After seven or eight hours of weighing down, and hand-squeezing, the eight pounds of tomatoes yielded two full quarts of liquid.
By the way, after settling and separating you can see what the tomato water would look like if you followed other recipes. Clear and pretty, and the flavor is the same.
I used one quart of the tomato water for four primi portions of the passatelli.
Oh, and the leftover solids will get used up somehow.
If you’d come up where I did then you would judge all clam sauces against one and only one: the clam sauce at Don Peppe, in Queens. Decade after decade this sauce never—and I mean never—disappoints. The dish is always perfect. Loads of tender clams, dozens of whole caramelized garlic cloves, properly cooked al dente pasta.
Here, see for yourself. A beautiful thing, no?
It was Uncle Dominic who first introduced me to Don Peppe, some decades ago now. Like us the restaurant was originally located in East New York, Brooklyn. Dominic, like the Don, had moved to Queens long ago.
That’s Dominic right there, with the love of his not long enough life, Aunt Laura (trust me, I’ve seen the letters). This was the last time we were at Don Peppe together, and it’s a meal and a memory that I greatly treasure. Both Dominic and Laura are gone now and I am not the only member of our family that misses them. Badly. Whenever I am eating at Don Peppe, most typically with my wife Joan and brother Joe, Dominic’s presence fills the unoccupied seat at the four-top we inhabit.
We wouldn’t have it another way.
For years now I have made my home some 300 miles from Queens. I visit from time to time, rarely without hitting Don Peppe on a Sunday afternoon with my brother and my wife, but for regular enjoyment of the dish I have had to mimic the Don’s clam sauce as best I can.
Which, as it happens, is respectably. At least these days it is.
The first thing you must do is to love garlic. Just liking it isn’t going to work. (Look at the amount of garlic in this picture and take into account that I am only working with a little over half a pound of pasta.) Slowly saute in olive oil the whole cloves from at least two heads of garlic (three are here) so that they caramelize just a bit. I also add crushed hot pepper and anchovy but I’ll leave those decisions to you and your god.
I live in a place where freshly shucked clams are in abundance. (If you haven’t access to fresh, go with canned clams; it’s better than not having any clam sauce at all.) That is a pound of fresh chopped clams in their juices; add them to the garlic and oil, stir and simmer at medium heat for maybe a minute.
Like so.
Then turn up the heat to high and add your pasta and some of its well-salted water, even more clam juice if you like. Throw in some freshly chopped parsley, stir vigorously, and in about a minute you’re done.
No, it isn’t the Don’s perfect clam sauce. But often it does come close to transporting me back to Queens.
A little over three decades ago, on a Sunday afternoon in August, I tossed a sandwich and some water in a backpack and hopped a Manhattan-bound PATH from the Journal Square station near my home in Jersey City. Before boarding the train I made sure to pick up a big bulky copy of the Sunday Times.
I was going to need it.
My destination was The Blue Note jazz club on West Third Street. And I would be hanging outside the club for a good four or five hours, much of it by myself.
That night marked the last in a weeklong set of performances celebrating Tony Bennett’s 65th birthday. I hadn’t been able to score a ticket but the club’s small bar was held for walk-ins and I was determined to be among them.
There are worse things than loitering on a scorching-hot Greenwich Village sidewalk all afternoon when the payoff promises to be so great.
Except it wasn’t. Not that night anyway. The announcement came after the club was filled and everybody—me included, at the best barstool with the clearest view of the stage—seated. Bennett wasn’t feeling well. The flautist Dave Valentin would be filling in. Anybody who wanted in on a makeup show if and when there was one should leave a phone number at the door on the way out.
Long story short, I left a number, got a call for a December show, a one-nighter, and wound up with not one but a couple of reserved seats—at a two-top just three feet away from Bennett as he and his lifelong accompanist Ralph Sharon performed their set.
I have seen Bennett many times since that night, most recently in 2017. He was 92 at the time and his voice was stronger than any human’s deserves to be at so advanced an age. During the show I did something that I never do: pulled out the cell and captured a small piece of the evening by video. I guessed, rightly, that this might be the last time I would see Tony, and so the indiscretion seemed not so horrible an offense. It is only a minute fifteen seconds long and yet brings me enormous joy every time I view it. Which is ofen enough.
I viewed the minute fifteen several times today. Tony is gone now and I miss him.
You may be missing him too.
