Tag Archives: easy

Winter Couscous + Winter Cocktail

Posted on January 19, 2012 | 4 comments

I have a new cookbook.

Actually I’ve had it for a few months now, but with Christmas and everything, I forgot about it for awhile. Until the past few weeks, I never tried a single recipe. That didn’t prevent me from having a very good feeling about it. (Or from giving it as a Christmas present several times.) It’s called Plenty.

Anyway. I’ve been playing around with it a lot. Usually, if I get five recipes  from a single cookbook, I feel like I’ve done really well. With Plenty, I’m going to challenge myself to cook every recipe. The writing and the photographs are so inspiring! On Monday I tried the Winter Couscous and I’ll definitely be making that again – maybe even tomorrow.

It’s sort of funny – how much I like this book because I have no instinct become a vegetarian, and this is a book all about vegetables. I simply couldn’t give up meat as I love to cook with it and I would miss the flavor too much if I stopped eating it altogether. However, after reading Plenty, I could actually see how I might make an entirely plant (ok, plant plus butter and cheese!) based diet work. As soon as I started flipping through this book without a speck of speck, a shred of pork, a breast of quail, a leg of duck, I wanted to try everything. I’m not even going to skip the eggplant section. And I nearly always think eggplant is creepy.

Another thing. This Ottolenghi – he’s not so chef-y in his cooking. Complicated techniques are not what you’ll find in his book. This is food with a wild riff-y flamboyance, full of vim and a middle eastern accent, but no craziness. It sort of reminds me of this roommate of mine from college, Craig, who used to cook for us on weekends. Many late Friday nights found him in our shared kitchen, heaps of ingredients on the cutting board, a glass of wine by the stove, music playing. More and more people would show up and he’d just add a little of this or that to the sauté pan. When we finally sat down to eat, it was often unpredictable and always delicious. We loved those evenings, the fun of Craig’s happy confidence in the kitchen. There’s something about the loose and playful style of cooking in Plenty, fearlessly combining flavors of far reaching origins, that reminds me of Craig cooking. Ottolenghi’s recipes are those of a gleeful, passionate chef, devoted to color and flavor. In Plenty, I found my favorite ingredients in dazzling and unexpected combinations. I’m just wild for this book.

I made the Winter Couscous on Monday night after we got back from skiing. You might think, judging from the longish list of ingredients, that this was an odd choice, after a rough drive down the mountain through a blizzard. The recipe did require a perhaps too extensive run to the grocery store when we were all wiped out. (Thanks Martin! It was worth it though…right?!)  But the vivid colors! The aroma! The deliciousness! I totally think it was worth it. If I were you, I’d make it on a relaxed Sunday the first time. You’ll see how simple it is and make it again right away.

Winter Couscous

from Plenty, by Yotam Ottolenghi

  • 2 carrots – peeled and cut into 3/4″ dice
  • 2 parsnips – peeled and cut into 3/4″ dice
  • 8 shallots – peeled
  • 2 cinnamon sticks
  • 4 star anise
  • 3 bay leaves
  • 5 tbsp olive oil
  • salt
  • 1/2 tsp ground ginger
  • 1/4 tsp ground turmeric
  • 1/4 tsp hot papricka
  • 1/4 tsp chilli flakes
  • 10 ounces butternut squash – peeled and cut into 3/4″ dice
  • 1/2 cup dried apricots – roughly chopped
  • 1 can chickpeas, drained
  • 1 1/2 cups water
  • 1 cup couscous
  • a large pinch of saffron
  • 1 cup boiling vegetable stock (I used Better Than Bouillon. I don’t think this is the occasion for making stock from scratch, unless of course you have some hanging around.)
  • 3 tbsp butter
  • 2 tbsp harissa (You could buy some, or you could make it yourself! I wrote about it here. It’s worth the effort.)
  • 1 preserved lemon, inner flesh removed and discarded, peel finely chopped
  • 2 cups destemmed whole cilantro leaves, washed
  1. Preheat the oven to 375.
  2. In a large roasting pan, put the carrots, parsnips, shallots, cinnamon sticks, star anise, bay leaves, 4 tbsp olive oil, 3/4 tsp salt, ginger, turmeric, paprika, and chile flakes. Toss well.
  3. Place in the oven and roast for 15 minutes.
  4. Add the squash and toss. Return to the oven for 35 minutes.
  5. Add the apricots, chickpeas and 1 1/2 cups of water. Cook for 10 more minutes.
  6. In a large Pyrex or other heatproof bowl, combine the couscous with 1 tbsp olive oil, the saffron, and 1/2 tsp salt. Pour the boiling stock over the couscous, stir, and cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Leave for 10 minutes.
  7. Add the 1 tbsp butter to the couscous and fluff until the butter is melted and incorporated. Cover with the plastic wrap again and leave near the stove to keep warm.
  8. To finish, mound the couscous on a large platter. Stir the harissa and preserved lemon into the vegetables. (Or, if you have sensitive children, serve the spicy harissa in a pretty bowl with a little spoon at the table, to be mixed in to taste.) Taste the vegetable mixture for salt and adjust if necessary. Spoon the vegetables and any juices onto the couscous. Strew cilantro leaves over the top and carry this gorgeous, fragrant mess right out to the table. Leave the whole spices in – they are so beautiful on the platter.
While you’re cooking, get somebody to make you one of these:
Ginger Cocktail
from the Art of the Bar by Jeff Hollinger and Rob Schwartz (by far the best book of cocktails I’ve seen)
  • 8-12 mint leaves
  • 1/2 ounce ginger syrup (see recipe below – you’ll need to make this in advance)
  • 1 1/2 ounces gin
  • 1/2 ounce fresh lime juice
  • ginger ale
  1. Put the mint leaves in a tall glass, pour in the syrup and muddle until you can really smell the mint.
  2. Fill up the glass with ice and pour in the gin and lime juice. 
  3. Top up with ginger ale.
  4. Gently stir to combine.
  5. Garnish with a slice of lime.
Ginger Syrup
2 ounces fresh ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
1 1/2 tsp black peppercorns
1 1/2 cups of water
1 cup sugar
Combine the ingredients in a small heavy saucepan and simmer for 30-40 minutes. Cool completely. Strain. Keeps for two weeks in the refrigerator.

