Mille grazie!

-MGF

My grandma Ruth is, in memory, among other sour smells, canned salmon and mothballs. She kept the latter in every enclosed space of her East Meadow, New York home, the home my father lamentably declared cost her less than he had just paid for his 1984 Datsun 300ZX.He had his mid-life crisis a bit early and, in addition to purchasing the car, he began dyeing the early gray out of his beard. I had not, and still haven’t, ever seen him clean-shaven. Grandma Ruth was his mother, and as my own mother, still young with still-unpermed hair, shuffled my younger sister and me into the red, red kitchen, weary after our flight from Chicago, that combination of smells was the first thing to greet us.

Invariably, the pantry door would be open, stocked with boxes of Froot Loops and Cookie Crisp, the “sugar” cereals that my mother would not allow us kids to have at home. And behind these boxes, carefully tied sachets of mothballs, their camphor stink commingling with the salmon patties Grandma Ruth always flipped in the kitchen, whenever we first arrived from Chicago. My mom hated them. My father, on the other hand, thought they were the living end.

Ruthie was a spectacle of a woman—a hunchbacked Jewish grandmother with dyed orange hair, thick swaths of baby blue eyeshadow, and garish, bubblegum pink lipstick. I’m sure she hid the true nature of her skin behind other powders and creams and greases, but that revolting blue, and that sick pink remain the most indelible. Her morning routine reflected her dedication to face-paint. Before my family could leave the house for our typical diner breakfast, we would have to wait for Ruthie to complete her ninety-minute make-up routine.

She would allow me, after five minutes of obligatory, playful protest, to photograph her, newly made-up, with my Polaroid Pronto SX-70, in a series of unflattering poses—her eyes narrowed and tongue hanging out, her cheeks puffed and hands fanned, thumbs wedged into her ears, her mouth scowling, pointer shoved up her nostril in some bitter defiance—maybe against me, or her coming death, or my father’s bellowing for her to hurry up her Clairol-sponsored procedure.

No matter: she is canned salmon, mothballs, and chalky rouge. I still smell the ghosts of her salmon patties every time my wife, Louisa, opens a can of tuna in our Michigan kitchen. Last night, we had a variation on pastaputtanesca (virtually the only time we use any sort of canned fish—and the tuna is imported from Italy and packed in olive oil—so that’s okay, right?), that Campanian dish of stunning “dirty” flavors reputed to have been created by Neopolitan whores.

This afternoon, sitting under the porch overhang in the backyard, watching the early-November rain (sorry Axl Rose) thicken to an embryonic snow, I ate the leftovers and was again transported to that kitchen in New York, bearing those illicit cereals and a red Naugahyde breakfast nook that squeaked so loudly whenever we shifted our weight. I saw my mother making her “gag me” face as my father eagerly devoured a plate of salmon patties; saw my sister laughing, her mouth carrying a small vacancy—her first lost baby-tooth.

At about the same time Ruthie died, my sister got engaged to be married and my mother bought a new car. This was about six years ago. It was a shockingly hot summer day in Chicago. The news had been warning the elderly and parents of small children to stay inside, crank-up the air conditioner. I remember hearing about a bunch of people dropping dead, people who didn’t heed the advice, or didn’t own an air conditioner.

In this heat, my mother and sister drove the suburban streets to the wedding dressmaker. My sister was due for a fitting. My mom, who by now, after chemotherapy, was sporting a cropped curly hairdo, drove the Honda CRV, odometer proudly boasting its infancy. This was a car my Grandma Ruth would never get to ride in—another in a series of cars that, like certain foods, restaurants, dishes, seem to mark the pockets of my life by the mile.

They pulled into the parking lot; one of those lots that fronts a busy street. My mom hated those—hated having to reverse directly into traffic. The sky was a cracking blue. My mom opened the driver’s-side door and stepped out into the sun. My sister opened the passenger side door, and, excited to see the alterations that had been done on her dress, leapt onto the burning asphalt. Something, as yet unknown, materialized inside the car, tumbled mid-air, end-over-end, to the floor of the front passenger side, and rolled under the seat.

They had both, in periphery, seen it.

“What was that?” my mom asked.

“I don’t know,” my sister replied, and was already bending into the car, reaching with her arm beneath the passenger seat.

What she retrieved was small enough to fit into her hand, to disappear if she closed her fingers around it. What she retrieved was slender and warm. She held it up so my mom could see—a black plastic tube of lipstick with a clear top. Already the sun had started to burn the backs of their necks. They both knew right away, cocked their heads like a dog’s at the tea kettle’s steam-whistle. My sister lifted the clear top and, spilling into the summer air between them, a plume of scent—mothballs, salmon patties, chalk. The lipstick was that sloppy sick pink that Ruthie so favored, wore proudly with her blue or green or purple or orange papier-mâché earrings that she would purchase every winter at the Thunderbird flea market in south Florida. My sister peered into the tube as if to find an easy answer, and saw that the lipstick had been pushed down as if with a finger.