Time to fire up possibly the finest complete record ever produced, The Tony Bennett Bill Evans Album from 1975. (The minute fifteen is of Tony singing “But Beautiful,” a cut on that album.)
You’ll feel better from giving the album a spin. I know I always do.
I’ll be traveling back to Italy in a few weeks, which means that I can stock up on a few items that aren’t so easy to find here at home. One of those things is Bronte pistachios, from Sicily. The reason I’ll need to stock up is because I just used up the last of my pistachio stash making these biscotti.
Bronte pistachios are the world’s most prized, and most expensive. They grow on the slopes of Mount Etna in Sicily, in volcanic soil that’s believed to enhance both the seeds’ flavor and bright green color. Bronte is an actual town, largely rural and reliant on farming. Its pistachios are produced in roughly 7,400 acres on the active volcano and are harvested only every other year, further enhancing their demand.
That’s not to say you have to score yourself some Brontes in order to give these biscotti a try. Any good-quality pistachios will do just fine, and the biscotti themselves are pretty easy to pull off.
Hell, I’ve been working with a bum arm for months now, and had no trouble with these at all.
Buona fortuna!
Pistachio & Chocolate Biscotti
Recipe
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
Pinch of salt
Zest of one large lemon
1 1/4 cups raw and unsalted pistachios, lightly chopped
1/2 cup sugar
3 extra large eggs
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
Egg wash
In a large mixing bowl incorporate the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, lemon zest and pistachios.
In a separate bowl add the sugar and eggs (I also added a tablespoon of Amaretto; why I couldn’t tell you). Using an electric mixer, mix at high speed for around 5 minutes, until thick.
Fold the egg mixture into the flour mix by hand. When they are thoroughly incorporated add the melted unsalted butter and mix by hand.
Roll the mixture out onto a work surface and knead for a minute or two, then form a single ball. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for about an hour. During this time preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.
Divide the dough into two equal pieces, then form logs that are around 2 inches high by maybe 10 inches long. Place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet, brush on a light layer of egg wash, and bake for around 20 to 30 minutes, rotating the pan once during that time.
When the logs are golden remove and allow to cool for around 20 minutes. Lower the oven temperature to 300 degrees F.
Cut the logs into slices that are around an inch thick, line them on a baking sheet, and return to the oven for around 20 minutes, or until crisp. Remove from the oven, allow the biscotti to cool to the touch.
Melt around half a pound of semi-sweet chocolate and dip each biscotti into it. Place the biscotti on a sheet of wax paper (I also sprinkled some finely chopped pistachio on top of the melted chocolate, which is just an option) and allow the choclate to thoroughly cool.
Place the biscotti in an airtight container and — this is very important — forget that you even baked them. Seriously. Biscotti always taste better after they’ve rested a couple days. Don’t ask me why.
Two or three days later feel free to have at it. You’ll be very glad that you waited.
Like me, Angelo is a born and bred Brooklyn guy. He is not an entirely lifelong friend. It just feels that way sometimes.
Some time ago Angelo was traveling in Italy with a group of friends, for around three or so weeks as I recall. He checks in with me regularly when on the road, much the way I do with him when I am traveling.
Angelo being a professional travel writer much of our correspondence deals in hardcore travel intelligence, though just as often we obsess over the foods that we are eating.
It is on this topic where my friend and I frequently part ways.
Honestly, I could just smack the guy sometimes.
Take this last trip, for instance. For around five days and nights Angelo and his group were staying in the historic center of Bologna. As you are likely aware, Bologna is the capital of Italy’s most important culinary region, the Emilia-Romagna. It is also the place where, back in the 18th century, the famous Bolognese sauce was conceived. Not surprisingly Ragu alla Bolognese is ubiquitous in Bologna and its environs. I do not believe I have been to a restaurant in the city that did not offer at least a respectable version of it. (If you’d like to try it at home, here is the recipe for an authentic Ragu alla Bolognese.)
So you can imagine my surprise when the following conversation unfolded, a day or so after Angelo and all his friends had arrived back home to New York.
ME: Okay, let’s talk Bologna. How was Leonida? (Trattoria Leonida, that is, my favorite of all in the city; I’d insisted that he try it.)
ANGELO: Everybody loved it. Really charming and the food was great. It was pretty empty, though. COVID I guess.
ME: Last time we were in Bologna we ate there twice; tried for a third time but they were completely booked the whole weekend.
ANGELO: Not a lot of places were booked on this trip, no matter what town we were in.
