The Last Supper: In Memoriam

The last meal of the year should be special in some way, and I always make myself something of which I am particularly fond, like a good veal chop or an old-fashioned London broil; something symbolic, like lentils; or something I don’t often have time to do, like a classic lobster bisque with a New England twist.  Whatever it is, it is something comforting. This year, as all you true foodies know, was a year of lost luminaries in the food world, and two in particular, Marcella Hazan and Judy Rogers, were old kitchen friends of mine. What to make in memoriam for the year and these women whose food has comforted me and millions over many years?  I will save Judy Rogers’s roast chicken with bread salad for another tribute meal, soon. Marcella and I go way back, and it is one simple dish—spaghetti with smothered onions—that I have made and loved scores of times, that seems the perfect punctuation for the year, and the perfect emblem of the genius of Italian cooking.

After the news of Mrs. Hazen’s death, when everyone was talking about their favorite dishes, I realized that I had really learned to make Italian food from her books, The Classic Italian Cookbook and More Classic Italian Cooking. This actually came to me as somewhat of a shock, because I had literally internalized so many of the recipes that I scarcely open the books anymore, which I bought when they were first published by Knopf: 1976  and 1978, respectively—I was still in my 20s! I had completely forgotten, for example, that I learned to make pizza, which I made every single Friday night for more than 20 years, and still do often, from her second book. I still make my dough, and my sauce, the same way. I could list dozens of dishes that are just as second-nature, and just as frequently made.

Marcella Hazan once said, “"I am never bored by a good old dish and I wouldn't shrink from making something that I first made fifty years ago and my mother, perhaps, fifty years before then.”  I couldn’t agree more.

Happy 2014. Eat well, and stay healthy.

Spaghetti col Sugo di Cipolle

(Spaghetti with Smothered Onions)

I have made only one minor change to this perfect recipe, indicated below. It contains lard, which you all know I adore; you can substitute butter or use all olive oil if you must. But do try the lard in Mrs. Hazan’s honor. Serves 4-6 as a first course.

1 ½ T lard

5 T extra virgin olive oil

1 ½ lb sweet onions, liced very thin

Salt

Freshly ground pepper

Freshly grated nutmeg (my addition; optional)

½ cup dry white wine

2 T chopped fresh parsley

1/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan

Heat the oil and lard in a large sauté pan; add the onions, cover, and cool over very low heat for 45 min or more, til soft.  Uncover, raise the heat to medium-high, and cook until golden brown, scraping with a wooden spoon occasionally. Sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper, and a whisper of nutmeg. Add the wine, raise the heat, and stir until the wine has boiled away and you have a golden, creamy-looking mass. Stir in the parsley and remove from the heat.

Cook the spaghetti until firm—about 10-12 minutes. Reheat the sauce gently. Drain the pasta and add to the sauté pan; raise the heat and toss for a minute. Serve with the grated cheese, tossing lightly. You can also have a little garlic bread, really a bruschetta, the way Mrs. Hazen directs: toast the bread lightly; rub with a smashed clove of fresh garlic; and drizzle fairly generously with olive oil so it softens nicely. Mangia!

Lentils for Luck: Happy New Year

After The Sopranos, everyone knows that the part of New Jersey where I grew up is full of Italians Americans. In fact, Tony Soprano’s psychiatrist had her office in the next town over from where I grew up; his aunt went into a nursing home in the town where I lived when I was a baby; and all kinds of things happened in Newark, where I was born; I pretty much lived my youth in Soprano country.

But I lived in an upper middle class town, and though we were surrounded by Italians my experience with Italian food at the time was limited to the inimitable New Jersey pizza on Friday nights; linguine with clam sauce at the famous Clam Broth House in Hoboken; and the occasional lovely supper of bragiole or lasagna at my friend Maria’s house. Her father, a doctor, used to scold me for putting lots of pepper on my food, claiming that hot food would give me ulcers, and I remember thinking that was a funny thing for a man whose name was Dante to say.

