Iowa City Amatriciana

Every time I visit my Mom and sister in Iowa City, I’m asked to make a batch of “bacon sauce.” This time I had been off the plane a mere 2 hours before I got the request! Making any dish outside your own environment requires patience and ingenuity. Shopping can also be a challenge because ingredients you are accustomed to using may not be available in different regions of the U.S. With all this in mind we headed to the New Pioneer Food Co-op for the makings:

10-12 oz. of uncured bacon
1 Tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
3-4 cloves of garlic, minced
2 28-oz. canned organic plum tomatoes (crushed or diced)
2 28-oz. canned fire-roasted organic tomatoes (crushed or diced)
2 teaspoons salt
1 ½-2 teaspoons ground black pepper
1 teaspoon sugar
½ teaspoon oregano
3 Parmesan/Romano cheese rinds (or ½ cup grated)

Cook bacon until crisp (baked or fried,) set aside to cool reserving drippings in the pan. In a saucepan, lightly brown garlic in olive oil. Turn down heat and add canned tomatoes to garlic along with salt, pepper, sugar, oregano and stir together. Heat tomato sauce until just boiling and turn down to simmer. Chop cooled bacon into ¼” pieces and add to sauce. Add bacon pan drippings as desired (I usually add about ¼ cup.) Add cheese rinds to the sauce and allow to simmer for 30 minutes to one hour. Turn sauce off and cool fully. Letting the sauce cool allows the flavors to meld. Bring the sauce back up to heat before serving. To serve, place cooked pasta of your choice in a large serving bowl and add 2 to 3 cups of sauce stirring to coat and set let stand for 5 minutes. Serve plates in bowls with additional sauce.

Vacation Cooking

We just returned home from a week at the beach. We rented a beachfront condo with a glorious view of the Atlantic and close proximity to the Ritz Carlton on Amelia Island. We are veterans at packing for rental cooking. We have experience with the not-so non-stick pans, knives that won’t cut butter, missing or non-existent corkscrews and a general lack cooking utensils. We had packed our traditional rental items which includes:

• Cast-Iron skillet
• Knives and sharpener
• Small cutting board
• Wooden spoon
• Spatula
• Grater or micro-plane
• Corkscrew
• Oyster knife and rubber mitt
• Garlic press
• Vegetable peeler
• Ziploc bags

This rental, however, was particularly devoid of the customary amenities. The furniture looked like leftovers from the Watergate era, a counter bar with no bar stools and a ubiquitous dining room set with a bamboo motif. The kitchen equipment was sad at best. Everything was plastic; the spatulas, serving trays, even the whisk was plastic. The dishes were Corelle which was popular when “Saturday Night Fever” was in theaters. Made by Corning Glass Company, the dishes are made of “thermally-bonded, laminated tempered glass.” While they may be stronger than standard dinnerware, they are thinner and by far, well, cheesier.

Our accommodations, such as they were, necessitated a trip to Goodwill where we purchased a set of 8 real plates, a pasta pot, a cutting board (that wasn’t glass), and a set of highball glasses – all of which we left for the next guests. There were no bar stools at the Goodwill store that day or we might have indulged ourselves. Once we had the items we needed to actually be able to cook, we managed seven wonderful meals including shrimp étouffée, steak and smashed potatoes, orecchiette with Italian sausage and broccoli rabe, pan-seared snapper with tomato salad, and sautéed grouper with browned rice. While cooking the meals yourself does save money, that is not the reason we do it. There is nothing more enjoyable than recounting the day with your family without ambient noise or waiters interrupting your conversation. Delicious food, good company, a little jazz and the sound of the surf in the background; that’s a vacation!

Denise's Signature Peppers in Oil

Photo Credit: Monica Bosco

A large basket of homegrown cayenne peppers sits on the counter waiting for me to put on my plastic gloves* and devote the morning to cutting and canning them. Before I visited Youngstown for the first time, I had never had peppers in oil. They were sitting on the table in Dom’s Aunt Phyll and Uncle Blackie’s kitchen with the salt and pepper. Blackie explained that he ate them with practically everything: sandwiches for lunch, steak at dinner, and his favorite, with eggs each morning. Blackie grew in the peppers in the garden, and Phyll would can them for use throughout the year. Dom remembered the peppers and lamented that he couldn’t find anything close to them in Atlanta. Phyll patiently explained to me how to make them. They do not last very long in our house as Dom and all the Youngstown transplants and especially my teenage boys, eat them almost as fast as I make them.

