Summer Picnic Pasta Salad

Summer Pasta Salad

1/2 lb cooked, drained and cooled creste di gallo--Cock's combs
1 can of Italian (Genova) tuna fish with oil
1 can of tuna packed under water--drain and toss the water!
1 /2 cup of diced sweet pepperoni--yours, or straight from the jar
1/2 cup chopped celery (optional)
1/4 of a red onion, sliced
2 Tbs. of tiny capers
1/2 cup of sweet gherkins sliced
1/2 cup of sliced black olives (I like the ones with Jalapeno)
1/4 cup of green olives stuffed with anchovies
1 Tbs of fresh parsley
1/2 lb cooked cannellini beans or pour straight form the can, cheater!
1 teaspoon of oregano
3 hard cooked eggs...quartered around the platter (optional)
3-4 small sweet tomatoes quartered and placed in between the egg pieces
1/2 lb. cooked cold, shrimp (optional)
Salt, coarse ground pepper
paprika (optional)
garlic powder (optional)
olive oil
champagne vinegar
a spritz of apple must!

Hint: do not add the tomatoes till the last minute. Or else serve each platter with the tom ates around and the salad plopped right smack dab in the center!

Today I made this without the celery, paprika or shrimp...it was super-duper YUM, FR said so, and he has a discerning, spoiled palate.

Serves 4-6, depending how generous you are dishing out the portions.

Osso Buco

Osso Buco
Literally translated as bone hole! It's the cut of meat that has the marrow in the center!

One summer night in San Felice Circeo I started to make this dish and halfway through the cooking of it--I ran out of PROPANE GAS! What did I do? I knocked on my neighbor's door, pot in hand and asked Licia if I could finish the cooking on her stove! That was the night the lights went out too, and we ate by candle light on the terrace overlooking the Maga Circe--a mountain profile of the the Circe who called to Ulysses.

It was the Feast of San Lorenzo--the day after the Feast of the Assumption (which is Ferragosto the 15th of August and one of the biggest holidays in Italy). Anyway, after dinner we sat with the lights out and an Amaro Averna in hand. Celebrating San Lorenzo is when you see the most amount of falling or shooting stars...that night we counted 16! And the magic of it made me feel I was just that age!

Ingredients:

5-6 veal shanks cut to about 2 1/2 to 3 inches thick...can use beef, but it takes longer to cook and sometimes remains a bit tough. I've done both--you just have to pay more attention to the beef.
1/4 cup of flour to dip the meat in (optional) I like this ingredient because it gives substance and texture to the gravy.
salt
black pepper
6-8 Tbs. of olive oil
2 carrots sliced
1 onion sliced
3 celery stalks sliced
4-6 plum tomatoes skinned
Now when I make this if I have a potato, a sweet potato or a zucchini, I use them as well. Not part of the true original recipe...but do you care if it's delicious?
2 cups of white wine
2 cups chicken or beef or vegetable broth
2 garlic cloves minced.

Directions:

Okay--this can be made in the oven...it takes 2-3 hours. It may be made on top of the stove and it takes the same 2-3 hours. Or you can brown the seasoned floured meat in 1/2 the oil and add all the broth and tomatoes and cook in the pressure cooker for about 1/2 hr. to 45 minutes and be sure your meat will be tender.

When the meat is cooked, pour the rest of the oil in a large Dutch over or iron heavy pot for stewing. Add oil, onion, garlic, carrots, celery and any other veggies mentioned above. Cook on high flame for about 5 to 7 minutes. Fling in the vino and let the alcohol steam off, and then add the meat and its broth and bring to a boil. Then reduce heat and let cook uncovered over a low to medium heat for 1/2 hr to 45 minutes--taste a potato for "doneness" if you added them. Taste and adjust seasonings.

Serve the sauce over fettuccine with some grated Romano cheese, and the meat as a second platter...

OR

Make it without tomatoes!

The men in my family go GAGA for this dish. I haven't a clue why, but Nico loves the midolo or bone marrow and Felipe just loves the whole thing!. This used to be a poor man’s dish due to the cheaper cut of the meat when my Aunt Jay, who just passed away a few years ago at 96, was growing up. Then one day she went to the Four Seasons in NYC and was shocked to find it on the menu and almost passed out when she read the right side and saw the price.

Fandango

Yesterday I bought a cookbook in a highly unlikely place to sell books: Coldwater Creek!

The book is titled: fandango, which caught my attention immediately because I fling that word around in stuff I write. The book was originally marked at $45, then reduced to half price and then marked down again and I got another 25% off, etc...

