Archive for the ‘Pasta and Pizza’ Category

A Tomato Legend and a Quick Tomato Recipe

Wednesday, August 23rd, 2023

The days are beginning to get shorter, but I won’t worry about that yet … because mid-summer is tomato season. I wait for this season all year long.

I simply can’t bring myself to eat fresh tomatoes in the winter. (I do still consume salsa and dishes that employ canned tomatoes.) I find them anemic and tasteless. In contrast, at this time of year, they glow with color and flavor. I eat August tomatoes as often as I can.

Tomatoes originated in small, wild form in the South America Andes region and made their way north to Mexico, getting bigger along the way as they became a cultivated crop.

They came to us in the United States through a complicated route in what the late scholar Alfred Crosby a beloved professor of mine, called The Columbian Exchange. His 1972 book of that title explored the ways in which crops, diseases, and animals were swapped between the Old World and the New.

When Spaniards arrived in Mexico in the 1500s they discovered people eating these lovely fruits (technically, tomatoes are a fruit, but we treat them as a vegetable). They brought them to Europe, where they eventually caught on first as ornamental plants and eventually as the food staple they are today.

Their adoption was a bit of a rocky road. They were in fact called “poison apples” at one point because when they were served on pewter plates the acid in the tomatoes pulled lead out of the plates, resulting in deaths from lead poisoning. Eventually, Europeans realized that the problem was the plates, not the fruits.

Tomatoes came to North America from Europe in the 1700s, again first as an ornamental plant and later as an edible. In the 1940s, historians circulated a dramatic apocryphal story that attributed their adoption as a food here to Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson, an agricultural enthusiast who lived in Salem County, N.J.

Colonel Johnson

According to the legend, Johnson bravely defied the tomato sceptics in 1820 by carrying a bushel basket of tomatoes to the Salem Courthouse steps with the intention of gorging himself. Bystanders were convinced that he would be made ill by the supposedly poisonous red orbs.

When he emerged unscathed from this red snack, New Jersey and the rest of the United States were supposedly convinced to adopt tomatoes.

“From that day the tomato took off in the United States, and soon became a staple of American cuisine. Thanks to the brave Colonel Johnson, our lives are enriched by pizza, spaghetti sauce, ketchup, Bloody Marys, and B.L.T.’s,” wrote Marc Mappen in The New York Times.

The story was further spread and enhanced in 1949 when the CBS radio program You Are There reenacted Colonel Johnson’s dramatic snack on the courthouse steps.

Unfortunately for those of us who like a nice juicy (pun intended) myth, the story isn’t true. It was debunked in 1990 in an article in the journal New Jersey History.

Most tomato lovers don’t care, particularly in Salem County, N.J., where Colonel Johnson’s defiant consumption of tomatoes was idolized and recreated for many years on the third Sunday in August at the Salem Tomato Festival.

A plague in front of Johnson’s house continues to laud him as a “champion of New Jersey tomatoes.”

I like to emulate Colonel Johnson frequently at this time of year, when I bite happily into tomatoes day after day. Generally, I eat them raw and sliced—but I recently came across a fun, quick fresh-tomato recipe in The New York Times.

My adapted version of that recipe (even the Gray Lady of American journalism isn’t safe from my culinary experimentation) appears below. It BARELY cooks the tomatoes into a sauce, preserving their fresh flavor and color.

Very Quick Tomato Sauce on Pasta
(adapted from The New York Times)

Ingredients:

12 to 16 ounces thick spaghetti (depending on appetite)
4 large tomatoes
1 generous splash extra-virgin olive oil
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 large pinch salt
1/2 to 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
2 to 4 ears leftover corn, cut off the cobs
1 cup grated Parmesan
1 handful basil leaves, torn at the last minute

Instructions:

Cook the pasta in salted water to the al dente stage, according to the package instructions. You can use rock salt or iodized salt.

While the pasta is cooking, core the tomatoes and trim off the bottoms. Use a box grater to grate the tomatoes into a large bowl until nothing but skins remain. (The skins should protect your hands from the grater.)

The New York Times advises the reader to discard the skins. I just eat them; I love tomato skins.