Ruthie came of age during the Great Depression, her father was a furrier and, like so many, had little money. As such, Ruthie never wasted a thing. I remember watching her, so many mornings in New York, as she dipped her finger into a near-empty tube, and wiped the pink dregs over her lips.

So, they both knew. Still, my sister felt compelled to say, aloud, “This is Grandma’s,” as if to test the cosmos. But the cosmos had said enough, opened the nebula like a mail slot, pushed this lipstick through.

At the wedding ceremony, my parents and sister organized to have a seat in the front row left open. On that seat, bearing witness, so small in such a large sea of white cloth drape, sat Ruthie’s supernatural tube of lipstick. This capped channel. This black plastic tunnel with pink light at its end. Perhaps it’s best that she attended in this incarnation. She wouldn’t have approved of the wedding food. As someone who once declared (to my passionate dismay) that she’d rather eat leftover pizza crusts than the black-olive oil poached salmon she ordered at a gourmet restaurant in Chicago, she would have labeled my sister’s choice of hors d’oeuvres “too fancy.”

As much as my mom and sister knew that day, I know. The ghosts are watching. The ghosts of people. The ghosts of food. Every time I eat cold leftovers on a porch on the cusp of a Midwestern spring, I know. Though I have become what many call a “food snob,” I realize that there is often honor in food I would normally dismiss. Honor, because these foods, however processed and modified, bear the weight of memory. Maybe not mine, but someone’s. As long as food is loved, who’s to say it’s not good food? Surely these culinary outcasts can join the ranks somehow—I certainly don’t want to offend any ghosts. So once in a while, because of salmon patties, canned tuna.

When Ruthie succumbed to Alzheimer’s a couple years before her death, she began craving foods she shunned for most of her adult life—foods she loved as a child: pies, chocolates, matzo brei with plenty of sugar. The rules had changed. So if sensory desires can circle back, if the present can twist and spiral and revisit the past, overlapping just slightly, perhaps with just a little imaginative alchemy, we can make of the mundane something gourmet. A larger-than-life grandmother. A Froot Loop soufflé.

(traditional Piemontese dessert, literally meaning “cooked cream”)

2 cups heavy cream,
1 cup whole milk
1/3 cup sugar
1 tablespoon unflavored powdered gelatin
2 tablespoons of cold filtered water
1 vanilla bean pod

In a saucepan, combine the gelatin and water and let stand for a couple minutes.  Heat the water-gelatin mixture over low heat until dissolved, then remove from the heat.  In another saucepan (this one a bit larger), combine the cream, milk, and sugar, and bring to a boil, stirring incessantly.  Remove from the heat, stir in the gelatin mixture and, with the back of a knife, scrape in the delightful inner contents of the vanilla bean pod.  Stir.  Divide the mixture into 8 half-cup ramekins (or 4 one-cup ramekins).  Allow to cool at room temperature and chill for six hours or overnight.  To serve, immerse the ramekin bottoms in a bowl of hot water for a few seconds.  Run a knife along the edges of the panna cotta and invert the ramekin onto a plate.  Serve with your favorite fruit, caramel, or wild flight of fancy.

(Piemontese raw beef appetizer)

Carne cruda is a stunning way to open a multi-course meal.  Unlike many cultures, the Piemontese do not add an egg to this dish, in favor of a stunning and often-unfiltered olive oil.

1 pound filet of beef of optimal quality
Juice of 2 lemons
3 tablespoons good unfiltered olive oil (or about the equivalent amount to the lemon juice)
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 white anchovy, chopped (optional)
salt and pepper, to taste
Garnishes: Traditional Piemontese garnishes include any or all of the following: shaved white truffle, drizzle of white truffle oil, slivers of parmigiano-reggiano cheese, chiffonade of fresh arugula, thinly-sliced porcini mushrooms.

In a dry skillet, sear the beef filet over high heat on all sides (about thirty seconds per side).  Trim away the seared portions leaving only the raw interior (this process is for the bacterially-neurotic, removing all “impurities” from the surface of the meat).  Eat the seared sections as you cook, or save it for tomorrow’s steak-and-eggs breakfast.  Chop the raw meat with a knife.  Do not use a meat/sausage grinder as this would destroy the silken texture of your optimal cut.  Toss the chopped beef with the lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper, crushed garlic cloves, and, if so desired, the white anchovy.  Let marinate about an hour (at least fifteen minutes and up to two hours, depending on how long you want the lemon juice to “cook” the meat).  Remove the garlic prior to serving.  Garnish with traditional garnishes.