2 pounds fresh hot peppers
¼ cup kosher salt
6 cloves garlic, sliced
Olive oil
Small jars with lids, cleaned and sterilized
Gloves

Begin by putting on your gloves*. Once you have donned your gloves*, wash the peppers and pat them dry. Next, cut the peppers in thin rings, removing the pith and seeds as you go. Place all peppers rings in a mixing bowl with the salt and toss gently to cover all peppers with salt. Cover the bowl and let stand overnight. When you are ready to put the peppers in jars, fill the mixing bowl with cold water and gently rinse the salt from the peppers. Drain and dry the peppers by laying a towel down on the counter and pat the peppers dry.

Pack the peppers and sliced garlic in your clean jars and fill them with olive oil. Using a spoon, gently push the peppers and garlic down in the jar to remove air bubbles. Top off with more olive oil if needed. Seal the jars and put them in a pot of hot water. Bring to a boil and simmer the peppers for 10 minutes to seal the jars. Let jars cool and check the seals of the lids. Place the jars in a cool dark place. While you can eat them right away, they are better if sit for a week or two, and will keep for up to a year. As I mentioned before, mine NEVER last that long.

*I'm not kidding about the importance of wearing the gloves!

Cleanliness is next to…

Yesterday, I invited a couple of friends over for coffee after we dropped our kids off at school. One of the Moms said she would rather go to Starbucks “because her house is so clean it intimidates me.” I am not sure if I should be complimented or insulted! We keep a tidy house, (although I am not sure you could even call the boys’ rooms tidy!) but I don’t consider it to be pristine by any means.

I will admit that our kitchen is uncluttered by most people’s standards. The only items on our kitchen counter are a coffee maker, olive oil and red wine vinegar, a salt/pepper well and a container with wooden utensils. This leaves plenty of counter space for chopping, pounding, slicing, dicing, etc. I wash out the sink and wipe down the counters with an ammonia mup after each meal, and sweep/vacuum the floors daily. I wash down the floors a few times a week too. Apparently my cleaning habits are on the level of Mrs. Dursley of Harry Potter fame (which is to say excessive) according to my girlfriends.

To this, my response is “Huh?” How can anyone cook with 21 appliances on the counter? I like knowing that my family is eating food prepared in a clean kitchen, if that is excessive then just call me Petunia!

The Market Bulletin

I was so excited to open my mailbox today and find a copy of the Farmers and Consumers Market Bulletin which is published by the Georgia Department of Agriculture. I had let my subscription expire more than ten years ago and was recently reminded of the bi-monthly newspaper. I opened the pages and discovered that this was the semi-annual Equine issue with ads for stud services, carts & wagons, and hand stitched saddles. Subsequent pages had ads for hand-drawn raw tupelo honey, farm fresh eggs, and angel trumpet plants. The Cooking column features a recipe for peach cobbler with ice cream and a balsamic peach salad. I learned that the “cow-itch” vine does not really make cows itch and that NASS (USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service) will be conducting the 2010 Cotton Objective Yield Survey at the end of this month.

The Farmers and Consumers Market Bulletin has served as a medium of exchange for Georgia’s farmers and consumers since its beginning in 1917. Throughout its history, the non-profit periodical publication was  produced weekly until it was reduced to a biweekly schedule by the Georgia General Assembly in its 2003 session. In addition to providing free advertising to Georgia farmers and consumers, the Bulletin features a variety of articles about agriculture and has regular features including a gardening column to promote Georgia products.

Throughout the spring and summer months, several “Pick-your-own” listings are included in the Bulletin to provide consumers with the location of farms where they can pick their own fresh produce.  Monthly handicraft editions also are published, which feature items handcrafted by advertisers, and during the Christmas-season, a list of the state’s Choose-and-Cut Christmas tree farms is featured.

