Kelie and are spent yesterday trying to come up with a list of what to make for her daughter Samantha, who is away at college and has a daily diet of pasta and sauce. I mean, we came up with a list of what Samantha could make–all by herself.

We started with what Samantha likes; now is not the time to ask her to try new foods–maybe later. She likes carrots, peas, sausage, salad as long as it has a lot of stuff in it, pasta, eggs and cheese. She doesn’t like soup, broccoli, potatoes, rice or spinach. Kelie was worried that if we asked her to cook something that started with having to cook a raw piece of meat, we might lose her.

The hardest part at the grocery store: I LOVE SOUP. I make soup all the time–it was like trying to keep Frik from Frak or a chicken from the corn not to go for the soup ingredients. I had to stay focused on the fact that just because I like something, doesn’t mean somebody else is going to like it. (I have to tell you anyways though–we bought a great big bag of carrots and of course as soon as filming was over, I made soup with them. And it was delicious. And one day, I am going to make the soup for Samantha, just to see if maybe she might possibly like it because I just know she will if she tastes it. People change, their tastes change and carrots are so good for you and soup is so soothing, and just a little bit can make you feel so much better. (2 shallots diced, 1 small yukon gold potato, 4-5 carrots, peeled and sliced thickly, 1 leek if you have it, 1 sprig of rosemary, 1 sprig of parsley and 1 big clove of garlic. Saute potato, shallot and leek with a whole pepperoncino or a few red pepper flakes, the herbs and garlic (herbs and garlic uncut.) Saute until lightly caramelized with a pinch of kosher salt and a grind of pepper. Add liquid that you have saved from another day of cooking potatoes or carrots–or just plain water, just to come to the top. Cover and simmer til all is tender. Remove rosemary and parsley. Blend with an immersion blender and taste for salt and pepper. Serve with a butttery crouton and if you have the hankering, a spill of heavy cream or a dallop of mascarpone.)

But, we didn’t make that.

We bought: fully cooked turkey sausages with red and green peppers (inside the sausage), baby romaine lettuce, an avocado, sharp cheddar cheese, tortillas, shallots, garlic, an apple, and the bag of carrots. We spent $25 and it was a good, but pricey grocery store. I had on hand at home: frozen peas, olive oil, and a little parmesan. At a regular grocery store we could have gotten all of that and stayed under the $25 mark.

What we came up with:

STAY TUNED!!! In a few days you can see for yourself on Dinner Confidential

The average day of my neighbor Olga in Italy:  rise at 6, put on about four layers of clothes, including hand knit stockings and sweaters, then head over to the bar on the other side of the fountain in the piazza for about one measured tablespoon of espresso with about 4 miniature teaspoons of sugar stirred in.  Squish into the car the size of a lost button with husband and various pieces of farm equipment and drive up the hill, over Pien di Marte and down to Corgna.  Feed the cows, find the sheep, round them up, feed the lambs, feed the dogs, cats, chickens, geese, and rabbits.  Kill a chicken, plunge it into boiling water and pluck.  Make a fire, grill thick slabs of yesterdays bread and cover both sides with olive oil.  Get the prosciutto from the huge wooden chest and slice it by hand.  Make a pot of espresso.  Feed everybody who comes, mirenda (snack.)  Clean up, sweep up, walk up into the hills to find the sheep again and cut fire starter wood from Scotch Broom bushes, and any stray bitter greens growing along the road.  Carry the bundle of brushwood (about as big as the button car) back to the house.  Set a pot of salted boiling water going in the fireplace for the pasta.  Make the pasta from a pile of flour and a few eggs.  (Get ready; this is the fifteen minute part:)  Cut up three or four red and yellow peppers and an onion.  Saute in a glug of olive oil with three cloves of thinly slivered garlic, a few sprigs of roughly chopped parsley and a small twig from the rosemary bush. Give it a pinch of sea salt and a whole pepperoncino. Let it sizzle for as long as the water takes to come to a boil and the pasta to cook.  At the last minute, add a tiny drizzle of an aged balsamic.  Spoon out some of the pasta’s cooking water in a cup.  Drain the pasta when it still has plenty of bite to it.  Add to the peppers and onions with a big handful of Parmigiano Reggiano and enough of the pasta water to make everything come together (about 2-3 Tablespoons.)  Sit for as long as it took to make the pasta and then clean up.  Knit more sweaters and socks.

Mama is tired.  I have stooped to reposting. This is from January, 2007.  Try it–you’ll like it.