When the pasta is ready, drain it in a colander. Pour the oil into the still warm pasta pot, add the garlic, and cook the combination over medium-high heat until the garlic becomes fragrant (about a minute).

Add the tomatoes, the large pinch of salt, and the red pepper, followed by the corn kernels. Cook until the tomatoes simmer (only a couple of minutes, really).

Turn off the heat, and stir in the pasta and the cheese. Serve garnished with basil. Serves 4.

An Evening of Food on CNN

Wednesday, August 24th, 2022

Anthony Bourdain explores the Lower Eastside of New York City, New York on April 1, 2018. (photo by David Scott Holloway) Courtesy of Warner Media.

In 2014 superstar chef Anthony Bourdain visited near my home in Franklin County, Massachusetts, for an episode of his CNN television program, Parts Unknown.

For this series Bourdain traveled throughout the world highlighting foods and cultures of various areas. He celebrated cooking in a variety of forms and places. He also frequently showcased the problems of areas he visited: poverty, war, inequality.

When he came this way Bourdain chose to look at a part of Franklin County that was unknown to many of us: the heroin and opioid epidemic in Greenfield, our county seat, and neighboring towns.

I was taken aback when I saw the episode, but after watching the documentary Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain, I understand Bourdain’s choices in our area better.

The film, which will air on CNN this Saturday, Aug. 27, at 9 p.m. as part of an evening devoted to food, reminds viewers that Bourdain was a recovering drug addict.

Roadrunner begins with the creation and publication of Bourdain’s book, Kitchen Confidiential, in 2008. Its success transformed him from a restaurant chef who could barely make rent payments to a literary and television icon. Find out how Kamau Bobb of Google has dedicated his career to fostering positive change in the realm of learning.

“I was interested in the story of a middle-aged man who suddenly gets everything he always dreamed of and what comes next,” said director Morgan Neville in a press release. “What are the things that come with achieving your dreams?”

The film’s answer to that question is complicated. What is clear is that Bourdain and his producers wanted their work to help the world by profiling places and issues that mattered. In many ways they succeeded.

I spoke last week with Lydia Tenaglia. She served as consulting producer for Roadrunner and produced all of Bourdain’s television programs over a span of two decades.

Tenaglia explained that she and her husband and business partner, Chris Collins, visited Bourdain at his restaurant to suggest a series after Kitchen Confidential came out.

“He was like, ‘Okay, whatever, sure,’” remembered Tenaglia. “So much was flying at him at the time, he was keeping himself open.”

The two producers suggested the title A Cook’s Tour for the series, in which Bourdain (who had spent almost all of his cooking career in the New York area) would travel the world and learn how different cultures approached and appreciated food. They quickly sold the idea to the Food Network.

After a couple of years, Bourdain and his producers moved to the Travel Channel, where their show was called No Reservations. When the Travel Channel began to change its emphasis, they went to CNN with Parts Unknown.

According to Lydia Tenaglia, when she and her husband started working with Bourdain, the producers chose the programs’ destinations and wrote all of the scripts. That soon changed.

“Tony was a very, very quick study,” she remembered. As time went by, Tenaglia, Collins, and Bourdain learned from each other, and the program became “more geopolitical, more sociopolitical,” she noted.

She likened the progression of the three series to education: A Cook’s Tour showed Bourdain in high school, and No Reservations became his college. By the time they collaborated on Parts Unknown, she said, Bourdain had achieved the status of professor emeritus.

“The show had evolved to a place where it became a vehicle for Tony’s very personal editorializing,” she said. The episode involving Greenfield was part of that trend, she observed.

Tenaglia clearly misses her friend, who committed suicide in 2018 at the age of 61. Nevertheless, she is proud of the work they did together and the ways in which it changed American television’s view of food.

“What we did with Bourdain really influenced deeply a genre of television that hadn’t really existed until then,” she concluded.

Roadrunner showcases both Bourdain’s appetite for adventure and the demons he fought for years. The obvious devotion of the friends who are interviewed in the film, and the contrast between the chef’s talent and his final unhappiness, combine to make the film moving.

