Accompaniments: Pickled Serrano Chili Peppers

Usually, when I am making a dish that requires a hot pepper I only need one or two at a time.  But then there I am at the supermarket and all I see are packages of hot peppers.  There just isn't a way that I will use up 20 serrano peppers this week.  But I can pickle them to use later!  I always have a jar of pickled hot peppers in my fridge and I use them in place of the fresh ones in any recipe that calls for one.  They tend to be less hot but still very flavorful. 

Pickled Serrano Peppers

• 1 lime cut in eighths
• 1 clove of garlic sliced or quartered
• as many chili peppers as you can fit in a jar
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1 teaspoon coriander seed
• 3 tablspoons salt
• white vinegar

Add lime, peppers, garlic, spices adn salt to a 16oz sterilized mason jar.  (To sterilize a jar and lid, place them in a pot of boiing water for 10 minutes.  Add vinegar until it rises above one fourth of the jar.  Fill the rest of the jar up to the lip with water so no air gets in.  They are ready to go after about 2 days.

Sunday Dinner at Home: Roasted Acorn Squash Ravioli

Let me start by saying that I do not have a pasta machine.  I have never had one and I am pretty sure my grandmother didn't either.  Saying that doesn't mean that I am opposed to one.  I didn't mean that in the belligerent I-will-never-have-one-and-you-shouldn't-either kind of way.  Quite the contrary, we would probably have fresh pasta more often if I did have a pasta machine.  But you can make fresh pasta without one and it isn't as hard as you think.

Do you remember what it was like to want to get your hands dirty?  Or to be a kid and need the satisfaction of a tactile experience?  I could not pass a pile of leaves my father had just raked without jumping in it.  How about running your fingers through warm sand and digging down to the cool, damp sand underneath?  When I was an art teacher my students would ask "When do we get to use clay?" starting on the first week of school and every week that followed until we actually did use clay.  They would cheer on painting day from kindergarten to high school.

That is the joy of making something from scratch.  It literally feels good.  Like cold water and wet clay on a potter's wheel...someone stop me because I will go on forever.  Pasta making is like that too except afterwards you get to eat it!  If you are really nice you might even share it with others.  So what if it took me all day and my kitchen was a mess?  Maybe my furniture, counters, hair and eyebrows are covered in flour, but I had fun.  Delicious fun.

Roasted Acorn Squash Ravioli with Fried Sage Leaves 

For the pasta:

• 3 eggs
• approx. 3 cups of flour

For the filling:

• 1 acorn squash
• 1/4 cup diced pancetta
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 small or half of one large onion diced
• 2/3 cup Parmesan cheese
• 5 sage leaves chopped
• salt
• pepper

For the garnish:

• 3 tablespoons of butter
• remaining bundle of sage leaves

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.  Wrap your acorn squash in aluminum foil and pop it in.  This will roast for about an hour and a half.

On a clean dry surface, scoop out your flour and make it into a pile (like a mountain, as my aunt would say).  With your fingers, make a hole in the center (like a valley, if you will).  You want to make sure this hole goes down to the surface and that the "walls" are pretty high.  Crack one of the eggs into the center of your flour. Gently scramble the egg with a fork.  it will begin to absorb the flour.  When it becomes more of a cough you can begin to knead it with your fingers.  Form the dough into a disc and repeat with the following two eggs.

On a floured surface, roll out your dough from the center out.  The flour is what makes the dough expand so if the dough is too sticky or not spreading, add more four to the surface.  Roll out the dough as thin as you can get it without breaking.

In the meantime, you might want to get started on the filling.  Add your butter, pancetta and onion to a hot skillet.  Turn down the heat to medium and sautee` your ingredients until your pancetta is well cooked and your onion is translucent.  Salt and pepper to taste

When your acorn squash is done, take it out, unwrap it, cut it in half and let it cool.  When it is cool  enough to handle, scoop out the seeds and throw them away.  Then scoop out the flesh with a spoon. Add the squash, pancetta and onion mixture, chopped sage and Parmesan cheese to a food processor and pulse until smooth.  (Or mash it together with a fork if you prefer.)