Pizza, Pizza

The first time somebody kissed me, I thought, “I don’t get it. Why in the good Lord’s name, would anyone want anyone to do that?” A smash of lips, near suffocation and then a pat on the shoulder. Then a year later, the goalie of the soccer team took me completely by surprise and kissed me at a Halloween party, and my feelings changed. I understood how a mere kiss can transform, transport and change forever the life that you have been living. The same with pizza. Pizza made with no hope or interest and a rubbery cheese does the job of filling you up. Pizza made with a beautiful flour and a sauce of San Marzano and a little secret this and a little secret that, will burn itself into your memory of love forever.

The good news is, I have figured out some pizza secrets.  The other new is, it’s important not to give up.  It doesn’t always work out  the first time, but if it works out for you the second time, it’s only going to get better.

Start the day before with 3 cups of bread flour, or high gluten flour, 1 cup of wrist temperature water, 1/2 teaspoon of sugar, 1 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 1 tablespoon of olive oil and 1 teaspoon of yeast.  Proof (test) the yeast in the warm water with the sugar.  Let it sit for 5 minutes.  Do not use rapid rise yeast.  Add the oil.  Stir the salt into the flour in a large bowl, and then dump in the water mixture.  Mix together with your hands until it all comes together as a dough, and then knead for 5 to 10 minutes.  Let the dough rise for just over an hour, or until double.  Grease the bowl it is rising in, and cover with a damp cloth.  Find a warm place to let it rise.  Press the dough down, give it a couple of kneads, then place it in individual balls on a greased sheet, covered with plastic wrap, and set the sheet pan into the fridge overnight (12-24 hours).  This slow second rise is what gives elasticity to your dough and transforms a nondescript  and spongy crust to a YES!!!  So try it.

For the sauce, strain a can of San Marzano tomatoes and open them up with your hands to strain them of their juice inside as well.  Squish them with your hands.  Color one very thinly sliced clove of garlic to golden in the best olive oil you can find.  Right before it swells to gold, add four or five fresh basil leaves and a few red pepper flakes.  Turn off the heat.  Sprinkle with salt, and add the tomatoes without the juice.  Taste again for salt.

When the dough is ready, roll out the balls to 1/4 inch thickness.  Transfer the dough to your sheet or stone that has been covered with a dusting of cornmeal.  Brush the top of the dough with your beautiful olive oil.  Lightly spread on some sauce, and sprinkle on some fresh mozzarella, but not too much, so that the dough cooks evenly.  Sprinkle on just a tiny bit of kosher salt, another tiny drizzle of olive oil and bake at 475 degrees, preheating a stone or tile if you have one.   Bake with a watchful eye until it is golden around the edges and looks done.  You’ll know.

My mother had a full time job, four kids and a pressure cooker which sound like a winning combination except that when you come home from a full time job and four kids enter your cellular structure and you haven’t had enough sleep since you gave birth, it is a challenge to remember that in the directions for the pressure cooker it says something like “Never use for pea soup.”  And then in finer, meaner print:  “Your walls and your ceiling will remind you of the pea soup, forever.”  I remember three separate incidents of our walls wearing pea soup, and it has taken me all these years to be brave enough to even smell pea soup again.  The thing is, you don’t need a pressure cooker.  You don’t even have to soak dried split peas, and they’ll be done without stirring, in about 45 minutes.  Buy the bag.  Rinse the peas, and put them together with a big pot of water.  Tie up a bundle of one thyme sprig (you should be able to find thyme in the salad section in little plastic packs), a bay leaf, a parsley sprig, and an inside tiny stalk of celery with a piece of string.  If you have no string, just dump them in the pot.  Add a spill of olive oil, a good pinch of salt, a garlic clove (uncut) and a quarter of an onion or a whole shallot.  Bring to a simmer, and let it go over a low heat with the lid ajar, until the peas are soft and tender.   Adjust the salt.  Meanwhile in a frying pan, add 3 leeks.  Don’t be afraid of the leeks.  Buy them–that’s the hardest part.  When you get them home, take knife, and just whittle away at each one, as if they were a stick that you were making come to a point.  Your goal is to remove the tough green parts.  If it’s easier just to whack the tough green parts off with a single slice, do that.  Some green is fine, it’s just that the thick green stuff never really gets tender when you cook it.  Now cut the root part off, which are the wiggly bits at the bottom.  Slice each leek lengthwise down the middle so that you can open it up–you need to get the sand out.  Now just fill a bowl with cold water and let them soak in there.  The sand will fall to the bottom of the bowl.  Take them out, pat them off and slice thinly.  Saute these in a little butter with another thyme sprig and a few sprigs of parsley until tender.  If you are feeling extravagant, add some small chunks of Canadian bacon or pancetta.  Peel two fist sized potatoes and dice into small pieces.  Stir those around with the leeks and season with salt and a grind of pepper.  Add a few ladlefuls of the cooking liquid from the peas, and the peas as well.  (lift them from the liquid with a slotted spoon so that you can reserve the cooking liquid)  Simmer until the potatoes are tender, adding more liquid from the peas, as you need it.  You are not looking for this to be the kind of soup you can stand a spoon in.  Serve with buttery croutons (butter good bread and broil, then cut into squares) and a lovely goat cheese or parmesan.  Ferd ate this. And I am going to eat it again for lunch.