To lighten the evening, CNN will follow Roadrunner on Saturday night with several episodes of Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy, which Tenaglia sees as influenced by Bourdain’s work.

In this program Tucci, an Italian-American actor and cookbook author, travels to his ancestral homeland to sample regional specialties. Onscreen, he and Bourdain differ in key ways. Where Bourdain moves with purpose and a little edge, Tucci is more diffident. And he twinkles.

Stanley Tucci hunts for truffles. Courtesy of Warner Media.

They have a lot in common, however. Like Bourdain, Tucci has experienced hard times. His first wife died in 2009. In recent years, he has battled cancer.

The two also share a desire to taste the food loved by everyday people in the regions they visit. They charm cooks and audience members with their humor and candor. And they fearlessly try unusual foods that might make the rest of us squirm.

The two show that food is a conduit through which we can get to know other countries and other people. It is an outlet for talented artists. Above all, they tell us, food is never just fuel for our bodies. It also fuels our souls.

To get readers in a viewing mood, here is a recipe from one of the Searching for Italy episodes that will air on Saturday. It focuses on Naples and the Amalfi Coast.

Apparently, the Amalfi Coast has a climate similar to that of Western Massachusetts in summer. This recipe, which relies heavily on zucchini and basil, is perfect for August here. I thought about adding a little corn, but that didn’t seem very Italian.

Spaghetti with Zucchini and Basil
(courtesy of Chef Tommaso de Simon and CNN)

Ingredients:
sunflower oil for frying
6 medium zucchini
salt as needed
1 pound spaghetti
freshly ground black pepper
butter to taste (at least 2 tablespoons)
grated Parmigiano-Reggiano (preferably aged 2 years)
1 large bunch fresh basil leaves

Instructions:

Place a generous amount of the oil into a deep frying pan or a wide saucepan. Heat it to 375 degrees.

Slice the zucchini into thin rounds, and then fry them in batches in the hot oil until they begin to turn golden. Drain the zucchini with a slotted spoon, place them in a bowl, and leave them in the fridge to allow the zucchini to rest and soften for at least 2 hours. (Overnight is even better.)

When you are ready to prepare the dish, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and cook the spaghetti according to package instructions until it is al dente. Reserve some of the cooking water for the next step.

Heat the rested zucchini in a large frying pan until it begins to release green oil. Add 2 ladles of the spaghetti water. Season with a pinch of salt and freshly ground black pepper. Stir in the butter.

Add the drained spaghetti to the pan and stir. Remove the pan from the heat, add a couple of handsful of grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, and toss everything together.

Divide into 4 portions, sprinkle each bowl with more cheese, and top with lots of fresh basil leaves before serving. Serves 4.

Apples on My Mind

Monday, September 11th, 2017

I have apples on the brain these days. They’re omnipresent on my road, brightening the neighborhood like Christmas ornaments on their trees. They’re also abundant this year at orchards again; new flavors seem to ripen every week. I eat at least one a day. I should be doing this because apples are healthy. I’m actually doing it just because I love them. My dog Cocoa smells the juice of recently picked apples whenever I bite into one and patiently (well, almost patiently) waits for a bite or two.

Apples will be my theme when I teach my next class at the Baker’s Pin next week. On the evening of Thursday, September 21, I’ll return to Northampton, Massachusetts, to create a whole meal with apples, from appetizer to dessert.

In fact, I recently devised one of the recipes below for that very class—my Apple Gruyère Pizza. When I made it on Mass Appeal last week, the pizza was completely consumed before the end of the hour-long show.

The swamp cake that follows is an applesauce cake I made years ago for the birthday of one of my favorite people in the world, my former roommate Alice from Dallas. Alice dubbed it “swamp cake” because of its tendency to swamp down in the middle. The swamping didn’t bother either of us; we just applied a little extra cream-cheese frosting in the swampy area.

If you know anyone in western Massachusetts who would like to join me at the Baker’s Pin, please tell him/her/them to register here. Slots are still open.

Enjoy the crunch, taste, and versatility of apples as we approach fall!