ME: So where’d you have the best Bolognese sauce? Tough call huh?
NO ANGELO HERE, JUST SILENCE
ME: So? Where was it?
Words are not often lost to my friend Angelo and so I immediately suspected foul play.
Correctly, as it happens.
ANGELO: Y’know, I didn’t have a Bolognese sauce the whole time. Neither did anybody else, come to think of it.
NO ME HERE, MORE SILENCE
ANGELO: I did have the most amazing roast beef sandwich in Genoa though. It was down the street from that place where you and I …
ME: Hang on a minute. Did you just say that you didn’t have a single Bolognese sauce the whole time you were in Bologna? That half a dozen other people you were with didn’t have a Bolognese sauce either? In FIVE FREAKING DAYS! Seriously?
ANGELO: Right, nobody, I’m pretty sure. But let me tell you about this roast bee…
ME: I really don’t know how you live with yourself, man. I mean, you got eight people eating like two meals a day each for five days, so that’s what, around 80 total meals — in Bologna ferchrissakes — and nobody, not a single person and not a single time, thought to order the most iconic dish in town, possibly in all of Italy? Not even once. That’s just not possible.
ANGELO: Well, yeah, but like I was saying …
ME: If you mention that roast beef sandwich one more time I’m getting in my car right now and driving down there. And when I get to your house I’m gonna kick your sorry ass straight into the Hudson River. I swear I will.
Our dialogue ended here, I’m afraid, the result of my hanging up the phone on my friend Angelo. It was several days before his calls did not (intentionally) go directly to voicemail.
I mention all this because Bologna has been much on my mind of late. As some of you may know, I have been on the shelf for months and months now, due to a freak accident back in August. Since then my prospects — and most certainly my mood — have been anything but optimistic. It will take several more months at least for truly meaningful improvement in either.
Nonetheless, I’m about to try my luck at getting a bit more active. Days ago my wife Joan and I completed plans, albeit reluctantly, for a three-week visit to Italy later this spring. Our first stop will be Bologna. If you have not yet visited the city, I would highly recommend it.
Only don’t invite Angelo along.
He’ll roast beef sandwich you to death, I just know it.
Aunt Anna has been reaching out a lot these past few months. She’s been worried. As aunts go they don’t make them better.
She called just yesterday, in fact, wondering how things looked for me getting home for Christmas.
“Do you think you can make the drive?” Anna asked. “Because if not you should take the bus, or stay home even, don’t take any chances.
“Please,” she added, more directive than plea. “Promise me.”
“Haven’t decided yet,” I said. “But don’t worry, I promise not to do anything stupid.
“Besides, I’ve got the opera tickets. If I don’t make it down then how are you gonna get in to see Rigoletto?” (Our Christmas gift to her this year is an evening at The Met.)
Anna laughed, but only a little.
“Don’t be a wiseguy. I can wait to see you until you’re all better. Rigoletto, he can wait too.”
I won’t burden you with details but an accident back in August is what has kept me on the shelf these past months. (Many thanks and love to those of you who have reached out and expressed concern.) For reasons that escape not just me but also the medical brainiacs around here, a full recovery, though likely, has so far been elusive. I haven’t cooked or written a thing this whole time. My mood has been, well, foul.
Anna would never cop to being worried, of course. And she is skilled, unknowingly I think, at keeping your mind off of your troubles.
“The only reason I care if you’re coming is so that I know whether or not to make you eggplant, that’s all,” she told me. (I never leave my aunt’s home at Christmas without a tray of her awesome eggplant parm.) “So as soon as you figure things out you let me know, okay.”
In the spring of 2016 my wife and I grabbed a couple of bar stools at a new restaurant here in Portland called Solo Italiano.
Our expectations were low. Very low. Mine especially.
The site, a cavernous onetime furniture store, had long been a place where restaurateurs’ dreams went to die. One by one these people opened their establishments, one by one they packed their belongings and moved on.
Not three bites into my meal I recall muttering these words aloud: “It’ll never last. Never.”
Only not for the reason you may be thinking.
The food at this new restaurant was simply too fine, too authentically Italian, to make it here in Maine. Its creator, a talented Ligurian named Paolo Laboa, just could not have known the heartache he was about to endure cooking things like Stoccafisso and Cima alla Genovese in a place where Pasta e Fagioli might seem exotic to the populace.