Lay out one sheet of the pasta and add a spoonfuls of your squash mixture, each about 2 inches apart. Brush a little water on the dough in between.  Lay another sheet of pasta on top and press around each lump of filling with your fingers so that the dough sticks together. Cut your ravioli apart with a knife or pizza cutter.  You want to lay the ravioli out on a tray with some space between them to keep them from sticking together before you cook them.  Boil about three or four at a time, until they float to the top and pucker slightly.

In a frying pan or hot skillet, melt about 3 tablespoons of butter.  When the butter is hot and melted but not yet brown, add the sage leaves with a generous sprinkling of salt.  Let them fry until they darken and curl.  Drizzle over the ravioli.

Dinner for One: Baked Eggs and Brussels Sprouts

I have been cooking for two for so long I forgot what it was like to fend for myself.  But I do have many single friends and most cook for themselves.  There is a popular opinion that when you are one person it is easier and just as cheap to get take out and I am still trying my hardest to prove that wrong.  Picture this: it is a Wednesday.  I come home from a long day at the office.  I have two hours before having to run out again.  I am even trying to get in a shower.  Yet, I am the food snob that I am and I want my dinner to be delicious spectacular.  If you find yourself in the same predicament one night, try the recipe below. 

Baked Eggs and Brussels Sprouts

• 2 eggs
• 4 brussels sprouts shredded
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 tablespoons chopped parsley
• Parmesan cheese to taste
• drizzle of balsamic cream
• sea salt
• pepper

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Toss brussels sprouts, olive oil, salt, pepper, and balsamic cream in a single serving, oven proof ramekin.  Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.  Crack the two eggs over the top.  Sprinkle with more Parmesan, salt and pepper.  Bake for 20 minutes.  

Go have a shower.  Do your thing.  It will be done by the time you get out.  

Printable Weekly Menu Planner Giveaway!

Planning my dinners at the beginning of the week has helped me immensely as a home cook.  I still have weeks where I fall behind, but when I am organized enough to take a few minutes at the beginning of the week to write out a meal plan, it saves me time. money and headaches.  It is important to me to cook at home, not only because I love to cook but it keeps us healthy and our pocketbooks happy. 

So here is how you can print your weekly meal planner below:

1. Double click on the image below.
2. Then right click and you should see a window of choices.
3. Select print.

If you have other ideas that help the process of making meals at home easier, please let me know.  I would love to hear from you!

Inspiration Outing #6: Paulie Gee's

This is the one year anniversary of this blog and it seems only fitting that the post should be about pizza. The motivation for starting this blog was to share some great pizza making on my brother's part.  (Check out this post.)  This weekend I had the fortunate opportunity to introduce one pizza-making Paulie to another.

On left is the Regina for all of the traditionalists out there.  On the right, Anis and Anefew for fennel lovers.

This is my favorite pizza in NY.  Brooklyn has no shortage of pizza places and these days no shortage of pizza places that make a neapolatan style pizza in a brick oven.  But none seem to to quite get the balance of crust and toppings as well as Paulie Gee's.  Even the better pizzerias may do a good crust and have some quality toppings but maybe they don't get enough char.  Or too much char.  Or the topping are heavily piled in the middle making the center of the pie soggy.  These are still good pizzas but they are not Paulie Gee's.  What I like most about the pizza at Paulie Gee's is the artful toppings.  They are both simple and surprising.  Take the popular "Hell Boy" pizza.It has most of the toppings you would expect on an Italian style pizza, mild fior di latte mozarella, soppressata piccante, tomato but with the addition of a spicy, hot honey.  Just enough to add an interesting complexity without overpowering the other ingredients.  We sampled six pies that night, all in unique flavor combinations but keeping with the tradition of simple, good quality ingredients.

The two Paulies in front of one beautiful brick oven.

Inspiration Outing #5: Sfogliatelle

This is a dark and sinful breakfast.  This is not your hearty eggs and toast or healthy yogurt and fresh fruit.  This is sugar and creamy, cheesy filling with a flaky, pastry crust.  Then sometimes there are those subtle flecks of citron.  There's the satisfying crunch as you break through the layers (le sfoglie) to the sweet creamy center.  Now there are flecks of sfogliatella crumbs all over your cheeks and down the front of your shirt.  This is where I start bargaining with myself.  Just one more and I will start running every morning before work.  Two and I will take the forty-five minute walk home this week.  I have no will power.  I crumble and sip my cappuccino knowing full well that I won't even so much as double my yoga classes.