 

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Date Night at Home

Posted on January 11, 2012 | 6 comments

On Saturday night, we spent the evening in the kitchen setting beef drippings, butter, olive oil, crushed peppercorns, and brandy on fire. The flames were bright blue and flying right up over my head! Isn’t that kind of perfect for date night at home?

Staying in rather than going out might seem boring until you consider a few things. We didn’t need to make a reservation. Or search for parking. There was no need to find a babysitter. Or find something clean and reasonably stylish to wear. (This is sometimes a problem for me. Sigh.) There was no menu ennui. (Spare me yet another kale salad!) No meaningless chatter with a fawning waiter. At dinner, we could savor that last drop of wine since we were already home and didn’t have to drive anywhere. (It would have been criminal to cork even a tablespoon of that Williams and Selyem!) We could’ve eaten dinner in our pajamas! (We actually didn’t do this.) Best of all, we could cook whatever we wanted. And set it on fire!(As you might’ve guessed, for me, this is the fun part.)

I’m not a fan of steakhouses. Portions are ridiculously large, I loathe getting nickel and dimed on the sides, and they’re too rich anyway. I find the rituals of a steakhouse old fashioned and boring. To me, brandy, cigars and Frank Sinatra are for posers. However, there are times when I crave a perfectly seared and seasoned steak, charred almost to the point of being burnt yet still with a deeply rosy interior. I try to make lighter sides, still alluding to the steakhouse classics. The brandied pan sauce on the steak enriches the mashed potatoes. Sauteed mushrooms need nothing but a little shallot, butter and black pepper. The chard, edgy then sweet with garlic, chilies, and (fig) balsamic turns creamed spinach on its nose.

We always nibble on some very fancy cheese while we cook, something local or French. Something stinky. I know of a very good ginger-y cocktail (if you ask me I will send you the recipe!) that would be wonderful with cheese, but if you do get a really great bottle of wine, a cocktail is too much. If you drink mineral water while you cook, you won’t fall asleep right after dinner, which would be a shame on date night.

Somewhat traditional and very celebratory, this menu has played Valentine’s Day dinner often, sometimes birthday dinner.  Yes there is work involved, but it’s simple – no crazy mincing necessary. I barely batted my eyelashes at Martin and I got him to wash and trim the chard, a job I hate. It should have been me, as date night at home was my idea.

Date Night Dinner

  • Steak au Poivre with cream
  • Mashed Potatoes
  • Sauteed Mushrooms – black trumpet are delicious and need no trimming
  • Wilted Swiss Chard with Balsamic ( I was given a bottle of Fig Balsamic by a dear friend and I am deeply grateful!)

I couldn’t take a picture of the food because you can’t let a hot meal cool on its carefully warmed plates and start snapping pictures in the middle of dinner on date night.  I had to settle for a photograph of a table set in anticipation and the empty wine bottle.

First, read through the whole recipe, then assemble all these ingredients as written, plus 3 sauté pans and a 3 quart saucepan. One person should do the steak and mushrooms; the other, the potatoes and chard. There should be 15 minutes of prepping the ingredients and under 20 to do the cooking.

Pepper Steak

  • (2) six ounce beef tenderloins, let them come to room temperature for an hour before starting
  • 1 1/2 tbsp black peppercorns, roughly cracked in a mortar and pestle
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 2 tbsp butter
  • 2/3 cup brandy
  • 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
  • 3/4 tsp salt

Mashed Potatoes

  • 3 medium sized Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled, cut in half, and set into the 3 quart saucepan, completely covered in cold water
  • 1/2 cup milk + 4 tbsp butter in a Pyrex measuring cup or small saucepan
  • sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Sauteed Mushrooms

  • 1/2 lb black trumpet mushrooms
  • 4 tbsp unsalted butter
  • 1 medium shallot, minced
  • salt and freshly ground black pepper

Wilted Chard

  • 1 bunch swiss chard, stalks removed, cut into 1″ strips
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 garlic clove, crushed and minced
  • pinch of red pepper flakes
  • 1 tsp salt
  • balsamic vinegar to finish (if you happen to have any fig balsamic, now would be a good time to break it out)

The poshest bottle of Pinot Noir you can get your hands on – poured into glasses so it opens up in time for dinner.

  1. Set the table. Light the candles. The plates will be hot so you may need to protect the table with a thick mat or trivet.
  2. Start by setting the saucepan of potatoes on high heat to boil. When they reach a boil, set the heat to medium and allow them to simmer. They should be done about 20minutes after they reach a boil.
  3. Press the crushed peppercorns into the steak firmly, top and bottom, with the heel of your palm. Sprinkle each side with a pinch of sea salt. Set aside.
  4. Carefully examine the mushrooms, looking for debris. We found a rather large dark piece of wood in ours! Trumpet mushrooms are difficult to wipe clean, so we quickly rinsed them in a colander and dried them with towels.
  5. Heat the oven to 200. Put two dinner plates on the rack to warm.
  6. You’ll be cooking the mushrooms and the beef simultaneously.
  7. Set two heavy saute pans over medium high heat for 3 or 4 minutes. Use the larger one for the mushrooms – they need a lot of space or they won’t crisp properly.
  8. In the mushroom pan, melt the butter until it stops foaming.
  9. In the steak pan, melt the butter with the olive oil, until the butter has stopped foaming.
  10. Add the mushrooms to their sauté pan and stir to coat with butter. Stir every minute or 2. Initially, they will weep a lot of liquid.
  11. While the mushrooms are cooking, add the steak to the other sauté pan. Set a timer for 3 minutes. The steaks should really sizzle, if they aren’t your pan isn’t hot enough. It’s a fine line between seared and burnt, so you want to pay close attention. It’s deeply satisfying to get it just right. After 3 minutes, carefully flip the meat, and set the timer for 3 more minutes. You want to get a good sear in that amount of time, no longer, to keep the interior pink.
  12. While the steaks are searing, the mushroom will have lost a lot of liquid, let it bubble away until it is gone, then raise the heat a little and add the shallots. Now that the liquid is gone, the mushrooms can brown and become deeply flavorful. When they start looking crisp, taste one and add sea salt and black pepper. They may be done before the steaks. It doesn’t matter. Put the sauté pan on the back burner while the steaks catch up.
  13. Now that the steaks are seared, you need to cook each side for 3 more minutes on medium heat. This will produce a deep pink (not red!) interior. After a total of 12 minutes, remove the steak from the sauté pan and carefully, without dripping all over the edges of the plate, move them to the warming plates in the oven.
  14. While you are finishing the steak and mushrooms, your partner should work on the chard and mashed potatoes.
  15. In the microwave in a pyrex measuring cup or in a small saucepan on the stove, heat the butter and milk until the butter has melted.
  16. Check the potatoes with a fork; they should be just falling apart. Drain in the colander and return to the saucepan. Add the hot milk and butter and mash with a potato masher or a wire whisk until smooth. Season with sea salt and black pepper. Put the saucepan lid on a place on a back burner until dinner is done, which will be very soon.
  17. The chard and the pan sauce will be completed at the same time.
  18. In a clean sauté pan, heat the 2 tbsp olive oil over medium high heat. Add the garlic and chili flakes. Just as the garlic turns golden, add the chard and toss as it settles down, wilting. Toss for a few minutes. Turn off the heat and season with sea salt and black pepper.
  19. As your partner finishes the chard, heat the brandy in the steak sauté pan with all the browned bits, any fallen-off peppercorns and pan juices. When the brandy is bubbling, light a long match, stand away from the pan, and light it. If you have never done this before, the flames can leap rather high – almost 2 feet in my case. It’s kind of exciting. Anyway after several seconds the flames will die down some – you can just blow them out very easily. With a wooden spoon scrape up all the brown pieces on the bottom of the pan. When all is bubbling nicely, add the cream. Let it simmer over medium-high heat until thickened, about 3 minutes.
  20. Remove the plates from the oven with mitts – they’ll be hot. Mashed potatoes are first, cozied up near the steak. Ladle some of the pan sauce over them. Don’t make a lake of it! You don’t want a messy looking plate. Put the mushrooms alongside the steak and the chard by the potatoes. Splash just a little balsamic over the chard. Inhale. Exhale. Sit down to dinner.
Oh. My. God. There are 20 steps!
Don’t let that deter you! This is really fun – I promise!