I went home that night ecstatic from the delicious meal that we had just enjoyed yet worried sick that the countdown to Solo Italiano’s demise had begun even before its first primi had been served.
Never have I been happier to be so dead wrong.
Not only is Paolo still cooking here in Portland, but Solo Italiano remains among the city’s best-regarded restaurants. Should you ever find yourself in the vicinity I highly recommend a visit. (Tell him the guy who brought him a mess of homemade mortadella sent you!)
I mention all this because recently I spent a couple of weeks in Liguria, in the north of Italy along the Mediterranean coastline. Pesto is more ubiquitous in Liguria than lobster is here in Maine, or barbecue is in Texas, which is to say that I sampled many different versions in dozens of restaurants on my journey. Some pestos were excellent, others extraordinary. But none were as fine as Paolo’s.
Not. One.
I made a batch of Paolo’s pesto soon after returning home from our trip and unpacking the Ligurian olive oils and Italian pine nuts from my baggage. Which got me thinking that you all might want to sample the pesto for yourselves. Paolo has been very generous to share his recipe through the years (here’s a video of him making his pesto on a local TV station in Maine a few years back). It’s a recipe that his mother taught him, handed down generations in his family. Back in 2008 it even won him the World Pesto Championship in Genoa (yes, there is such a thing).
You will not be disappointed.
Trust me on this.
Paolo Laboa’s Pesto Recipe
Use a blender only, NOT a food processor.
Makes 1 1/8 cups
6 cups loosely packed Genovese-style basil leaves
1/3 cup Italian pine nuts
1/3 of a small garlic clove (yes, I said ONLY a third)
1/2 cup fruity, mild extra-virgin olive oil (preferably Ligurian)
1 teaspoon coarse sea salt
1/3 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese (24 months)
1/3 cup freshly grated Pecorino Sardo or aged Pecorino Toscano cheese
Place the blender jar in freezer to chill thoroughly.
Soak basil leaves in water for around 5 minutes.
Combine nuts and garlic in the chilled jar, then cover with oil. Puree until the mixture is creamy, then add salt. Note: Make sure to PULSE ONLY as constant running will generate heat which will affect flavor.
In 4 batches, lift basil leaves from water and add to blender. Note: Shake off excess water but not all of it, as water helps emulsify the pesto. Pulse until the mixture is smooth.
Add the 2 cheeses and pulse again until fully incorporated.
Transfer the pesto to a container. If you’re not using it immediately, cover with a thin film of oil and refrigerate, covered, for up to 3 days, or freeze for up to 3 months.
Okay, so this isn’t my bathtub. But it is a mess of eels, so let’s just start there.
Specifically, this is a pot filled with Aunt Anna’s stewed eel, the kind she often (though, sadly, not always) prepares for Christmas Eve dinner. There are tomatoes and onions and lots and lots of whole olives in Anna’s stewed eel, but the best part about it is that only a few of us at the table will eat any of it. That means more eel for, well, me.
My mother cooked eel a lot when I was a boy. The men in the neighborhood who used to go fishing in Jamaica Bay often returned home with lots of live eels in their buckets. Mom being a pretty well-known user of the species the men often offered their eels to her as gifts.
Be patient. The bathtub thing is coming up soon, I promise.
Anyway, my mother worked all day. Either she was behind the counter or in the kitchen of our fountain service store, or hunched over a Singer doing piecework for the ladies’ garment factory blocks away. Evenings were the time for coping with her live eels, not afternoons when they would always be left for her.
These were not tiny eels, by the way; often they were in the three-feet-in-length range if memory serves. Mom being the sensitive type leaving the poor live eels crammed into little five-gallon buckets all day long didn’t sit too well, and so, in the eels went to a bathtub filled with plenty of fresh water for them to swim around in.
Get the picture?
It is important to mention that this bathtub mom so generously offered as an eel pond, for entire afternoons on end, was the only bathtub in the only bathroom of the apartment that she shared with her husband and three young sons.
I do not know when my brothers were first introduced to our mother’s eel husbandry, but me? Clear as day, this memory of mine.
It was a very hot Saturday afternoon one summer and I had just gotten home from playing league baseball up in Highland Park. The walk home was around a mile, which was brutal wearing an entire baseball uniform, and so stripping down and jumping into a cool shower was all that my ten-year-old brain could wrap itself around.
Nobody was home when I arrived and so I immediately made a beeline for the bathroom. Uncle Joe had recently completed a fancy upgrade to our bathtub, two sliding glass doors to replace a simple shower rod. The glass was frosted, which I now assume was to allow for privacy (five people, one small bathroom, remember?).