The first time I can remember appreciating a sfogliatella was in in Naples.  I had had them before but never did they stand out as memorable as this one time.  It was many years ago and I was visiting relatives and friends in Italy during my August vacation.  I met up with my cousin, Livia and we took the train from my father's hometown in Frosinone south to Naples, where she was living and going to school.  She was opening up her world to me, I got to see her apartment, her city.  I was so eager I had my bag packed within the hour.  Livia was a native Italian, raised in southern Lazio.  Our father's were brothers.  Mine came to live in the US, hers stayed in Italy.  There had always been so much geographical distance between us that I was curious about her daily life, her friends, her routine, her home.

Livia spoke no English but was remarkably patient with my Italian.  I marveled at how easy it was to understand her but I realize she must have made a real effort to speak slowly and simple for her American cousin, who talked way too much in a language that had not been mastered.  We talked about art, food and agriculture.  We giggled about things I don't remember in between.  

Livia promised to introduce me to her favorite Neapolitan foods and the best places to get them.  The first place we went to was a coffee bar right outside the train station.  It was a small bar with a long counter and we ordered two espressos and two sfoglietelle.  The bar was full of stocky middle-aged men smoking and talking loudly with snapping hand movements.  Clearly this place had never had an interior designer, or even a picture on the wall, but still it had an atmosphere simple because it had absorbed  Naples, its people, its sounds, smells and tastes.  As I sipped my coffee and bit into what I will forever consider my first real Napoletano pastry, everything around me seemed to drop away from the pleasure of that moment.  Livia squeezed her coffee colored eyes in a blink and a nod to say "you are very welcome."  

This is me in front of Egidio's off Arthur Avenue in the Bronx.  I have had this sweet in many a pastry shop in NY but this was my first time at Egidio's.  It was light on the cream filling (which was nice actually), minus the citron and had a wonderful light, flaky crust.  Another place in NY with a killing sfogliatella is Paneantico in Bay Ridge.  What can I say?  For good sfogliatella you have got to travel. 

My Sweet Spot: Chai Tea Ice Cream

A rainy day in March off a street in Berlin is a strange place to have first tried an Indian chai tea, but that is how it happened.  I was young traveler in the nineties with a backpack and a eurail pass, bought with pennies saved from waiting tables. Dewey and fresh-faced, I hopped around Europe hoping to collect adventures like postage stamps and come home more interesting and worldly.

Berlin greeted me with lots of rain and some friendly faces in pubs that sold me bratwurst in cumin-laced ketchup.  I had no agenda and no cell phone, a luxury I can not even fathom today.  Still I managed to meet up with fellow dewey and fresh-faced traveler-come-waitress friend on rainy day number three and we explored the city with ducked heads and hunched shoulders.  When the chill got too much for our thin coats, we ducked into an Indian cafe for some warmth and nourishment.  I don't remember what it was called or where we were but we sat by the water streaked window.  My traveling companion ordered us two cups of chai tea.  The tea was warm and rich with cinamon and clove, and I started to thaw like someone had plopped me in front of an open fire and thrown a fuzzy blanket around my shoulders.

Since then I have had many cups of chai tea on a chilly afternoon.  It isn't just the hot liquid but the richness of the sugar, milk and spices that can be such a comfort.  I have made some pretty successful chai tea cupcakes in the past.  This day I made chai tea ice cream, a twist on my earlier post on the the italian affogato.

It has been raining here but it isn't March and I am not ready for tea.  The sun is out again. I think I will savor the fleeting summer a little bit longer.

Chai Tea Ice Cream

Makes one pint:

• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 chai tea bag
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 teaspoon cinamon

On very low heat in a saucepan, heat milk and cream with the tea bag.  Heat until the tea is infused into the milk and cream. Let cool to room temperature. In an electric mixer or using a hand mixer, blend the egg and the sugar.  Add vanilla and cinamon to the egg and sugar and blend.  While the mixer is still going, pour in the milk and cream tea mixture.  Add to your ice cream maker and proceed according to its instruction manual.