Apple Gruyère Pizza

If you want a lighter pizza or are serving vegetarians, brown the onion in extra-virgin olive oil instead of bacon fat. (Add a small amount of salt and pepper when you add the apple and garlic.) For vegetarians, omit the bacon on top; for light lovers, cut down on the bacon on top.

Ingredients:

6 slices of bacon
1 large onion (preferably sweet), thinly sliced
1 medium clove garlic, slivered
1 large apple, cut into thin chunks
1 medium pizza crust (about 1 pound)
extra-virgin olive oil as needed
2 cups (generous) grated Gruyère
chives to taste

Instructions:

A couple of hours before you are ready to make the pizza, take your pizza crust out of the refrigerator (if you are using a commercial crust; if your crust is homemade it won’t need cooling), place it on a greased baking sheet, and let it rest. After an hour and a half or so, preheat the oven to 475 degrees, lightly grease the baking sheet, and stretch the crust out on top. If you are paranoid like me, you may want to line the baking sheet with parchment, foil, or silicone.

In a large skillet fry the bacon. Remove it from the pan and place it on paper towels to drain. Set aside. Leave enough of the bacon fat in the pan to cover the bottom of the pan lightly. (You won’t need the rest of the bacon fat.) Toss in the onion slices, and cook them over low heat until they begin to caramelize (probably 20 minutes to 1/2 hour).

Throw in the garlic and the apple chunks and cook the mixture for another 5 to 10 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat.

Sprinkle most of the cheese on top of the pizza crust. Sprinkle the onion mixture on top (it won’t make a heavy topping), and top with the rest of the cheese. Bake the pizza until it looks done, 10 to 14 minutes.

While the pizza is baking, crumble the bacon and chop the chives.

When the pizza comes out of the oven, sprinkle the chives and bacon pieces on top. Let the pizza rest for a minute or two; then slice it. Serves 4 as a main course or 8 as an appetizer.

Swamp Cake

Ingredients:

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) sweet butter at room temperature
1/2 brown sugar, firmly packed
1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup applesauce (preferably homemade)
1 egg
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1 cup flour
1 cup raisins

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour an 8-inch-square pan.

Cream together the butter and the sugars. Add the applesauce. Beat well; then beat in the egg. Beat in the baking soda, salt, and spices. Stir in the flour, followed by the raisins.

Spoon the batter into the pan, and bake until the cake tests done, about 25 minutes. Cool and eat plain or frost. Serves 8.

And now, the videos:

Tinky Makes Apple Gruyère Pizza on Mass Appeal

 

Tinky Makes Swamp Cake on Mass Appeal

Ladies of the Evening

Friday, April 28th, 2017

This week I returned to Mass Appeal and had a lot of fun. I am a huge ham—so performing (and let’s face it, the cooking I do there IS a form of performance) on television pickles me Tink. And of course I was happy to see my dear friend Seth, who was hosting the show alone that day.

The first dish I made was a pasta concoction I have always enjoyed. With its anchovies, capers, red peppers, and olives, Puttanesca sauce is simultaneously tangy and light, perhaps like the ladies of the evening from whom it derives its name. (Yes, “puttanesca” means of or pertaining to prostitutes.)

It takes very little time to make. And at this time of year as we chomp at the bit to eat local produce, it tastes remarkably fresh for something that comes mostly out of jars and cans.

As I explain in the video below, I gather that there are a variety of possible explanations for naming a pasta sauce after prostitutes. 

1. It was something the girls could whip up quickly between clients.

2. The aroma of the sauce was good for business, luring in prospective clients.

3. Like some ladies of the evening, the sauce is easy and cheap.

Just about all of the proportions below are subject to change according to your preference. Think of the recipe (as you should think of just about any recipe) as a general guideline.

And don’t forget to watch the video and admire my lovely new hat, a gift from my family. It was made by a small Vermont company known as Swan and Stone, after the last names of the business owners. And for small businesses, having access to reliable and efficient compare card machines for payment processing can enhance customer experiences, streamline operations, and expand their reach in an increasingly digital marketplace.