In the end a fabulous cookbook by Sandy Hill, with a FOREWORD by Martha Stewart, and with gorgeous pictures and 125 lovely recipes by Stephanie Valentine, cost me a whopping $7

There's a picture of the painting: The Fandango 1873 by Charles Christian Nahl (Crocker Art Museum, E. B. Crocker Collection) on page 63 of the cookbook. And the book is filled with history and romance! My kind of cookbook exactly!

Okay so what's this all about? INSPIRATION, pure and simple. I want to write a cookbook. I find a lovely example of one and it gets me thinking--that's what writers do--they think before they write.

I told my idea to Linda Bladholm, Miami food and cookbook author: see her page on amazon! ( http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Linda+bladholm ) She said this idea about me wanting to write a cookbook is not totally off the wall. I also told her that my recipes are scattered--that is to say, they're not just Italian--they're a whoop=di=do kind of potpourri-melange. So I figure I need a theme. Got one? Anyone who has read my blogs?

If so clue me and I'll be happy to post them and give you complete credit for them on this very bloggerino.

Shrimp with pearls and pearls

Happy 4th of July! (More on shrimp...)

This definition is from Wikipedia...

"A pearl is a hard, roundish object produced within the soft tissue (specifically the mantle) of a living shelled mollusk. Just like the shell of mollusks, a pearl is made up of calcium carbonate in minute crystalline form, which has been deposited in concentric layers. The ideal pearl is perfectly round and smooth, but many other shapes of pearls (baroque pearls) occur. The finest quality natural pearls have been highly valued as gemstones and objects of beauty for many centuries, and because of this, the word pearl became a metaphor for something very rare, very fine, very admirable and very valuable."

The recipe I'm about to write is for shrimps with pearl onions and "pearl pasta" (acini di peppe-- little beads. like tiny pearls).

Ingredients:

1/2 to 3/4 lb of acini di peppe
1 cup of sugar snap peas with strings removed , then halved--may use just a cup of English peas (green pearls) or broad beans cut 3-4 times on an angle, or French string beans...your choice
2 Tbs. unsalted butter
1 Tbs of olive oil
1/2 to 3/4 lb. of shrimp, peeled, deveined and tails off (medium size)
1/2 cup of white wine (whatever you're drinking always works)
2 -3 small fresh tomatoes, skinned and minced or you may use grape tomatoes, halved
1/2 Tbs. tarragon, if desired
1/2 TBS of mined parsley
1 scallion sliced thin, including the green tops
1 minced garlic clove (optional)
salt
pepper
(may also use couscous instead of pasta, same schemer)

Directions:

Cook the pasta for 9 minutes in enough water so you don't drain it.

At the 5 minute mark, add peas or beans--you may do both if you like veggies!

In the meantime while the pasta and veggies cook, put the butter and oil, garlic, sliced scallion, heat for few minutes and then add wine, cook down, and then add tomato, parsley and tarragon.

Raise heat to medium high and then simmer uncovered for about 5 more minutes.

Add the shrimp, salt and pepper to taste...I love fresh coarse ground black pepper! and toss until shrimp are pink--about 3-4 minutes.

Transfer the pasta to a warmed bowl and add shrimp and serve!

Serves 2-3 Obviously, if you want to serve more people, you add more good ingredients!

Spaghetti with Shrimp and Bay Scallops

July 3, 2009

Same day as the Frame Poem,but just a bit later.

Here's the recipe as promised. In fact here are two recipes since you waited to read this while I had an exciting excursion to Home Depot...No, they don't make mailbox keys, Ladies of Screw Iowa!

Recipe # 1
Spaghetti with Shrimp and Bay Scallops


1 lb of De Cecco spaghetti (linguine for the second recipe)
3 Tbs. olive oil
1 teaspoon of unsalted butter
2 minced garlic cloves
1 Tbs. of minced onion
½ teaspoon of saffron (if you can afford it!)
1 lb of peeled and deveined shrimp—may use the smaller ones, white or Key West pinks shrimp
½ lb of bay scallops
28 ounce can of any whole San Marzano peeled tomatoes—crush these yourself, or smash them as you will—of course you can use fresh, peeled tomatoes also, in which case, I doubt that you’ll find fresh San Marzano , so use Roma or any plum tomatoes
1 cup of fresh heavy or whipping cream
½ to 1 undernourished as in meager teaspoon of grated cheese (no more or you’ll kill the seafood taste)
hot pepper, if desired


In a large skillet over medium heat oil and butter and add garlic, hot pepper and onion. Before turning gold, add the juice of the tomatoes and then the hand crushed or tomatoes you’ve passed through a sieve. Yes, it’s the old fashioned way—do you want to do this well or not? Let the liquid cook down and then add the cream to thicken. Now for the tricky part—when you’re about to drain the pasta from the salted water, fling in the shrimp and scallops.