(I wonder if I am the only person who thinks that setting things on fire in the kitchen constitutes a romantic evening?…Martin seems to like it!)

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The (failed) Salad Redux

Posted on January 4, 2012 | 2 comments

The holidays are over. It is raining listlessly. Through the window in my office I can see the looming black shape of the evergreen in the yard, the grey stick mass of the leafless maple tree and the leaden cocoon of the winter sky. In the living room, the Christmas tree is strung with a series of dusty, white, spider webs connecting the Santa Claus at the top to the light on the ceiling. Tree limbs droop with the weight of the ornaments and there are more and more needles on the carpet. (I’m taking the tree down tomorrow, I swear!) Outside, it is not particularly cold and certainly not warm, but it is soggy. Thick new moss grows on everything, greenly blanketing paths and the steps – even tree branches. What an excellent time of year to play around in the kitchen!

It was about this time last year that I wrote about grapefruit in salad. The winter weather must drive me to anything at all reminiscent of sunlight. Anyway, I made this salad over the holidays again and again and sent the recipe around to anyone who asked for it. (It’s a reworked and vastly improved version of the failed salad) I must have eaten it twenty times in the last month and I’m still not sick of it!

The candied walnuts were very last minute. There were none left at the grocery store (probably because I started a run on them!) so I had to find a recipe. I made the walnuts for the first time this Christmas Eve. Crisp, spicy and so one-more-handful-ish, I made a batch minutes before leaving for my aunt’s house: a sweet little extra Christmas gift. How perfectly handy –  to have a recipe like that.

The Salad

for 4-6 people

  • 2 bunches of watercress
  • a wedge of blue Castello or Cambozola, cold – to make cutting easier
  • a handful of candied walnuts (see recipe below)
  • 2 pink grapefruits or 3-4 blood oranges
  • 1 tbsp currants
  • 1 shallot – thinly sliced into rings
  • 2 tbsp Champagne vinegar
  • 1 tsp red wine vinegar
  • 6 tbsp olive oil
  • salt and pepper
  1. Combine 1 tbsp hot water and red vinegar in a very small bowl with 1 tbsp currants.
  2. In another very small bowl, toss champagne vinegar with the sliced shallot.
  3. Wash and dry the leaves of watercress and mound on a large platter.
  4. Cut the Blue Castello into small pieces, removing any rind, and strew over leaves.
  5. With a very sharp knife cut the top and bottom off the grapefruit. Cut off all the rind and pith. Over a medium sized bowl, carefully slice between the membranes to remove the fruit in sections, catching any juice and the fruit in the bowl.
  6. Arrange the sectioned grapefruit over the salad.
  7. Toss the walnuts over the top.
  8. Lift the shallots out of the vinegar carefully, reserving the vinegar for the dressing. Pulling the rings apart, scatter the shallots over the salad.
  9. Drain the currants, and toss over the salad.
  10. Add 1-2 tbsp grapefruit juice to the  small bowl with the champagne vinegar. Whisk in olive oil, 1/2 tsp sea salt, and a few grindings black pepper.  Dress the salad – you may not need all the dressing.
Candied Walnuts
(can be quadrupled!)
  • 1 cup large walnut pieces (mostly halves)
  • 2 tbsp maple syrup
  • 1 tbsp sugar
  • 1/2 tsp kosher sea salt
  • several grindings of pepper
  • an optional pinch of cayenne (I liked it; my kids, not so much)
  1. Preheat the oven to 325.
  2. Toss all ingredients together in a medium sized bowl.
  3. Lightly spray a rimmed cookie sheet with vegetable oil.
  4. Spread the coated nuts over the cookie sheet.
  5. Toast for 15 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes.
  6. Remove from oven and cool stirring every few minutes so they don’t stick too badly to the pan.
You might think you’re mad at me when you see how the maple syrup and sugar seem welded to the cookie sheet. Don’t worry. Pour a cup or two of very hot or boiling water over it and in a few minutes it will wash right off.

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After Christmas dinner comes plum pudding

Posted on December 13, 2011 | Leave a comment

As you might have guessed I’ve given Christmas Dinner a lot of thought. There have been culinary highs and lows. I’ve made far too much, too rich food. I’ve lost a lot of sleep. I’ve allowed my kids too much Christmas chocolate and suffered some mind-bogglingly bad behavior. Two years ago I had to spend the afternoon on Christmas day in bed, trying to catch-up on rest I was too wired to get the night before. A lost cause. I’d drunk too much coffee!