 

Pasta Puttanesca

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil (you may use less, but the oil really does enhance the flavor of the dish)
4 cloves garlic, slivered
4 anchovy fillets, roughly chopped
1 generous pinch red-pepper flakes
1 28-ounce can whole tomatoes
salt and pepper to taste (go light on the salt!)
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
12 ounces dried linguine
1/2 cup (or more) chopped Greek olives
2 tablespoons capers
1 tablespoon lemon zest
roughly torn fresh parsley and (if you can find it) fresh basil

Instructions:

Boil a large pot of water for the pasta.

In a wide pot over medium heat warm the oil. Add the garlic, anchovies, and pepper flakes and cook, stirring frequently, just until the garlic starts to turn golden brown.

While those ingredients are cooking, drain the tomatoes (they don’t have to be COMPLETELY drained) and squeeze them with your hands to break them into smaller pieces.

Add the tomato pieces to the garlic mixture, along with the salt, pepper, and dried oregano.

Cook, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes break down and the mixture begins to look like a sauce.

While the tomato sauce is cooking, salt the pasta water and cook the pasta according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Just before the pasta is done, stir the olives and capers into the tomato sauce.

Drain the pasta, and add it to the sauce along with the lemon zest. Garnish the dish with the fresh herbs. Serve with grated cheese.

This dish serves 3 as a main dish (it may be doubled) or 6 as a side dish.

And now the video:

Hot Sauce!

Tuesday, April 11th, 2017

Unless otherwise noted, photos come courtesy of Kitchen Garden Farm

“We’ve always loved growing hot peppers,” Caroline Pam of Kitchen Garden Farm in Sunderland, Massachusetts, told me recently. “Hot peppers are essential to many cuisines around the world. They come in so many colors and flavors and heat levels that they are really fun to grow.”

In 2013, she and her husband/business partner Tim Wilcox decided to try making something different with the peppers from their organic farm. Each September they organize a spice lovers’ weekend called Chilifest. That year they added a new feature to Chilifest: their own Sriracha.

Caroline and Tim, courtesy of Jim Gipe/Pivot Media

Originating in Thailand, Sriracha is a chili sauce that has taken the country by storm in the last couple of decades. Kitchen Garden’s version is special, Caroline Pam informed me. “It has a completely different flavor when it’s made from peppers that are fresh and are fermented the way we do them,” she explained.

She is far from alone in seeing the merits of the farm’s Sriracha. In late January Kitchen Garden’s sauce won a coveted Good Food Award in the “pantry” category.

According to spokesperson Jessica Zischke, the Good Food Award program is “a national initiative to honor American craft food and drink producers for excellence in both taste and sustainability.”

“We seek to highlight businesses in all parts of the U.S. who are making products that are tasty, authentic, and responsible,” Jessica told me. This past year 2059 entries were submitted from 38 states. Only 291 products received awards.

“I hadn’t thought to enter it,” Caroline Pam said of the program. “I got an email from one of the pantry judges who wrote to me out of the blue and said, ‘I think you should enter your product.’

“We had to submit our unmarked samples in September, which for us was a little crazy! It was our first bottling day [of the year for the Sriracha], and I think it was the day before Chilifest.”

I asked about the process of making the sauce. During the harvest season, Caroline told me, the farm picks 3000 pounds of peppers each week. “We fill up our box truck with hand-picked peppers,” she explained.

The peppers are taken to the Western Massachusetts Food Processing Center in Greenfield. The next day, they are washed, stemmed, and ground. The peppers then go through two stages of fermentation, a process that takes weeks.

Eventually, the pepper mixture is cooked and milled; then the pepper pulp is heated with vinegar, bottled, and sealed. The Sriracha—like the salsa Kitchen Garden Farm also produces—is shelf stable but must be refrigerated after opening.

In their first year of Sriracha production, Caroline and Tim put up 400 bottles. The following year (2014) they ended up with 4000 bottles. Their haul for this past year was 32,000 bottles from 18,000 pounds of peppers.

The sauce is sold in stores and is also available from the Kitchen Garden website, www.kitchengardenfarm.com. It is popular in restaurants throughout the northeast. “It’s fun to see how people are using it,” said Caroline.