Pour some of this sauce into a warmed serving bowl, and then the drained pasta, more sauce and then the cheese.


AND Recipe # 2
Linguine with creamed shrimp: Crema di scampi.

Crema di scampi. Since you probably won’t find langostini or scampi—the ones that look like little lobsters—use a very sweet shrimp instead!

Here are the directions for this—you make it without the scallops and add more shrimp, say 1 ½ lbs. and grind them up and set aside.

In this case you will not crush the tomatoes but rather whip and whir them into liquid.

Also add ½ glass of wine to the cooked onion, garlic and hot pepper and when this cooks down, add the liquidy tomatoes.

Are you following me here, folks?

Let this simmer for about 20 minutes. If you add basil, take it out before you add the cream, and remove about ½ of this sauce to save it for something else.

Add the cream to thicken and then when the pasta is draining add the ground shrimp to the sauce and raise the flame to high—stir till completely drowned. Pour the tightly drained pasta (for this dish, I use linguine instead of spaghetti) into this mixture, and stir in the scanty teaspoon of grated cheese.

Serve from the pot. Garnish with minced parsley at the table.

P. S.
I have never made pasta this way—I will this weekend. I just thought it sounded like a good idea since Felipe told me this morning that shrimp with pasta is not one of his favorites when I mentioned that Lulu said the other day it’s not one of hers after suggesting it for our menu last Sunday!

So there you have it, chefs and chefesses, Necessity is once again a Mother of Invention.

Have faith, it'll turn out lip-smaking, delectably scrumtious. Ipso facto~

The Frame Poem

Here's an exercise in poetry I posted on Screw Iowa's blog this morning...and decided to steal for my own! Steal, being the operative word of the day it seems...

And also LATER I'll write a recipe for spaghetti with shrimp and bay scallops (after the poetry exercise you owe it to yourself to make a delish supper dish!)

Take a chance: write poetry, enrich your inner being!

The prompt: In front of me on my desk is The New Yorker—please take hold of any magazine you wish… open to a random page. I opened to the July 6 & 13 2009 issue

Lucky me, I found on pages 56-57 a poem entitled “Twin Cities” by Carol Muske Dukes…plus two pages worth of words from an article: The Kill Company by Raffi Khatchdourian.

What you’re about to write is called a frame poem or an exercise of words that will frame a poem. Basically you steal words or phrases from the magazine pages and write your own poem.

As my dear friend and mentor John Dufresne always said, and he might have been quoting someone else, “Good writers imitate, great writers ‘steal.’” (I believe the quote is a rip off from something Picasso said: “Good artists imitate, great artists steal.” But then again, it could be from something T. S. Eliot said…whatever the case may be, it’s a terrific great idea to consider. Remember it. House it in the room of your brain that speaks to your writing!

Okay, give me a second here to "read" and skim … meantime go find a copy of Newsweek, Time, Sports Illustrated, People, or whatever. You can highlight the words, or make a list.

These words are from the poem:

Skate across
Raft
Snake
Dakota
Cliffs Caves
River
Mills
Winter ice
Brittle mirage

These are from the article:

The presence of women
Conflicting memories
Squad disbanded
Cleaned up the remains
The men I killed
Squatted
Deaths
Soldiers
Shot while escaping
Massacre
Charlie company
Blindfolded bodies
miscommunication
Law of War
Capacity for moral discrimination
the sound of gunfire


So what’s going on in my brain here? Strong words or images popped out at me.As I was picking out words, apparently my brain started doing associations and did some first drafting homework for me by connecting possible words in order to group together later to write a poem that could make sense.


I might title this:

In the Presence of Women

Some of the Dakota tried to escape
skating the partially frozen river
or snake across it at its shallow, lower parts
in zigzag formation
to reach the hills, cliffs
and caves on the other side.

Some of the horses had travois,
raft-like attachments made of tree limbs
covered with pelts
but the brittle mirage of thawing winter ice
could not hold them
and many women and children drowned.

The Calvary’s disbanded squads
chased and hunted down others,
some shot while escaping.
The remaining men of Charlie Company
blindfolded the renegade Indians
and killed them Army style, lined up
in an execution with a firing squad.

When it was over, it was revealed
these natives weren’t hostile at all,
but peace-lovers, which made this a massacre.

“Miscommunication,” a Sergeant said,
“The Law of War,” said a Lieutenant,
his brass buttons shining in sun
glinting from the General’s office window

The General said to the officers,
“At ease, Gentlemen. What’s needed, perhaps,
is a greater capacity for moral discrimination.”

It took me all of twenty minutes to write this draft, not half-bad for a first draft, but it can made into a really good poem with some time, effort, and revision. Try one! Your brain will make associations you never dreamed about when you formed your list. You can change and invert the words or phrases, and of course, add some of your own to give the vrerse some sense. Have fun!