Figuring out how to have a nice day, a nice dinner and nicely behaved kids forces me to be reductive. I don’t want to spend the whole day in the kitchen. I want to play a board game, do a puzzle, get out of the house for some fresh air with the family and the dog. I want to make food that my kids will look forward to, that will thrill the grown-ups. If we want to be sure to have happy kids, this would not be the time for experimentation, even though my natural inclination is to try something new. Experimentation feels festive to me and I have to shelve that impulse. I have tried to create a tradition that isn’t bogged down by either trendy recipes that will quickly seem passé or uninspired renditions of the menus we had as kids.

After much trial and error I’ve finally arrived at what feels like the perfect Christmas meal. It has been a long haul. One year I prepared a slavishly Swedish smörgåsbord with smoked fish, ham, meatballs, lingonberries and all the trimmings. The next year I made a totally traditional British meal with a haunch of roast beef, billowing Yorkshire pudding, crisply roast potatoes and gravy—followed by plum pudding. Cooking such complicated heavy meals takes weeks of prep and planning and it gets boring. This led to exhaustion (me), bad behavior (my kids) and frustration (Martin). Then I had an illuminating conversation with my aunt.

The answer to my dinner conundrum turned out to be French dip sandwiches. Seriously. And no, they aren’t too pedestrian for the main event on Christmas Day. My aunt takes the French dip sandwich to a whole new level and yet she manages to keep the process easy so that her Christmas day is a relaxing one where she can enjoy her family and still have a meal that everyone looks forward to. She makes a standing rib roast for all of us on Christmas Eve and then, with leftovers, builds the most luxurious French dips the next day.

I can do this! I thought. So now I roast a beef tenderloin, which is a very easy thing to do on Christmas Eve, and slice it up the next day. I stir a little horseradish into some creme fraîche so it’s got a searing edge to it. I open a jar of cherry chutney that I buy at the store—that’s easy. I put par baked little French breads from La Brea into the oven; they are perfect with a crispy crust and an interior with just enough oomph that it doesn’t melt into the brothy dip. (Once I tried brioche rolls – a disaster! They disintegrated.) I butter the bread and layer it with piles of thinly sliced rosy beef. Wrapping the sandwiches in foil, I put them in the oven to make sure they get good and hot and move on to the salad. The beef broth for dipping is made the weekend before, and heated up just before serving.

With the sandwiches there will be a salad, a variation on the one that I made a few weeks ago, the failed salad. I’ve tweaked the recipe and now it works. The watercress gets a much milder blue cheese, blood oranges and candied walnuts. I kept the pickled currants and shallots and added juice from the blood orange to the vinaigrette. Now the salad is perfectly balanced. The colors are vibrant and very Christmas-y.

For starters we have smoked salmon on homemade Swedish rye bread with all the trimmings: minced red onion or chives, lemon, unsalted cultured butter, sea salt. With this you must serve champagne.

The one thing I couldn’t ditch was the plum pudding. And I’m going to tell you how to make it, even though I would put money on the fact that nobody who reads this will actually try making one. My grandfather faxed the recipe to me from England, transcribed from my grandmother’s “norse mutterings”, back in 1991. It really wouldn’t be Christmas dinner if I didn’t serve Granny’s Plum Pudding afterwards.

Christmas Menu

Smoked salmon, creme fraiche, minced red onion and lemon on Swedish rye bread with fennel seed and orange rind

French dip sandwiches with horseradish cream, sour cherry chutney and strong beef broth for dipping

Watercress salad with gorgonzola dolce, blood oranges, candied walnuts, quick pickled dried currants and shallots

Granny’s Plum Pudding and Hard Sauce

Plum Pudding  

You can make this weeks in advance of Christmas. It will only improve with age.

  • 3/4 cups softened butter
  • 2 cups soft bread crumbs from white bread
  • 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice
  • 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
  • 2 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 cup flour
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 3 cups dried currants
  • 1 1/2 cups raisins
  • 1 1/2 cups golden raisins
  • 1/2 cup candied citron or orange peel or a mixture of both – chopped
  • 1/4 cup dried cherries
  • 1/2 cup chopped blanched almonds
  • 1 large cooking apple, grated
  • 3 eggs
  • the zest of one orange and one lemon
  • 3/4 cup sherry—or “any booze you have”; some people like Guinness for this. Others, ginger beer.

Stir all the ingredients together until well combined. Pack into a buttered pudding basin and steam in a soup pot for 6 hours. You do this by sealing the pudding basin and placing on a stainless steel vegetable steamer. Fill the pot with water so that it comes a quarter way up the sides of the pudding basin. After six hours let it rest uncovered on the counter until it is cool. Store in the refrigerator for weeks if necessary and reheat in a steamer on the stove. This seems to take about 2 hours. All this cooking will not hurt the pudding in any way.

Martin says that Plum Pudding is really just a vehicle for the following hard sauce and I understand what he is saying up to a point. In my opinion, you do need to serve Plum Pudding with some sort of sauce. We like Hard Sauce. Some people serve it with a sickly rum creme anglaise kind of thing but I don’t approve of that.

Hard Sauce

  • 3/4 cup softened unsalted butter
  • 1 1/4 cups soft brown sugar
  • 3 tbsp brandy

Cream the butter and then add the sugar. A hand mixer or food processor will make this very quick. Then add the brandy and process until smooth. Taste it; you may want more brandy. Put the hard sauce in the refrigerator to chill. I like this lethally strong as the contrast of the boozy sauce melting over the the mindbendingly rich and steamy pudding is so completely diverting.

It would be very much in the spirit of the Christmas season to have a not-too-small piece heated up in the microwave the morning after with a spoonful of Hard Sauce. Eat it in bed before the kids have woken up with a cup of strong Indian tea with milk on the bedside table, while reading one of the books you unwrapped the day before.

That’s what I would do.

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Ribollita

Posted on December 6, 2011 | 2 comments

More cannellini beans. More soup with bread stirred into it. What can I say? I imagine it will be difficult to convince anyone that they ought to run out and try this soup. I was dubious too, the first time I tried it.

