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Cookbook #47: Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking

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Adapted from Cookbook #47:  Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking (1992) Recipe:  Ravioli Stuffed with Parsley and Ricotta in Tomato Sauce with Heavy Cream Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, one of my favorite holidays.  Every year the husband and I trundle on over to his parents' (one of three pairs) house for dinner.  The crowd has ranged from an intimate eight to an overwhelming twenty.  But every year we congregate around 3 p.m., sip wine and snack on some fantastic appetizer, and then gather around a big table and laugh and laugh. Some highlights have included: the best salad ever.  A simple pear, goat cheese, and butter lettuce salad with a divine, tangy, peppery dressing.  Which was later revealed in some secrecy to be Girard's Champagne Dressing ; the most, umm, interesting and Midwestern salad ever: a pear poached in red hots (yes, red hots , those cinnamon hard candies) served atop iceberg lettuce--let us not speak of this again; a porcini...
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Pappardelle with Wild Mushrooms

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I could move to Seattle. Since moving to California, I have learned the following lesson again and again: I love the water. I love the crash of waves while I walk on the beach with a cup of hot chocolate, the splash of sidewalk puddles (especially when I am wearing my polka-dotted rain boots), the penumbras of light from streetlights in heavy fog, the ping of rain on the roof of my car, the rush of fog over the Berkeley and Oakland hills, the sweep of the Bay as I round the curve on 24 just heading west from the Caldecott Tunnel, and most recently the stillness of the surrounding Delta while hundreds of ducks dip beneath the water's surface for food. However, we just ended the driest January on record here in the Bay Area. As in, literally no rain whatsoever during the wet season: the first time since 1850 that no rain has fallen in January. Yikes. I miss the rain. And I miss the mushrooms that come with the rain.  The other day, I had planned to mak...
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Ottolenghi's Lemon and Eggplant Risotto

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Risotto is such a delightful dish. Comforting, creamy, simple, stable.   And I am a huge fan . As in, I will make me a risotto any chance I get, with any sort of ingredient you can imagine. It doesn't matter--any season.  Spring--lemon and peas;  Summer--tomato and parmesan;  Fall--mushroom;  Winter--butternut squash and pancetta.  If it's in your fridge, you can put it in this Northern Italian rice dish. However, you will want a very specific kind of rice--a high starch, medium- or short-grain rice--in order separate this delicacy from any other rice dish. The high starch means that as you cook it, it releases its starch, making that requisite creamy smoothness to risotto. The most popular risotto rice in the United States is, hands down, Arborio rice. This short-grained rice isn't as starchy as some of its popular Italian counterparts, but it is the most easily procured. However, a...
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Ottolenghi's Semolina, Coconut and Marmalade Cake

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"When I stepped out into the bright sunlight, from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman, and a ride home."  This week I did two very important things: I made Ottolenghi's Semolina, Coconut and Orange Blossom Cake and I rewatched The Outsiders . These two events are not related; however, they were both delightful. Let's start with the cake, shall we? This cake is a light - in - texture - but - heavy - in - flavor take on the ubiquitous Eastern Mediterranean semolina cake. From Greece to Syria, Egypt to Turkey, this cake, well, takes the cake. Call it revani , basbousa , shamali, harisi , mix in yogurt, coconut, rose water instead of orange blossom water--no matter what, you're going to do all right.   Ottolenghi's version adds coconut and marmalade to a large dose of sunflower oil and semolina. He also serves it with a dallop of Greek yogurt freshened with orange blossom water. However, this is the kind of ...
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Ottolenghi's Salmon Steaks in Chraimeh Sauce

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Oh, what a sauce this is.   What a glorious, glorious sauce. And it comes from our new Jerusalem cookbook, from one of this blog's favorite chefs and current culinary darling, Yotam Ottolenghi.  I need not detail that this blog has featured recipes from Ottolenghi here and here and here and here ,  but I will anyway because, whoo boy, I love these recipes.  This sauce comes from the Sephardic Jews, who resided on the Iberian peninsula until the Spanish Inquisition.  After their expulsion from Spain in 1492, many Sephardic Jews were folded into the Mizrahi communities in Northern Africa and the Middle East.  Such intermingling of people and cultures has produced some culinary superstars; this being no exception.  Indeed, you can taste the Spanish, Moroccan, and Libyan influence on this sauce. Sephardim pride themselves on their chraimeh recipes, and often serve them at Rosh Hashanah and Passover celebrations (whereas Ashkenazim might serv...
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