From the minute Ferdinand was born, I have been consumed with What Ferdinand Eats and Is Ferdinand Eating Enough?  To say, “Hey, don’t worry about it” is ridiculous.  It’s akin to saying, “Your baby will float” to a mother in a windstorm, in a dinghy, in the middle of the ocean.  Even being in the privileged position of having a grocery store and enough money to buy the groceries, can leave you unable to sleep.  Out of your grasp and in the clutches of a school cafeteria or grandmother, the child’s main food group can easily become air or chocolate or chips.  Then there are the fun facts like, our children are part a generation that for the first time is predicted to die at an earlier age than their parents because of diet related issues like diabetes and that their food sources are plagued with antibiotics and super strains of corn that are not digestible.  It’s a problem.  Here is what I do; you let me know what you do:

1.  Homemade stock is a winner.  Science has proven it’s good for you.  There is no science backing up dusty old stock cubes that have a shelf life of many years.  God knows what goes in stock cans or long-life chicken stock boxes.  Make some at some point in the week and you will only feel good.  Start with (organic if you can) chicken soup bones or wings and add a leek, an onion, a garlic clove, a bay leaf, a thyme sprig, a parsley sprig, a carrot and a celery stalk. None of these things go bad too quickly, so put them on your grocery list if you don’t have them.  Simmer for at least an hour or even two as soon as come home and then strain and use or freeze.  Use for chicken soup (cook a chicken breast or thigh right along with the rest of the stuff, once the stock has been simmering for at least  half an hour) or ladle out  into a smaller pan and cook single serving pastas in it (add peas and parmesan.)

2.  Dried beans are best, but in a pinch, canned beans rinsed, and added to a finely chopped, sauteed onion with a little parsley and coriander (and hot stuff like chile in adobe sauce if they like it hot) are great smashed with a fork and served with rice and a stack of warm tortillas.  Toss broccoli with olive oil and salt and roast at 375 degrees until bright green to serve along side.

3.  Make a pound of meatballs, serve some that night with a little tomato added to them for sauce, and a quick cooking polenta and save (or freeze) the rest of the meatballs to serve with pasta or sliced on a sandwich.  They are good for a snack.

4.  Potato and leek soup can have spinach added and eaten as long as the whole thing is pureed.  (saute one bunch of leeks and add four big peeled, chopped potatoes, cover just to the top with water and simmer til tender.  Right at the end add a few good handfuls of washed baby spinach leaves.  Puree.)  Top with hand grated parmesan cheese

5.  Serve a bowl of frozen peas and corn with a little butter and salt for a snack while dinner is getting ready.  Carrot sticks with hummus or blue corn chips and salsa, or (all natural, no sugar) peanut butter and celery, apple slices, pear slices, a banana or a bowl of plain yogurt with a drizzle of real maple syrup.  Kraft Macaroni and Cheese will not find it’s way into your grocery cart if you don’t put it in there. Doritos–same thing.  Don’t feel bad about not buying them.  Your child is going to have plenty of opportunity to find and eat these things outside of your kitchen.  When it’s not around, they won’t get in the habit of making those things a meal.
6.  Buy a whole chicken, set the oven to 375 degrees, drizzle the thing with olive oil, give it a grind of salt and pepper and stick it in the oven.  You can eat this for dinner, for sandwiches, to put in soup, on top of a cracker with an avocado or in tortillas with red peppers and onions.