I don’t think it’s just the memory of the candlelit barrel vaulted brick ceiling in the restaurant or of being an architecture student in Florence or of walking out in the chilly darkened narrow streets of late fall behind the basilica of Santo Spirito. That memory is sketchy and faded and would be unlikely to have any bearing on how I remember this soup. It was over 20 years ago after all. I do remember the cistern quality of the room, the dim light, the heavy dark wooden furniture. Also that it was kind of thrilling to enter a space that was so deep underground. A dozen of us crowded around a long corner table. We’d been strongly encouraged to try the ribollita. Yes, skip tagliatelle al cinghiale e porcini. Skip bistecca alla fiorentina. (It’s way out of your meager student budget anyway.) Don’t just order a salad or pasta. So I, like everyone else at the table except for one extremely picky person, shrugged and ordered ribollita. I am still so happy I did.

Ribollita is not a brothy soup. It looks like wet stuffing. (I shouldn’t have written that. Now you’ll never try it.) There are ragged shreds of cavolo nero run all through it – it wouldn’t be ribollita without the cavolo nero. Don’t think you can just substitute plain old kale or cabbage and still call it ribollita. Bread is essential. I have come across recipes that layer the bread in the soup like some kind of bread lasagna. This seems wrong to me. It needs tearing up and stirring in; transforming plain old minestrone into a deliciously rich velvet mess. A drip or two of green olive oil over the top, just before serving – that’s also important.

Ribollita is the easiest thing in the world to make and at the same time, time consuming. To extract rich flavor from such simple ingredients, you have to let it cook for awhile but the hands on part is minimal. You will be richly rewarded for a little planning and labor! I think I might be begging you to try this…No, I am begging you to try this. You won’t regret it. Ribollita is just the thing for December. Utterly warming and deeply satisfying on an almost spiritual level for adults. And yet my four year old plowed through a large bowl. Even after burning his tongue, he kept on eating. Then he asked for seconds.

Ribollita – serves 6

  • 1 cup of cannellini beans, soaked over night and simmered for about 45 minutes until tender. Save the cooking liquid. (Simmer with a bay leaf and a couple of smashed cloves of garlic. Add a tablespoon of salt towards the end.)
  • A small bunch of chopped parsley, finely chopped
  • 2 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped
  • 4 large stalks of celery, chopped
  • 2 medium carrots, peeled and chopped
  • 2 red onions, peeled and finely chopped
  • 4 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 (14 1/2 ) ounce can whole plum tomatoes, drained and chopped
  • 1 bunch cavolo nero, stalks removed and sliced into coarse shreds
  • 1 loaf of stale pugliese or other Italian style bread, crusts removed and torn into 1-2″ pieces
  • sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
  • extra virgin olive oil and parmesan
  1. Over medium heat, in a large heavy soup pot, place the parsley, garlic, celery, carrot, onion and olive oil and stir. When the vegetables are hot and gently sizzling, turn the heat down to low and cover. Leave for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Do not let it stick or brown.
  2. Add the tomatoes, and cook for another 30 minutes in the same way.
  3. Add the cavolo nero and half the cannellini beans with enough of their cooking liquid to cover everything and make the soup liquid. Simmer for another 30 minutes.
  4. Using an immersion blender if you have one or a food processor if you don’t, puree the remaining cannellini beans. Add them to the soup. If the soup looks dry, add a little boiling water until it is just liquid.
  5. Add the bread, several glugs of extra virgin olive oil, and season to taste with sea salt and pepper.
  6. The soup should be extremely thick.
  7. Garnish each serving with more olive oil at the table and parmesan if desired.

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Heat: Linguine with clams

Posted on November 27, 2011 | 2 comments

“It’s about the sauce, not the little snot of meat in the shell” Mario told me later. “Nobody is interested in the little snot of meat!” Heat, by Bill Buford

I can’t believe I’ve never written about this.

A couple of years ago I read this book Heat by a guy who was a fiction editor at the New Yorker.  He took time off from his life as an editor and took an unpaid position in the kitchen at Babbo, an Italian restaurant in New York. The book details what he learned and how it completely changed the trajectory of his life. Anybody who knows me well could tell you that I really loved this book. As in reading it six times in one year – the kind of love which probably would more accurately be described as obsession. There’s a particular passage where the author describes making linguine with clam sauce, “begin by roasting small pinches of garlic and chili flakes and medium pinches of the onion and pancetta in a hot pan with olive oil” and so on, and I could just about taste it while reading. I imagined the rich smoky scent of the pancetta. The briny, winey, butter swirling around silky noodles. Splayed grey clam shells and bright green parsley strewn over the top. Linguine with clam sauce might seem pedestrian – some version is served at every mediocre Italian restaurant – but Mr. Buford’s prose was so compelling, I had to try it.

For some crazy reason that had to do with having trouble finding the right page in the book when I wanted to shop for ingredients (I know this is a lame excuse but the book has no index!) and being fearful about major dinner revolt caused by serving clams to my kids who fear all shellfish except crab and shrimp, I never actually did try this recipe. Until today. Somehow after the excesses of Thanksgiving, linguine with clams seems festive and at the same time, a little bit reductive, at least in terms of technique and ingredients. It doesn’t take all day to put it together. It doesn’t require even a single glug of heavy whipping cream. And Mr. Buford’s description captured my imagination. I envisioned excellent baguette for mopping up the juices, a Verdicchio to drink and a lightly dressed fennel and cucumber salad. I thought this might be the perfect post Thanksgiving meal.

Babbo Linguine with clams, Mr. Buford points out, was “no longer linguine exactly; it had changed color and texture and become something else. I tasted it again…in this strand of linguine: an ocean pungency.” It was, deliciously, just that. And a welcome respite from leftover turkey and mashed potatoes as well.

Linguine with clams – serves 4

I had to conflate Mr. Buford’s method with some more practical aspects from Marcella Hazan’s recipe for Linguine with clams in Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. For instance, “a big handful of clams”? What’s that? Ms. Hazan writes you’ll need 4 or 5 littleneck clams per person – sounds like a big handful to me.