(Italian breadsticks and “Lady-kisses” cookies)

Courtesy of Panetteria Cravero: Barolo, Piemonte, Italy:

Barolo’s Panetteria, known as Panetteria Cravero is run by Guillermo Cravero and two of his sisters.  A third sister, Nella, heads Barolo’s Cantinella restaurant (not to be confused with Cantinetta, another local hot-spot).  Panetteria Cravero is famous for their grissini and baci di dama cookies, purveying such delights to restaurants all over Italy, the remainder of Europe, the United States, and beyond.

For Grissini:

2 lbs. all-purpose flour,
1 _ ounces compressed yeast
2 cups of warm water
3 pinches of salt
Enough olive oil to grease a baking sheet

Dissolve a half-ounce of yeast in a cup of the water and mix this with about three ounces of flour.  Gently knead this together and allow the dough to rest in a fairly warm spot for about ninety minutes or until the size of the dough-ball doubles.  Into this doubled dough-ball, heap about one-pound, three-ounces of flour, the rest of the yeast, the few pinches of salt, and just enough warm water to render the dough soft, silken, and elastic.  Knead the dough until it peels freely from your hands.  Form into a ball, drape with a towel, and let rest for about five hours or until doubled.  Then, combine the dough-ball with the remaining water and flour and knead until sleek and pliable.  Cut or pinch into small pieces and roll these pieces into long snakes along a counter or some sort of wooden board.  Depending on the size of your oven, or your deftness with dough, these snakes can be arm-length or a bit shorter.  Oil a baking sheet.  Place “grissini snakes” on the oiled baking sheet and, again, let the dough-snakes rest until doubled.  Bake for ten minutes (or until browned) at a whopping 550-degrees Fahrenheit.

For Baci di Dama:

Baci di dama (or lady-kisses) can be made with an array of nuts.  In the Piedmont, hazelnuts are preferred due to their local status.  Almonds can easily be substituted.  Or macadamias.  Or pinenuts.  Pick your favorite and experiment.

1 cup hazelnuts (or as we’ve discussed…),
1 cup plus 1 ounce of butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup flour
2 ounces bittersweet chocolate

Combine the hazelnuts with butter, flour, and sugar until smooth and luscious.  Form the mixture into small, ping-pong sized balls and bake on an oiled/buttered baking sheet for about fifteen minutes at 350-degrees Fahrenheit.  Meanwhile, melt the chocolate down in a double-boiler.  Once removed from the oven, plunge a cookie-bottom into the chocolate and press it to the bottom of another cookie.  Hold the two cookie-lovers in this position until they stick.  Repeat with the remainder and, though the cookies will remain hot for each other, allow to cool.

Few things (eating notwithstanding) provide greater pleasure than taking an established dish and spinning it, ever so slightly, to the left. The resulting dish will play by the rules of the original, while reinventing itself within these distinct parameters. In this world, what was once an appetizer salad can now be dessert.

Ingredients:

1/3 cup fresh basil leaves

½ teaspoon orange zest

1 cup heavy cream

2 large egg yolks

¼ cup sugar

½ cup finely chopped or shredded fresh buffalo mozzarella, plus four thinly sliced discs of buffalo mozzarella, about ¼ inch thick and 2 inches in diameter.

½ cup whole milk

½ cup sugar

1 tomato (heirloom if possible—if not, any good tomato will do), sliced thinly to about ¼-inch thickness.

1 cup tomato simple syrup (recipe follows)

1 cup tomato water (recipe follows)

3 cups sugar

Procedure:

For the basil ice cream:

In a small saucepan, combine approximately half the basil, the orange zest, and the cream. Bring to a boil and remove from the heat. Cover and steep for 45 minutes. Using your kitchen facilities, make an ice water bath. You can, quite simply, stop up your kitchen sink, add about six inches of cold water (water level will depend on the height of your saucepan—you certainly don’t want any water creeping into your ice cream mixture), and a bit of ice. In a small bowl, beat the egg yolks together with ¼ cup of sugar. After the ice cream mixture has steeped, bring, once again, to a boil. In order to temper the eggs (a process which prevents the eggs from scrambling), very slowly pour in some of the hot cream mixture to the egg bowl, while simultaneously whisking the beaten eggs. Then, pour the tempered eggs from the bowl into the cream saucepan, and cook, stirring often for an additional minute or two, until the mixture coats the back of a spoon. Remove the saucepan from the heat and place in the ice water bath, stirring occasionally, until the mixture is cool. Add the mixture to a food processor and blend thoroughly with the other half of the fresh basil. Strain through a fine-mesh strainer, pour into an ice cream machine, and freeze. Store in an airtight container in the freezer until ready to use. If you have some leftover, it would go perfectly with your forthcoming sweet strawberry ravioli dessert.