NY Style Cheese Cake a la Nina and write me a poem

NEW YORK STYLE CHEESE CAKE

I've been working with this recipe for close to 40 years! Yes, I started in the cradle...

So here's the adapted recipe from my friend Joni Di Giovanni's original one given to me when we were young girls together in bella Roma! At the time I lived there from 1970-1990 there wasn't a pasticceria (bakery)that sold this cake--so if you wanted it, you baked it! Just like cherry, blackberry, peach, blueberry, pear, and any other kind of American pie. I've always cooked, but I learned to bake from Expatriate American women. Viva!

A little note on living and baking overseas...
My dear friend, Angela Ragusa, may she rest in peace, was one of them, who taught me to bake bread, make croissant, and other goodies. Nelsa Montagna taught me the art of baking Italian sweets like crostata and mimosa. There were countless others. One southern chick, Priscilla Diaz, taught me to make "Tea Time Tassies" (one to these days, I'll write the recipe for that...if I can find it.)

And I in turn taught Nico's preschool class to bake chocolate chip cookies and muffins! No small feat, I can assure you, especially when the Italian Mammas were asked to leave me their children and pick them up 3 hours later! I had 1/2 the class on Friday afternoon, and the other 1/2 on Saturday morning...yes, I had a huge kitchen. And no, they didn't even know how to crack an egg--at first try, the egg, complete with shell, went into the mix. Start over: each child tasted every raw ingredient, and learned how to crack and egg, and gently drop the actual egg, sans shell, into the raw dough.

There were other chef/teachers along my path: Italian women who shared their recipes for tiramisu--God bless Margherita Melle--we even made it on our boat the Lady Drifter going to Sardegna! And Anna, a cleaning girl who taught me Neapolitan wonders! Not to mention la mia car'amica Pina Pintucci, who taught me mouth-watering savories, among others!

Back to Cheese Cake...

Blend the ingredients any way you want--food processor, in a bowl of a standing mixer, or by a small hand mixer--max nix--you can't go wrong. I've used all three methods. them all

Ingredients:

1 cup of heavy cream
2 large packages of soft cream cheese at room temperature--that's about 1 lb.
2 tablespoons of sifted flour
1 generous teaspoon (that is to say a little overflowing!) of vanilla
pinch of salt
3/4 cup of sugar
4 eggs.

Bake for 1 hour at 350" stick a toothpick in to see if it's done.

Okay, okay--for you enthusiasts...you may use a spring pan, and yes you may make a Graham cracker crust if you think this is a MUST!

For the crust:

4 to 5 oz. broken up Graham crackers: process these to crumbs (about 1 etto or 110 gr.)
4 Tbs. of very soft butter (1/2 etto)
1 Tbs. of sugar (10-12 gr. )

With the soft butter--butter the pan, then melt the rest and fling it into the crumbs mixed with the sugar. Mix well. Place this mixture into the bottom of a spring pan. Press and flatten this all around--bottom and sides--you can use the bottom of a 1 cup stainless steel measuring cup, or be inventive, choose your own method.

In a heated oven, bake the crust for about 10 minutes at 325 degrees. (In the mountains, bake for 12-13 minutes using convection baking!) While this is baking, mix all the cheesy ingredients adding them one at a time, and then pour this into the spring pan with readied crust.

Now bake in a preheated oven at 350 degrees, or until the internal temp registers 150 F.
While baking --do NOT open oven door. Let cool for at least 15-20 minutes on a rack and then slide a knife around the cake edge a few times. Then pop it into the fridge. Sever cold with blueberry, strawberry or cherry glaze, sauce, or just plain old jam.


Write me a Poem:
Don't say you can't, or never tried. Do not tell me that you never wanted to, have no ideas or imagination. there's a little poet in every one of us, and poetry enriches our lives! so sit down with a pencil and piece of paper and do this...

LESSON # 1. THINK

LESSON # 2. WRITE SOME COLLOQUIALISMS HAVING TO DO WITH ONE SUBJECT

LESSON # 3. LINK THEM

Here's my example--straight on this blog--no cheating--no pre-writing.


DEATH

Kick the bucket
Cashed in all his pennies
Dropped dead
Passed-on
Terminated
Deceased
Bit the dust
Died
Expired
Left this world
Went on to Heaven
Melting ice cubes in Hell
Wrote a will but never got to read it
Last breath
Dying in peace
His precious last
Received Extreme Unction
Expiry
Bought the farm
The End

Okay--next job is to link these, but since I have to go pick out some rocks for the garden--your on your own! Try! (Of course, you may want to pick a happier subject...but this is where my thoughts jumped to after cheese cake! Go figure.)