  • 2 tsp finely chopped garlic
  • 1/4 tsp – 1/2 tsp chili flakes – this will barely be hot. If you’re not serving kids, bump it up a little.
  • 3 tbsp minced red onion
  • 3 tbsp finely chopped pancetta
  • 3 tbsp olive oil
  • 4 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
  • 4 splashes white wine (1/2-3/4 cup?)
  • 1 lb linguine fino
  • 24 littleneck or other small clams
  • 1/3 cup finely chopped flat leaf parsley
  • splash of green olive oil to finish
  1. Set a large pot of water to boil over high heat. Salt the water until it tastes as salty as sea water.
  2. Put a very large heavy bottomed sauté pan (not non-stick!) on a burner and set the heat to medium. Allow the pan to heat up for 2 minutes. Add the olive oil, then garlic, chili flakes, onion and pancetta, all at once. Stir until softened. Do not scorch. About 2 or 3 minutes.
  3. Spoon off any olive oil and add the butter. As it melts, swirl, and then add the wine. Let it bubble for 20 or 30 seconds and turn off the heat.
  4. When the water has hit a rolling boil, add the linguine. Stir until all the strands are separated and submerged and the water has returned to a full boil.
  5. Dump all the clams into the sauté pan, turn up the heat and clamp a lid on the top. The clams will be done in about 6 or 7 minutes. By this time the pasta will be nearly done.
  6. When the pasta is almost done, set the clams on high heat.
  7. Do not drain the pasta in a colander in the sink! The starchy pasta water clinging to the linguine is a key component of the sauce. Make sure the pasta pot is right next to the sauté pan. With big tongs, reach into the boiling water and drag the drippy wet pasta into the pan of clams – taking a few passes so you get most of the pasta out of the pot. Simmer the pasta and clams for 30 seconds.
  8. Dress lightly with the green olive oil and strew parsley over the top.
  9. Serve immediately in warm pasta bowls.

I bet you’ll love Heat, if you haven’t read it yet, although probably not as obsessively as I did. (Even I can see that was a little weird!) If you want to make this using Mr. Buford’s excellent notes, the text describing how starts on page 130 in the hardcover edition, two thirds of the way into chapter 12 for those of you who have the paperback.

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White Bean Soup with Croutons

Posted on October 25, 2011 | Leave a comment

“Although, for the sake of practicality, alternatives are given for homemade meat broth, the hope here is that you ignore them, relying instead on the supply of good frozen broth that you try always to have on hand.”

Marcella Hazan, Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking

Even though it stresses me out a little bit, I have to say I love that quote. Many times it has been running through my head and gotten me off the couch and into the kitchen with a few leftover chicken carcasses, a couple of pounds of chicken wings and a pile of onion, carrot, celery and parsley stems. Ms. Hazan seems to have little patience for slackers. Homemade chicken stock is not hard to make anyway and as I’ve said before, life is too short to rely on boxed chicken stock. Even the organic kind is really a lab concoction and shouldn’t be used in any soup where the broth is the star. What you need for this soup is homemade stock.

Chicken broth is so popular in my house that every year when I ask my 9 year old what he wants for his birthday he has a quick single word answer: “Broth.” Instead I make this soup which is broth-y but not quite as uncelebratory as a plain bowl of chicken broth. I guess some people might say a simple bowl of white beans, chicken broth, parsley and garlic isn’t party food at all. If you got off the couch and started making your own broth, I think you might be singing a different tune.

Anyway, this post is not about broth because I already covered it months ago. This post is about White Bean Soup, which is a lot easier than the kale and fennel version I also love. If my kids beg me to make anything, they beg for “white bean soup – with extra broth! Can you make it with extra broth please?!” and I make it if and only if we have chicken broth in the freezer. Last night I used my last 3 bags which Martin had to wrench off the freezer floor – I guess I haven’t made broth since early spring. Clearly I’m going to have to get off the couch and dust off my stock pot.

White Bean Soup with Croutons – serves 4 generously

  • 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 tsp chopped garlic, about 1 fat clove
  • 2 cups dried cannellini beans
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 12 black peppercorns
  • 2 cloves of garlic crushed
  • Sea salt and ground pepper
  • 6 cups homemade chicken broth
  • 2 tbsp chopped flat leaf parsley
  • Croutons for garnish – see below
  • green extra virgin olive oil and grated parmesan also for garnish
  1. The night before you want to make the soup, put the dried beans in a large bowl and cover with 2-3 inches of water.
  2. In the morning, drain the beans and put them in a large pot covered with 2 inches of water. Add the bay leaves, the peppercorns (in a tea ball if you have one – it makes it a lot easier to fish them out), and the 2 crushed garlic cloves. Bring the pot to a boil and then turn it down quickly to maintain a gentle simmer. Leave the pot partially covered. Simmer for 45 minutes and add salt to taste. I would add about 1 teaspoon. When the beans are tender, turn off the stove and leave them until you are ready to make the soup. This could be a lot later in the day – the beans will be fine just sitting there.
  3. Heat 1/2 c. olive oil in a large heavy soup pot. (I use a 7 qt. Le Creuset) Add the chopped garlic and over medium heat, cook the garlic until it is pale gold.
  4. Drain the beans and add them to the pot. Grind in some pepper and a pinch of salt, then stir and cover. Turn down the heat and wait 5 minutes.
  5. Add the 6 cups of stock and turn up the heat until the soup in simmering. Simmer for 5-6 minutes and add the parsley. Stir and serve hot with olive oil, grated parmesan and the croutons floating on top.

Croutons

  • 1 baguette
  • 1 tbsp butter
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  1. In a 10″ or larger heavy skillet, heat the butter and olive oil over medium heat.
  2. As the butter melts, slice 12 thin slices from the baguette.
  3. When the butter is no longer actively foaming, add the sliced baguette in one layer to the pan. Check the bottom of the bread after one minute (it’s so sad if the bread burns!) but it will probably take 2-3 minutes total until the bottom is deeply golden and crisp.
  4. Flip the bread and toast the other side, equally carefully.
I would make extra croutons for sure.


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White Fall Salad with a green variation: Fennel, Apple, White Cheddar and Hazelnut

Posted on October 4, 2011 | Leave a comment

White Fall Salad

I really hate to write about food that requires any sort of special equipment to be successful. I haven’t written up my favorite honey-saffron ice cream recipe or about the crazy pasta shapes I love or anything that might require a tool that falls into the realm of food geekiness. (That would include, for example, my ice cream maker and the pasta attachment on the KitchenAid.) A mandoline slicer falls into a category of esoteric kitchen equipment that most people don’t have much use for. Few people feel they need to julienne or shave things wafer-thin. So initially I was a little reluctant to write about this fennel salad.