I can't wait for the August 11th "Handicraft" issue! Georgia residents may subscribe to the Market Bulletin for $10 per year, and out-of-state subscribers must pay a $20 annual fee.  To receive your own copy, click here.

Chef's Table

It is a wonderful gift to have dinner with my husband and sons each night! We are very fortunate that all of our schedules allow us to eat together on a daily basis. Some nights, the conversation even continues over a game of gin rummy or chess. Experts in teenage development say that the more often families eat together, the less likely kids are to smoke, drink, do drugs, get depressed, consider suicide and, the more likely they are have exceptional vocabularies, get good grades, delay having sex, learn table manners and maybe even eat their vegetables!

Most night's we have our family dinners at the dining room table, but every so often we have “Chef’s Table.” We eat at the kitchen counter and eat during the live action (like in a commercial restaurant). These evenings are much more laid back and festive with music in the background and banter while we cook and work in the kitchen. Fried foods lend themselves to chef’s table fare as well as anti-pasti. Foods like roasted oysters, fried cod, fried bell pepper and mushrooms, or fresh tomato salad and bruschetta are among our regular noshes.

After a quick clean up, the conversation usually continues in the living room where we contemplate the mysteries of the Universe, like how Paul, the psychic cephalopod at the Oberhausen Sea Life Center, can predict the outcome of Germany’s World Cup Soccer games!

Sicilian Stuffed Mushrooms

Having friends over this evening, and Dom is making his famous stuffed mushrooms. These are really delicious and versatile. Dom has been making these for years and has perfected his recipe.

18 large (about 2 lbs.) white mushrooms
Extra-virgin olive oil

¼ cup Marsala wine
1 ½ cups, fresh bread crumbs (Panko work well too!)
1 cup grated Pecorino Romano
2 Tbsp. fresh Italian parsley, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, peeled and minced
Freshly ground black pepper
Pinch of salt
Aged balsamic vinegar (optional)

Preheat oven to 375°F. Remove stems and coarsely chop them, reserving the caps. Heat 3 tablespoons of olive oil in a large, deep, non-stick skillet over medium-high heat. Add chopped mushrooms to the heated oil, season with salt, and cook, stirring occasionally. Cook until mushroom mixture is dry, about 5 minutes. Slowly add Marsala. Cook until Marsala has evaporated, about 2 minutes, then remove from heat and stir in the bread crumbs. Set aside the bread crumb mixture to let cool, and then add Pecorino Romano, parsley, and garlic. Mix thoroughly.

Place mushroom caps in a single layer (rounded side down) on a greased cookie sheet. Spoon mushroom filling into caps, drizzle with olive oil, season with pepper, and bake until golden brown, about 30-45 minutes. Arrange mushrooms on serving platter and drizzle with more marsala or aged balsamic vinegar.

No-Mayo Potato Salad with Herbs

Potato salad is a versatile side dish and is just as important as coleslaw for a successful barbecue! It will go perfectly with the pulled pork that has been cooking all day. Since Dom does not like mayonnaise, this French-style recipe, with mustard and herb dressing, is the preferred recipe in the Romeo house.

2 pounds new potatoes, washed
3 Tablespoons white wine vinegar
1 Tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground black pepper
½ cup olive oil
2 Tablespoons minced fresh chives
2 Tablespoons minced fresh parsley leaves
minced basil, mint, tarragon or other fresh herbs as desired
2 Tablespoons capers (optional)


Place the unpeeled potatoes in a medium pot. If the potatoes are larger than 2” or 3”, cut in half or quarter. Add water to cover and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to simmer until the potatoes are tender, about 15 minutes. Do not let the potatoes become mushy or soft. Drain the potatoes and set them aside to cool slightly.

In a separate bowl, mix the vinegar, mustard, salt, and pepper together and add olive oil gradually until the dressing is smooth. Slice the slightly warm potatoes into ¼” thick slices. Toss the potato slices, dressing, and fresh herbs in a large serving bowl. Mix well and adjust seasonings to taste. Refrigerate potato salad until chilled (about 2 hours.)