For the mozzarella syrup:

Combine the mozzarella, milk, and ½ cup of sugar in a small saucepan and bring slowly to a boil. Remove from the heat and puree the cheese into the liquid with an immersion blender. (If you don’t have an immersion blender, add the mixture to a regular blender, puree, and return to the saucepan. Cover the saucepan and steep for 45 minutes. Return the mixture to medium heat and let steam (but not boil) for an additional 3-5 minutes, stirring often. Remove from the heat and strain through a fine mesh strainer. Let cool at room temperature.

For the oven-dried sweet tomato:

Preheat the oven to 275 degrees. Dip each tomato slice in the tomato simple syrup and place onto a baking rack over a baking sheet pan. Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes, flip the tomatoes and bake for an additional 15 minutes, until the tomatoes have caramelized dried. Cool at room temperature. Reserve the remaining tomato syrup at room temperature until the dish is plated.

For the tomato rock candy:

In a small saucepan, combine the tomato water and 1 ½ cups of sugar. Heat over medium-high heat, stirring often, and boil until the sugar dissolves. Add the remaining 1 ½ cups of sugar and continue to stir until sugar dissolves. Remove from the heat. Let stand for 5 minutes at room temperature, then pour the mixture into a large sturdy drinking glass or glass jar. Meanwhile, tie a few lengths of string along a pencil. The string should be about ½ the height of the glass or jar. Balance the pencil over the mouth of the glass or jar so the ends of the strings hang in the mixture. Allow to sit at room temperature for at least 24 hours or up to a week (the longer you wait, the larger the rock candy crystals). Strip the crystals from the strings. If you have more than you can use for this recipe, save for a late night indulgence.

To make the tomato simple syrup:

Combine 1 cup tomato water with 1 cup sugar (or, in other words, equal parts sugar and tomato water, depending on the yield you desire). Stir. Bring to a boil in a medium saucepan, remove from the heat, and let stand at room temperature until cool. Store the leftover syrup in the refrigerator.

To make the tomato water:

For approximately 2 cups of tomato water, puree about 10-15 good large tomatoes in a food processor with a small pinch of salt. Spoon the puree into an adequately sized piece of cheesecloth and tie it up. Suspend a strainer over a large bowl, place the tied-up cheesecloth into the strainer and set in the refrigerator overnight, or until the juice has dripped from the tomatoes into the bowl. You can save the tomato solids for a homemade vegetable stock. Store the tomato water in the refrigerator (it should keep for about a week, but the leftovers can be frozen).

Plating:

Dip each slice of buffalo mozzarella into the tomato syrup. Place a slice at the center of each plate. With a small ice cream scoop, place a sphere of basil ice cream on top of the mozzarella slice (the scoop of ice cream should just cover the mozzarella). Top the basil ice cream with a slice of oven-dried sweet tomato. Spoon a small amount of mozzarella syrup around the plate. Float a few crystals of the tomato rock candy in the syrup.

Eating:

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Revisionism.

(Prosciutto with small salad garnished with Barolo vinegar)

1 leg of pork
5 bulbs of garlic
7 oz. black peppercorn
2 cups salt
2 tablespoons cloves

a good green (arugula is good), chopped
Barolo vinegar (can substitute excellent quality red wine vinegar)
salt and pepper
white truffle oil
an excellent unfiltered olive oil
thinly-sliced porcini mushroom (optional)
slivers of parmigiano-reggiano cheese (optional)

Make paste of garlic.  Rub over pork leg.  Grind peppercorns coarsely.  Mix dry spices.  Pack into pork leg on top of garlic.  Pork leg should be completely covered with spices.  You may need more, depending on the size of the leg.

Put leg on a rack in a large pan, cover, and store in a cool, dry place (some people use a refrigerator for this stage) for 6 weeks.

Rinse leg completely with water and red wine vinegar.  Wrap leg in thin cloth (such as cheesecloth) and hang in cool, dry place for approximately 8 months.

Slice the prosciutto very thin.

Toss salad greens with enough olive oil and Barolo vinegar to coat.  Salt and pepper to taste, and drizzle with white truffle oil.

On a plate, place small amount of salad next to two slices of prosciutto.

Optional: Garnish salad with mushroom and cheese.