But here is fall, misty and damp. Leaves are on the brink of yellow. The air is beginning to cool and local apples are appearing in the market, crisp and sweet-tart. Rubenesque end-of-summer heirloom tomatoes are a thing of the past. (I was getting a little sick of them anyway!) Now we’ll have a heap of paper thin fennel threaded with slivers of apple, shavings of sharp cheese and studded with toasted hazelnuts, all dressed tartly in cider vinaigrette. If you are serving the salad with something beige or brown like roast chicken, you may want to add a handful or two of arugula which looks gorgeous and is also intriguingly bitter against the floral fennel and the sweet apple. This is a salad for fall. If you don’t have a mandoline, you’d better sharpen your best chef’s knife, take a deep breath and get ready to slice.

White Fall Salad: Fennel, Apple, White Cheddar and Hazelnut

serves 4

  • 1 apple – I like pink lady but honeycrisp is also very good, in matchstick julienne
  • 1 fennel bulb, cored and sliced as thinly as you can manage
  • about 1/3 cup sharp white cheddar, shaved into very thin slices with a cheese slicer (or a vegetable peeler!)
  • a handful of hazelnuts, toasted for a few minutes in a skillet over medium heat (please don’t burn them)
  • optional: a handful or 2 of arugula leaves
Toss all ingredients together with your hands on a large white platter.
  • 6 tbsp olive oil
  • 3 tbsp cider vinegar (I like Bragg’s)
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • a few grindings pepper
  • 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
Whisk all ingredients together with a fork until emulsified. Drizzle over salad and gently toss.

White Salad with Arugula

If you are interested in owning a mandoline slicer, I have heard that this Japanese version is very good and a great buy. There is something very satisfying about slicing so precisely and efficiently, but that just might be a combination of the food geek and architect in me.

Heap of shaved fennel and mandoline

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Roast Chicken 101

Posted on September 26, 2011 | 10 comments

I remember my first roast chicken. I was in college. Somebody had given me a copy of The Frugal Gourmet. (I quickly graduated to The Silver Palate – thank god!) The “Frugal” recipe called for a lot of olive oil, a moderate oven and just over an hour of roasting. I probably don’t have to tell you that this produced one very blond bird. The skin was pale, glistening, floppy and kind of freaky. It was very very moist and the flesh perhaps a tinge more pink than I am comfortable eating. For some inexplicable reason, I made roast chicken from that recipe for years. I wasn’t really up on the beauty of a perfectly roasted fowl. (The Silver Palate wasn’t big on things like that – it was more like “Glazed Blueberry Chicken” than roast.) So I didn’t make a roast chicken very often. It was just too gross.

A lot later, years and years actually, I was introduced to the Judy Rodgers method.  By that time, Roast Chicken had acquired a retro-chic and was often offered “for 2 – in approximately one hour” at fashionable bistrots. Ms. Rodgers’ recipe was one of those and involved salting the bird 3 days in advance, gently placing herbs under the carefully loosened skin and something called “bread salad”. Please don’t quibble that bread cannot really be salad. Relax, follow the directions and don’t look back. Just don’t. Judy Rodgers’ Roast Chicken with Bread Salad is the ultimate in ludicrously delicious comfort food made of mainly humble ingredients. I had it once in her restaurant in San Francisco, Zuni Cafe and only later discovered the recipe. It’s a little laborious – don’t let that deter you.

Roast chicken should be the workhorse of at least a monthly recipe repertoire. It can be dinner, then leftovers can be sandwiches or quesadillas the next night. The bones and drippings from a roast chicken make an excellent base for stock. Which can be made into soup on day three or four. Roast chicken makes the house smell like you’ve been slaving in a hot kitchen in order to lavish affection on those who are lucky enough to be eating dinner with you. However, a three day marathon is a tall order on a weekday. So after a little trial and error, I’ve tweaked the recipe. Taking a cue from an excellent teacher at Mugnaini Cooking School, I’ve combined recipes and a little common sense that comes from cooking for a family of five. This Roast Chicken requires only a little time and tastes wonderful. The pan drippings are liquid gold. Even though the method is streamlined, you won’t be giving up much. (You really should make Ms. Rodgers’ bread salad version some rainy Sunday though.)

Roast Chicken 101

the secret is the salt rub

The chicken will need to rest in the refrigerator for one night. The prep takes only 15 minutes though. All that’s left is to roast the following day.

  • (1) 4 pound (or thereabouts) free range chicken
  • 1 tbsp kosher salt, I like the Real Salt brand for this, and everything else actually – it really does make things taste better
  • 1 tbsp mixed fresh herbs – the shrubby ones, like rosemary, sage and thyme
  • the zest of one unwaxed organic lemon, removed with a Microplane grater
  • freshly ground black pepper
  • 1 heavy duty skillet, not cast iron, it will get too hot. The skillet must be able to go from the stovetop to the oven
  1. Rinse the chicken in the sink in a large colander. Pat dry with paper towels and set it in a small roasting pan that will fit, with the chicken in it, in your refrigerator.
  2. Rinse and dry the herbs and remove the leaves. With a sharp chef’s knife finely chop the herbs, the salt, the pepper and the lemon zest.
  3. Rub this seasoned salt thoroughly all over the bird.
  4. Cover lightly with parchment and place in the refrigerator overnight, breast side up.
  5. When you are ready to roast, preheat the oven to 475.
  6. When the oven is hot, take your heavy duty skillet and place it on the stove over medium heat. Leave it for 5 minutes. 
  7. After five minutes, place the chicken, breast side up, in the pan. There will be a loud dramatic slapping sound as the cold chicken hits the hot pan. Put the whole thing in the hot oven. Set the timer for 30 minutes.
  8. After 30 minutes you’re going to need to flip this bird. Don’t worry, it’s not such a big deal. Using a metal spatula, carefully loosen the bird from the pan. (Because you placed the cold bird on a very very hot pan, this should be quite easy.) Drape a mitt over the skillet handle so you don’t forget and grab onto it. This has happened to me and it was not funny. I couldn’t grab onto anything for days afterwards. Using a few wadded paper towels, grab the bird by the legs and quickly flip it onto it’s breast. With mitts, put it back in the oven for 20 minutes.
  9. After twenty minutes, flip the bird back onto it’s back. Place it back in the oven for 5 or 10 minutes to recrisp the breast skin.
  10. Remove the chicken from the oven and then the skillet and let it rest on a platter or cutting board while you deal with the drippings.
  11. Pour off all the clear liquid on the bottom of the skillet. I usually pour it over those paper towels I used to flip the chicken and throw it away. The clear stuff is just chicken fat. It’s the browned bits on the bottom that you want.
  12. Pour a couple of tablespoons of water into the pan and set over medium heat. Using a wooden spoon, scrape up all the browned bits until they blend into the water, forming a glossy brown liquid – this is actually liquid gold. Believe me.
  13. Cut up your chicken. I use kitchen shears for the job. Arrange the pieces on a platter and dribble a tablespoon or two of the pan drippings over the top. Save the rest with all the bones for stock. You can freeze the bones and drippings together and do this later. Maybe on the weekend.
This probably looks like a lot of directions. Yes, it takes a little planning. Just do it once when you have a little extra time, perhaps on a Sunday afternoon. You’ll soon see it’s a little bit of work with a huge pay-off.
My final piece of advice to the cook is, make sure you get the wings. They will be crisper than the most crispy delicious thing imaginable (better than pommes frites!) and perfectly seasoned. The small amount of flesh will be moist and simply fall from the bones. Be very careful not to make a big deal out of it. Just make sure you get them. My nine year old has caught on to my little land grab so now he gets one of the wings, but that’s just between the two of us. No one else is the wiser.
We served our roast chicken with a salad of shaved fennel, julienned apples, toasted hazelnuts and white cheddar. I’ll tell you how to make that next time.