It was not until I arrived in Rhode Island for college that I really began to eat Italian food much the way I used to eat salt bagels or crumb cake at home: pretty much every day. For one thing, it was everywhere; where we had delis, luncheonettes, or Chinese restaurants in New Jersey, Rhode Island had little Italian places serving minestrone, pasta e fagioli, chicken cacciatore, burgers on Italian rolls and oven grinders, all kinds of pasta (baked ziti and stuffed shells were big), and veal parmesan. This was only natural: while New Jersey has the greatest number of Italians, Rhode Island has the largest percentage (New Jersey is third). And while both states are small and densely populated, Rhode Island is so tiny and has so many fewer cultural influences that the presence of Italian Americans is, as we might say here, in your face.

My first Sunday family meal at the house of an Italian friend resulted in my mistaking the lasagna for dinner, only to find it followed by a huge roast. I learned quickly to pace myself, and this same friend kindly gave me some formal preparation for the series of courses one could expect during the holidays, and the expectation that I would have to eat every one, and seconds, too. One year I was invited over for New Year’s. My friend’s mother served a big dish of lentils with a large sausage: the lentils, I was told, signified coins—wealth for the New Year. Lentils are not as convincing a coin as the golden gelt of Hannukah, not even if you try to envision them as tiny copper pennies. And of course gelt seems luckier than legumes to a child or other fancier of chocolate (me, for example). But the combination of lentils with pork was very good, and this first exposure to lentils at age 19 remains a fond introduction, both to the food and the tradition.

Last New Year’s I made a luxurious dish, lobster bisque, but this year lentils and pork seem to suit the simpler times. We could all use a few extra coins, and a little luck. So here is my version of lentils and pork, with a little pasta, too, and sage, in hopes of imparting a little wisdom. There’s something to be said for being sadder but wiser.

 

Mini Farfalle with Lentils, Pork, and Sage

Light but satisfying, you could serve this as a first course or the main dish. Serves 3-4.

1/2 lb  sweet Italian sausage
3 T milk
pinch salt and nutmeg, few twists of the pepper mill

1/2 cup minced carrot (about 1 medium)
2 tea minced garlic
2 T olive oil
1 tea butter

1 tea minced fresh sage
zest of a small lemon

1 1/4  cup cooked lentils (about 1/2 cup dry)
2 cups dried mini farfalle or other small pasta shape

freshly grated parmigiana
additional whole sage leaves for frying (optional)

 

Peel and mince the carrot and the garlic. Using a grater, zest the peel of the lemon onto a piece of wax paper. Stack 4 or 5 large sage leaves, roll them tightly and chop fine; add them to the lemon zest. If desired, dip the remaining, largest sage leaves in flour, shaking off the excess. In a deep frying pan, place about ½” vegetable oil and heat to about 350-375 F; fry the sage leaves in the oil very briefly, until they crisp. Remove to paper towels.

Wash and pick over the lentils. Bring 3 cups water to a boil; add the lentils, and when the water returns to the boil, reduce the heat to a moderate bubble and cook the lentils, partially covered, until just tender, about 20 minutes. Drain and set aside.

While the lentils are cooking, crumble the sausage into a large frying pan and cook, chopping with the side of a wooden spoon, over medium heat until the  meat just loses its color; do not allow it to brown. Add the small amount of salt, pepper, and nutmeg as it cooks, and then the milk, continuing to cook until the milk is absorbed. Remove to a bowl, and clean out the pan.

Put the pan back on the stove, add 1 T olive oil, and heat over moderate heat. Add the carrots and cook slowly for about 2-3 minutes without browning. Set aside.

Cook the pasta in boiling, salted water for about 6 minutes; drain, reserving about 1/2 cup of the cooking water. Return the frying pan with the carrots to the stove, add the remaining T of olive oil and 1 tea butter over moderate heat, then add the garlic, sautéing for a minute. Add the cooked sausage, 1 cup of lentils, and the pasta; toss, adding in a little of the reserved pasta water. Stir in the lemon zest and sage.

Serve, sprinkling over some of the remaining 1/4 cup of lentils, and garnish with freshly grated parm and, if desired, fried sage leaves.