I slid open the frosted-glass door and there they were: four or five very large and very alive black eels. Swimming around in the place I was supposed to be cooling and cleaning off in the dead of summer. I didn’t know what exactly they were at the time, of course; I was too busy slamming the glass door shut so that they couldn’t leap out from their pond and go all Creature Feature on me.
A cool, cleansing post-baseball shower was not in the cards for me that day, at least not until mom got home and attended to her guests.
As it happens, I missed out on many more post-ballgame showers throughout my childhood. Mom’s eels-in-the-bathtub holding strategy worked pretty well, I guess, because she never saw reason to change it.
Years later I married a woman who enjoys eating eel, especially Aunt Anna’s, as much as I do.
She did make me promise to never allow a single live eel to swim in our home. Ever.
Judging by the size of us I’ll take a stab and peg this snap at 1959, or maybe it was ’60. Location: Almost assuredly Liberty Avenue, somewhere between Shepherd and Essex, in the East New York section of Brooklyn.
Judging by the threads that our mothers have put us into it could be only one specific day, that being Easter Sunday of course, a sunny and beautiful one it appears, though that is the only kind of Easter Sunday that I can recall there ever being. No other day could we have been dressed in this way.
This group represents fewer than half of those of us in this partcular generation of our family. The rest are somewhere close by, I assure you, as all of us lived together on the same street and in the same buildings.
Underneath the Easter bonnets are the two Ursulas, each carrying the name of our grandmother, though with the added “Big” and “Little” designations tacked on so as to not be mistaken for one another. In the interest of not embarassing one boy in particular, I’ll leave the rest of our pack unidentified (though I must admit to feeling envious of Cousin Bobo’s spiffy porkpie and pocket square).
This photo came to me by utter coincidence (I swear) only moments ago. It being Easter Sunday I’ve decided to post it here, despite having insufficient time to discuss it with you all further.
Promises and pie crusts are made to be broken. —Jonathan Swift Not around here they ain’t. I promised some people meatballs (you know who you are and why) and meatballs I am delivering. To make a good meatball you must first prepare your sauce (aka gravy). Why? Because the sauce is what the meatballs are cooked […]
It’s not as easy as it looks, okay. Trust me. I’ve had a lot of mediocre Sunday Gravy (that’s tomato sauce to you civilians). Hell, I’ve made a lot of it myself. Not lately, though. It appears that I have gotten the Red Sauce thing down pretty well. It is not the sauce that my mother prepared […]
I hope that you enjoy looking at pictures and captions. Because I have got an absolute ton of them for you here. Making pancetta (basically Italian salt-cured bacon) at home is simple. It only takes a little bit of prep time; the rest of the time you are waiting for the meat to cure and then dry. […]
Below are all of the pasta, stuffed pasta, pasta sauce, and pasta dough recipes that appear on this blog. Just click on a link and you’ll be taken to the recipe you’re after. Every time a pasta recipe is added to the blog it will be added to this list, which appears at the right of […]
Below are all of the vegetarian recipes that appear on this blog. Just click on a link and you’ll be taken to the recipe you’re after. Every time a new vegetarian recipe is added to the blog it will be added to this list, which appears at the right of the homepage under “Search Vegetarian Recipes.” […]
Below are all of the dessert and other sweets recipes that appear on this blog. Just click on a link and you’ll be taken to the recipe you’re after. Every time a new sweets recipe is added to the blog it will be added to this list, which appears at the right of the homepage under […]
Not long ago, while watching my motley Mets get massacred by the Giants on a particularly heinous road trip, I got a frantic call from my friend Jordie, who lives in (of all places) San Francisco. She and her partner Julie were stranded at JFK in New York and were looking at another six hours […]
The sweetest pastry that I have ever had was a gift from a woman whose name I do not know, face I did not see, and kindness I cannot possibly repay. This pastry, a miniature cannoli, came to me in the most peculiar way and in the unlikeliest of settings. It was tossed into the limousine […]
A multi-course meal consisting of Frank’s favorite foods, in honor of his birthday. On the wall in front of me, just above the printer that hasn’t worked since the day I plugged it in three years ago, hangs a framed Life magazine from June 25, 1971. “Sinatra Says Good-by and Amen: A farewell to 30 very good years,” […]
Mister Meatball 