7.  For treats I buy really good chocolate in bulk and Ferd has a small chunk.  Prime their taste buds.  I bake cookies, because there is just so much time for that kind of thing, which makes it unlikely that there will be pounds and pounds of them hanging around.  Plus, it’s something to do together.  I buy good ice cream that has only ingredients that Ferd can read and identify and I give less because it’s expensive.

8.  I buy cereals from the health food section of the grocery store, which used to be embarrassingly similar to cow feed, but now come in zippy boxes and tasty flavors.  (Kashi is a good brand)  He has a bowl of cereal with milk almost every night before he goes to bed.

9.  For breakfasts there are wholesome pancake mixes around or you can make your own, or yesterday’s bread soaked in a little egg and milk for French toast or whole oats for oatmeal (too many ingredients in the instant packets) which is easy enough to make–boil water, add oats and a pinch of salt.  A bowl of yogurt with banana topped toast and on Sundays we go all out and get bacon that has no nitrates or nitrites and fry it up.  It tastes like it came from a farm.

That’s what he eats.

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Menus from this weeks (work) parties:

Party 1:

started with a platter of little tastes:  medjool dates, clementines, shaved fennel with olive oil and lemon, radishes with a dish of French sea salt and almonds

teeny first course: the red grapes with fresh tarragon and ricotta salata with a little olive oil and salt

first course: Linguni with lemon zest, fried parsley, garlic, basil and toasted breadcrumbs

main course: seared chicken marinated in dijon, lemon, parsley, thyme, garlic and olive oil with tomato confit, slow cooked fennel puree, and a toss of roasted fingerling potatoes, carrots and leeks

salad:  zucchini pappardelle  (raw zucchini sliced thinly lengthwise) with olive oil, shallot, nicoise olives and mint served with a pecorino scacciata (like focaccia)

Party 2:

Passed Hors’doeuvres:

Pear with gorgonzola on bruschetta

Lardon

Spinach Sformata

Poached shrimp with beurre blanc

Mushroom Risotto Cakes

Salad:  Arugula with orange, fennel, shallot and basil

Main Course: Seared chicken with mascarpone, rosemary and lemon, zucchini trifolatti, cannellini and polenta

Dessert: Flourless chocolate cake and cream

The trick:  if you’re serving a lot of people, instead of reheating the chicken (chicken should never be served hot), which is when you can really dry out the bird, make a velute sauce, that you douse the chicken with right before it goes out.  There is the quick way (a roux of butter and flour with stock added) and then there’s the FAYE WAY:  make a chicken stock and after 3 or 4 hours, strain it.  Add a pour of good dry white wine.  Continue to cook the liquid until it’s a rich golden brown.  Swirl in a few tablespoons of unsalted butter and season with salt and pepper.
Today is rest day.

Not so nice. It reminds me of when Ferdinand and I get really mad at each other about something and the only thing I can think of is to say “Ferd, we are stuck and we have got to change the direction.” We either hit the “love” button on a stuffed lion that he has which starts the tune “I love you babe” going which gets anybody’s head bobbing and automatically feeling more relaxed, or if that doesn’t work, we walk around the block.

It’s all about distraction.

Try a teeny tiny plate of it. This is a Jamie Oliver classic: seedless red grapes, slivers of ricotta salata and fresh tarragon leaves. Toss it together with a pinch of salt, half a grind of black pepper, and a few drops of your best olive oil.

I got up from my desk yesterday to make lunch and as is usual, I ate while I was looking in the fridge.  Nicoise olives with fennel fronds and lemon zest; could have been some parsley leaves in there as well.  I was moved to sing.  SIT DOWN GIRL, I THINK I LOVE YOU; NO STAND UP GIRL AND SHOW ME WHAT YOU GOT!

Food gets me all worked up.  I got the frying pan going and threw in a good spill of olive oil  and chopped shallot with slivered garlic and few leaves of parsley along with a sprig of rosemary.  On the tip of the rosemary sprig, I shoved a whole pepperoncino (helps me find it to remove before serving.)  I don’t know why it’s so hard to find pepperoncini in the States–it’s not like they weigh a lot.  You could always substitute a few red pepper flakes.  I chopped up a zucchini and a red pepper and got that right in after it.  Water went in it’s own pot to boil for the pasta with a good pinch of salt.  As soon as the pasta was al dente (use a good pasta–De Cecco–it is so worth it), I added it to the zucchini mix along with a good handful of olives and a douse of reserved cooking water from the pasta.  I grated a beautiful goat cheese from Coach Farms to shower over the top.  Yes, yes and more yes.