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Rain in August = Pappa al Pomodoro

Posted on August 23, 2011 | Leave a comment

On my mobile telephone, I have this weather app so I can look up what the weather’s like in the cities that I’ve lived in. I love to see whether the weather is worse in Stockholm or Seattle, or if it’s raining in Paris or sultry and warm in Rome. For mid-August, it was awfully wet today here in Seattle. Not only wet, but grey and dark and cold. When I checked that weather app for Rome it showed five little shiny yellow circles for the next five days. It’s not really surprising.  88, 90, 92, 89, 88 – so not only sunny but nice and warm too.

As I stand at the kitchen counter chopping away, I think of sitting at table on the edge of the piazza, taking in the heat and the bustle of Rome, where the scent of exhaust and cigarettes mingles with the perfume of fresh tomatoes, sliced and drizzled with olive oil and sea salt on a wide white plate. Or a bowl of bread and tomato soup, served tepid, slicked with olive oil and strewn with basil leaves. (It’s strange – I usually hate the smell of dirty cars and cigarettes here, but in Rome, I loved it.) Those were some premium tomatoes and I’ve haven’t had anything close since we moved up here from California. I loved mopping up the juices with crusty bread and washing it down with a glass of wine as I watched the passeggiata. Now I find myself on a grey day stuck in my kitchen cooking for small children, with less than wonderful tomatoes and I have to wonder, how did this happen?! And it’s August! It’s not supposed to be rainy all the time is it? Of course we are getting tomatoes but they’re from California, Mexico and those Canadian ones they grow hydroponically. Knowing it’s 90 degrees in Rome is killing me. I could be sitting at the edge of the piazza eating something so simple and delicious. Thinking of all those ripe tomatoes in the outdoor market could easily make me cry.

There’s hope though, for dinner anyway. What would you think about making tomato and bread soup? I had this soup several times a week, living in Italy. I’m sure if you’ve never heard of it, it sounds weird. If you’ve ever followed any of my soup recipes though, you know I’m a big fan of the garlic and olive oil slicked toast raft in a wide bowl of soup. This is a bit different. You cook stale bread into a chunky garlicky tomato broth for half an hour, and what you end up with is a satiny-rustic adult-baby food. All of which sounds like too much contradiction to be comprehensible. You’ll just have to trust me. Pappa al Pomodoro will transport you to the edge of a piazza in Rome no matter where you are or what the weather is like. Even if the tomatoes are pallid and mealy, this soup will still be fantastic.

A bowl of pappa al pomodoro, a glass of wine, a crisp salad and the sound of rain falling heavily outside the open back door changed everything. Tonight, the weather felt like an event to celebrate as we ate our wide bowls of silky, bread-thickened, tomato perfumed soup to the sound of raindrops. Even if the tomatoes did come all the way from Mexico.

The finished soup

Pappa al Pomodoro

This soup takes no time to throw together and it uses only water no stock. Don’t be tempted to substitute chicken stock for the water – this soup manages to be deeply flavorful and rich without any stock.

  • 1 red onion, diced fine
  • 1 slender carrot, diced fine
  • 1 stalk of celery diced fine
  • 1 pinch red chili flakes
  • 1/2 c. olive oil
  • 4 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
  • 1 1/2 lbs  Roma tomatoes, skinned and roughly chopped – I use a serrated swivel peeler – this must be the fastest way to peel them. Don’t use fancy heirloom varieties – they won’t be flavorful enough here – you’ll lose everything that makes them special. what you want is a dense paste tomato – like a Roma.
  • 1/2 a bunch of basil, in chiffonade
  • 1/2 pound of quite stale Italian style bread, in 1/2 inch slices (you can dry it out in a 200 oven for 2o minutes. It should be quite hard.)
  • 1 cup hot water
  • more extra virgin olive oil for drizzling, grated parmesan for dusting

Chunky tomato broth

  1. Put the sliced stale bread in a large bowl and cover with cold water.
  2. Put the onion, carrots, celery, chili flakes and olive oil in a heavy 6 quart soup pot. Turn the heavy to medium and and stir until it sizzles gently. Turn down the heat and cover, cooking for 12 minutes, stirring a few times.
  3. Add the garlic and tomatoes, and stir, cooking for 5 more minutes.
  4. While the garlic and tomatoes cook down a little, drain the bread, discarding the water. Squeeze all the water out of the bread and crumble into the soup pot. Add the hot water and stir. Season with salt and pepper. Simmer over low heat for 25 minutes, stirring every few minutes
  5. Add the 2/3 of the basil and stir.
  6. Serve the soup garnished with the remaining basil in individual bowls.
  7. Pass the olive oil and parmesan at the table to season further.

Bread soaked in water

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