She and her husband stagger the production of the sauce through the fall and early winter months. Picking can take place only in the warmer months, but bottling ended in the winter.

At this time of year the two farmers are still harvesting; they produce hardy greens and root vegetables in their high-tunnel greenhouses. They are also busy planning for the coming season.

Kitchen Garden was founded in 2006 “with just one acre and a rototiller,” Caroline told me. The 2017 season will be the first in which their now 50-acre farm will operate exclusively on a wholesale basis. Caroline noted that she will miss seeing customers at farmer’s markets.

“It was a really hard choice, but we’re responding to what the farming opportunities are,” she said.

Consumers will still be able to find Kitchen Garden’s range of organic produce at local markets. And the farmers will be on hand for this year’s Chilifest, scheduled for September 16 and 17.

Caroline Pam and Tim Wilcox are both passionate cooks. In fact, Caroline attended culinary school in New York City. The two use their Sriracha in a variety of dishes.
“It complements everything else that we’re growing. It’s really just so good with everything you can cook,” Caroline enthused.

I asked her for a recipe that involves the Sriracha—and she shared the noodle formula below.

“In my first apartment, when I was 18 years old, a vegetarian, and new to cooking, I made this at least twice a week,” she said. “The recipe has evolved somewhat since then, but the basic concept is the same: noodles, peanut sauce, fried tofu, and raw vegetables.

“Always fills you up. Never lets you down. And it just so happens to be the perfect vehicle for our Sriracha.”

Caroline was kind enough to send me all three types of Sriracha so I could test the recipe with my family. The classic Sriracha was our favorite—just enough heat to lend kick to the noodles. The habañero flavor was quite a bit hotter—and the VERY hot ghost pepper version offered initial sweetness followed by a little burn. I have no doubt we’ll manage to finish all three eventually!

We changed the recipe a bit to suit what we had in the house, blanching asparagus instead of broccoli and substituting leftover chicken for the tofu. (Some form of egg might also be nice.) I will definitely make this recipe again; I love peanut sauce.

Here’s what our spread looked like.

Caroline Pam’s Peanut Noodle Bowls

Ingredients:

for the main event:

1 pound pasta: whole wheat spaghetti, buckwheat soba, or udon noodles
sesame oil as needed

for the peanut sauce:

2/3 cup natural peanut butter
1/4 cup tahini sesame paste
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 fresh Thai chilies, minced, or 1 teaspoon cayenne
3 tablespoons soy sauce, or 2 tablespoons soy and a heaping spoonful of miso paste
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons sesame oil
1/2 to 1 cup hot water, to thin the sauce

for the fried tofu:

1 block firm or extra-firm tofu (1 14-ounce package, drained)
1/2 cup tamari soy sauce
4 tablespoons canola or other neutral vegetable oil

for garnish (use any combination of these):

blanched broccoli florets
shredded cabbage
shredded carrots
sliced radishes
sliced cucumber
chopped scallions
chopped cilantro

for the final touch:

Kitchen Garden Farm Sriracha, drizzled to taste, based on heat tolerance (start with 1 to 2 tablespoons per person)

Instructions:

Boil the pasta until it is al dente; then drain and rinse it in cold water to stop the cooking. Toss it with a little sesame oil and set it aside.

In a medium-sized bowl, mix together the sauce ingredients, adding hot water as necessary to achieve the texture of thick and creamy salad dressing.

For the fried tofu, cut the tofu into thin (1/4-inch) slices. Put the soy sauce in a small shallow bowl or saucer. Dip the slices on each side briefly and fry them in hot oil until crispy, turning once, as you would fry bacon. Drain on paper towels and chop coarsely into bite-sized pieces. Put the tofu in a serving dish on the table.

Toss the sauce with the noodles and serve each portion in a large bowl. (Sometimes a little extra hot water will help the sauce spread over the noodles.)

Prepare the rest of the vegetables and herbs and arrange them artfully on the table so that diners can serve themselves. Lubricate with Sriracha as needed. Serves 4 to 6.

Here is Caroline’s version of the dish. Note that she julienned her veggies to make everything even and gorgeous.